Improve the World - Empower Women

To all the women that have suffered at the hands of the Taliban and other such organisations for daring to ask for more than being an unrecognised slave - you are bright stars that refuse to die.  The world will remember you, even if we don't know your names.

It has made me think, once again on the state of the world.  Has anybody noticed that the countries that are the poorest in the world tend to be the ones were women are powerless and without educations?  Has anybody considered the fact that there might be a correlation between women who are little more than chattels and poverty?  I believe there is.

For starters - if a women is educated and valued for being a house wife and mother of her husband's children then it is more than likely she will still be happy to stay at home and be the mother of those children.  However, while staying at home as a mother an educated women can educate her children - teaching them how to read and write and do basic arithmetic.  Then, if the family can only afford to send the boys to school, the daughters still gain an education that they can pass on to their children in turn, while the sons go to school with the basics already in place.  Therefore they can begin their formal education at a more advanced stage than their peers who had uneducated mothers, they can advice further in the time that their family can afford to send them to school and when they leave school they will be qualified for a better paying job, therefore helping to lift their family out of poverty.

Also an educated women, if she has any schooling in health care, will know how to keep her family cleaner and therefore less likely to die of disease.  Therefore her children will more likely reach adulthood, meaning that she does not have to risk her health and her life having dozens of children in the hope that one of them will reach adulthood.  That means that the family's resources are not stretch as far trying to feed a dozen mouths, meaning each child can receive more food, further increasing their chances of surviving to adulthood.

It seems to me that the best way of eliminating Third World Debt and improving the lot of our fellow human beings lays with educating their women.

Power Failure

Do we really ever realise how much we in the Western world rely on electricity?  I mean really realise?  Part of me says I doubt it but a couple of events recently has gone a way to opening my eyes.

First off - an over sensitive RCD.  We are still in the process of cleaning the house so the TV is still off.  Therefore, my sister borrowed one laptop to watch a film.  Meanwhile I have recently started playing a real time strategy game on  my computer.  I'm doing fairly well on it so I would like to keep it up.  I plugged my laptop in to keep the battery charged up while I'm playing and immediately the RCD cut out.  I didn't even turn the socket on, it just flipped every trip in the house.  Eventually we managed to turn on both laptops without them tripping the RCD but it was something of a struggle.

The second thing - a steamer that drops dead at the sight of a socket.  We are still trying to clean all the nicotine of the previous tenants out of the house and the best way has been to steam clean ceiling, walls and in some cases, the floors.  However, it is incredibly difficult to put in a full days work on the house when the steamer not only trips out the RCD but also kills it's own element!  What is really frustrating is the fact I only bought it about a week ago.  I am beginning to suspect that even the equipment is giving up this house as a bad job.

These two events have made me realise that when the electricity stops running both work and play grind to a halt.  Kind of hints that we should take better care of the coal reserves.

Missing Persons

May every honest, decent persons thoughts be with the family of April.  What they are going through is a horror beyond imagining and we can only pray for the Divine's comfort to bless them and hold them by the hand as they face this terrible thing.

It is sad to reflect that too often our newspapers are sold on the back of one family's suffering.  Too often we hear of a child disappearing, never to be seen again.

What we don't hear about are the adults who go missing each year.  That's right. Adults!

Missing People is a charity that is run solely for the missing people who we don't read about in the papers.  The great majority of them are adults.  There appears to be no common age range and no common year for disappearances.  They happen apparently randomly and steal away sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers.

For example Joseph Reid went missing from Northumberland on the 30th of August this year.  He was sixty-nine when he disappeared and his whereabouts remain a mystery.

An old man disappearing is not a story the newspapers can make a sensation out of so he is ignored but he is a human being.  He has friends and family now worried sick about him.  These people matter as much as a child and deserve to be found.  They all, adults and children a like, deserve to be found.

www.missingpeople.org.uk