Underserved Populations: Testing a Model for the Care and Wellbeing of Rich and Poor Orphans– 2019

Abstract

Our world has become starkly inequitable with 0.01% of the population owning 11% of all wealth, 1% owning 38% of all wealth, 10% owning 76% of all wealth, and the lower 50% owning almost nothing. Amongst all of these, there is a group of the most vulnerable, the most underserved, and ironically the most silent because, for the most part, they cannot speak for themselves: orphans, most of whom are in the lower 61%. The world population of orphans today is approximately 153 million. Selfishness and indifference have brought us to an appalling point in human history, but a radical change could be made, starting with the orphan population, if the world’s middle class and above would adopt them in some way. The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of such a social action and demonstrate the viability and potentially rapid effectiveness of this positive social engineering. The subject area is social and emotional learning, social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and global citizenship. One of the groups in question is underserved and one is overserved yet underserved in that it lacks real happiness, in effect, both orphans. Through the lens of social constructivism, we examine the feasibility of projects through which the overserved help the underserved and both find fulfillment. Quantitative facts highlight the possibilities for radically ameliorating the orphan problem and qualitative investigation can measure the ensuing fulfillment of these groups. The final significant implication is that the orphan problem could be solved in this generation