Losing roots

Whatever happened to grassroots initiatives?

I'm working on a story (that seems to be changing daily, but that's another issue) and one of the key points about it is the idea of grassroots initiatives to change the community. But it appears that in order for these groups to exist, they either need to take on a sponsor or they lose funding and shut down or reduce their services. If the city is so desperate to change the area, the need to realize that these grassroots groups are one of their best hopes for these things to succeed! Even the province realizes that it needs to address poverty head on and has created a new ministry post to deal with the growing poverty in the province.

I've never understood why poverty exists. Someone once told me that it was a necessity, in order to have balance in the world. I think that's crap. It doesn't have to be. Why can we all just have incomes that sustain us and don't lean toward either excess OR deprivation? Why not just a sustainable, happy median point? I may be 25, I may have grown up in the lower middle income bracket (I emphasize "lower" here) and I have seen poverty in Canada and in other Western nations (working on eventually getting to see the rest of the world) but I don't think I will ever understand why poverty exists in this world.