Poverty in America

One NPR article demonstrates the struggle of poverty of Desiree Metcalf, a twenty four year old mother of three who lives in a small apartment in New York. Many factors have gone into her becoming poor: from being raised by a poor mother to growing up in foster care after a horrible incident with her mother to attending 26 different schools to other problems that she has struggled with, like alcoholism, which she admits to being her fault. She became pregnant at a young age, shattering her ability to go to college. Her poverty continued into her adulthood with periods of homelessness and hunger. This has taken a toll on her children, too, especially her eldest. Many, many programs have assisted Metcalf and her family, but she always runs into problems like transportation. She continues to struggle even with government help, especially with getting jobs as she is not very educated.

An article on the World Food Programme website shows the story of a man growing up in Kenya--and what was key to his ability to escape poverty. He was very poor as a child, coming from a family of 8, and they did not have even food or sufficient water. They struggled to live. They lived on one meal a day that was not sufficient as his whole family suffered from malnutrition and were all emaciated. His house was made of mud-walls and a grass roof, one that would leak often. In his school, textbooks and desks were all shared among multiple people and everyone studied on an empty stomach. When he was nine years old, he was told that he, among other students, would benefit from a ‘school feeding’ programme led by WFP which provided every student with nutritious porridge for breakfast and five biscuits to take home every evening. This food was keep to his perseverance and health for the rest of his life. It allowed him to eventually enroll in an engineering school and then graduate with an Honors Degree. He does not live in poverty any more and is able to meet all of his basic needs, along with having an optimistic future.

An All Africa interview with Mosifane Johannes, who lives in South Africa, shows his struggle of poverty and how he escaped it. He was just eleven and his brother thirteen when their mother passed away, causing them to live with their grandmother who used to help neighbors in exchange for food. Consequently, his brother had to start selling goods to the locals, which was not very promising. When their grandmother died, no one took care of them after that. Johannes attended four different schools, having to walk long distances to every one. He eventually was able to obtain a bachelor’s degree in education and now teaches grades four to seven along with speaking at high schools. He never once gave up, despite all of his hardships, and that is how he rose out of poverty.

An NPR article tells the harrowing story of a village in India shook by the deaths of over twenty young children who ate a free school midday meal. This meal was tainted with toxic insecticide. India’s poverty line stands at 54 cents a day. That’s less than a candy bar. Critics say that if India had a more realistic poverty line, many more people would be classified as poor. This meal was served in a one-room elementary school--a school without any equipment, infrastructure, or even glass on the windows. There was no kitchen, so the meal that killed all of those children was cooked on the front stoop. So many families lost their beloved children that day, and the Bihar Chief Minister did not even make the trip out to their village where this tragedy occurred.