What You Can Do To Change The World

If you're reading this, the odds are you're either in Europe, the Americas or Australia.

Why? Well if you have time to spare to read random articles of intellectual topics, you probably have a certain amount of money at hand, and thus certain level of education. Now you have money because you got educated and therefore you have time to read smart things. When do the poor have time to read smart things? Never, they're constantly fighting and struggling to merely survive, every second of their lives. They do not catch breaks like you are doing right now, or me as I write this.

Poor people are not less intelligent than you, they just don't have the opportunity to exploit any of their potential.

When you see a campaign that invites you to donate money to provide water, or mosquito nets for airborne diseases or vaccines, it's all really great. In the short term. Water doesn't last, it becomes waste (urine on the most part). Vaccines must be given to each new human to eradicate a virus. Nothing of your donations are going towards something sustainable. It's like healing a broken leg, but you never tell the patient to not jump off high trees anymore.

So what can *you* do to save the world? Invest into foreign education. Education, especially to young african girls, is the key to a third-world that could become a sustainable developing world, healthier, smarter, independent.

Here are a few UN research statistics and conclusions (Please read all points):

-12% less people below the poverty line by simply providing basic reading skills. Over the past four decades, the global increase in women’s education has prevented more than four million child deaths.

-12 percent of all people could be lifted out of poverty if all students in poor countries had basic reading skills. (over 170 million people)

-Education empowers women to make healthy decisions about their lives. For example, women in Mali with a secondary level education or higher have an average of 3 children, while those with no education have an average of 7.(Overpopulation problems reduced with higher education.)

-53% of the world’s out-of-school children are girls and 2/3 of the illiterate people in the world are women.

-Women with a primary school education are 13% more likely to know that condoms can reduce their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. An education can help decrease the spreading of this virus by promoting safer sexual practices.

-Children who are born to educated mothers are less likely to be stunted or malnourished. Each additional year of maternal education also reduces the child mortality rate by 2%.

-In developing, low-income countries, every additional year of education can increase a person’s future income by an average of 10%.

OK, I think you get the point. Education is not only awesome, but fundamental to a functioning capitalist country. With these statistics, we can easily break down facts and predict side effects. More education equals more income, therefore more spending into local industries, thus creating more jobs which in turn encourages the growth of the local education to get qualified staff, which results in a healthier, circulating economy of earning and spending. They will be able to build their own hospitals, pay their own doctors, build their own aqueducts, power generators, electricity lines and so much more.

My point is, if you invest in education for african children instead of investing in giving them water or other short-term, immediate solutions, you probably will never have to donate again. They won't need your money.

SOURCES:

http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/children/pdf/educationfirst-facts.pdf

https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-education-around-world