from the Independent Online
By John Batterby
One of the first challenges I faced in helping South Africa's hard-won image as one of the world's most hopeful new democracies in 2004 was how to respond to foreign visitors who were shocked by the extremes of sprawling poverty and conspicuous wealth that they encountered on the drive from Cape Town International airport to Bantry Bay and Clifton.
"When are you going to do something about that terrible mess?" was the question I was to face again and again.
Implicit was the question: How are you going to achieve a united, democratic South Africa in a country with such a yawning, visible gap between the haves and have-nots?
The question became a metaphor for the task of contextualising the huge challenges that face the country HIV and Aids, crime, poverty, underdevelopment, corruption etc in the framework of the historic negotiated settlement which enabled South Africa to hold its head high in the international community for the first time in half a century.
The grand narrative as the central theme is known in communications jargon told the dramatic story of a country which had negotiated itself out of an apocalypse and established a politically stable democracy with an independent judiciary and a world-class treasury, central bank, tax collection system and a sound macro-economy to attract accelerated trade, tourism and investment.
This course would in turn enable South Africa to deal with the huge developmental challenges arising from the apartheid legacy.
Former president Nelson Mandela laid the foundation of compromise and reconciliation necessary to create a society based on justice and equality.
President Thabo Mbeki created the economic framework to simultaneously bolster the globalised and prosperous first economy to enable the upliftment of the marginalised, informal and poor second economy.
Recently elected ANC president Jacob Zuma has stressed the importance of accelerating the process of delivering a better life to those trapped in the second economy.
In times when the grand narrative is under siege, one looks as a reputation manager for examples of the legendary resilience of the South African people and the robust economy; and one looks for declarations by influential friends of South Africa abroad to reaffirm their fundamental confidence in the economy and in the institutions of democracy and values enshrined in the constitution.
Managing South Africa's reputation in the UK has a sharp upside and downside: the upside is that there is a high degree of knowledge and connectedness between the two countries; and the legacy of a strong anti-apartheid movement in Britain has established a network of solidarity which has served the country well in terms of collaboration on a wide range of projects.
There is also a pool of goodwill in British society which goes much wider than the anti-apartheid network.
The downside is that the British tend to judge South Africa through a set of standards formed in their colonial past and are quick to recognise the "African syndrome" when the script does not follow a predetermined path cast in its own image.
In this equation, the legacy of apartheid and the pressures that a democratic South Africa would face to turn towards the needs of its neighbours on the African continent were underestimated.
The recent BBC documentary by Fergal Keane No More Mandelas presented a recurring media theme which seeks to replace the post-1994 narrative with one which says: The South Africa of the Mandela era has descended into a country under siege racked by crime, corruption, Aids, poverty and underdevelopment and now the one foundation of the new democracy a world-class infrastructure is under threat.
No More Mandelas was not a particularly compelling documentary and gave viewers few new insights into the complexity of South Africa's delayed transition to democracy and the consequences of a major upheaval in the ruling party.
It gave little insight into the personality of the new ANC leader, opting instead to reinforce existing stereotypes.
And it succeeded in the latter.
This kind of shift in media perceptions of South Africa cannot be turned around by a reactive approach or by trying to communicate away concerns which are based on facts. Changing perceptions means changing the facts as well as contextualising developments in a credible and constructive way.
As a country, we need to learn to listen to what others are saying about us to understand where they are coming from rather than to judge and dismiss them.
We also need to understand how their conclusions are based on a particular world view which is also in the process of undergoing radical change as the assumptions of an Anglo-Saxon world with its centre-of-gravity in London and Washington are increasingly challenged by the ascendance of the new economic powers such as China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and Mexico.
The view of South Africa from Beijing, New Delhi or Brazilia is a very different one and is a sobering reminder of the relativity of perceptions.
From the vantage points of these countries, South Africa is seen as a key strategic partner, a country of hope and promise and a dynamic destination for trade, tourism and investment.
And in varying degrees that is how we are perceived on much of the continent. A power-house of hope and development not without its own problems.
The kind of interventions that build confidence in South Africa and its economic objectives in Britain are the visits by leading economic cluster ministers and government officials in which investors are briefed on economic policy, the meaning of the budget and infrastructure programmes.
Such a visit was the one last week led by Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi which helped restore confidence in the economy on the back of an outstanding Budget and the emergence of a viable long-term response to the electricity crisis.
With a relatively low attention level on South Africa and African issues in Britain, repetition of key messages by leaders and decision-makers is an essential element of a successful communication and marketing plan.
Another vital need is to communicate South Africa's changing position in the global community and how new relationships require new perspectives and positioning.
Ensuring a constant flow of reliable and up-to-date information about conditions in the country, government plans, implementation of infrastructure and preparedness for the hosting of the 2010 Fifa World Cup are essential elements of an effective communication plan.
At a time when South Africa needs assistance from its friends more than ever before to address the skills gap and build training, mentoring and knowledge exchange programmes, the need for clear, open and honest communication is vital.
There is also a pressing need for a greater appreciation of the close relationship between domestic and foreign perceptions.
In order to project the kind of image that will assist South Africa in its economic diplomacy internationally it is important to have a clear and realistic appreciation of South Africa's place in the world and the fact that the country is on the right side of the shifting centre-of-gravity of the global economy as it moves both southwards and eastwards.
What impresses foreign observers and investors more than anything else are demonstrations of unity within the country: joint messaging by the public and private sector on economic issues is far more powerful than the government acting alone.
Investors can deal with changes in leadership and even ideological shifts. But they get spooked when power conflicts appear to threaten the country's political stability.
One message that South Africa has communicated successfully to the investor community is: Only a society based on sustainable democracy and the rule-of-law can ensure economic growth and sustainable development in South Africa given its legacy of inequality and injustice. The option open to some societies to forge ahead with inbuilt inequalities is not open to South Africans.
But our first task is to convince ourselves by our own actions and commitment that the cup is half-full rather than half-empty. We have to show that we believe in project South Africa and can deliver on our promises.
Once we believe in the future and project our confidence and belief to the world at large, the world will believe and invest in South Africa with renewed vigour and confidence.
Nowhere is the vibrance and energy of South Africa more immediately communicated than in the country's music, dance, theatre and fine arts. It is a celebration of the country's diversity and creativity which is instantly communicable.
We need to reach the same level of communication in other fields of endeavour if we want to assure our place in the globalised world and build a sustainable democracy at home.
# John Battersby has served as the International Marketing Council's London-based UK Country Manager for the past four years.
He is a former editor of The Sunday Independent (1996-2001) and served as the southern Africa correspondent of both the New York Times (1987-89) and the Christian Science Monitor (1989-94).
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Four in 10 children 'in poverty'
from the Press Association
Four out of 10 children in London live below the poverty line, according to a new report published.
The report by the London Child Poverty Commission (LCPC), Capital Gains, called for tougher action from the Government and employers to raise salaries and increase employment in the capital.
LCPC found that 41% of the 650,000 children in London are living in a household with an income of less than 60% of the national median.
