One of my favorite ways to share statistics with people about the state of the world is to use the “If the World Were a Village of 100 People” analogy.
It was first created in 1990 by Donella Meadows. Basically, it takes some of the world’s most recognized statistics and breaks them down into a bite-size picture of what it look like if there were only 100 of us living in a village. It’s hard to understand with millions of people living without clean drinking water would look like but much easier to envision what 13 people living without drinking water would look like in a village of 100 people.
The following is an updated (2006) version of the original idea. It’s from the website 100people.org:
50 would be female
50 would be male26 would be children
There would be 74 adults,
8 of whom would be 65 and olderThere would be:
60 Asians
15 Africans
14 people from the Americas
11 Europeans33 Christians
22 Muslims
14 Hindus
7 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
12 people who would not be aligned with a religion12 would speak Chinese
5 would speak Spanish
5 would speak English
3 would speak Arabic
3 would speak Hindi
3 would speak Bengali
3 would speak Portuguese
2 would speak Russian
2 would speak Japanese
62 would speak other languages83 would be able to read and write; 17 would not
7 would have a college degree
22 would own or share a computer77 people would have a place to shelter them
from the wind and the rain, but 23 would not1 would be dying of starvation
15 would be undernourished
21 would be overweight87 would have access to safe drinking water
13 people would have no clean, safe water to drink
Sources: 2012 – Fritz Erickson, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Ferris State University (Formerly Dean of Professional and Graduate Studies, University of Wisconsin – Green Bay) and John A. Vonk, University of Northern Colorado, 2006; Returning Peace Corps Volunteers of Madison Wisconsin, Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures from the Developing World, 1992; Donella H. Meadows, The Global Citizen, May 31, 1990.
