Provide a first-person profile of 1 of the individuals depicted in Chapter 1 and your broader impression of living in subsistence. Please note that we are not focusing on the economic realm, as in product and market interactions just yet. It is more on lives and living in subsistence. * Identify key life-changing circumstances. * Reflect on what you learned about living in poverty—i.e., the types and nature of challenges that individuals have to face in different areas such as food, etc.

The factors on the change of the people’s life in the poverty
The first week reading introduces two people who have the completely different lifestyle in their live. Meanwhile, Sumitra, a low-literate buyer, her life experience move me a lot and let me understand several things for the people who live in the poverty and only have a very low literacy. It is not very hard to identify the reason why there is a huge change in Sumitra’s life, which is the power of the education. During her whole 46 years, Sumitra faced two huge change in her life. First, her husband’s death deeply influenced her lifestyle, because her husband’s salary is the main income for the whole family. Also, her husband is the only person who was wanna teach Sumitra how to realize or take the bus. After husband’s death, the construction of the whole family changed, and her son needed to work, and Sumitra had to afford the family. However, because of her low-literacy, she faced significant problems in her normal life. For example, she was cheated by the sellers, or took a wrong way bus because of the lack of the knowledge of the number. All these challenges required Sumitra to make a change. Therefore, she took the class and accepted the education from a college. Everything had been changed after this happening. She began to argue with the sellers if the sellers tried to cheat her again.

After this reading, Sumitra’s change let me understand how the power of education is. Therefore, in my own opinion, the education should be the first and the most significant factors in changing a person’s lifestyle, and accepting education should be the key life-changing circumstance. As what the lecture’s video mentioned, a low literacy can bring lots of challenges for a person’s daily life, such as no idea how to compute the price, purchasing stuffs by only using the concrete thinking or pictographic thinking. Also, low educated experiences will restrict the development in a person’s life, which means that person may lose many chance to get rid of the poverty. However, there is vicious circle in the people who live in poverty. Because of a poor live, children have to give up their school live and earn money so as to afford the family. Therefore, in order to get rid of the poverty, education is important.