Dear madam the rector, teachers and friends, I wish you a very Good Morning.

Today we are facing with a problem, that is not a new one, but an enduring one - POVERTY. The term poverty may have vastly different meaning to people from different countries or backgrounds. However, when humans hear poverty, it will mean to them to have lack of enough income and resource to live adequately by community standards or in other words situation of being poor. According to the United Nations, poverty in our world is still a very real and distressing problem. Based on their annual report, over 40% of the poorest people in our world live with less than $3 a day. Can you imagine that our beautiful island so called the paradise island has a high poverty level? It is an alarming fact that over 50,000 of the Mauritian population is below poverty level. It is very shocking that in our so-called modern society, there are hundreds of families living with less than Rs 2000 monthly. People may think that the cause of poverty is laziness. This can be right but also wrong. This does not mean that poor people are lazy because they did not study well or work hard. Some people who are in poverty, work hard and they are still poor because they did not get the opportunity of changing their poor life. Each individual in this world has different causes for being in poverty. Lack of opportunity, lack of education, lack of fair treatment and lack of employment are causes of poverty. People struggle to find food, clothing and shelter. Many of our parents or the parents of our friends are working very hard for our education or for sending us to school and to satisfy our needs. Poor parents sacrifice their own desires and needs to give us all our happiness. Thus, it is our duty to encourage them by studying hard at school and behave properly. Moreover, education is the only means of coming out of poverty. Our good results only can give us a good job, salary and a happy life. Everything is expensive nowadays. WE have to think about our future life, our future

family and our parents who will not always be there to support us. So if we want to live a poverty free life, we must be financially independent and it can be done ONLY through Education. I want to leave all of you with one final thought: Be the change that you want to see in the world.