Dear editor of footprint

Dear Editor of Footprint, In light of your recent article about emerging numbers of poverty in a family and that poverty has become serious issue all over the world, I thought the readers might like to know about impacts that poverty has within families.

Many experiences of hardship are common across the different contexts, but there are also significant differences in the challenges families faced. Families with lower income often face higher levels of stress. Besides financial uncertainty, these families are more likely to be exposed to series of negative events including illness, depression, and family death. If the parents’ stress is extreme then it may lead to violence in family. As the housing is normally lacking and poor, the family tends to have greater concerns about crimes and unsafe neighborhoods. Not only the parents face obstacles and challenges from the pressure to feed on their families, but young adults who are grown enough to get jobs also have pressure that they need to earn money to pay debts.

The greatest problem that the family faces is lack of accessibility in education. Even though some schools give free fees for poor families who don’t have enough money, in the world with a huge competition today, many children need extra academic practices and families cannot afford any extra expenses. This may lead the children to lose many opportunities to attend ideal universities and get occupations. Also even if the children are allowed to attend school without any fees, other students may bully them due to their family background or differences in status.

While some people are aware of issue related to poverty in family, majority of people hardly know or consider about this issue at all. Many tend to believe that poverty has been removed throughout years as a result of modernization and they should now understand how serious poverty is in the world nowadays. I strongly recommend the readers to read several articles or books related to global poverty and start thinking about how they would like to help to resolve problems. Moreover, they need to get involved in activities that associate with helping those in needs and take actions once they understood general concepts about poverty.

Printing this letter in Footprint would help to raise awareness about poverty to those who read them. Raising awareness is the prior action we all must take to start with.

Sincerely, Chae Eun Lee October 6, 2014