Living in our global village

When I reflect on my visit earlier this year to the Gambia, and my trips to other poor countries, I tend to gain some real perspective on my life. I'm left asking what will the future hold for the Gambian children in this picture? I spent some time with them all, and they are certainly as bright and enthusiastic as any kids I have met in my own country. How many of these children will survive to adulthood, how many will enjoy happy lives and achieve their dreams? None for sure will have any of the opportunities I had when I was their age. You see, in the Gambia children are forced to leave school when they reach 11, unless their parents can pay for their secondary education. Most cannot.

I can't help but feel extremely privileged to come from a part of the world where electricity, water and gas are all piped to my home, and where education is free for all children up to the age of 18. Even healthcare is free at the point of delivery to all British citizens (and of course to anyone else who is visiting the UK and gets taken ill) courtesy of the National Health Service. Hell, I even have broadband wifi in my house, and enough to feed and clothe my entire family. If I want fresh, clean water, I have simply to walk a few metres to my kitchen sink. The children in the picture have to walk several kilometres every day to fetch their water from a well in a bucket. Yes, I'm very, very fortunate indeed. I have always been affected by the following scenario, ever since I first heard it several years ago. If you want some perspective on your life, read on....

If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:

Our village would be populated by 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans,
8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific....

51 would be male,
49 would be female.
82 would be non-white;
18 would be white.
67 would be non-Christian;
33 would be Christian.
80 would live in substandard housing;
67 would be unable to read.
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation;
33 would be without access to a safe water supply;
39 would lack access to improved sanitation;
24 would not have any electricity (and of the 76 that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night).
7 people would have access to the Internet;
1 would have a college education;
1 would have HIV.
2 would be near birth; 1 near death
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens
33 would be receiving (and trying to live on) only 3% of the income of “the village”

Information source

This post is a revised version of Our global village, first published on this blog on February 27, 2010.

Living in our global village by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.