In 2020, 11.7 percent of children in Norway grew up in households defined as low-income families. These are figures from Statistics Norway, and amounted to 115,000 children. With the electricity crisis, interest rate crisis and price crisis, it is natural to believe that the figures are higher now. If you do not know any children who fit the description, the probability is high that you know children who associate with one or more such. These kids may not go to bed hungry, but you can tell they are left out in other ways. If you are only willing to watch. Do you know a child who never makes it to birthdays? Bingo! It may be that this particular child grows up in a family where there is no money to set aside for a birthday present, and that either the child himself or the parents think it is small to appear in the company with a drawing as the only gift. Maybe you are upset about the parents who never show up at closings? Where you sell vegetable soup made by proud children for a symbolic sum, at the same time you auction off the children’s artwork and sell raffle tickets. All for cheap, of course, and all for income for SOS Children’s Villages. The measure is noble, but are you sure that the parents who never show up are absent because they either have to be at work or because they don’t care? How can you know that twenty kroner for soup and thirty kroner for lottery tickets are funds these parents have to allocate? Can you understand that it can be embarrassing to never buy anything, never be able to support, never be able to give in to “one more lottery ticket, please”? Everyone has a hundred kroner, you might think, as you suggest that the entrance fee to the class party, Halloween party or carnival in the village or district should be exactly that. Everyone has a hundred kroner, you say, and at the same time add that the income goes back to the children, so that we can arrange other nice things for them later. How do you know that the hundred kroner must not be put in gym shoes, polo gloves from Finn or in the electricity bill? We do it for the kids, you repeat. Whose children then? Those who are as well-off as your own, or for everyone, including those from low-income families? Surely there is nothing to suggest that children with poor parents want to participate less than children from middle-class families? Do you know of a child who does not take part in any leisure activities? Participating in one or more activities in the afternoon is of course not a mandatory part of growing up in Norway, but are you sure that this child does not participate because he does not want to? Yes, the child may say that football, band or ski school are not for him. But how can you know that the reluctance is not due to the child covering up the fact that the family simply cannot afford training fees, term fees, cultural school fees, instrument hire, costume hire, bus tickets to get to and from the activity? It is difficult to cycle where you are going if you cannot afford a bicycle helmet, much less a suitable bicycle. There is no reason to automatically assume that children from less well-off families do not have the same wishes and dreams as children from a more fortunate financial starting point. Surely there are cheaper things you can try, in the worst case the municipality must have free spaces? In my home municipality of Trondheim, the income limit for applying for a free place at the cultural school is 400,000. For a family. It may not be impossible for a family of three, four, five to survive on that sum, but I would like to see those who have set this limit try. Not just for a day or a week, but year after year. Then cultural school becomes something you opt out of. Goodbye instrument training, goodbye circus school, goodbye theatre. Goodbye a real choice for the children, and goodbye equal opportunities. That is what we tell ourselves, that in Norway all children have equal opportunities? In 2005, then SV leader Kristin Halvorsen claimed that poverty in Norway could be removed with the stroke of a pen. 17 years later, we can say that it was not that simple. There is no shortage of good intentions, plans and speeches. Until we actually see measures with real effect, maybe we can collectively start small? Make it as normal to show up with a drawing for the birthday child as to bring a gift for a hundred kroner? Make everyone feel welcome at the party, whether they can pay 200 per person. head or 2 kroner? It’s easy to feel indignant on behalf of your own child when he or she is not invited to a birthday party. But can you imagine that it might be because Anna’s family lacked both the surplus and finances to make the most of it, and thus set the limit for guests at three? Can the price for pieces of cake at events be set at five kroner instead of twenty? Or how about “pay what you have to pay, tip or cash?” Feel free to come up with other and better suggestions yourself. And above all, don’t look the other way when you meet a child who can’t afford to join. They exist, also in Norway.
ttn-69
The children who refuse – Speech
