Changing the Face of Poverty Summary

In Changing the Face of Poverty the author, Diana George, begins with her annual food drive at St. Vincent de Paul, and every day she receives bills and catalogs with appeals like the Navajo Health Foundation, little Brothers, and many others. In those was Habitat for Humanity. As a member of this club, I know the duties and responsibility towards this organization. George states that Habitat for Humanity is not as helpful as it seems. She says that the organization limits poverty to just third-world countries, it increases their debt problems and over exaggerate the way to get out of poverty.

George thinks organizations like Habitat for Humanity isn’t living up to what they should be doing, is guilt tripping them to donating to their organizations, and is giving the wrong impression to poverty, showing that poverty only happens in third-world countries.

A New Yorker ad for Children, Inc. reads, You don’t have to leave your own country to find third-world poverty. Under this ad she discovers a black-and-white photo of a little girl with torn up clothing. George examines a particular representation of poverty-publicly produced by Habitat for Humanity-in order to suggest that reliance on stereotypes of poverty can work against the aims of the organization producing them. Most ads put sad children or pets to guilt trip people into donating money or clothes.

Habitat for Humanity’s goal is to eliminate poverty housing from all around the world, but the problem with that is a lot of people have inadequate housing. George brings our attention to how the problem of poor housing and its solution are represented especially in publicity material produced and distributed by the organization, and how those representations can feed into the trouble that Habitat for Humanity and other nonprofits use to advocate to change the ways Americans think of helping others. George says, Habitat must produce publicity appeals aimed at convincing potential donors to give time, money, and materials.

Poverty is all around the world and is happening down the street. Poverty in the US is different from a third-world country but it still happening. Most don’t appear to have ripped clothes, but are struggling every day to feed their family, pay rent, and find jobs that pay more than with costs for daycare. Habitat chooses third-world countries and place sad children with torn up clothes in their ads so that many can feel sad for them and want to help. I know a few people who seem that they have everything they need but little people know the truth that they are struggling to pay rent and pay their families.

I don’t agree with George because as a member we actually help others around out area and anyone we can. I have been in this club for about 3 years now and we continue to help others in any way we can. Poverty is everywhere and helping others, here in the US or any other country should just be in our nature. Other organizations, like Habitat, do target more third-world countries more because they have more poverty than the US.

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