Half of all children in inner London were found to be living in poverty.
The report, which is the result of two years of research and consultation, called for the introduction of a government minister with specific responsibility for cutting child poverty in London, and for an increase in child tax credit.
It also called for employers and trade unions to help low-paid workers and recent immigrants develop their careers.
Other suggestions included tougher employment targets for Jobcentre Plus, more resources for literacy schemes, and the possibility of introducing a London-specific minimum wage.
Families living in social housing, single-parent families, and some black and ethnic minority groups were facing higher risks of poverty, the commission found.
More than one in three children in London currently lives in social housing, while 61% of children in inner London belong to an ethnic minority group.
Employment rates in the city are much lower than the national average, with 43% of single parents working, and 60% of mothers with partners.
Four out of 10 children in London live below the poverty line, according to a new report published.
The report by the London Child Poverty Commission (LCPC), Capital Gains, called for tougher action from the Government and employers to raise salaries and increase employment in the capital.
LCPC found that 41% of the 650,000 children in London are living in a household with an income of less than 60% of the national median.
Half of all children in inner London were found to be living in poverty.
The report, which is the result of two years of research and consultation, called for the introduction of a government minister with specific responsibility for cutting child poverty in London, and for an increase in child tax credit.
It also called for employers and trade unions to help low-paid workers and recent immigrants develop their careers.
Other suggestions included tougher employment targets for Jobcentre Plus, more resources for literacy schemes, and the possibility of introducing a London-specific minimum wage.
Families living in social housing, single-parent families, and some black and ethnic minority groups were facing higher risks of poverty, the commission found.
More than one in three children in London currently lives in social housing, while 61% of children in inner London belong to an ethnic minority group.
Employment rates in the city are much lower than the national average, with 43% of single parents working, and 60% of mothers with partners.
Interview: Steve Redgrave on his Fairtrade clothes range, charity and giving up the oars
from SmartPlanet.com
Sir Steve Redgrave may have won five consecutive Olympic gold medals for his rowing, but he's not stopping at that -- this week sees the launch of his Fairtrade men's clothing range, FiveG, at Debenhams. What was just meant to be a way of generating money for his retirement has turned into a deep affinity with Fairtrade. We talk to him about the price of cotton, Fairtrade premiums and find out why campaigning is harder than being a professional sportsman.
SmartPlanet: Why did you decide to use Fairtrade cotton in your clothing range?
Steve Redgrave: I got involved with a family business five or six years ago and we came up with a range of casual clothing as a business interest for me in my retirement. I'm very involved in charity -- I've got my own charitable trust and do a lot with Comic Relief and Sports Relief -- and one of my trips out to Zambia with Comic Relief made a real impact on me.
We had visited a huge farm, the biggest employer in the area, which had gone out of business because they couldn't sell their produce. The workers hadn't been earning very much, but at least they had a job. Now there was nothing at all. It wasn't the poverty itself but the magnitude of it that shocked me. The compounds had hundreds of mud huts with tin roofs, no space in between and one standing water pipe for every couple of hundred of these so-called properties. This made me think of the whole supply chain system and when I got back I thought: what I should be doing is not just a clothing range, but a Fairtrade clothing range.
When you're paying an extra couple of pennies for Fairtrade coffee, teas and things like that, which are relatively cheap, you do wonder whether it really makes a difference or if it's just something that makes us feel good. I wanted to see the cotton being produced, meet the farmers and find out how the Fairtrade premium was making a difference to them. So in November I visited the cotton farmers in Mali and found it absolutely fascinating. I saw that this small premium we pay to get Fairtrade makes a huge difference to their lives and to the whole structure of how they set themselves up. It's not charity and they're not asking for handouts. They just want a fair price for a very good product.
SP: How does the Fairtrade Foundation actually help the cotton producers?
SR: Over the last three decades, the cost of cotton has plummeted, but have we noticed that in the cotton garments that we buy? No. We expect farmers to produce cotton for less, year on year. What Fairtrade does is to give them a fixed price for cotton that's above the average going price and means the farmers can plan a bit more. I also found that where they used to be individual farmers looking after their little plot of land, they're now working more as a community.
The villages I saw mainly put their premiums into storage for the cotton, as the factories don't start ginning until there's a whole load of cotton and go into production whenever we need it, not when cotton's in season. One of the communities I visited also produces maize, millet and peanuts. Without adequate storage facilities, they had to sell all the produce at the local market at harvest time -- and when there's lots of it about, the prices plummet. But now they can keep it for when they need it for their own food or sell it at the market when the demand is there.
Schooling is also a priority. I spoke to one farmer and asked him: "In order, what's the most important to spend the premium on? Water, education and health?" And he said: "No, the most important thing is education. If you're educated, you'll find water." I found it very refreshing that he had that insight.
SP: It sounds like you feel there's more to Fairtrade than just the premium?
SR: Yes. We live in a very small world compared to when I was a kid. To go away on holiday to maybe Spain or somewhere like that was a big trip. Now people travel huge distances for both holiday and work, and communities have changed. These people who live tough lives in other parts of the world are very much part of our worldly responsibilities.
SP: Are your sporting fans surprised when they realise how involved you are in charitable and Fairtrade work?
SR: People who don't know me probably will be surprised and think 'why are you doing this?' People who do know me know that I'm very community-minded in all sorts of different ways. I'm originally from a building family and I've worked on a couple of projects over the last five years: helping design new towns in a way that'll bring back communities -- village greens, getting people to talk together and so on.
SP: You've raised huge amounts of money for charity, haven't you?
SR: Yes, we've raised over £5 million directly through my own charitable trust with the involvement of other charities and projects I've been involved in.
SP: Being a great sportsman and a campaigner both require lots of commitment. Do you find it easy or difficult to unite the two?
SR: I was involved in my sport for 25 years -- most sporting people, especially in the Olympic sports, tend to have very short careers. You do your sports, then you give it up or do it at a lower level or move on to other walks of life. Because I was at the top of my sport for such a long time, I was asked to come along to charity functions and that's how I got involved in Sport Relief and some of the other charities such as Sparks.
The more I got involved, the more I felt that when I retired I wanted to make a big impact in a short period of time. If I had just won, say one Olympic gold medal for instance, I might have retired and gone off and done other things -- probably business-wise. I would have enjoyed my golf, been invited to a few things and that would be it. But I wanted to make a big impact, which I why I decided to do what I do.
SP: It seems the years of commitment you put into rowing, you now put into campaigning and fundraising for charity.
SR: Relatively, it was easier doing my sport. It was hard commitment-wise, but it was very single-minded. I was doing one thing at the time and everything else in my life revolved around that. Now I'm involved in lots of different things -- obviously my charitable trust; my Fairtrade clothing range; and the list goes on and on. So I'm spread quite thinly in some ways.
SP: So are we more likely to see you on the campaign stool than in a boat in the near future?
