When the North thinks of the South, the image is often one of hopelessness: drought and destruction, floods and debt. Weeping fathers and mothers in disaster-ridden countries burying their children wrapped in old rags. Malnourished children with distended bellies and faces covered with flies. Once proud and dignified men, women and children begging for food with cupped hands — these are all common images in television and newspaper articles.
However, in the North and the South, the causes of poverty which make people vulnerable to disasters receive scant attention. Despite some decades of "development", most of the Southern nations are in desperate shape. Having pursued economic strategies largely modelled on Northern experience and inappropriate to local conditions, the countries find themselves deeply in debt and unable to extricate themselves from the quagmire of poverty.
The poor, who have been seldom more than mute actors in plays conjured up in the capital cities, becoming further alienated in their own societies.
It is easy to lament over the plight of the poor. But for the poor themselves, despair is a luxury which they can ill afford. And throughout the South, there are seeds of hope, sown by citizens' groups. All over the world, and against all odds, tenacious people have started projects small and large. Out of bankruptcy and poverty of failed international and national development strategies, a new set of organisations has emerged among the poor.