{"id":1525,"date":"2014-10-21T19:14:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T23:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2014-10-21T19:14:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T23:14:13","slug":"growing-culture-poverty-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/2014\/10\/growing-culture-poverty-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"The Growing Culture of Poverty in the USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of last month, I published a blog (link)<\/strong><\/a> about my representing the North Carolina Council of Churches<\/strong><\/a> in a meeting of 13 American \u201cfaith leaders\u201d with the United States Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to discuss providing greater economic opportunities for all, especially those living in poverty. I promised to write a follow up blog discussing the unfortunate growing culture of poverty in the United States and what business leaders can do to address it.
\n

\"Sheila<\/a>

Sheila Forte-Trammell provided the inspiration and much of the information in this blog.<\/p><\/div>
\nI thank my long time IBM colleague internationally respected diversity and workplace engagement leader and author Sheila Forte-Trammell for much of the inspiration and content for this short blog (see byline about Sheila at the bottom on the blog.)<\/p>\n

An unfortunate cyclical circumstance within the US is a growing distinct culture of poverty, which tends to trap multiple generations from the same families and areas. Statistics show that the number of people officially living in poverty in the US continues to grow, even as we tout ourselves as \u201cthe land of plenty.\u201d Some statistical facts:
\n\u2022\tThe 2010 US Census declared that 15.1% (over 46 million people!) of Americans were living in poverty.
\n\u2022\tThat Blacks and Hispanics were disproportionately represented in the poverty numbers (Over 28% of Blacks and 26% of Hispanics.)
\n\u2022\tThe poverty rate for women single head of households was 5 times the poverty rate of families with two parents.
\n

\"Many<\/a>

Many people in poverty in the USA live on the streets or in their cars like this man in his 1998 station wagon.<\/p><\/div>
\nNow add to that some sociological discussion:
\n\u2022\tThe cycle of poverty continues to perpetuate itself since children raised in poverty have less access to quality education.
\n\u2022\tThat growing up in poverty often leads to low self esteem, lack of role models, culture of crime, etc.
\n\u2022\tThat poverty often nurtures the mentality of immediate \/ short term gratification over delayed \/long term gratification and investment in the future.<\/p>\n

What are ways corporate America can help lower the poverty rate and help build a country where all citizens have better economic opportunity?
\n\u2022\tSpecifically open plants and facilities in high poverty areas where the jobs are needed most, keeping in mind that many in poverty do not have the transportation access to locations in the suburbs.
\n\u2022\tContribute corporate philanthropic money to initiatives that improves educational access to those living in poverty. This also helps build a national pipeline of better trained diverse talent.
\n\u2022\tEducate your employees about the plights of poverty and what can be done. Perhaps offer opportunities for community service and mentoring programs on company time.<\/p>\n

It is absolutely the right thing as a nation to not ignore the poverty here in \u201cour land of plenty,\u201d but instead take action to raise the living standards and occupational readiness of our entire nation.<\/p>\n

# # # # #<\/p>\n

Much of the content of this blog was provided by Sheila Forte-Trammell, Total HR Services, LLC. Sheila was recognized in 2014 with a Triangle Business Journal \u201cLeader in Diversity \u2013 Role Model\u201d award (link)<\/strong><\/a> and has co-authored two books: \u201cAgile Career Development: Lessons and Approached from IBM,\u201d and \u201cIntelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge and Relationships.\u201d Link to Sheila\u2019s LinkedIn profile.<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toward the end of last month, I published a blog (link) about my representing the North Carolina Council of Churches in a meeting of 13 American \u201cfaith leaders\u201d with the United States Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to discuss providing greater … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[679,701,703,698,700,702,699],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-info","tag-culture-of-poverty","tag-cycle-of-poverty","tag-economic-opportunity","tag-living-in-poverty","tag-poverty-numbers","tag-poverty-rate","tag-sheila-forte-trammell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.totalengagementconsulting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}