Can people in poverty implement self-sustainable solutions to provide basic needs for themselves?
I am taking on a topic that I have questioned for myself for a long time. As I have spent three years of my life exploring South-Africa and the people of South-Africa.
I have spent within these three years most of my time in what is called townships and rural developments, where the majority of people within townships are African or mixed races.
South-Africa has a population of 55 million people, of which only 8% is white, so finding a poor white family is difficult, not because there isn’t any, just because the whites are so few among the many. My point being, I want to clarify that poverty exists for all ethnic groups in South-Africa, as poverty is a manmade problem, it isn’t discriminating with color, it is discriminating with money.
I have been in super-rich people's houses and sat with them, their families, from rich black people, rich Indian people, and rich white people, and rich coloured people, where they have the best cars, gadgets, and they have their kids in schools that cost more than I ever made in a year in my life. None of what I saw in the rich people’s homes ever got my attention as much as when I spend countless hours in dozens of poor people’s homes. When I say poor, I am talking poverty, not just someone that doesn’t have enough money, I mean someone that does not have any money.
My heart was broken many times for what exist in this world, from what I was kept safe from, from what exist in this world for others that I would never wish upon anyone to live and go through, what got me the most was when I had to imagine myself living in these peoples shoes, their lives, I just could not, I could not place myself there, in that situation and living in the conditions they were living in.
When I visited the homes of people that had more than enough money and those that were rich, I heard all their problems, their stories, and a bit about who they are. Most of the stories were always about the children having some mental illness, some form of depression or ADHD/ADD, how stressed the parents are, how much work they do, how many problems they have with family members, most of the kids being overweight and not very active.
When I would visit people in poverty areas, I never heard of any of those problems, but the points that I could never hear enough of was, sorry we do not have water to offer you to drink right now, or our electricity is off, we do not know when it will be back, and the saddest parts were when they had made food, which was literally some maize meal with sauce, they would say, we are sorry, this is all we have, but please eat with us before we begin, it will help our child focus better, she/he hasn’t had a meal all day, and then I had to accept that meal, eat it with them, knowing that they did not have more or even know if they will have enough until the end of the month. I never got a meal offered by those who had more than enough money surprisingly.
I have spent my time not only in people’s homes in poverty driven areas, I also spend my time in the communities with the people and their cultures. I got to see the setups, the infrastructures and the way people move and think to a certain degree. The main feeling of such communities where children is staving, mothers and fathers are in a state of hopelessness and despair constantly, where the whole community is overly emotional due to the reality of their lives and what they are literally STUCK in, I say stuck because this I have now seen is a fact when all the factors are considered.
This brings us to the next point of focus – can people in poverty grow their own food in a self-sustainable way? The word self-sustainable is extremely crucial here, as those in poverty actually are the most in need of anything that can be self-sustainable in doing things for basic needs, such as food, water and basic resources/materials for infrastructure and self-development. The reason this is a very crucial word to focus on within anything that needs to be done in areas of poverty is that, they have no means of making money or to get it, not to mention the extreme lack of basic education such as reading or math.
A short story to give insight
“ I visited a Not for Profit company and took a day tour with them, they have been busy for the past 9 years empowering people in Rural and impoverished areas with skills and structures to work and live by to in the end empower themselves, within this visit we went to some of their projects where I got to meet the people they are working directly with, I saw their circumstances, I met children that have been orphaned and left by their parents and are now in the care of the community, they show us and tell us that the children haven’t eaten for days, they show us their vegetable patches that has been ravaged by wildlife, as they cannot afford fencing or poles to place around the patches, not to mention not having water to water it, I saw their homes. Wat I also witnessed was how this Not For Profit Company that gets 16 Million Rands in donations a year (from USA donors) has been doing with their money – I had one question coming up within me the whole time that challenged everything about this company and what they are doing, why after 9 years earning each year 16 million Rands and more in donations have they not been able to simply BUY the poles and fencing for this one community to secure their food source? It would literally cost them about R2000 (170$) – I then started questioning more. I asked the lady that was taking me around, what is the initial outcome they are expecting from their efforts, and she said, they hope to empower these people to start their own business, to make their own money, to enter the economy and to survive that way. Meaning, ONLY once they have developed themselves to be able to start their own business and make their own money can they then have the money to buy food, to get water, to improve their infrastructures and have basic needs met, yet if you look at 9 years and a company earning 16 Million or more a year (IN DONATIONS), they could have built a palace for each person by then. But my mind was on the question the whole time of, why hasn’t their basic needs been sorted FIRST by implementing self-sustainable solutions for food, water and living conditions, and then focussing on starting a business. I realized soon that it is because if they had to do that, then there will be no work left to do, there will be no more donations coming in, as the main and only real problems of the community would then have been solved (basic needs), and they need to stretch what they are doing for as long as possible to keep getting donations, to have salaries and a retirement, so they placed these structures onto these people’s lives to follow and learn, which will be impossible and never be reached – which always leaves the blame with the people in poverty for not bettering themselves, They wanted these people that are in extreme poverty and abusive situations and that live at least 60 miles away from the nearest town to make their own money to buy that small piece of fence to secure their food, how ridiculous, and it has been going on for 9 years while children is starving, How ridiculous.
