"Why I Joined Poverty Talks!" A Post by Sue

Today's Post comes from Sue, a member of Poverty Talks!

The other day I was asked 3 questions: Why did you join PovertyTalks!?; Why is peer relations the hill you chose to die on?; and Why are issues surrounding food security so important to you?

Big questions, right? Well I am going to answer them in a this and the next two blogs I will write (Nigel is so happy I have committed to writing 3 blogs in the next few weeks [editor's note: I indeed am!]), but I figured I would start with why I am a member of PovertyTalks!.

I was invited to attend a meeting by the famous TracyRay Lewis. She didn’t tell me too much about it, she just let me join the table and experience it for myself. Turns out it is a group of people with lived poverty experience and are all, through their own voices, bringing a voice to others living in poverty. That sounds pretty simple right? Well that is what I thought as well but I was wrong and gloriously right at the same time. Nothing could be more complex yet straight forward.

With each person around the table came with a vast variety of agency and experience both good and bad. Each person had a clear outline of what didn’t work to fix the problems of poverty for their represented communities. Each person had ideas of what could work toward fixing the problem of poverty for their represented community’s. But just like all other big picture problems it is never that straight forward. The answers are there but buried in 10 tonnes of governmental and “helper agency” red tape. After all if poverty is ended a whole population of people are out of work. Not a very good motivation for those “helper agency” people to work on this problem themselves. PovertyTalks! takes on the role of cutting through some of that red tape and pointing out that with financial poverty a thing of the past there is plenty of work still to do, it would just look a little different from the model we are all used to.

I saw a space for me, my agency and experience at that table. It turned to be a chance to work with some of the brightest, most knowledgeable and generally great people on an issue that is and will always be near and dear to my heart. Enough for All. So I asked to join those people and haven’t regretted it once, even when some of the work feels like sandpaper rubbing on an exposed dental nerve.

Have A Great One!

Sue Gwynn

Sue has been a member of Poverty Talks since 2014 and sits on the peer support working group.