States breakfast programs often reflect poverty rates

fom The Green Bay Gazette

By Kelly McBride
kmcbride@greenbaypressgazette.com

With school breakfast programs often more prevalent in districts with higher poverty levels, it's no surprise the Green Bay School District offers breakfast in all but three of its 25 elementary schools.

The district's poverty rate — as defined by the number of students on subsidized lunch — was 47 percent for the 2006-07 school year, with some schools reaching poverty rates above 90 percent.

And while poverty in Brown County tends to be highest in the central city of Green Bay, other counties in more rural areas have greater struggles — and therefore greater need for services like school breakfast.

Marinette County is a prime example. The school breakfast program is offered in 21 of its 22 schools, according to University of Wisconsin-Extension data for the 2005-06 school year, the most recent year for which data is available.

"I know that's very positive for our children, for our families," said Nancy Crevier, a family living agent with the Marinette County University of Wisconsin-Extension, adding there are "very, very high statistics in those rural areas relative to poverty."

In fact, several Marinette County school districts have higher poverty rates than the Green Bay district, according to statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

In the Goodman-Armstrong School District, for example, 50 percent of students qualified for subsidized lunch in 2006-2007, up from 32 percent during the 2000-2001 school year. The Wausaukee district had a 51 percent poverty rate for 2006-2007, compared with nearly 54 percent for Beecher-Dunbar-Pembine, according to DPI statistics.

Although the county has breakfast widely available, getting students to participate isn't always easy, Crevier said. Parents aren't always made aware of the option, and even those who are might be hesitant to fill out subsidized meal forms when applicable.

"People don't always want to do the paperwork to show that," Crevier said, "They don't want to send that USDA form back into school, knowing whose eyes are going to see this, where this is going to go. … It should not be a stigma for you. That's the biggest obstacle."

"Whether they're poor or not, they need adequate nutrition," Janowski said. "The program is not just for poor kids. It should be accessible for all kids."

The following is a list of 41 school districts in the seven-county area, and the current status – if any – of their school breakfast programs:

Brown County

# Ashwaubenon: Breakfast program for all five schools. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Denmark: Breakfast program for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# De Pere: No breakfast program.

# Green Bay: Breakfast program for kindergarten through 12th grade and Head Start. Full or reduced-price, based on income. Some schools with universal breakfast.

# Howard-Suamico: Breakfast program for most schools.

# Pulaski: Breakfast program for middle and high school students. For the elementary buildings based on income level.

# West De Pere: No breakfast program, but district is considering starting one

# Wrightstown: Breakfast program for grades kindergarten through 12th grade. Free for all students.

Door County

# Gibraltar: No program.

# Sevastopol: No program.

# Southern Door: Breakfast program for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. There is a cost.

# Sturgeon Bay: Breakfast program for kindergarten to 12th grade. There is a cost.

# Washington Island: No program.

Kewaunee County

# Algoma: Breakfast program for all ages and grades. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Kewaunee: Breakfast program for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Luxemburg-Casco: No program.

Oconto County

# Gillett: Breakfast program for pre-kindergarten to fifth grade.

# Lena: Breakfast program for pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. There is a cost.

# Oconto: No breakfast program.

# Oconto Falls: Breakfast program for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. There is a cost.

# Suring: Breakfast program for ages 3-4 years and kindergarten to fifth grade. Fee or reduced-price, based on income.

Marinette county

# Beecher-Dunbar-Pembine: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Coleman: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Crivitz: Program for 4-year-old kindergarten through eighth grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Goodman-Armstrong: Program for 4-year-old kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Marinette: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Niagara: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Peshtigo: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Wausaukee: Breakfast program offered to all students.

Manitowoc county

# Kiel: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Manitowoc: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Mishicot: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income.

# Reedsville: No program.

# Two Rivers: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Full or reduced-price, based on income

# Valders: A la carte only.

Shawano county

# Bonduel: Program for kindergarten through fifth grade

# Bowler: Program for kindergarten through 12th grade. Free for everyone.

# Shawano: Program for kindergarten through eighth grade.

# Gresham: No program

# Tigerton: A la carte only.

# Wittenberg/Birnamwood: Two of four schools have breakfast program.

Diocese report puts focus on poverty

from The Schenectady Gazette

Catholics aiming to do more about problems in community

By Sara Foss (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

CAPITAL REGION — A new report contains sobering facts.

About 40 percent of African-Americans and 44.8 percent of Latinos in the city of Schenectady live in poverty. About 22 percent of adults in Fulton and Montgomery counties have not earned a high school diploma. More than 16 percent of non-elderly Montgomery County residents do not have health insurance.

Yet unlike most reports on poverty, this one is interspersed with biblical Scripture. A chapter on income insecurity is preceded by verses from the book of Isaiah: “They shall live in the houses they build and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant. … And my chosen ones shall long enjoy the produce of their hands. They shall not toil in vain.”

The report, released last week by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany, is titled “Poverty in the Diocese of Albany: A Threat to the Common Good” and provides a detailed look at poverty in the 14 counties that comprise the diocese. The report will be used to shape the diocese’s public policy agenda and make parishioners more aware of the poverty in their communities.

“We can inform people about what poverty looks like,” said Marianne Comfort, a sister of St. Joseph and public policy analyst at Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany. “It’s not just something you can point to in New York City and Washington, D.C.”

Catholic Charities USA released a similar report on national poverty last year and has launched a Campaign to Reduce Poverty, which aims to cut poverty in the U.S. in half by 2020.

The report examines five factors contributing to poverty: income insecurity, educational disadvantages, hunger and inadequate nutrition, lack of health care and a shortage of affordable housing. It also contains the stories of people who have received help from Catholic Charities: a single mother struggling to keep her daughters in Our Lady of Victory School in Troy; a father who lost his ability to work and support his family when he fell from a ladder; a 16-year-old who found out she was pregnant but eventually completed her high school education.

John Steele, executive director of Catholic Charities of Schenectady County, said that 60 percent of the people who seek help from the Community Crisis Network, a program that assists needy people in Schenectady County, fall under the federal government’s definition of poverty. The people who go to the Community Crisis Network seek help with a range of problems: utilities, rent, transportation, homelessness.

“Housing is a huge problem in our community, and it seems to be a growing problem,” Steele said. “There are so many people in low-paying jobs without health insurance that can’t make ends meet. The expectation for the diocese is that as people in the pews read this report, they’ll be moved to help in some way.”

The report found that more than 40 percent of Schenectady County households are spending more than 35 percent of their income on rent, a level the federal government defines as unaffordable.

When the community crisis network, which is supported by a number of local anti-poverty agencies, was established seven or eight years ago, it served about 500 people a year, Steele said. Now, it serves more than 3,500, he said.

Comfort began working on the report in the summer. The statistics on children living in poverty “just blew me away,” she said. In the city of Schenectady, about 31 percent of children live in poverty; in Albany, about 41.6 percent of children live in poverty.

She was also surprised by some of the challenges in more rural areas, such as a lack of transportation.

“People are spending $60 on a cab so they can go to Oneonta and see a doctor,” she said.

Martha Pofit, director of public policy for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany, said the report will guide this year’s conversations with state legislators. She said the diocese’s goals include raising the welfare benefit, which has not been increased since 1990, making sure all children have health insurance and seeing the state fully fund Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposed $400 million Housing Opportunity Fund, which would provide affordable and supportive housing. At the national level, Catholic Charities would like to see Congress create a national housing trust fund to provide housing for senior citizens and low-income people.

“We’d like to move away from a minimum wage mindset to a self-sufficiency [mindset],” Pofit said. She said Catholic Charities is supporting a New York State Community Action Association initiative that asks the Legislature to create a commission on poverty.

Poverty is of particular interest to Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard, who chairs the New York Catholic Bishops’ Public Policy Committee, as well as the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ domestic antipoverty program, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

In an introductory letter to “Poverty in the Diocese of Albany,” Hubbard writes, “This report challenges us to fulfill the Gospel mandate to respond to the needs of the least among us.”

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany is currently engaged in a planning process titled “Called to Be Churched.” Clusters of parishes have formed 39 planning groups; each planning group has a Christian service committee that will use the poverty report as a resource for determining the needs in their communities and how best to address them.

The poverty report updates a similar report, called “Rebuilding the Covenant with the Poor,” that Catholic Charities put together in 2005.

“A lot of the information was very time-specific,” Comfort said. “It talked about what the governor was saying. We wanted a document that was less time-sensitive.” “Poverty in the Diocese,” Comfort said, will be updated in 2010, when new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau are released. The diocese will use it to update its public policy goals every year.

