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Critical Self Reflection: My First Experience Of Poverty In Canada

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Critical Self Reflection Poverty is an experience that touches many people. I believe my first experience with poverty came in elementary school. Everyday, my mother would come to pick me up from school and we would regularly drive by a man begging on the street. Often, we would stop and give him a piece of fruit or a granola bar. This is, I believe when two of my views surrounding poverty began to change. Before this, I believed that anyone on the street was scary and should be avoided. Yet this man was perfectly polite and always grateful for what we gave him. He was not scary and I did not feel threatened by him. He changed my perspective on those struggling to survive.
Another view that changed after this experience was my view on poverty in Canada in a general sense. About 1 in 7 people in Canada live in poverty according to the Low Income Measure. That is an estimated 4.8 million people (CPJ, 2014) . Before seeing the reality, I believed that poverty was almost non-existent in Canada and that those who were dealing with this issue were a minority. Seeing this man struggling …show more content…

I was raised in a middle class family. My parents were employed throughout my childhood and I never had to worry about money. I always knew that there would be food, shelter and clothing available for me. There were never any real worries about paying the bills. Seeing poverty first hand showed me that not everyone was as fortunate as I have been. In fact, until I encountered poverty I do not believe I even realized I was lucky. After taking the Poverty awareness survey I can see how little I really knew about poverty. I was unaware of what poverty really looked like. I had no understanding of who it really impacts. There were many assumptions that I had about poverty which were untrue. I am unsure of where and how these ideas developed and did not even fully realize that they were

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