Background
Poverty in the US is as stark and real as poverty in many developing countries. The difference is that ours is a wealthy nation, heightening the injustice that millions of America’s poor endure.
Oxfam's US programs focus on that injustice, particularly among low-wage farm and meat processing workers in the rural southeast and Gulf Coast families in Mississippi and Louisiana still struggling to rebuild lives and communities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
Toiling under dangerous conditions, workers in our nation’s meat-processing plants and on our farms are among the lowest paid laborers in the country. Many of them are immigrants who fled their own country's poverty to earn a living but are now in low-wage jobs with no benefits or security and little opportunity for advancement. An increasingly competitive global market is pushing wages lower and eroding all worker rights. In the southeast, Oxfam and its local partners are seeking to reform the system so that those who produce our food can be assured of their rights to decent work and improved conditions in their communities.
On the Gulf Coast, soon after Hurricane Katrina hit, it became clear that the disaster would overwhelm local, state, and federal authorities. Oxfam stepped in to help. Our initial response has now grown into a $12 million program focusing on affordable housing and good jobs for semi-skilled workers. Oxfam's goal on the Gulf Coast is to help local citizens become active in securing their rights and leading the recovery of their communities.
Oxfam in the United States
Oxfam has been working to bolster rural communities in the US since 1992. The program recognizes that poverty is not confined to other countries; it is as systemic in the US as it is throughout the world.
Oxfam believes that working to expose the systems of poverty in the US—racism, gender discrimination, denial of rights, and unjust policies—will provide insights into the systems that perpetuate poverty around the globe.
The US program brings Oxfam's extensive global experience with agriculture to bear within the US context. Over the last decade, we have developed specific areas of focus on:
- People of color in chronically poor rural areas;
- The most recent wave of immigrants driven to the US by globalization; and
- Native Americans whose land and culture are being destroyed by mining.
