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This is me!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Poverty in Vanuatu


For this week’s assignment I have gathered my information from the UNICEF website. I have chosen to take a closer look at child poverty in Vanuatu which consists of 65 inhabited islands (UNICEF, 2012). By using the basic needs poverty line, seventeen percent of children are living in poverty in Vanuatu (UNICEF, 2012). The number of people living in a home and the amount of education the adults had in the home impacted whether or not a child was living in poverty (UNICEF, 2012). Due to the poverty level in Vanuatu I was surprised to learn that they also needed to look at deprivation (UNICEF, 2012). Deprivation is similar to poverty in the matter that it looks at the child’s shelter, sanitation, drinking water supply, health, food, education, and information (ex. telephone) (UNICEF, 2012). During a study in 2007 deprivation appeared to be more of a problem than poverty (UNICEF, 2012). There are broad policies in Vanuatu that are in place to promote child well-being, but due to the island location it is difficult to provide adequate resources to those who need it (UNICEF, 2012).

By studying poverty in Vanuatu this week I have learned that poverty will look different in each part of the world. This is because each location has different struggles. As you can see the biggest struggle with improving poverty in Vanuatu is the island location, because they are surrounded by 700,000 square kilometers of ocean (UNICEF, 2012).  I am interested to see what these challenges are for other locations around the world.


References



UNICEF. (2012). Global study on child poverty and disparities. Suva, Figi Islands: United Nations Children's Fund Pacific.


5 comments:

  1. Hi Lisa,

    You made a good point when you said that poverty will look different in each part of the world. I think that Dr. Grace's audio clip this week also taught us that it can also look different from family to family. She talked about food insecurity and how a middle class family can appear perfectly stable- two cars, a house, clean clothes, et cetera, but if you look in the kitchen, there is nothing to eat. That is very different than what most people have come to think of as a representation of a poor or hungry family. We must really keep open perspectives in order to see and reach out to families in need.

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  2. Wow, 17% of children living in poverty is very sad. I think it is true, poverty does look different in different parts of the world. I chose to look at the poverty issue in Uganda, and many of the struggles there is housing, and education. The UNICEF has made some changes as far as gearing their attention toward protecting children from violence and abuse, and putting a school readiness program in place.

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  3. Hi,
    Thank you for sharing! It is very interesting to read about poverty around the world and the different factors that contribute to poverty. I enjoy reading about all the different programs that are helping child raise above their situation and protect their rights.

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  4. Hi Lisa- It continues to become more and more clear to me that poverty is a serious issue in all parts of the world. Deprivation is very closely related to poverty. All children should have decent places to live, enough food to eat and clean water to drink. Without these things children become weak and very sick. They are unable to concentrate in school without proper nutrition.

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  5. Wow, that's a large percentage of children in poverty. And what I got out of this is that these people are living in poverty, but there is not nothing we can do about it. I got that because you stated that it is difficult to get help over there. These types of things hurt me because I am the type that want to help everyone.

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