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My Poverty Series: The Heart's Cry of Poverty


Poverty.

An emotional and multifaceted word.  

An in your face word.  

A word which explodes with feelings and responses.

A pit in the stomach word.  

Anguish.  Fear.  Worry.  Sickness.

Shame.  Guilt.  Despair.  Cornered.

Heavy.  Exhaustion.  Depression.  Suffocating.

Poverty infiltrates a person, family and community's 

identity as a virus.  

A dangerous and threatening virus. 

Poverty narrows ones focus and squeezes out light, 

hope and life.  

Poverty slashes through energy and releases the air 

from one's will.

Poverty is a mindset.  

It is not a virtue. 

It is difficult to define.

It is a dynamic, relative and 

subjective state.

Poverty needs understood.

 Poverty defined:

  
Merriam Webster as
: the state of being poor
: a lack of something

Wikipedia defines as
:lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society

The European Union offered its definition of poverty in 1984: 
“the poor are those whose resources (material, cultural, and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the Member States in which they live” (http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/rc7_eng.pdf)
Dr. Ruby Payne with AHA Process, Inc. (http://www.ahaprocess.com/)
"clearly defines understanding poverty as the varying degrees to which a person lacks any one of following nine resources:
Financial
Language (ability to speak in formal register)
Emotional
Mental
Spiritual
Physical
Support systems
Relationships/role models
Knowledge of middle class hidden rules"
"Poverty is difficult to define because of its relative and subjective nature.  Nevertheless, poverty is defined here as “the unfulfilment of basics human needs required to adequately sustain life free from disease, misery, hunger, pain, suffering, hopelessness and fear...” (http://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/AdewunmijuPO01.pdf


 What is your definition of poverty?  Experience? 


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