Nestled in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Mountains is a small rural farm community called Mifflinburg.  Mifflinburg is located in Union county about an hour east of State College, Pennsylvania. Renowned for its rich history, and its strong German roots, Mifflinburg is popular for our Christkindl festival that is held each year.  Even though it is an exquisite town, if I was our mayor I would draw attention to an unspoken problem, something I, as a teenager, see daily in my community, our poverty.

To begin, we have a point of departure in Mifflinburg with our unemployment levels unwaveringly increasing.  The reason I bring up this issue is because the unemployment levels could negatively impact our community. In our middle school, students are going without winter coats in the winter, and in some cases without dinner.  Sometimes, when people are not in a financially good spot it affects the state of their kids. From this, we can infer that the next generation is being affected. This can cause a domino effect, the children of unemployed people might think that they don’t need a job too.

That brings me to our middle school.  As the poverty rates go up, the quality of our school goes down.  What I mean by this is, if our focus is on our poverty rates we forget about our school.  This is the true cause of our outdated color scheme, our broken lockers, our awful air conditioning system and our water issue.  

Additionally sometimes the water backs up into parts of our school.  This causes an issue, because we can´t run the water to wash our hands before we cook, we can't experiment with the water for our labs, we can’t wash our paint brushes after we paint and we can’t get a drink at the water fountain after a disquenting math test.  Maybe if our community could do some type of fundraiser, we could raise money to fix our school.

This brings me to our water issue in Mifflinburg.  In Mifflinburg we always have some type of water plight, whether it is a ruptured pipe or chlorinated water, there always seems to be a problem.  Approximately a year ago, a pipe ruptured leaving us with no clean drinking water for a few days. Through this, we still went to school, and our office was amassed with bottles of clean, drinkable water. Some of us could hardly concentrate on our work, because the water created an immeasurable distraction.  

After the water issue is resolved, I would proceed to work on our downtown.  The issue with our downtown is, it looks extremely neglected; as if no one cares at all.  Picture walking into a quaint downtown and seeing paint falling off of buildings and black stains streaking across the exterior of gorgeous Victorian era homes from the immense number of diesel trucks rushing through the narrow main road.  This predicament could easily be resolved if there were fundraisers at our local park, or if our historical society could help restore our community. Then the money raised would go to restoring Mifflinburg’s homes, roads and park.

The last ripple, but not least important, is our community as a whole.  Sometimes when things perceptibly turn for the worst turn for the worst with buildings and community spaces it’s either because the community is extremely poverty-stricken or people are just unmotivated.  In the eyes of someone who doesn’t live in town I believe it’s a mix of both. When I’m in town for field hockey practice or marching band I infrequently see anyone cleaning the outside of their house or taking care of landscaping.  This causes a never ending chain of people not caring about their homes. On the other hand, people who are poverty-stricken might not have the money to fix their homes, and choose putting food on the table over cleaning their home.

To conclude, I’d like to make the point that the once quaint town of Mifflinburg is going through a ripple effect from poverty levels increasing. If I was the mayor of Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania an abundance of Mifflinburg’s chattels would change as soon as humanly possible.  All in all someday, hopefully soon, Mifflinburg will be modernized to open the doors to the realm of amazing potential.