Two team members (represented by [A] and [D]) working on 'A Dollar a Day' had the opportunity to visit the Southeast Asian country of Bangladesh while the site was being created. While there, they answered several questions, posed by their relatives, about poverty to enhance the website and provide firsthand accounts of what poverty in the developing world is really like.

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Question: Some people believe that the poor are responsible for their own poverty - that if they just tried harder and worked harder, they wouldn’t be so poor. Others blame societal problems for poverty. In this latter view, the poor are largely victims of society - of discrimination, poor schools, dangerous neighborhoods, etc. Still others take the middle ground, arguing that the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes, so that both the poor and society play important roles in alleviating poverty. Which of the above views do non-governmental organizations in Bangladesh seem to support?

[A]:
One NGO in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Relief Fund, is working to create a fishery project using man-made lakes. It seems to emphasize the view that the poor are victims of society in many regards. This is because it works to provide rural villagers with somewhat stable jobs, and hopes to produce a long-term monetary return for its workers. Read More...

While the dirt-carriers who build the ponds work hard in the sense that they have long, physically demanding days, they do not have to be economic experts to benefit from the project. The project supplies them with a job, and they take the job, as simple as that. The only person who really has to manage work is the project manager, who isn’t really poor anyway.

I support the view that society causes poor people to be poor because I believe that in many situations, no matter how hard people work, they will never be able to get out of poverty without help. This is due mainly to a lack of a good education and a lack of good jobs. If you are forced to take a bad job because you never received adequate schooling, it is very hard to start learning a better-paying trade while still supporting yourself and your family. You simply can’t drop everything, go to college, and then get a better job. Collapse...

[D]:
Another project of BRF’s, a chicken farm in Savar, Bangladesh, supports the view that the poor are poor because of society problems. Read More...

The purpose of the chicken farm is to give poor people jobs, and employ them to care of the chickens, feed them, build cages for them, collect their eggs, care for the farm animals living there, grow and harvest plants there, and so on. I would say this shows that BRF believes that many people are poor because society doesn’t offer them sufficient jobs, and the organization would like to provide them with jobs that have good working conditions and good pay, which many other jobs poor people get have neither of. I think this BRF project is quite a success and seems to at least have put some people in better positions, and raised them out of poverty.

My personal view on the cause of poverty is that both society and poor people have a role in it. Many poor people are denied a chance from the very beginning. Some are born handicapped, have no good schools to attend for a decent education, and therefore don’t have a chance to get a good job. Even if they can get a job, most jobs in Bangladesh don’t pay much (rickshaw driving, picking tea leaves), no matter how hard you work. Then again, some poor people go out to the streets to beg right away, and don’t look for jobs and opportunities. Others might get fired from their jobs for not doing their share of work, or even stealing or trying to cheat people. So my views are in the middle ground, but leaning toward blaming poverty on society. Collapse...

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Question: Psychologist Abraham Maslow depicted a “hierarchy of needs” using a pyramid. At the bottom are physiological needs for food, water, sleep, and so on. Next are “safety” needs, followed by needs for “love,” “esteem,” and near the top, “self-actualization.” According to Maslow’s theory, only when the needs at a lower level are met can a person advance to the next level. Thus, for example, physiological needs must be met before a person can address his or her needs for safety.

Does Maslow’s theory seem to be at work among the people of Bangladesh? Do you think the poorer people are stuck at or near the bottom levels of the pyramid?

[A]:
Yes, I believe that to an extent, Dr. Maslow’s theory can be observed in Bangladesh, especially at the lower levels of society. Read More...

In Bangladesh, many poverty-afflicted people are stuck at the bottom level of the pyramid (physiological), struggling to make sure they have shelter and food every day. Some slightly better off might be at the second level, but just barely.

Either way, it is clear to the outside observer that the poor people of Bangladesh are much worse off on the pyramid then, say, poor people in America. While the poor in Bangladesh might be on the bottom two levels (‘physiological,’ ‘safety’), in America, the poor are probably on the second- and third-to-last levels (‘safety,’ ‘love’). Collapse...

[D]:
Yes, Maslow’s theory seems to be at work here, with poorer people stuck at the bottom. Read More...

