This recent report by the UN Capital Development Fund looked at underserved communities in 46 of the worlds least developed countries and the opportunities that fit for purpose digital financial services brings.
Don’t be mistaken to think this isnt relevant to developed countries. We have our fair share of marginalised individuals and groups. We can find great examples and insights to create inclusive digital economies that we can apply right here.
We live lives
Of fallacy
Sleepwalking
Oblivious
Indentured slaves
Endlessly
Monotonously
Going around and around
The hamster wheel
Powering someone else’s
Flame.
Parroting those
Surrounding us
Their diatribe
Lulled by ignorance
Sweet Lullabies
Deadening blows
Leaving no visible marks
As we gorge
Leftover morsels
Their seductive charms
Brainwashed and
Blissfully unaware
As we are
Inevitably trampled
Ground down
To dust.
Marionettes
Pulled to and fro
By dispassionate puppeteers
Elites
With a system rigged
Unfair to most
Stark disparity
Their right of birth
To maintain the status quo
Intent to fulfil
Every privileged desire.
Time removes
Unstitches
The invisible strings
That bind consciousness
Unbidden thoughts
Seep though
I sense
My surrounds
With newly opened eyes
I start
To spot
Needless disparity
Injustices all around
My mind
It does
Cause me to pause
To assimilate
These hidden tapestries
No longer
Beyond my
Grasp.
I see
The world as if anew
Layer upon layer of
Nameless institutions
Politicians Protecting
Power and inequity
Revulsion
Fills my core
How have we
Allowed this
To become our society?
How could
Our apathy
Be so great?
So many remain
Cocooned in false narratives
Playing another’s
Game.
It’s time
To take a stand
Break the chains
The bonds that bind
To protect
What remains of
Our land
To stand up for those
More invisible
Than you or I
To break the shackles
On our minds
Regardless of consequences
To take a leap of faith
And act
As if our
Very lives
Depend on it
For they surely do.
Come.
Do your worst.
Sitting quietly
Taking in morning’s awakening
Listening to the world
As it slowly comes to life.
Homelessness Week 2-7th August 2020
Sitting quietly
Taking in morning’s awakening
Listening to the world
As it slowly comes to life.
Taking in the aroma
Of fresh coffee brewing
And intoxicating aromas of bread baking
Just right.
I sit
Carefully reading
Today's crumpled paper.
News that matters little
In my humble
And simple life.
Footsteps echo
With furtive glances
Of daily commuters
Scurrying by.
Looking down
With pity
In their eyes.
Senses on autopilot
Simply unaware
Of the rapturous moment.
This precious time.
Sitting quietly
Taking in morning’s awakening
Listening to the world
As it slowly comes to life.
https://www.homelessnessaustralia.org.au
31.5% (659,000) unemployed or underemployed young Australian’s nationally, writes Helen Connolly is SA Commissioner for Children and Young People in InDaily.
Clearly, something different needs to be done unless we want long term underutilisation to become the norm for our youth.
One step is to help them learn the skills of the future through educational options and a second is to guarantee them jobs and not rely on industry alone.
Brotherhood of St Laurence 2017 Report – Generation Stalled – Young, Underemployed and Living Precariously in Australia shows the worrying dual threat of unemployment and underemployment. Covid-19 would only have made this much, much worse.
A life without her dignity,
Without expression of her own unique identity,
Independence a foreign state
For forty years she had endured
For this had been her constant state
Subjugation her present fate
A life without
A life without her dignity
Without expression of her own unique identity
Independence a foreign state
Voice stolen
Half living
Transparent
Flickering in the shadows
A life without a cause
With a history steeped in years of indoctrinating tradition
Conditioned to merely obey
The role of a woman
Of duty.
At home.
To stay.
There is no end to her husband’s torment
Her lord and master’s shrieking from his majestic throne
And it is from his threadbare and decrepit armchair
One imbued it seems with mystic properties
Symbolic
Emanating dread and fear
For there — the alpha dog sits
Basking
Preening
With all his arrogance on show.
