Poverty presentation shares stories, mission

Extreme poverty is a complicated issue, but the number of people in the world living in such condition is dropping, Meg Watkins said.

“We really want people to know that progress has been made in the past,” Watkins, who works with the Global Poverty Project, said. “There are fewer people now living in extreme poverty than 10 years ago or 50 years ago, and to us that means it’s really possible to address this problem and we need to keep going and keep fighting.”

Watkins spoke to 33 students about the current status of extreme poverty and the advocacy group’s efforts to combat the issue on Wednesday at Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. She reviewed the organization’s mission to empower a constituency that cares about extreme poverty.

The Global Poverty Project gave a traveling presentation, titled “1.4 Billion Reasons,” which included facts about extreme poverty and anecdotes about those living below the poverty line.

Watkins said 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day, and 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water. Watkins also noted 21,000 children die everyday from diseases that already have cures.

“Two of our main advisors are Jeffrey Sachs, the economist, and Hans Rosling, who runs Gapminder,” she said. “So both of them supply a lot of the facts and figures. We are also working in concert with the U.N. so we use a lot of their figures too.”

Watkins cited a 2010 Washington Post poll stating that Americans think 25 percent of the U.S. annual budget goes to foreign aid. In reality, less than 1 percent of the budget is allotted to foreign aid.

Lindsey Perreault a SAR freshman, said she was shocked by this figure.

“A lot of the numbers weren’t what I was expecting, especially the amount that the U.S. doesn’t give to foreign aid,” she said. “I thought the number would be a lot higher than the less than 1 percent that it was.”

Watkins used South Korea as an example of a country that has risen from extreme poverty since the 1950s, as it has gone from an aid-recipient country to an aid-giving country.

“I was unaware about the dramatic change in South Korea since the 50s,” said SAR junior Christie Siegele, president of the BU Sargent College Rotaract Club, which hosted the event.

Karen Jacobs, the club’s advisor, helped organize the lecture through the Global Poverty Project’s social media coordinator.

“We may physically be in Boston, but our students come from all over the world,” Jacobs said in a phone interview.

“We have a humanitarian responsibility,” she said, “to help solve the issue of extreme poverty.”