Food for Thought

I attended a workshop the week after summer break started. As workshops go, it wasn’t bad. I actually got some useful information. The facilitator passed out several handouts that were for us to read later. This was one of them. I had seen these statistics before, but I still find the information quite interesting.

The Global Village

If the world’s population of nearly 5 billion people was reduced to a village of 100 people, this would be the result:

Area
58 would be Asians
12 would be Africans
10 would be Western Europeans
8 would be Latin Americans
5 would be North Americans
1 would be an Australian or a New Zealander

Language
17 people would speak Mandarin
9 would speak English
8 would speak Hindi or Urdu
6 would speak Russian
6 would speak Spanish
4 would speak Arabic
The rest would speak Bengali, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese, German, French, or any of the other 200 languages

Religion
29 would be Christians
17 would have no religion
14 would be Muslims
13 would be Hindus
12 would be Buddhists
9 would be Confucian and Shinto
5 would be Animist
1 would be Jewish

Education
70 would be illiterate
1 would have a college education

Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures from the Developing World