1.000.000.000

It warms my heart that I am not the only one taking a deeper interest in these children's life. Really, these kids are an enormous pool of talent, I am certain each one of them has the capacity to move mountains, they just need some guidance to find the way to their mountain. They just had bad luck, they were given a bad hand from the start. If we ignore them and we let them perish it is not only dispicable but a crime against humanity as we let perish an enormous amount of human potential. In these kids I see the new Lionel Messi, the new Carlos Santana, the new Gabriel García Márquez, the new Paulo Coelho, the new Che Guevara. 

According to UNICEF (which seems to me a reasonably trustworthy organization) one billion (that's a 1 followed by nine zero's!) children worldwide are living in poverty. So about a seventh of the whole world's population consists out of poor children. If that staggering statistic doesn't instantly turn you into a crying baby you must be some cold-hearted psychopath... About 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Each f*cking day. That is almost a thousand each hour. Count to three. A child died because of poverty. Count again to three. Another one died due to poverty. Every f*cking 3 seconds. Can you live with that? I ask you to look into the mirror and ask the woman/man you see what she/he is doing about this. Not anymore in my name. 1 billion children live in poverty. I am helping 33 of them. Please oh cruel world, help me to help the other 999.999.967. I cannot do this alone, but if we work together we can get out of this magnificently cruel spiral. Poverty is only a side effect of a human social construct, namely economy. We created this. We need to fix it. Twenty-two thousand children die every day due to poverty, and if you are not doing everything in your power to help lowering that number, than you are guilty. Guilty of neglecting them who need you the most. Every day poverty kills the new Siddhartha Gauthama, the new Albert Einstein, the new Nelson Mandela, the new Vincent Van Gogh, the new Mozart, the new Mary Cury, the new Helen Keller, the new Mother Teresa, the new Billie Holiday, the new Eva Perron, the new Audrey Hepburn, the new Malala Yousafzai,... And they are all killed due to poverty before they had the chance to make their masterpiece, before they made their everlasting footprint on our beautiful planet, before they met their mountain and before they had any fighting chance to move it. 

And so it does warm my heart when I see I am not the only one taking an interest in their lives, it gives me hope that I am not the only one willing to work on a better and just world. A short (non exhaustive list) of people giving me hope:

* everyday some university students come and help out with the homework of the kids in the afternoon. 

* a group of youngsters from the Mexican red cross came in the weekend to play games with the kids

* a group of university students that want to be the future dentists came to explain in a very fun way why mouth hygiene is important. 

* a group of university students from the faculty of law (ja, hemdjes!) came to join us for a day to play games and they brought food (domino's pizza's and coke) for the kids. 

* a group of other children prepared a play for our kids and they brought as well food to enjoy while watching the play. 

* another religious group of catholics brought us a nice evening with an emotional movie ('Cartas al Cielo' or the original title 'letters to God') and food. 

*... 

If you think 1.000.000.000 is a staggering number, I agree with you. But it is not a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to get your ass from the couch and do something. And I am not saying you should do the same as what I am doing. Every small bit helps and you don't have to start in the countries far away. Help out local in your own country. Start with one day a month and see how it makes you feel. Look for a project you feel you can really support and put your shoulders underneath it, only one day a month. I am not asking you to be the new Robin Hood and steal from the rich and give to the poor, I am asking you to connect to people who are living a harsher life than you are, listen to them, be kind to them. 

Since most of the people reading this blog are Belgians I have another statistic for you. In June 2018 this was published in Knack: "De kansarmoede-index 2017 voor het Vlaamse Gewest bedraagt 13,76 procent en ligt daarmee 0,94 procentpunt hoger dan die van 2016. Die index van Kind en Gezin geeft aan hoeveel procent van de kinderen tussen 0 en 3 jaar bij de geboorte opgroeit in een situatie van kansarmoede. Dat meldt Kind & Gezin dinsdag in een persbericht." WHAT?! I thought Flanders was a rich part of our world! How is it possible that more than 10 percent of young children, aged between 0 and 3, grow up in poverty in 'rich' Flanders? We let this happen, right under our noses. We can no longer stay indifferent. Poor Flanders, poor Belgium, poor Earth. 

To those who feel they are already helping out: keep up the good work, I applaud you, you are a Hero. 

To those who feel their consciounce itching somewhere, for once listen to that tiny little voice, there is a crapload of work waiting for you, and that work has a face, or better said, it has 1 billion faces. 

B. Supertramp