Poverty

Like most sheltered middle class peoples - for a long time I thought poverty was just people who didn't have much money and were there really by choice. And, as I saw beggars at shopping mall entrances with their signs saying "will work for food" or "anything will help" my immediate thought was if that person had the time to stand there all day, then they surely could find a job. This was after I rolled up the windows on the car.

I felt that the homeless and those who were suffering economically were the obvious result of just not applying themselves. As if they had made some conscience decision sometime earlier in their lives and wanted this for themselves because, all-in-all they were just lazy.

I even unconsciencely believed the urban legends like that of the beggar who purposefully donned their ragged clothes to beg only to go home at night in their limo since they made so much from the guilt trip they placed on others. Getting angry that we were who saw them and donated were somehow duped by their guise. Or those stories about how someone would take up a beggar with the "will work for food" sign and put them to work only to have them turn it down because they did better from the stray dollar bills that people gave as they pulled up.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 and the failure of the safety infrastructure that took out the levees and flooded the lower 9th ward (one of the most impoverished in the nation) and when the slow response of our nation to come to the aid of those who were stranded finally started to resolve itself into manifestations of $5,000 checks and FEMA trailers. And that when those checks were cashed to purchase big screen TV's and Air Jordans and that three years later we still have a significant population still either displaced or living in those same trailers, I wanted to know what we so terribly wrong.

I knew that there was a some huge miss in the way aid was generated and then passed on to those in need. It wasn't for the lack of trying by either our government or the countless non-profits that donated time and money to help pull the city together again, but that it was the thought process of middle class households putting they thought was the proper thing for those who only really knew poverty.

I read the book "The Framework for Understanding Poverty" by Dr. Ruby Payne. Dr. Payne is a career educator in Texas who set off to get a better understanding of why kids from different backgrounds - especially those from the poorer neighborhoods couldn't really get a strong foothold in the school system and how she could go about changing that to help them find success. Through this research, she found that there are multiple levels of poverty and that money is just one part of it.

To get a better perspective on it, think of poverty in terms of resources. Every single person on the face of the earth requires a minimal set of resources in order to live. Food/water, shelter and clothing. To obtain those items, we require some combination of the following resources:

• Financial - this is the obvious one and the most associated with poverty. But it doesn't have to be currency. Services for trade or items for trade can act in this same capacity. Think of your own job - you have a business relationship with employer and they pay you for your time and efforts. The level of pay is based up on your skill and value you bring. You have traded your services for currency (in this case).

• Physical - this is a little more indirect but it deals with your physical capabilities of obtaining resources. If you have a physical handicap, this can limit your working which, in turn can limit your value to a business for less pay. In some circumstances a person may not be able to work at all and would rely on the graces of others

• Emotional/spiritual - this is harder to measure but is nonetheless significant. A person's belief in their own sense of value is an incredible resource. This is fueled by those that are in our environment such as the way you were raised as a child and the love and attention you were given. Also as an adult that you receive this type of reinforcement from your key relationships (adult child/parent relationships, spousal, peers, etc). I believe that people have an intrinsic need for validation of self and those that struggle with it may have strong resources in financial and physical (think of the gifted professional athlete) but will throw it all away because the lack of this key area - Michael Vick comes to mind. This area is shaped by our core values and are completely learned in a lifetime.

There are also two different types of poverty that apply to these areas: generational and temporal. Generational poverty is what we are born into and what is passed along to us and of which we would pass onto our children. Temporal poverty is that which would be temporary - a loss of job or spouse for example could bring on financial or emotional poverty.

Every single person needs to have significant resources in all three areas to find any level of sustainable success. We typically break a persons availability to resources in three areas: low income, middle class and wealthy. Each sub group has their own set of unwritten rules and obstacles for succeeding (or failing) in that particular level.

• For instance, those in low income find resources in trading for services (such as dinner for helping fixing a car) or knowing where to get free meals or clothing.

• The Middle class focus on managing of resources such as knowing how to start a retirement fund or operate a checking account or obtaining a loan.

• The Wealthy know how to build profitable relationships - sending their child to Princeton (for example) isn't necessarily for an education to find a good job (as how the middle class would think) but that other wealthy families send their child there and networking can result in profitable relationships in the future - mainly to sustain their wealth going forward.

When Hurricane Katrina hit - those $5,000 checks were thought up by some middle class think tank that derived that those funds, if placed in the hands of the low income families, would be used for critical goods and services (food/water and shelter). Instead, they found their way into (what the middle class people think as) crazy purchases like TV's. What FEMA (and middle class Americans) didn't realize was that in the subculture of low income peoples, there is a high value placed on entertainment and those that can entertain (theorized that it is a relief mechanism by that class to help cope with the high levels of stress from surviving at that level). To the low income families - this was a critical purchase but to all of us, it was an outrage.

Every single one of us has resources available to us and how we manage those resources and invest in those will bring about our general sustainability as a person. Ever wonder why people live longer when they've got pets? It's a relationship that was invested in that gives value to them. Or those that have more productive lives who are more physically fit (I, am not one of those, by the way). It was an investment in health that can be a resource when they need it. Not to mention those that understand the value of living under their means and saving for a rainy day (like, now, when our economy is in the toilet and people will loose jobs).

Understanding the existence of resources and cultivating them will help every single person become the best that they can be. Surround yourself with good people who encourage you to be a better person and you'll find that success comes a lot quicker than you think.