Even elementary school kids can help

An elemnentary school is raising money for a health organization that helps the undeveloped world. Waverly Elementary School in Baltimore began a relationship with Jhpiego, a non profit health group.

A worker for Jhpiego, Jane Otai addressed the school a couple of years ago, from that assembly the students began to put their allowances to good use.

From the Baltimore Sun story, reporter Donna Owens tells us what the kids are up to.

"I described the challenges of families and children there," said Otai, recalling the visit, her first to the U.S., during a recent international phone call. "Most families live in houses with iron sheet roofs and mud floors, no indoor plumbing or electricity ... no access to clean water. If they can get work, they become very cheap labor at nearby industrial factories, earning about $2 a day."

The students, moved by what they heard, had a bevy of questions for Otai. At one point, a girl named Jasmine Harris stood up and asked: "What can we do to help?"

From there, an informal partnership was launched with Jhpiego, and a long-distance friendship was born between a Baltimore school and a country an ocean away.

"At first, we thought about sending clothing to the children in Kenya, because one of the things we learned from Miss Jane was that there weren't enough uniforms," said Keishonna Davis, 11.

But shipping items to Africa would have been too expensive. So the students agreed to save spare change and collect donations from family and friends and send that money to Kenya, Rock said. Using empty cookie tins to hold their money, the youngsters began their nearly yearlong campaign. Some gave up their favorite treats, like candy, and instead put money in the pot.

"We really wanted to help," said Wayne Zeback, 11. "Our goal was to raise a thousand dollars."

"I was saving pennies, dimes and quarters," said 10-year-old Miesha Manigault, who regaled the class with a hilarious tale of how she visited a supermarket to tally the coins in an electronic counting machine.

Adopted girl helps family in Guatemala

from WTOP

A touching story of Lily Mackley, who helped another little girl in Guatemala.

By TIFFANY ARNOLD

Her name is Veronica Par. She is 10 and has five siblings. The youngest, 1, sleeps in the bed with the parents while the rest of the children sleep on cardboard pallets on the concrete floor. Her father earns $16 a week as a gardener. Her mother earns $2 a week by making beaded jewelry.

"It's easy for (us), but it might not be easy for them to earn up that money," said Mackley, who begins her first year at Smithsburg Middle School this fall.

Thanks to Mackley, who lives in Smithsburg, Veronica's family has one less thing to worry about. In April, Mackley used her birthday money to help offset Veronica's school expenses.

Mackley said she did it because she felt obligated to help her people. She was born in Guatemala but was adopted and has lived in the United States since she was an infant. She lives with her sister, Anna, 8, who was also born in Guatemala, and her sister, Vanessa, 15, who was adopted from Canada.

In Guatemala, school can be an elusive dream for families who can't afford the supplies, said Dwight Poage, director of Mayan Families, a nonprofit charity group that helps raise money for low-income Guatemalans, especially young girls.

"Usually boys are sent to school, girls are sent to work," Poage said in a recent phone interview.

Mackley donated $120 through Mayan Families. The organization has sponsored more than 700 children, Poage said.

More than half of the country's 13.3 million inhabitants are descendants of the Mayans, the native people who flourished in Guatemala long before Spanish colonizers arrived.

Today, Guatemala is characterized by wide income disparities. Violent crime because of widespread poverty remains a serious concern, according to the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, part of the U.S. Department of State.

Mackley's mother, Kathie Mackley, said she looks for opportunities to keep her Guatemalan daughters in touch with their culture. All three girls attend a cultural camp in the summer. They eat Latin cuisine and attend ethnic festivals, though they are usually held in and around Washington, D.C. The girls are also being tutored in Spanish.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

City plans hunger fight

from the Baltimore Sun via Tropix

By Jonathan Bor

Nearly one in eight families taking children to the University of Maryland Medical Center's emergency room and primary care clinic lack enough food to ensure good nutrition - putting the youngsters at risk for growth and learning problems, a study has found.

