It's Blog Action Day again

This year the theme of Blog Action Day is raising awareness of poverty. This means looking at not just the abstract concept of 'poverty' but realizing how it effects your neighbour - next door, down the street, on the street corner, around the world.

In the spirit of this blog, when I get around to posting, that is, I'm going to provide some links to organizations which try to put a human face on poverty.

Make Poverty History Canada addresses poverty more as a political issue, pointing to the impoverishment of people resulting from the action (or inaction) of governments.

Oxfam Canada points out a variety of issues that lead to poverty, and shows what you can do. Today, at least, and I hope on most days, the title picture on their website shows a variety of images following the theme "This is what women's rights look like". Women's rights are part and parcel of human rights, empowerment for everyone, and as the pictures show, a sense of community.

Tomorrow, October 16, is World Food Day, an event "established by FAO's Member Countries at the Organization's Twentieth General Conference in November 1979". Their 'History' page has posters going back to 1981.

I did a search on Google using World Food Day 2008 as my search term. The variety of events are quite impressive.

The Stephen Lewis Foundation "helps to ease the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa at the grassroots level". It goes without saying that if people weren't dying with AIDS at such a high rate, if they had access to health care and food and necessary drugs, then maybe they could think about getting out of poverty.