And so her treatment continues
Oblivious of what’s right
An unequivocal dismissal
Made worse by an unfailing maniacal suspicion
An underlying contempt
Of someone that is not equal
A culture past, that expected submission
A constant demand to justify her inferior position
Ignoring the world outside
One that has moved on
Grasping to a past
A made up fantasy
Conjured
A fictitious memory
Unaware.
She shakes her head in sorrow and grief
And heavily she sobs
She shudders
Hands taunt in supplication
Reaching upwards
Following a path repeated a hundred times before
Pleading to the heavens for answers
“Why has this been my fate?”
And then a thought
Unbidden… enters…
And does not leave.
“No. No more.”
For now her daughter has fully grown
Safely, forging her own path
Free to explore
Able to make mistakes and missteps her own
Leaving our forlorn protagonist so full of pride
But also so so achingly alone.
Alone to face her nightmares
One that lasts from dawn to dusk
Every waking hour brings acknowledgement
Oppression
A way of life
Repeating endlessly
Unrelentingly
No escape.
“No. No more.”
Emboldened by her meek displays
Again he asserts
Again, a refusal of any permission
To simply allow her to wander outdoors alone
“A woman’s place is at home!”
But inside, coalesces a thought
Getting stronger and more certain.
“No. No more!”
A chasm to cross in darkness
One that she had to take alone
Summoning up reserves of strength
That she did not ever know
To renounce her life with her tormentor
To leave her family home
And all her worldly possessions
And their memories of a lifetime ago
To a cold and foreign Australian court
For a simple piece of paper
A stamped piece of officialdom
To file for her divorce.
“Yes. No more.”
So hurriedly with bags packed and nowhere else to go
To her daughter’s did she flee
Her life now perched in limbo
Dependent on a son-in-law indifferent to her cause
An impatience plain to see
Mark his face with troubled countenance
For her untimely imposition
That’s upset the tranquility of her new sanctuary
His home
“How long will your mother be here?” he whispers
“I understand, but I never did agree.”
“I know she is your mother…”
“This long? Really?”
“I have reasonable limits on my charity!”
But even away from home she felt constrained
For her journey was not yet complete
For in the eyes of her religion
She was not yet free
Her angry, ex-husband could justify
That he could lay claim on her
That it was his right
That sanctioned abuse could continue
For in his eyes he still owned her
To do so as he desired.
“But no. No more.”
The next step was the hardest
A painstaking and disagreeable process
That incredulously caused more terror
By putting her in a room again with her tyrant
Treated as a third party
An object for those far brighter
Who knew better
To seal her destiny
And though she nearly did break
Give up
Acquiesce
Subdued
Somehow, somehow
Her quiet voice
Remained firm
Did carry
And her case was finally made
Though it took twelve months for the Imans to grudgingly agree
What was painfully obvious for all to see
That there was no room for reconciliation
Love and duty no more than a fallacy
That the intervention order was real
That finally in God’s eye
She. was. free.
Surviving now on an old aged pension
Scrimping and scraping at the edges of modern society
She cannot afford modest housing
A future uncertain has she.
But it is a life that is now oh so different
At TAFE she helps in English language classes
To help others who face the same perilous journey
To help provide safe passage
To be their shining beacon
Against a darkening landscape
That threatens to stop the faint hearted
From withdrawing from their future
To succumbing
To their perilous fate.
Eugène Boudin (French, 1824 – 1898 ), Three Women at Trouville, c. 1865, watercolor and graphite on laid paper, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection 1970.17.142
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880 – 1938 ), Women at a Table in a Room, 1920, etching with drypoint and surface etching, Gift of Ruth Cole Kainen 2012.92.721
This wonderful woman of the ages
Has found an inner peace
Though fate has made her journey long and arduous
That finally she feels so unfettered
That finally she feels so free.
Eugène Boudin (French, 1824 – 1898), Women on the Beach at Berck, 1881, oil on wood, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection 1970.17.15
Oh! Our heroine!
Our inspiration!
Oh gaze upon her now
Our beautiful, independent woman
For her voice has finally been found
As laughter lines now crease her aged face.