'29% Malawian children engaged in child labour'

from The Daily Times

BY JACOB NANKHONYA

Twenty nine percent of children in the country are engaged in child labour, Unicef’s child protection specialist Seamus Mac Roibin has disclosed.

Roibin was speaking during official handover of 150 bicycles to Ministry of Labour at Trade Testing Centre in Lilongwe on Wednesday.

The bicycles are meant to help in fight against child abuse.

“Economically, we are stopping a generation of children to go to school thereby failing to invest in human capital,” said Roibin.

Minister of Labour Anna Kachikho said at the function that as most developments were now being channeled within the context of various frameworks such as Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All initiatives (EFA), amongst others, was paramount.

“Ladies and gentlemen, such frameworks constitute ideal vehicles for combating child labour and efforts should be made to mainstream child labour in these frameworks at national level,” said Kachikho.

According to Kachikho, the 150 bicycles would be dispatched to 15 districts across the country.

Some of the beneficiary districts are Chitipa, Rumphi, Kasungu, Dowa, Mchinji, Dedza, Phalombe and Nsanje.

“These 15 districts have been selected because they are suppliers and receiving districts of child labour,” said Kachikho.

Roibin added that Malawi currently has over one million orphans, adding by 2010 there could be 40 million orphans in Africa.

“These children are some of the likely vulnerable ones to be abused sexually or economically exploited and Unicef is to walk side by side with Malawi in the fight against child abuse,” sad Roibin.

Poverty can be just a few paycheques away

from The Barrie Examiner

Barrie woman’s financial struggles are not unique
Posted By Nicki Cruickshank
Posted -16 sec ago

A few years ago, Bev Colpitts had a house, a car, and was living comfortably.

But that all changed after her marriage collapsed and her health took a turn for the worse.

Now, five years later, she has been left without a drug plan and can’t scrape enough money together to fill a $58 prescription.

“I have viral pneumonia, and I can’t afford the antibiotics or inhaler I need to get rid of it,” said Colpitts, a retired nurse who worked at Royal Victoria Hospital for 33 years. “I’m on a Canada Disability Pension, and I only get $900 a month to live on.”

Factor in $400 for rent at her east-end rooming house and the $350 for medication she needs to live, that leaves little for food or other amenities, let alone another prescription.

“I have to make that last $100 stretch, and I’ve lived like this for the past five years,” Colpitts said. “And I can’t take away from my medication funds because, without them, I have no quality of life.”

She isn’t the only one in this situation. Colpitts’ life is one Louise Stinson sees many local residents struggling with every day.

“Her situation is not unique here in Barrie,” said Stinson, executive director of the David Busby Street Centre. “It (poverty) is on the rise here. Most people in Simcoe County are two paycheques away from losing their homes.”

Stinson said, on a busy day, the centre, located in the basement of Trinity Anglican Church, can see upwards of 200 homeless or impoverished residents come through the door.

“And we get tons of calls from people in need of our services,” Stinson said. “We have counsellors whom people can come and talk to, or we have them go to people who can’t get here.

“We also have a nurse practitioner on staff that might be able to see people and see about getting them help with some medications,” she added.

It all depends on the severity of cases and on how much help can be found for these residents.

“We need to see increases in Canada Pension Plans and Ontario Works,” Stinson said. “Because this scenario can happen to anyone.”

Barrie MPP Aileen Carroll insists increases have been made.

“Ontario Works and Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) payments were increased last November,” Carroll said. “And our government has raised the general minimum wage every year for the past four years.”

Regardless, Colpitts says she will never receive as much money as she did while working as a nurse.

“I had a good life and loved my job. I was making $39 an hour,” Colpitts said. “But we tend to fall between the cracks, and I’m resentful because I gave everything to my job and suddenly, when I need help, no one’s around to help me. It can really break your spirit, and I’d love to find some sort of drug plan.”

But there are community and social service programs around that can help.

“We can help them with access to food if they need it,” said Paula King, of the Elizabeth Fry Society in Barrie. “We can also connect with other services, like the Salvation Army.

“It really irks me that a pension plan wouldn’t give someone like her (Colpitts) a drug plan, too,” King added.

But there is a way to get one, according to the Simcoe County branch of Ontario Works.

“If someone is receiving disability, they can apply to the Ontario Disability Support Program and make a self-referral and be fast-tracked,” said Jamie Moran, manager of the social services department for Simcoe County Ontario Works. “If they’re eligible, they could be provided with a drug card to cover their medications.”

Moran said the Trillium Drug Plan is another option for those who don’t quality for ODSP.

It’s funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, and is for low-income residents under 65 years old.

“It’s much better than having no drug coverage at all,” he said, adding that Trillium applications are available at the ODSP office (34 Simcoe St.).

Carroll said addressing local poverty is one of her priorities.

“The 2007 budget announced a number of initiatives for those who most need our help, including low-income families and seniors,” she said. “The premier has made the reduction of poverty a major priority for this mandate, and the creation of a cabinet committee solely designated to this goal indicates the seriousness of our intent.”

Colpitts hopes sharing her story will be an eye-opener to the public, and will encourage them

to help Barrie’s less fortunate on a more regular basis.

“There are such good news stories that come out of big storms or fires, when people say, ‘What can we do to help?’” she said. “But what about the people living without everyday?”

Contact the writer at ncruickshank@thebarrieexaminer.com

Poverty rates up in county, Triangle

from The Durham News

Changes in welfare rules, influx of immigrants, cooling of economy cited for rising number of poor.

Jim Wise, Staff Writer
Durham County has a poverty rate of 15.6 percent, commissioners chairwoman Ellen Reckhow said in her state-of-the-county speech this week. Application rates for food stamps and Medicaid have almost doubled in this decade.

"I was very surprised," she said afterward.

It's not just Durham. Right across the booming, prosperous Triangle, numbers suggest that hard times are spreading and have been for years.

"I think three things are going on," said Michael Walden, an economist at N.C. State University.

For one thing, he said, eligibility rules have changed for public assistance; for another, the Triangle has had an influx of immigrants likely to need economic aid; and third, the local boom is "entering a slow phase."

The U.S. Census estimated Durham County's 2006 poverty rate at 15.6 percent -- up 2.2 points from the 13.4 percent reported in 2000. Wake County's rate rose from 7.8 percent to 9.1 percent.

Orange County's poverty rate fell from 14.1 percent to 13.9 percent; but, while the county's population grew 7 percent between 2000 and early 2006, according to state estimates, its population eligible for Medicaid grew 44 percent.

Wake County averaged 43,480 food-stamp recipients per month in 2007, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. That was a 122-percent increase from 2000. During the same period, the county's population grew just 25 percent.

"What we're tracking, all along it's been a significant increase," said Nancy Coston, social-services director in Orange County. "It is real."

Another reason Medicaid and food-stamp numbers are up is that local agencies have increased efforts to enroll those who do qualify, said Brad Dean of the state human-services office. "Children need to be covered," said Sam Haithcock, Durham County social-services director.

"The Medicaid increase is not too difficult to understand, because of the cost of medical insurance," Haithcock said.

"We have a considerable number of people in Durham who are low- or moderate-wage people," he said.

"All the [price] increases in the basic things over the last seven or eight years, especially last year ... I think that's a partial explanation."

The Triangle's per capita incomes have gone up since 2000, but in Durham and Wake counties they have not kept pace with the rising cost of living.

"Whenever people cut back in the middle class," said Coston, in Orange County, "then [in] the service industry and some of the manufacturing industry jobs aren't paying as much. ... Some people will tell you they aren't working as much.

"It's not just lost jobs," she said, "you have to kind of look at a bigger picture."

Responding to the poverty indicators, Reckhow called for intensifying efforts to reach the needy with public-aid programs, and for expanded literacy, financial-skill and occupational training. Walden, the economist, also said education is important but had his sights a bit higher.

"Education is really the dividing line in our modern life," he said. "By 'education' I mean college. If you don't have a college degree, you're not doing as well."

Santa Fean Combats Poverty With Food

from Red Orbit

By PAT REED, PHOTO BY REBECCA CRAIG

Man's passion to relieve food insecurity was planted at age of 10

Poverty: As supermarkets left poor areas, food prices soared

When Mark Winne was 10, a pair of World War II refugees who lived near his family threw a Fourth of July party at their New Jersey home. At some point, the youngster wandered off to explore the vegetable garden in the couple's backyard. "I suddenly came face-to- face with my first vine-ripe tomato," Winne writes in Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty.

The tomato was "lush, full, and round," he says, and "I reacted to

the sight and scent of it with the

same sense of awe that I would react with much later in life at the sight

of my first naked female breast."

