Poverty can affect anyone.

Poverty – what is it, really? Is poverty a disgrace? Does poverty cause one to lose one's human dignity? Why do so many of us look away when it comes to poverty, until perhaps through a twist of fate, it suddenly affects us personally? No one here has to go hungry yet; our welfare state is still functioning. And yet, even here, fewer and fewer people can afford to buy healthy food in a typical supermarket. Questionable political decisions and other factors are driving the cost of living ever higher, making it unaffordable for many. Exorbitant rents and energy costs are now plunging many people into debt. Companies are closing, and many people are losing their jobs as a result. The proportion of people in our country considered to be in the so-called lower class is growing. Even though, internationally speaking, we in Germany are currently still doing relatively well compared to most countries in the world, the social classes have long been segregated here as well. I remember my school days in the 1970s at a grammar school. Almost all the students were the children of wealthy people. I was the only working-class child. My friends invited me to their birthdays, but always asked me: "Please don't tell my parents that your father is just a laborer, otherwise I won't be allowed to invite you over anymore." – Basically, that hasn't changed to this day. We point the finger at countries like India with its caste system, but in reality, things aren't so different here either. Upper, middle, and lower classes, and the lower class are our "poor," living in social hotspots, in tiny, run-down apartments in areas best avoided, or who don't even have a home anymore. A good Syrian friend once said to me: "You Germans are strange. Your first question is always: 'What do you do for a living?' And then you treat people accordingly. In Syria, where I come from, profession and income aren't important. People ask: 'What's your name? Are you and your family doing well? May I invite you and your family to our home?'" – So, what exactly is poverty? What are we using to define it? Or isn't poverty also a real opportunity for the "upper class" to look beyond their comfortable world and recognize what truly makes people poor? A class that doesn't even offer most people the chance to ever escape the social class into which they were born? Who among us is truly prepared to support such a person by foregoing our own accustomed luxuries and instead helping the needy so that they, too, can live with dignity? Let's never forget: poverty can strike anyone. One stroke of bad luck is all it takes.