中級閱讀模擬測驗　第三十五回

Every Saturday morning a line forms outside a small shop on Fifth Street. Inside, volunteers hand out rice, oil and vegetables to families who cannot afford a full week of meals. The shop belongs to a local 11 that began with one box of tins in a church hall. Today it serves four hundred 12 in the district. What surprises visitors most is the atmosphere. Nobody is treated like a 13; people choose their own food from open shelves, and the volunteers ask no questions. Small changes like this, the 14 team believes, protect dignity better than any speech. Gifts of time, they add, 15 as much as money.

The south-east corner of the city was once lined with empty workshops. Then families from six countries moved in. Within ten years the street had been 16: a bakery, a repair shop and a language school now stand where doors were once boarded up. Studies of such districts find the same pattern. A new 17 often works longer hours than the average worker, saves hard, and opens a small business that serves everyone. The 18 of the older houses benefit too, because rising trade lifts property values. Fear of newcomers has not disappeared, but it has begun to 19. The numbers show that shared streets create 20, not poverty.