That tomato was a revelation. "My stroll that day through (the couple's) backyard garden opened my senses to a much larger world of possibilities," writes the author, now a Santa Fe resident. It was an encounter with nature in its cultivated form, he says. And it eventually led him to gardening, farming and what he calls "the sensuality of food."

Ultimately, he chose food as his way to address poverty.

In 1968, as a freshman sociology student at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, years after seeing that vine-ripe tomato, Winne found himself "profoundly moved" by children who were starving during the civil war in Nigeria's Biafra region. "The hurt of these people had somehow lodged itself inside me," he writes. So Winne raised money for famine relief, his first effort at providing food assistance to the hungry.

Not long afterward, he and several college friends decided to try to "make a difference" in Lewiston, a small city on the banks of the Androscoggin River, which he describes as a "once beautiful waterway whose paper and textile mills had turned it into a wide, open sewer whose contents were

too thick to drink and too thin to plow." A breakfast program for the city's poor children

and a community food co-op were among the group's projects.

Immediately after college, he became the director of a youth program in Natick, Mass., 15 miles west of Boston. "Not wasting time on a warm, Welcome Wagon kind of greeting, the town fathers advised me that if I wanted to have a job in six months, I'd better get 'those damn kids off the street,' "

Winne writes.

So he adapted a town-owned farm in the affluent community of Weston, Mass., to Natick. Teenagers worked on the Weston farm, learned about "the rigors of farm work"

and distributed the farm's produce to people living in Boston's low-income housing projects.

The Natick Community Farm was organic, largely, he writes, because he and the farm manager -- a recent university agriculture graduate without farming experience -- had

no idea how to use agricultural chemicals. "By some miracle," he says, "we managed to

cultivate a righteous patch

of organic cantaloupes for which (a natural food store in Boston) was willing to pay top dollar."

* * *

In 1979, Winne moved to Hartford, Conn., to become

the executive director of the newly formed Hartford Food System. He was much more interested in food systems than in counseling troubled youth, he says.

"What was unique (about

the program) -- indeed,

never attempted by any other

U.S. municipality -- was

an initiative to address the city's food problems, specifically the increasing cost of

food available to Hartford's lower-income residents," he writes.

In other parts of the country, people were organizing markets to help farmers or they were creating food co-ops for those who had converted to organic food. But the Hartford Food System was attempting to blend "two separate but related movements" -- the farmers market/organic food crowd and poor people. "This was new, it was exciting, and it was risky as hell," Winne says.

But in 1981, a couple of years after Winne took over the Hartford Food System, Ronald Reagan became president. "In the face of a softening economy and growing unemployment, the Reagan administration moved swiftly to implement its conservative agenda by cutting programs that poor people depended on for survival."

Ultimately, the Reagan administration cut food stamps -- just one program -- by

$1 billion.

"The pressure to feed a

rising tide of hungry people

fell increasingly to local communities and especially to nonprofit organizations and faith-based institutions," Winne writes.

But Reagan aside, the poor neighborhoods of Hartford -- as well as most of the poor areas in the rest of the United States -- were suffering from "supermarket abandonment," as Winne calls it. When middle-class families departed Hartford for the suburbs,

the supermarkets went with them.

The few that remained smelled as if "something had rotted and was never fully cleaned up. When seasoned with a pinch of filth, marinated in gallons of heavily chlorinated disinfectant, and allowed to ferment over many years, the store released a heady aroma that brought tears to the eyes of men stronger than I," Winne writes. In addition, the poor who didn't have a car or money for a taxi to take them to the suburbs were charged more for such dismal food as black bananas and brown lettuce.

In his book, Closing the Food Gap, Winne discusses the successes and failures of his agency's programs -- community farms, farmers markets and food banks, among them -- to deal with supermarket abandonment.

As supermarkets left the city, however, fast-food restaurants and gas-station convenience stores rushed in. "Such establishments thrive in areas of poverty and low education," Winne writes. "While they presumably serve a community's immediate need for calories, they actually prey upon those who are who are weakened by insufficient money, choices, and knowledge. As a result of these factors, Hartford's major food problem shifted from hunger to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity."

Winne departed Hartford for Santa Fe after 25 years. The reason: "a woman," as he puts it, Pam Roy, the director of Farm to Table, a food-policy group. They were married several months ago. Today, he is the food-policy council program director for the Community Food Security Coalition, a national nonprofit based in California. He's also a freelance writer.

* * *

Food insecurity has a root cause: poverty, says Winne, sitting at a small coffee shop in downtown Santa Fe. Americans, he adds, believe poor people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. But we have enough innate compassion that we don't want anybody to starve to death. So Americans, unlike much of the rest of the world, deal with poverty through food programs.

Most European countries, he points out, have fairly sophisticated social-welfare systems that don't focus on food. France, for example, doesn't have food banks or food stamps. Instead, poor people receive enough money from a single source to meet their basic needs.

Countries in Europe spend, on average, about 15 percent of their gross domestic product on social welfare programs, he adds. The United States spends 8 percent.

If poor people could afford to shop at places like Whole Foods or the Santa Fe Farmers Market, Winne asks, would they do so? Would that be their first choice? "My guess is, everyone would chose the more affluent natural food stores and farmers markets," he says.

In 2001, Winne says, the Hartford Food System talked to four Hispanics and four African Americans. The word organic meant "natural" and "healthy," they said. But buying organic food wasn't an option for them. It simply wasn't available.

The elderly women in the group -- from the American South or Puerto Rico -- "spoke animatedly of green beans that 'snapped sharp and clear,' " he writes, "and fresh garden tomatoes, cilantro and collard greens, the mention of which brought sweet smiles to their faces."

Like a 10-year-old boy coming face-to-face with his first vine- ripe tomato.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Santa Fe resident Mark Winne will sign copies of his book, Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, at 3 p.m. Saturday at La Montanita Natural Foods Co-op, 913 W. Alameda St.

(c) 2008 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Locals looking to 'Make Poverty History'

from Perry Sound

by Jack Tynan

PARRY SOUND – A group of area residents hope that by banding together they can make a dent in local poverty.

About 25 people gathered in St. James Centennial United Church for three hours Saturday afternoon to discuss how they can make a difference for the area’s unemployed and working poor.

The group gathered to hear from a representative of the national Make Poverty History campaign – an organization funded by several non-profit groups in order to coordinate a Canada-wide effort to eradicate child and family poverty in Canada.

The goal of the campaign is to help coordinate local efforts to fight poverty while simultaneously creating national momentum for legislative changes.

“I think a big part of our job is the awareness,” said Lloyd Taylor, past chair of the St. James church’s outreach program. “At this point, too many of the people are too isolated by the problem. It’s hard to convince people there really is a problem. Comfortable people don’t see it as a problem.”

The group gathered Saturday included teachers, doctors, students and members of several area churches. Although most were from Parry Sound, some Muskoka residents also joined the session – including Sara Hall, the NDP’s candidate for the riding during last fall’s provincial election – who encouraged residents to make poverty an issue in every election campaign.

“We need to make sure we show up at all-candidates meetings,” Ms Hall said. “It’s one thing to host your own all-candidates meetings, but you need to show up at every single one.”

Make Poverty History hopes to alleviate local poverty and convince world leaders to cancel debts owed by Third World countries, change policies to provide better foreign aid and eradicate child poverty across Canada, said spokesperson Sarah Mohan.

“About 800 million people go to bed hungry at night, many of those people are in Canada,” said Ms Mohan. “People go to bed hungry every night in Canada. We have this pressure at a local level right across the country and there we say, ‘listen, this is a democratic country and people are saying something’. A lot of our groups do local poverty work, such as helping out at food banks. You can really make this campaign what you want it to be.”

Most of those gathered Saturday said they were interested spreading a message across the province and country, but wanted to make a difference in the Parry Sound area, where the average family income sits at about $35,600, about $11,600 lower than the provincial average.

“We live in this little niche,” said local resident Frank Thompson. “It’s not getting better.”

The session finished with information on how to launch a local campaign and how to affect local election races.

Scotts Bluff poverty among children higher than national average

from The Bellevue Leader

By JENNIFER BARTEN , Midlands News Service

More than 2,100 children in Scotts Bluff County live in poverty, according to a statewide survey.

Child poverty in Scotts Bluff County is higher than both the state and national averages, with 22 percent of children 17 and younger living in poverty,
Between 2000 and 2005, the poverty rate for Nebraska children in that age group rose 50 percent and is still on the rise, according to the Voices for Children "Kids Count 2007" Report.

"Children that experience poverty ... are more likely to experience other risk factors, like child abuse, neglect," said Annemarie Bailey Fowler of the group Voices for Children.

