It’s been good to participate in Blog Action Day this year and the focus on Poverty has produced some amazing posts and some very moving testimonials around the blogosphere.
Understandably, a lot of what has been written is about poverty in underdeveloped and developing countries.
Sparkplugging CEO Wendy Piersall reminds us that even in our richer, developed countries there are people living in and struggling with poverty, something that she has experienced personally.
People ask me about why I am so dang passionate about helping people start a business or become self-employed. While I find it fascinating, rewarding, challenging, and intellectually stimulating, the biggest reason is because of my past: I have eaten at the Salvation Army, lived out of my truck for 6 months, and when I started my first business, I was a single mom living in my parent’s basement.
That reminded me that, as well as looking at what we can to support efforts to tackle poverty in other countries, we need also to have a thought and take some action for people in our own countries, our own neighbourhoods. If you are a formerly successful, happily married businessperson who thought life was looking good and are now sleeping in your car, I would imagine you would not be immediately consoled by hearing that people in developing countries were doing it tougher.
Wendy lists thirty six sites, including this one, where people can get high-quality advice and ideas, free, for small and home business, together with a list of Government agency and other sites with resources.
If you are one of the many people around the world who are wondering, in the light of the current economic meltdown, how you are going to ensure you and your family are spared the evils of poverty, Wendy’s list would be a very good place to start.
What’s more, the comments feature on most blogs and the willingness of most bloggers to engage in conversation with their readers, via the comments system, mean that you have more than just texts to read. You have a community you can choose to belong to. A community in which there are many people who, like Wendy, have worked hard themselves to provide for their own and their families’ economic stability and prosperity. Real experts, not theorists in ivory towers.
To Easton Ellsworth who has labored mightily to bring us Blog Action Day 2008 and poke and prod us to participate, and to all my blogging colleagues who have posted about poverty and about what can be and is being done about it, my admiration and my thanks.
