Uplift and Empower

A Guide to Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation

Danielle Hawa Tarigha

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781641377096
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Poverty in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Did you know that over 700 million people live on less than $2 a day?

Nearly 10% of the global population struggles to survive 24 hours at a time. E radicating extreme poverty may seem like a simple issue, but in reality, it ' s very complex.

In Uplift and Empower: A Guide to Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation you'll learn about:

• The history and context of poverty and how the Industrial Revolution shaped modern social structures
• Major challenges caused by poverty and what it means to live within the poverty mindset
• Innovative solutions to addressing poverty, such as new methods for job creation and community engagement
• And so much more...

This book is an exploration into one of the most pressing issues of our time. It's for anyone interested in becoming part of the solution, and everyone that's ready to Uplift and Empower.

Part 2

Unpacking the Problem

Poverty Mindset

“If English is your first language, take one step forward!” my program coordinator yelled in the courtyard of our largest local museum.

I confidently stepped forward, along with the majority of the group. Solid start. Nothing to be nervous about...yet.

In my junior year of high school, I was a member of a city-wide leadership development program. As part of the program, we participated in a “privilege walk,” which is an exercise designed to help people understand how levels of privilege vary from person to person.

“If you were raised in a single parent household, take one step back.”

I gulped nervously and stepped back. It was the first of many to come. By the end of the exercise, I found myself somewhere in the middle of the pack. I was behind the students with housemaids and high-powered social connections, but ahead of others who had faced hardships like being raised in rough neighborhoods or going without meals when money was tight at home. At the time, I was just relieved to have not been too far in the back.

As one of the few Black students in the program, I didn’t need any more reasons to stand out. To this day, I remember making nervous eye contact with my Black friend. We glanced at our friends near the front, but our moment of silent solidarity was more valuable than the things we already knew about some of the more privileged students in our group.

My personal experience with this exercise was memorable because of the sentiments shared by the girl who ended up finding herself furthest from the front. She was white, surprisingly, but what shocked me most wasn’t the color of her skin but the happiness she exuded.

She shared that even though she didn’t have as much as the rest of us, she was content with her life. She felt loved and sustained by the support of her family, and she didn’t realize how much she didn’t have until the exercise. I share this to say we are all born into situations we have no control over, and those situations shape everything from the clothes we wear to the mindsets guiding our interactions with others and within ourselves.

The long-term value of exercises like the “privilege walk” has been called into question in recent years by some who argue it exploits the stories and hardships faced by the less privileged and centers its focus on the most privileged in the group. The most privileged receive an eye-opening lesson while those with the least privilege are forced to face facts they already know—they are marginalized and oppressed.

Poverty can have deeply damaging effects on our psyches. Our economic and financial security influence how we make decisions, how we plan for the future or if we consider the future, and how we identify ourselves.

In this chapter, I am going to draw closer attention to the relationship between poverty and psychology. Why is this relationship so critical to our understanding of extreme poverty? Because unlike other impediments on our health, no amount of medicine, therapy, or treatment can directly make a person less poor. We know life in poverty is hard, but with more detail about the psychological effects, we can gain a better understanding of why it is so hard. Essentially, rather than treating the symptoms of poverty, we can begin to understand and eliminate its causes.

Let’s begin.

Fast versus Slow Life Histories

Life history theory is a helpful starting point because it relates to how organisms allocate resources for survival and reproduction.214 Within this theory, there are two primary strategies to help explain the trade-off in resource allocation: the fast path and the slow path. For humans, these paths are rooted in the experiences and environments faced during childhood.215

On the fast path, people grow, well, faster. They start puberty earlier, have more children, and age faster.216 Fast path people focus on short-term, immediate benefits rather than the long-term repercussions. On the slower path, the opposite occurs. The slow path leads people to focus on the long-term and forego instant gratification in favor of greater gains in the future.217

Is there a better option between the two paths? Not exactly. Determining which path is better depends on context and who is making the decisions. Both paths have benefits and costs. On the fast path...