Charities unite to tackle poverty as four in ten Hackney kids live below breadline

Solidarity: The Speak Out About Poverty planning team. Photograph: Hackney CVS

For all that Hackney has been going up in the world over recent years, widespread and severe poverty is still a huge problem for many of its residents.

In May, a network of charities supporting vulnerable groups across the borough is coming together to make clear the heavy toll poverty continues to take on its communities.

Speak Out About Poverty is being run by the Community Empowerment Network, a forum for co-ordinated action run by Hackney Council for Voluntary Services (Hackney CVS), the umbrella group for voluntary organisations in the Borough.

The event’s aim is to bring together residents, voluntary organisations and local politicians under one roof so that they can find better ways of supporting each other to cope with, and move out of poverty, as well as campaign together more effectively to stop the growth of inequality.

One-on-one support and advice will be on offer alongside theatre pieces designed to spark discussion and new ideas, based on real local experiences.

Groups involved include care and support service Outward, and the Hackney Refugee Forum.

Matt Bray of Hackney CVS says the event is designed to do just what it says on the tin: “We live and work in a borough where 41% of children live in poverty. We need to work together to agree that such realities are not acceptable.”

Bray says the agenda comes from grassroots concerns. “Local community groups and residents tell us that in-work poverty is an increasing issue due to low wages, expensive child-care and ever-rising housing costs,” he says.

“The poverty of austerity impacts disproportionately on groups that already experience disadvantage and/or discrimination. Women earn around 15% less than men in the first place, so when austerity hits, it hits women harder. Women from Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee communities are even harder hit.”

Also at the event will be Precious Lives, a Hackney charity set up by and for members of the local African community, aiming to “highlight the link between poverty, inequality and crime, and their impact on physical and mental health” says Co-ordinator Bosco Ssendegeya.

“Many people we work with are caught up in a poverty cycle,” explains Ssendegeya, “the effects of which lead to crime, domestic violence, ill-health, low self-esteem, inequalities and social exclusion.”

‘The poverty of austerity impacts disproportionately on groups that already experience disadvantage’

Precious Lives works with many refugees and asylum seekers, groups which Ssendegeya says are, by definition, particularly vulnerable.

“Many refugees suffer from PTSD and depression as a result of events that led them to seek asylum,” he says.

But Ssendegeya believes that official support systems can hinder the situation more than help: “Restrictions on refugees’ and migrants’ access to welfare benefits and health facilities lead to extreme levels of poverty.”

“Unfortunately, we at Precious Lives are seeing more people in Hackney trapped in poverty.”

Tickets for #SpeakOutAboutPoverty can be booked at hcvs.org.uk/

This article is published as part of a Community Partnership between the Hackney Citizen and Hackney CVS.