Poverty Simulation Reflection

Poverty Simulation Reflection

On the 9th September i participated in a poverty simulation which was run by red cross charity, during the poverty simulation we were organized into small groups of around ten and were expected to make paper bags and sell them to shop keepers.Our aim to pay for taxes and basic living needs (e.g water, food) at the end of ten minutes. We were forbidden to steal newspaper from other groups and slack off and also touch the bags after the time was over which is what most made this activity difficult for a lot of people. If we were not able to pay for rent then we would have to live under a bridge and give all our bags to the landlord of the bridge however we did not have to pay for the multiple things that was compulsory to buy to survive and i can argue that it was somewhat easier to live under the bridge.

For me my greatest problem was the limited that i had, since the space we had was only two meters squared and there were ten of us which gave us very little space to sit and work. The next problem was the people in the group slacking off, during the simulation i felt that i had three people in the group that were not working at all which made the seven of us having to work even harder. The last problem i had was the pressure to work fast with all the conditions that i had to make it.

For each issue consider where in the world they might exist, what things might have caused it, what pressures do people experience in that environment? One of these issues must exist in HK.

The first issue that would occur in many places in the world where poverty is most affected is over population. India is the second most populated country in the world with 1.27 billion people with over 69% of the population (876 million people) living in poverty. "The Borgen Project" is a national campaign that fights global poverty, their main focus is the over population in certain countries. As stated by them -The higher the death rate in a region, the higher the birth rate… when people know their children will survive, they have less children. The higher the death rate in a country the more the population grows. But how exactly does over-population cause or affect poverty? well it's simple, the more the population grows the more resources they demand, however the resource that a certain place can produce is only limited especially with the wealthy citizens who have more resources than needed that leads to the less wealthy having little to nothing.

 SBill Gates said that "the key thing you can do to reduce over population growth is actually improve health". The reason is because poor parents are having more children in order to take care of them when they get old so improving the health would had less mothers thinking that way therefore reducing population. Now i way we can make this happen is with government putting funds in to improving their countries health service.

There are a few limitations to this solution one of the biggest ones is that is the government are not likely going to be spending the money to be able to support everyone in poverty. Health is also very hard to supply for people in poverty.


Sources
AV. "How and Why Does Overpopulation Cause Poverty??" Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo!, 2008. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.

"The Borgen Project | Poverty and Overpopulation - The Borgen Project." The Borgen Project RSS2. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.

"Poverty in India." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Sept. 2013. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.

Issue 2 (something to do with money and governments)