SR: It's unlikely you're going to see me in a boat anymore. I did a veterans' race last summer and I will do that again this year, but otherwise I'll continue doing many different things, such as promoting Fairtrade. I'm also vice-president of Diabetes UK -- I'm a diabetic myself -- and health issues are extremely important to me. Obesity is becoming more and more apparent, we're doing less exercise and less physical activity than we've ever done before on average. We've got to make sure kids are fit and healthy and will have long lives. These are the kind of issues I'm going to be involved with in the near future.
Sir Steve Redgrave may have won five consecutive Olympic gold medals for his rowing, but he's not stopping at that -- this week sees the launch of his Fairtrade men's clothing range, FiveG, at Debenhams. What was just meant to be a way of generating money for his retirement has turned into a deep affinity with Fairtrade. We talk to him about the price of cotton, Fairtrade premiums and find out why campaigning is harder than being a professional sportsman.
SmartPlanet: Why did you decide to use Fairtrade cotton in your clothing range?
Steve Redgrave: I got involved with a family business five or six years ago and we came up with a range of casual clothing as a business interest for me in my retirement. I'm very involved in charity -- I've got my own charitable trust and do a lot with Comic Relief and Sports Relief -- and one of my trips out to Zambia with Comic Relief made a real impact on me.
We had visited a huge farm, the biggest employer in the area, which had gone out of business because they couldn't sell their produce. The workers hadn't been earning very much, but at least they had a job. Now there was nothing at all. It wasn't the poverty itself but the magnitude of it that shocked me. The compounds had hundreds of mud huts with tin roofs, no space in between and one standing water pipe for every couple of hundred of these so-called properties. This made me think of the whole supply chain system and when I got back I thought: what I should be doing is not just a clothing range, but a Fairtrade clothing range.
When you're paying an extra couple of pennies for Fairtrade coffee, teas and things like that, which are relatively cheap, you do wonder whether it really makes a difference or if it's just something that makes us feel good. I wanted to see the cotton being produced, meet the farmers and find out how the Fairtrade premium was making a difference to them. So in November I visited the cotton farmers in Mali and found it absolutely fascinating. I saw that this small premium we pay to get Fairtrade makes a huge difference to their lives and to the whole structure of how they set themselves up. It's not charity and they're not asking for handouts. They just want a fair price for a very good product.
SP: How does the Fairtrade Foundation actually help the cotton producers?
SR: Over the last three decades, the cost of cotton has plummeted, but have we noticed that in the cotton garments that we buy? No. We expect farmers to produce cotton for less, year on year. What Fairtrade does is to give them a fixed price for cotton that's above the average going price and means the farmers can plan a bit more. I also found that where they used to be individual farmers looking after their little plot of land, they're now working more as a community.
The villages I saw mainly put their premiums into storage for the cotton, as the factories don't start ginning until there's a whole load of cotton and go into production whenever we need it, not when cotton's in season. One of the communities I visited also produces maize, millet and peanuts. Without adequate storage facilities, they had to sell all the produce at the local market at harvest time -- and when there's lots of it about, the prices plummet. But now they can keep it for when they need it for their own food or sell it at the market when the demand is there.
Schooling is also a priority. I spoke to one farmer and asked him: "In order, what's the most important to spend the premium on? Water, education and health?" And he said: "No, the most important thing is education. If you're educated, you'll find water." I found it very refreshing that he had that insight.
SP: It sounds like you feel there's more to Fairtrade than just the premium?
SR: Yes. We live in a very small world compared to when I was a kid. To go away on holiday to maybe Spain or somewhere like that was a big trip. Now people travel huge distances for both holiday and work, and communities have changed. These people who live tough lives in other parts of the world are very much part of our worldly responsibilities.
SP: Are your sporting fans surprised when they realise how involved you are in charitable and Fairtrade work?
SR: People who don't know me probably will be surprised and think 'why are you doing this?' People who do know me know that I'm very community-minded in all sorts of different ways. I'm originally from a building family and I've worked on a couple of projects over the last five years: helping design new towns in a way that'll bring back communities -- village greens, getting people to talk together and so on.
SP: You've raised huge amounts of money for charity, haven't you?
SR: Yes, we've raised over £5 million directly through my own charitable trust with the involvement of other charities and projects I've been involved in.
SP: Being a great sportsman and a campaigner both require lots of commitment. Do you find it easy or difficult to unite the two?
SR: I was involved in my sport for 25 years -- most sporting people, especially in the Olympic sports, tend to have very short careers. You do your sports, then you give it up or do it at a lower level or move on to other walks of life. Because I was at the top of my sport for such a long time, I was asked to come along to charity functions and that's how I got involved in Sport Relief and some of the other charities such as Sparks.
The more I got involved, the more I felt that when I retired I wanted to make a big impact in a short period of time. If I had just won, say one Olympic gold medal for instance, I might have retired and gone off and done other things -- probably business-wise. I would have enjoyed my golf, been invited to a few things and that would be it. But I wanted to make a big impact, which I why I decided to do what I do.
SP: It seems the years of commitment you put into rowing, you now put into campaigning and fundraising for charity.
SR: Relatively, it was easier doing my sport. It was hard commitment-wise, but it was very single-minded. I was doing one thing at the time and everything else in my life revolved around that. Now I'm involved in lots of different things -- obviously my charitable trust; my Fairtrade clothing range; and the list goes on and on. So I'm spread quite thinly in some ways.
SP: So are we more likely to see you on the campaign stool than in a boat in the near future?
SR: It's unlikely you're going to see me in a boat anymore. I did a veterans' race last summer and I will do that again this year, but otherwise I'll continue doing many different things, such as promoting Fairtrade. I'm also vice-president of Diabetes UK -- I'm a diabetic myself -- and health issues are extremely important to me. Obesity is becoming more and more apparent, we're doing less exercise and less physical activity than we've ever done before on average. We've got to make sure kids are fit and healthy and will have long lives. These are the kind of issues I'm going to be involved with in the near future.
Hard times drive food stamp rolls
from the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
By Devon Haynie
The Journal Gazette
A worsening economy and a state-driven outreach effort have led more northeast Indiana residents to apply for the state’s food stamp program, according to aid workers, state officials and economists.
The annual average number of food stamp recipients in Indiana increased 22 percent from 2003 to 2007, according to figures from Indiana’s Family Social Services Administration. The increase in recipients was more pronounced in 10 northeast Indiana counties, where the annual number of food stamp recipients rose anywhere from 24 percent to 87 percent during the five-year period.
While most northeast Indiana counties saw an increase in food stamp recipients of less than 30 percent since 2003, LaGrange County saw a 42 percent increase. The rise in enrollment was also particularly noticeable in DeKalb County, where the number of recipients almost doubled from 2003 to 2007.
FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob believes the numbers reflect the agency’s statewide, grass-roots effort to publicize the food stamp program and other assistance programs and enroll those eligible for their benefits.
While local aid workers agree that outreach efforts are partly responsible for the increases, they say the numbers illustrate an increased need and the pinch that economic factors like rising prices and declining wages are putting on the region’s working poor.