In Nebraska, 15 percent of children between the ages of 1 and 17 are living in poverty, compared with 18 percent in the nation. Thirty-six percent are from families considered low income. In 2007, a family of four making $20,650 or less was considered at the poverty level. Low-income is classified as $40,000 in annual income for a family of four.

Kelly Reisig, community relations specialist at Panhandle Community Services, said poverty guidelines are established annually by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Of the state's Hispanic children, 61 percent of Hispanic children were from low-income families, compared with 26 percent of white children.

A positive trend in the report is that Nebraska ranked first in the country for the percent of children living with working parents. Among children ages 6 and younger, 73 percent of their mothers worked full time. Figures for fathers were not provided in the report.

"We have a lot of service-related jobs in the area that don't pay a lot," Reisig said. "It is assumed that people in poverty aren't working, but that isn't the case."
The report also found that young children living in households with "very low food security" are 61 percent more likely to be overweight than are young children living in "food secure" households.

"Despite the fact that we have such a high number of working families, we continue to see a high number of families struggling to put food on the table," Reisig said.

Reisig said type of jobs that come to the area will determine whether the number continues to rise in the future. To help families in poverty, programs in the area have been set up to help their immediate needs and to help them set goals to try to get out of poverty.

Zimbabwe: Crisis endagers education

from Africa News

Two weeks into the new term, Tatenda Marimire, 13, has spent more time as an unpaid errand boy for his school than getting to grips with algebra, because there are no teachers. Like most civil servants, educators have increasingly stayed away from work to seek other sources of income to survive hyperinflation.

"We are spending most of the time cutting grass, cleaning dormitories and running errands for members of staff that have reported for duty, and this makes us feel like young workers without salaries," he complained. "We don't know where the teachers are and if we will manage to learn at all."

The Zimbabwean government has been struggling to pay its employees inflation-related salaries and the education sector has been one of the worst affected by the eight-year economic crisis. On 24 January the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), the country's biggest group of educators, issued a statement calling for a strike over general unhappiness with recent salary hikes.

The union had asked for a minimum monthly salary of Z$1,770 million (about US$321 at the parallel foreign exchange market rate of Z$5.5 million to US$1) for at least the first quarter of 2008, but only Z$141 million (about US$25) per month was put on the table.

The government has not publicly released official inflation figures for the last two months but the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that the rate has reached 100,000 percent and is still rising.

Too weak to teach

"We are stressed, our bodies are weak and our minds numb," said the PTUZ statement. "Prolonged exposure to poverty has destroyed the professional person in us. We are facing a slow death."

We [teachers] are stressed, our bodies are weak and our minds numb. Prolonged exposure to poverty has destroyed the professional person in us. We are facing a slow death
Low teacher morale, the brain drain, inadequate financing, poverty and hunger were some of the challenges the education sector was facing, according to the 2004 government progress report on the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Many teachers have sought to supplement their meagre salaries by cross-border trading, illegal gold panning, informal foreign currency trading and even sex work.

The PTUZ statement said reporting for work would only deceive children and their parents into believing that meaningful learning was taking place at schools, whereas it was not: "We do not want to convert classroom blocks into shopping malls and shopping centres. We do not want to covert our students into customers."

A senior teacher at Marimire's school in Chitungwiza, a town about 30km south of the capital, Harare, admitted that they had been affected by the shortage of teachers.

"Even the strike that PTUZ is calling for would be meaningless because the teachers are just not there [because they have left the profession or even the country], and through interaction with my colleagues in and outside Chitungwiza and Harare I have heard that the situation is bad in almost every school, with private schools being less affected," said the teacher, who did not want to be named.

The school was unable to pay the salaries demanded by private tutors and had approached university students awaiting the start of a new semester in March to help out temporarily. "This is just a way of managing the crisis, but we are lost as to what permanent solution we can have. Teachers have been abandoning classrooms over the years, sometimes without even bothering to tender their resignations, but this year seems to be the worst."

In another statement urging parents to support their strike, the PTUZ noted that more than three million Zimbabweans have fled the country to seek economic refuge in other countries. The brain drain has also acutely affected the health, construction, engineering and manufacturing sectors.

Angry parents

Many parents are angry because their children are receiving little or no education. According to the latest statistics by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Zimbabwe still has an overall literacy rate of over 90 percent, the highest in southern Africa, which analysts attribute to an aggressive policy in the 1980s that aimed to bring about universal education.

But the high inflation rate has drastically undermined the allocation for procuring teaching and learning materials, according to the government's Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture.

Primary school enrolment rates were above 90 percent in 2004, but attendance and completion rates have been dropping because of rising costs, which have also affected the quality of education: in 2004, the Grade 7 examination pass rate was 67 percent and the textbook-pupil ratio was low, ranging between 1:6 and 1:10 in all subjects, according to the ministry.

"Yes, this country might have one of the highest literacy rates on the continent, but the falling standards in the education sector are definitely bound to drastically lower the quality of local qualifications," commented John Sakarombe, whose daughter is in a boarding school outside the city of Gweru in Midlands Province.

When he visited her recently, his daughter complained of erratic food supplies and power cuts, and said they had to cook their own meals because most of the kitchen staff had left. The pupils have been forced to use the bucket system because the school did not have the funds to hire plumbers to clear the blocked sewer system, and this exposed them to communicable diseases, he added.

"I feel cheated and am fed up," said Sakarombe. "I paid more than one billion dollars [in school fees] - not easy money to raise, especially as we are coming from the Christmas holiday ... but this is what I am getting."

Some schools even urge students to buy groceries for their teachers, because the prices of commodities have now risen beyond the reach of the majority.

People's Shops

In an attempt to help the poor cope with high prices, the government announced this week that it would be introducing "People's Shops" to cater to low-income groups.

According to the official Herald newspaper, industry and international trade minister Obert Mpofu said the shops would ensure that disadvantaged groups and people earning very low incomes could buy basic commodities at affordable prices.

The concept has been borrowed from Angola, which has allocated US$1.5 billion to build such shops throughout the country.

For some elders, pride before food

from The Boston Globe

By John Guilfoil, Globe Correspondent | January 31, 2008

Advocates for the elderly are pushing hard to get area senior citizens in need of assistance to apply for the federal food stamp program, but pride and embarrassment stand in the way, they say.

Many seniors who never had to ask the government for help during their prime working years now find themselves struggling with lower incomes. As a result, it's harder for them to make ends meet while juggling medical needs and prescriptions, utility bills, housing and food costs, and other routine expenses.

Living on Social Security payments, sometimes supplemented by a pension, retirees may be eligible for aid for the first time. But many do not seek the help, now that they no longer work full time.

"It's very difficult to get people to overcome the stigma that seems to be attached to the program, even though it can benefit people," Kristin Kiesel, director of the Sudbury Council on Aging, said of food stamps. "The whole history of the program makes people reluctant even if it could benefit them."

The local effort is part of a nationwide campaign by the US Department of Agriculture to get more seniors on food stamps. In recent weeks, the agency has sent out posters and pamphlets and had public service radio and television spots aired. It also has streamlined the application process, and allows people to apply online or over the telephone.

State officials have also enhanced efforts to bring eligible senior citizens into the food stamp program, providing resources such as additional training for those who assist the elderly with applications, and more information and access to the program.

The efforts are important in a state such as Massachusetts, where participation in the food stamp program has historically been low, according to the USDA.

The department reports that in 2005, Massachusetts was ranked 49th in the country for participation by those eligible for food stamps, with just 12.8 percent of the seniors living below the poverty level enrolled in the program.

In community after community, advocates say, the story is the same - when seniors think of the aid program, they envision "the poor person" with a book of food stamps, tearing out the individual paper coupons to pay for their groceries while the other customers in line stare impatiently.

This image lingers, they said, even though the current system utilizes a plastic debit card, much like a Visa or MasterCard, and using it is fast and discreet.

A number of area senior centers, including Sudbury's, are working to debunk myths about the program and remove the social stigma about receiving help from the government. The message is simple: Food stamps provide food.

"Food stamps are not welfare," Kiesel said. "The program is designed to help people get nutritious food that they otherwise might not be able to afford." So far, however, no one in Sudbury has gone through the whole sign-up process, officials said.

At the Milford Senior Center, the message was conveyed in a recent issue of the Elder Milfordian, a newsletter mailed to the community's 2,800 households with older residents. But as it is with tax, medical, and fuel assistance, Milford seniors are often too embarrassed to seek help, officials say.

"It's been our history that seniors are a little bit shy about applying," said Ruth Anne Bleakney, director of the Milford Senior Center. "They don't want anyone to see them come into the senior center and have an application."

