Opinion: Could we be the generation to end poverty?

The thing about changing the world is that it is hard work – and it takes a lot of belief. We know from research that most people in Ireland lack this belief in their own power. A survey undertaken by Amárach Research found that more than 50 per cent of people in Ireland feel helpless in bringing about positive change. And only 29 per cent said they feel "confident in my ability to influence decisions affecting my society." Even more strikingly, a mere 32 per cent of Irish adults feel confident in their ability "to influence decisions affecting my local area."

It seems that most of us have decided that the world is always going to be a bad place, so why even try?

But that could be misreading the situation. For opinion polls only capture what people say, not what they do. And the reality is that people in Ireland are making a difference all of the time, whether they know it or not. Hundreds of thousands of people regularly volunteer in their community and the World Giving Index consistently ranks Ireland in the top 10 when it comes to the amounts people donate to charities.

But most of us don’t realise that we are making a difference all the time, often in unintended ways. Much of our influence on the world around us is in fact subconscious. And one of the aims of the European Year for Development is to make people aware of the consequences their day-to-day actions have on the world.

For most of our existence as a species, humans have had to struggle on a daily basis to get the basics in food and energy. In 1820, 94 per cent of the world population lived in poverty, and a century ago, more than 80 per cent of the people in the world consistently fell below the poverty line. (Click here for report)

This situation only started to change in the 1950s, when Europe’s colonial empires were dismantled and global life expectancy started to rise. In contrast to 50 years ago, when the average life expectancy for humans was 47 years, we now live in a world where we can expect to live to at least 67 years. In the last two decades, 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty and the number of people living in extreme poverty has more than halved.

Today, for the first time ever, 90 per cent of the world's children are enrolled in school and almost nine out of every 10 people on the planet have access to safe drinking water. (Click here for report)

Despite all the problems of the world this helps put the goals of the European year in perspective: they can be achieved. And it should also serve to illustrate that, if we pull together, we can make huge differences to the lives of millions of people.

Many of us have grown up with a view that world events are being shaped by important people. Thomas Carlyle famously stated that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men," and much of our current affairs media coverage also suggests that only highly-influential or highly-gifted people make decisions of importance.

The European Year for Development is built on the opposite theory: that all of us make decisions that matter. We believe that you don’t have to be rich and famous to have influence. We believe that you don’t have to be an exceptional person to make a difference. We believe that you don’t have to be a Malala, a Mother Theresa or a Mary Robinson to help build a better world. In fact, we believe that small changes can make a huge difference.

And we can make those small changes, precisely because we are already having a huge influence. Whether we know it or not, our daily actions impact on millions of people around the world. The things we buy, the clothes we wear, the energy we use and the food we eat, all have ramifications for other people. The European Year for Development is trying to make us conscious of those effects, and encourage us to see the potential of our actions.

Mahatma Gandhi famously asked us to “be the change that you wish to see in the world.” This year, we are asking people in Ireland to begin to be that change: to buy goods that are more ethically traded; to take out pension schemes that invest in environmentally and socially constructive enterprises; to reduce their energy use. Most of all, we want to fight the feeling of powerlessness that we experience when confronted with global challenges. We would hope that by the end of this special year, more people in Ireland realise that we are global citizens and that we can all be change makers.

The European Year for Development is structured around a celebration of ordinary people’s actions.

We did that through the Dóchas Awards by the many organisations in Ireland that work on global issues. For the first six months of this year, we have seen countless public events, debates, seminars and trainings on themes that emphasise the fact that our lives in Ireland are inextricably linked to those of everyone else on the planet.

The Inside Out series, too, showcases global links and telling stories of how our lives are inter-linked with so many others around the world. The stories featured here show us that, despite our cultural differences and the huge dissimilarities in our circumstances, we share much more than that what separates us. And we are capable of finding courage and hope in the most unlikely places.

Hans Zomer is director of Dochas, the Irish Association of development Organisations

For more on the European Year for Development see dochas.ie

[This story is part of the Inside Out project to mark the European Year for Development 2015]