To the Journal editor:

Mining Journal Staff Writer Mary Wardell’s recent two-part series in The Mining Journal on child poverty in our state and region points out an epidemic that has increased by 35 percent over the last six years and looks like it’s getting worse.

State and local agency and program budgets are continually cut and child services are losing ground on keeping kids out of poverty.

I think it is important to keep these state support systems alive and properly funded but I want to focus on ways that we can all improve the quality of the lives of the children in our own neighborhoods and towns with our own personal efforts as citizens.

Jane Zehnder-Merrell, Kids Count project director, describes a child’s life opportunities as “shaped not only by their individual characteristics, but by the systems that surround them, the level of services, the kind of neighborhood, the neighbors, their friends and family.”

Out of those factors, half of them are neighbors and neighborhoods. We have spent many years as a nation attacking poverty from the top with large government programs with grand visions with titles like The Great Society and though these large programs are important for holding up a standard of basic service to all people, they are often limited in their ability to get at the root of poverty.

I believe that poverty starts in the mind and that the best way to combat poverty is to improve the way people think and feel about themselves. In my world this is about getting involved on a volunteer level with the kids in your neighborhood through all forms of community outreach from coaching to working with service clubs and church groups to being a Big Brother or Sister, or starting a kids program or project in your own neighborhood.

This type of war on poverty doesn’t cost the tax payer a dime and it improves the lives of all people involved from donor to recipient to everyone in the community you live in.

In our little town of Ishpeming I see a huge outpouring of this type of energy suddenly coming from many sectors. We are starting the Partridge Creek Farm at Grace Community Gardens this spring. The Inspiration Zone is building community around beautifying neighborhoods. The Youth Mountain Biking Development Program provides kids with bikes and gets them in the woods.

Watch us turn our kids around.

Dan Perkins

Ishpeming