You've heard from all of the experts. I would like to now tell you that I'm also a mom, and I'd like to share a story about that.
As a mom of four children, I was blessed enough to adopt three of them from the foster care system. They are natural siblings and have given me the most intense training in why it is that poverty is not only a generational problem for families, but why it's also important that we take a significant action now so that no child in our country has to live in poverty.
The first night I met my oldest daughter, she was eight years old. She had left a home with a mom who abused drugs and alcohol, and the entire family was entrenched in a world of poverty. On that very first night that she stayed in my home, I remember asking that eight-year-old little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, “I think I'll just stay home and get a cheque like my mom.” She had no idea how that one statement would essentially guide my lifelong passion to end the cycle of poverty.
Today Savannah is in her last semester to become a teacher. She has truly broken the cycle of poverty that she felt she was destined for at the age of eight years old.
I tell you this story not to brag about my child—well, maybe a little—but to demonstrate two things. First, poverty is generational and ingrained in a child's brain at a very young age, and second, with a planned intervention and sustainable work to reduce and eliminate poverty, that brain can change. We can end poverty and give everyone the opportunity not just to survive but to thrive.
Thank you.