What can one person do?

I was walking from my lab to a dinner and presentation at Brent House, the Episcopal center on the U of C campus. As I strolled through campus I was overwhelmed with a multitude of thoughts, mostly about me and my life. I felt completely disconnected from the world around me. In all honesty, I've felt rather disconnected for a couple of weeks now, this being one reason for the relative paucity of new posts. But tonight it was particularly acute.

The presentation was by the Rev'd. Michael Kinman, the director of an organization called Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. Their main interest is in alleviating global poverty, and they are very interested in the fulfillment of the Millenium Development Goals. The facts that the Rev'd. Kinman presented were astounding. For instance, for $10 billion we could provide education to every child on the planet. That's half of the amount this nation spent on ice cream last year.

Let me say that again. We could educate every child on earth for half our nation's ice cream budget.

It's really astounding how little it would take to bring people out of poverty. It's even more astounding how unwilling society is to make even the smallest sacrifices to make the dream of alleviating poverty a reality.

Please visit the website for the Millenium Development Goals to see what you can do. Contact your elected representatives and ask them to support the United States' commitment to the Millenium Development Goals. If you want to give money, consider giving 0.7% of your income to Episcopal Relief and Development. For every dollar you give ERD more than 90 cents goes to the beneficiaries. Most importantly, learn about the problem of global poverty. It's a huge problem that's easy to shrug off, but everyone has the power to do something.