International Contacts

     It is very sad to say that I have not been able to reach anyone that I originally contacted. I have a friend that is stationed over in Germany and he happens to live next to a school.  I told him what I was trying to do, and apparently he went to the school the next day.  He talked to the secretary at the school and she said that she would ask around.  He went back the next day and no one was interested either for lack of language to communicate, or time.  I appreciated the offer that he went out on a mission for me. Next on my list is to try and contact some of the missionaries that keep in touch with my local church. 

     Until I make some kind of connection, I chose to look into Brazil's poverty situation.  I was not able to use the www.childhoodpoverty.org website.  No matter what I did, it would not open.  So I went to the UNICEF website and found information that regarded Brazil.  There is one article that talks about how there is a lack of understanding as to how many children were living in poverty, because there is a lack of technology that records all the children that are born in Brazil.  Not all children that are born are registered, and they are beginning to make it part of the birth requirements. 

     In reading through The State of the Worlds Children they talk that many countries use the poverty tool as an excuse to not properly educate their population.  Although there is documentation out there that shows just what a country  can do when they embrace their population, and educate them.  There seems to be a lack of control that governments wants to give out to the masses. 

     On www.ruralpovertyportal.org their statistics shows that there are 21.4 million, there were no specifics of whether that was just children or adults.  These people lack adequate access to water, food and nutrition.  The main source of poverty takes place in their rural areas, where people live off less than $2 a day. 
     I found this website very helpful in better understanding the situation in Brazil.  Things are very different there, than here.  I am going to try and contact some old friends this week, that might be able to connect me to their family in Brazil. I want to better understand the situation over there, and having a first hand knowledge of the situation would be amazing! I am not giving up hope of having a connection with someone!