This year is the 35th anniversary of the House of Commons all-party resolution to end child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. This resolution’s objective was never met and child poverty continues to increase across the country. The story for Nova Scotia is particularly grim as child poverty here ranks the highest in Atlantic Canada and the second highest among the provinces.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) notes that, in Nova Scotia, 41,500 children presently live below the poverty line. The figure for Lunenburg County is 1,810 children. By extension, these children’s households are struggling to make ends meet. The fact that poverty in our province increased by 16.1% between 2021 and 2022, the highest increase in Canada over that one-year period, shows a troubling trend. The situation becomes more troubling when we consider that successive provincial governments have failed to match social security payments and the minimum wage with the cost of living. In Nova Scotia, the minimum wage will increase to $15.70 per hour on April 1, this year, whereas the living wage in Lunenburg County is estimated to be $25.05 per hour. This shortfall means that people in our county are working in full-time, year-round jobs and living in poverty. This also means that a number of successive provincial and federal governments have been neglecting to appropriately address poverty and inequality by ensuring that people are either provided with support or paid a wage that enables them to meet their living costs and support their families fully and with dignity. Instead, parents in our community continue to struggle to provide their children with the bare necessities. Our children should be thriving but too many are barely scraping by.
The CCPA notes that a poverty-elimination plan should focus on families and households “but investing in youth and their families is critical to lifting them out of poverty and breaking the cycle.” The Rotary Club of Lunenburg’s focus for March and April, this year, is its Vulnerable Families Support Program, which centres on families and households. Last year, our Rotary Club raised $10,000 to assist vulnerable families in Lunenburg County through our community partnerships. This year, we aim to double that amount. We work with community partners such as school principals and guidance counsellors, social workers, and community leaders to identify and respond to needs by providing support for groceries, winter clothing, school supplies, sneakers, backpacks, dental care, eyeglasses, and other identified necessities. We also help families with their utility bills, so they can keep the lights on and stay warm in winter, and telephone data to maintain connections to employment and essential services.
Our other charitable giving also benefits families as we provide dictionaries to grade-three children at schools in the county and funds to ProKids and Schools Plus to cover fees for extracurricular activities. We also donate annually to St. Vincent de Paul, another charity that assists families in need, and to the Health Services Foundation of the South Shore to boost their fundraising efforts. Year round, we work hard to raise funds through activities such as concerts, dances, flea markets, and raffle baskets. We also receive donations from generous people and businesses in our community who donate through a number of means, including our website.
Rotary emphasizes service above self. Through Rotary programmes that support those who are struggling in our community, Rotarians attempt to become the “glue” between those in our community who wish to provide support and those who could benefit from assistance. If you would like to know more about Rotary or to assist with our campaign for vulnerable families, please visit our website at www.rotarylunenburg.com. Working together we can prevent poverty from limiting the lives of children and families in our community.
Glenna Jenkins is an economist and an active member of the Rotary Club of Lunenburg.
