San Antonio College Library

"Because I was bad in my last life." "Because Allah has willed it." "Because the rich do nothing for the poor." "Because the poor do nothing for themselves." "Because it is my destiny." These are just some of the answers to the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asks in cities and villages around the globe: "Why are you poor?" In the tradition of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, writer Vollmann struggles to confront poverty...

Having survived the two months, we have to say goodbye to our new friends in Peña Blanca. Coming home, it is hard to get used to our lifestyles back in the U.S. How can we make a difference for the people we left back in Peña Blanca? Starting small, we begin to use our story to inspire other students to follow their own passions so that together we can change the world.

Today, we are setting out on the most intense experience of our lives: to live in extreme poverty; on just {20}1 a day for 56 days. We're traveling from the U.S. to the small village of Peña Blanca in rural Guatemala. There are so many things we don't know about the next two months. What will we eat every day, how will we budget such a small amount of money, what will happen if we have an emergency?

This film follows seven different children who live in poverty in seven different countries--India, Egypt, USA (New York), Romania, Cambodia, Rwanda and Brazil--who share their experiences of life in poverty so articulately while retaining their joyous spirit of childhood.

"Voices of the Poor" provides a unique and detailed picture of the life of the poor and explains the constraints poor people face to escape from poverty in a way that more traditional survey techniques do not capture well. Each of the three volumes demonstrates the importance of voice and power in poor people's definition of poverty. 'Voices of the Poor' concludes that we need to expand our conventional views of poverty which focus on income expenditure,...

This program explores school and classroom success factors that support the academic achievement and life readiness of secondary school students.

One in eight Americans, approximately 37 million people, live below the poverty line although the United States is still the richest country in the world. This program looks at the various factors that contribute to this problem and what can be done to break the cycle of multigenerational poverty.

This book offers a view of the lives of the world's poorest people, helping to explain why the poor tend to borrow in order to save, why they miss out on free life-saving immunizations but pay for drugs that they do not need, and the cointerintuitive challenges faced by those living on less than 99 cents a day. Billions of government dollars, and thousands of charitable organizations and NGOs, are dedicated to helping the world's poor. But much of...

Much popular belief, and public policy, rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their powers to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world has led to many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In this book, the contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies...