Week 3 - ALTERNATIVE ASSIGNENT

          Since I have had no luck, with getting in touch with the international contacts that I chose in week one, I completed the alternative assignment for this week.  I chose to research childhood poverty in India, using the website, http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/. Compared to the United States, childhood poverty in India is severe and devastating.  About 62 million children are under the age of five and malnourished and 34 percent of the new-borns are significantly underweight.  Children still struggle with having to work instead of attending school.  India accounts for 20 percent of the world's out-of-school children.  It has the largest number of working children in the world, and nearly a third of the children working are below 16 years of age.  For female children, life is particularly hard.  Gender biases continue to worsen for girls, and limit their life chances (Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre, n.d.).
          A particular insight that I gained by doing this research on childhood poverty in India is a personal one.  Childhood poverty is hard for me to read about.  It breaks my heart to learn about what children in India have to endure.  Another insight that I realized was that not all countries focus on the well-being of children as much as the United States does.  Children are one of the most important things to people in the U.S.  A third insight that I gained was that discrimination against females is as strong as ever in other countries.  In the U.S., if a woman is discriminated against she has a lawsuit she could file, however in other countries, such as India, the women have to deal with all kinds of discrimination.  I enjoyed this assignment, it has helped open my eyes even more to the state of childhood poverty in the world outside of the United States. 

References

 

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre. (n.d.). Country Overviews. Retrieved from http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/