Romi Levine
News Reporter
Humber faculty and staff were told Tuesday they can play a role in helping students escape from poverty.
“Education is the source of a solution,” an expert on poverty in schools, Grace-Edward Galabuzi said in a lecture attended by about 50 people gathered in a conference room at the North Campus.
“It empowers young people and communities, prepares new avenues of communication, helps expand personal choice and control over one’s environment,” he said.
Galabuzi, a professor of politics and administration at Ryerson University who has written extensively on the subject of poverty within schools, cited some warning signs that could alert teachers to a student in need.
Grace-Edward Galabuzi speaks about poverty affecting youth.
“Data shows that students from the most deprived areas account for high levels of absence in schools, low levels of attendance and more likely to leave school without qualification,” he said.
Human rights and diversity manager at North Campus, Nancy Simms, who attended the lecture, said it’s a challenge to identify students living below the poverty line.
But, she said, “poverty is real among us.”
Simms said she knows what it’s liked to struggle with poverty.
While completing her graduate degree, she said, she sometimes had to go without lunch, but was too proud to request assistance.
Many students at Humber are the same way, not knowing how to ask for help, she said.
“We must find a way to put this information up so that the students can maintain their dignity,” Simms said in an interview before the lecture.
For one thing, she said, she encourages students to access services provided by the HSF, such as the food bank. The service is currently accessed by 75 students in the North and Lakeshore campuses combined.
Professor of sociology and demography, Jim Jackson, who also attended the lecture, said there must be an effort to help poor students.
“There must be action to reach the youths, to break this cycle of poverty and despair,” he said.
[...] second is on poverty in post-secondary schools, featuring notes from a lecture given by Dr. Grace-Edward [...]