Hello and welcome back to all the return visitors to our blog. If it is your first time visiting, please take ten minutes to explore our website. On it, you will find the basics about what we do and can also sign up to receive email notifications for all of our new blog posts and other updates.
It is our hope that these blog pieces will not only stand to inform you on the work that The Propel Foundation is doing, but also to greater inform you on the general issues and solutions to problems that we and many organizations encounter while trying to fulfill our mission. One of the greatest of these problems is misinformation and sensationalism that often clouds the truth. The solution to battling this specific problem is to educate people on it. This is an ever-important thing to do as many misbeliefs inhibit us from fulfilling said mission to our greatest potential.
The first bit of misinformation that I’d like to address is the idea that the world and its populations are broken up into two parts – developed and developing. Look, the world is an ultra-complicated place and we need tools and maps to break down the enormous amount of data in order to get a grasp of it. Otherwise, we’d be stuck with problems that are increasingly difficult to solve. However, the issue with oversimplification is that it makes it easy to overlook a population’s uniqueness and progress, therefore, again, making it more difficult to come up with solutions to their vexing issues. It’s hard to see progress within a specific country if you are dividing the world into “developed” (rich) and “developing” (poor) countries. When you only have those two options, you’re more likely to have a standard in mind and think that anyone who doesn’t meet that standard is poor. Therefore, instead of just the developed and developing world, we prefer to look at it like this:
This useful diagram comes from a book called Factfullness by Hans Rosling, a Swedish doctor who spent the greater part of his career working in lower- and middle-income societies, helping to battle epidemics and common health problems that these societies typically face. The results of his many years of research can also be found at www.gapminder.org. Each of the yellow figures in the diagram represents one-billion people. I could summarize further, but I think it’s best if I let Bill Gates do it. On his blog he states, “Hans compares this instinct (to dividing the world in two) to standing on top of a skyscraper and looking down at a city. All of the other buildings will look short to you whether they’re ten stories or 50 stories high. It’s the same with income. Life is significantly better for those on level 2 than level 1, but it’s hard to see that from level 4 unless you know to look for it.”
So, what does life look like for each of the four income levels?
Diagram number two from www.gapminder.com is a superb one. It shows what the activities of daily living looks like at each of the different income levels. As you can see, life really does differ greatly between each of the different income levels. Furthermore, going from one level to the next is as beneficial as it is difficult. Imagine living on Level 1, for instance. You eat the same, mundane, meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner (if you’re lucky enough to get three meals). You sleep on the floor, which is most likely dirt. You walk barefoot to get around, which means you walk barefoot up to several miles to get water (that you hope is still fresh/drinkable). The bulk of your day and your work is surviving to the following day. But, if you have a bit of luck and save what you can, maybe you can get to Level 2 one day. Let’s look at how awesome level 2 is relative to level 1. You’re not walking barefoot anymore! This makes water more accessible, you are more well-nourished, and you’re not waking up in the dirt – instead you’re waking up feeling rested and ready to take on the day. Once you’ve ‘leveled up,’ you are more likely, and better able, to move up once again. There are two points I’d like to make here:
1. If we instead showed you only two sets of pictures and labelled them “Developing” and “Developed,” my guess is that you would have accepted it as is. I will also venture to guess that now that you have seen the not-so-subtle differences, you are looking at the world in a slightly different manner. It’s a great example of how facing the problems with facts can open your eyes to solutions. How many different ideas can you now come up with to help people, families, to move from level 1 to level 2?
2. Another guess here: You looked at level 4 and thought to yourself, ‘my car’ or ‘my bed’ or ‘my kitchen’ looks better than that. Well, you’re right. The majority of Americans live in the upper regions of level 4. I say this not to guilt you but rather to show you the differences that occur even within the four income levels.
What does any of this have to do with Propel and what we’re doing in Uganda? In order to answer that, let’s turn to one last diagram from the folks over at Gap Minder (I’ll show a screenshot below that will suffice to make my point, but I strongly encourage you to go to https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$chart-type=bubbles and play around with this interactive chart. It’s incredibly fun).
At the top of the graph you’ll find the different income levels. The Y axis shows life expectancy in years and the X axis shows GDP per capita (incomes). Finally, the size of the circles shows how large a population is. When we compare Uganda and the United States, we obviously see some stark differences. What’s great about this graph, however, is that it shows just how big those differences are. In 2018, Uganda’s life expectancy is 63.2 years, which matches the US’s in 1940. Furthermore, Uganda’s current GDP per capita is actually less than the US’s was in 1800… 1800!. This is of course adjusted for inflation.
If you look at the trends of that screenshot, you’ll see the incremental increases in quality of life in both the United States and in Uganda (if you visit the interactive chart, you’ll see that the entire world has been trending up). Yes, there are stark differences, but Uganda is, without a doubt, getting better. A country’s current conditions can be both bad and better. Uganda in the past decade has made amazing strides – the average citizen has gone from being squarely in level one to being on the surface of level 2. This is where Propel’s (and organizations like it) work becomes increasingly important.
Propel’s main goal is to increase the quality of education that children in rural Uganda receive. In order to do this, as you well may know, we must address the issues that inhibit this mission. These include factors that lead to low attendance, such as poor health, low incomes forcing young men and women to help sustain a household, and the general idea that an education is not always a worthwhile pursuit for a young woman. The real aim here is to help these families move to a higher standing of living by taking the education of their young ones seriously; to help them understand that education is the greatest ticket to a better life.
Before Propel began working with the schools, water was hard to come by. Many of the kids would miss school because of the long treks to fetch water. Propel directly addressed this issue by building wells at seven schools that we work with. Now, kids and the community as a whole have a place nearby to fetch water. This has accomplished several things:
1) The number of instances of kids facing symptoms of dehydration has drastically dropped.
2) The number of poor-drinking-water-related illnesses has dropped to nearly zero.
3) Children and adults alike are starting to see the schools as they should be seen – as a central place of the community.
*All data referenced above comes directly from our staff in Uganda who scrupulously track these metrics.
Don’t take that last point too lightly. It demonstrates how we can address those other factors that lead to low attendance that were mentioned earlier. All of this goes to show how our work is helping the average Ugandan move to a higher income level, all with the foresight that by putting the impetus on education, the move upward will be an exponential one. This is just one of the many examples of Propel addressing problems that act as barriers to growth and wellness.
My goal here was to help you understand how misinformation (or the lack of information) can distort our view of the world and make it increasingly difficult to solve otherwise very addressable problems. By using the latest research and more accurate models, we can begin to see the world from a more accurate and helpful perspective. We can then face the problems and issues head on and get consistently better outcomes, as Propel continues to do month after month, year after year.
Thank you for reading this blog post and for your continued support of our mission and of the kids we serve. If you’d like to find out more about how you can contribute, please visit our Take Action page. Even the smallest of donations helps push the students and communities we serve toward more outstanding futures.
Until next time,
Drew vonEhrenkrook