Abolissons la Pauvrete Parte Deux: Get On Board

So I was watching The National and there was a piece about this grassroots movement called Get On Board. The idea of the movement was to travel to some of the poorest villages in Africa and take messages from them directly to the G8 leaders. And Emma Thomson was featured, saying that the idea that helping Africa and changing policy and providing aid is charity needs to change. This cannot be thought of as charity, that mentality is wrong. It is our moral responsibility to take care of African people just as much as it is to take care of Canadian people, to protect the unprotected from injustice. Poverty should be seen as injustice, not just misfortune.

The messages included pleas for education, empowerment of women, free anti-virals, and this one was my favourite: "G8 Leaders: Your guns equals to our poverty"

I've been following, and commenting on a weblog called Wizbang which turns out to be kinda right wing, but what the hell... and if you wanted to check it out and see what your brilliant pal kristin has to say... there you go. The initial post is called Will Live Aid End Poverty, and it pissed me off, as well as subsequent posts and I felt the need to comment.

so mainly what I'm thinking about is how poverty is not the real problem but the symptom of the problem. So yeah, we need to root out the cause and fix that. But in medicine you have to treat the symptoms and the cause more often than not. so while Aid may not be The Answer, it most definitely needs to be part of the package.