WASHPO: Solutions to poverty are clear to kids, if those in charge would listen

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By Petula Dvorak

Tuesday, May 11, 2010


To fifth-graders, the solution to poverty is pretty obvious.


"If the government has all this money, why don't they just give some of it to poor people so that we don't have poverty anymore?" one girl asked me.


The fifth-graders at Ferebee-Hope Elementary School in Southeast Washington are studying poverty, a familiar subject to them because they live in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods.


They all have stories about homeless guys spitting on their dad's window, panhandlers asking for money at the corner store every day or someone living on their couch, because their family was the only one available to help a down-and-out cousin.


In Washington, 32 percent of children live in poverty. The national average is 18 percent.

It's really interesting to hear kids who are growing up in Ward 8 talk about poverty and their ideas to reverse the scary rate at which the city's families are plummeting off the edge.


"What about if we grow food in a garden, so people have something to eat?" one girl asked.

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