By apearlnews.com
I was born in a not so well off family and I grew up seeing poverty. Poverty is one of the
most evident challenges facing people especially in rural areas including my people of
Ndorwa East.
Of recent, I have seen a very interesting discussion on social media on
how we can get rid of poverty with some stakeholders giving very interesting views and
opinions. I have also encountered some people in my lifetime who think that poverty is
some sort of genetic curse, treading the belief that some people are poor because of
their background of because of fate.
As an aspiring leader, I wish to build the confidence of everyone out there, and my
thinking tells me that Poverty is about lack of and/or limited access to opportunity and
not individual characteristics.
The degree to which one is able to access opportunities
and factors of production, the level of skills one has that can enable them to manipulate
their surrounding is really what matters in this whole poverty debate.
The belief that
wealth is reserved for some group of people and some others cannot be rich because of
their personal characteristics is rather archaic and outdated.
In my thinking, limited access to quality education, quality health care, poor
infrastructure, poor community leadership and limited access to government programs
are actually great causes of poverty that must be dealt with, with immediate effect and
any community will be on its road to getting rid of poverty.
In my simple understanding therefore, all stakeholders need to make efforts towards ensuring improvement of the quality of education and health services, improving the infrastructure especially road
networks, ensuring access to government programs like Parish Development Model,
Emyooga, Youth Livelihood Program, funds meant for women, among others.
We need to mobilize and organize our communities into manageable groups, invest
resources directly in these groups, and support efforts that will realistically get people
out of poverty. The youth and women groups, the Village Saving Loan Associations
(VSLAs), and SACCOs can be used as the key vehicles to drive poverty out of
communities.
As leaders and aspiring leaders, the key message we should be giving to
people should be to keep them hopeful and encourage that savings groups are formed
at community level to reduce poverty because they have the potential to financially and
socially empower the poor and vulnerable people. This is partly the foundation for my
ambitions and aspirations in Ndorwa East.
To all people of good heart especially from my home Ndorwa East, let us make efforts
together to ensure that our people access good quality and education services, because
this will give an opportunity to the poor to live longer and spend less on disease, acquire
key skills that will improve their livelihood, we ensure that people get organized, save
and trade to earn income, and also advise them to take advantage of government
programs at any given opportunity, and not focus on fighting the symptoms of poverty
because the biggest challenges are the root causes of poverty that I have highlighted
above.
Our legislative agenda and mission for 2026 will definitely take into account, this noble
efforts.
Alexander Kyokwijuka is a humble citizen from Kigarama and MP hopeful for
Ndorwa East, 2026!
