Poverty is a serious problem running through the Lehigh Valley. While the Valley offers a great array of restaurants, shops and services, many of its residents are unable to take advantage of them as a result of their economic disadvantages.
Nearly one in five children in the Lehigh Valley are living in poverty. In Allentown, two in five children are living in poverty. That’s 43.8% - an extremely high rate.
According to The United Way, a non-profit organization consisting of volunteers and contributors that serve their communities, 27% of all third graders tested in the Lehigh Valley are both economically disadvantaged and have reading capabilities below their grade level. The same was found for 31% of all seventh graders and 31% of all eleventh graders in the Lehigh Valley. Similarly, of all Hispanic seventh graders who were tested, 50% of them were not reading at their grade level.
In 2005, nearly 600 students in the Allentown School District were homeless for some portion of the year.
Clearly, a great amount of Lehigh Valley residents have been affected by poverty in some way. However, there are several organizations that are making great strides towards improving the lives of these people.
One of these organizations is the United Way. Mark Margherita, the outreach coordinator for the community schools of the Bethlehem school district, acknowledges that poverty is a serious issue in the area.
“The poverty situation in the Lehigh Valley is actually a lot more serious than a lot of times a lot of people think,” he said. “Broughal Middle School, which is right here next to Lehigh’s Campus, has about 90% of the students on free and reduced lunch.”
Margherita explains that reduced lunch at schools is a prime indicator that families are living at or below the poverty line.
He also says that many of the Lehigh Valley’s food pantries and homeless shelters are reaching capacity without being able to serve all the residents that are in need.
As a result, the United Way has created a system to try to combat these issues.
“We focus on three main objectives that we have for the Lehigh Valley,” Margherita said. “The first of those is older adults being as independent as possible. The second area we focus on is youth graduating from high school. The third area that we focus on is Lehigh Valley residents having access to their basic needs.”
Another group working towards improving poverty levels in the Lehigh Valley is Reading Rocks. As a coordinator for the program this year, Lehigh University Senior, Allie Einsidler believes that this program provides students in the local Bethlehem area an opportunity to improve reading levels that are currently much below average.
“Some students in the reading program can be as old as 13, because their reading levels are so behind,” said Einsidler. “It also does so in a way that they can be mentored by Lehigh students, since they look up to them.”
One of the moments that Einsidler recalled during mentoring for Reading Rocks was being told, “’If the kids start opening up about personal things at home, of a bad nature, just sit there and nod.’ This was an eye opener to me, because I have never really been forced to look beyond my own personal situations.”
Unfortunately, this poor reading level is a huge determinant of where students will end up in five to ten years, and lack of quality education is a factor in the poverty level in the Lehigh Valley.
Yet, both Margherita and Einsidler seem to be optimistic about the progression of the Lehigh Valley’s economic status in the past few years. Residents have been recently able to lower the unemployment level, education has seemed to improve with the help of programs like Reading Rocks, and motivation to rise above the poverty level is prevalent among a majority of Bethlehem citizens.
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