We are finally ending our comprehensive unit on Poverty. I have a more detailed ppt and corresponding handout.
I. Support girls’ education in poor countries
++What is the link between girls’ education and poverty?
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SCHOOL SUBJECTS: Rank these and share your rankings with your partner. Put the most important at the top. Change partners often and share your rankings.
• literature
• English
• maths
• art
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• geography
• science
• history
• sports
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Vocabulary (A /B): Write the Chinese meaning, use your dictionary.
II. Trade Justice and Globalization
What does Globalization mean?
What is Fair Trade?
Fair Trade is a worldwide movement. Over a million small-scale producers and workers in 500 certified producer groups in 60 countries are actively involved in this system. Their products are sold in thousands of “world shops”, Fair Trade shops and supermarkets, and online.
Fair Trade unites producers in developing countries with millions of consumers in developed countries. These goods often carry an information label that explains how they benefit poor people. This helps to raise awareness about the conditions under which many people in developing countries live. By buying Fair Trade products, people show that they want fair globalization. Consumers have the power to demand trade justice. Trade justice means a fair international trading system, based on rules that ensure that everybody benefits.
No matter how hard poorer people in developing countries may work, trade rules often benefit the rich world most. The result is exploitation for hundreds of millions of people. Trade justice is about changing the rules that keep people in poverty.
7 Reasons To Buy Fair Trade (Group Presentations)
Reading 2: End Debt Crisis, Case Study: S. Korea
(A, B)
Vocabulary: (A/ B)
Reading 3: Universal Basic Income, Case Study: Finland
Universal Basic Income: A Utopian Idea Whose Time May Finally Have Arrived
Universal basic income (UBI), is simple enough: the government would pay every adult citizen a salary, regardless if they worked or not. Doing so, might solve many endemic economic problems, from poverty to chronic joblessness, which will only get worse in the near future.
Martin Luther King Jr. endorsed the idea, as did conservative economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Today, thinkers on the left see the UBI as a way to fight poverty and inequality. To the right, the idea is a simple alternative to a bloated social-welfare system.
Critics come from all sides too: they say the UBI is just a decoy to starve government help that boosts universal child care or free college tuition. Or it’s one more bad program bound to make workers lazy,making a large numbers of people dependent on the government.
Finland became the first European country to pay unemployed citizens an unconditional monthly wage. The two-year national pilot program, gives 2,000 unemployed Finns ages 25 to 58 a guaranteed €560 (around $590), money that would keep coming even if they find work. The test is intended to alleviate poverty and reduce unemployment.
The Finns aren’t alone: similar experiments are moving forward in Canada, the Netherlands and Italy. The Indian government is also thinking about having a small UBI as a strategy to cut the country’s most extreme poverty.
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