Poverty complex

As your excellent article ‘‘How to fix poverty’’ (Business, October 8) made clear, there is little agreement about the best way to fix poverty in New Zealand. In spite of this – or maybe because of this – however, there has been a growth in charitable forms of poverty alleviation which are completely unsustainable.

I am not talking about the traditional soup kitchens, which are probably always going to be with us as long as we have unfortunate and isolated individuals, but the growth in charities focussed on children, such as KidsCan and Variety’s child sponsorship programme.

These may address issues in the short term and make donors feel good, but they will never change anything in the long run. This is also true of some of the ‘social’ enterprises which have sprung up in recent years, some of which are actually profit-making businesses. For example, I was surprised to see a full-page advertisement in our local newspaper a few months ago, urging readers to ask their MPs to buy an ‘‘Eat My Lunch’’ lunch. Not to ask them to use their position in Parliament to address poverty but, in effect, to support the owners’ business.

For every child in poverty, there is at least one adult struggling to make ends meet. Surely it would be more effective to put energy or money into organisations that are working to address the root causes of poverty such as low wages and lack of housing.

Helen Wilson, Wellington