The news isn’t good on the street.
Victoria’s less fortunate are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, even to find a warm bed to crawl into on a cold winter’s night.
Social service agencies throughout the community are seeing greater demand for their services from Our Place, where demand for meals and shelter have never been greater, to Victoria CoolAid Society.
Despite the obvious, the biggest consequence with this problem is that more and more people appear to be falling through society’s cracks. We can blame how expensive it is to live in the city, lack of education or mental health issues, but the problem still remains people need help.
We should all be thankful that non-profit social agencies step forward, but they need our help, too. And not just to provide a meal and a bed.
Most social services agencies provide transformative programs to break the cycle of poverty. These are programs that have impact on lives, providing counselling, goal setting, even vocational training.
But they can’t do it without you.
They need donations both in the form of cash and goods, so they can expand their professional staff and volunteer base.
Everyone wishes poverty didn’t exist, but it does. In order to change the scourge of poverty, we need to support and encourage those who have made it their mission to help where they can.
We will never end poverty, but we can certainly ease the plight of those who suffer through it, and work to get away from it.
