You need a key to get in

Melody is a single mother of two young boys. She is a social work student at the Winnipeg Education Centre and is also active in the anti-poverty movement. Melody is a recent recipient of the "Beating the Odds" award from the Learning Disabilities Association of Manitoba.

Melody says:

The first time I remember hearing the economy word was watching TV. Donald Duck's uncle Scrooge McDuck, the richest duck in the whole world, came on and he was swimming in a vault of money. He started talking about the economy as the system that money moves through, and when he said the word economy big huge dollar signs fell down from the sky and bags of money. That's how I learned to link economy with money.

Watching this little white duck swim in all this money and hearing all these stories about how the economy got started really perked me but at the same time disappointed me. I wasn't and still am not swimming in a vault of money. And nobody I knew at that time was swimming in a vault of money. I realized that this word was something really, really important and yet I was not able to participate in it.

In school we would do questions about money and stuff like that. Because of my learning disability, not being able to do the math questions and linking that with the money questions, fortified that I'm not able to do this, not able to understand this. And it became very intimidating. I remember feeling very much not a part of the economy. We had just enough money to survive but we never talked about saving so it didn't feel like we were part of the economy. Economy to me meant having extra and we didn't have that.

As far as I know there weren't any courses on how to do life budgets unless you were pregnant or considered high-risk. That meant a lot of minority children were in those classes because they're just expected to be poor. In the classes there's nothing mentioned about saving or putting in stocks. Everything is clothes, rent, food, just the basics that you need to survive which are the basics that you receive on assistance. There were business classes too where the numbers were so high I can't even fathom having that much money. But those were only for the smart kids and I wasn't considered a smart kid.

It all gave me the impression that economy is something that you need a key for, a key to get in. Either you have that key or you have to push your way through the door. Sometimes you're given a key and you're not told what door it's to open. Take for instance, being on social assistance. You're given money - a key to enter the professional world - but you're not given enough so the key doesn't reach all the way into the door. So you either have to shove the key in a little bit further or you have to totally pull the key out and try it in another door. If the next door happens to be a little bit smaller you may be able to open the door but you can't fit through it because it's too small.

I don't think that's fair. We should all have the same equal opportunities to enter the economy. We shouldn't have to break the door down in order to get in.

My view of the economy is changing. Now every time I buy something I see that I'm contributing. Every time I go grocery shopping or pay my bills or whatever I think in my mind: I'm paying into the economy, I'm helping out here. And when I'm sharing my resources again - this is sharing in the economy. When I'm at the second hand shop, I'm no longer thinking, "I'm buying second-hand," or when I trade something. Now I have a little thing in my mind going: "I'm participating, I'm helping this person out, we're sharing our resources, that's how we're sharing our economy." I also think of myself as participating when I am able to put a little money away and save for the future so that my kids can have some kind of trust fund. It's hard - very, very hard - but we're working on it.

But right now being a mother is my work, that's my job. Whether I'm just making sure they're clean, they brush their teeth, they're fed. It's all very important. All of that builds their character and I believe if my children have character then they're able to stand up for themselves, to be gracious to others, to be accepting and tolerant. To me that's character. If I can give them that and teach them to stand on their own, then I've done my job. And they also can contribute and pass that on to their children which contributes once again into the economy. That's much more important than bringing home the cheque because once your kids have that solidness, that "Yes I'm worthy," they can handle it when the rest of the world tells them they're not. I know my oldest one goes, "That doesn't matter, my mom thinks I'm great."

I'm not minimizing anymore what I'm doing and when I'm talking to other people I'm much quicker to say, no you are part of it, you are part of the economy. Don't minimize it.

I have overcome a very hard task that I had to struggle through. I've made it and I've overcome and that means I can do it again.