“People are taking advantage of their eligibility; that’s the good news,” said Jane Avery, executive director of Community Harvest Food Bank in Fort Wayne. “The bad news is that clearly our area is still suffering. There are a lot of folks who have seen their incomes reduced because of job losses or medical problems, and they need more assistance.”
In 2006, the FSSA worked with IBM to create a Voluntary Community Assistance Network, a group of 1,000 organizations helping struggling Hoosiers meet their basic needs. The organizations provide information about the food stamp program’s eligibility requirements and distribute enrollment applications, along with referring people to Indiana’s other assistance programs, said Roob, who oversees the state agency that includes Indiana’s food stamp program.
“We’ve put a big onus on spreading the word out to people,” Roob said. “And we found that we had people all over the state who were eligible, for whatever reason, weren’t getting what they were entitled to get.”
Avery agrees with Roob that awareness campaigns have played a role in increased enrollment. Community Harvest Food Bank told 15,000 people in the nine northeast Indiana counties it serves about the food stamps program last year, Avery said. Of those addressed, at least 1,000 enrolled in the food stamps program, she said.
But Avery, like most food bank and aid workers in northeast Indiana, thinks the rise in food stamp recipients is more indicative of an economic downturn than an increased outreach effort. From 2003 to 2007, the number of food stamp recipients in Allen County grew 24 percent. At the same time, Avery said, more people have been coming into the food bank for assistance. In the past few years, she’s seen more men, refugees and members of the working poor than in the past.
“We’re talking about our standard Hoosier,” Avery said. “Hardworking, good people who don’t want to take charity of any sort, but find themselves just not making it.”
Rick Farrant, marketing director for United Way in Allen County, has seen similar trends.
“It’s very clear that the need for food assistance, at least based on the calls we receive, is growing,” he said.
A United Way-administered phone service that helps people in 10 northeast Indiana counties with basic needs received 3,829 calls about food assistance in 2007, Farrant said. The number of calls was the highest the phone service, known as 211, has received in four years and was the second most-common call behind requests for financial assistance. He attributes the rise in calls to higher food and utility prices, job losses and stagnant wages.
Jerry Conover, director of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, agrees that the economy is likely playing a role in the increasing number of food stamp recipients. While employment in the Fort Wayne area has been increasing, Conover said, wages are slipping and historically well-paying manufacturing jobs are declining.
“There’s been a general downward shift in income in Indiana,” Conover said. “And that is true in many parts of the nation, but especially in manufacturing-intense areas, as the jobs that used to pay handsomely are replaced by manufacturing jobs that don’t pay as much. There may be more people slipping below the (poverty) line because of a gradual decrease in wages.”
The FSSA didn’t authorize its DeKalb office to speak about the county’s particularly high increase in food stamp recipients but attributed the increase to outreach efforts statewide. Economists agree that a suffering economy has played some role in DeKalb’s food stamp surge, but are skeptical that economic factors are the only cause.
DeKalb County’s unemployment is about 1 percentage point higher than most northeastern Indiana counties, said John Stafford, director of Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Community Research Institute. But that statistic, he said, is “only a piece of the puzzle.”
“DeKalb, like so many counties, is heavily invested in manufacturing jobs, but no more so than, say, Noble or Steuben,” Stafford said. “If you had asked me to guess a county (that had a dramatic increase in food stamp recipients), that would not be the county I would guess. DeKalb has surpassed Allen in terms of per capita income. They’ve been doing pretty well.”
The food stamp program is a federally funded entitlement program available to households that meet certain income requirements. To be eligible for the program, a household generally cannot earn more than 130 percent of the federal poverty guideline. The guideline translates to a maximum gross monthly income limit of $2,238 for a four-person household or $1,107 for a one-person household.
Eligible households must also not have more than $2,000 in assets, unless they contain a member with disabilities or someone older than 60.
As part of an effort to de-stigmatize the program, paper food stamps have been phased out and replaced with plastic Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which are similar to commercial debit cards. They can be used only for food, plants and seed to grow food.
dhaynie@jg.net
Write glancebox
Food stamp recipient increases
County 2003 2007 % increase
Allen 26,960 33,477 24
Adams 1520 1950 28
DeKalb 1763 3310 87
Huntington 2077 2695 30
Kosciusko 2950 4027 36
LaGrange 754 1075 42
Noble 1990 2549 28
Steuben 1649 2218 34
Wabash 1945 2515 29
Wells 1092 1427 30
Whitley 1,237 1,642 32
Source: STATS Indiana citing the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) data. http://www.stats.indiana.edu/about/fssa_m.asp
Write jump_from
Food stamp recipient increases
County 2003 2007 % increase
Allen 26,960 33,477 24
Adams 1520 1950 28
DeKalb 1763 3310 87
Huntington 2077 2695 30
Kosciusko 2950 4027 36
LaGrange 754 1075 42
Noble 1990 2549 28
Steuben 1649 2218 34
Wabash 1945 2515 29
Wells 1092 1427 30
Whitley 1,237 1,642 32
Source: STATS Indiana citing the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) data. http://www.stats.indiana.edu/about/fssa_m.asp
By Devon Haynie
The Journal Gazette
A worsening economy and a state-driven outreach effort have led more northeast Indiana residents to apply for the state’s food stamp program, according to aid workers, state officials and economists.
The annual average number of food stamp recipients in Indiana increased 22 percent from 2003 to 2007, according to figures from Indiana’s Family Social Services Administration. The increase in recipients was more pronounced in 10 northeast Indiana counties, where the annual number of food stamp recipients rose anywhere from 24 percent to 87 percent during the five-year period.
While most northeast Indiana counties saw an increase in food stamp recipients of less than 30 percent since 2003, LaGrange County saw a 42 percent increase. The rise in enrollment was also particularly noticeable in DeKalb County, where the number of recipients almost doubled from 2003 to 2007.
FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob believes the numbers reflect the agency’s statewide, grass-roots effort to publicize the food stamp program and other assistance programs and enroll those eligible for their benefits.
While local aid workers agree that outreach efforts are partly responsible for the increases, they say the numbers illustrate an increased need and the pinch that economic factors like rising prices and declining wages are putting on the region’s working poor.
“People are taking advantage of their eligibility; that’s the good news,” said Jane Avery, executive director of Community Harvest Food Bank in Fort Wayne. “The bad news is that clearly our area is still suffering. There are a lot of folks who have seen their incomes reduced because of job losses or medical problems, and they need more assistance.”
In 2006, the FSSA worked with IBM to create a Voluntary Community Assistance Network, a group of 1,000 organizations helping struggling Hoosiers meet their basic needs. The organizations provide information about the food stamp program’s eligibility requirements and distribute enrollment applications, along with referring people to Indiana’s other assistance programs, said Roob, who oversees the state agency that includes Indiana’s food stamp program.
“We’ve put a big onus on spreading the word out to people,” Roob said. “And we found that we had people all over the state who were eligible, for whatever reason, weren’t getting what they were entitled to get.”
