Campaigners and charities across Scotland are coming together to take part in this year’s Challenge Poverty Week.
The annual drive to highlight the ‘injustice of poverty in wealthy Scotland’ runs from Monday 7 to Sun 13 October.
Today, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation launches its Poverty in Scotland 2024 report, showing that the number of people living in very deep poverty has risen to 40% of all of those in poverty, up from 26% in the mid 1990s.
But the week also highlights proposed solutions, and yesterday (Sun 6) Scotland’s faith leaders united around a call to deliver a Minimum Income Guarantee with the potential to draw a line under poverty once and for all.
Representatives of Christian, Muslim, and Sikh congregations say the measure is needed to allow everyone to live a ‘decent, dignified, and healthy’ life.
The Guarantee is just one of a range of policies that campaigners will be raising with the Scottish and UK governments during the week, including scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap, boosting the value of Universal Credit and the Scottish Child Payment, investing more in social housing, extending free public transport schemes, and delivering universal free school breakfast and lunch provision to all pupils in Scotland.
Poverty Alliance chief executive Peter Kelly said: “People in Scotland believe in justice and compassion. They don’t want to live in a country where more and more of their fellow citizens are being pushed towards deep poverty.
“During Challenge Poverty Week, events are taking place across Scotland which will shine a light on poverty and the importance of building just and compassionate solutions to this enduring .
Hundreds of organisations are coming together to call for a wellbeing economy with good work that pays people a real Living Wage.
“They want strong public systems that we can all rely on – like health, education, transport, and social security – so that everyone has a solid foundation to build a life free from the threat of poverty, debt, and destitution.
“And they want political leaders to take responsibility for investing in a better society, with better taxes creating better budgets.”
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