Children and Poverty

Childhood should be a happy time spent playing with friends, enjoying a favorite toy — even planning for the first day of school. But children in the developing world spend most of their childhood struggling to survive, without much hope for a secure, productive life.

And they face incredible odds. Of the 57 million people worldwide who died last year, 10.5 million of them were children less than five years old. The majority of these children — ssome 98 percent — were in developing nations. Won’t you please help children and their families today?

Treatable illnesses, such as pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition, become life-threatening when combined with poverty, war, poor sanitation, inadequate health care and insufficient preventive measures.

Take a closer look at how CARE is improving the lives of individual children.

For those who survive childhood, the path to a secure and happy future is still filled with obstacles. Children in developing nations have limited aaccess to education, which limits opportunity and reduces potential.

Economic, social and cultural factors keep some 121 million children, especially girls, from attending school. Faced with difficult choices, parents often take girls out of school to care for younger siblings, hhelp with household chores or work outside the home to contribute to family income. In the world’s least developed countries, only 14 percent of secondary school enrollment is female.

CARE’s Response

Despite grim statistics, children represent one of the best opportunities for defeating poverty. CARE strives to attack the underlying causes of poverty through health and education projects in poor communities.

CARE takes a well-rounded approach to improving children’s health through:

• Water, sanitation and hygiene education projects that enable healthier households

• Farming innovations that result in better nutrition

• Family planning projects that promote healthier mothers and infants

• Emergency response programs that meet basic needs for food and health

In children’s health specifically, CARE emphasizes disease prevention through immunization programs and health ttraining.

CARE works to break through the barriers of education by:

• Promoting and facilitating discussion between parents, teachers and other community members about the benefits of education

• Working to improve opportunities for education in the developing world — with a special focus on girls and women

• Helping parents cover the cost of keeping children in school

CARE’s education programs emphasize equal access, especially for girls, and we focus on the quality of teaching and the learning environment.

You Can Help!

Over tthe past year, some 313,000 students in 28 countries received basic education while CARE reached nearly 9.5 million children in 31 countries through programs in child health. But there is still more to do, and you can help. To support CARE’s efforts wherever the need is greatest, click here.

If you would like to support CARE’s work through monthly donations, click here to become a contributor to CARE For the Child.

Facts About Children and Poverty

Health Care and Nutrition

• Measles, malaria and diarrhea are three of the biggest killers of children — yet all are preventable or treatable

• More than 30 million children in the world are not immunized against treatable or preventable diseases

• 95 percent of all the people who get polio are under the age of 5

• HIV/AIDS has created more than 14 million orphans — 92 percent of them live in Africa

• Six million children under five die every year as a result of hunger

Education

• 134 million children between the ages of 7 to 18 have never been to school.

• Girls are more likely to go without schooling than boys — in the Middle East and North Africa, girls are three times more likely than bboys to be denied education

• For every year of education, wages increase by a worldwide average of 10 percent

• Educated mothers tend to send their children to school, helping to break the cycle of poverty

Exploitation

• In the last decade, more than 2 million children have died as a direct result of armed conflict

• More than 300,000 child soldiers are exploited in armed conflicts in over 30 countries around the world

• 2 million children are believed to be exploited through the commercial sex trade

• Approximately 246 million children work

• 171 million children work in hazardous conditions

About half of the world’s population — nearly 3 billion people — lives in poverty, on the equivalent of less than $2 a day. These people do not simply lack financial resources. They struggle each day to keep hunger and disease at bay. Basic opportunities to improve their lives are frequently beyond reach.

The factors that keep people living in poverty are complex and interwoven. That’s why CARE does much more than feed the hungry. We work alongside families and communities to understand the greatest threats to their survival and to help them find lasting solutions to their problems.

Through our Victories Over Poverty campaign, CARE iis supporting integrated programs that include emergency relief, post-emergency rehabilitation and recovery, and long-term poverty-fighting projects. Whether it’s teaching new farming techniques, training teachers or helping improve access to health care, CARE works with communities to create solutions that last.

Reducing Poverty: Proof is in the Numbers

Last year, CARE’s programs directly improved the lives of more than 31 million people in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Tens of millions more benefited indirectly from CARE projects that confronted poverty in their communities.

• Poverty is not having access to clean drinking water or adequate sanitation systems. Last year, CARE helped 3 million people in 34 countries gain access to clean water and sanitation, reducing time spent gathering water and illness caused by poor hygiene.

• Poverty is a lack of accessible, affordable health care information and services. In 2002, almost 10 million children in 26 countries benefited from CARE’s child health projects, reducing their vulnerability to disease.

• Poverty is not being able to produce enough food to feed your family. Last year, CARE’s programs helped train more than 1.5 million farmers in 43 countries in activities relating to agriculture and natural resource management, increasing crop yields while conserving the environment.