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Poverty places not just one or two obstacles but multiple obstacles in a child's pathway to what we would consider to be regular development - cognitively, intellectually and emotionally.

All over the world, children facing the challenges of poverty attend schools that aren't designed to meet their extra needs; across country lines, the lives of marginalized kids look far more similar than they do different.

You have kids growing up in some of the worst circumstances financially, living in some of the worst ghettos, and they succeed. They succeed because an adult figure, typically a mother, maybe a grandmother, nourishes the kid, supports the kid, protects the kid, encourages the kid to succeed. It's as if the environment never happened.

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

Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative need of its own, which shapes its individuality.

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.

Let's remember the children who come from broken homes, surrounded by crime, drugs, temptation, their peers having babies out of wedlock, but who still manage to get a good education despite the many obstacles they face every day.

There's no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving all citizens a chance to pursue happiness and pursue their goals, then we cannot continue to marginalize entire groups of people.