Poverty and Education

The world experiences a self-perpetuating problem with poverty and education. In a sense, it’s a “chicken and egg” type of situation.


Which came first: low education or poverty?

When parents are stuck in a cycle of generational poverty, they often raise their children without education. Sometimes they can’t afford to send their kids to school or they don’t see the benefit of education in their daily struggle to survive. Likewise, when a person doesn’t get an education, poverty is often the result. For that reason, education is a major key to ending the cycle of poverty, but, unfortunately, poverty is still one of the largest obstacles to education.

In order for this self-perpetuating problem of poverty and education to cease, there needs to be something that breaks the cycle. That’s where GFA World comes in!


Dayita is a living example of the impact of poverty and education.

Dayita, a mother of four children, lives in Asia. With her husband ill, she was forced to provide for her family on her own. As an illiterate woman, her job skills were limited. She could do manual labor, but that’s about all she was qualified to do. So, she began gathering firewood from nearby forests and selling it to meet the needs of her family. The work was difficult and made it difficult to spend time with her family. She didn’t earn enough money to send her children to school. She couldn’t teach them basic reading and writing, either, since she didn’t know how to read and write herself. The cycle of poverty and illiteracy was on schedule to continue into the next generation.


Then GFA World stepped in to help.

Knowing the correlation between poverty and education, GFA workers enrolled Dayita’s eldest daughter in our child sponsorship program.1 Her daughter began receiving the support she needed to attend and succeed in school. Her daughter’s joy began to spread to her younger siblings as well. The help Dayita’s family received made a tremendous difference and helped ease the financial burden on the family.


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