Fighting poverty in Malta through social welfare

Abstract

The study aims to understand the importance of governmental social services together with services offered by non-governmental organisations to work together with the aim to fight poverty and helping people who are at risk of poverty. Using semi-structured interviews, two people from non-governmental organisations and a person from the Ministry for Social Welfare, Childrens’ Rights, and Family were interviewed. Results show that both government services and non-governmental services are important in this fight against poverty. The government creates a safety net which results in people who are at risk of poverty to be alleviated from that burden or at least to not fall in the absolute poverty circle. However, people who fall out of this safety net are in need of the services provided by the non-governmental organisations such as The Soup Kitchen OFM Valletta and The Foodbank Lifeline Foundation to help ease the pain of poverty, both physically, and mentally. Future research may advance this research by finding out what other non-governmental organisations such as YMCA, Caritas, and other government entities such as FSWS, offer to help these vulnerable people.