The mission of CGE is to provide cross-cultural educational opportunities in order to foster critical evaluation of local and global conditions so that personal, organizational and systematic chance takes place leading to a more just and sustainable world. Through a liberating and transformative experiential education individuals are encouraged to live as active agents in history, and hence, foster social transformation rather than the maintenance of the status quo.
One of the exercises they had us do was Market Basket Survey to give us a genuine look at life in the Third World, especially now as food prices and basic stables continue to rise. You may have seen the NY Times article about Haitians eating mud pies and the food riots resulting.
We divided up into groups of three and were given 100 pesos, ten dollars, and two hours to do a market survey and buy Mexican staples with our money. We did this exact same exercise in Greenville before leaving Furman, to be able to draw accurate conclusions.
I had just read two days before in a mail I received that Nicaraguan staples had soared to 400% and I was told the price of tortillas in Mexico jumped to 380% in the last year. They are in the third world, so it must be cheaper there.
Most of us automatically convert prices and then compare it to dollars. Coming to the satisfying conclusion that its okay, its cheaper in dollars. But, when you put the American minimum wage on a level playing field as the Mexican one, and then look at hours needed to work you come to shocking conclusions.
When we bought tortillas on Monday, September 14, they were equivalent to $11.80 US dollars! The poor are barely surviving on minimum wage in the US. Imagine what people do here, forget talks about a living wage, they are struggling to receive enough calories.
This allows us to understand a poverty mentality. Why people choose to live in a trash dump. They need the dependable income that results from sorting trash and selling it back to the recycling companies.
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