Avery agrees with Roob that awareness campaigns have played a role in increased enrollment. Community Harvest Food Bank told 15,000 people in the nine northeast Indiana counties it serves about the food stamps program last year, Avery said. Of those addressed, at least 1,000 enrolled in the food stamps program, she said.
But Avery, like most food bank and aid workers in northeast Indiana, thinks the rise in food stamp recipients is more indicative of an economic downturn than an increased outreach effort. From 2003 to 2007, the number of food stamp recipients in Allen County grew 24 percent. At the same time, Avery said, more people have been coming into the food bank for assistance. In the past few years, she’s seen more men, refugees and members of the working poor than in the past.
“We’re talking about our standard Hoosier,” Avery said. “Hardworking, good people who don’t want to take charity of any sort, but find themselves just not making it.”
Rick Farrant, marketing director for United Way in Allen County, has seen similar trends.
“It’s very clear that the need for food assistance, at least based on the calls we receive, is growing,” he said.
A United Way-administered phone service that helps people in 10 northeast Indiana counties with basic needs received 3,829 calls about food assistance in 2007, Farrant said. The number of calls was the highest the phone service, known as 211, has received in four years and was the second most-common call behind requests for financial assistance. He attributes the rise in calls to higher food and utility prices, job losses and stagnant wages.
Jerry Conover, director of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, agrees that the economy is likely playing a role in the increasing number of food stamp recipients. While employment in the Fort Wayne area has been increasing, Conover said, wages are slipping and historically well-paying manufacturing jobs are declining.
“There’s been a general downward shift in income in Indiana,” Conover said. “And that is true in many parts of the nation, but especially in manufacturing-intense areas, as the jobs that used to pay handsomely are replaced by manufacturing jobs that don’t pay as much. There may be more people slipping below the (poverty) line because of a gradual decrease in wages.”
The FSSA didn’t authorize its DeKalb office to speak about the county’s particularly high increase in food stamp recipients but attributed the increase to outreach efforts statewide. Economists agree that a suffering economy has played some role in DeKalb’s food stamp surge, but are skeptical that economic factors are the only cause.
DeKalb County’s unemployment is about 1 percentage point higher than most northeastern Indiana counties, said John Stafford, director of Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Community Research Institute. But that statistic, he said, is “only a piece of the puzzle.”
“DeKalb, like so many counties, is heavily invested in manufacturing jobs, but no more so than, say, Noble or Steuben,” Stafford said. “If you had asked me to guess a county (that had a dramatic increase in food stamp recipients), that would not be the county I would guess. DeKalb has surpassed Allen in terms of per capita income. They’ve been doing pretty well.”
The food stamp program is a federally funded entitlement program available to households that meet certain income requirements. To be eligible for the program, a household generally cannot earn more than 130 percent of the federal poverty guideline. The guideline translates to a maximum gross monthly income limit of $2,238 for a four-person household or $1,107 for a one-person household.
Eligible households must also not have more than $2,000 in assets, unless they contain a member with disabilities or someone older than 60.
As part of an effort to de-stigmatize the program, paper food stamps have been phased out and replaced with plastic Electronic Benefit Transfer cards, which are similar to commercial debit cards. They can be used only for food, plants and seed to grow food.
dhaynie@jg.net
Write glancebox
Food stamp recipient increases
County 2003 2007 % increase
Allen 26,960 33,477 24
Adams 1520 1950 28
DeKalb 1763 3310 87
Huntington 2077 2695 30
Kosciusko 2950 4027 36
LaGrange 754 1075 42
Noble 1990 2549 28
Steuben 1649 2218 34
Wabash 1945 2515 29
Wells 1092 1427 30
Whitley 1,237 1,642 32
Source: STATS Indiana citing the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) data. http://www.stats.indiana.edu/about/fssa_m.asp
Write jump_from
Food stamp recipient increases
County 2003 2007 % increase
Allen 26,960 33,477 24
Adams 1520 1950 28
DeKalb 1763 3310 87
Huntington 2077 2695 30
Kosciusko 2950 4027 36
LaGrange 754 1075 42
Noble 1990 2549 28
Steuben 1649 2218 34
Wabash 1945 2515 29
Wells 1092 1427 30
Whitley 1,237 1,642 32
Source: STATS Indiana citing the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) data. http://www.stats.indiana.edu/about/fssa_m.asp
Madagascar is reporting over 70 deaths, more than 239,000 people affected and 148,000 without shelter following Cyclones Fame and Ivan.
from African Science
In the capital alone almost 20,000 people are affected by the flooding due to the latest cyclone, Ivan. An estimated 47,000 are children under five years old.
The risk of diseases such as diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria are becoming increasingly threatening in many regions.
According to a Press Statement from UNICEF on the situation, thousands of Malagasy children are deprived of their rights: without shelter, food, healthcare, safe drinking water and schooling.
UNICEF is currently mobilising resources to support the Government of Madagascar, through the National Office for Disaster Risk Management, in line with the scale of damage caused.
More than 239,000 people are affected by the cyclones in Madagascar that hit Amparafaravola in the region of Alaotra Mangoro, Tamatave and Antananarivo hard.
“Emergencies considerably weaken the survival mechanisms of the most vulnerable families in a country where around seven out of ten people live in poverty”, Bruno Maes, UNICEF area Representative for Madagascar, Mauritius and Comoros told Africa Science News Service adding that UNICEF is supporting the health sector by supporting the efforts of the Ministry of Health, Family Planning and Social Protection.
It has made medicines available to treat 60,000 people with diarrhoea, and other essential medicines for 9,000 people.
This week, more than 6,000 households will receive two blankets each, and 2,160 households will benefit from insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent the risk of malaria.
In addition, to prevent the risk of diarrhea and other diseases linked to a lack of safe drinking water and poor access to hygiene facilities, UNICEF and partners have distributed water, hygiene and sanitation kits to the worst affected regions.
In Madagascar’s capital city, Antananarivo, approximately 5,000 displaced families were provided Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) kits including buckets, cups, jerry cans and soap.
Seven temporary accommodation shelters were equipped with mobile latrines (separate for men and women), hand washing facilities and showers.
Distribution of WASH kits is also ongoing targeting 2,000 families in Alaotra Mangoro and says distribution of kits to another 29,000 families will begin Friday.
Behaviour change communication supports have also been developed to prevent the risks of malaria, respiratory infections and hygiene-related diseases.
Throughout the country, an estimated over 500 classrooms have been destroyed and thousands of children remain out of school.
In addition, 25 tents that are be used as provisional school structures, have been installed and plastic sheeting will be distributed in Tamatave during this week to assist communities in setting up temporary learning spaces.
In the capital alone almost 20,000 people are affected by the flooding due to the latest cyclone, Ivan. An estimated 47,000 are children under five years old.
The risk of diseases such as diarrhoea, respiratory infections and malaria are becoming increasingly threatening in many regions.
According to a Press Statement from UNICEF on the situation, thousands of Malagasy children are deprived of their rights: without shelter, food, healthcare, safe drinking water and schooling.
