I wrote a big long thing about vocational education but I guess it didn't show up. ANyway, I do not believe for a minute that people are doomed to poverty, if they live where there are opportunities..some places it is hard to imagine working your way out of it, say Bangladesh..oh my goodness..where are great miracles happening every day? Where are the microloans started and who got the Nobel Peace Prize? People absolutely, if they are of normal (oh a loaded word) health and vigor can, in many places, get out of poverty. They do it every day. Mental health problems are a whole other story and need lots of intervention, but even many people with mental health problems could be contributing something in a sheltered situation, and many are. They need a lot of help.

One thing we do, another sensitive area, is pour so much money into special education situations where there is not much hope for a person realistically to become productive. I am talking about profound, severe cases. Those same resources put into vocational counseling and training of people with poor environments but "normal" intelligence and capacity, would reap thousands of times the benefits. This is not what people want to hear though and not where the money goes. I have seen money going for one instructional assistant taking one child to the bathroom each day and not much else. That same money could have funded a vocational counselor, such as me, as I would have worked for those wages, and Icould have placed 100 students perhaps a year in programs that would have gotten them out of poverty. Don't tell me it can't be done. You aren't talking to the right people.

It is very important to listen to people with different approaches and not thing one group or profession has all the answers. They have part of the answers. Not all of them. Look at the problems in the Romanian orphanages years ago...it is obvious to the casual observer that so many of the problems there could have been solved by a good plumber or two. Refugee camps..plumbing. Homelessness on the streets, plumbing. Migrant worker housing, plumbing. Need to hear from nurses and place them in the schools and all over the place. They tend to be very results oriented. This is a multi-faceted problem, poverty, and there are some people who it is fairly easy to get up and out. Some it will be impossible and they will have teo be supported in a clean and decent enviornment with supervision. Many of them should just get a small amount for incidentals and should not be given a social security check that can be stolen or not spent on essentials. There need to be almost dormitory situations for many people who otherwise do end up on the streets. There needs to be a sorting process so that people who need to be institutionalized are to least extent possible of course, that those who just need some support, such as day care and transportation get that, and there needs to be not just a financial safety net, but a real safety net, so they can take the bus late at night, so an ambulance will come if they are called, so girls can walk to school unhassled in the mornings, so children can play outside once again. Some of this is not too hard to accomplish...probably if you keep one person out of jail you can hire one policewoman if the money was in the same pot. We could do a lot with better lighting. We could do better security in housing projects. We could have more cameras pretty much everywhere and I know people would complain but too bad.