Most of Bangladesh’s population do not have enough food, are drinking poor water, and sleep on the streets. You see men, women, and children picking up food to eat from trash piles, and drinking (probably) pretty bad water from dirty, clouded glasses. I have seen some people bathing in the disgusting water of Dhanmondi Lake, where all of Dhaka’s trash and leftovers are dumped. You have to carefully step over people lying asleep on mats on the hard sidewalk in some areas of the city. It’s very horrible, and I can’t even begin to imagine actually living like that, in those conditions. It’s hard not to take your food, water, and shelter for granted. Collapse...

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Question: Where would you place yourself on the Maslow’s pyramid? Where would you place a Bangladeshi beggar?

[A]:
I would place myself at the “esteem” level, and a Bengali beggar at the “physiological” level.

[D]:
I would place myself on “esteem,” but a Bangladeshi beggar would probably be on “physiological.”

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Question: The streets of Bangladesh are crowded with obviously very poor, often physically disabled beggars. Is it better to give money directly to them or to donate that money to an organization that funds projects aimed at helping the poor be self-supporting, even though such projects may never benefit the beggars of Bangladesh?

[A]:
I think that it’s better to donate to an organization that helps the poor, rather than just give to beggars themselves, at least in Bangladesh. Read More... I don’t think beggars should be encouraged in their line of work by Americans giving out money, and I think that large organizations with many experts on poverty can do a lot more to help them than a simple handout would.

All they really need is a better-paying alternative form of employment, something that I think NGOs should be able to provide, even in cities like Dhaka. Once there are enough of these open jobs, beggars will gladly move into them because of the greater pay and stability. This would not be unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts during the American Depression of the 1930s to create many new government jobs and positions in order to help cut down unemployment. Collapse...

[D]:
I think it is better to donate the money to an organization that funds projects aimed at helping the poor to be self-supporting. Read More... The organization will most likely use the money in the best, most helpful way it can, and will be able to affect more poor people than giving money to specific beggars would. If you just handed out money to the beggars of Bangladesh personally, it would only help one person at a time, and for all you know, the person might spend it unwisely. Giving out money to beggars may help them get a day’s food, or support them for a short period of time, but once the money runs out, they will be right back where they started, and beg some more. They may beg their whole lives, never getting a job, and giving them alms will just encourage this. To help alleviate poverty, you should donate your money to organizations that will give poor people jobs, and truly help them, by teaching them to earn their own money and supporting them for a long period of time. Collapse...

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Question: Some people say that ending poverty starts with educating children. What do you think this mean?

[A]:
They mean that studies show that people who have a good education get better-paying, more stable jobs as adults. Read More... Education is the only sure way to lift people out of poverty. While not everyone can become a doctor or scientist, a good education ensures that they can be an accountant (at least in Bangladesh) rather than an unskilled construction worker.

Also, in Bangladesh, education provides a way for those who can be doctors or scientists to leave the country for more opportune areas. If these people receive a good education, then little can stop them in succeeding. However, if the schools they go to are not prepared to supply them with appropriate knowledge, they will remain stuck in poverty. Collapse...

[D]:
Educating children will help end poverty because educating children will lead to better chances for good jobs and more opportunities. Read More... Hopefully, the children will manage to get good jobs and earn enough money to raise themselves out of the poverty they found themselves in when they were born. Then they may have children, and if their children are educated, the same process should go on. It is best to start at the very beginning of life to alleviate poverty, and try to get children off to the right start. Otherwise, beggars will have children, who will then become beggars, and so on. Collapse...

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Question: One NGO believes that it is far better to “loan” a chicken to a family to raise for income than to give that family the chicken for the same purpose without any expectation of being repaid. Without the repayment obligation, the NGO argues, the family may just decide one day to eat the chicken, rather than wait until it is full grown so that the family can sell it and use some of the proceeds to buy another chicken or chickens. Another NGO argues that less business-minded people won’t dare “borrow” a chicken, so to get these families started on the road to self-sufficiency you may have to give them their first chicken outright, with no expectation of being repaid. Which NGO do you think has it right?

