Teaching Children Compassion & Understanding
Instead of Pity With Regard To Poverty

Parents often want to cultivate compassion and kindness in their children - feelings of care and sympathy for others. Often, adults will want young people to appreciate what they have, like the availability of food, their own bed to sleep in, etc., and to do so, they will say things that might be meant to cultivate appreciation for those privileges. But these efforts can also create feelings of superiority and even supremacy over others, especially in other countries. Examples:     

• talking about "the poor children of Africa." Indeed, there is extreme poverty in each of the 54 countries of Africa - but there is also tremendous wealth. There are doctors, lawyers, musicians, motorcycle riders, beautiful homes and beautiful families in each of those countries. There are rich cultures and history in each of those country. There are capable, intelligent, talented people in every country.
  

• putting together food or toiletry packages for homeless people. This promotes the idea that charity is what's needed - richer people giving to poorer people when they have the inclination to do so - to address poverty, rather than dealing with the inequality in health care, lack of equal access to work and social opportunities and innate discrimination that contributes to people being homeless. 

• Don't just go through your house to pick things to donate to Goodwill. First, talk as a family about what Goodwill does (Goodwill trains people to be able to work; their stores raise money for their programs, and provide a training ground for the people they are working with) and why their work is necessary. Also talk with your family about how even the poorest of people want to have new things, not just things that have been used by someone else and are no longer wanted by them. Talk about dignity and how everyone, no matter their economic level, is entitled to that feeling.
  

• Take your family to the grocery and help them to spend less than a certain amount to put together a meal for that evening, which you prepare together using ONE burner of your stove top or just your microwave, or an open fire, and using just one or two pots. If it's a family of five, for instance, spend just $5. That amount includes drinks. Talk together about nutrition, not just amount of food, talk about why some children go hungry in your community, how hard it is for many poor people to get healthy food, even canned vegetables, because their nearest food outlet is a convenience store, etc. Talk about what it would be like to cook and eat that way every evening. 

• Give your family a week to make as much money as possible with a garage sale, pawning videos and jewelry, taking glass bottles and cans back for deposit money and working for cash (babysitting, yard work, etc.) for families that you have NOT done such work for before. At the end of that week, add up how much you all made. Would it be enough for the rent and utilities on a two bedroom apartment in your area? What about a trip to the emergency room?
  

• Use mass transit for an entire 48 hour period or an entire weekend to do all that you want to do: go to the grocery, go to an event, etc. Talk about the experience afterwards and remember that this is the only way for many people to get around every day.
  

• Make a list of every ethnically-based cultural center in your area and a list of their public events. Go to some of those events: art shows, dance productions, music events, community fairs, etc. Talk together as a family about what you are learning together about countries that perhaps you've heard about only with regard to poverty on the news and what you have learned. 
  

• Talk to youth about the difference in humanitarian emergencies and long-term development / transformation projects. Emergencies require an immediate response of food, temporary shelter and temporary repairs, clean water, sanitation facilities, medical care, tools and evacuation. Emergencies can be natural or man-made. Emergencies can happen rapidly (tsunamis and earthquakes) or slowly (drought and famine). Long-term development / transformation projects are just as important and urgent: they help build the skills and resiliency of people and infrastructure (legal and physical) in communities to address poor health, violence, human rights abuses, environmental destruction (which contributes to poverty) and ability to survive a humanitarian emergency. CARE notes that in many parts of the world, "the degree of poverty may be so desperate that breaking a cooking pot might mean a family can no longer cook their food, and may go hungry – with no markets nearby or money to purchase a new pot, families battle to survive." In those cases, the family doesn't just need a new cooking pot - they need access to the basics.

• Talk about poverty usually centers on basic needs: food, water, clothes and shelter. Talk also with your children or students about poverty in relation to access to clean water, access to nutritious food, access to a quite home to study, access to healthcare, including dental care and access to education. Make sure young people understand that poverty is much more than lack of "stuff."
  

• Give your kids or students this assignment: go online and use at least three resources to make a list of why people in their own community are living in poverty. Talk about this together as a family or class.
  

