Guardian: Global poverty targeted as World Social Forum gathers in Brazil

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Wednesday January 26

Global poverty targeted as 100,000 gather in Brazil
Activists join presidents as annual World Social Forum gets under way in Porto Alegre
By John Vidal in Porto Alegre

Elvis, Betu and Renatu live in a rubbish dump. Every day the teenagers take out their wire pushcarts, collect the waste of the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and bring it back to the illegal slum of Chocolatado to sort and then sell on.
It's a grim place, made of reclaimed tarpaulins, waste timber, old plastic and metal. None of the shacks have running water or toilets, and most of them are deep in litter.

This, then, is the ideal backdrop for the launch today of the World Social Forum, which meets annually to discuss issues affecting developing countries.

Begun five years ago specifically to counter the annual meeting of world business and political leaders in Davos, Switzerland, it has unexpectedly become a global political and social phenomenon.

Every year as self-serving elites who are part of the problem meet in Davos, Switzerland, real people seek real solutions in Porto Alegre.