REALITY BITES
However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names.
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.
Things do not change, we change.
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.”
-Henry David Thoreau
Cruising Manila during the wee hours of the morning, I found several children with plastic bags or sacks sorting out heaps of waste. Our mountains of refuse, from plastic bottles, tin cans, stale food, are trucked away to dumps, hopefully far from human sights where residents won’t be affected by the noxious stench or the toxic leachate making its way into the water supply. But for millions of people living in poverty, these piles of garbage are a source of life and sustenance: the only one!
These people rely on the scraps of garbage we throw away everyday as they have no where else to go and earn, no one else to ask for help…Nothing!
At the dump sites, each arriving truck means “manna” from heaven which instantly draws hundreds of scavengers. Sacks on their shoulders, black rubber boots or open-toed sandals on their feet, they rifle the trash to grab the best bits: plastic containers and sheets, tin cans, anything that can be recycled.
Let’s make a stand together to help these children gain its lost paradise. In a rotten environment filled with our refuse and waste, let’s give them signs of hope: birds flying where no birds dared to be.
Let’s start first with ourselves.
POVERTY QUOTES
Poverty is the schoolmaster of character.” - Antiphanes
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” - Aristotle
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” - Frederick Douglass
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.” -George Bernard Shaw
It is not the rich man you should properly call happy, but him who knows how to use with wisdom the blessings of the gods, to endure hard poverty, and who fears dishonor worse than death, and is not afraid to die for cherished friends or fatherland.” -
Horace, Odes
It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.”
Juvenal, Satires
It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.” -Kin Hubbard
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.” -Plato, The Republic
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” -Charles Darwin
My poverty is not complete: it lacks me.” - Antonio Porchia, Voces
Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food.” - Sébastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort, Maximes
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” - Norman Vincent Peale
Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.” - Heinrich Heine
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.” - William James
You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.” - P.J. O’Rourke, A Parliament of Whores
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.” - John Berger
Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.” - Eli Khamarov, Lives of the Cognoscenti
The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. - William James
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving.” - O. Henry, Heart of the West, 1907
We didn’t starve, but we didn’t eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was.” - Bernard Malamud
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. -W.C. Fields
Affluence creates poverty. - Marshall McLuhan
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.” - Willem de Kooning
Poverty is the mother of crime. - Marcus Aurelius
Hunger makes a thief of any man. - Pearl S. Buck
To a man with an empty stomach food is God. - Gandhi
Almsgiving tends to perpetuate poverty; aid does away with it once and for all. - Eva Perón
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient. - Sydney Smith, His Wit and Wisdom, 1900
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. - Mahatma Gandhi
For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred. - John Gardner
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. - Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 1929
Poor and content is rich, and rich enough. - William Shakespeare
Filed under: DUMP SITES, POVERTY QUOTES by ross
If you weren’t able to watch the Basurero episode of The Reporter’s Notebook in GMA 7, watch it, Ross. Sobrang maantig ang puso mo sa episode na yun. They gather fastfood leftovers tapos himayin nila what they can eat pa. Tapos gagawin nilang parang mashed na ipa-fry nila tapos they will eat it. Pinakita sa TV yun, Ross. Sobrang mahahati ang emotions mo. Babaligtad sikmura mo kung madirihin ka (thank God I’m not) and sobrang awa ang mararamdaman mo. Simula nga nun di na ako nagtitira ng food. Naiisip ko na ang daming nagugutom na tao tapos nagsasayang lang ako ng food.
Nakakainis ang government natin kasi hindi dapat ganito ang nangyayari sa paligid. Yes, they cannot help everyone, pero at least make the children a priority. It sucks because an ordinary person can only do so much. This is a very frustrating issue talaga. Especially for me kasi I see these kids everyday. I give them food pero ganon pa rin. Hay…
Anyway, let’s all do our share nga talaga and help these kids.
Happy Monday, Ross! Natuwa ako sobra when I read your comment… Lalo na dito, “Sasha, my little sis!”…
God bless, big sis!
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My lil sis Sasha,
I’m not in Manila right now and I don’t have TFC here so I wasn’t able to watch the Basurero episode.
I saw those children when I was in Manila 3 months ago and since mahilig ako sa gimmik sa gabi, nakikita ko sila lagi sa madaling araw.
Marami pang mga batang bata…
We can’t wait for our government to do something, in our own little way, pwede tayong gumawa ng para sa kanila.
[quote post=”215″]Simula nga nun di na ako nagtitira ng food. Naiisip ko na ang daming nagugutom na tao tapos nagsasayang lang ako ng food.[/quote]
Yan, isang halimbawa din yan…ang pagbabago mag sisimula sa atin…
BTW,
your comment went to my spam section, good thing nakita ko sa dami ng mga spammers ko…
muntik ng mabasura…basura pa namn topic natin
Cheers !
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Naku sasha, nung hindi ka na nagtitira ng food, nabawasan sila ng makokolekta!
Kidding aside, this is a serious issue. Pero buti pa nga sila, they do their part para lang makakain sila ng hindi nang momolestya. I’d rather give to those people (ng di nila alam nagbigay ako)…kaysa dun sa mga bata na naglilimos lang (which most often eh may humahawak lang din sa leeg nila).
Pero palagay ko, kahit na bigyan mo sila…hindi pa rin mawawala yung dami ng tao na nagbubungkal ng basura…kasi may pera sa basura eh…sayang kung hindi nila pupulutin (yan ang general thought nila)…
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it really breaks my heart to see children deprived of the basic necessities in life… that didn’t made me feel proud for being fortunate compared to them, rather it made me feel so sorry for doing less to help these kids… yes, sometimes, i get myself involve in reach-out programs… some community services…. but it doesn’t solve the major problem (katokin ang gobyerno!)… but I am sure proud that in our own little ways, we were able to help them.
