A recent Boston Globe editorial talked about organizations helping enable homeless, low-skilled, and low-income people to take care of themselves mainly through education and better employment. I include an excerpt:
There’s an emerging cure for dead-end jobs and unemployment. Instead of letting people languish in homelessness or despair, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions is making it clear that low-income and low-skilled workers can succeed with help from a committed team – employers, government, foundations, unions, colleges, and nonprofit organizations. The fund, a new, $50 million initiative, is announcing 10 new grants in 10 cities and states at the National Press Club in Washington today. And it is holding up programs in and around Boston as innovative models.
I recommend reading the entire article, because it recites some individual stories of a few people who uplifted themselves with the help of local non-profits, which focus on education and job training. I hope to see this approach replicated throughout the country.
I think the above methods contrast to some common misguided approaches. Often times, people think of fighting hunger and homelessness through plain charity such as soup kitchens. That only fights the symptoms of poverty, but does nothing to fight poverty itself. To actually stop poverty, we have to help people find permanent solutions through education, job training, and then employment. Additionally, poor people need to break any habits or other obstacles holding them down such as addiction or unemployment. A soup kitchen only provides a single meal that will fend off hunger for a day, but education and employment help poor people actually eliminate their poverty.