The Boise Weekly conducts an insightful interview with Henry Krewer, who sits on the board of Corpus Christi House, a homeless day shelter:
When you’re homeless, a lot of the development stops—emotional development, educational. And a lot of it’s because you’re in survival mode. It’s static. Nothing happens while you’re homeless. They’re all good people, but they’re kind of on hold. A lot of homeless people work. Most of them work. If they have housing and work, then they’re on their way. If they just have work, then they’re living day to day.
The News Leader in Staunton, Virginia, profiles the struggles of Darlene Keiper, who has lived in her car for more than a year:
After four years spent living in a Waynesboro boarding house, the Pennsylvania transplant fell on hard times last year when she tried striking out on her own in a new apartment. “I was struggling for six months to meet the rent, and I got evicted,” she said … Keiper spent a month at the Econo Lodge on Richmond Road, where she was employed but was sent packing in August when new ownership took over. She’s been living in her car ever since …
Whatever your opinion of Oprah may be, have a look at material from her show “Inside the Lives of People Living on Minimum Wage”:
Thirty million Americans who work full time are living in poverty … Why should you care? These are the very people we rely on every day. They are the teachers’ aides in your child’s classroom. They are caring for your aging parents in the nursing home. They make sure your hotel rooms, your offices and your schools are clean. They are security guards keeping buildings safe. They are paramedics who are there in your most desperate hour.
In 2002, the Common Dreams NewsCenter published a sixth-grader’s views on poverty and “What the American Flag Stands For”:
You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.
The Onion offers a funny take on advocacy work in “Nonprofit Fights Poverty with Poverty”:
“Our crack team of anti-poverty activists is totally devoted to marshalling every resource at our disposal,” Lindstrom said as she stood under a flickering light bulb in the office’s bathroom and added some water to an old toner cartridge to squeeze every last drop of usable ink from it … According to Lindstrom, the organization recently acquired a stool with two fully intact legs and a 1987-model photocopier …
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