By Andres C. and Miguel V.
Did you know that as of 2020, around 37 million people in the United States have experienced living in poverty? That’s around 11.4% of our population suffering serious deprivation. According to The New York Times, many of the causes of poverty inflation in recent years are tied to the pandemic. The shut down of many businesses and companies, due to quarantine, have resulted in supply disruption which have caused prices to rise rapidly. This has led to poverty, which leads to more supply disruption, which leads to even higher prices and the cycle continues. The question is, how exactly do we determine that someone is living in a state of poverty? In the U.S. the poverty line, the minimum amount of money an individual must make to sustain his or her family, for a family of three people is $19,985. This means that a person must work 50 hours a week at a minimum wage of $7.25 just to barely sustain their family.
However, how have these poverty rates affected our U.S. citizens? As of 2018, out of the 73 million children in the U.S. 16.2% have lived in a state of poverty. That’s 11.9 million kids! This has resulted in 2.5 million children experiencing homelessness a year. In addition to this, the USDA estimated that 11.1% of the households in the U.S. were food insecure. That means that around 14.3 million households were unable to provide enough food for everyone in their families.
To take it a step further, we interviewed our principal and IB Head of School, Mrs. Alexandra Fox in order to learn about what our school is doing to support individuals dealing with poverty in our community. Mrs. Fox also filled us in on her childhood and her experience dealing with poverty. She said, “I was a child of poverty. My parents were poor when they came to the United States from Greece.” She also stated “My parents, being Greek immigrants, had no idea where to go for resources.[...]My mom only completed some of her elementary school years, maybe 4th or 5th grade; my dad was the first one to graduate high school in his family. I was the first one to graduate college in our family.” Mrs. Fox broke the poverty cycle in her family and openly shares resources to programs that can help others break the cycle of poverty in their family.
Mrs. Fox informed us about some of our school programs, such as “The Heart Program”. The Heart Program is a Broward County initiative to help and support students living in a state of poverty by providing them with food, snacks, school supplies, and additional resources to wear including purchasing uniforms. Another program in place is “The Care Committee” in which teachers and staff members would cook and buy food products for members of our Franklin families dealing with poverty. Mrs. Fox, as a survivor of poverty herself, would like to remind anyone out there living in a state of poverty that it doesn’t matter who you get compared to, what matters is getting yourself out of the cycle.
Poverty is a very horrible experience that nobody should have to go through. And yet thousands and millions of people in America encounter it. It’s time that we make ourselves accountable for the conditions of our community and raise awareness of poverty.
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