Franzigreenwood’s Weblog

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gandhi_studio_1931.jpg

Ghandi was a spiritual and political leader of India and the Indian idependence movement. Most people know him as Mahatma Ghandi, what means Great Soul. He spent time in South Afrika, where he was confronted with discrimination. That was one of the main reasons why he started to fight for the rights of the Indian people in Africa. Upon his return to India, he organized poor farmers and labourers to protest oppressive taxation and widespread discrimination. Gandhi famously led Indians first in the disobedience of the British-imposed salt tax with the 400 kilometers (249 miles) Dandi Salt March in 1930, and later in an open call for the British to quit India in 1942. He was imprisoned for many years, on numerous occasions, in both South Africa and India. With his non-violent protest and his campaings he tried to reach alleviation of poverty, the liberation of women, brotherhood amongst different religious and ethnic groups, an end to untouchability and caste discrimination, and the economic self-sufficiency of India, but above all he fought for the independence of India from foreign domination. Parts of his protests where also long fasts as forms of both self-purification and social protest. Ghandi’s principles where truth, nonviolence, vegetarianism, simlicity and faith. On January 30, 1948, Gandhi was shot and killed while having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan (Birla House) in New Delhi.

The Salt March (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Salt_March.jpg)

Ghandi in South Afrika (1895) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gandhi_South-Africa.jpg

I know I already finished my Facharbeit , but I finally found the time to reflect on my way of working. I didn’t keep a diary, because I had no time while I was writing the Facharbeit. Now I can reflect on my working process and maybe discuss what I could have done better or what worked out very well.

The title of my Facharbeit is “Wege aus der Armut – Perspektiven der Entwicklungshilfe für Afrika”. I think it describes very well that I wanted to find an answer to the question wether the so called “Entwicklungshilfe” can change Africa’s situation or not. I decided to concentrate on the effects that the poverty has on the people living in Africa first and disregard Africa’s financial distress, to get an impression how the people feel and a presentiment of what can help them. I realized that poverty and bad living contitions entail a lot of other problems, like diseases caused by the bad medical care and low education. In fact there are a lot more problems the poor people – not only in Africa- have to deal with every day.

Later I found out that there are a lot of different opinions on how these problems can be solved, too. Some people think that a “big push” – that means a lot of mony from the rich countries- is the only thing that can help Africa. On the other hand there are people who regard this financial help as very negative, because many poor countries are corrupt and so the money just determine corrupt presidents to do what they want to- and mostly that is not to improve the situation of the poor people.

The next question I dealt with was wether globalization can have positive effects on Africa or not. Therefore I also took the “fair trade” in consideration. With fair traded products companies strive towards more money for the producers of goods. Often the world trade makes it impossible for little companies to keep up with the big ones. The people are underpayed but are dependent on selling their products at the same time. Especially the women’s situation is bad, because they have to care for their children and are often victims of violence. 

Subsequently I regarded the Human development goals. With specific measures these goals want to improve the situation of the poor people. But until now they still not working very well, although the oficial “deadline” is 2015.

Eventually I can say that I defenetly learned a lot by writing this Facharbeit, what is in my opinion the most importand aspect. It was very hard to cope with all the different informations and I think for an outsider it’s almost impossible to get an idea of what is really going on with the enourmous amount in the world trade and between the countries. It was also very hard to put all the informations together on only 15 sites, because it’s defenetly not enough to use 15 sites for a theme that fills thousands of different books…