On February 11th, the Child Poverty group had guest speaker Lauren Mucciolo come speak with our grade. Lauren Mucciolo is the producer of an amazing documentary called “Poor Kids”. This documentary aired on PBS Frontline about a month ago that takes place in the eyes of three kids who have lived in poverty almost all of their life. These kids are named Kayley, Johnny and Britney. (To learn more about the documentary please look at my previous “Poor Kids” blog post). Lauren told us all about the making of the movie (which was really interesting)! Something that our group was dying to ask Lauren was how she picked these certain families for her documentary. She said that she almost had to cast the families for the documentary and make sure that they were comfortable showing their tough situations to the public. She also said that when something big in the family came up (like if they were kicked out of the house because they couldn’t afford rent), she needed to film it. She did this not to torture or embarrass the families, but to inform the public that there are millions of families, like us, who are struggling from poverty. She also said that she has kept in touch with these three families and has visited them every so often. Though these families are still struggling from poverty, they have come along way and have found a way to live in better conditions. I think that this has been a huge highlight of our social justice project and I thought that it was so great and creative of Lauren Mucciolo to inform the public about child poverty by making a documentary.
