Going UNHUMANLY on global poverty.
Help the @UgandaFarm end extreme poverty the unhumanly way, i.e., in a way that is devoid of humanity’s default way of doing things.
Help us make at least the smallest possible stride on extreme poverty in our region by 2030, by working together with us the UNHUMANLY way.
Let 2030 not be a total waste, really. Help us have something to show from these 15 years (2015 – 2030) as far as ending extreme poverty is concerned, by teaming up with us the unhumanly way. Please read on to see 5 unhumanly ways you can work with us between now and 2030.
By Anthony Kalulu, founder @UgandaFarm, or the UCF | March 20, 2023.
Why end extreme poverty the UNHUMANLY way?
2030 is only seven years away, and per humanity’s workings, i.e., per humanity’s default way of doing things, these seven years are going to pass with totally nothing new on ending extreme poverty.
Put another way, these seven years are going to pass with humanity still insisting, as always, that the world’s extreme poor must only sit and wait for the right people [or the most legit people] from the global north, to come and move them from poverty.
But thing is: for those of us who are directly battling ultra poverty here in the global south, this is nothing but a condemnation to a lifetime of chronic extreme poverty.
It is why I am asking you to help the @UgandaFarm rein in the grip of poverty in our region, by working together with us the unhumanly way.
The humanly way is only a CONDEMNATION to a lifetime of poverty:
Today, it doesn’t matter whether humanity expends just $50k or $50 billion on ending global poverty in a given year, for those of us at the very bottom of the pyramid, poverty still rages exactly the same way.
In fact, if humanity was to do one unusual thing, by deciding to spend the equivalent of the US GDP on ending global poverty yearly, between now and 2030, the extreme poor in a place like ours won’t even notice that there is something humanity has done differently this time round.
Why?
On the one hand, humanity has historically ensured that virtually no single penny of all the money that is intended to end global poverty, or not more than 1% to be exact, reaches we the world’s extreme poor.
And on the other, the people from the global development sector, i.e., western charities, who keep the other 99% of global antipoverty $$$, until their own work reaches your village by pure chance, which rarely happens, getting these people to lend you a voice on poverty, or getting them to work together with you on anything, is nothing but a miracle.
Under the humanly way, tangible change is simply very hard to see:
In a place like ours, i.e., Busoga, Uganda’s most impoverished region the size of Gambia, there are communities here that can take even up to twenty years without seeing a single antipoverty agency, and there are those that have never seen any.
But humanity is very keen to set 15-year timelines of ending global poverty (2000 – 2015; 2015 – 2030 etc), all the while spending billions year after year for exactly this purpose, in a way that makes it precisely impossible for WE the ultra poor in the global south to ever see a single penny of it — and in a way that leaves people like us completely on the sidelines of the global fight against poverty.
If you visited Buyende, for example, one of Busoga’s most destitute places that stretches 1,880 sq km, with nearly half a million people, and asked the locals which antipoverty project they have seen since 1980 (that’s, in 42 years), there are communities that will only mention one or two, and there are those that won’t mention any.
Yet, even in those few poor communities that have been lucky enough to get some random intervention, there is usually nothing to show for it. These solutions have always disappeared without a trace. All because this work is exclusively long-distance, top-bottom and often one-off.
And that is for those few poor communities that have been fortunate enough to get something. But these are the very few. In the majority of remote rural communities, it is very, very hard to find anything that is happening to end extreme poverty, and it’s been that way for decades.
Entire communities are always dead silent; people are starving, with no trace of anything in place to end poverty.
My main worry is 2030 being a total waste.
Like most people across our region, my entire life has been a big mess.
But somewhere in 2014, after a lifelong struggle with ultra poverty, I decided it was now time for me to take things into my own hands. That is the year I started the @UgandaFarm.
So, when the Global Goals came only a year later in 2015, I thought this all couldn’t come at a better time.
In reality, though, even in the very week of Sept 25 – 27, 2015 when the Global Goals were being launched, I was still practically going hungry, and things had been that way for me since my years of childhood.
I started the UCF in 2014; secured land for it in 2015 (the same year the Global Goals came), but it wasn’t until 2016, after growing various types of crops, that I at least bid farewell to the hunger part of it.
After exiting actual hunger, my goal was to hitch a ride on humanity’s newfound love for the world’s poor (as stipulated in the Global Goals), to contribute to a real end to poverty in my region, by 2030.
I can say most of the inspiration that I got that point onward, came from the language that was being used to describe the Global Goals — things like “fostering cross-sector collaborations and partnerships”, “bringing together people and ideas”, “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere”, “leaving no one behind” etc. These things gave me hope.
In some way, I thought the coming of the Global Goals somehow meant a poverty-free world was now possible, and that people like us were now in the company of the rest of humanity. So I started badgering the global antipoverty world, and humanity as a whole, right away.
My idea was that: since nearly every person in our region lives in abject poverty, and since every other generation that came before us has lived in ultra poverty, that maybe this time round, or 2030 as everyone says, was the time for us to finally see a better world.
Today, it is very clear to me that the things that humanity promises we the world’s poor, aren’t really what it means.
And at this point, it has become very clear that 2030 is in fact going to find people like us in the same place, with totally nothing new.
It will be as if the world only slept the entire time between 2015 – 2030, and it will be as if we never lived during those 15 years in the first place.
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Let’s go UNHUMANLY now.
1). Help us end extreme poverty the unhumanly way. Details here.
2). See the 5 unhumanly ways you can work together with us. Details.
3). Lastly, see our funding needs for the work that we intend to do.