Acting on the finding, the city health department yesterday announced a plan to screen children for signs of hunger and to link families to food pantries and federal nutrition programs such as food stamps and Women Infants and Children.

'The underlying cause of hunger in Baltimore is poverty, so I don't think better coordination will make the whole problem go away, but it's going to help a lot more people,,' said Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein.

Though citywide statistics are not available, the study offers a snapshot of a problem that Sharfstein and public health experts say afflicts poor communities across Baltimore.

The pervasiveness of the problem is often disguised by the tendency of many poorly nourished people to become overweight or obese, said Maureen Black, professor of growth and nutrition at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the study's director. With scenes of emaciated children of Darfur ingrained in the U.S. consciousness, it's often hard to conceive of local children as nutritionally deprived.

In Baltimore and other U.S. cities, she said, poverty and food scarcities are less extreme. Yet many families buy food that is inexpensive and fattening, and skimp on food purchases during heating seasons and other times when bills pile up.

'The people hear 'malnourished,' they think 'skinny,'' Black said. 'But if you're eating those noodles all the time that fill you up and have no nutritional value, you can turn fat.'

Over the past four years, researchers at the downtown hospital asked a series of food-related questions to families seeking care for their children. They found that 13.5 percent of the families were 'food insecure' - a federal designation that means they don't have a regular or steady supply of nutrition.

'In the United States, we should be up in arms about any food insecurity,' said Black. 'We are the richest country in the world, and we shouldn't have families anxious about getting their next meal.'

Among families struggling with putting food on the table, 11 percent were not receiving food stamps or enrolled in WIC, the study found. More than 40 percent were receiving just one of the services, despite the fact that virtually all were eligible for both.

The study was funded by a $50,000 grant from the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, which supports programs for children's health and welfare. The findings are contained in a report, 'Food Security: Ensuring the Health of Baltimore's Babies,' written by Black and colleagues.

Sharfstein announced a few simple steps aimed at identifying children in need while linking them to services.

For instance, the city health department is urging pediatricians to ask two related questions to parents of young patients: Over the past year, did they worry that food would run out before they got money to buy more? And did they find that, indeed, the food they bought didn't last before they could afford another purchase?

Doctors and social workers should refer parents who answer 'yes' to either question to pantries and offices where they can apply for nutritional services, according to a city advisory.

The health department has also established a Web site - www.hungryinbaltimore.org - that has a list of food assistance programs and a map of pantries supplied by the Maryland Food Bank.

'The research compels an immediate response,' Sharfstein said. 'Everyone caring for families in Baltimore should be asking questions about food security and connecting families to resources.'

Dr. David Paige, a pediatrician and professor at the Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, said children spanning the social spectrum can look the same because of their 'T-shirt and dungarees' attire. It belies the fact that many are lacking in essential nutrients such as iron and zinc.

In the first few years of life, he said, children are particularly vulnerable because the brain is growing and establishing important connections.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

The poor and plenty

from the Baltimore Sun

Maryland may be affluent overall, but poverty traps families, including children, throughout the state

By Sumathi Reddy

The statistics are eye-opening - if not startling.

In Maryland, one of the most affluent states in the nation, significant swaths of poverty endure in urban and rural areas, among families and children.

In Baltimore, 22.2 percent of residents live in poverty, new Census Bureau estimates show.

To the east in Somerset County, the figure is 20.1 percent.

And to the west in Allegany County, 15 percent of residents live in poverty.

In a state where life for most residents has improved, those on the lowest rungs remain stuck. Their situation is made more difficult by Maryland's high cost of living, as well as by a lack of adequate programs for job training and adult education, those who advocate for the poor say.

"There are very troubling, persistent pockets of poverty and it's not just Baltimore City, which is the common stereotype," said Sean Dobson, executive director of Progressive Maryland. "If you look at Maryland over time, we stack up well compared to other states, but compared to 1999 or 2000, the average person is definitely worse off and the poorest among us are significantly worse so. We can certainly do more."

