Voices from Below: Poor people talking about poverty
Despite some initial work to find out what poor people think, relatively little is still known about their needs and how their experiences and abilities could be harnessed to develop better anti-poverty strategies, with them rather than for them. Indeed, it is argued that it is only when the poor can help to define what their poverty actually is that real solutions to poverty can be found.
This paper looks at a small study led by Dr. Klaus Serr of Australian Catholic University (ACU) which was conducted at the Sacred Heart Mission in Melbourne in partnership with Catholic Social Services Vic. (CSS). The study interviewed 20 disadvantaged men and women in inner-urban Melbourne asking them to define what poverty is.
Preliminary analysis of the data indicates that:
*The majority of people interviewed were able to identify relevant poverty issues
*While insufficient income was raised by all participants as part of their poverty definition, issues such as health, emotional/psychological problems, substance abuse, family an community breakdown, lack of self esteem/ self worth were ever present.
Early findings of this approach further demonstrate that many issues raised by the participants have practical solutions and are promising signs in the usefulness of peoples’ own definition of poverty. They also suggest that poverty definitions mainly based on income need to be questioned and that poor peoples’ participation in poverty research needs to be studied and integrated more fully as part of anti-poverty strategies in Australia.