But, this visit opened up a whole new Vision for me, I saw what they were doing and within that a gift opened up for me to SEE what I can do, what I can be and how I can take REAL actions.
So, getting back to the simple answer to the topic of this blog is, can people in poverty implement self-sustainable solutions for themselves to have basic needs met, and the answer is NO – people in poverty cannot implement self-sustainable solutions to meet their basic needs. They definitely need support, intervention and a guiding hand, they need to have MONEY first, that is a fact taking all factors into consideration. This is not where it ends, the solutions that will be implemented for them must be something that has NO money cost or need afterwards, this means for communities in poverty, people need to come with money, buy everything that is needed to re-create and terra form the environment to support growing your own food, collecting your own water, purifying the water, getting electricity and using it and upgrading the houses/facilities with new awesome technologies, and once these points are in place the most crucial point comes next – to make sure NO negligence take place, the first point of prevention would be to implement solutions that actually can be self-sustaining, the second point would be to EDUCATE during and afterwards the process. This will take a year or two for each community and then it is done, move onto the next one, actually do many at a time. Actually change things.
This brings me to the point of how Earth Haven was birthed. The concept and what it is that will be needed. Those with money must funnel their money into one place, where this one place, one point of force goes to communities MOST in need, set up a MOTHER sustainable eco village that will produce ALL resources that will be transferred out into the surrounding communities for free, like how a heart pumps the blood to the rest of the body, setting up the heart will cost money, but once it is functioning and creating more than what is needed to run itself, the more will be given FREELY to those in need, including nature and animals, this IDEA that others must work hard and do all the work to earn their water, food, shelter needs to go, especially when their environment and circumstances are Surrounded by a capitalistic system for which they have NO skills, tools or ways of entering this system that excluded them and does not really want them or care for them as they are seen as useless, producing nothing except crime and abuse.
The Mother/Hearth Eco-village communities will be filled up and equipped with skilled and well educated people to become a healthy hearth that ca actually care and support effectively for People, animals and nature.
This is the approach we MUST take – I will in this blog as with everything I do, say the following and ask- I ask that everyone for a moment consider that, YES we need to create a sustainable earth, future, but we are currently focussing only on ourselves, we must consider to GIVE some of our money to the resources needed and efforts to empower those in poverty to rise with US in a sustainable manner, and they are the ones MOST in need to self-sustainable solutions, as they do not have access to money, to basic needs, which we here can still simply go buy in a shop, get from somewhere. And we must consider that even if we implement the BEST and COOLEST ways for growing food in sustainable and organic ways, people in poverty can still not benefit from that as they will still not be able to afford it.
So even when our planet is shifting (very slowly for what is needed, and this is also part of Earth Havens initiative, to move sustainability up and faster within this world) to more sustainable and eco-friendly and organic ways in foods and ways of producing things, and stopping certain things, those in poverty are always losing out, as they have been.
Please visit Earth Haven’s Patreon page - https://www.patreon.com/earthhaven and see this part of the equation that is needed, to GIVE, and support our initiative, our movement and first project here in South – Africa.
If you have read this post and gotten this far then you might be one of the few who does, and here I ask you to really consider – do you have 1$ a month to support Earth Have with? We are aiming to get 1 million people together each giving 1$ or more, and through this we can start setting up Mother communities as the Hearths/seeds that will pump real solutions needed into where it is most needed in a sustainable and effective way.