Maryland had the third-lowest statewide poverty rate, 8.3 percent, according to the 2005 Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates, which the census released earlier this year. (Changes in methodology make it difficult to compare the data with previous years, a census spokesman said.)

Yet there is a huge gap between the state's median household income - $61,546 - and the resources of the poor. The federal threshold for poverty, a sliding scale based on family size and the head of the household's age, starts at annual income of $9,973 for a one-person household and is less than $20,000 for a family of four.

Kate McMinn Campbell, a social policy analyst at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, said that across the country poverty rates dropped significantly in the 1990s but have crept back up this century. Maryland shows high rates in its urban and rural centers, much like the rest of the nation, she said.

"Maryland is fortunate that it has one of the lowest poverty rates in the country, but at the same time there's still a large group of people who are left behind," she said.

The disparity between rich and poor in a state with such wealth makes the numbers especially troubling, state poverty advocates say.

"The point is we're very affluent and that affluence gives us a real advantage because we do have the resources to make even more gains in reducing poverty than we're doing," said Jason Perkins-Cohen, executive director of the Job Opportunities Task Force, a Baltimore-based nonprofit. "We're not putting our resources to work in the best way we could."

Perkins-Cohen said Maryland ranks in the bottom third of states in spending on adult education, a critical factor in reducing poverty. The other area that needs more attention and state dollars is training, he said.

"Maryland invests very little, outside of federal funds, in training," said Perkins-Cohen. "We don't spend much ourselves and that's terrible. If you're trying to help alleviate poverty, one clear area to work on is helping adults in the labor force have the opportunity to improve their skills so they can get better jobs."

In terms of youth under age 18 living in poverty, Maryland had the second-lowest rate, 10.9 percent.

But local rates ranged as high as 30.9 percent in Baltimore, 20 percent in Garrett County, 26.6 percent in Somerset County and 22 percent in Dorchester.

More disturbing is research done by the Annie E. Casey Foundation showing that youths from low-income households in affluent states lag behind their counterparts more than in less affluent states, said Laura Beavers, a senior associate.

The foundation examined 30 indicators of child well-being, such as access to after-school programs and health. "We found that when there's a lot of disparity in income in a state it tends to aggravate issues for kids and oftentimes kids do worse," said Beavers.

"One of the big impacts on low-income kids is that the housing costs are so much higher," she added. "So the extra stress of paying a large portion of income on rent really hurts."

A report by Progressive Maryland showed that while the economy has been growing, wages in Maryland have been stagnant - even as income grows for those at the upper end of the scale. "Average blue-collar families that work hard and earn a wage are not included in the bonanza," Dobson said.

Matthew Joseph, executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth in Maryland, noted that in addition to being one of the wealthiest states in the nation, Maryland is one of the most expensive states to live in.

His group commissioned a study to show what it costs a family to make ends meet in Maryland - more than twice as much as the federal poverty level, he said. The study also showed that the cost of living for a family of three in Maryland increased by 31 percent from 2001 to 2007.

"We are the wealthiest state in the United States, so it's not a surprise that we would have the second-lowest poverty rate, but I think that's a misleading figure," he said. "Because the federal poverty level used is the same across the nation, it's a little misleading."

He added, "We don't know how many families are below that self-sufficiency level. It's that gap population that is very sizable in Maryland."

The picture is not all bleak.

Poverty advocates point to several positive steps Maryland has taken in recent months.

In the General Assembly's special session last year, legislators increased eligibility levels for health insurance.

They also increased the refundable earned income tax credit for families earning lower wages. Research on the federal level has shown that the earned income tax credit is the most effective anti-poverty tool for children, said Joseph.

"Maryland is one of the few states that has one of these, which is one indicator of something that's being done to help poverty," said Joseph.

With poverty spread across the state, not just in Baltimore, the political will to solve the problem should increase, advocates say.

