The UNC Center For Poverty, Work And Opportunity

And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby, be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this,
For me, son,
If you can...
In February, it was announced that the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill would be establishing a Center for Poverty, Work and Opportunity to study ways to eliminate poverty in the United States. It was also announced that John Edwards, who recently left political life after a stint in the U.S. Senate and a run for the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency, would not only be the director of the Poverty Center, but would also be a professor at UNC's law school, from which he and his wife Elizabeth graduated in 1977.
On March 22, he led a panel of experts in a discussion on the subject on the UNC campus, intending it to be a call to action. "This is intended to be a conversation," he said. "We want to hear from you. I want to know what you think, because at the end of the day - today and then later - we're going to ask you to join us in this cause.
"For me, this is just a continuation of something I've cared about for a long time, something I've talked about for a long time, something that I intend to devote a lot of my life to right now."
In his talks across the country about this cause, he has still held to the belief that there are "two Americas" - one for the affluent and one for everybody else - and the numbers are staggering. During the initial forum at UNC, it was revealed that the average net worth of most African-American households is $6,000 and most Hispanic households is $8,000, while the average of many white households is $80,000. Author and journalist David Shipler said, "If you go to malnutrition clinics, and you talk to parents bringing children in who are underweight and developmentally delayed, you will find more often than not that they are paying high rents, and they represent very high percentages of their income."
The audience heard from several panelists, including Loretta Smallwood-Johnson, the owner of a pizzeria who worked minimum-wage jobs for 14 years before she started her own business. She was a woman John Edwards had talked about in several speeches, saying she had "a handshake like a 250-lb. truck driver" and that she was honored to be working with the people she was working with in her pizzeria.
So far, the Poverty Center is off to a good start. Let's hope it keeps doing well, much like Jimmy Carter's Habitat for Humanity program has done over the years.

Lyrics from SIMPLE MAN by Lynryd Skynryd.