Bleakney said center officials have noticed that some of the food stamp applications left out for people have been picked up. But because seniors are reluctant to talk about food stamps, it isn't possible to tell whether there has been an upswing in applications for the program. The reticence creates another problem for advocates.

"It's hard to know who needs help, because they're not going to tell you," Bleakney said.

Natick seniors are seeing a targeted marketing campaign from their senior center, with posters highlighting the program and brochures and forms available to pick up.

"Sometimes it's an issue of awareness, not being aware of what benefits are available," said Moira Munns, director of human services for the Natick Council on Aging. "But sometimes even awareness is not enough to shift attitudes."

In Newton, officials with the Senior Services Department have found some success, after promoting the food stamps program for several years as a regular part of their work with the city's elderly.

"Every time we meet a senior, we do an assessment and part of that assessment is seeing if there are any entitlement programs that they are not accessing, that they should be accessing, and food stamps is a big one," said Kathy Laufer, a clinical social worker for the city.

Newton treats the food stamps program like Social Security or Medicare - something that seniors have paid taxes into and have earned the benefits in return.

"We educate seniors that this is a program they are entitled to. They paid taxes to this when they are younger, and this is not a charity," Laufer said. Several seniors have signed up for food stamps in Newton after listening to a presentation.

To qualify for food stamps, an individual's net monthly income should not exceed $851. For a household of two, the maximum figure is $1,141. Seniors can deduct many expenses, such as doctor's bills, over-the-counter and prescription drugs, attendant or visiting nurse care, and dental care, from their gross income when determining whether they qualify for food stamps. Even seniors who own their home or get meals delivered to them through a government program may be eligible, officials say.

Information about applying for food stamps can be obtained by calling the USDA's toll-free telephone number for Massachusetts, 866-950-3663, or online at www.fns.usda.gov.

Child coverage expands in state

from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

By GUY BOULTON

Starting today, almost every family in Wisconsin will have access to affordable health insurance for their children.

The insurance will cost $10 to $90.74 a month for each child, depending on family income, and will be available through the state under the new program known as BadgerCare Plus.

The state hopes to enroll 25,000 people in BadgerCare Plus in the first year to year and a half.

"It's a huge step toward providing cost-effective health care coverage for all children in the state," said Jon Peacock, research director for the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families, a statewide advocacy group in Madison.

The new program will consolidate and simplify three existing programs that provide health insurance to low-income families in Wisconsin: Medicaid, Healthy Start and BadgerCare. Those programs now will be known as BadgerCare Plus.

The state estimates that the expanded coverage will cost $50 million over the next 1½ years.

The federal government will pay more than 60% of the cost. In addition, the program will be financed by the premiums paid by families, coupled with efficiencies attained by the expanded use of health maintenance organizations and administrative savings. Families with incomes above 300% of the federal poverty level - $63,600 for a family of four - will pay the full cost of the health insurance for their children: $1,089 a year for each child.

The cost will be lower for children in families with incomes that fall between 200% and 300% of the federal poverty level. Parents and children in households with incomes below that are eligible for health insurance through the state at no cost.

In most parts of the state, children will get basic coverage through an HMO run by private companies that contract with the state. The coverage will have some co-pays, including a $60 charge for inappropriate emergency room visits, and will provide for only generic prescription drugs. It also will have limited benefits, similar to commercial plans, for behavioral health.

BadgerCare Plus also will change the way the state determines eligibility for farmers and people who are self-employed, enabling more families to qualify for subsidized coverage for their children, or free care for the family, depending on their incomes.
Quicker, simpler

The state estimates that 48,000 children in Wisconsin were uninsured for the full year and 71,000 childrenwere uninsured at any given point in time in 2006. An estimated two-thirds of those children wereeligible for state health programs before BadgerCare Plus.

One of the key goals of BadgerCare Plus is to simplify the programs.

"We have tried to take the complexity out of the program as much as possible for people enrolling," said Jason Helgerson, administrator of the state's Division of Health Care Financing, who will oversee BadgerCare Plus.

Here's an example of that complexity: A mother could get coverage for herself and children under 6 - but not for children who were older. As a result, some children within the same family would have health insurance while others would not.

Under the previous programs, the state estimates that there were 22 categories for determining eligibility.

Under BadgerCare Plus, there will be three."It seemed to me that there had to be real savings there if you streamlined this and made it into a single state health insurance plan," said Gov. Jim Doyle, who first proposed BadgerCare Plus in 2006.

One of the biggest changes under the new program is Express Enrollment.

Children in families with household incomes of 150% or less of the federal poverty level - less than $21,000 for a parent and a child, for example - will be immediately enrolled upon applying for BadgerCare Plus. The families will then have the balance of that month and the next month to provide the needed documents.

"You walk away with a card right after your enrollment," Helgerson said.

People also will be able to apply for BadgerCare Plus online.

Even with the changes, BadgerCare Plus will have its share of complexity. The manual on the program is more than 300 pages. And the program's introduction will inevitably bring some problems.

"Whenever you change anything of this scale, you are going to have glitches," Helgerson said.

The program's rollout includes $447,142 in grants to community organizations to help explain the new program and to process applications. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation gave the state $300,000 to help fund the grants.

"We really are trying to do everything we can to get the word out to as many people as possible," said Audra Brennan, who was hired by the state four months ago to be the liaison for southeast Wisconsin.

The unknown is how many families will buy insurance for their children through BadgerCare Plus.

"We want people to know that this is a very inexpensive way to get their children insured," Doyle said. "To me, that is the biggest challenge in the coming months - to do the outreach."
Some exceptions

While BadgerCare Plus will make affordable health insurance available to almost every child in the state, the program won't make it available to all.

"In the big picture, it's a step in the right direction," said Bobby Peterson, a lawyer with ABC for Health, a public interest law firm based in Madison. "Some families are going to face challenges in understanding the program and getting the coverage they need."

Parents whose employer pays 80% of the cost of family coverage, for instance, are not eligible for the program. That could be a problem for low-wage workers whose employers offer only a health plan with a high deductible.

"That's something we are going to look at going forward," Helgerson said.

BadgerCare Plus also will not cover children who are illegal immigrants. And legal immigrants must wait five years before they are eligible. (Children born in the United States are citizens and are eligible.)

The one exception is pregnant women. The reasoning here is that prenatal care can save money by ensuring the birth of a healthy child who will be a U.S. citizen. The mother loses her coverage with the birth of the child.

"This is a very difficult issue that the country itself has to grapple with," Doyle said. "We are controlled by federal law on this."

The governor said he believes that providing health care to all children, including those who are illegal immigrants, is a moral obligation.

"If a child came into an emergency room who is seriously injured or seriously ill, I can't believe there is anybody in the country who wouldn't say we have to do something about that," Doyle said. "We can't just say, 'I'm sorry. Go back out into the cold. We're mad at your parents.' "

Doyle hopes to expand BadgerCare Plus next year to make health insurance available to low-wage workers who don't have children.

For now, the state's focus is on getting children insured. And state officials believe they've come up with a relatively low-cost way to do that.

"We've done it in a very practical way," said Kevin Hayden, the secretary of the Department of Health and Family Services. "This is a great story for us to celebrate."

[Book Excerpt] Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles by Harriet Lamb

from New Consumer

In June 2007, I was ironing the kids’ school uniforms while watching Tony Blair on the TV news make his emotional resignation speech. He called on us to: ‘think – no really think’ about how different Britain was ten years ago when he came to power. On the BBC website, philosopher and author Julian Baggini reflected: ‘A more permanent change of the last ten years could be the way in which issues of global justice and environmentalism have become mainstream. In 1997, Fairtrade coffee, campaigns such as Make Poverty History, and popular support for reducing our environmental impact were found only on the fringes of society. For instance, in 1997 Sainsbury’s didn’t sell any Fairtrade bananas. Soon all its bananas will be certified Fairtrade. The change is largely down to customer demand, which is ironic, because early advocates of such issues were generally of the view that consumerism was synonymous with selfish greed. . . . Whether it is because of or despite his leadership, it seems indubitable that Britain has a greater sense of its global responsibility as Blair prepares to leave Downing Street than it did when he entered it.’

The shifts in public concerns in the last ten years have indeed been remarkable. ‘To judge the success of Fairtrade,’ John Kanjagaile once told me, ‘don’t look only at sales volumes and market shares, look at the issues on the agenda, look at what the public are asking and what companies are debating. When we go into negotiating rooms with companies now, even if they’re not yet doing Fairtrade, they all have to do something on social and environmental

issues.’


As a 2007 Mintel report identified: ‘Green is the new Black’. It found: ‘People in Britain today are clearly moving towards more ethical lifestyles and are starting to realise that their actions have consequences. As British shoppers increasingly look to shop with a clear conscience, Mintel forecasts that the market will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.