"The issues that used to just relate to families in Baltimore City seem to be relating to families in a much broader cross-section in the state of Maryland," said Joseph. "In some ways that's a sad story for Maryland, but on the other hand it may mean that there will be a broader group of decision-makers involved in solving the problems."

Attitudes toward alleviating poverty have also improved nationwide, according to a report issued by the Pew Research Center last year. Fifty-four percent of Americans say they believe the government should help more needy people, compared with 41 percent in 1994, the report said.

Chasing the dream, 1 new job at a time

from The Baltimore Sun

Ralph E. Moore Jr. used the inspiration of the Rev. Martin Luther King's economic justice campaign to begin an annual job fair that has grown every year since it began in 2002.

By Kelly Brewington | Sun reporter

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life." -- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Pasted to Ralph E. Moore Jr.'s door at St. Frances Academy Community Center is a poignant quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It's not about having a dream, and it says nothing about the content of one's character.

Rather, the passage comes from King's 1963 "Strength to Love" speech, which stresses the need to uplift those who are less fortunate.

It's been the foundation of Moore's anti-poverty activism for more than two decades. It also serves as inspiration for an annual job fair and skills training event that the Baltimore community center hosts every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Today, amid parades, volunteer efforts and lectures planned to commemorate the observance of King's birthday - he would have been 79 - scholars, civil rights pioneers and activists such as Moore are urging people to remember King, the champion for economic justice.

Less celebrated than his epic 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech, the Montgomery bus boycott or his oratory gifts is King's anti-poverty crusade.

"People don't recall that the March on Washington was actually called the march for jobs and freedom," said Moore, 55. "When he died, he was working for economic justice issues. He was actively organizing a strong coalition of a variety of races to focus on the poverty issue."

One need look no farther than Baltimore for evidence that poverty and the social ills associated with it remain 40 years since King's death, Moore said. Nearly 20 percent of Baltimore's population lives in poverty, the U.S. Census found in 2006. And an estimated 227,700 Baltimoreans 16 and older are unemployed or not in the workforce, according to the city's Job Opportunities Task Force.

Six years ago, Moore, who grew up in Baltimore's Sandtown community, began tying King's anti-poverty message to the small job fair. The first event attracted a few dozen employers, but the demand from job seekers was huge. Nearly 300 people showed up. It was the first time a formal job fair had come to Johnston Square, this economically depressed neighborhood just east of Mount Vernon, Moore said.

This year, several hundred people have registered for the event, which will feature workshops on resume writing and interview skills in addition to recruiting. And unlike many similar events, this one encourages job seekers to stay in touch with organizers. The first 10 people who contact Moore on or after April 4 - the anniversary of the date King was assassinated - will receive $100, if they can prove they have retained the job they got at the fair.

"It's not a lot, but we want to make sure people connect to jobs," said Moore, who previously served as vice president of the now-defunct Center for Poverty Solutions. "We are dealing with a tougher population, people with criminal records, and there are a lot of discouraged workers because of this."

Moore estimates that about 85 percent of the people attracted to the event have arrest records, which remains a huge barrier to employment. But it is precisely the population that most needs employment, he said. Job fair organizers reached out to employers who are willing to hire people with criminal records.

"These are the folks who are forgotten; this is the invisible population," he said. "But these are people who want to do more and better their lives."

Waged in the final year of his life, King's campaign for full employment was controversial, unpopular among some of his activist peers and risky. Culminating in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968, King planned for "a multiracial army of the poor" to descend on Washington in a nonviolent protest urging Congress to sign a poor people's bill of rights. He called it the second phase of the civil rights struggle.

"He said it over and over again - racism, poverty and war are the triple evils," said Thomas F. Jackson, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice. "And racism is bound up with poverty. You could not combat one without combating the other."

But the campaign sputtered. King infuriated President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 when he criticized the Vietnam War as an "enemy of the poor." Civil rights leaders complained the movement was too ambitious and unstructured. And with demands for a massive government jobs program, others saw King as too radical.

