Blog Action Day Invites Ideas to End Poverty: Here’s My Health Ideas on Poverty
Today is Blog Action Day and thousands of people are Blogging about ways we can collectively and individually end Poverty.
My contribution is to provide a few ideas for ending poverty using health ideas. Ending poverty is a pursuit which will not only touch each individual’s life, but contribute to a family, a neighborhood, a community, a state, a country, a province, a nation, a continent, and a world where we all thrive with lives which are uninterrupted by the lack of sufficient money to live each day richly and productively!
Each of us must begin with ourselves. When we choose to live within our means, within the context of a sustainable lifestyle, and within a wholeness that does not harm or injure self or others through economic imbalance – we can literally turn this situation around together. Each person touches others throughout the course of their lives. In turn, those people influence and affect still more people in another circle. We enjoy touching lives in many ways in concentric circles of interaction and create a ripple effect which truly alters the quality of each life.
We experience one another at many levels of Consciousness. We have our own self-identity, then we assume various roles as parent, child, sibling, co-worker, community member, citizen, and a member of the human race. We carry these connections with us each moment of our lives, giving attention to any aspect of our relationships which are important at any given moment in time. This includes our economic relationships which can impact any of the associations with other people. We work, we are compensated for our work, we take that compensation and acquire products and services from others, we offer products and services to others who need them or appreciate them, and we make our exchanges that continue to support our work and businesses through a unique concept known as Reciprocity.
Reciprocity is demonstrated in many ways. The important point to keep in mind in our efforts to eliminate poverty is to find a ‘balance’ in the ways we enter into reciprocal relationships. We can learn to maintain this balance by trading and exchanging more equitably with one another. We agree to meet one another’s needs and interests with our exchanges and that our medium of exchange – money – is sufficient to support our mutual interests.
Fair Trade coffee is one amazing example of such a practice in business and among coffee drinkers who are more attune to world affairs. There are American companies that are making a commitment to providing a choice of good coffees which support local and international coffee growers and sustainable production methods. Shade-grown coffee and growers who pay close attention to the environment for generations to keep the land and the people healthy will certainly make a difference in ending the cycle of poverty for people in numerous regions where coffee is grown as well as where it is consumed! There are non-profit organizations who allow their members to sell coffee as a fund-raiser and to assist these growers engage in Fair Trade. You can buy this coffee and put your dollars to work for ending poverty.
You can purchase products and services through our affiliates on our website and we will continue to do our part by taking our money and buying sustainably-sourced products and services for our homes, offices, and customers in addition to giving to charitable organizations and individuals through donations and by directly supplying people in our community and around the world with health products and services which will positively impact their lives and well-being. When you buy from us, we pass on the portion of the profit to help others live a healthy lifestyle. ‘Passing it forward’ is a living reality rather than just a curious concept for us.
You can donate food to Food Banks, you can deliver some healthy food to spiritual groups who share it with their people, you can offer food to those who are hungry or too poor to buy healthier food. Many impoverished people will buy white bread, stale crackers, canned vegetables, refined sugar, and other food laden with chemicals, toxins, preservatives, fillers, excipients, coloring agents, and other ingredients which do not lend themselves to a healthy lifestyle. When you donate healthy foods to these folks they benefit directly by improving the quality of their nutrition on a daily basis. This saves our society money in the long run with fewer hospital visits, fewer incidences of degenerative diseases, fewer demands on social service agency programs, and this makes a difference to redirect our money toward health and away from treating malnutrition or disease from nutritional deficiencies.
You can begin to eat healthier food yourself and the money you save can be used for any worthy cause you deem suitable. You can help to save family farms, you can support healthy food choices in public schools, you can educate a person about the benefits of organic food for their health and the well-being of our planet. This will do so much more than most people realize to eradicate poverty.
Finally, it is imperative that you think in abundant and prosperous ways. Your common thought will create your daily reality and the environment which surrounds you will respond to a positive mindset. This use of placing your attention on everything that is right with the world will allow it to be the common experience. This is probably the most significant thing you can do…think ‘abundance’, live abundantly as if every moment matters, and give abundantly to those around you to encourage them to share this state of Being with you!
You can learn more about other Bloggers are doing at this Link:
http://blogactionday.org/
