Tagged: poverty

The Johnson County Christmas Bureau, has opened its doors to their annual Holiday Shop at the Great Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe, KS. This is their 50th year creating a shopping experience for low income families around the holidays.

Director Barb McNeil says that “Poverty” and “Johnson County” aren’t words often heard in the same sentence, they should be. Though the population in Johnson County grew by 2% last year, the number of families below the poverty line grew by 64%.

Kansas City, MO –
The number of children living in poverty in Missouri and Kansas rose dramatically between 2008 and last year. Using numbers compiled by the census bureau, The Social Impact Research Bureau in Chicago calculated that one in every five children in Missouri lives in poverty.

In Kansas it was 17 percent of the child population.

The agency says 381 thousand people in Missouri are in extreme poverty. That's a family of four earning less than $11 thousand a year.

Kansas City, MO – If you grew up in Kansas City anytime since 1980, you probably took a school field trip to Exchange City. At this learning center, grade school students take on the roles of various members of an adult community, like the mayor, banker and radio reporter, to learn how the economy of the "real world" really works.