Disparity and humility

We’ve spent a lot of time this week defining and planning for our big plans for next year. It is coming along really well, and so we will post details about what it all is about the beginning of the New Year. Our thoughts and ideas have been around how we can make a bigger impact on the disparity between developing countries and ourselves. Some interesting facts;

- 1.2 billion people live on less than $110 PER YEAR. Half of these people have stunted growth or mental retardation from insufficient nutrition.
- 60% of humanity live on less than $520 PER YEAR.
- 1/3 of all the children in the world suffer from malnutrition.
- Only 30% of the wealthiest 1 billion people report being happy!
- A poll in the USA of people earning more than $270 (about £200) a day, 27% said they could not afford to buy all they needed!
- Each person worldwide has up to 4.7 acres of land for yearly resources (although 3 acres is more of a sustainable amount of use) – the average American uses 24 acres a year, the average Indian uses less than 3 acres a year.
(Source ‘Radical Simplicity’ Jim Merkel)

With our background in healthcare and therapy, we are especially interested in the disabled and disadvantaged in the third world. This, of course, was only made more so by our work this year with Seeing Hands Nepal. Many of the students there were blind because of either malnutrition or lack of adequate healthcare. However, they were quite humbling and inspirational. Each of the students lived and travelled independently on local transport and through difficult terrain. Each of the students were pursuing not only an intensive (5-6 x week, 4-5 hours a day) massage therapy training, they also were all completing bachelor’s degrees at the same time – by attending university classes that began at 6am! They also seemed to live full lives – playing blind cricket, singing, dancing, socializing, and participating in the Blind Association. They live on very small allowances while doing all this. It certainly made us think, and still does. It makes it much harder for us to complain about anything when we think of them – and we are much happier than most Americans (it would seem)…
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“You will never understand violence and non-violence until l you understand the violence to the spirit that happens from watching your children die of malnutrition” (A Salvadoran peasant in Radical Simplicity)