Poverty and the Human Spirit

Today is Blog Action Day. One day a year (Oct. 15) thousands of bloggers talk about one topic. This year it’s poverty.

The image above is a girl named Annalyn. She and her family live in a charcoal burners’ camp beside the enormous Manila landfill called ‘Smokey Mountain’. It is famous for rotting at such a high temperature that parts of it caught on fire, and collapsed, thus killing many people (hence the name).

The government closed the dump in 1994 as part of a beautification campaign, but the garbage kept coming, and a new mountain began to grow here. Scavengers moved here too, ready to accept its toxic fumes and smells. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people live on the margins of the landfill.

Living in middle America, I’m light years removed from Annalyn’s world. But that doesn’t mean that I’m removed from providing some form of help. Although I may not reach Annalyn directly, it will have a ripple effect because I believe all of our spirits are connected in one way or another.

Ways to help:

As Albert Einstein eloquently said, “It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.”