[A]:
I think that to run a successful NGO program you need to be somewhere in between. Read More... I think that if an NGO lends someone a chicken, it should encourage the person to repay the loan back later. However, the NGO should not base its program on the expectation of being repaid. Accidents can happen – the chicken could get sick and die, or get stolen, and if this means that the NGO will crack down on the person it gave the chicken to, others may be afraid to make use of the program. NGOs should encourage repayment but should not actually expect to be repaid. Collapse...

[D]:
I think that the NGO that believes it is better to loan a chicken is right. Read More... That way, the people who received the chicken will have really earned the profits they make, which would not be so if the chicken was just given to them for nothing in exchange. I don’t understand why some individuals should be afraid to “borrow” a chicken, since there probably isn’t a specific date that they have to pay back the loan. They should realize that if you keep a chicken long enough, you will be able to make a profit from its eggs or by selling it. If the chicken dies early, then the family may be able to explain the situation to the NGO, and something can be worked out. After all, the NGO is just trying to help, not make a profit itself. Loaning a chicken works better than giving away a chicken, because if you give the chicken away, it may last only a short-period of time and the family will not be anxious to make use of it. Collapse...

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Question: Can you imagine the poor children of Bangladesh complaining at dinner that they don’t like some food item in their bowl, that they would rather have something else? Now think about this: in an industrialized country, such as the U.S., where we have so much, is it reasonable to expect that children will sometimes whine for things?

[A]:
I think that it is reasonable to expect children in rich countries to ‘whine for things.’ While this might look bad in comparison to Bengali kids, in reality, it is to be expected. Read More...

Poor Bengali children are probably on the physiological” level of Maslow’s pyramid. They are happy to be eating food and staying alive, and don’t care what the food tastes like. An American child, however, is probably not on the “physiological” level, but on the “esteem”/”self-actualization” level. While they need food to survive like everyone else, they know that there is plenty of food available to them, and are therefore concerned more about their level of enjoyment while actually eating the food. If they were starving, they wouldn’t care, but because they aren’t, it is normal to expect that they want food that tastes good to them.

This food example can be applied to many other things. A poor Bengali child might be happy swimming in a polluted lake, but it is not fair to expect an American child to enjoy the same activity. If the Bengali child were raised in America, he would probably feel the same way. Because we’re human, we always want things to be better, to have more of the good and less of the bad. In Bangladesh, many people may want more food, but they just don’t have it, while in the U.S., children may want ice cream, and because it is readily available, they can probably get it. It looks as if the U.S. children are is spoiled, but really they are just recognizing that they would enjoy ice cream, and therefore want it, in the same way that the Bengali person would like more food, and therefore wants it. Collapse...

[D]:
It is reasonable to expect that children in richer countries will sometimes whine for things, although this doesn’t mean that the adults should put up with this behavior. Read More...

When so much has always been available to them, they take their food for granted. It isn’t their fault; they just don’t know any better—U.S. children are used to getting what they want, but if they had been born in the circumstances of a poor Bengali child, they wouldn’t whine at all. It just depends on the child’s circumstances and upbringing. Also, poor Bengali children would be glad to have food, no matter what kind it is. U.S. children, on the other hand, would probably expect very good food, and may not be satisfied with something they are served because they have had better and therefore expect better. Collapse...

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Question: When you’re looking for poverty, what do you see? What does poverty look like, smell like, feel like?

[A]:
In Bangladesh, there seems to be two main types of poverty: rural and urban. Rural poverty is best observed in villages of the Bengali countryside, such as Dolah and Bhorat Cali [two rural villages]. Read More... Many of these villagers are very poor farmers and unskilled laborers, and life is very hard for them. For example, poor farmers – who have no monetary buffer if their crops fail – can be completely devastated financially if the floods are bad, as they were in 2004. Also, I’m guessing that getting produce to markets, or bazaars, can be difficult, due to the quality of the roads I observed while in the villages. Due to massive inefficiency, many roads have to be rebuilt every year due to improper sealing of the edges. River crossings are even worse. At one location, the only way to get to the other side was to cross a rickety bamboo bridge about a foot in width.