People do not want to damage the planet or its people and as a result retailers that once competed only on price are now partly competing on who is the greenest and fairest of them all. But can this surge of interest be sustained? Can it be turned into real improvements for millions of producers? Will people make Fairtrade their daily, lifelong habit? How far can we take Fairtrade in the next five, ten, years?


Key to these evolving plans is Mike Gidney, the Chair of the Fairtrade Foundation, and Director of Traidcraft Exchange’s Policy Unit. Usually en route to lobby ministers on world trade rules or supermarket dominance, Mike is always flying through our offices to ensure we stay on track with our core mission and remain accountable to our NGO owners despite the strong crosswinds constantly buffeting our little organisation. Gesticulating wildly, and speaking nineteen to the dozen, he wastes no time outlining the vision: ‘We’ve gone a long way – but Fairtrade needs to be ingrained into the fabric of our lives and the economy. To make this next step-change, we need to engage the public, businesses and governments so that they are ready to deepen their commitments. We need’, he pauses, ‘to start really

transforming trade – so we can touch more lives deeply.’


Top of our To Do list is keeping Fairtrade sales growing – so more producers of more products can have more benefits. There’s much to celebrate about the take-off of Fairtrade. We’ve come a long, long way from the early get-togethers of banana and coffee producers, when their main call was for organisations such as the Fairtrade Foundation to invest more in growing the market. In fact, at one point, the coffee farmers even suggested investing some of their premium in marketing – an idea that was rejected in the end. But, far as we’ve come, we do not delude ourselves about the impact this is having on global poverty as a whole, and nor can businesses rest up, feeling they’ve ‘done their bit’. Still only a tiny proportion of disadvantaged producers in developing countries can participate in Fairtrade – because it’s still only a slither of the food we buy from overseas. So there is everything still to play for. The good news is we have solid foundations to build on – a global system, a turn-key model that can be applied to new products, public appetite for more, many businesses ready to move from merely complying with Fairtrade rules to deeper commitment. Now we need to realise that potential to make a significant difference to poverty. In five years’ time, Fairtrade in Britain could top sales of £1.6 billion (where organics are today), five times today’s level. And perhaps global Fairtrade sales could

reach $10 billion by 2012.


More importantly, we want to achieve that by embedding Fairtrade into the way companies trade and citizens shop. The first fifteen years of Fairtrade turned a seemingly wild idea into a living alternative with a foothold in the mainstream and thousands of companies involved worldwide. While having different strategies for each commodity, in the next few years we need to make Fairtrade the rule, not the exception, so it becomes what Mark Price,Waitrose’s Chief Executive, calls ‘the hygiene factor’. So, just as a company will always meet stringent hygiene rules for food

products – they are the non-negotiables – so too Fairtrade couldbecome part of the normal way of doing business with producers in developing countries, while enabling the more committed companies to go further still.


We can surely imagine the day when most bananas, and a good chunk of roast and ground coffee sold in British shops is Fairtrade. Other fresh fruit such as pineapples and grapes have also been making great progress, with the supermarket chain Asda leading the way here along with the fresh fruit company Malet Azulet, who have worked with them and other retailers to achieve this. However, the potential for growth is still huge. And we will need clever strategies for those products that have been stubbornly stuck at the bottom of the Fairtrade sales league – like chocolate, rice or tea.

Working poor target of initiative

from The Omaha World Herald

BY JOE RUFF
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Helping low-income workers make ends meet in Nebraska will create stronger families and businesses, said organizers of a statewide initiative announced Wednesday to study, increase awareness of and develop solutions to the problem.

"Working families in Nebraska should have the opportunity to not just get by, but get ahead," said Kathy Bigsby Moore, executive director of Voices for Children in Nebraska.

Cost-effective programs that companies can embrace — such as financial education in the workplace — will be one focus of "Opportunity at Work," a coalition of business, human service and nonprofit groups, said Shawn Macken, a financial adviser with Waddell & Reed Financial Services in Omaha.

Workers concentrating on their jobs instead of struggling to pay their bills will create more productive, profitable companies paying higher wages, Macken said.

The Opportunity at Work initiative grew out of the realization that many people who work hard still have trouble paying their bills, Moore said.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 88 percent of low-income children in Nebraska have at least one working parent.

"For several years in a row, Nebraska has ranked number one in the United States for the number of children living with working parents, and yet our child poverty rate increased by 50 percent in five years," Moore said.

The coordinator of Opportunity at Work, Annemarie Bailey Fowler of Voices for Children, said the group wants to do research to better understand the problem of working people who struggle financially. Feasible, measurable solutions will be sought, including policy initiatives, Fowler said.

Macken's company has worked with United Way of the Midlands and the University of Nebraska at Omaha in a financial education package delivered at work sites, with employees and employers helping foot the cost. The program includes one-on-one financial counseling with participants about their budget, savings and investments.

Godfather's Pizza, Quality Living Inc. and Nebraska Furniture Mart in Omaha have offered the classes. Officials in those companies have said they were very effective.

The program brings what is taught in the classes directly into people's homes, influencing their behavior, said Jeanette Washington, manager of employee relations and diversity initiatives at Godfather's Pizza.

"Education without application is just knowledge," Washington said. Giving workers an opportunity to learn about finances and apply it to their lives is a key initiative, she said.

Workplace financial education could spread statewide as interest increases, organizers said.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Sherwood Foundation each gave $40,000 to help start Opportunity at Work. The money will help pay for a coordinator, research and public awareness.

Participating organizations in Opportunity at Work include Voices for Children and the Sherwood Foundation; the Financial Stability Partnership; and the Wellness Council of the Midlands. Others include Waddell & Reed Financial Services; First National Bank; Lincoln Action Program; the YWCA; Catholic Charities; Quality Living Inc.; Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest; Godfather's Pizza Inc.; Family Housing Advisory Services; and Legal Aid of Nebraska.

World-Herald staff writer Erin Grace contributed to this report.

[Comment] Thailand in forefront of race for better health

from The Bangkok Post

By JOY PHUMAPHI

For millions of the world's poorest people, ill-health and disease too often go hand in hand with grinding poverty and blunted national aspirations. In looking for solutions to this troubling state of global health, we can learn a great deal from Thailand. Given that most of the world's development thinking cascades from wealthy OECD countries in the North to countries in the South we need to hear more from Thailand and other countries like Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Vietnam, which have achieved breakthroughs in primary healthcare, to export their development experience in a South-South dialogue to show their neighbours in South Asia, Africa and other regions what works, what doesn't, and why. This experience should not stay confined to national borders.

At the Prince Mahidol Awards Conference in Bangkok this week, we have heard yet again that weak health systems are a significant roadblock to improving the health of people in developing countries. Thailand, by contrast, has focused on strengthening its health system and this has allowed the nation to cope with and contain other epidemics of global significance such as avian influenza and Sars.

This a clear case of how a stronger national healthcare system can not only protect the people of Thailand, but the greater worldwide community as well.

Thailand has also shown the world that HIV/Aids could be confronted with well-financed prevention, care and treatment programmes. These programmes, initiated in the 1990s, may have prevented as many as 7 million new cases of HIV infection by 2006.

Thailand is in select company here. Only a handful of other countries have been able to reverse an HIV epidemic in this way.

Sadly, for millions of other people in South Asia and Africa, this level of healthcare is a distant mirage. Despite some notable examples of success, we continue to see unacceptable levels of sickness and death that abandon people to poverty and desperation.

Almost 11 million children die every year, mainly from preventable causes like pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. More than 500,000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth every year. In 2006, almost 3 million people died from HIV/Aids. Tuberculosis is curable, yet 1.7 million people die from it every year.

Nearly one-third of children under five in the developing world remain underweight or stunted, leading to irreversible brain and physical damage. Prevention is therefore a long-term investment which greatly benefits both present and successive generations.

A country's sustained economic growth rate is significantly influenced by the health of its people. It is little wonder, therefore, that illness is a cause of poverty as families tap into savings or sell what they own to cover the costs of medical care. If we are serious about fighting poverty, improving the perilous health of millions of the world's poorest people must be a top priority of the global development community.

What can we do? We need to strengthen health systems across the board; we need to focus on verifiable results; and we all need to work together better. Stronger, integrated health systems are an essential platform for effective universal prevention, treatment, care and mitigation of diseases.

In practical terms, strengthening health systems means putting together the right chain of events that, for example, gets life-saving drugs and health workers to mothers and their newborns where they are needed most. It means making sure that poor people get the good quality health services they need. Many existing aid programmes for health stall or actively fail because there is no functioning health system with the capacity to deliver services and drugs to the people who need them. Focus on results _ without results, health system strengthening has no meaning. Without health system strengthening, there will be no results.

