Hi. I'm Alana.
I want to start this off with morning routines. We all have one, whether it's drinking coffee or tea, a shower, etc. Most people can take that for granted. It's a nice experience. My experience in the morning is waking up, putting coffee on my coffee table, turning away, and not even 30 seconds later seeing a cockroach swimming in my coffee, which causes a physical reaction at the end of that. That is an example of what it's like to live in poverty and in housing that is affordable but not necessarily the cleanest when it comes to bugs.
I grew up in poverty in Hamilton. My mom was on welfare. I'm on ODSP for mental health, and honestly, I would list all the diagnoses I've been given, but we don't have enough time to list them.
I would also like to mention that on the private colleges, I have to agree. I spent $14,000 to get a diploma that is literally useless to me. The paper is worth more than the diploma I was given. I can't get a job at all with that diploma. No one will recognize a private college diploma. Again, that strikes those in poverty, because those schools target those who are in poverty. They say things like “come to us”, “we can get you OSAP”, and “we can get you a job”. One recommendation I would have for that is to check into the success rates of those colleges. In all honesty, you'll notice that while people do have jobs, they're not in the field they went to school for or got OSAP loans for, which they now have to pay back for a diploma that's useless.
Poverty is inexcusable. You try your best to get ahead. You can't. I go to sleep each night hungry because most of the time I don't have enough food in my cupboard. ODSP does not give me enough to live on successfully after bills, my phone.... I'm lucky if I have enough to buy a strip of bus tickets to get from point A to point B for all my volunteer work. If it weren't for my community supports for all the volunteer work I do within my community, my mental health would be a lot worse than it currently is.
We need to end poverty, because children should not be going to school each day unable to learn because their stomachs won't stop growling, and they're too embarrassed to tell the teacher that they can't concentrate because they haven't had anything to eat for three days. That's because part of that goes back to parents. If you're in poverty, your parents tell you not to tell your teachers, because when you do, that always ends up in a call to the CAS.