Personally, I believe that the only real change has to come from individuals and spread upward to governments and businesses, not the other way around, so I do what I can to make the world more like how I think it should be.
Being a lifelong Detroiter and the child of a social worker, poverty and related issues have always been a bit of a soft spot for me. One of the big problems that I see is hunger. Starvation may not be an issue, but nutrition is. The maximum food stamp allowance works out to about $25 per person, per week, and that just isn't enough to provide a healthy diet. Since gardening is one of my most enjoyable pasttimes and I've been blessed with a green thumb, I spend a lot of time in the warmer months tending gardens that are far too large to feed my family so that I can donate the excess produce to the food pantry in our community. I also give away some of the food I store on a more personal basis, since the food pantry does not accept home-canned or home-frozen produce.
In the same vein, I have been working for over a year now to try to organize a community garden project (for those not familiar with the idea, here's a link -
http://www.mindspring.com/~communitygardens/index.html ) in our town. I volunteer off and on with an established group in Detroit but that is too far from home for me to make a regular committment, and I would like to see the same principles at work in my own community. While we don't have the extreme poverty of the city, we are a blue-collar town dependent on the auto industry, so there are a lot of people cutting corners and passing on the expensive fresh produce in favor of cheaper, more filling basics.
Another thing which addresses the two causes most important to me - economy and environment - is a concerted effort to shop locally owned businesses and buy locally produced goods whenever possible. I'm far from perfect; there are many things that simply aren't made here and I lack to commitment to live without those things, but when a locally or domestically made option exists, that is what I will choose.
And at home, we work to be as environmentally neutral as possible given our limited means. My gardens are all grown using organic methods and we produce zero yard waste between mulching and composting. We recycle everything our collection accepts, plus paint and batteries that have to be dropped off at the county collection center, and as we remodel we're building more energy efficiency into our home. I had gotten to the point where I was only driving one day a week, but with a new baby and the weather turning cold, I'm back to driving instead of biking to run errands for now.
They're all little things, but I do hope that if enough people do the little things, it can make a big difference.