One promising approach to strengthening health systems is ''results-based financing.'' In fact, using this approach, the World Bank is working with Mozambique, Rwanda and other African countries to help them lower their numbers of child deaths and improve their maternal health. This innovative approach links aid directly to verifiable results.

Health systems, however, don't function in isolation; they need to show their worth and their value to people at the household level, at the local community and national levels. It is important to have systems that not only show results but respond to demand.

We need to work together better. With the health and development arena increasingly crowded by bilateral and multilateral partners, as well as new foundations and charities, it is clear that donors, too, have a bargain to keep. In fact, there is widespread recognition that the Millennium Development Goals of maternal and child survival will not be achieved without significantly improved performance and coordination by all stakeholders within countries and internationally.

And we all have to learn from each other's successes and failures. This is key to moving forward faster.

With this task in mind, it is fitting indeed to invoke the memory and achievements of Prince Mahidol, the Father of Modern Medicine in Thailand, and a man who saw many years ago that a well-functioning public healthcare system was a cornerstone of a vibrant, modern society.

Let us use the Prince's health summit in Thailand this week to step up our efforts to help middle-income and developing countries to strengthen their health systems to achieve long-term, sustained good health, stronger growth, and more promising national prospects in the global economy.

Joy Phumaphi is vice-president of the World Bank's Human Development Network; a former WHO assistant director-general for family and community health; and a former minister of health in Botswana.

Event gives a voice to doorstep poverty

from The Telegraph and Argus

By Paddy McGuffin

People are recounting their personal experiences of poverty and homelessness at an awareness event taking place in Bradford today.

Bradford has two of the worst wards in the country for child poverty and a significant "hidden" homelessness problem, according to groups which deal with the issue on a daily basis.

Today's event, called Speak Out On Poverty, has been organised as part of a national campaign running until the end of next week.

The campaign is being supported by various groups and organisations as well as the Church of England.

Sam Randall, church in the world officer for the Bradford Diocese, said: "Poverty and homelessness are complex issues and can be hidden from view which means often people are not aware of them.

"When we talk about poverty we are not necessarily talking about people being destitute although, of course, that is part of it. Poverty can affect anyone - single parents, students, long-term carers.

"In the current economic climate with fixed incomes, more and more people are feeling the strain. Poverty affects us all and can damage the cohesion of communities.

"I spoke to someone the other day who had been offered a mortgage seven times their salary. To me that is absolutely criminal. How were they ever going to pay that back?"

"Some of our wards here in Bradford have pockets of deep poverty, there is also the issue of rural poverty which is often overlooked. This is an issue which we should all be concerned about and these events are all about opening people's eyes.

"Everyone must get involved. Local representatives, local businesses, not just the voluntary sector and the church who are incredibly committed to the issue.

"For me these issues are far more important than putting a pond in the middle of the city. When Jesus said the poor we shall always have with us' he wasn't saying there is nothing we can do about it."

Marsha Singh, Labour MP for Bradford West, who is attending today's event, said: "I think events such as this are very important in raising public awareness. It is very easy to forget about poverty.

"This country is very good at helping impoverished people in the developing world and quite rightly so but at the same time we have to be aware of poverty on our own doorstep.

"It could be your next-door neighbour or a pensioner unable to pay her fuel bills. Fuel poverty is an issue I hope will be addressed at the event today.

"I am proud that this Labour Government is acting on poverty as a priority. Of course, there is always more that can be done and you cannot reverse decades and decades of poverty overnight but good work is being done."

Speak Out On Poverty is being held at the Impressions Gallery in Centenary Square, Bradford, from 11am until 12.30pm.

Nourishing under-threes boosts long-term earnings

from Reuters Africa

By Peter Apps

LONDON, Better nutrition not only helps small boys grow up taller and stronger but can boost earning power, a long-term study in Guatemala showed on Friday, with the researchers saying childhood feeding would help reduce poverty.

They said the study, published in the Lancet medical journal, made a case for rich country donors, aid agencies and developing nations to target feeding at the very young.

"Our study is the first to find a direct link between nutrition in childhood and economic productivity in later life," researcher John Hoddinott from the Washington, DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) told reporters in a telephone briefing.

"The implications are stark. Governments... that are interested in welfare and poverty reduction should increase their spending on preschool nutrition."

Researchers looked at almost 1,500 people in four Guatemalan villages who had been enrolled in a nutrition study between 1969 and 1977, with two villages receiving a protein, calorie and nutrient rich porridge-like drink and two receiving a less nutritious placebo.

They found men who had received the nutritious porridge before the age of three earned 46 percent more per hour than those who did not. But there was no increase in earnings for women or for men who received the supplement only after they had passed three years of age.

The researchers said they took into account other factors such as village location and school quality.

"The ages of zero to two and zero to three are often described by nutritionists as a golden window," Hoddinott said. "In very young children, malnutrition has several malign effects. They have slower physical growth so end up being shorter. Malnutrition also affects brain development."

Being taller and stronger might help boost earnings in trades such as agricultural labouring, he said, although the researchers suspected it was the difference in cognitive -- or thinking -- ability that was most crucial.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS

The researchers said they were uncertain why women did not reap the economic benefits of better early childhood feeding, but suggested it could be due to differences in work activities. Most women in the area worked in low productivity activities such as agricultural processing so might have lacked the ability to substantially increase their wages.

Many aid agencies and developing countries target the very young with nutritional supplements but other interventions -- such as United Nations World Food Programme school feeding programmes -- target older children.

"If what you are looking for is to improve school attendance and improve attention then school feeding programmes are still effective," Hoddinott said.

But given limited resources he said he would rather spend money on feeding before children reached school age. (editing by Maggie Fox) (for more information on humanitarian crises and issues visit www.alertnet.org)

Multi-structure approach vital in poverty reduction – Nana Akomea

from My Joy Online

Nana Akomea, Minister of Manpower, Youth and Employment (MMYE), on Thursday said strategies targeting poverty reduction should be multi-structured with different interventions to improve the chances of access.

He said when a country adopted only one strategy it would end up not reaching out to many vulnerable groups who really needed that intervention.

“Various poverty alleviation measures would have various degrees of targets, impact, or incidence. It is not all poor families who may have a young beneficiary of the National Youth Employment Programme or Capitation Grant or school feeding.”

Nana Akomea, who took his turn at the meet-the-press series said government therefore was pursuing another major Social Protection intervention – Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) to complement relief measures for categories of poor people in society.

The LEAP pilot programme, funded by DFID and UNICEF with support from the government would be implemented nationwide from this year to 2012 in the form of Direct Cash Transfers.

He said in 2007, government allocated 20 billion Ghana Cedis in the budget to support the programme and has earmarked another 220 billion for the 2008 roll out.

The total cost of the five-year programme was estimated at 26 million Ghana Cedis, amounting to less than 1 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Amounts to be disbursed monthly ranged from eight Ghana Cedis to 15 Ghana cedis depending on if the extremely poor household also has an orphan, severely disabled person, and persons aged over 65.

Nana Akomea said the selection of households would be done using Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS) data, district poverty maps and the regional distribution of extreme poor so that the poorest regions would be fairly represented.

“Beneficiaries would be assisted over a period to build socio-economic capacity to cater for subsistence needs. While on the programme LEAP beneficiaries, targeted households would be linked with other livelihood promotion services from other MDAs to sustain their livelihood beyond the LEAP, “he added.

The LEAP was designed by a team of local and international experts who had designed and implemented similar programmes in other developing countries such as South Africa, Zambia, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Turkey.

The design was done through a participatory and consultative process involving Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and Development Partners and the Centre for Social Policy Studies of the University of Ghana and subsequently reviewed and validated by relevant stakeholders.

Mrs. Oboshie Sai-Cofie, Minister of Information, cautioned Ghanaians to desist from being cynical about programmes aimed at improving people’s livelihood and urged them to rather give constructive alternatives to help solve the problem at the grassroots.

Workshop examines living in poverty

from The Quad City Times

By Jennifer DeWitt

For those living in poverty, a lack of money may be only one of their troubles.

Transportation could be a stumbling block. Accessing social services could be an issue. Even having to make a choice between buying groceries or paying bills could be a regular dilemma.

An upcoming poverty workshop hopes to shed light on the real-life struggles so people who work with them can experience first-hand the situations these families face every day.

The Poverty Simulation & Workshop will be 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 12 at the Black Hawk State Historic Site in Rock Island. The event is sponsored by University of Illinois Extension and the Illinois Quad-City Chamber of Commerce.

“This is aimed at those living in the middle class but working with those in poverty so they can better understand the challenges and frustrations these people face,” said Diane Baker, the Illinois extension service’s youth development educator.

The workshop, which has been hosted locally several times in the past three years, has been eye-opening for its participants, she said. “They get a better idea of why someone can’t pay their bills or why people turn to crime to support their families.”

Registration is required from 40 people for the workshop to be held. The extension service also is looking for up to 15 volunteers to assist with the program. “We would like a volunteer who is or has experienced poverty first-hand,” she said.

Similar workshops have been presented to social service agencies, schools, churches and health care providers. This session is open to anyone.

In the morning session, participants assume the role of a low-income family during a poverty simulation. Each “family” — which can range from a single parent to grandparents raising grandchildren, a widow or a middle-class family that now finds a breadwinner unemployed — must go through the daily struggles of living on a limited income. Each 15 minutes represents one week in which they must provide for a family, maintain a home, get children to school or daycare, purchase food, apply for aid, utilize social services and perform other daily survival tasks.

After the simulation, participants hold a debriefing, which has proven to be a powerful tool in increasing empathy, Baker said. She added that the extension service would like to begin tracking the long-term impact of workshops and whether any organization has made changes as a result of the experience.

The workshop is part of the efforts Rock Island County is involved in as it works to get removed from the state’s poverty warning list, determined by Heartland Alliance. Baker serves on a task force assigned to address the poverty situation.

Jennifer DeWitt can be contacted at (563) 383-2318 or jdewitt@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.

Poverty Simulation & Workshop

When: 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Feb. 12

Where: Singing Bird Nature Center, Black Hawk State Historic Site, Rock Island

What’s happening: Poverty simulation experience, 9 a.m. to noon; “Understanding the Framework of Poverty” workshop, 1-3:30 p.m. Susan Zelnio of the Illinois Quad-City Chamber will present the afternoon session, which is based on the work of Dr. Ruby Payne, author of “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” and “Bridges Out of Poverty”

Cost: $10 for the morning only, $30 for afternoon only, or $35 for both sessions. Participants are on their own for lunch from noon to 1 p.m.

Registration: University of Illinois Extension’s Web site, extension.uiuc.edu/rockisland

For more information: Extension office, (309) 796-0512

World Bank lends millions of dollars to Moz

from Independent On Line

Maputo - Mozambique's poverty alleviation programme this week received a boost after the approval of a further $60-million loan by the World Bank.

"The council of executive directors of the World Bank has approved a credit for the International Development Association (IDA) to the value of US60 million for the implementation of the fourth phase of Poverty Reduction Support Credit (PRSC-4) for Mozambique," the bank said in Maputo on Friday.

The fourth phase of the PRSC is the second in a series of operations approved by the World Bank and will assist the government of Mozambique, among others, to implement reforms that will result in the reduction of poverty indices, and for the country to achieve the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Michael Baxter, World Bank regional director for Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe, said the loan would enable the Mozambican government to maintain economic stability.

The loan, which would be repaid in a period of 40 years and has a 10-year grace period, would attract an interest of 0,75 percent per year, the World Bank said.

Antonio Nucifora, head of the World Bank's Poverty Reduction Support Credit, said: "The operation will help the government implement the poverty reduction programmes on a broader base, particularly in rural areas.

"This will also equally provide key reforms in the government through proper management of public finances."

In the 2007 the United Nations' Human Development report placed Mozambique on the bottom list of the United Nation's human development ranking.

The report noted that while Mozambique was considered to have developed economically, its population continued to live in poverty.

According to the UN more than half of Mozambique's 20 million people live on less than 1 US a day and their situation was worsened by a legacy of poverty which stretched back more than 20 years.

On the eve of its independence from Portugal in 1975, Mozambique was plunged into a 16-year civil war in which a rebel movement was pitted against the newly elected government.

During the civil war most of the country's infrastructure was destroyed while the country was littered with landmines, many of which have still to be removed.

Poverty level in local schools not as bleak as stated

from The Statesman Journal

Students still in need, but not as many as officials have said

TRACY LOEW
Statesman Journal

For more than a year, in speeches to churches, community groups and parents, Salem-Keizer Schools Superintendent Sandy Husk has pounded home the difficulties of educating children who live in poverty.

The district's mediocre test scores are no surprise, she says, considering that more than half of Salem-Keizer students live in poverty. She wrote in this year's budget document, the U.S. Census shows that Salem has the highest number of students in poverty of any city in the state.

School board vice-chairwoman Krina Lemons has echoed that message, calling Salem-Keizer "the most poverty-stricken school district in Oregon."

But newly released Census figures show that the situation isn't quite that dire.

In 2005, 17.7 percent of school-age children in the Salem-Keizer boundary came from families living in poverty, up from 17.0 percent in 2003.

That's about the same as the state and national rates, which are 16.6 percent and 17 percent respectively.

According to the Census data, 91 Oregon school districts have a higher percentage of students in poverty than Salem-Keizer, including Portland, Woodburn and Centennial (in Portland).

Husk told parents at a Jan. 7 meeting that the district has the highest number of students in poverty statewide. Actually, that distinction goes to Portland, with 12,314. Salem has 7,394.

The district reports poverty counts to the state in order to receive extra funding for students in poverty. Those reports show the number of students in poverty hovering at about 18 percent for the past few years.

So why the confusion?

Husk said Thursday that her statements about Salem-Keizer School District having the most children in poverty were in error, and she will correct the information.

She said she was drawing from a report from the Oregon Progress Board showing that in 2004, Marion County had the highest percentage of people living in poverty among 12 urban counties studied. The Progress Board doesn't report city or school district statistics.

Husk said her statements about half the district's children living in poverty refer to the percentage receiving free or reduced-price lunches.

Still, neither the school district nor Marion County top that list either, as Husk has alternately claimed.

Ninety-two Oregon school districts have a higher percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches than Salem-Keizer. They include Woodburn, with 83.5 percent; Falls City, with 80.5 percent; and Gervais, with 76.2 percent.

And nine counties have a higher percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches than Marion County.

"My intent has been and is to show the changing demographics in our community, a growing rate in poverty of the children we serve, and most importantly how poverty can have an impact on learning," Husk said.

Families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty line qualify for free or reduced lunches. For a family of four, that's an income of $38,203 per year.

Last school year, 47.9 percent of Salem-Keizer students qualified, according to state Department of Education records. But the rate fluctuates monthly, reaching 52.7 percent in May 2006 and 51.5 percent in May 2007.

"May is a good month to use because by the end of the school year, families are well aware of the program and have had ample time to sign up and participate," Husk said.

Lemons, meanwhile, called Salem-Keizer "the most poverty-stricken school district in Oregon" in a blurb for a speech she is giving next month at a national conference. She said that's because eight of Oregon's 10 poorest schools, measured by the percentage of children getting free and reduced-price lunches, are in Salem-Keizer.

That assertion has been made by others in the community, and Lemons said she thinks it came from a grant document written about three years ago.

But it's not true. Just one of the state's 10 poorest schools is in Salem-Keizer, according to the state Department of Education.

Hoover Elementary, where 94.4 percent of students get free or reduced-price lunches, is No. 5. The next Salem-Keizer school on the list is Highland, at No. 20, then Weddle, at No. 37.

All this is not to say that the poverty level in the Salem-Keizer School District doesn't pose challenges.

The district's poverty rate has been growing, along with the state's. Between 1999 and 2005, Salem-Keizer's poverty rate rose from 15.1 percent to 17.7 percent. During the same period, Oregon's poverty rate rose from 14 percent to 16.6 percent.

Poor children often enter school with a smaller vocabulary and less exposure to educational experiences. That can translate into lower test scores. Last year, fewer Salem-Keizer students passed the state reading and math tests than in any of the state's 10 largest districts.

In response to the rising poverty rates and poor student achievement, the League of Women Voters of Marion and Polk Counties has taken on poverty as its issue for the year.

"We have a good many members who are aware that it's having a very heavy impact on the schools, on housing, on jobs. There's a very high percentage of people in poverty in the Marion-Polk county area," program chairwoman Rose Lewis said.

Although they recognize the problem, Salem-Keizer School Board members won't take it up as an issue, school board member Steve Chambers said.

"That's not the board's function. That's the administration's function. Our job is to determine policy and budget," Chambers said. "It's not something that comes to the school board for us to review."

The U.S. Census' most recent poverty estimates, for 2005, were released last month for each of the nation's 14,000 Title I-eligible school districts.

The official poverty figures are important to school districts because they are used by the U.S. Department of Education to implement provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act, and to allocate federal money to districts.

tloew@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6779