Living on a Dollar a Day (truthdig)
Nearly 1.8 billion people on our planet live in extreme poverty. Most are barely existing on $1 a day. Often that dollar is stretched to support a family of six. In comparison, the world’s 1,426 billionaires make, on average, $273,973 a day. That daily figure is more than 20 percent higher than what the world’s poorest citizens will ever make in their lifetimes.
This great disparity was the driving force behind the book “Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor” by child advocate and lawyer Thomas A. Nazario and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Renée C. Byer. Nazario is founder of the San Francisco-based nonprofit The Forgotten International, whose mission is bringing awareness to the plight of the poor and providing grants to grass-roots organizations on the front lines. Two hundred glossy, large format photos by Byer, who also provides some text, document the everyday lives and struggles of the world’s poorest people.
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With an introduction by the Dalai Lama, the 10 chapters focus on issues such as “Children at Work” and “Health Care.” The stories enlighten detractors who think poor people are just lazy, a recurring argument spewed by the privileged.
The chapter “Women at Work” provides countless examples to counter that argument. Jacaba Coaquira, an 80-year-old Bolivian farmer, works from 7:30 a.m. to dusk, gathering oats and green beans. Unable to feed her cow and donkey, she walked five hours to the closest town to sell them. Then there’s 25-year-old disabled single mother Jestina Koko and her 5-year-old daughter Satta in Liberia. Crippled since childhood, Koko scoots around by dragging herself on her arms. She survives by doing laundry, selling cookies and begging. Her only wish is to make enough money to send her daughter to school. Their temporary home is a sliver of dirty floor where they squat in a doorway.
Link: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/living_on_a_dollar_a_day_20141226
