{"content":[{"text":"Reflections on ‘The Hidden Dimensions of Poverty’","bbox":{"left":0.262091,"top":0.09146,"width":0.47572299999999995,"height":0.016926999999999998}},{"text":"I grew up in what is usually considered a ‘lower class’ household of six, and I live in the \n ancient Yoruba town of Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where I was born. Ours being a traditionally \n patriarchal society, my father worked outside of home – being the one traditionally \n assigned the role relating to the economic sustenance of the family – while my mother, \n like most other women, did unpaid domestic work and petty trading at home. As a \n teacher posted to one rural school after another, my father travelled to his home every \n week, leaving us some stipend for feeding and other household expenses until he \n returns by weekend. I remember that at least once, (I think it was during General Sani \n Abacha’s regime), we were taken from town to my paternal grandmother’s village, \n because there was no food for us to eat, traveling by foot for almost a whole day, such \n that by the time we reached our destination I could not walk again as my legs had \n become swollen and too weak to carry me. Today, I am a researcher, and I work with \n social and environmental justice movements like Africans Rising and ATD Fourth World. \n I told this story to make it obvious that my commitment to the building of a poverty-free \n world stems from my personal experience, and from a growing understanding of how \n the existence of poverty diminishes us all. It was Henry David Thoreau who said ‘Who \n can best fight injustice if not the one who has suffered it?’","bbox":{"left":0.11781,"top":0.124036,"width":0.7646250000000001,"height":0.29571500000000006}},{"text":"The International Participatory Research, and its report, The Hidden Dimensions of \n Poverty, for me, have done two things fundamentally: it re-affirms some of the beliefs \n which constitute the underlying conviction and motivation for me in enlisting my support \n for the cause of ending poverty; and it has also brought new insights which, no doubt, \n are helpful in this fight against poverty.","bbox":{"left":0.11781,"top":0.4354,"width":0.7633110000000001,"height":0.08662400000000003}},{"text":"The study of poverty – and the reading of this report particularly – makes very visible \n the intersectionality of the political, economic, cultural and environmental injustices that \n we face. The most basic expression of the existence of unjust systems, laws and \n practices in any place/country is the subjection of some of those who reside in such a \n place/country to poverty. The suffering of any form of injustice manifests in the \n deprivation of life’s comfort, and the extent of deprivation is connected to the amount of \n discrimination suffered. The report reveals that dimensions and modifying factors of \n poverty follow the forms of injustices listed here.","bbox":{"left":0.11781,"top":0.537673,"width":0.7649250000000001,"height":0.13889600000000002}},{"text":"One thing that the research has further made visible to me is the practicability and \n imperative of the involvement of those who bear the major burden of the existence of an \n oppressive system in the understanding of that system and in the cause of changing it. \n One of the most profound yet simple definitions of poverty that I have seen is that given \n by a person subjected to poverty as reported on page 26 of the report. Rephrasing \n slightly, I came up with a definition of poverty as ‘a condition in which the individual \n subjected to it is made to constantly worry about basic sustenance.’ I have pointed this \n out to note how the involvement of people subjected to poverty in the reflection about \n poverty is crucial and how it improves our ability to understand it – just as their \n involvement in actions geared towards revamping systems birthing poverty is inevitable \n if such actions are to produce any meaningful outcome. I have read earlier in Paulo \n Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ of what he calls the ‘banking system of education’","bbox":{"left":0.11781,"top":0.692218,"width":0.76465,"height":0.20859400000000006}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}