Today in Global Studies / Spoken English we had a debate. It was in the form of a forum where three speakers gave their points of view and then were questioned by the audience. The topic was "What is the greatest development issue?" The speakers gave reasons for it to be health, education or clean water. They had been 'prepped' by their teams using research on each issue.
It turns out that all these are interdependent. If you don't have a good education system people get sick through ignorance and you can't train enough doctors. If you don't have a good health system then children miss a lot of school and their education suffers, or students are kept home looking after ill relatives and miss out on the education, either good or poor, being offered. If they don't have clean water available people get sick and children miss school - see above.
The winner for me was 'clean water' as it reduces sexual assaults on women and girls. How you ask? Many women and girls have an early morning daily trudge to fetch water, often kilometres from home, through isolated places, and fall victim to rapists. Provision of clean water in each village would improve lives the most!
