Have you ever bought or received an item from name brands like Supreme, Nike, Adidas, Pink, Lululemon, or Sephora? I’m pretty sure we’ve all shopped at at least one of these places. To be honest, they can cost a lot at times. But while some people are going around buying ridiculously expensive items just to brag, others are dying because they don’t have the supplies or money to save them. Children are starving to death, or desperately eating hazardous foods to sustain their emaciated bodies. Families are sharing their living spaces with rats and garbage. Meanwhile, people in first world countries are living a much better life than people in developing nations, and we should know that we can do something about it. Citizens from developed nations should assist the residents of third world countries out of poverty by funding education and helping to prevent widespread diseases.

It’s not easy to imagine a circumstance where drinking water is polluted, or where people are dying of disease. That’s because we live in a flourishing country where things like food, water, and shelter are taken for granted. However, just across the globe, people are living with a lack of the very things that we have an abundance of. According to the Hunger Project, 2.4 billion out of the seven billion people inhabiting our planet do not have access to adequate sanitation. Inadequate sanitation leads to diseases such as malaria and parasites that absorb nutrition from the food eaten. Even with all these horrible conditions, health care and clean hospitals aren’t provided! The governments of these countries don‘t have enough money to supply hospitals with the proper tools and doctors that are needed to cure patients. As a result, nearly a thousand children die each day due to preventable diseases.

Not only are children dying of disease, they are suffering from lack of education. Funds pledged by the international community aren’t enough to provide for a prosperous learning environment for everyone. A lack of financial resources leads to a lack of teachers, which leads to oversized classes. This is why the dropout rates of third world countries are exponentially rising; multiple grade levels all being thrown into a single classroom causes lack of attention, which makes the teaching quality a lot worse. With the amount of students dropping out of school this early, their chances of becoming successful would disappear.

These children, who had the capacity and potential to become the next Bill Gates, the next Steve Jobs, the next Beyonce; they lost their chances to profitable lives. Many of these children grew up and resorted to criminal actions to make ends meet, or even to fool themselves into thinking that they were being productive. An attack on the World Trade Center was originated by a group of extremists from a country in poverty. That attack resulted in almost 3,000 deaths, and it has forever changed our nation.

That’s why we need to aid these countries. That’s why we need to care. If these people had been educated, their lives would have been easier when they were grown up, and they wouldn’t have resorted to criminal acts. Millions of children are wasting away because of diseases that can be stopped with the proper resources and the proper funding. If they had health care to pay for their treatments, or even a clean hospital room to get treated in, the situation would be so much better. We can help by donating to organizations such as CARE and International Child Care. They collect donations to provide for families in third world countries, and send medical care for children. As Mother Teresa once said, “The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty.” Let’s help the people feel wanted, loved, and cared for, and give them a chance to live their lives to the fullest potential!

<Kristen Won Richardson Middle School 8th Grade>