Poverty is the New Black

“Call now. Your donation of only $1 a day will save the life of a whole family.” The media constantly pressures us to donate money to help the homeless and under-privileged people in third world countries. The ones where people are dying from things that are easily preventable. At least, in places like Canada and the US (ranked 6th and 8th according to the UK Telegraph's Top 20 Countries for Quality of Life) where medical treatment is affordable, and easily accessed.
But if our country is so amazing why is it that according to the 2001 Canada wide census, on any given day you can find roughly 14,000 people living in shelters, without fixed addresses, and almost half of them living in Ontario? Statistics show that poverty is on the the rise in Canada, yet our media focuses mainly on the despair of countries that are continents away. What is being done to help the homeless closer to home? Canada is fortunate enough to be holding the 2010 Olympics, where several photographers and other artists will be attempting to band together to produce set of nation wide prints showing the despair of homelessness. Ranging from people sleeping on the heating vents, to in the front doorways of stores in blizzards, all labeled around the general theme of the series: “Getting ready for the Olympics.”
Around important statutory holidays, the government and several small-town run food banks and charities collect donations, and food to feed the homeless and money strapped Canadians. Than, they disappear along with th holiday decorations, the trees discarded to the curb, and the rest put out of mind for another year. Thinking back, there are less than a handful of commercials that I can recall being used to raise awareness of our own poverty epidemic:
A bus driver drops a child off in front of their house, with their smiling family waiting on the step to greet the child. The screen cuts to the bus driver sleeping against the side of a building. A teacher smiles and waves goodbye to her children, and it flashes to her sleeping in her car. The end of the commercial reads “Homelessness isn't always obvious.”
A group of people are sitting around a table, with teens bustling around them with brown paper bags. The commercial was run by a small city based food bank which specializes in making sure students have lunches.
Our political groups always discuss tax cuts, and their plans to make things easier for Canadians, yet homelessness and poverty levels are drastically rising on a year-to-year basis, but poverty is still becoming a serious problem. More and more people are becoming fatally sick from causes that could be eliminated if the government actually took the time to come up with a real plan to help stop poverty in it's tracks. As it becomes more harder to afford basic necessities for a family, especially as a single parent, more and more people are relying on government assistance to help survive from paycheck to paycheck. Welfare used to be a thing of social disgrace. It was stereotyped as a last resort for the addicted, or generally dirty lower class citizens. But as more companies are forced to slash their employee numbers to cover basic funds, it's becoming more of a mainstream thing, and much more accepted. People from every walk of life find themselves losing their jobs, their homes, and occasionally even their family. They try the best to provide for their families, but a child growing up as a government funded child is not a happy child.
At Southwood alone, there are very noticable differences between the people who come from the perfect families with money to feed and clothe their children in designer labels, and the students who come to school with the same clothing, and don't eat lunch because their welfare check didn't come in on time. They're the people who skip school to get a part time job, so their families aren't as stressed out financially, and instead end up severely damaging their education.
Poverty is noone's fault, but it's something that effects everyone on some level. As a country, we need to do something to put an end to poverty before it puts an end to us.