help!!! there is stuff wrong with this..i just can't figure some of them out!

[Charlie Bernstein]

The People of Poverty

It’s a horrid world. Everywhere you go there are people living out on the streets, just hoping that someone will come alongx and give them something, a little push to get their lives moving on the right track again. Anything, anything at all that would help them feed their families, give them something to hope for, or maybe just something to look forward too when they have nothing at all.

If you walk down the streets of some of the biggest cities-the small ones too-and the countries that hardly have anything, you’ll see families living on the streets, lying on cardboard scraps, and covering up with torn newspapers.

Many poverty stricken families don’t even have that to give them comfort. They lie on the side of the cold streets, shivering in the dark, frigid night, just prying to make it through another nights choke hold. In some countries, children lose their parents to diseases, starvation, or the governmental authorities and are forced to take care of themselves, as well as their brothers and sisters. Sometimes they often go without eating to the point of starvation so their younger siblings can have more of a substantial meal, caring more for their family’s life.

But poverty is not just limited to people living on the streets. It’s people not having enough money to help their families through very tough financial situations. It’s when parents are unable to send their children to schoolx or they don’t have enough money to buy the necessities needed to take care of the ones they love. Poverty is having shortage on a shelter to keep each other safe, clean safe drinking water and all things that determine life’s survival.

Every day, families all over the globe lose everything to poverty and no one ever considers any of this as something to stand up forx or to take notice of. Every single person on this planet of ours takes everything available to us for granted. I do it. I know my friends do it too, as well as everyone else in this world of ours. We don’t realize that everything that we have could be gone tomorrow. What we have is a privilege, a gift to make our lives better and that should never be forgotten. We freak when we are unable to go somewherex or if something gets taken away from us, but these people, they have, basically, lost everything, and we never even stop to think. We go to bed every night with a blanket or a pillow, and some don’t even have that.

If we spent one week with only the clothes on our backx and were left in a strange city where we don’t recognize a single face around and where we live on no thing but our own skin, maybe then we could actually learn something, and someday poverty would end and the world would actually start to become a better place. But if we don’t try, try to help the people living in poverty, the world would be the same as it has always been: people having nothing, fights between different races and different religions, and people hating other people because of how they livex or how they were brought up. It might even get worse, but one thing that will stay the same: families will be in poverty and people won’t even try and make it better.

There are so many things that have played a part in the cause of poverty, there are so many that no one would ever be able to name them all. Some of those causes are recession. The Great Depression caused a huge incline in the amount of families in poverty throughout the worldx and caused many people to lose everything that they had. Families were forced to sell everything, yet they were still pushed to poverty. Democracy, weak rule of law, and erosion also forced families to become poverty's victims.

When there is a cause of something, an effect usually follows quickly behind. In this cause, poverty has many effects. While living through poverty, families have suffered from diseasesx and deaths, they’ve dealt with violence, drugs, and pregnanciesx and also malaria and AIDS. Childrenx who are forced into povertyx usually end up becoming victims, or they cause violence themselves. Poverty victims are also less immune to many diseases, therefore their chances of incurable diseases are much higher than anyone else's. Children born into poverty normally have low birth weights and may end up dealing with physical or mental disabilities while growing up, and more times than not, poverty can cause families to become homeless.

Poverty has been around for the longest time, and there really is no solution for it. Organizations such as ONE, Poverty Fighters, and Freedom from Hungerx [no italics or quotation marks for ordinary proper nouns] have been raising money for poverty for years. It has helped, but there is never really any solution for it. The only way poverty could possibly end, or even start to diminish, would be if people actually stopped to think about anyone but themselves for once. If people actually considered for once that there are more people out there who need our help, maybe some day poverty would actually disappear. Or at least start to.

But if people don’t, poverty will continue to exist, and there will always be people out there who will think, oh well, it’s their fault for living the way they do, xxx it is not my problem. They don’t understand that it was never these families' fault in any way. Most try every single day of their lives to help their family find a better life, to get them out of poverty. These people living through poverty are strong people. They go days and days with out having the things that we have. And most of these people make it to see the next day. More people need to actually understand, xxx because no one ever does. They need to actually look at these people and realizex they need helpx and that poverty needs to end.[/quote]

Not bad! Here are a few pointers:

1. Go back and review the rules of commas. There aren't many, and they're easy once you get the hang of it. (For instance, why did I use one just now? Because it's a compound sentence: two complete sentences joined with an and.)

2. Everyday = ordinary. Every day = at least once in every 24-hour period. Don't confuse them!

3. You handle English very well - better than most native English-speaking students. Now you need to turn your attention to organizing your thoughts. This essay is more a stream-of-consciousness than a persuasion piece. If the paragraphs seem to run together, it's because they don't really follow a clear sequence of thought.

So I'd go back to my primary point. What is it? That people don't care about poverty and will never take action - or that people do care and can take action?

Once you're clear about what you mean to say, think about the arguments you can use and evidence you can bring in to convince the reader of your primary point. Then develop your arguments. Then bring you arguments together, especially at the end.

Does that help? I think you're on the trail of something good. It's a passionate piece, and with just a little more attention, it can really work.

[I edit copy and have tutored college writing.]