Name: Leah Maathey

Social Justice Group: Education: Dropping Out

Date of Fieldwork: November 22, 2018

Name of Organization: LIFT

Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Brittney Lynch

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did:

We recently met with Brittney Lynch to get more information about LIFT. We discussed details about what her charity does and what makes it different from other charities. We are going to hold a toy drive to help with LIFT’s holiday fiesta on Dec 18. We have announced it in homeroom and I sent and email to remind our classmates. We are also going there to volunteer and maybe have a change to interview some people to get a better grasp on how education affects these people. I think it will be a great opportunity so that we can see these people as people, not as statistics.

What I learned:

Differently from our interview with Michelle Fine, we wanted a look into what these charities do as opposed to general information. We learned that at LIFT they believe the key to ending poverty lies within the parents. They focus on helping the parents give a better life to their children as an attempt to stop generational poverty. They coach and help the parents plan and give them opportunities for social and economical help. They think that by the time a child is in high school it is to late, the longer a child lives in poverty the more likely they become to stay in poverty. We need to address them as children and intervene and then we can stop them from living in poverty. 9 out of 10 times it isn’t an issue with the child but with the parents and family.

What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:

I learned that there is no clear, main contributor to poverty. Just because they may improve one aspect of their lives, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have to worry about it anymore and it certainly doesn’t mean they’re out of poverty. Poverty is a generations long problem that can’t be fixed quickly and easily. For a child to escape poverty you have to start with their parents.