Social Change Reflection

Advanced human services professional practitioners serve the community in a number of different roles, which offer unique opportunities to effect positive social change. For example, a human services administrator may consult with other agencies to address a long-standing problem in the community, a program director may create an outreach program that targets an underserved population, and a family services specialist may advocate for a policy change on behalf of families in need.

• Reflect on what you learned in this course about social change and prevention, advocacy, and consultation.
• Consider how you will use what you learned in your current or future role in the human services profession to effect positive social change.

By Day 4

Post a response to the following questions:

• What have you learned about social change as a result of completing this course?
• How do you plan on using what you learned in your current or future role in the human services profession to effect positive social change? In your response, be sure to address how you would use prevention, advocacy, and consultation in your work.

Oahu in Hawaii is one of the places that experience high rates of poverty due to its stark difference in income among the residents.  More than 30% of the residents are living below the poverty line, and 9.4% of the native Hawaiians do not have a job, and they are overrepresented together with other pacific islanders by 210% of the homeless population in Oahu, Hawaii. Research shows that unemployment and homelessness are the main factors causing poverty among native Hawaiians. Globally individuals living in poverty, which means that their daily living budget is below $1.90, is estimated to be around 9.4% of the global population. This means that more than 800 million individuals live in extreme poverty. The number of individuals living in poverty has reduced by more than 1 billion from the 1990s to 2015 on the global level (Sumner, Hoy & Ortiz-Juarez, 2020). Assuming that the world does not experience another pandemic within the next five years, the rate of poverty will have reduced significantly. This is because the pandemic has made people be more creative, although it has led many to become poor.

One of the collaboration challenges that arise when dealing with poverty is that the organizations that deal with reducing poverty across the globe lack to work together, or they lack a common goal which makes it difficult to deal with the issues of poverty on a global level (Larantika et al., 2017). Communication challenges that exist in dealing with poverty globally are that there is a lack of a common language to address the issue in a way that is easy for individuals from different countries to understand. The challenge of lacking a common language to address the issue of poverty might persist into the future since it is complicated to address poverty in a way that is easy for all individuals to understand.

Technology and infrastructure have played a significant role in addressing the problem of poverty across the globe. With technology introducing social media, it has become easy to create awareness of poverty across the globe to a large number of people. Moreover, technology and infrastructure have also introduced different jobs that helped individuals move out of poverty across the globe. In the future, technology will help in establishing better ways of dealing with poverty across the globe.

References

Larantika, A. A. A. D., Zauhar, S., Makmur, M., & Setyowati, E. (2017). Collaboration as a strategy for poverty alleviation. International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (IJSSH), 1(3), 40-48.

Sumner, A., Hoy, C., & Ortiz-Juarez, E. (2020). Estimates of the Impact of COVID-19 on Global Poverty (No. 2020/43). WIDER working paper.