Abstract:

Poverty is one of the most disturbing issues in the world. This problem touches virtually everyone since poverty has many faces and it has particularly intensified now, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Preventing its causes and minimizing its effects is a great task for each of us. Appropriately selected information technologies may be helpful, because they can be fine-tuned to answer the needs of the poor. This article defines poverty very broadly, as various shortages or an inability to fulfil one’s needs – not only the “traditional” ones, such as hunger, thirst, cold but also loneliness, that is the absence of another human, ill health, unemployment, or lack of education, proper living conditions, information…This article is an answer to this challenge. It presents an overview of various types of poverty, their causes and results, and a wide range of information technologies. This data was then used to procure, with the use of an innovative C-E-T (cause – effect – technology) method – based on Gittman-Levine’s algorithm and with the use of a method of similarity matrix construction – groups of information technology offers (applications, Internet services, software systems, etc.) which address the needs of the poor who experience the effects of poverty in various areas of life and for various reasons.