What Is Project Penniless?

Project Penniless is a campaign I started to in order to encourage writers to include characters that are fighting poverty. Sometimes poverty isn't obvious. In the year 2012-14 data says that 49.6% of students qualify for Free/Reduced Lunch at school. That's almost half of every school. This proves that in the United States, although we are more fortunate than other countries, still have people who deal with poverty and finical burdens in their everyday life.

As writers, we have a responsibility to write about people enduring poverty. Poverty affects not only how much a family gets to eat, but also their mental well being. In extreme cases, poverty can even lead to malnutrition. My challenge for you is to write about a character who has a low income family, or who is enduring poverty themselves. Show how poverty effects the characters everyday life. Does it affect them physically, mentally, emotionally?

If you believe in this progress and have/are writing about a character who is impoverished, please add the hashtag #penniless to your story and add the hashtag #ProjectPenniless to your bio. Also, you can add a sticker to your cover to show your support (sticker link is in profile bio). Let's work together to show people what poverty is really like, and not their illusion of what it is like.

Examples:

Write about a characters who works as a contractor or who's parents are contractor. Contractor jobs are paid for the work they do, instead of being paid by the hour. Say your character installs air conditioning, during the summer, business would be booming because the demand for air conditioning is higher, but during the winter season, business isn't going so well because it is cold, and everyone is paying for heaters to be installed instead, or vise versa.

Write about a character who has a single mom or single day. Maybe they don't have a well paying job, and taking care of their kid(s) really stresses them out and they are living paycheck to paycheck and sometimes their isn't enough food.

Write about a character who works at a nonprofit organization, such as a church or salvation army.

Write about a character who is homeless or floats from household to household.

Write about a character who looses their job and is having troubles at finding a new one.

Write about a character who is laid of from work.

Write about a teenager who gets kicked out of their house and has to live alone.

Write about a character who lives in a third world country or about a character who missions to them.

Those are just a couple options You are not limited to these ideas. Any character who is struggling from poverty can be apart of this campaign. Your story doesn't have to be written for Project Penniless. If you have already written a story about a character suffering through poverty or a low income family, you can tag your story. If you wish to write a new story to support this campaign, that is obviously welcomed as well.

Get creative and don't rush! This campaign will be around forever, so you can take as much time as you want to develop your story.

A huge goal of mine is to make this campaign a social and friendly place to users. I encourage people to read stories on our reading lists in order to support people who are struggling through poverty/low incomes and to support the writers who write about these tough situations. If you are reading or have read a story on one of the reading lists, please vote and comment. Make sure to be friendly, and nice. At the end of your comment, please hashtag #ProjectPenniless in your comment. This will tell the writer of your support and connect with one another.

This is a request and it would make me immensely happy to see this happen.

If you have any questions, ask me them in the comments below.