Poverty Traps

After reading the New York Times article, I felt a bit overwhelmed for J.R. I respect how he saw a problem and he decided to do something about it to the best of his ability. He and Sampson have very different approaches on how to help a community or neighborhood but both can make a large impact. What I kept thinking about after I read the article was that J.R.'s work might seem like a small drop in the bucket in respect to the magnitude of the poverty problem itself but if you look at it on a personal level, think about the families or the individuals that he could have helped. His small acts could help change their immediate surroundings and even their world. He could even help build some momentum, just like bad deeds or bad habits I think good deeds or acts can be contagious. Other people could see his efforts and follow suit. On the other hand an individual like Sampson can have an extremely large impact on these "poverty traps" his use of the bucket loads of data and studies of other communities and of course his potential to find larger resources to attack a much bigger problem than a single neighborhood. I would agree with Sampson that "poverty traps" are a real issue in inner cities and that eliminating those housing projects and stopping inner city decay is a monumental task and a seemingly insurmountable challenge. It's tough to change the momentum of an entire community. People are for the most part a product of their environment and circumstance.

I would say that the most blighted neighborhood that I have ever seen was a neighborhood that I lived in as a missionary while serving in Peru. The first city that I lived in was called Chimbote which in it self was poverty stricken, there was not a lot of industry and that being the case there was not a lot of job options. I lived in a neighborhood called 21 de Abril, it was probably the second poorest/roughest neighborhoods in the city. Most of the houses were adobe brick with tin roofs. Violence was a real issue, I was robbed once, luckily I didn't have much to take and wasn't hurt. There was a few nights that I woke up to gun fire outside of my house. The city itself was very dirty, there was trash everywhere and not very many places to enjoy like a clean park or any place with maintained vegetation. What was encouraging was that the community leaders were making strong efforts to improve their neighborhoods. We assisted in multiple service projects that were intended to beautify 21 de Abril. There was a particular project that they had been working on for almost a year. They were building a soccer field and a small park, but they didn't have tractors or heavy machinery. They were building this soccer field with shovels and about 100 people with 5 gallon tin buckets. They would go work on the field all day every day, moving what seemed to be mountains of dirt just so that some day they would have a nice place to play futbol and their kids can play in a safe and comfortable environment. I was impressed with the resolve of the community to try and better their situation.