One option is considering moving. Regardless of your eng. skills if you are able to discuss requirements and communicate well you would be an asset for any smaller consulting company in eastern europe.
And to do that, they would need immediate stable income, or enough capital to live on until they found it. Probably both.
That is the whole point: no one in this situation has either of these things. That is the group of people Sen. Hatch thinks does not deserve financial help.
After reading through (most of) the comments here, I am genuinely curious what we can do as individuals to help. It is pretty clear that the gov isn't too keen on helping (don't want to get into politics - just one look at the budget cuts is enough to prove this point).
So is there anything we can do? Protesting, running for public office etc makes the most sense but I am not built for it. What is the second best thing that an individual with a few dollars and few hours a week to spare do to help?
Honestly, I see the biggest problem is that there isn't a clear solution.
We have a culture that is trained against this group of people; trained against helping each other succeed, against promoting others' individual liberty. I don't have a one-size-fits-all solution, and that seems to be the only kind this culture will accept.
I think an important first step is empathy: understand how people feel stuck and why. Understand that the bare necessities are not enough. Understand the heightened stress that comes with this situation: inability to take risks, inability to recover from failed ventures, etc.
The next step is sympathy. Sympathy is closely related to empathy, but there is an important distinction: the difference between comprehension and understanding.
After that, I really don't know. I haven't ever been in a situation where I have the capital to significantly change another person's situation. Because I have never had the perspective, I don't see a solution. That is probably the most frustrating part of the problem: not knowing how someone can help you.
Sure, I could beg for food and rent, but that wouldn't be enough to be independent. In our society, it's difficult to ask for even the bare necessities, let alone ask for things like a car, enough capital to move to the city, out of state, or even out of country.
Some see debt as a solution: Get a student loan and an education, and then get into a better situation. But that assumes that college education is well suited for everyone, which is simply untrue. Loans require judgment by lenders; and if the path that you are most passionate about does not explicitly follow the "normal" routine - school, internship, temp job, career, etc. - those who lend money are likely to deny you your dreams.
The most frustrating thing to me is that because I don't have a perfect solution, the entire subject gets dropped. Solutions are found with effort and progress, not simply stumbled upon.
I get what you are saying and I feel the same way. But can't we at least toss some ideas around and see what comes of it? After all, for those in the US, all it takes from doing okay to bad situation is just one illness, hospital bills can screw someone's life faster than anything else. These things can happen to anyone.
Contribute or set up non profits to genuinely help people find self sustaining careers.
I’ve for long pondered how I could set up a 100 studio apartment complex with some counselors, training materials, and a supportive non profit. It seems doable.
One obviously wouldn't move before securing a position. For a consulting company like that having a native speaker interacting with clients can mean very tangible difference in hourly rate so should not be hard to find a place.