As she shares delightful, playful stories with her friends
A hard yet fulfilled life on the land. Lines etched on his face by hard won gains. Battling against all elements. Against nature’s bane.
A hard yet fulfilled life on the land
Lines etched on his face
By hard won gains
Battling against all elements
Against nature’s bane.
With a farm inherited from his father’s father
With a proud lineage and strong legacy
He is a pillar of the local, rural community
He doesn’t say much
But is always there to support those in need
Our honourable battler.
A harsh Australian outback
A parched corner of the land
In futile search of rain
In constant yearning,
In constant pain.
With cattle in desperate need of feed
Foraging in dusty paddocks
For meagre grasses
That are distant memories
Long gone
They are starving
Sagging skins draping skeletal frames
Disease takes hold
Too late — they can’t be sold!
No option left but culling stock
Too late to remake his lot.
With debt also the way of life
With incessant bills to pay
Mounting up, perilously high
An amount so obscene
Teetering
On the brink
Threatening to come crashing down
To destroy his life’s work
To take away his crown.
For all of his experience
For all his father taught him
From generations passed knowledge
The practices and ways
The tricks in his kit bag
The wisdom of the age
With slow governmental policies
That sow confusion
With handouts that shame
They are unable to help him face today’s demons
That climate change has unleashed
Nature’s revenge
Unchecked by man
Upon his unwary, tempered land.
And now his façade is slipping
His belief system is faltering
The pressure continues building
His failings are exposed
This strong and unfailing farmer
Has to grudgingly turn to face a truth
A truth that he has tried desperately to stow
That the master of his surroundings
One that he has shaped with his own two bare hands
That represents his essence, his being
That represents his soul
Well that world
That his world
Is slipping through his fingers
Is inexorably crumbling
Disintegrating
Turning to dust.
How does he reconcile this new truth with his wife?
That he has to break her faith?
That all that he could do — has been done
That there is no honest answer
That there is no other path to follow
That he has faltered
That he is lost this fight
That he has failed
That he is cast adrift
In that unforgiving, sun-burnt land.
The knot in his chest grows tighter
Sweat drips from his brow
Sleep continues to evade
And it is in those witching hours
In the pitch black of night
The darkness before dawn
When despair is at its zenith
With innermost fears brutally exposed
Ominous rumblings become louder
His thoughts turn to something wretched
Dreadful whispering surround him
Of a final escape from his onslaught.
He dismisses it in a second
But yet
There is a slight delay…
But yet
It sits there just below the surface
Lurking
Festering
Welcoming
Enticing him
Seducing him
Growing at the edges
Biding its time
Waiting
Offering its warm intoxicating embrace
A final resolution
The bringer of peace
The harbinger of rest
To be rid of his anguish
To take all his troubles away.
Our dear, stoic farmer
So unwittingly close to his own demise
Pondering his potential options
Options that he dare not speak out loud
Because of pride.
“Oh for the love of God!
Oh for the shame!
Another day
Another night
All consuming
More bills to pay!
No end in sight!
It’s never been this bad before
Nothing I do makes a difference!”
He sighs.
And it is in that watershed moment
At his life’s tipping point
Standing at the precipice
Preparing himself
When all is lost
To take a step beyond
To flee this world
To escape his chains.
And it is in that moment
In the stillness of the morning break
Upon lightening skies
In that oh so precious moment
As he watches the sun slowly rise
Dazzling beams reach across the horizon
Casting their golden rays on all to him that is precious
As he hears a trilling birds cry.
It is in that moment
That he remembers
In that grace
That he realises
Where all that is good in life
Envelops him
That he finally makes a decision
That he finally decides.
With great strength and ultimate resolve
With all his character
With love in his eyes
Of a shared history
Of tears, of laughter, of pain and surprise
A lifetime in its making
Against all his training
That a man must follow
His code
With a never seen before openness
His pride exposed to the elements
Laying down his shame
Finally….
He turns to his wife.
Background
Part of a series of poems on financial inclusion. This one focusing on the drought and the increased rates of suicide in farming communities. Photos edited from unsplash. In the animated video I experimented with motion capture.
The Spoken Word 