Blog 11

The rotunda projects really opened my mind to real world problems. One that particularly caught my eye was the project on Long Island Poverty. This project gave an amazing visual with the use of thumbtacks to represent the amount of people in every town on Long Island. It was an eye opener to me because I never really realized the amount of people that live in poverty every day. It has truly made those of Eastport South Manor realize how fortunate they are to live in a school that doesn't suffer from such high poverty levels.

Although on the plus side, studies have shown that Long Island has experienced a poverty rate of 6.7%, lower than New York State's at an average of 16%. In just a matter of five years, the poverty rate has grown on Long Island by 43%. These increases probably reflect the lasting impact of the great recession and the region’s and nation’s slow and uneven recovery. One of the most surprising things I found about this project was the low amount of people who were in poverty in East Hampton.  It has now been considered for out region, that $46,000 is considered to be the true poverty level and as much as 285,000 use food pantries every year. It is very sad to see that most of these people in poverty are children, suffering to live on Long Island.