It’s time to treat the underlying causes of poverty

Grade 9 students in the Collective Voice program at Aden Bowman Collegiate share their lives and opinions through columns. At some point in our lives, all city dwellers have seen a panhandler begging for money. Many people in this situation will give some, which is a generous, short-term way to help people in need. Sadly, this isn’t the best long-term solution for helping impoverished people.

People do thoughtful things like donating clothes or money to homeless shelters, but they will not necessarily think of what else they can do to help people in need.

After visiting a local shelter and rehabilitation centre in Saskatoon — The Lighthouse — and seeing how many people are suffering, I tried to think about what we could do to solve this problem. I believe the only way to solve this issue is by stopping it from occurring in the first place. Instead of trying to treat the symptoms of poverty, we should be treating the source.

Treating the source of the problem is what we would try to do for many other difficulties in the world, so why not for this? If everyone started dying from an illness, we would look for a way to stop it. This is how we should tackle the issue of poverty.

Targeting the source of poverty is difficult to do because poverty is a very complicated issue. Illness, unemployment, lack of education, abuse and addiction are just some of the many problems that lead to poverty, but some groups have begun to address the issue differently.

In 2005, Utah changed its thinking about the issue of poverty and homelessness. Instead of accepting this issue is “unsolvable or unfixable,” they created a new strategy called Housing First.

Homeless people are usually sent to shelters, but this new strategy gave homeless people their own homes. Not only did this strategy work, it also saved money. Giving people their own homes allowed them to escape some of the effects of homelessness and work on improving their lives in other ways.

“If you move people into permanent supportive housing first, and then give them help, it seems to work better,” said Nan Roman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Homelessness. Over time the Utah government saved money and the number of chronically homeless people in Utah has gone down by 74 per cent.

One company based in Saskatchewan works to create a better society by thinking differently about the problems we face. Upstream promotes “upstream thinking.” Its website says, “Upstream thinking means investing wisely for future success rather than spending all of our time and resources responding to and perpetuating failure.”

Even if you are not directly affected by poverty, you are touched by it in your life.

Because so many people are impoverished, we all feel the effect of it. Upstream thinking not only helps people who are in need, it challenges the way we address and fix problems. This type of thinking will hopefully help millions of people in our world who are struggling with problems.

If we all begin to think “upstream,” we are more involved in creating the type of country we want, and we will begin to make a difference in our world. Some ways that we can think upstream are simple and easy to do every day.

First of all, we can challenge the stereotypes that surround poverty, and educate people on what they can do to help people who are impoverished. Websites like Upstream provide some good information about how we can make a difference.

Secondly, do something to help. Lead a fundraiser for your local homeless shelter or rehabilitation centre. Volunteer to help in a homeless shelter. Donate to organizations like Upstream that are trying to get at the root causes of poverty.

Most importantly, remember that you don’t live in a bubble. You live in a world where people are suffering every day. So let’s stop ignoring it. Don’t just see the outstretched hand, see all of the underlying issues that created that person’s situation.