Non Governmental Organizations

Arriving half an hour late, I walked into the darkened classroom and quietly began  listening to presentations focused on nonprofit organizations.

Non-governmental Organizations, NGOs, were something I hadn't even heard of. Easy enough to figure out by the name, but I didn't expect the entire idea to sweep me off my feet and enchant me with common sense and inspiring goals. Representatives from a couple of major NGOs all over the world came to tell us about who they are, what they do, and how we could help. Such as:

Oxfam International (<http://www.oxfam.org/en/about>), an organization dedicated to fighting poverty (1 in 3 people in the world live in poverty) by teaching communities innovative solutions to hunger, thirst, and job handling.

Education Public Support Association of Youth of Azerbaijan (EPSAYA) (<http://www.epsaya.az/index.php>): Has a goal of building life skills in youth by hosting trainings, debates, clubs, classes, and various events in order to raise social awareness. They also have domestic violence help centers and staff.

United Aid for Azerbaijan (UAFA) (<http://www.uafa.az/en/index.php?lang=en>): Was founded to "aid long-term development of life in Azerbaijan, with particular focus on children, health and education." Only 23% of children in Azerbaijan have access to school (only 16% in rural areas), and this program focuses on education, reaching out, and helping one another instead of giving up.

SOS Children's Villages (my personal favorite) (<http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/>): This organization works on social intervention with abusive homes, and serves as an orphanage or place for children who need a home to go. We actually had the privledge of visiting an SOS center, and I was impressed by what I saw. Although this program is under-funded, there was a little community of houses in which each house had about 11 kids living in with one or two "mothers" to take care of them all. They had education, food, and shelter for these kids who otherwise would have nothing, and although they are struggling, they continue to save children all the time in locations all over the world.

These were just a couple of the presentations we had this day. The realization I had this day was as such:

Americans are so privileged. As in, there is no place in America you could go and see the amount of despair, hopelessness, and poverty you find in other countries. Not even close. 23% of Azerbaijani kids have access to schools? That's insane. While here, kids are required to go to school, and we complain about it! Sitting in the computer lab full of updated Windows computers, doing our free college-level classwork surrounded by kids we've grown up with in this educational system, full from the lunch we packed or bought from school, ready for the last bell to ring so we can get on the supplied transportation to go to our granite-countered, air conditioned, and modern homes. And we have the audacity complain.

I immediately noticed a difference in the approach to school my Azerbaijani acquaintances had as opposed to myself and friends here in America. They, overall, seem much more joyed to go to school. I mean, of course they talked about how classes are sometimes boring or their teachers were mean, but I never heard anything close to a "I hate school!" Everyone was positive towards the concept. Appreciative. Generally (again, there are always exceptions. I'm not saying that every single person is unappreciative all the time), we don't appreciate what we have here as much as we should comparatively.

Countries treat the  educational system like a competition. What country is ranked where? How can we beat the "super smart countries" like China and Japan? Let's add new Mac books, technology, longer teacher training programs, fix up the bumps in the sidewalk to create a cleaner-looking learning environment. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent every year on unneeded "improvements" to the "educational system," while we leave other countries who could actually use that money to, I don't know, get access to schools?

How about instead of needing to compete against the world, we work together. If countries could put their ideas, their tools, their backgrounds and knowledge and experiences together, that's when we would all win. While I do agree that competition does create incentive for improvement, why couldn't improvement itself be an incentive?  Instead of saying "We must beat the Russians to space!" we could have made faster and more impressive scientific discoveries if we had instead said "Hey Russia, want to help us build a rocket?" Boom. Efficiency.

It's easy. There is no law saying "don't cooperate with other countries," no rule that specifies "good" countries from the "bad" ones. All we have to do is work together, and then when everyone is caught up, when the poverty-struck countries are self-sustaining and have access to education and resources and technologies, then their input would help move the world along even faster.

1 of 3 people live in poverty. That's 33% of the world that could be chipping in to progression.