This week I had an opportunity to give an interview to the Jerusalem Telegraphic Agency whilst on a train coming back from London. Anybody who has tried this will first of all know that you can’t do this whilst in the “Quiet Coach”, but actually you can’t do it anyway as the signal drops every few minutes. Eventually we gave up and instead I conducted the interview whilst in a taxi dashing to get to my son’s school.

The reporter was very interested to understand how we help people in Poverty and we had a really good debate about how this can be done. I explained that my view is poverty affects every aspect of your life, poverty impacts your health, your confidence, your access to transport, your access to learning and where you live. Sometimes we think poverty is just about money but money whilst very important is also a means to an end.

We work with people in poverty and it is so inspiring to help people who want to improve their lives, who see the value that work can bring, not just financially but also in confidence and self esteem.

I explained we want to give people fishing rods not fish, because we understand that the changing labour market means that for most of us we will move jobs more often than we would like due to redundancy and economic situations. So we don’t just try to get somebody into a job, we try to give them the skills they will need to get themselves back into a job each time they get caught up in a change in the labour market.

The reporter wanted to know if we were like the programmes in the USA which hurt people. I explained that A4e is built on the vision of improving people's lives and it is hard to see where hurting people fits into that model. I explained that our staff will do anything to improve the lives of the customers we serve, and they won’t do anything that doesn’t.

At the end of the call I think we had developed a good exchange and I was very happy we had had a good debate. I have invited the journalist to visit our centre in Jerusalem and see for her self the way we tackle poverty and unemployment. Fingers crossed for when the article is printed.

Do you have new and innovative ways of tackling poverty?

Are you stuck in a poverty rut now and reading this makes your blood boil?

Do you have some insights or suggestions about what needs to be done to lift people out of poverty and particular child poverty?

I would love to hear from you.

Thanks


Roy