island⁹⁴

We just had our AmeriCorps*VISTA orientation last week—which to our delight and hard work turned out great—and one of the things I’ve been ruminating on since then was one of the powerful dialogue we had around poverty. AmeriCorps*VISTA’s mission is to help individuals and communities out of poverty rather than focus on making poverty more tolerable; so it should come as no surprise that we talked a lot about poverty. But the substance of the discussion made me think a lot about how I view poverty. Making it doubly interesting, of course, is that I was running the orientation and manage our VISTA program.

I realized I take a very broad view of poverty; perhaps as broad as they come. One of the activities involved each of us (about 40 people in all) writing on a tacky note their definition of poverty. My definition I gave was:

Poverty is the inability to fully participate in or benefit from society.

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Because of constructive criticism of some of my organization’s archaic language, I asked the Mission Based Massachusetts Listserv, a nonprofit discussion list, what terms they use in place of “poor people”. Below are all of the responses I got, which were awesome!

Some terminology…

• low-income
• under-resourced
• under-served (Barbara humorously notes that “overserved” is a euphemism for intoxicated)
• people living in poverty
• historically and persistently marginalized groups

(thanks Michelle, Felicia, and others who are quoted below)

Some general strategies…

• Use a preposition: Instead of “poor children” the phrase “children from low income households”. Therefore, it’s not the subject themselves, but rather their circumstances. (thanks Barbara!)
• Use a specific measure, like “125% of the federal poverty threshold” or “50% of area median income,” whatever’s most appropriate in the context.
• For a grant proposal, look at the language the grantmaker is using and follow their lead. (thanks Dennis!)

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