Easy peasy Dickey. Mitigation is about finding, providing and or linking people to resources. Increased resources = decreased poverty.

Don't send a mother or father to school and expect them to do much with that 'opportunity' if they are consumed with struggling to provide the most basic of needs for food, clothing and shelter to their family. Mitigation aimed at meeting of basic needs will increase the likelihood the parent will make good 'use' of the educational opportunity, and therefore increase the likelihood that at some point in the future, the family will not need mitigation to meet basic needs.

Need based scholarships and grants are mitigation.

Subsidized child care or health care, section 8 housing, bus vouchers (in those places where there are buses or mass transit) are mitigation.

Little mitigation is needed to prevent poverty. Prevention is something that occurs in the absence of a problem. Prevention is an action taken to avoid the occurrence of a problem. Mitigation will almost always be a necessary part of any successful effort to remedy a problem, however.

You talk so arrogantly of values, and give the impression that you believe that you, and people who are financially able to take care of their basic needs, have a corner on the market on good values. If you actually knew many poor people very well, (and provided your own sense of well-being and moral superiority was not too threatened by the realization)you would not, with such an extremely wide brush, cling to your assertion that the root cause of poverty is lousy values.

Mitigation is sometimes simply the right and moral action, even if it will set no stage for opportunity. Sometimes I seek ways to mitigate simply because my values dictate that I offer a plate of food if some one appears who is hungry. In the face of hunger, who is to blame doesn't matter. It is not for me to judge who deserves to eat when there is enough food to feed everyone. I am always mindful that there some seeds of hope and opportunity included in that meal I hand over, but I have no control and no attachment to the ground on which the seed lands. Maybe it is barren. Doesn't matter. Maybe the seed will rot or die before conditions occur in which it might germinate. Doesn't matter. Maybe it is one of those seeds that remain viable for a long time, and down the road, when I am long gone out of the picture, something will happen to change the conditions, and the seed will germinate. Doesn't matter. Maybe the seed will wash right off of that ground, flow down the creek, and land on some other ground where it will germinate. Doesn't matter. If the seed ever does germinate, maybe it will wither. Doesn't matter. My responsibility as a human being is to offer the plate with food on it to the hungry person in front of me.

Still waiting....