By Vanessa Hulse
Contributing Writer
Poverty is not something that we generally want to see or think about on a daily basis. Poverty is something we as a society like to brush under the rug and hope it doesn’t interfere with our lives. Only those of us who don’t face poverty each day can avoid the topic — and then, not for very long. However, poverty still remains whether we see it or not, and therefore we should at least try to accept what is evident and do what we can to help.
Poverty has been a particular topic of interest for me for several years. I am from a poor area of New York and so from a young age, I was exposed to poverty. I didn’t fully understand what was going on until I was much older, but once I began to understand, I began to research to find more information. With the influx of information, I found out that the world around me was different than I had always imagined. I realized that there was a huge stigma against those that lived in poverty. This stigma was against the people I knew and cared about, so I quickly decided that I would do whatever I could to help remove this stigma.
Now, I will attempt to embark on a journey to learn even more about this issue by looking at the people in a particular area. Olean, New York, is a small city with approximately 14,000 people, located in Western New York. Olean is the largest community in Cattaraugus County, which is known for being one of the poorest counties in New York State.
Olean has a high percentage of people who fall below the poverty line. According to census data acquired in 2015, approximately 13.5 percent of people in Olean live in poverty. This makes Olean a perfect place to look at what living in poverty really means and how it can affect the person, because people in poverty are still people. Therefore, I invite you, whoever you are, to follow me as I learn more about what it really means to be living in poverty in small town America today.
This is part one of a series.
hulseva13@bonaventure.edu
