Poverty 101—Improving Your Poverty Competency

Gain strategies for understanding and communicating more effectively with people who are fighting poverty. Poverty competency is having a comprehensive understanding of poverty and the skills to effectively eradicate its impacts on learning. It is knowing the history and structural causes of poverty ensure that you are operating from facts not stereotypes. 

Poverty 101 is understanding the complexities of poverty and how many different life experiences are labeled “poverty.” It is knowing that working-class poverty experiences are different from situational poverty experiences or generational poverty experiences. It is understanding that families in poverty are struggling in a war zone. It is about operating on the assumption that people are making the best decisions they can within the “shoes” they are wearing. It is fostering a climate of everyone belonging and having the opportunity to shine. It is creating relationships based on identification so people can see they are not so different. 

Poverty 101 will provide you with take away tools for making a difference for those living in poverty in your community. Participants will leave with:

• A deeper understanding of poverty, its history, causes, and current national and local facts;
  
• Awareness of their own attitudes, beliefs, and values about poverty and those who endure it;
  
• Skill sets for communicating and relating more effectively across poverty barriers; and
  
• Tools for building strong internal and external partnerships to take a collective approach.