Flooding near the edges of large rivers, such as the Padma and Jamuna, makes life for poverty-stricken people along the banks demanding as well. I could see that efforts to raise embankments on the river sides were woefully inadequate and architecturally unsound. Shop owners who operated next to the river said that every year, they have to take down the buildings and move them by hand to higher ground.

Perhaps the worst consequence for impoverished villagers (and unfortunately, almost everyone who still lives in a village is likely to be below the poverty line), is the lack of good education. The schools we observed, especially the one in Bhorat Cali, struggle to provide an adequate education to students. Desks were not in good supply, the students’ books were ripped and tattered, and the only educational feature in most classrooms was a blackboard. I believe that all efforts to relieve poverty in these areas should go towards increasing the quality of schools.

In urban areas, poverty looks very different. Because most people in cities are not farmers, the yearly floods do not have the same power as they do in the country. However, I believe that conditions are probably much worse in cities than in the country for the poor. Unemployment is very high and this drives many people to beg for money to buy food. I saw no evidence of relief organizations that supply food or jobs to these people, so many of them just walk door to door at stoplights asking for money, sometimes selling flowers or similar items. Many beggars are also crippled or blind, a severe handicap in a country like Bangladesh. In cities, even children go out to beg for money or search through trash dumps for recyclable items, something I did not see happening in the countryside. Collapse...

[D]:
When I see poverty, I see children and adults in dirty, worn clothing, begging pitifully on the streets. Read More...

I see people bathing in Dhanmondi Lake, because they have no where else to clean themselves. I see rickshaw drivers who are so thin you can see their ribs, struggling and straining to turn the pedals, because they are weak from doing such hard work in blazing heat and without food for energy. Poverty smells like the overwhelming stench of trash dumps where poor people pick out things to eat or use. It smells like the dirty, reeking children who have not washed well for a very long time. I don’t know what poverty feels like, because I’ve never been poor. It feels like it is a horrible thing that ruins millions of lives and affects every single person in the world. Collapse...

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Question: One NGO working in Bangladesh argues that you must improve the status of women in order to alleviate poverty in the country. Why might this be so?

[D]:
By improving the status of women, you help alleviate poverty because once women get fair chances and an equal status with men, they will be able to get jobs much more easily, and get out of poverty. Read More... With a job, they can support a family, and raise their children out of poverty by giving them access to a good education and opportunities. They can also support themselves, so their husband (if they have one), does not have to have a job that supports two people. If both the husband and wife have good jobs, they can avoid poverty, and they can support their children, give them a good education, and their children should be able to succeed in life as well. As you can see, improving the status of women could lead to many good things, including poverty alleviation. Collapse...

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Question: What is being done to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh? What more should we do?

[A]:
Right now, the only people who seem to be taking an active role in alleviating poverty in Bangladesh are workers in NGOs. Read More... The government is too corrupt and has too many other problems to deal with (for example, the Energy Minister was recently sacked for bribery). However, I do think that the government should spend less money on projects like the Parliament building and fancy sidewalks and more on support programs in other sectors, for example, building roads in rural areas.

The government aside, however, I believe a lot is being done to help poverty-stricken people in Bangladesh. NGOs are building roads in villages, a very important step in helping people because then they will be much more connected with the outside world. NGOs also are setting up loan programs, so villagers can get the materials they need to be successful financially. I believe that in many of these programs, all that is needed is more awareness and money, whether from private donors or foreign governments.

One area that I think does not get enough attention, though, is the urban sectors of poverty, mainly those in the big cities such as Dhaka and Chittagong. In the villages, I didn’t see overt begging at all, while in Dhaka, every time you stop in a car, beggars come up to the window. I think that NGOs and the government need to create more jobs for these city dwellers in order to help them survive. In the villages, unskilled workers can get jobs carrying dirt for the roads, but that kind of opportunity just doesn’t exist in Dhaka. Because of this, begging, for many, has become an occupation, which I think should not be allowed to happen. We need more NGOs working exclusively in urban areas to help relieve poverty there. Collapse...

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Wikipedia: Abraham Maslow. 2006.

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Copyright © 2006 ThinkQuest Team 00282