Urgency

How do you have a sense of urgency if you are not the one being oppressed?
How can you really appreciate what you have if you never experienced being without it ?

For example my daughter taught in a innner city high school with many kids that came from poverty and some from other countries, one young man was born and raised most of his life in a part of Africa where they had very little.
As a young boy he would get up very early every morning and do his chores and then walk miles , in all kind of weather, to have an opportunity to go to school and get an education.
Here in the United States we have public transportation to take our children to public schools and many of our children take it for granted and complain and resist getting an education.

How can you teach appreciation?

My grandparents grew up in a small house with no indoor plumbing and grew most of their food.
My grandmother had this cookie jar on the top of this metal cabinet and when I would visit as a very young boy it was a huge treat for her to hand me a cookie from this jar.
My aunt lived next to her sister, my grandmother, and was very poor and if my grandmother had a ham she would share it with her sister and her sister would take the bone home to make soup out it.

How can a child today ever really understand and appreciate what is in their kitchen and refrigerator if that is all they have known.

How can we install or teach a sense of urgency to help those less fortunate if we never really lived their lives and saw the world through their eyes ?