Students Help

Tu Tran Huynh was deeply touched by the homeless children she met as a high-school volunteer at Sacramento’s Loaves and Fishes dining hall. She wanted to do more to help, so as a sophomore at UC Davis she co-founded a student organization to advocate for the local poor.

The group, Help and Education Leading to Prevention (HELP), now in its second year, helps community service programs serve meals, hosts a free Thanksgiving dinner, collects food and clothing donations, tutors children at a local group home and works to educate the public about poverty.

“If we can’t solve a problem within our own little niche, we can’t really solve world problems,” said Huynh, a biomedical engineering student who grew up in Sacramento after moving with her parents from Vietnam when she was 10.

HELP has 13 members who pay a $7 per-quarter fee, but Huynh said the group has a much wider participation. Meetings last year drew about 100 students, and about 250 signed up for HELP’s e-mail list.

Huynh hopes students can help break the cycle of poverty by serving as role models, encouraging poor children to do well in school and to dream of a better life. “Our whole goal is to let them know there are people who care.”

Related stories:

Homelesss—Poorest of the Poor
The homeless, says sociologist Dean MacCannell, are a lot like the rest of us—with dreams of a decent job, good home and a nice vacation. The difference is that “their relationship to the world is broken, usually by a drug or alcohol problem.” [more]

The New Rural Poor
Mention poverty and many people think of the inner cities. But a number of small Central Valley towns have poverty rates rivaling those found of the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles and Oakland. [more]

The Poor Get Poorer
Since 2001, the U.S. economy has been growing and the standard of living going up, but more than 4 million more Americans have slipped into poverty. Three UC Davis economists recently took a closer look at the reasons why and found the answer lies largely in a growing wage gap. [more]

The Compassion Gap
Hurricane Katrina exposed more than the face of poverty in the United States, says sociologist Fred Block. It also revealed a historic schism in American attitudes—a “compassion gap” between traditions of helping and blaming the poor. [more]

Back to introduction, Poverty in the Land of Plenty,

Kathleen Holder is associate editor of UC Davis Magazine. Photos by Karin Higgins/UC Davis.