King died organizing the campaign. In May 1968, marchers staged sit-ins on the Mall in Washington, but attendance was small.

"In the eyes of the press and the nation, it was a failure, but for the participants and the organizers, it was part of the process of learning," Jackson said. "It put the human face of poverty at the forefront."

The Rev. Marion C. Bascom, retired pastor of Baltimore's Douglas Memorial Community Church and a confidant of King's, allowed Poor People's Campaign marchers to take refuge at his church en route to Washington.

"It was terribly important," he said. "My reaction then and now would be hallelujah. I read in the paper [Friday] we are trying to combat homelessness. We are trying to deal with it now. Well, it's too late."

Those who paid little attention to King's legacy of economic justice must reconsider it, he said.

"He had the power to articulate the tragedy that runs rampant and he said it with such force, such power and with such intellectual excellence that not even a bigot could argue with it," Bascom said. "We are still being called on to do what he did."

It's a message that Moore hopes to get out in the job fair: We're all in this together.

"I don't think King would want a parade done in his honor, although I appreciate the people who want to honor him in that way," Moore said. "I think he would want someone to march somewhere, to do something."

Survey shows declining rate of child poverty in Maryland

from the Baltimore Sun

By Ben Meyerson

Capital News Service

WASHINGTON

Maryland had the lowest percentage of children younger than 5 living in poverty of any of the United States in 2005, according to new estimates from the Census Bureau.

The survey said 12.2 percent of children younger than 5 lived below the poverty line in Maryland, compared with a national average of 21.3 percent, according to a survey released by the Census Bureau's Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates program.

Maryland also had the second-lowest overall poverty rate in the nation, as well as the second-highest median household income, according to the survey.

The state moved up the ladder in each of these categories from 2004's survey, which might lead some to believe the state's welfare programs are doing well, according to Daraius Irani, director of applied economics at the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson University.

But Irani said the state should interpret the survey carefully.

"Arguably, if you're looking at data that says programs we've been putting in place are successful, it could say that we don't need to increase them," he said.

To cut state poverty programs would be a mistake, he said.

"Hopefully this doesn't mask some of the issues going on in Baltimore," where the survey said the overall poverty rate was 22.2 percent. The state average was 8.3 percent.

Matthew Joseph, executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth in Maryland, said the low poverty rates make sense because of the state's wealth.

But, he said, the surveys shouldn't necessarily be taken at face value. Advocates for Children and Youth periodically calculates the cost of raising a family in Maryland, and Joseph said the group found it's notably above the federally established poverty line, which is $20,650 for a family of four.

"Maryland is one of the highest-cost states in the country to live in," Joseph said. "Depending on the jurisdiction, [the cost of living] could be two to three times the federal poverty level."

Consequently, the data could be deceiving, he said.

Poverty declines in Maryland

from The Examiner

Stephen Janis, The Examiner

BALTIMORE -

Fewer Maryland residents lived in poverty while household income across the state inched up, according to the latest estimates released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

An estimated 453,850 Maryland residents lived at or below the federal poverty line in 2005 — 8.3 percent of all state residents — down from 506,265 in 2004. That’s an 11 percent decline year over year.

The federal poverty threshold was $19,350 for a family of four in 2005.
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The report was part of a comprehensive survey of poverty in the United States required by the No Child Left Behind Act, a federal law that ties federal funding to school test scores.

The report also included data on household incomes nationwide.

The median household income in Maryland rose from $57,019 in 2004 to $61,546 in 2005 — a 4 percent gain.

Maryland continues to outpace the nation in median incomes and the number of residents living in poverty.

Nationwide, the median household income was $44,100 in 2005 — with 12.7 percent of the U.S. population living in poverty.

Howard, Carroll, Anne Arundel, Harford and Baltimore counties all showed decreases in impoverished residents, with Baltimore County experiencing nearly a 20 percent drop in the number of people below the federal poverty line.

