Poverty is about not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter.  However, poverty is more, much more than just not having enough money.

The World Bank Organization describes poverty in this way:

“Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time.

Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways.  Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action -- for the poor and the wealthy alike -- a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.”

Poverty to me is a state of mind, it’s the lack of the very peace that is unmeasurable and that is without a price, it is far from what is and what is not. Poverty to me is deriving yourself of worthiness on the basis of the tangle able it is the very turmoil in your own soul that gives you sleepless nights.

The stigma on its own is however heavy enough to make one lack what’s important, measure self-worth and feel so defeated by the standards of which we see and interpret a better life. Communities year in year out keep strengthen this stigma. Social divisions and gaps between the rich and the poor keep on increasing.

Often comfortability makes us ignorant, to feel and think about others often we cannot see what our own actions do to others, and I stand guility.Often having more than what we should is misinterpreted for a deserved privilege.

What wrong is not poverty, what’s wrong the birth of a monster, that keeps growing in our young minds, the limits that we set as a result of  what can be and what cannot be, where one belongs and where not. Whoever told you that being poor is a sin? Who created a standard in which people should conform and be slaves to it? Being poor lies in the very being that sees no point in doing just for others, without applause.

Poverty is in fact not what one is or has it is in fact, a mind that cannot see beyond the realm of labelling people like based on their capacity and well-being. The stigma of poverty divided people even before race did.

Think About It
 

Dictionary.com defines the word design as the preparation of the preliminary sketch or plans of execution, especially the plan of a structure or a form. The word design is concerned, Gavin Mageni once said that: “Everything you see is someone else’s design, we are in fact surrounded by designs.  

The real question here is how do we go about designing a better South Africa? When do we begin to grasp that we are in fact capable of designing a South Africa that exists in our minds. What could be the odds? If we changed how we think and yes began to think like designers?

South Africa is a very diverse country, in almost every sphere, we embody the fullness of diversity. Our challenges are thus as diverse as our image, with so many c issues, needs, expectations and views that stem from almost all walks of life.  The socio-economic, the socio-culture, socio-political dimensions of our structure makes the complexity of our diverse issues that much greater. As a developing nation, we face so many compelling issues, unemployment, crime, enormous gap between the rich and the poor, pressure of growing our economy at any cost, expanding our trade market.

 Most of our problems arises from the urgency to become developed, arising from our ignorance to study and understand our very own structure, to accept that we are weaker in some aspects, yet stronger in others. What accumulates our problems as South Africans is the propensity to believe in adoption of  well developed countries, that their strategies, policies, laws, structures can actually better our own structure, because it seems to be working for them. We therefore greatly fail to appreciate our uniqueness.   

The intrinsic mindset of belonging to a society or a certain nature that possess its own pattern of thinking, automatically pushes us to refuse to see things in a different angle and light than what and how we have always seen things, we therefore constantly adopt previously used methods that do not always guarantee the same effective results.

The conflicts of interests will always be present in any society for that matter as people we are different what is important to you will not necessarily be important to me, the sensitivity of policies and laws implemented remain influenced by our different demographical background, our different expectations and views of how everything should be, that remain hindrances to progress

Unemployment, for example continues to be an ever growing stigma, with so many people waiting for employment, people do not realize that the sphere of entrepreneurship is open. Entrepreneurship is fast becoming another effective apparatus to try and create employment, especially for the youth.

 I would honestly vouch for entrepreneurship, many would disagree, and looking at the state of the economy and how risky it is to actually venture into a business. The accuracy of my view can be debatable to a certain extent. However imagine if we would actually apply creative thinking to our problems, there are countless opportunities within an already open sphere.   

The chasm of attempts to study our structure as South Africa therefore becomes that much more complex given how much we have to consider, to ensure that whatever is  done, whatever is planned must  fall in the realm of what we know as democracy, a system that is made for us, and by us as a result.

 I therefore believe that we can only re-create and try to mend our  structure, if we begin to appreciate the fact that we are different and  there see things from a different, if we in fact work together and co-create the South Africa that we know has potential to thrive above challenges.                                                  

The need to become catalysts of change is quite necessary, the need to be something more than just a citizen depending on government to bring about the change, to open a gap we need to start designing our tomorrow irrespective of what today looks like there is really a need!

What do you say?