Every year a dozen or so students attending Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School are escorted for 10 days to Nicaragua.

They go there for the purpose of helping in some way — to build a school, engage in a project one way or another to improve the lives, in however small a way, of those people living in one of the poorest countries in the world. During their sojourn in Nicaragua, the students and teachers are billeted with families (who are paid for their hospitality, of course) so as to give the students the full picture of life there.

The results of the trip are amazing.

Something of benefit happens in Nicaragua — a room is added to a school and supplies are brought from Canada; a useful space is established — something.

But something more happens to the young people who make the trip. They come back changed, and asking important questions about life here in Canada, about the opulence, about the waste. There can be arguments at home, resentments about the questions where the parents feel they have done the right thing for their now critical children; there can be weeping at the height of the garbage piles of goods and food that the returning students see here.

The reasons for this restlessness are that they watched people living on dumps, digging through them to find consumables or things they can sell. Now it is even worst, for they apparently have competition for the garbage from people who used never to bother.

The students stay in extremely crowded conditions with families who only have one or two rooms at all for the whole family, all its activities and their guests. When they come back, they ask, "Why do we need all these rooms? Why do we need all this stuff? Why are we throwing out all this food?"

On the radio the other day, I was listening to the news when a man was being interviewed about losing his job. "There's nothing to look forward to, nothing," he moaned. "The future has nothing in it for me."

I heard a story about a man in his 50s who was laid off from his job of 30 years, who went into a depression and drank himself to death, taking four years to manage it and leaving a family of wife and a couple of teenaged kids to cope.

These men should have gone to Nicaragua with the staff and students of Robert F. Hall CSS, or to Africa with Doctors Without Borders, or some place to volunteer their time to help people living in conditions of poverty and strife that we cannot even begin to imagine.

Times are tough, are they? People are losing their jobs. The governments are going to toss away millions of dollars helping the wealthy stay that way in hopes of salvaging a few hundred jobs, albeit temporarily. They are "lending" billions to car companies — a mistake made under extreme pressure.

At the Detroit Auto Show this year, the Big 3 trotted out their new electric cars. Great, fuel efficient, battery-operated cars.

Well, Toyota recently revealed that their hybrids and electric cars had not sold as well as they had hoped. Logically, in the case Ford/Magna's BEV, batteries which need to be charged every 160 or so kilometres, which is not very far by North American standards, will not be attractive to anyone living outside a city centre, or, indeed, wanting to travel (by car) outside a city centre. In addition, these batteries will take eight hours to recharge. How many of those will they sell, do you suppose?

The Chevy Volt has a battery that only take you 64 kilometres before it needs to be charged. How much use is that in this country?

Car companies are wasting millions on unusable battery-run automobiles so that they will not sell and everyone will have to concede that they tried, but, really, people just want to drive gas-guzzling automobiles.

What, oh, what is stopping automobile and oil companies from channelling their vast resources into bio fuels made of waste matter — you know, manure, from large beef farms, that sort of substance...

What stops oil companies and car companies from investing in fuel made of waste? Sweden does it, why can't we?

Because the governments will give lots and lots of money to them for sticking to the status quo.

Times are tough. Chances are, and certainly economists and the finance ministers are blowing their trumpets about it, that more jobs will be lost and the common folk will get little or nothing of substance to help them. McGuinty assured us a few weeks ago that there would not be funds available to alleviate poverty as much as had been planned.

In the face of our governments' refusal to invest in us, to invest in new businesses, or individuals, we must figure our own ways out. It is only money, after all. Is your health okay? Can you lift heavy things? Can you think and remember what day of the week it is? Have you done any volunteering this year? There is always a way out. There is always a way to capitalise on adversity.

We are so used to having our hands held, of having everything dealt out to us, of relinquishing our independent thought to the responsibility of others — union leaders, especially.

Now is the time to grow up, to go to Nicaragua and build a school, to take our lives into our own hands and make our own way. Maybe, you will join together with others to create a cottage industry. Maybe, you'll go back to school and training and learn a new skill. Maybe, you'll remember an old skill.

Whatever you do, you will not kill yourself in any way, deserting your loved ones; you will not bemoan your lot; you will deal with it.

Pulling yourself up by your boot straps.