When Ball State University senior Kevin McBride was inspired to raise awareness for child poverty, he figured the problem would be half a world away - not in Muncie.
He quickly realized he was wrong.
According to The American Community Survey and the U.S. Census Bureau, Muncie is one of the top ten poorest communities with a population under 250,000, and has a 32 percent child poverty rate.
McBride decided something had to be done to address the problem, so he spearheaded the Ball State chapter of Ambassadors for Children, an international organization that has given more than $5 million in world wide aid to combat child poverty.
McBride, a senior elementary education major and former president of Elementary Education in Action, said he knew he had to get involved with AFC after learning about the plight of impoverished children.
"I just couldn't imagine the types of situations these children we were helping were in," said McBride. "The type of things other chapters of AFC have been able to accomplish for them is just remarkable."
McBride said Muncie's child poverty problem urged him to get the AFC involved in the local Boys and Girls Club. Tuesdays through Saturdays, members of Ball State's AFC volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club where they interact with children from low-income families.
"The way to really impact poverty in Muncie in my view is to help out the kids, they need a view of a future," said McBride. "If they have that, they can start working toward getting out of poverty."
Eva Zygmunt-Fillwalk, former director of an inner-city poverty outreach program in Minnesota, and the 2007 director of the Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry's study on poverty in Delaware County, recently spoke at a Ball State AFC meeting.
Zygmunt-Fillwalk said organizations like the AFC are important because solving poverty requires more than waiting for individuals to volunteer.
"I think raising awareness, first and foremost, is very important because you can't do something about an issue you don't realize exists," Zygmunt-Fillwalk said.
Zygmunt-Fillwalk said it's easy for poverty to become invisible due to the fact that it tends to be "pocketed" in isolated parts of the community. A key solution to poverty is reaching out to poor families and helping them build networks that break poverty's isolating effect, she said.
Zigmunt-Fillwalk said students can get the misconception that they have to travel outside of the country to provide child poverty relief.
"We have a lot of poverty here in America, and a child poverty rate that is surprising in an industrialized nation," Zygmunt-Fillwalk said. "One-fifth to one-sixth of children are living in poverty in this country."
Ball State's AFC has only been active since October, discovering what steps will make the program successful is challenging, McBride said.
McBride said he has to commute from Indianapolis, where he student teaches, to manage the AFC. He said balancing school, work and the AFC is difficult but he's proud to have headed the start of the Ball State Chapter.
McBride said he is confident students will volunteer once they understand what children living in poverty face.
"If you put yourself in the shoes of these children, which is almost impossible, you would know why you need to be involved," McBride said.
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