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I complain far too much when I was younger hmm even now, sometimes lo … About everything, and one of them is the food on the table… I would not really eat it specially if it is gulay and isda… Nang tumanda ako at nakita ko na poverty really exist doon ko naiisip na napaka swerte ko pala… Hindi lang ako “tayo” na may nakakain sa araw-araw noong mga bata pa tayo na hindi natin kailangan pag-trabahuhan o paglimusan…
Your entry really makes me sad…
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really… really… really makes me sad Ross!
Teka nga at BRB muna aketch sabi ni Cee may pera daw sa basura, makaalis muna at maghahanap muna ako ng basura dine. he he he….
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Yes it is very said , unfortunately it happen in many place .
Many chidrens live in terrible condition in
Brazil and others south american countries , Nepal ,Russia , India , in several african countries , but also in europe as since 2007 romania is an european country . for a child live in that situation is much more dangerous than for a man for several reason …they are the weak part of emarginated people and so they are victim of any kind of violence .
the sad part is also that exist many foreign and not NGO who saY to help those childrens but a not small part of THEM stole money for themselves and often also for some gov they are only a boring problem .
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C5,
[quote post=”215″]Pero palagay ko, kahit na bigyan mo sila…hindi pa rin mawawala yung dami ng tao na nagbubungkal ng basura…kasi may pera sa basura eh…sayang kung hindi nila pupulutin [/quote]
Hindi ako masyadong pabor sa “bigyan sila”…like this saying goes:
“Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”—
Tamang me pera sa basura: isang kilong plastic, 10 pesos (kung bata ang mag bebenta)…eh ano namn ang mabibili sa 10 pesos na antagal nilang binungkal?
Pero tama din..na mabuti nga sila nag hahanap ng pera sa mabuting paraan kesa ang iba, nag nanakaw at nang hihingi lang…
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Ciao AsimpleLife,
[quote post=”215″]i get myself involve in reach-out programs… some community services…. but it doesn’t solve the major problem … but I am sure proud that in our own little ways, we were able to help them.[/quote]
I admire people who finds time to be involved in reach-out programs…I admire their generosity.
To be involved doesn’t mean we can solve the major problem, because it will never happen.
What counts is giving one’s precious time and sharing oneself to others without any expectations at all.
Just a quote:
“There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle” - Robert Alden
Let’s continue our little ways, let’s stand by our candle…
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Cara Diwatangbyaning,
[quote comment=”5259″]really… really… really makes me sad Ross!
Teka nga at BRB muna aketch sabi ni Cee may pera daw sa basura, makaalis muna at maghahanap muna ako ng basura dine. [/quote]
Finally, a very enlightening comment from you.
Sabi ko na eh…deep ka talaga kahit patawa ka lagi
Yes, it’s really sad and seriously I’m thinking of a project for them when I’ll settle down in Pinas.
Cge, BRB ka look around your basura, baka by distraction, me nagtapon ng libong dolyar, jewelry…
kung sakali…isosoli mo ba yun?
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Caro Nanetto…
Wow…parli in inglese
Sono d’accordo! I bambini sono i più emarginati…and there are a lot of Organizations pretending to help but the money ends up in their own pocket!
Che tristezza!
However, it is easy to criticize or point our finger…honestly, let’s ask ourselves, what did I do for them?
Buona vacanza Nanetto!
Non fumare troppo…vedi quanto spendi??
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So your settling in PI? Kelan? Hmm project like ngo? That is very interesting tita! Supurtahan kata!
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Hi Ross, Thanks for the right hard talk. Although it all looks gloomy but can be changed surely.
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[quote comment=”5317″]
Yes, it’s really sad and seriously I’m thinking of a project for them when I’ll settle down in Pinas.
[/quote]
Maybe you can join us at the Talitha Foundation. We teach them how to catch fish via Knowledge Chanelling. It’s never easy. Without funding, it’s really walking on faith.
[quote comment=”5371″]So your settling in PI? Kelan? Hmm project like ngo? That is very interesting tita! Supurtahan kata![/quote]
((((((Diwa!!!)))))
My contest post at ceefive (dot) i (dot) ph is my way to help the Foundation. *Baka kainin nanaman ni akismet itong comment pag sumobra sa isa ang link eh…magpapalit nanaman ako ng name nyan…kaya ayun ni-code ko link ko.*
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sumakit ang dibdib ko, kumirot ito sa realidad na nakabandara sa ating bayan…sa kahirapang kinasasadlakan ng ating bayan at mga kababayan…i can only pray for our country andfor our countrymen…yan lang ang kaya kong gawin–….
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In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. ~
Confucius
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Hi Ross! Off topic ito… Just want to say hi and kumustahin ka na rin. I hope everything’s okay with you.
Take care and God bless!
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Hello Ross,
Hope you are fine and doing good.
All on a sudden we had a nice weather this afternoon in Salzburg. So there are a lot of people in the city
All the best and hear you again.
Yours Shams.
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Napapagkakaitan nga naman sila ng pagkakataong makaranas ng matiwasay na buhay. Marapat lang talaga na matulungan natin sila, kahit na papaano, sa anumang paraan.
Sa kasamang palad, ang pambansang kalagayan ay isa sa mga dahilan kumbakit hindi matulungan ang mga sawimpalad. Kahit na umuunlad na paunti-unti ang bansa natin, sa palagay ko e hindi pa rin matulungan ng Pilipinas ang sarili nito. Hindi natin masasabi kung mga corrupt na mamumuno nga ba ang dahilan ko tayo rin mismong mga mamamayan.
Naniniwala pa rin ako na, isang araw, magkakaroon tayong lahat ng magandang buhay. Sikap lang talaga.
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I couldn’t understand some parts of this article REALITY BITES, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
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