My country Uganda, is one of the poorest on the planet. And in my view, needs to focus on raising household incomes to draw itself from the poverty tsunami. With eyes fixed on bringing individual families out of poverty, we can ensure better, education, health, security, housing, employment, etc., empowering wealth creation in Uganda before the year 2015. I believe that poverty is a more family than a national or individual bondage. A family feels more poverty than an individual could...
I was brought up in a very humble family household. My late father was an office assistant. He left us with a mother who is small-scale shopkeeper. What followed in the family of only three children was myself being the only one to make it through high school and on to college. My eldest sister dropped out upon finishing elementary school, and my other is a single mother who got pregnant in her second year of high school.
I have many family responsibilities on my shoulders. I have to check on mom's finances, pay for my tuition and the daily necessities of my poor siblings, in addition to planning my future not to mention the people I see around me who think I'm “less unfortunate”. I wake up each day to ensure that tomorrows may never be like yesterdays. My drive is to see the next generation doesn't have to struggle like us to survive in this country.
Once one is born in poverty, poverty becomes the synonym to that household; poverty is its clan, tribe, and nationality. This ring of poverty characterizes many of my fellow countrymen. But we can wake up against poverty - though deep rooted, it is curable. We can throw its causes into the dustbin by ensuring preventive measures in each household.
My thesis is "My nation's poverty does not start from the statehouse. On the contrary, it stops at its entrance gate. Poverty starts with an individual, who resides in a given household in a village like mine. In my or your very house." Therefore, to dig it out, we have to start from the bottom to reach the top.
The root cause of poverty is the unskilled, ill family. With poverty stinking in a household, the children won't go to good schools. I emphasize school because an uneducated nation is a poor nation. To create a wealthy nation, developing the intellectual pursuits of its people is mandatory. However, when it comes to poor homes, they can't afford costs of being in school, that is; "a healthy mind in a healthy body."
School is almost impossible with an empty stomach, rugged uniforms, worn-out shoes, no textbooks, lack of self-confidence, ambition, role models, ...the list is endless. The result? "As the poor grandfather was, so will the grandson." That is why around you and me there are sickly, weak, begging, dirty, hungry millions, whose only desire in life is to earn enough coins for their daily bread. Nothing more, nothing less. None of them care about saving money, let alone not knowing the benefits or meaning of banking and savings.
Governments - especially in our third world countries - come with promises of milk and honey, while seeking votes. Once in office, they throw crumbs to the voters in the likes of free Christmas gifts. Poverty seems to be a tool for simple manipulation of the common person. It becomes easy to buy votes with the common persson believing the promises of each election. People sacrifice their time to attend the nonsensical speeches. They are humble and clap their hands when a politician donates a bag of cement to bury a dead neighbor. Yet, the same people are blind to the HIV/AIDS infected single father or mother, the job cuts, the malnourished children, the unskilled bread winner, over-taxation, inflation of prices on home care products like soap, oil, and toothpaste.
Household’s Own Millennium Development Goals
My strategy to end poverty is not to beg governments to cut taxes or give welfare benefits - such mechanisms encourage laziness if not intense corruption. My approach is to bring the MDGs to the grassroots. So households can understand, work, own and live them.
Let MDG talks come out from the conference halls and into the village councils. Let them enter the family circles. Then children will integrate the MDGs into their lives. Let us equip each household with skills that enter it into the sphere of wealth creation. We should ensure wealth creation start at the grassroots level and that each household has access to consultant services in their chosen fields of household development.
Start with the Breadwinner
What does it help a poor government like ours to spend millions of dollars on military bases and equipment as though we had anything worthy of protecting? We can't afford a job for the household breadwinner, let alone the graduates walking the streets each day because their training taught them to seek jobs not create them!
How does it profit a child to come to school with an empty stomach? What about for a person falling sick due to poor household living conditions? Will I shock you when I confess that, AIDS, Malaria, Dysentery, Cholera are mostly diseases of the poor? I say categorically that a 'working’, well-paid person will educate their children in the best schools they can afford, go for better medication and sleep in sanitary conditions; life can be better without government welfare supplies. The point is - empower the family income sources [i]then[/i] save your welfare benefits and defense spending for other development projects.
It is true that; "Most wealthy people are self-starters." Many of my countrymen do not realize that their cries of poverty will never end until they build 'a working nation'. And a nation cannot work until its individual citizens take on the duty [i]themselves[/i] to work for a common good. When it comes to working for a common good, many people turn a deaf ear to the call because, to many, the government has been an instrument of oppression.
Working to make the government rich is a joke - any person in good wits will laugh at the idea. For one, government officials are corrupt and selfish. They don't care about the plight of their people. That's why people should be challenged to focus on uplifting their household incomes for their own benefit. It matters to them.
Instead of government hiring more people to run after tax defaulters, criminals, and rebels, it should hire people to offer consultancy services at local levels; to farmers, small-scale traders, self-developers, and job seekers. The government should hire adult education and continuing studies specialists for each village. They could move around household to household, teaching home economics, family finance management and other possible income generation projects for a household. Training at household levels will increase MDG awareness within each community and the spark the desire to break the circle of poverty.
The Solution
I have been in touch with friends, some in and some out of college. We want to make an experimental project with a focus on household oriented development. Our strategy is to use a door-to-door education/consultancy system, teaching income generation projects, finance management (banking, borrowing and saving), housing skills, adult-education opportunities, health monitoring, employment services, etc.
Our Method
1. We sit down with a household to talk about their present economic situation.
2. We inquire about what they think can be done, if nothing, we make suggestions.
3. We discuss plans together on how to bring their ideas to fruition.
4. We build a follow-up mechanism that doesn’t interfere with the household's self-reliance and independence.
We hope to recruit more like-minded people to this project and help break the ring of poverty. We have yet to start the first village experiment, from where we shall share the success of our project with others. We can also turn to our local authorities if we need their help and they are willing. Nevertheless, we are ready to sacrifice anything to bring our countrymen to where they should be.
I still stand strong writing MDGs can work best when well absorbed at household levels. There is no better way to reach households in my country than meeting the people concerned face to face. Where they are at home. Then together, we move to 2015.
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