There has never been a more urgent time than now. Families stand between success and marginalization. The inability to provide for the family is at stake. God created all of us to be His love extended in the world. An extension of His love is access to resources and other provision. The need to survive, was never the point of being gifted.
Gifts, skills and abilities were given, not loaned, to each person as the wherewithal to feed, clothe provide recreational enjoyment and benevolent care- to help others in need. The notion that there are families struggling to put food on the table is heart breaking. Economic systems are in place that disadvantage the poor. The greatest premise of hope is that if you move families out of poverty, you end poverty, is a premise on which all resources must be built and allocated.
The difficulty in interrupting the culture of poverty is the individualizing nature of the effort. Either the target is prenatal, preschool kids, preteen, teen or other young adults or older populations. Rarely, if ever, a full spectrum approach that targets the entire family as a unit, has been attempted. It can no longer be considered cost prohibited. The timing is right.
Now is the time to blueprint families out of poverty and need. Believing gifts and talents are prescribed by neighborhood or ethnicity has always bore an unconscionable falsity. It has always been by legislation of resources-housing, financial institutions (access to capital), investments in communities, tax credits, amortization schedules, inflated values in needy communities and the list continues. The contributions of the poor toward their own need can be correlated, directly, to policy matters – minimum wage, lack of banking resources for grassroots startups, penalization of families receiving entitlements if their income exceeds a certain threshold, states refusal of medicaid expansion and the list goes on and on.
It is because the end to poverty is possible, that families must be encouraged by campaign to support family literacy, and in particular, financial literacy. Embedded in a plea to design strategies that move families out of poverty, is the need for financial education around money matters. The basic premise is simple, if families understand how money works, their ability to make better choices increase exponentially. From an awareness of how money really works- even in lean households, creates a family culture more willing to pool their resources around common goals, which accounts for the belief in a better quality of life.
A the end, that begins the beginning, families will be “forced” to choose a “success track”- On Line Learning, College or University, Trade or Technical School, or start their own business. There is no way around it. Technology has advanced everything. The workforce is transforming itself before our eyes. The skills necessary to command a salary to support a household elevates to astronomical levels everyday. The handwriting the wall is written plain for anyone to see.
Families must decide how they will tackle future competitiveness. There is no need to live in lack with gifts, skills and abilities untapped and undeveloped. The metaverse- someday to be web 3.0- the so called “intelligent web”, is accessible and prepped to handle inquiries of need from traditional educational pursuits to how to cook spaghetti or change a tire. It’s all about targeting, supporting and campaigning to mobilize families around money matters with financial literacy as the gatekeeper, commanding a rallying cry to end poverty.
