Poverty is a social longstanding problem and throughout the human history there have been enormous efforts for raising the public awareness about the huge threats and negative impacts of poverty on the socio-economic developments. There are well-documents correlations between poverty and high crime rates, corruption, illiteracy, sanitation, diseases, many other social fragmentation, cultural and degradation problems. Poverty is the biggest single obstacle not only for achieving sustainable socio-economic development but also for bringing about political stability, safety and security in any society. It is a “socio-economic debt” and without appropriate instruments to cure such “socio-economic debt” a pileup of negative impacts and threats will be the ultimate fate of any society with a final result of total socio-economic collapse. The pathway to  poverty is much simpler than erasing it and once deep rooted it isn’t simple to revert the situation. Religions have recognized poverty as a huge social defect. However, with the increasing importance of politics, cultural diversity, social welfare systems, individualism and competitions in a labor free and globalized market new instruments are needed, if not imperative, to erase or at least to reduce poverty.

If we don’t fight poverty will be forced to fight poor people, which is already happening. It is an enormous task for the developing countries, especially in Africa, Latin America and Asia, to build up modern societies with acceptable, affordable and accessible water, energy and food resources in the shadow of an increasingly global complexity in trade and economy. Engagement of all stakeholder and population through NGOs is of increasing importance as political and governmental systems alone are proved to be insufficient especially for effective and rapid transformation to more welfare based societies. One of such NGOs “Stand for Vulnerable Organization ( SVO)” was established in Ethiopia already in 2005 by Misganaw Eticha, currently a Guest Blogger at “sustain-earth”.

For more information about Stand for Vulnerable Organization (SVO), please visit: http://www.sva.org.et/about-us/historical-background/