Exercise 47D Identifying causes of poverty in developing countries Key Skills
Success criteria
I can name the causes of poverty in developing countries.
1. Working in pairs, look at the following stories and identify the cause of poverty in each case. Cause
(a) Abida is a mother of fi ve children. She is struggling to provide for her family after her husband was killed and the family were forced to leave their home in Yemen.
(b) Maya is 13 and works washing dishes in a restaurant in Kathmandu in Nepal. She cannot go to school because her family needs the money she earns.
(c) Mariam lives in Bamako in Mali. Like many of her friends, she spent only a short time in primary school, but her brothers went for longer.
(d) Emmanuel is a maize farmer in Malawi. In the past few years, he has lost his crop twice due to drought and fl ooding caused by global warming.
(e) Diego lives in a rural village in Guatemala with no tap water. He and the other villagers get water from a pipe, but the family get diarrhoeal illnesses.
(f) La Win was a farmer in Myanmar until the army seized his land. He now works as an agricultural labourer for only €2.70 per day.
(g) Mercy lives in Kenya and must walk 8 km twice a day to collect water for her family. She carries the water on her head, while carrying her baby on her back and minding her two other young children.
(h) Emilio and his family live in Honduras. His brother lives in the US and sends him some money when he can. Criminal gangs know Emilio receives this money, and force him to pay them a fee, leaving him with very little money.
(i) Joao is a farmer in Mozambique. He is struggling to survive because drought and fl ooding destroyed his crop last year and he had no savings to buy seeds to replant.
(j) Fatouma is 14 and lives in Niger. Her family have decided that she must get married because they will be paid a dowry (money from the groom to the bride’s family).