Jennifer Garner Gets Emotional Testifying About Child Poverty In Washington D.C.
Posted on Fri Mar 17th, 2017 9:25am PDT By X17 Staff
This gives us a lot of respect for her.
Jennifer Garner teared up while testifying on child poverty in Washington D.C. on Thursday, and the the issue is clearly close to her heart. The Dallas Buyer's Club star was speaking to explain the importance of early childhood education on behalf of Save the Children, which she has been a trustee and ambassador for since 2014.
"I make a point to try and get out and do as many site visits as possible. Mothers come up to me and say, 'Can you help get my child into these programs? Can you just nudge us up in the wait list? Is there anything you could do?' The thought that I would have to go back to these mothers and say, 'Well, no, there is nothing I can do …'†she said.
"These families know what it is to have this intervention and they know what they're losing when it's gone, and I'll have to answer to it. So that is what matters to me, selfishly, sir," she added.
The brunette beauty then touched on topic of childhood neglect.
"It's easy to escape responsibility for disgrace like that by blaming the parents. Who doesn't talk to a child? Who doesn't sing to their child?’ I'll tell you who: parents who have lived their whole lives with the stresses that come with food scarcity, with lack of adequate shelter, with drug addiction and abuse. Parents who were left on the floor when they were children, ignored by their parents, who had to choose, as one out of three mothers in this country do, between providing food or a clean diaper for their children. Poverty dulls the senses, it saps hope, it destroys the will," she explained.
In the end, the mother-of-three wants to fight for those that can't fight for themselves.
"These children don't vote, they don't make political contributions; neither do their parents. Somebody has to tell their story above all the noise. Poverty is silent, but I can't be," she concluded.
She just seems like a really good person!