Quote

It is widely known that the effects of childhood poverty follow children through adolescence and into adulthood.

I am deeply concerned about the impact of poverty on children because poverty can destroy their future and bind them to a life of misery.

You can't raise the aspirations of a child and then leave them hanging. Poverty can't be solved by a project. It's solved by a relationship, collaboration.

Poverty is a very complicated issue, but feeding a child isn't.

If you are born into poverty, the chances are good that your children will be born into poverty. Find a way to give poor kids the same cognitive stimulus that rich kids receive, and they should end up with the same tools for success.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

With the right support, a child growing up in a dysfunctional household, who was destined for a lifetime on benefits could be put on an entirely different track - one which sees them move into fulfilling and sustainable work. In doing so, they will pull themselves out of poverty.

Poverty is more than a material experience; it's a psychological state as well, one that is infused with anxiety. And decision-making is very complex because every decision you make has an impact on your future and survival.

A lot of children grow up in poverty with flawed parents, but their inner world is still as inherently filled with wonder and innocence as children who are kept away from the city's underbelly.

We do nothing for children between the ages of zero and five. And we seem to be quite happy to have children growing up in not just poverty, which wouldn't be so bad, but isolation, lack of people around them, lack of support, lack of ability to go out and play in the dirt.