Workshop addresses poverty worldwide
Workshop addresses poverty worldwide
by Rachel Ward
George Street Observer (College of Charleston)
4/13/06
Students from more than 20 South Carolina universities learned techniques to raise global awareness in the United States and promote the Millennium Campaign's international efforts to eliminate poverty at the Global Leadership Workshop held at C of C March 31.
Nearly 100 students completed the half-day workshop coordinated by Americans for Informed Democracy, a non-profit group seeking to educate college campuses on global issues.
Although the event was open to all C of C students, students from other universities had to be nominated to attend.
Elloa Lee, a senior from Furman University who attended the workshop, said it was empowering to meet so many students who were serious about global issues.
"Honestly I didn't realize that there were so many other people who were so interested in these issues that they'd be willing to give up five hours just to do something like this," she said.
The workshop was part of the College's two-week Global Poverty and Politics series designed to draw connections between local and international issues of poverty.
The Global Awareness Group, a committee of about 70 faculty, staff and students formed in fall of 2004, sponsored the series of events that ranged from a panel on homelessness in the Lowcountry to a documentary on the global sex trade.
"The goal of our group is to raise awareness, and awareness involves taking action," Professor Jeffrey Diamond of the history department said. "We can't live in an isolated world anymore, and we have to accept it and take responsibility."
The Global Leadership Workshop introduced the Millennium Campaign and its development goals. Some of the goals include: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality, ensuring environmental sustainability and combating AIDS and malaria.
During the workshop, Americans for Informed Democracy Chairman Seth Green said that ingrained misconceptions about how much the United States actually assists developing nations is one of the greatest challenges efforts like the Millennium Campaign face.
Americans estimate that the United States spends about 20 percent of the federal budget on global development, according to the Program on International Policy Issues' survey.
However, the actual figure is far less than one percent, and when aid is measured as a percentage of national income, the United States ranks dead last among donor countries, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
Although American citizens are generous, most of their philanthropy is local, Green said.
Green's presentation suggested that increasing U.S. overseas development assistance to about $25 billion is feasible, considering that the government spends an estimated $286 billion on transportation and has proposed to increase military spending to almost $421 billion.
Senior Skylar Curtis thinks that other nations don't give the United States enough credit for doing things like contributing peace-keeping troops throughout the world.
"At least we're not sitting back and doing nothing," she said.
The United States is becoming increasingly involved in the global effort to end poverty. Recently major celebrities, evangelicals, businesses and colleges have shown interest in the ONE Campaign, which calls for the United States to allocate an additional one percent of its budget to fight global AIDS and poverty.
Students interested in contributing to the effort to end world poverty can get more information on the Millennium Campaign at www.milleniumcampaign.org or join the ONE Campaign at www.ONE.org. To learn how to organize a town hall meeting or host a video-conference with peers and experts around the world, students can visit www.aidemocracy.org.
© Copyright 2006 College of Charlston George Street Observer