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Editors note: Today’s post is part of my regular “Humanitarian Friday” series. When I started mytropicalescape.com one of my goals was to help spread some awareness of the tremendous disparities in the quality of life that exists around the world. Surprisingly, many people have actually been reading these posts (Google Analytics is watching you) even though they do not draw many comments, and as a way of expanding the series the standard format for the next couple of weeks will be changing, but only a little.

Specifically, as a way of thanking some of the participants in my weekly “Ten Questions With” series I have asked them to provide me with a humanitarian cause or social issue (and the organizations working to assist and support the issues) that they would like to see get more exposure. Last week’s post topic on Amnesty International’s campaign to Stop Violence Against Women came from Skellie, of skelliewag.org. Today’s post on Compassion and Poverty was inspired by a suggestion from Leo Babauta, of Zen Habits. Additionally, because poverty is such an enormous development issue (and struggle) this post is also being submitted to the compassion writing project as a way of trying to draw additional attention to this matter.

Poverty and Hunger Statistics - Provided by Global Call To Action Against Poverty

• Over 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day with nearly half the world’s population (2.8 billion) living on less than $2 a day.
• From 1990 to 2002, in sub-Saharan Africa, although the poverty rate declined marginally, the number of people living in extreme poverty increased by 140 million.
• More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day… 300 million are children. Of these 300 million children, only eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.
• Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5.
• An estimated 824 million people in the developing world were affected by chronic hunger in 2003.
• In the early 1990s, the number of hungry people in Eastern Asia declined, but again it is on the rise.
• Every hour more than 1,200 children die away from the glare of media attention. This is equivalent to three tsunamis a month, every month.
• In 2001-03, FAO estimates there were still 854 million undernourished people worldwide: 820 million in the developing countries, 25 million in the transition countries and 9 million in the industrialized countries.
• Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
• The overwhelming majority can be traced to a single pathology : poverty.

I think the world would be a much better place if we all increased our compassion, and willingness to help our fellow man in 2008.

If you are a regular reader of mytropicalescape.com then you might know that I am a former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer and hold a Masters Degree in International Development and I am strongly committed to the principles of local empowerment through compassion and participatory development practices.

One of the major factors that can help to alleviate poverty is personal empowerment, which can be defined as “the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. Central to this process are actions, which both build individual and collective assets, and improve the efficiency and fairness of the organizational and institutional context which govern the use of these assets.”

However, it is difficult for empowerment to survive if there is not a concerted effort amongst government leaders, and a lasting POLITICAL WILL that helps to support, nurture, and promote effective change.

Poverty Reduction, on a global scale, is a difficult topic to process, and also to write about because it encompasses many different levels, facets, and meanings. Making the issue even more difficult to grasp is the fact that the financial means currently exist to eradicate this global epidemic, which is largely dependent upon where you were born, or where you happen to live on the planet.

So how can we in the global internet and blogging community help to make an impact and alleviate the issue of poverty?

One word - Compassion

According to Wikipedia, “Compassion is often characterized through actions, wherein a person acting with compassion will seek to aid those they feel compassionate for. Acts of compassion are generally considered those which take into account the pain of others and attempt to alleviate that pain.”

How about making 2008 your year to act on that compassion?

Two organizations that are working diligently to alleviate the pain and suffering of poverty around the world are Make Poverty History and Global Call to Action Against Poverty.

If you would like to support either one of these organizations in their quest to reduce poverty I strongly suggest you spend some time today visiting their websites.