How to Feel Good About Poverty

If you want to do more than just feel good, ask the Big Questions about poverty and we can expose its root causes and get real answers about how to stop creating it.

How is poverty created?
Why is growth the only answer?
Who's developing who?

We’ve all heard the stories told about being poor: we’re ‘born into it’, or ‘it’s just the economy’, or ‘the wealth will trickle down’, or ‘we’re just lazy/unlucky/unfortunate’. These are such powerful stories that they’re easy to believe, but they all hide the fact that poverty is created by hundreds of years of history and inequality; things like colonialism, slavery, racism and resource theft.

The United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development goals tell us another story: that things are getting better, and that if we keep doing things the way we are and growing the global economy we can end global poverty by 2030.

It’s a wonderful goal, but growth won’t deliver it. Our pursuit of economic growth means that we are already ruining the planet at such a rate that – sooner than most people can imagine – large parts of it will become uninhabitable and to get everyone in the world living like an American we’d need the resources of 4.1 earths. We also recognise that nearly all of that growth will end up in the hands of the few – even now the 85 richest people in the world have the same amount of money as the poorest three billion and 18 times more money flows out of the global south every year than trickles into it, so who’s developing who?

Find out more here.

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