I’m currently developing a concept note for a
poverty alleviation project. Inevitably,
I had to surf the net for the country’s latest poverty statistics. It wasn’t just the tables and figures that I
came to. I stumbled upon reports as
well, bearing photographs on its covers showing exactly what poverty means in
this country.
The tables and figures are impersonal, merely
black and white representation of the cold facts. By looking at them, they appear to just be a
jumble of numbers, albeit incomprehensible to some. In contrast, the pictures would immediately
leap at you. You see dilapidated nipa
huts with wide-eyed children peering out of windows. You see pictures of bare-*$$3d, barefooted
children, with protruding bellies that seemed an ironic representation of the
hunger that beset them every day.