UNICEF is currently mobilising resources to support the Government of Madagascar, through the National Office for Disaster Risk Management, in line with the scale of damage caused.
More than 239,000 people are affected by the cyclones in Madagascar that hit Amparafaravola in the region of Alaotra Mangoro, Tamatave and Antananarivo hard.
“Emergencies considerably weaken the survival mechanisms of the most vulnerable families in a country where around seven out of ten people live in poverty”, Bruno Maes, UNICEF area Representative for Madagascar, Mauritius and Comoros told Africa Science News Service adding that UNICEF is supporting the health sector by supporting the efforts of the Ministry of Health, Family Planning and Social Protection.
It has made medicines available to treat 60,000 people with diarrhoea, and other essential medicines for 9,000 people.
This week, more than 6,000 households will receive two blankets each, and 2,160 households will benefit from insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent the risk of malaria.
In addition, to prevent the risk of diarrhea and other diseases linked to a lack of safe drinking water and poor access to hygiene facilities, UNICEF and partners have distributed water, hygiene and sanitation kits to the worst affected regions.
In Madagascar’s capital city, Antananarivo, approximately 5,000 displaced families were provided Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) kits including buckets, cups, jerry cans and soap.
Seven temporary accommodation shelters were equipped with mobile latrines (separate for men and women), hand washing facilities and showers.
Distribution of WASH kits is also ongoing targeting 2,000 families in Alaotra Mangoro and says distribution of kits to another 29,000 families will begin Friday.
Behaviour change communication supports have also been developed to prevent the risks of malaria, respiratory infections and hygiene-related diseases.
Throughout the country, an estimated over 500 classrooms have been destroyed and thousands of children remain out of school.
In addition, 25 tents that are be used as provisional school structures, have been installed and plastic sheeting will be distributed in Tamatave during this week to assist communities in setting up temporary learning spaces.
Eliminating Water Shortages - Osabutey Calls On Stakeholders to Step Up Effort
from All Africa
Accra Mail (Accra)
Ernest Ohene-Kissiedu Dr. Seth Osabutey, a health advocate and environmentalist has urged the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI) and other stakeholders in the water provision sector to step up efforts to solve the acute water shortage facing several parts of the country.
"Water", he said, "is a right and not a privilege" and the government alone cannot meet this basic need, "hence the need for partners like WAWI and other donor agencies to come to the aid of government in its efforts in giving the citizenry this basic necessity".
In an interview with ADM, Dr. Osabutey called for annual regional review of WAWI meetings to help address water shortages in the country.
The WAWI project, he said, was initiated to improve water supply and eliminate water-borne related diseases as well as improve sanitation in three West African countries namely Ghana, Mali and Niger.
He said WAWI has been a major partner in the sustainable development of the country and its drive towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
He urged WAWI to partner the government in its efforts at eradicating guinea worm in the country. "This would help in alleviating poverty among the people", he said.
Mr. Osabutey commended staff of World Vision International and WAWI from the three West African countries and the U.S. representatives of Water Aid Ghana, Carter Centre, Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) and some District Chief Executives for efforts being made to solve water shortage in the country.
Mr. Bernard Aryee Mensah, an expert in water issues said the organisation was established in 2002 and had four major objectives towards the attainment of the MDGs.
These include increasing the level of access to sustainable, safe water and environmental sanitation among the poor and vulnerable in society.
He said other objectives included reducing the prevalence of water-borne diseases such as trachoma, guinea worm and diarrhoea.
Mr. Aryee Mensah said the organisation had so far made some valuable successes in its areas of operation particularly in the Northern Region.
Dr. Martha Agyepong, a corporate researcher told ADM that, the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) has partnered WAWI and has made tremendous impact in the lives of many through its programmes and activities in Ghana, Mali and Niger.
She said through the organization's efforts, Ghana was likely to be the first country in Africa to eliminate trachoma.
Dr. Agyepong called for efficient allocation and judicious use of funds, grants and resources given by donor agencies so that the poor would benefit fully from the achievements of the MDGs.
A resident of Adenta municipality, Madam Anita Opare Adjei told ADM that the issue of water shortage has been a major problem in the area for years.
"Water is life and therefore must be given the needed attention it required.
Our taps only flow once a week, some even once every two weeks. This is making living standards in the area at times very difficult", she said and appealed to government and the GWCL to devise measures to address the problem.
Accra Mail (Accra)
Ernest Ohene-Kissiedu Dr. Seth Osabutey, a health advocate and environmentalist has urged the West Africa Water Initiative (WAWI) and other stakeholders in the water provision sector to step up efforts to solve the acute water shortage facing several parts of the country.
"Water", he said, "is a right and not a privilege" and the government alone cannot meet this basic need, "hence the need for partners like WAWI and other donor agencies to come to the aid of government in its efforts in giving the citizenry this basic necessity".
In an interview with ADM, Dr. Osabutey called for annual regional review of WAWI meetings to help address water shortages in the country.
The WAWI project, he said, was initiated to improve water supply and eliminate water-borne related diseases as well as improve sanitation in three West African countries namely Ghana, Mali and Niger.
He said WAWI has been a major partner in the sustainable development of the country and its drive towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
He urged WAWI to partner the government in its efforts at eradicating guinea worm in the country. "This would help in alleviating poverty among the people", he said.
Mr. Osabutey commended staff of World Vision International and WAWI from the three West African countries and the U.S. representatives of Water Aid Ghana, Carter Centre, Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) and some District Chief Executives for efforts being made to solve water shortage in the country.
Mr. Bernard Aryee Mensah, an expert in water issues said the organisation was established in 2002 and had four major objectives towards the attainment of the MDGs.
These include increasing the level of access to sustainable, safe water and environmental sanitation among the poor and vulnerable in society.
He said other objectives included reducing the prevalence of water-borne diseases such as trachoma, guinea worm and diarrhoea.
Mr. Aryee Mensah said the organisation had so far made some valuable successes in its areas of operation particularly in the Northern Region.
Dr. Martha Agyepong, a corporate researcher told ADM that, the International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) has partnered WAWI and has made tremendous impact in the lives of many through its programmes and activities in Ghana, Mali and Niger.
She said through the organization's efforts, Ghana was likely to be the first country in Africa to eliminate trachoma.
Dr. Agyepong called for efficient allocation and judicious use of funds, grants and resources given by donor agencies so that the poor would benefit fully from the achievements of the MDGs.
A resident of Adenta municipality, Madam Anita Opare Adjei told ADM that the issue of water shortage has been a major problem in the area for years.
"Water is life and therefore must be given the needed attention it required.
Our taps only flow once a week, some even once every two weeks. This is making living standards in the area at times very difficult", she said and appealed to government and the GWCL to devise measures to address the problem.
Donors should support local peace-building efforts - Oxfam
from IRIN News
The international community and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai are five years late in implementing a meaningful community peace-building programme, and there is no time to lose for a local peace-making drive, Oxfam International said in a new report.
