The sun is beating down on the dusty, mud hut sitting within the semi-arid terrain of the local desert and the slow stirring of 4 young children is taking place as each wakes up off the floor. Each can feel the other's legs sprawled on top of the next sibling as they fight for space amongst the dirt and animal skin cloths. Aged 2, 4, 9 and 14, each child has never known anymore than a dirt floor to call their bed and the fear of another day to survive as their pillow. Through the day and into the night, these 4 children face life within the Southern Sudan as normal as anyone else throughout the world. With barely any food, the floor to call their bed, no reliable, clean water for miles and only one parent alive, this is their reality and this is their home.
Within Southern Sudan, the girl child attendance rate in school is 35% and only 1 in 5 children ever finish school, which is lower than attendance of children living under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Through humanitarian interventions, we are creating programming to try and coax families in to letting their girls go to school through giving them a take-home ration each month of 5L of oil. The skills and strength of these girls at home are more valuable to the family and bring more assistance than if they were sitting under a tree, miles away, learning and improving their education. With each hour that passes, there is less work that has been accomplished, less food that has been made, but, as each class rolls on there is one more girl that will never understand and will never be educated. Gender inequality throughout the developing and third world is rife and girls across the globe, due to culture, income needs and forced labor are missing out on education. The education of their children, the future of their family, the revolution of a generation and the upliftment of a gender all hangs on 5L of oil.
As the problems of the world become vaster and more complicated, more dangerous and more deafening, the disconnect between the West and the underdeveloped countries becomes greater and more disastrous. Whether its down the halls of the United States Congress, among the pews of the local church, within the editing rooms of the New York Times or around the boardrooms of corporate America, the reasons that Africa struggles are barely ever understood. As we sit in our centrally heated homes, our freshly carpeted living rooms and our leather-clad SUV's, there is no possible way to understand the life-changing exchange that occurs with 5L of oil. Why leave women out? Why the gender disparity? Why only 5L of oil? Why anything at all? All of these questions lead to one thing: when all you have is one bowl of rice left and 4 children to feed, nothing makes sense anymore.
International relations and humanitarian development across the world targets all of these issues that face so many people today: economic empowerment, gender inequality, HIV/AIDS, water borne diseases, malnutrition, sex trafficking and civil conflict. Through targeted interventions and protracted poverty alleviation projects, may we, as people whom were the lucky ones, the ones with families, parents, homes and educations, take a longer look at helping those whom are the most in need. May we strive for a greater avenue of assistance through the presidents we elect, the churches we attend, the money we donate and the time we spend.
As you pull your shopping cart out of the line, walk down the aisle of the local Wholefoods and review your list for the week, the day around you will be bustling and busy. Mothers with small children will be looking for formula and some sort of unneeded toy, the local university student will be picking up the six pack of Bud light and the young couple will be looking for the fresh vegetables. Across the world, in a hot, dusty town, one young Sudanese girl will be walking miles home, with no shoes after 3 hours at school.carrying her reward on her head.
As you turn the corner and walk down that cooking aisle the next time, will you ever look at 5L of oil the same? I pray, for the children of Sudan you do not...
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