3 ms·
If you were awarded $20,000, how would you fight poverty?
- merciBien 14y agoI would take 5 impoverished middle-school kids, and put them to work on some public works projects, 8 hours a day for 4 weeks. If they can read or write, they'd work in an elementary school teaching first graders to read. If they can't read or write, they'd work on school facilities, painting, emptying trash cans, cleaning gymnasium floors. Each would be paid the $4000 share of the $20000, in the form of a trust fund for college. After the four weeks they'd return to school, hopefully knowing what work is, and able to connect it to their schooling. Or I'd spend all 20k on one kid, to pay for a piano and lessons for as long as the cash held out. Might need to pay someone parent-like to enforce practice, that's the hardest part. Both solutions require someone to teach self-discipline.
- lutusp 14y agoI would address what many agree is the root of the poverty issue but no one is willing to talk about -- I would put the money toward a way to improve women's reproductive rights. Planned Parenthood and other organizations do what they can to stay out of ideological disputes, focusing instead on assisting women toward reproductive self-determination. In worldwide interviews, women who know their answers won't come back to haunt them, say they want more than anything to be able to control their fertility -- to choose when and whether to have children. But there are powerful political and social forces that stand in the way of this basic human right. For me, this is a no-brainer. No human right is so fundamental as the right to control one's own fertility.