“Existing measures to promote peace in Afghanistan are not succeeding,” said the report entitled Community Peacebuilding in Afghanistan: The Case for a National Strategy, and released on 28 February.
More than six years after the Taliban was ousted by US-led coalition forces, Afghans are still embroiled in violent insurgency, organised crime and widespread insecurity, analysts said.
“There is a powerful case for greater donor support for non-governmental organisations engaged in local peace-building, as well as the development of a national strategy,” the report said.
Matt Waldman, the report’s author, told IRIN the future of peace and stability in Afghanistan depended on what the Afghan government and its international partners do now.
Most of the conflict management and peace-building efforts so far have been highly politicised, top-down and/or ineffective, Oxfam found, based on interviews with 500 people in six provinces.
“Peace cannot be imposed from above. It needs to be nurtured and supported from below,” Waldman said.
Local disputes generate insecurity
According to Oxfam, the nature, causes and effects of violence in Afghanistan vary widely, while the capacity of communities to effectively manage conflicts and ensure a viable peace has largely been neglected.
Land, water, poverty and family disputes are the major causes of local insecurity. These often turn into violence, exacerbating the wider conflict due to a lack of adequate conflict management and peace-building resources, the UK-based charity said.
“The resulting insecurity not only destroys quality of life and impedes development work, but is also exploited by criminal or anti-government groups to strengthen their positions in the wider conflict,” the report said.
“Insecurity in Afghanistan often has local causes,” said Waldman, adding that natural disasters, refugee flows, badly delivered aid, corruption, abuse of power and the opium trade often aggravated insecurity.
Local peace-building
In the absence of a reliable peace and secure environment, effective rebuilding and development activities cannot take place: “'Peace at a local level underpins the development process,” Waldman said.
Oxfam suggests that local mechanisms and resources should be used and supported to tackle local disputes and violence in communities, and prevent them from contributing to the wider conflict.
“People are the best resources for building and sustaining peace,” said the report, adding that community or tribal councils of elders (`jirgas’ or `shuras’) should be used to curb violence and promote peace.
Oxfam’s research indicated that 16 percent of Afghans perceive Taliban insurgents to be the greatest threat to their security; 14 percent thought warlords were the biggest threat to security; 13 percent said criminals; and 11 percent said the international forces.
The international community and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai are five years late in implementing a meaningful community peace-building programme, and there is no time to lose for a local peace-making drive, Oxfam International said in a new report.
“Existing measures to promote peace in Afghanistan are not succeeding,” said the report entitled Community Peacebuilding in Afghanistan: The Case for a National Strategy, and released on 28 February.
More than six years after the Taliban was ousted by US-led coalition forces, Afghans are still embroiled in violent insurgency, organised crime and widespread insecurity, analysts said.
“There is a powerful case for greater donor support for non-governmental organisations engaged in local peace-building, as well as the development of a national strategy,” the report said.
Matt Waldman, the report’s author, told IRIN the future of peace and stability in Afghanistan depended on what the Afghan government and its international partners do now.
Most of the conflict management and peace-building efforts so far have been highly politicised, top-down and/or ineffective, Oxfam found, based on interviews with 500 people in six provinces.
“Peace cannot be imposed from above. It needs to be nurtured and supported from below,” Waldman said.
Local disputes generate insecurity
According to Oxfam, the nature, causes and effects of violence in Afghanistan vary widely, while the capacity of communities to effectively manage conflicts and ensure a viable peace has largely been neglected.
Land, water, poverty and family disputes are the major causes of local insecurity. These often turn into violence, exacerbating the wider conflict due to a lack of adequate conflict management and peace-building resources, the UK-based charity said.
“The resulting insecurity not only destroys quality of life and impedes development work, but is also exploited by criminal or anti-government groups to strengthen their positions in the wider conflict,” the report said.
“Insecurity in Afghanistan often has local causes,” said Waldman, adding that natural disasters, refugee flows, badly delivered aid, corruption, abuse of power and the opium trade often aggravated insecurity.
Local peace-building
In the absence of a reliable peace and secure environment, effective rebuilding and development activities cannot take place: “'Peace at a local level underpins the development process,” Waldman said.
Oxfam suggests that local mechanisms and resources should be used and supported to tackle local disputes and violence in communities, and prevent them from contributing to the wider conflict.
“People are the best resources for building and sustaining peace,” said the report, adding that community or tribal councils of elders (`jirgas’ or `shuras’) should be used to curb violence and promote peace.
Oxfam’s research indicated that 16 percent of Afghans perceive Taliban insurgents to be the greatest threat to their security; 14 percent thought warlords were the biggest threat to security; 13 percent said criminals; and 11 percent said the international forces.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Hunger, weight loss in poverty action
from the Otago Daily Times
By MARK PRICE
A CUP of oats and water for breakfast; a cup of rice and lentils for tea; and virtually nothing in between. That is the diet a Dunedin man committed himself to while living for a month on just $1.49 a day.
At the beginning of February, Jolyon White set (34) out to live for a month like the 1.2 billion people in the world who subsist at, or below, the poverty line.
Three weeks down the track, he is hungry all the time, has lost weight and is lacking in energy. But he has survived after a fashion.
From the shanty he has constructed from rubbish in the town belt, Mr White said he had 80c left from the New Zealand equivalent of $US30 at the start of the month. He had started out with the possessions he thought a person who had lived in poverty all their lives would have a cooking pot, a tarpaulin, three blankets and the clothes he was wearing.
Mr White said he was not a ‘‘left-leaning hippie’’, but a middle-class conservative, a qualified electrician and a climbing instructor who usually lived a ‘‘normal life’’, complete with email and cellphone.
He wanted to remind New Zealanders of the eight goals set for the year 2015 by a United Nations summit of world leaders in 2000.
‘‘The first of the eight goals is to halve the number of people living on a dollar a day or less.’’
His day consisted of collecting water, cooking on a methylated spirits stove he fashioned from discarded food cans and wandering to relieve boredom.
He washed in the fountain in the Octagon or at the Speight’s tap in Rattray St, kept an eye out for wild plum, apple and pear trees, collected useful rubbish and had just acquired a rotten mattress.
At the start of the month, he scavenged food from supermarket rubbish skips, but found their supply of fresh bread, fresh salads, yoghurt and camembert cheese negated the point of the exercise.
For the first few nights, he tried to sleep in alleyways around Great King St, but found he was too often disturbed by drunks, so moved to a secluded part of the town belt where the only night noises were snuffling hedgehogs.
Rain last Friday turned his camp cold and soggy, reminding him how hard it could be to live exposed to the elements.
Mr White believed NZ’s clean water and lack of disease and civil war made living in poverty here easier than in many other countries. He had rejected all help, but friends checked on him twice a week. To mark the end of the month’s poverty, Mr White planned to join friends at a restaurant for a glass of wine and real fruit ice cream.
