Many people face challenging problems living in poverty. People have limited access to food, stable shelter, healthcare, and education due to not having enough money. Society needs to come together and provide helpful solutions for families in need of help.
When my parents first came to the United States and didn’t know English they struggled a lot; they were extremely poor and did not have a home, healthcare, or food. They stayed with family but it never lasted; my parents were in their early 20s with two babies living in a basement. My father mainly worked, but the money was never enough for food, clothes, and rent. Since my dad did not have an education, it was harder for him to find a good-paying job. It took a good while until my parents were able to finally afford an apartment on their own. Being in poverty made it extremely hard for families to survive.
A person being in poverty decreases their chances of survival because they have less access to sufficient resources. For example in the article “A Word of Hardship: Deep Poverty and the Struggle for Educational Equity '' the author Peter W. Cookson Jr. says “Households in deep poverty suffer from food shortages, unemployment, unstable housing, inadequate medical care, electrical shut-offs, and isolation.” Food and healthcare prices are higher, and families are not able to afford them because they do not have enough money. This leads them to starve and struggle to make ends meet without them taking care of themselves. This can also lead to people losing their homes if rent also goes up and possibly being left homeless on the street.
Life in poverty is completely different from someone who has adequate financial stability. They have a better education, a lifelong career, better healthcare/insurance and shelter. Meanwhile, a person in poverty has to go through struggles of not having a proper education and also not having the probability of not going to college either. They also have struggled with not having a home, healthcare for emergencies, or enough money to provide food for themselves. This has been a problem for many families and not many can fix it. Poverty has been a problem for many years, and no one has done anything to help or better it. Society just judges the less fortunate saying they could do more, not knowing what it is truly like to be in their shoes. This is why poverty is still an issue to this day; no one is willing to help. In the article “Economic security Programs reduce overall Poverty, Racial and Ethnic Inequalities,” Danilo Trisi and Matt Saenz mention “Economic security programs such as Social Security, food assistance, tax credits, and housing assistance can help provide opportunity by ameliorating short-term poverty and hardship and, by doing so, improving children’s long-term outcomes.” These programs help future generations to have a chance at a better life and be successful for themselves and their families. Society needs to provide helpful resources and have the more fortunate people make donations to help whether it is food, clothes, shelter homes, or even homeschool tutors that are volunteers to educate kids that can not afford school. Anything would be helpful for families in need of help.
Poverty has many issues that come along with it. People face many challenges trying to support themselves and those they love, and they try to make it every day with the limited resources they have . To help these families society should provide them with some useful resources, not just to survive, but to thrive.
I wrote this essay about this topic because it is a problem worldwide. Many people in this world don't realize how different their life can be if they were in poverty. I want my message to be heard that we should help one another because I know we all need some help at one point.