Poverty and Empowerment

A new report from the United States compares the UK record on poverty with other countries and the results are actually remarkable.

The Columbia University Professor Jane Waldfogel presented her findings this week in New York. In fact she shows that the UK has managed to reduce absolute poverty in children by a half since 1999, that's some 1.7 million children whose lives have been changed. America did not do so well and still has 20% of their children in absolute poverty. Other European countries found that their poverty levels have only stagnated at the same levels and they have been unable to unlock the secrets to success.

Women are particularly affected by poverty and their empowerment helps them bring their children with them into a better future. 90% of all single parents are female headed households with dependant children in the UK. These families will disproportionately suffer from fuel poverty, economic support and opportunities to increase their life chances such as access to higher education.

What has worked so far in the UK is a complex series of measures that have involved local and national government programmes to empower children and to support low paid workers, which have especially helped women. Economic credits have included the Sure Start children's programme and working family and children's credits. Other measures have been specific programmes that identify specific children in need of support at an early age and at a street by street level.

Women who lead families are more likely to spend their meagre incomes on essential items for the whole family such as food, fuel and clothing. Their national and global impact on the environment is negligible in every single sense.

Women's Environmental Network have pioneered a programme to influence and empower women and their dependent children in poverty in the UK. For more than ten years WEN has been supporting women and women's groups to grow their own food. This is healthy, sustainable, organic and superior quality fresh food. In one holistic project, local sustainability in action affects the health and quality of life of every single member of the family.

Rosie Boycott, London Mayor Boris Johnson's "Food Tsar" visited one of our Cultivating the Future projects in December 2009, and she, like the local police, were very impressed.

"A few weeks before I took up my job as the Mayor's food adviser, I went to see some food-growing projects in the capital, the first being in the centre of four ugly grey tower blocks in Tower Hamlets.

Unlike many such places I've since visited, this space wasn't full of rubbish, old beer cans, used condoms or yesterday's crumpled newspapers.

Keys were needed to enter the garden, which was surrounded by a cheery, bright-blue fence and divided into three sections: one for a kids' play area with swings and slides, one with picnic tables and a barbecue and the third, a series of raised beds where women of many nationalities were growing herbs and vegetables, talking and laughing as they did so.

The project was the brainchild of the Women's Environmental Network, which aims to make life better for women in very practical ways.

Its great work on the garden has spun off other benefits. Now all the residents felt safe to walk through the central space because it is tidy and litter-free."

WEN had found that there was very little practical help for women from ethnically diverse backgrounds living together in areas of deprivation like those in Tower Hamlets and cultivating the future was the response. Women involved have realised other health, social and educational benefits. The project has encouraged women to reconnect with nature and grow traditional vegetables from their homelands. The wider community is affected, with many other local people becoming interested in sustainability and community empowerment.

From its success the Taste of a Better Future national network of community food growing projects has evolved, with groups meeting in the popular Culture Kitchen evens when women come together and share their ideas and stories while sharing the fruits of their labour in cooking and feasting. One such event was held this March by WEN in London's East End.

WEN was also recently praised for its empowerment programme Getting to the Roots, which trains volunteers to support new and existing groups offering specific skills, education and training and personal confidence and empowerment.

But to wholly integrate sustainable practices these projects need to be mainstream, in almost every housing estate, using all available land and gardens, plots and spare earth or fields. People and especially those in dire need of help and support, can be taught how to grow their own food.

The cost to a government if one of their departments paid for this sort of WEN project is about £200 per person, per year. That's not a lot if you compare most training programmes, offering slim deliverables and no job at the end of the training. For women in London, these projects offer a lifeline, to a better healthier future for their whole families.

For those in poverty, the ability to eat fresh organic produce created by your own hand is a priceless gift for the environment and each family.


They can stop buying costly vegetables from supermarkets, uniformly produced, expensively packaged, environmentally tarnished, from pesticide use to transportation and even air freighted, sometimes refrigerated for good measure, which can even be peeled for "convenience".

Millions of people could be eating more healthily, and growing foods that they like and will enjoy more. From an exercise and health perspective, growing your own food is fabulous. Forget the gym or running, putting energy into gardening will pay off handsomely in terms of personal health and fitness.

Urban food growing could be really big.
Urban food growing should be really big.
This could be the big idea for the whole country to get behind to create a greener, more local, more prosperous and safer future. What better to help people in poverty than to give them seeds and tools and education so those that want can help themselves?