Global Issues Portfolio Reflection
3rd World Farmer Reflection
The purpose of the game was to show how farmers in the LEDC’s live. Their lives are very different from ours, and the game raises awareness to those who can afford the luxury of Internet. Many of us don’t know those in poverty are living, and this game helps us realize it so we can take action.
Throughout the game, my strategy was to think ahead and see the consequences of my decision. I did not want to do something that I knew would cause something unwanted to happen, such as a government officials coming to my house. For example, I was offered the chance of growing opium, but I refused because I knew that the end result would not be pleasing.
A short-term decision is a decision when you can’t afford to wait for a while to make. Life becomes a day-to-day battle, and you don’t have the option of planning your child’s future, because you are too busy making sure that he or she has one.
They are bad because it is a cycle, and once you get sucked in, it’s hard to get out. You can’t give your children an education because you don’t have any spare money, and if you do, it goes into medication.
They are always fighting for survival, and they need to make sure that they nourished and healthy, so they can try to get an education for their children. You always have to plan for tomorrow, so your mentality is “I don’t want to worry about next year just yet. Right now, I’m trying to make sure you have enough for tomorrow.”
I think that they only thing that could get them out of the cycle is possibly luck and a helping hand from an outsider. Even the smallest donation, like a cow, can improve their lives. It will help them because they can use the cow for milk, so they will spend less on food and water, so they can spend on education. The cow will also help plow the fields.
A long-term decision is decision that will affect them later in life. For example, educating your child is a long-term decision, as well as vaccinating them. They are dreams when you are hungry and sick, and you can’t really try to achieve them when there are more pressing matters of survival.
You can make these decisions when you are well off money wise. You can’t make the decisions when there are matters of survival at hand.
They are good because they are the ones that will help you get out of the cycle of poverty, like education, because then your child can do jobs that pay more. Not many people have education, and so the few that do get paid more.
If you get your child vaccinated, then they will be healthier and will live longer. If they are healthy, even if they aren’t educated, they will be strong, and be able to work on the farm. That will help you earn money, so that you can continue keeping everyone in your family healthy. If they get an education, there will be better chance of developing because people know the right decisions to make, and how to be smart with what they have.
I learned that the people in L.E.D.C.s have it alot harder than we do. They have so much that they can be complaining about, but they learn to be happy with what they have. I think that we should all be like them and have a positive attitude.
This experience was sort of a combination of Reason Critically and Live Ethically. You had to reason critically to flourish in the game, and it was also about living ethically, like not growing drugs, and making the right choices, even if you know it is harder.
This simulation relates to Ending Poverty and Hunger, because the farmers in L.E.D.C.s are living in poverty, and we have to fix that.
I chose the image shown because it shows a child hungry, and a vulture watching, waiting for it to die.There was a food camp very near by, and the child is trying to crawl to it. This photo is a Pulitzer Prize winning picture, and it was taken during the Sudan Famine in 1994. It is an extremely sad picture, and the photographer that took it committed suicide out of depression 3 months later, because he was so upset that he hadn’t done anything to help the child.
"The Third World is not a reality but an ideology."-Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-born American political philosopher
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