Vote with your feet – Social Justice Dilemmas

Allocate four areas of the room to be – STRONGLY AGREE, AGREE, DISAGREE, STRONGLY DISAGREE.
Read out each of the statements below and ask the students to move to the area where their
opinion lies. You may like them to record their opinion. You may also find it beneficial to display the
statements on a PowerPoint to assist the visual learners.

1. Many developing countries and billions of people are devastated under the burden of
debt and trade policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World
Trade Organization (WTO). In 1997, Zambia spent 40% of its total budget to repay foreign
debt, and only 7% for basic services like vaccines for children. If debt had been canceled in
1997 for twenty of the poorest countries, the money released for basic health care could
have saved the lives of about 21 million children by the year 2000, the equivalent of 19,000
children a day. Third World countries’ debt should be abolished.

2. Today 130 million children are illiterate, 75 percent of secondary school aged children in
sub-Saharan Africa are not in school and 774 million adults don’t have basic literacy skills.
Access to free education up to Year 7 level should be free in every country – state or private
school.

3. If you are born into wealth, it is your responsibility to help those in poverty.

4. Spending money on developing weapons is important in maintaining peace.

5. Our worldview or culture affects the ways we look at others, either who are less fortunate or
more fortunate than ourselves.

6. The economic downturn of 2008-2009 in the developed world has led to an estimated 55
to 90 million more people living in extreme poverty worldwide. We should help others in our
local community before we consider donating to an international charity.

7. The government of a country has no relationship to the wellbeing of its people.

8. We need to consider nuclear power as existing fossil fuel sources are dwindling and our carbon
footprint deepens.

9. Every decision we make affects the environment.

10. Climate change makes people poorer.