Make Poverty History: Idealism or Reality?

I was sitting in the lobby of the Parliament House in Canberra, waiting for a certain politician's PA to escort me into the hidden recesses of the political world. My Singaporean passport was tucked gently in between scraps of paper with foreign aid figures on them. What the hell am I doing here? I keep asking myself. Here, in the nation's capital, not my nation, but some other that I am a guest in, attempting to persuade them into increasing aid and cancelling debt to the poorest countries in the world.

The last three days in Canberra have been simply amazing. I learned more about politics than any uni class could teach me. I was part of the Micah Challenge, a sister campaign of the Make Poverty History Campaign, to go to Canberra and lobby for debt cancellation to be on the G20 summit agenda, and for Australia to increase foreign aid to 0.7% by 2015.

The last few days have been a crazy jam packed schedule of morning worship and seminars on aid and political issues, afternoon appointment with politicians and attending question time and parliamentary debates, and more evening sessions on aid and economic issues. We had speakers from AusAid, and various economic advisors to ministers to inundate us with facts, figures and policy material. As we walk, as we eat, it is bam bam bam...information flying from every direction at us..."his party just released a white paper discussing the various policy initiatives on increasing aid but have not committed to actual figures, you have to remember to talk to him about XYZ...." ......" he is connected to so-and-so, and is part of the so-and -s0 party...."...."this is the opposition whip for blah blah blah..and is a key target to the microeconomic reforms that we have been talking about.."

So my brain is in a state of overheat right now on information and problems that seem so beyond me. I was taught to think deeper, beyond short term, into the bigger picture, the connections and the complications. Aid isn't just about the money. It is about corruption, governance and long term interlinking benefits. Yes, we can provide a million dollars to train teachers in developing countries. Then what? They get great well-paid jobs in the urban areas, and the poor rural areas still have no education. Ok, so they go back to the rural villages to teach. There is no money for books, no money for a school house, no money for materials. The children in the village are hungry and sick. They have to help their parents and thus have no time for school. Just like the lady at the AIDS forum said, you can't just throw drugs at people in third world countries who are suffering from HIV. They don't have the food or portable water to take it with. You can't just immunise a bunch of kids and leave it there. So they no longer have TB, but what about HIV, other forms of illnesses or just pure starvation. And children will keep coming. Batch after batch. Is there a kind of long term government engagement to keep ALL the children immunised?

The more I learned, the more the hole got bigger and bigger. 11 million children die every year from totally preventable diseases. These are not statistics, but people with the same emotions as us. It needs a combination of both money from the top, and credible manpower at the bottom to ensure the money goes to the root of the problem.

But there was some positive outcome in it all. We heard both liberal and labour members talk about the Micah challenge and mentioned the option of increasing aid during question time, and we got valuable cooperation into the policy making process. All this time I was thinking, this is amazing. With all the selfishness and image-conscious corruption in a democracy, this is one of its beauties. That the people can go up to their government and tell them what they want done. It is no guarantee that the government will hear, but it is still a step in a particular direction. While trying to hide my identity as a non-Australian at least for the meetings so the ministers will hear me out for a bit, I thought about Australians and the possibility of voting for your values, and having your views heard. And I thought about Singapore, and the possibility of raising the issue of Singapore's contribution to the Millennium development goals for world poverty. While I am part fighting for it on another turf, I want my country to do their fair share too. It would be interesting to see what happens when I put that in question to the MP when I go back to Singapore at the end of the year.