INTRODUCTION

A semester spent studying poverty

Journalism project explores the reality of child poverty in B.C.

It started with a report: First Call Coalition's 2014 B.C. Child Poverty Report Card. "First Call has been tracking child and family poverty rates in BC for nearly two decades," it reported in the introduction. "Our first provincial report card containing data for 1994 showed that one in five BC children were poor. It is profoundly disappointing that eighteen years later the data still shows that one in five BC children are poor."

Students in Kwantlen Polytechnic University's Advanced Journalism class dug into the report and, working as a newsroom team, spent the Spring 2015 semester producing a range of journalism — narrative, audio, data — exploring some of the issues of child poverty. Working together, and individually, they've used the full range of skills they've developed in their four years of journalism studies.

During the semester, students interviewed those affected by child poverty, politicans and those who have programs in place that attempt to alleviate the effects of poverty. They gathered, analyzed and visualized data. Students served as peer editors and were involved in continuing discussion and decision-making about the project.

The result is this website. The index at left provides links to the students' work, and the Resources section has links to a number of agencies and organizations that allow for a fuller exploration of an important issue for our society.