i have a letter i should send

Dear Prime Minister,

2006 International Aid Donated
COUNTRY	Aid as % of income	How close to the 0.7% goal
Sweden	1.03	Already reached goal
Luxembourg	0.89	Already reached goal
Norway	0.89	Already reached goal
Netherlands	0.81	Already reached goal
Denmark	0.80	Already reached goal
Ireland	0.53	Scheduled for 2012
United Kingdom	0.52	Scheduled for 2013
Belgium	0.50	Scheduled for 2010
Austria	0.48	Scheduled for 2015
France	0.47	Scheduled for 2012
Switzerland	0.39	No schedule yet
Finland	0.39	Scheduled for 2010
Germany	0.36	Scheduled for 2014
Spain	0.32	Scheduled for 2012
Canada	0.30	No schedule yet
Australia	0.30	No schedule yet
New Zealand	0.27	No schedule yet
Japan	0.25	No schedule yet
Portugal	0.21	Scheduled for 2015
Italy	0.20	Scheduled for 2015
United States	0.17	No schedule yet
Greece	0.16	Scheduled for 2015

I am a student who just recently immigrated to the USA. Despite my fancy new residency (and quite sparkly visa in my passport) I am still quite patriotic and rather concerned as to Canada’s role in wellbeing of society. It’s been brought to my attention that Canada is eighth to the bottom of preventable deaths that occur every day from hunger and poverty-related diseases. Eighth to the bottom of what, you say? International aid of course.

So what’s up? How come my country is not honouring the agreement it made and signed at the 2002 Monterrey Conference and once again at the 2002 Johannesburg Summit? We are supposed to be making a concrete effort towards giving 0.7% of our national income in aid to poor countries. Perhaps I’m being naïve, but that really doesn’t seem much to ask.

If all 22 countries make this 0.7% goal, it is estimated that the resulting hundred ninety-five billion dollars each year will be enough to effectively combat— and essentially abolish— extreme poverty on our planet.

Honestly, I have paraphrased most of the above information from generic letter located on poverty.com (so assuming you read your own letters, you might recognize it). In my defense, I thought personalising it into my own words would give it a more authentic feel, not to mention it was a good source of statistics and facts.

I understand that you and the rest of our government have a lot of important things to worry about. Canada is a big country, after all. But it’s important to realise that abolishing poverty won’t just help destitute individuals in distant countries. It will also aid our nation in numerous ways– because poverty affects everyone. Not only would we be raising the general quality of life, I suspect by at least reducing poverty we will dually be reducing crime. Clearly humans are flawed by nature so no, I don’t have any pie in the sky ideas that we will become the perfect Utopia, but in the very least we can heighten security. Having nothing makes you desperate, wild with the wonder of where you will get your next meal or source of shelter.

Looking back over the letter, perhaps I got a little too informal at the end. Maybe you get letters like this all the time. Who knows? But again, perhaps that makes it all the more authentic. I don’t understand politicians and I don’t pretend to. Much thanks to whoever took the time to read this and I just desperately hope society keeps continuing to better itself. We’ll never be perfection, but damn it we can try.

Sincerely,
Kaija A. Thom