It’s fairly excepted that in the debate over the worlds ever widening poverty gap that what an individual’s ‘needs’ is pretty much the same universally – you know shelter, full belly, clean water, security etc. Essentially in monetary terms not very much at all.

So what is causes the gap to keep growing. The answer is what we ‘WANT’. We want so much and we in the west more so than anywhere are fed messages 24 hours a day that blur the line between ‘need’ and ‘want’. You know when your kid comes up and says daddy I need such and such, it’s an age old story – in truth there is very little that we need. Yet even adults tell themselves that you can’t just opt out the world is like this so we must participate, and in our western society the things we ‘want’ quickly get excused as the things we ‘need’.

So with an estimate by the UN of 6800000000 people on the planet in 2009 imagine the difference just 1% of people sacraficing just $100’s would make. In short sacraficing something each year they ‘want’ that costs at least $100 for providing something someone ‘needs’

Well it would raise exactly $1 per person on the planet, at anyone time, no small sum of money $6800000000 and rising. Given that the international poverty line is $1 per day – that’s 6800000000 days of basic life for people in the poorest countries alone.

Now obviously poverty is relative to the cost of living in any given country but even so, people in developed countries need to step and think about these kinds of basic figures – every time we buy a pair of running shoes we don’t need for $200!!

I genuinely think there is a campaign idea in this – and sitting there pondering the idea has made me realise how much more I can do even at a monetary level, how little I really ‘need’ vs how much I think I ‘want’.

1% of can equal $1 per person, by giving $100 what a simple idea!!

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