Breaking the Cycle of Poverty and Despair

World Vision is committed to overcoming poverty and injustice in the world—including here at home. Poverty in the United States exists in the midst of prosperity, and is characterized by a lack of safety, security, and access to basic resources.

World Vision’s U.S. Programs team works across the nation in neighborhoods and communities characterized by poverty and violent crime, including juvenile crime. Conditions in these communities can produce a sense of despair among local youth. Without intervention, these young people are likely to be denied the opportunity to experience life in all its fullness.

Learn more about how World Vision helps children overcome poverty through education:
The Key to the Future: Education Unlocks Children's Potential

The Need

• Sixty percent of the 1.2 million students who drop out of high school every year are from low-income families.1
• Lack of education is one of the strongest predictors of criminal activity. Sixty-five percent of convicts are dropouts.1
• Seventy percent of eighth-graders can’t read at their grade level—and most will never catch up.1
• In a 2005 assessment of the math skills of eighth-graders, only 13 percent of students living in poverty achieved a score of “proficient” compared with 40 percent of those who were not poor. Forty-nine percent of children living in poverty had scores below the threshold for basic competency, compared to just 21 percent of non-poor children.2
• Approximately 8 million U.S. students struggle to read at grade level. Some 70 percent of these need remediation. These struggling readers can read words on a page, but are usually not able to comprehend what they read.3

1. ED in ’08, Strong American Schools
2. National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Education Progress 2005 Mathematics Assessment (U.S. Dept. of Education, Institute of Education Sciences)
3. “ Reading Next: A Vision for Action and Research in Middle and High School Literacy,” by Gina Biancarosa and Catherine Snow, Alliance for Excellent Education, 2004