The Social Development Commission held their 2018 “Summit On Poverty – Statewide Edition” on Thursday, September 27, and on Friday, September 28, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Over the course of the conference, over 500 low income individuals, community partners, business leaders, and policy makers from all over Wisconsin explored the shared experience of poverty and the interconnected economic, social and political lives of rural and urban Wisconsinites.
Dr. C. Nicole Mason, (Pictured here) Executive Director of the Center for Research and Policy in the Public Interest, was Friday’s Luncheon keynote speaker. She said, “It’s the idea that our success in life is much less shaped by how smart we are, but by learning self control, resiliency, optimism, and of course grit. Grit and resilience, while helpful, will not end poverty or ensure that someone who starts at the bottom of the totem pole ends up at the top. Less than 4 percent of people who start in poverty ever make it to the middle class, and that means 96 percent of people are not. This is not about how hard you work. We know that our ability to succeed in society is much less determined by our grit or resilience but by our zip codes and the families we are born into.”
