Last Saturday Community Links joined thousands of people from across the UK in the End Child Poverty, Keep the Promise rally, demonstrating to government that we are serious about eradicating child poverty by 2020 and we want government to be as well.
Although earlier PM Gordon Brown expressed his intention to enshrine the target in law there is very little talk about how this will happen in practise. Speaking to people in London on the way to the rally many commented on all the talk of ending child poverty from this Government but they had no idea what had actually been done about it.
Community Links staff and families from Newham made our presence known throughout the march. We talked to people and spread information about the national Need Not Greed campaign which is seeking to change benefit laws to enable parents who work informally to make the transition into formal work; out of poverty and not further into debt. The campaign also seeks to create more awareness and better understanding of the issue. We got people to think about the realities of poverty and how parents are forced to work cash-in-hand and become trapped there.
People talked about the role of government, the media and the general public in stigmatising people on benefits and how this can have a detrimental effect on getting people into employment as It pushes people further underground and further socially excluded. We got over 200 people signing up to the campaign and writing messages of support as well as writing to their MP to support the campaign. We found many people really understood the problems with the current benefits system and the traps that make people take up cash-in-hand work. There was a lot of empathy and a desire for a change in the system but most importantly people were talking about it and realising that the public has a role to play here too in ending the stigmatisation and to start understanding and supporting people.
A number of politicians and celebrities turned up including James Purnell and Stephen Timms whom we have been in touch with regarding the campaign, as it developed from our work in Newham.
There were various speeches in Trafalgar Square after the march but the most noteworthy ones were from speaking to families affected by poverty. The immediate and continual realities such as homelessness or separation of children and parents because of poverty poignantly tells of the reasons why we need to eradicate poverty and the urgency of action needed to be taken. Although it was a fun day, it was for a very serious issue.
It was great for local residents and Community Links to come together and put our stamp on a national event that is so relevant to the area we work and live in. It was also a chance to show we want changes and we need government to support Newham to makes change happen. The children were the stars of the show and held the banners they made with pride as photographers snapped away.
A big thank you to everybody who came together on the day and made such a big impact. I encourage others to so the same, to get involved in the campaign and create a voice for change.
