Our Global Village
Poverty and hunger are serious concerns in many
countries. Below are some activities to help your girls understand the
unequal distribution of food and wealth throughout the world. The activity can lead into a discussion
on the need for compassion and sharing with those less fortunate.
As a side note - if a few of your ³angels² have
exhibited greedy tendencies in the past, you may want to consider giving them
the opportunity to be a member of the poorer group in order to double their
learning experience from the activity. Also, consider the age level of
your girls when choosing the activity and adjust the follow-up discussion
accordingly.
Activities could be tied
to World Thinking Day in February or National
Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week in the fall. See my Thinking About World Thinking Day and Themes for November webpages for more information.
If
all the people in the world got together to share a batch of cookies, some
people would get more than their fair share. Here is a game to show how
the world's food is used.
1.
Start
with cookies, at least one for every child in the group.
2.
Arrange
the cookies on plates: One plate heaped full, enough for 3 per child in one of
the groups. All the other plates have only a few cookies, not enough to
go around.
3.
Have
each child choose a slip of paper from a hat. 80% of the slips say
"poor" and 20% say "rich". Assign rich and poor
groups places to sit.
4.
Ask
each group to send someone to get cookies. Rich gets the heaped plate.
Poor get the scanty plate.
5.
Let
the eating begin.
6.
Ask
how the groups feel. Is there a way to make things fairer? If
sharing takes place, who is in charge of redistribution? How does it feel
to wait for other's generosity? Did the rich group earn their position or
was it just their good luck to be there?
7. Point out the parallel to
the global food situation: 20% of the people have 80% of the goods.
Hunger
Banquet
³The Oxfam Hunger
Banquet is a powerful tool that brings to life the inequalities in our
world and challenges us as the more economically fortunate to realize how our
decisions affect others in the world. Few leave an Oxfam Hunger Banquet with
full stomachs, but all leave filled with a greater understanding of the
problems of global hunger and poverty and the motivation to do something about
it.² Oxfam America offers additional resources for Student
Action against hunger.
Beans
and Pennies
(published
by the Canadian Council of Churches)
Here is a graphic way of illustrating the
distribution of wealth to the population of the world.
1.
Save
up 100 pennies and count out 100 dried kidney beans (or other large beans).
You will also need two large paper plates.
2.
Put
8 beans on one plate and all the rest on another plate. The eight beans
represent the people of Canada, the United States and Japan. The other 92
represent the rest of the world.
3.
Now
put 37 of the pennies on our plate (the 8 bean plate)-that is the wealth the
richest part of the world shares. We get about five pennies each.
4.
Everyone
else can divide up the remaining 63 pennies. The other beans (the rest of
the world) have to make do with considerably less than one penny each.
5.
Next
you can go on to show what happens if you add the countries of Western Europe,
Australia, and New Zealand to our plate. That gives us 9 more beans (17
beans in all) and 31 more pennies (68 pennies in all). The remaining 83
beans share out 32 pennies.
6.
The
last step transfers another 8 beans to our plate (25 in all). This 25
represents all of the developed world, including Russia, Japan, USA, Europe,
Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Our 25 beans share 81 pennies. The
other 75 beans (The Third World) share 19 pennies.
Who
Lives in a Global Village?
Find out an estimate of the Current World Population
with updates every second and review the Population
Map to learn how the population is distributed around the world. Then,
discover more about us by discussing The
State of the Village Report (adapted from a 1990 piece by Donella H.
Meadows, statistics updated in 2005):
If we could shrink the
earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing
human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
The Geographical Ratio would be:
·
60
Asians
·
14
Africans
·
12
Europeans
·
8
people from Central & S America, Mexico & the Caribbean
·
5
from the USA and Canada
·
1
from Australia or New Zealand
The Languages spoken would be:
·
14
would speak Mandarin
·
8
Hindi/Urdu
·
8
English
·
7
Spanish
·
4
Russian
·
4
Arabic
·
The
remaining 55 would speak a variety of over 200 languages
The Religious Ratio would be:
·
33
would be Christian
·
22
would be Muslims
·
15
would be Hindus
·
14
would be nonreligious
·
16
all other religions
The Monetary Distribution would be:
·
5
people would possess 32% of the entire villageıs wealth, and these would all be
from the USA
·
The
poorest 1/3 of the people would receive only 3% of the income of the village
The Standard of Living would be:
·
80
would live in substandard housing
·
50
would suffer from malnutrition
·
33
would not have access to clean, safe drinking water
·
24
people would not have any electricity
·
7
people would own an automobile (some more than one)
·
In
the whole village of 100, there would be 42 radios, 24 televisions, 14
telephones, and 7 computers (some villagers own more than one of each)
When one considers our
world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance,
understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
Younger girls might understand this better using a
visual aid: 100 beans or M&Mıs.
Older girls would be able to follow the full
text, which is a village of 1,000 and provides a more in-depth discussion.
Check out If the World Were a Village book
and DVD by David Smith. A video clip interview
with the author in 2008 provides interesting updates on the statistics,
such as the growth in telephone availability and drinkable water.
The 100 People: World Portrait
Lesson Plan ³invites students to contribute to our world portrait by
celebrating someone in their community through photography, writing, and art.²
This program provides a slight variation on the above statistics compiled from
a variety of other sources.
Artist Allysson Lucca explores the concept of 100
people with powerful still images set to music. It can be viewed as a Flash film.
If interested in further study, girls can view
estimates of our world population over time compiled by the US Census Bureau.
Contact the respective council for permission and ordering information if interested in any of the below council-own programs:
A related topic might be to ask your
girls What
does it mean to be a refugee in todayıs world? (from internet archives)
GSUSA provides resources to help girls learn about this problem, suggests ways
they could help, and lists GS program links.
Count Your Blessings
(author unknown)
If you woke up this morning
with more health than illness. . .
you are more blessed than
the million who will not survive this week.
If you have never
experienced the danger of battle,
the loneliness of imprisonment,
the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation . . .
you are ahead of 500
million people in the world.
If you can attend a church
meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death. . .
you are more blessed than
three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the
refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep. . .
you are richer than 75% of
this world.
If you have money in the
bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace. . .
you are among the top 8% of
the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still
alive and still married. . .
you are very rare, even in
the United States and Canada.
If you hold up your head
with a smile on your face and are truly thankful. . .
you are blessed because the
majority can, but most do not.
If you can hold someone's
hand, hug them, or even touch them on the shoulder. . .
you are blessed because you
can offer healing touch.
If you can read this
message. . .
you are more blessed than over
two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Updated
February 2009