• Go through the list of Least Developed Countries. Put the names of each of these countries on a separate piece of paper and in a bowl. Have each child or student pick a piece of paper out of the bowl. Then each child should make a fact sheet about that country. Have them make a list of:
  • How many languages are spoken in the country? What's most widely spoken? What's second most widely spoken? Third?
  • How many ethnicities are there in the country? What's the largest? The second largest? Third? Others?
  • How many religions are in the country? What's the largest? The second largest? Third? Others?
  • What percentage of the country's population lives in urban areas? Rural areas?
  • What are the names of some universities in the country?
  • What are the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the country? If there are more than five, what are the five most famous?
  • Of the world’s poorest people, 70 per cent are women and girls. What are the literacy rates for women and girls in the country compared to men? What are the country's laws regarding child marriage?
  
  If possible, have each student find a photo of a man and a woman from that country in the traditional dress of that country or one of the country's cultures. You could also have them find a YouTube video of someone or a group from or in that country singing, playing music and or dancing.  
  
  Your goal is to introduce children to the country through the lens of culture, not the lens of poverty.
• Talk to your children or students about vanity volunteering, about voluntourism and about poverty porn, and why these activities are harmful to local people rather than helping them. Talk about how these activities are being increasingly criticized. Talk about what shared decision-making can look like when addressing poverty, so that the people that are the target of help have a determination of how they are helped.
• Ask your children or students how people that are living in poverty could help make the world a better place if they were NOT living in poverty. Ask them what benefits the world might be missing out on because so many people are living in poverty.

A fantastic web site to help teens understand poverty in the USA is “Lessons in Poverty” from Teaching Tolerance. It is comprised of four lessons to help students understand that poverty is systemic, rooted in economics, politics and discrimination, and to show that poverty, far from being random, disproportionately affects Americans who have traditionally experienced oppression—African Americans, Latinos, immigrants and children.

More, related resources

Creating or Holding a Successful Community Event or Fund Raising Event.

Fund Raising For a Cause or Organization

How you can advocate for an issue important to you

Volunteering with Seniors.

Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters.

Volunteering to Address Your Own Mental Health. There are many people that have high hopes that volunteering for a "good cause" can help them address their own mental health issues - depression, loneliness, even feelings of suicide. And, absolutely, social interactions and accomplishments that can come from volunteering can help improve a person's mental health. But volunteering activities can also can augment negative feelings. This resource is designed to help you have realistic expectations for volunteering and to avoid an experience that will make you feel worse instead of better.

Volunteering with organizations that help animals and wildlife.

Volunteering on Public Lands in the USA (national parks, national forests, state parks, wetlands, etc.)

How to Make a Difference Internationally/Globally/in Another Country Without Going Abroad

Using Your Business Skills for Good - Volunteering Your Business Management Skills, to help people starting or running small businesses / micro enterprises, to help people building businesses in high-poverty areas, and to help people entering or re-entering the work force.

Details on how to quickly fill a community service obligation from a court or school.

Ideas for Leadership Volunteering Activities
These are more than just do-it-yourself volunteering - these are ideas to create or lead a sustainable, lasting benefit to a community, recruiting others to help and to have a leadership role as a volunteer. These can also be activities for the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the Duke of Edinburgh's Award (U.K.), a mitzvah project, or even scholarship consideration.

Ideas for Creating Your Own Volunteering Activity.

How to complain about your volunteering experience.

Donating Things Instead of Cash or Time (In-Kind Contributions)

Group Volunteering for Atheist and Secular Volunteers

Helping People Address Their Problems with Plastic
How to mobilize a community to clean up plastic bottles, plastic bags and other plastic waste from their environment, and how to reduce their use of such items in the future

Ideas for Funding Your Volunteering Abroad Trip.

Careers Working With Animals (for the benefit of animals)

 
 
 
 
Suggested books:

 
Volunteering: The Ultimate Teen Guide (It Happened to Me)

 
The Busy Family's Guide to Volunteering: Doing Good Together

 
Doing Good Together: 101 Easy, Meaningful Service Projects for Families, Schools, and Communities

 
Engage Every Parent!: Encouraging Families to Sign On, Show Up, and Make a Difference

 
Volunteer Vacations: Short-Term Adventures That Will Benefit You and Others

 
Children as Volunteers: Preparing for Community Service