Simple acts can help fight homelessness

As residents of the Chicago area, many of us have frequent brief encounters with poverty, passing homeless families on the street, volunteering at food pantries, or giving to the clothing and toy drives every December. While it is sad to witness, it is easy to resign oneself to inaction, as a singular individual has little power to change the circumstance of every child who goes to bed hungry or cold, every single mother who struggles to get by with one paycheck, or every patient who is sick and cannot pay for treatment.

Despite this feeling of helplessness, though, there are simple ways that one can easily get involved to fight poverty on a larger scale and around the world without using excessive time and resources.

Call your elected officials and tell them to craft legislation to fight poverty on the way to work, use resources provided by organizations like the Borgen Project to easily email your representatives during a commercial break during the Cubs game, or give your spare change to an organization like this that will use your money to fight against poverty on a larger scale.

While your 30-second phone call or auto-generated email might feel like nothing, the office of elected officials keeps tallies of the calls or emails they get about different topics.

While these tasks require a phone and a couple minutes of time, they can encourage elected officials to allocate federal funds to fighting poverty, benefiting people facing poverty around the world. While it can be easy to be frustrated and feel as though your voice or contributions to a cause are insignificant, try to remind yourself that you can be part of the solution to large scale problems, like poverty, if you choose to take a little bit of action.

Margaret Wasco

Elmhurst