But in Baltimore City, despite a slight increase in median household income from $29,792 in 2004 to $32,453 in 2005, the number of people living in poverty edged up slightly to 134,060 from 131,827 the previous year. More than 30 percent of the city’s children live at or below the poverty level, the largest percentage of impoverished children in any jurisdiction in the state.

“The increase in income is a good thing. It shows there is a lot of opportunity in Baltimore, we are attracting more jobs into the city,” said Sterling Clifford, spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon.

Nevertheless, “not everyone has the same access to those opportunities, and that is what the mayor is committed to fixing.”

INSIDE THE CENSUS

Number of residents living in poverty by jurisdiction in 2005

Baltimore City 134,060 22.2 percent

Baltimore County 52,033 6.8 percent

Harford County 13,470 5.7 percent

Anne Arundel County 26,604 5.4 percent

Howard County 10,251 3.9 percent

Carroll County 6,128 3.7 percent

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Allocation of funds for poor students questioned

from The Baltimore Sun

By Andrew A. Green

Alvin Thornton, who headed Maryland's commission on quality education, said a new study questioning how school districts have spent money allocated to help students in poverty should spark a review of how the landmark education funding formula bearing his name is administered.

The report, released yesterday by Advocates for Children and Youth, concludes that $500 million designed to help poor students is instead being funneled into general improvements.

The report examined the school budgets of Baltimore City and Baltimore, Montgomery, Prince George's and Washington counties. It found they were collectively spending less on targeted interventions for students in poverty than they were before the Thornton money was approved.

ACY is advocating for legislators to include language in this year's budget requiring that the at-risk money be spent on targeted interventions for students in poverty.

The group also wants school districts to report on their expenditures and for an independent entity, such as the comptroller or the Department of Legislative Services, to verify those reports.

State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick and other state and local education officials say the ACY report underestimates the importance of systemic improvements, such as higher teacher salaries. Local districts have also questioned whether the ACY report accurately reflects all of their efforts for at-risk students.

Thornton said he thinks Grasmick's argument about teacher salaries has merit. But he said measuring how effective those measures have been is difficult because the state switched the standardized tests it gives students about the same time that the state began increasing funding through what is officially known as the "Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act." When fully phased in, the program will add $1.3 billion annually to education spending.

The state also needs to scrutinize how the counties and Baltimore City have funded their school districts to make sure local investments are not dropping off as the state investments are increasing, Thornton said.

"There needs to be, I think, some type of Bridge to Excellence II process by which the legislature and the governor look exactly at how the funds have been used and how we go forward, particularly now that you have a new set of tests and new state accountability measures," Thornton said.

Cummings calls for solutions to poverty

from The Gazette Maryland

Black and poverty are too often synonymous, and the nation needs an agenda of new policies to defeat poverty for everyone, said the participants at the Poverty, Race and Policy Forum organized by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Wednesday.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Baltimore, exhorted the organization and the audience to work on new proposals to solve the problem.

‘‘It is not good enough to have a report, it’s how you bring it to life and make it work,” Cummings said.

A document from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, center of the forum’s discussion, said that 37 million Americans are living in poverty. And it showed that by 2004, poverty rates for blacks had risen to 24.7 percent.

Among several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Cummings said, there were ‘‘very interesting stories” about how they rose from poor families to members of Congress.

Cummings talked about his parents — who had little education and moved from South Carolina to Baltimore ‘‘because they wanted their children to do well” — and the value they gave to his education.

Cummings never moved from Baltimore City, he said, because he wanted to show African American children they could do whatever they want in the future.

In Maryland, 8.8 percent of residents live in poverty. The state is 29 percent black, according to the U.S. Census.

‘‘There is so much that government can do, and there is so much that we need to do for ourselves,” Cummings said.

The interim president and chief executive officer of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Elsie Scott, said that after what happened in New Orleans, she thought poverty would be a priority.

Now that several black members of Congress are going to be in top positions during the next Congress, Scott said, they were hoping for their help in working out solutions.

‘‘We want to keep the issue alive.”