Are you below the poverty line? Do you give money to poor people? Do you know how many people are in poverty around the world? Poverty is a big problem in the world and we need to find a solution to it.

According to dosomething.org, 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. That is a big problem. According to Cable News Network (CNN), a family in poverty would make about $50,000 a year or less. That is not a lot of money. That is the average amount of money for one individual to make. That doesn’t seem like that would be a problem, but when you do the math, an average household spends $50 to $150 on food each week not including the times they eat at a restaurant. When you have people who make $10,000 a year or less, how will they buy food every week, buy a house, or rent an apartment? More than 3 billion people in the world live on less than $2.50 a day. That is around $900 to $4,000 a year. It depends on the amount of time they work, but if they work 8 hours a day for 4 days a week, they get around $4,000 a year. There is more than 1.3 billion people who live on less than $1.25 a day. Poverty is a big problem, and we need it to stop.

According to United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Seventy million people worldwide don’t have enough food to eat. When there is a lack of food, they don’t have enough protein and nutrients to survive. Just imagine only having only one or no meal a day. I don’t know about you, but that would be hard on me. They could go to homeless shelters to get food, but the problem is that most homeless people are scared of other wealthy people seeing them. I once went to Mexico and when we were driving to the resort, we passed a box village. There were probably about 150 boxes just in that little area. There were really poor families living there. When I saw that village, that made me think of how big of a problem poverty is. One kid was standing outside of his box, and he looked like he had nothing in his stomach.

In 2012, 46.5 million people (15%) were in poverty. That is about nine million more than the population of California. California has the highest poverty rate at 18.1% in the United States. That is a lot of people. That needs to change. Another big problem is that a quarter of humanity lives with no electricity. That is about 1.6 billion people. Some of those people choose to not have electricity, but the vast majority of them are living in poverty. That means no t.v., radio, light, refrigerator, oven, or anything. So you might not know it, but a lot of people are in poverty and they need help. The problem is that we have people in the world who are rich and do not have to worry about poverty. Poverty needs a solution.

Poverty is a hard topic to pick a solution for because it happens all around the world and some people chose to be homeless. A good solution for a school community to help people in poverty would be, if you are under the poverty line, then you should be able to get free lunch food. That would help the family a lot because if the kid gets free food, then he gets to eat and they do not have to pay for it. In our community, a solution would be to give to the food pantry. That happens right now, but they do not have enough food for all of the people in poverty. Also if you make a lot of money, just give some food or money to the food pantry. A solution for the nation is to try to get a job. If you apply to get the job, then you have a chance for the job. If you do not get the job, then you should just keep applying for other jobs until you get one.

Some people give to the poor but we need to change that “some” to all. Poverty is a problem and there are solutions to it, but if you are in poverty, the biggest solution is just to try to get out. If you keep trying and keep failing, then go and get some help from a person.