Author: Christina

I had researched a program which actually helps alleviate hunger for children.

 Although free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs provide significant nutritional benefits to students during the school day, many disadvantaged children do not have access to regular meals when school is not in session.

The BackPack Program helps alleviate child hunger by discreetly providing hungry children with backpacks full of nutritious and easy-to-prepare food on Friday afternoons so they have food to eat throughout the weekend. 

The BackPack Program serves more than 6,500 students in 220 schools across 20 counties.

The BackPack Contains:

• 2 Breakfast items (cereal, oatmeal packets, graham crackers, granola bars)
• 3 Entrées (mac & cheese, PB & J, Spaghettios, tuna, soup)
• A loaf of bread
• Milk card for a gallon of milk (distributed every other week)
• Egg card for a dozen eggs (distributed every other week)
• Fresh fruits
• Canned vegetables (distributed monthly)
• 2 snacks (cookies, popcorn, pudding, etc.)
• Menus change each week to provide participating children with variety

This is a clip of the BackPack program I think people need to hear about and check to see if their school has this program going on. Every donation or lending hand help a child in need. Click on this link: The BackPack Program

Helping Children in the Classroom Who Live in Poverty

Poverty is linked with negative conditions such as homelessness, inadequate nutrition and food insecurity, inadequate child care, lack of health care, unsafe neighborhoods, and schools with fewer resources which impacts children.

An appalling number of American children live in poverty. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 14.7 million, or nearly 20 percent of children under age 18, live below the poverty line. That is, in households with incomes less than $23,550 a year for a family of four. There’s been an increase of poverty in minority groups — 38.2 percent of black children and 32.3 percent of Hispanic children live in poverty.

Children from low-income families face increased risk factors in their educational life. Poverty affects student brain development, relationships with peers and the ability to complete a formal education. Students who live in poverty come to school every day without the proper tools for success. As a result, they are commonly behind their classmates physically, socially, emotionally or cognitively.

Schools can address poverty through teaching social justice, offering equal academic opportunities, and providing school supplies, snacks, clothes, and other basic necessities.

Check out the Facebook Page: Bridges Out of Poverty

If you are looking to counter poverty or its impact on people and businesses in your community, Bridges Out of Poverty offers innovative concepts and training that helps employers, community organizations, social-service agencies, and individuals address poverty in a comprehensive way. They offer the ideas, structures, and concrete tools a community needs to prevent, alleviate, and reduce poverty. People from all economic classes come together to improve job retention rates, build resources, improve outcomes, and support those who are moving out of poverty. and tools that present guidelines and action steps. 

This is a link to directly message them if you are interested: m.me/bridgesoutofpoverty 

Every Kid Deserves a Champion!

1. Where did you live?

In Brooklyn NY – Neighborhood was Cypress Hills

2. What was hard about living there ?

It was a very high crime rate area. Lots of crime, violence and drugs. It was a poverty stricken neighborhood. I was always hungry while growing up, definitely never enough food. My mother got that check on the first of the month and it never lasted, the food never lasted. People were on public assistance and when my mother got groceries that food was gone within the second week.

3. How did your family and friends set an example for you?

Always being positive, never to complain, just making due with what you have and always loving and supporting each other.

4. Did your family and friends have goals at the time?

Sure, my friends and I wanted to grow up, go to school and get good jobs so we could get out of where we were leaving to have a better life.

5. How did poverty affect your education?

I feel like when I was growing up we were actually growing up in an era where they were desegregating schools so we went to a very integrated school which was a better school. I had friends of all different races and we all just got along. Everyone was either poor or working class so we was all on the same level.

6. Can you paint us a picture of what a typical day of school looked like?

I was in the accelerated classes which were the people who scored high on exams. The top ranking classrooms and got an advanced curriculum. Even as poor as we were we always competitive about our academics. I did see a lot of gangs, bullying and a lot of fights on the school bus. The real fighting happened in middle school and in high school. Everyday there were multiple fights after school where it was people getting jumped just constantly. It was every single day and nobody ever broke anything up. There were never any adults the cops were never called, it was just a regular ordinary thing. So that was horrible to see everyday. It was both males and females. Growing up seeing that it was horrible and I just felt horrible. I never had that situation by the Grace of God.

7. What made you want to be better and get out of your living environment?

It was terrible where I was living. I wanted a better life. We were surrounded by shooting and murder everyday. To me, how can you not want to get out of there. All of my friends and I wanted to get out of there and I think living there made us stronger. None of us ended up living in the projects. Most of my friends got good paying jobs. I feel like that gave us the drive to break out that cycle and I’m talking about the women. The men though they ended up dying, getting murdered, going to jail, being drug dealers, still there. It was a different story for the guys their survivors too they just had it different from the rest of us.

8. Did anybody help you on your journey? If so, who?

My friends,  my ride or dies. They were there every step of the way. My family played a part including my aunts and uncles. My mother gave me lots of love.

9. How are you different from your family?

I think we’re all different and each of us have our own strengths and weaknesses. My decisions have made me different because we all had taken different paths to get where we are today.

10. What are you doing now with your life?

I think I am enjoying my life as much as I can. I enjoy my family and friends. I try to pursue all of my interest and try and do the right thing. I am as of right now a Senior Civil Rights Investigator and I investigate complaints of (race, sex, harassment, disability, age) discrimination in schools. We fight for people who don’t have a voice in an educational setting. I was always interested in law enforcement for some reason but I wanted to help people and this was a combination of both those desires.

The things I want people to take out of this is that even though you live in a poverty stricken neighborhood you don’t have to be another statistic. If you really want to, you can get out and achieve your dreams/goals. My mother knew from young that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life there and made sure she did everything possible to get out. I think its important for children or teenagers to see there’s more out there than just becoming another stereotype you can be anything you want to be.

Viola Davis was born August 11, 1965 in St. Matthews, South Carolina. She began her acting career by starring in minor theater productions. She is now considered one of the most famous African American actresses today. She was the first black actress to be nominated for three Academy Awards, winning one, and is the only black person to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. However, Davis’s background story is not all rainbows. Before she became the first black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series, she had to overcome poverty which was difficult and she was ashamed about it.

She had told a crowd at the Variety Power of Women event that, “Although my childhood was filled with many happy memories, it was also spent in abject poverty. I was one of the 17 million kids in this country who didn’t know where the next meal was coming from. And I did everything to get food.” She talked about how she had stolen for food. Davis had lived in a rat infested apartment where she jumped in huge garbage bins with maggots for food, she befriended people in the neighborhood who she knew had mothers that cooked three meals a day, just to eat!

Davis used acting as an escape and despite her challenges in life, she pursued her dreams while attending Rhode Island College and later Julliard School of Performing Arts in New York City. After attending the Julliard School of Performing Arts, Davis made her Broadway debut in 1996 in Seven Guitars. She has won two Tony Awards for her performances in King Hedley II (2001) and Fences (2010), which co-starred Denzel Washington. Her film work includes Doubt (2008), for which she received an Oscar nomination, The Help (2011), Ender’s Game (2013) and Get on Up (2014). In 2015 she became the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her work on the television series How to Get Away with Murder. In the 2016 film adaptation of Fences, she received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2017.

I chose Viola Davis to profile because she is one of the most successful African American women today.  I thought who would be a figure people living in poverty can look up to? She was the first person who came into my head because she has been through the struggle and lived in it but now she is making history and trying to be an example for others that they can make it out too. The audience is directed to people in poverty who don’t think they could make it out and to the girls who are told, “no that’s a man world, you wont succeed.”