Changing The Social Fabric Of Poverty…
Putting your money where your mouth is. The Mayor of NY City, Mike Bloomberg is doing just that. He has raised millions of dollars, a lot of it his, to to start a program to reduce poverty in the State of New York. No, not just by giving the money away, but by giving it away with expected returns.
Part of the initiative to end poverty includes opening an Economic Opportunity Center and Opportunity NYC a program that will provide:
• Education incentives will promote superior attendance and good behavior in school, achievement and improved performance on standardized tests, and parental engagement in children’s education.
• Health incentives will be offered to maintain adequate health coverage for all children and adults in participant households as well as age-appropriate medical and dental visits for each family member.
• Employment and training incentives will promote increased employment and earnings or combine work activities with specific job training activities
The Opportunity NYC program emulates the “conditional cash transfers” programs that have proven effective in other countries around the world. The program is currently privately funded but if successful, may be eventually funded with public funds.
Now you may wonder why pay people to do things that they should already be doing? Breaking the vicious cycle of poverty is difficult and often impossible to do from within. By prompting people to become better parents so that their children hit the streets better educated and start seeing the world in a different light, it helps those in the circle climb out and society as a whole. Why not act out of the box. Governmental programs tried up to now are obviously not working, we have people being born into poverty and then raising their own children in that same poverty; multi-generational poverty. By helping people make the right choices that puts them on the right path to self-reliance and a more supportive family structure, we are helping them and society.
Part of the problem with poverty is that it is either under reported or just totally denied as if it did not exist. In order to reduce poverty we have to have a grasp of the magnitude of the problem. Unfortunately Bloomberg among others, believes that we lack in our ability to measure poverty. Bloomberg who has made his living analyzing data, is trying to update the way we measure poverty today. The Federal Poverty Measurement currently being used was introduced in 1964, and has not changed since even though the rest of the world has. “The poverty formula, you might say, is bankrupt. It obscures both the good results we’ve achieved, as well as the hard work that remains to be done. I come from a background where numbers matter, and data drive decisions. We all say ‘In God We Trust,’ and we do. But for all others, you have to bring data. I’m a big believer in the saying, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ So just as we need a more creative, more vigorous approach to fighting poverty – we need a more accurate method of assessing whether we’re making any progress. (source: Bloomberg)
More great reading on this subject is: Social Inclusion for the US : “Social inclusion is based on the belief that we all fare better when no one is left to fall too far behind and the economy works for everyone. Social inclusion simultaneously incorporates multiple dimensions of well-being. It is achieved when all have the opportunity and resources necessary to participate fully in economic, social, and cultural activities which are considered the societal norm.”
This story is not new, Opportunity NYC has been going on for almost a year, but the effort deserves revisiting over and over again, so that we may keep track of the progress of such projects, and replicate them throughout our cities and the rest of the world. This is another great example of Bill Gates’ Creative Capitalism Model.
Bloomberg fighting poverty measuring Poverty Opportunity NYC poverty
