CURRICULUM GUIDE FOR S.C. TEACHER CADET COURSE | EXPERIENCING EDUCATION, TENTH EDITION
Resource: If the World Were a Village of 100 People
The village would have 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the
USA and Canada, 1 from the South Pacific
51 would be male, 49 would be female
82 would be non-white; 18 white
67 would be non-Christian; 33 would be Christian
80 would live in substandard housing
67 would be unable to read
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation
33 would be without access to a safe water supply
39 would lack access to improved sanitation
24 would not have any electricity, and most of the 76 that do have electricity only use it at night
7 people would have access to the Internet
1 would have a college education
1 would have HIV
2 would be near birth; 1 near death
5 would control 32% of the entire world’s wealth; all 5 would be US citizens
33 would be receiving --and attempting to live on-- only 3% of the income of “the village”
16 live on $1 or less per day; 33 live on $2 per day
Sources for statistics: The original version of the STATE OF THE VILLAGE REPORT by Donella H.
Meadows was published in 1990 as "Who lives in the Global Village?" and updated in 2005. The initial
report was based on a village of 1000. David Copeland, a surveyor and environmental activist, revised
the report to reflect a village of 100 and single-handedly distributed 50,000 copies of a Value Earth poster
at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Research for many of the facts for the 2005 update was done by the Sustainability Institute. (See
www.odt.org/pop.htm for further details.) The rest comes from a variety of sources including David Smith’s
children’s book: If the World Were a Village, the CIA World Factbook 2001 (age, birth, death, internet),
2001 World Development Indicators, World Bank (HIV), Adherents 2001 (religion) Bread for the World
(malnourishment), United Nations Population Fund (food security) The Global Supply and Sanitation
Assessment 2000 Report (improved water, improved sanitation)
Additional Source: http://www.familycare.org/news/if_the_world.htm
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Theme I: Experiencing Learning
Unit 2: Styles and Needs
If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with al