Amber, it is clear that you have no clue about poverty, its causes, or its solution. 

Do you have a business?  Do you hire people, train unskilled laborers into skilled trades?  Do you give people the resolve and encouragement to lift themselves by their own bootstraps if they must?

How many people have you trained to lead others, to do what we should be doing, and they in turn train leaders?

Until you do that, you are part of the problem, not part of any feasible solution.  The problem is that weak-kneed leftists make mistakes -- severe mistakes -- and those mistakes cost others any hope of lasting remedy.

The very instant you become sentimental, you lose that essential objectivity to make a fair judgment call. 

If we left it to you, everyone would lose.