THIS PUTS OUR WORLD INTO A PERSPECTIVE MORE EASILY UNDERSTOOD.

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following:

There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
  and all 6 would be from the United States.

80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective,
the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes
glaringly apparent.

The following is also something to ponder...If you woke up this
morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than
the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness
of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of
starvation...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment,
arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion
people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof
overhead and a place to sleep... you are richer than 75% of this
world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in
a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's
wealthy.

If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very
rare, even in the United States and Canada.

If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing
in that someone was thinking of you, and furthermore, you are more
blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read
at all.

Someone once said:
What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.

It's National Friendship Week.
Send this to everyone you consider a FRIEND.

Pass this on, and brighten someone's day. Nothing will happen if
you do not decide to pass it along. The only thing that will happen,
if you DO pass it on, is that someone might smile because of you.

HAVE A GREAT DAY

Received from Enas Abdallah
eabdallah@acs.edu.lb
on April 1, 2003