Ruby Payne, founder and CEO of aha! Process, wrote a four-part series of articles on poverty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These articles are just as relevant today as they were then. Starting this month and running until August, aha! Process will highlight each of the four articles in the series as part of its weekly Tuesday blog posts.

The first article, titled “Understanding and Working with Students and Adults from Poverty,” stresses that poverty occurs in all countries and among people of all ethnicities, that economic class is on a continuum, that generational poverty and situational poverty are different, and that everyone uses the hidden rules of the class in which they were raised.

It is possible, Payne stresses, to move out of poverty; one is not necessarily stuck in an economic class. However, moving out of poverty is difficult if not impossible to do on one’s own. Payne writes, “Individuals who made it out of poverty usually cite an individual who made a significant difference to them.”

Click here to read the article in full, and click here for a podcast version of the piece.