 "Photo: Taya Hanaver")
About 30,000 children die each day as a result of poverty around the world, according to UNICEF research.
This fact, which breaks down to about one child's death every three seconds, motivated members of IUP's Sociology Club to distribute facts about poverty in the Oak Grove.
Dressed in ragged clothes Monday to draw attention, event organizer Derek Dobson (freshman, sociology) and other club members distributed a small sheet of facts about poverty, both on a local and worldwide scale.
"I thought I should better myself and learn about poverty around the world," Dobson said, "and when I saw it was a child every three seconds, I really wanted to try to educate people and try to prevent this."
In addition to the more than one billion children that live in poverty worldwide, Dobson said that through his UNICEF research he found that half the world lives on less than $2 a day.
In order for students to relate to these facts, Dobson also researched poverty in Indiana County using Penn State's Living Wage Calculator available at livingwage.geog.psu.edu.
According to the calculator, the living wage in Indiana County for a single parent with one child is $13.23 and $7.42 for one adult, both based on a 40-hour work week.
Although Pennsylvania's minimum wage rose to $7.15 in July, this still leaves the single parent $6.08 an hour short of a living wage and the single adult 27 cents an hour short.
These estimates take into account expenses for food, childcare, medical bills, housing and transportation. "These numbers are only Indiana County," said Shaun Murphy (senior, sociology), who also helped distribute poverty information. "They don't take into account higher costs of living in other cities like New York."
For example, the cost of living for one adult according to the calculator is $9.53 in Philadelphia, $10.27 in Los Angeles and $12.35 in New York City.
According to Dobson, the Sociology Club would also like to do more to educate IUP students about poverty, including distributing updated information next semester.
"I really hope a lot of people read it," he said.
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