Maybe we don’t notice or maybe won’t notice, probably a little of both. We are a proud country built on bootstrap pulling and rags to riches success stories that color our perception of what poor people “should” be doing. They “should” be just like me. Come on, quit complaining, get a job, work harder, get an education, manage your money better.

There is always a little bit of truth in everything we all shoulda, woulda, coulda done with our lives, but the fact is that in the darkness behind all the prosperity numbers and waves of billionaires paraded across the economic stage to tout the American Dream, we perhaps “should” be embarrassed that the stats still shout that one in every six children in our country remains mired in an impoverished life. These are our neighbors, right here in our own communities.

Almost 220,000 kids in Arizona struggle for the basics, looking up from below the poverty mark, even though the overwhelming majority of families dealing with poverty are working families. Among the 14,000 people SFB-CRC serves, a third are minors in families at or only slightly above the poverty level, and half of them, nearly 2500 children, live beneath it.

The minimum wage of less than $14 per hour still leaves a family of four’s annual income 3,000 dollars short of the federal poverty line. Even if both parents work at that kind of wage and can earn closer to $55,000, licensed child care costs can easily drain nearly half that income, dropping them below the line anyway. Steadily increasing daily expenses for transportation, energy, food, housing, and all the other costs incurred in raising a family only make it more and more difficult to get ahead, let alone just make a living.

Interestingly, 198,000 households in Arizona are considered “kinship households.” Grandparents or other relatives are raising the children. The heads of these households are usually much older folks not working, often relying only on social security.

Many families in rural areas with limited services face hardships. Sopori Elementary in Amado, for example, unfortunately finds 78 percent of its students eligible for free and reduced price lunches. Free lunch programs mean those families live under 130 per cent of the poverty level. Summit View Elementary numbers rise to 88 percent of the student population.

Poor kids can transform into grownups without hope, significantly less likely to achieve academic success and secure employment, facing a myriad of social, health, and economic pitfalls, and much more likely to continue the cycle of poverty into their adult lives. So, what can one do? Finger pointing gets credit for doing nothing and critics of directing tax dollars toward the problem will always argue we are wasting precious resources that could be used for more important things. People should handle their own problems, right?

Again, though, the facts are clear. The Child Tax Credit in 2021 cut child poverty in half and when taken away reversed the numbers right back to where they were. Housing assistance programs, SNAP benefits, WIC, TANF, and school lunch programs all contributed to the war effort against child poverty. Access to these and other programs directed toward families with children can mean they are more likely to succeed in school, enjoy better health, and have the chance to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty.
SFB-CRC continues to do its part locally in extending a helping hand with food assistance, but more importantly, its mission includes adding and improving programs that provide adults as well as young people unique opportunities to gain skills and confidence that can offer them a glimpse of hope to escape that cycle.

What greater gift can we give as we comfortably live in front of the curtain than to look behind it once in a while and ask…what can I do to help?