By MARK PRICE
A CUP of oats and water for breakfast; a cup of rice and lentils for tea; and virtually nothing in between. That is the diet a Dunedin man committed himself to while living for a month on just $1.49 a day.
At the beginning of February, Jolyon White set (34) out to live for a month like the 1.2 billion people in the world who subsist at, or below, the poverty line.
Three weeks down the track, he is hungry all the time, has lost weight and is lacking in energy. But he has survived after a fashion.
From the shanty he has constructed from rubbish in the town belt, Mr White said he had 80c left from the New Zealand equivalent of $US30 at the start of the month. He had started out with the possessions he thought a person who had lived in poverty all their lives would have a cooking pot, a tarpaulin, three blankets and the clothes he was wearing.
Mr White said he was not a ‘‘left-leaning hippie’’, but a middle-class conservative, a qualified electrician and a climbing instructor who usually lived a ‘‘normal life’’, complete with email and cellphone.
He wanted to remind New Zealanders of the eight goals set for the year 2015 by a United Nations summit of world leaders in 2000.
‘‘The first of the eight goals is to halve the number of people living on a dollar a day or less.’’
His day consisted of collecting water, cooking on a methylated spirits stove he fashioned from discarded food cans and wandering to relieve boredom.
He washed in the fountain in the Octagon or at the Speight’s tap in Rattray St, kept an eye out for wild plum, apple and pear trees, collected useful rubbish and had just acquired a rotten mattress.
At the start of the month, he scavenged food from supermarket rubbish skips, but found their supply of fresh bread, fresh salads, yoghurt and camembert cheese negated the point of the exercise.
For the first few nights, he tried to sleep in alleyways around Great King St, but found he was too often disturbed by drunks, so moved to a secluded part of the town belt where the only night noises were snuffling hedgehogs.
Rain last Friday turned his camp cold and soggy, reminding him how hard it could be to live exposed to the elements.
Mr White believed NZ’s clean water and lack of disease and civil war made living in poverty here easier than in many other countries. He had rejected all help, but friends checked on him twice a week. To mark the end of the month’s poverty, Mr White planned to join friends at a restaurant for a glass of wine and real fruit ice cream.
Ad targets state benefits program.
from the Santa Fe Reporter
Most people use Craig’s List to look for a roommate or sell a car.
Carol DeCosta used the popular Web site to draw attention to her criticisms of the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD).
DeCosta, 57, originally from Tulsa, Okla., first encountered problems last year when she lost her $105 monthly food stamp benefits.
She says she posted her ad on Craig’s List to find fellow victims of a program she believes fails to properly explain HSD policies.
“Maybe having the glaring inadequacies of HSD services publicly exposed will make a difference for the HSD clients who are affected and force HSD to take the required action to resolve the problems,” DeCosta writes in the Feb. 18 ad, which also mentions the possibility of a story in this paper and promises confidentiality to anyone who responds. SFR was unaware of the ad prior to DeCosta posting it, and made no such commitments.
DeCosta’s need for public assistance began nearly four years ago when a major car accident left her unable to resume a career as a paralegal and legal assistant. Since then, she’s been diagnosed with diabetes and a degenerative joint disease, both of which have complicated her recovery.
“I don’t want to be on food stamps forever,” she tells SFR. “But I want to have something that I can count on with some consistency.”
DeCosta says she mailed her mandatory food stamps recertification application to HSD last November. She didn’t know the department hadn’t received it until her food stamp benefits were terminated the following month, despite her efforts to notify HSD of changes in her income from a temping service she’s been trying to get off the ground. DeCosta’s benefits were later reinstated, but the pro-rated benefit she was given, to last through Jan. 17, was only $17.
DeCosta says numerous phone calls to her caseworker weren’t returned, nor was she informed there was a 60-day waiting period before her benefits would be readjusted. “That’s important information for people to have,” she says.
Gail Evans, legal director for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, speculates that DeCosta, like many others, might have been “auto-denied” for failing to verify her recertification paperwork, which is required every six months.
“Basically half the folks who are auto-denied haven’t been first informed what they need to do to complete the application,” Evans says.
“The computer function has been set up to accommodate their lack of caseworkers,” Evans says, adding that her office is collecting affidavits from other HSD clients in similar situations.
The Legislature recently approved funding for 50 new HSD caseworkers for the new fiscal year beginning in July. In Santa Fe County, 27 field caseworkers serve roughly 9,000 food stamp benefi-ciaries, according to Fred Sandoval, director of HSD’s Income Support Division. Sandoval, himself a former caseworker, cites a number of vacancies, but also points to “significant improvements.”
For example, Santa Fe’s Income Support Division office, he says, recently conducted three customer-service trainings. A new filing system should be completed by the end of this month to streamline the paperwork requirements. And for the first time, potential clients can sign up for food stamps at area hospitals with no need to visit the office.
“Clients come first for us,” Sandoval says.
He might want to post that on Craig’s List.
Most people use Craig’s List to look for a roommate or sell a car.
Carol DeCosta used the popular Web site to draw attention to her criticisms of the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD).
DeCosta, 57, originally from Tulsa, Okla., first encountered problems last year when she lost her $105 monthly food stamp benefits.
She says she posted her ad on Craig’s List to find fellow victims of a program she believes fails to properly explain HSD policies.
“Maybe having the glaring inadequacies of HSD services publicly exposed will make a difference for the HSD clients who are affected and force HSD to take the required action to resolve the problems,” DeCosta writes in the Feb. 18 ad, which also mentions the possibility of a story in this paper and promises confidentiality to anyone who responds. SFR was unaware of the ad prior to DeCosta posting it, and made no such commitments.
DeCosta’s need for public assistance began nearly four years ago when a major car accident left her unable to resume a career as a paralegal and legal assistant. Since then, she’s been diagnosed with diabetes and a degenerative joint disease, both of which have complicated her recovery.
“I don’t want to be on food stamps forever,” she tells SFR. “But I want to have something that I can count on with some consistency.”
DeCosta says she mailed her mandatory food stamps recertification application to HSD last November. She didn’t know the department hadn’t received it until her food stamp benefits were terminated the following month, despite her efforts to notify HSD of changes in her income from a temping service she’s been trying to get off the ground. DeCosta’s benefits were later reinstated, but the pro-rated benefit she was given, to last through Jan. 17, was only $17.
DeCosta says numerous phone calls to her caseworker weren’t returned, nor was she informed there was a 60-day waiting period before her benefits would be readjusted. “That’s important information for people to have,” she says.
Gail Evans, legal director for the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, speculates that DeCosta, like many others, might have been “auto-denied” for failing to verify her recertification paperwork, which is required every six months.
“Basically half the folks who are auto-denied haven’t been first informed what they need to do to complete the application,” Evans says.
“The computer function has been set up to accommodate their lack of caseworkers,” Evans says, adding that her office is collecting affidavits from other HSD clients in similar situations.
The Legislature recently approved funding for 50 new HSD caseworkers for the new fiscal year beginning in July. In Santa Fe County, 27 field caseworkers serve roughly 9,000 food stamp benefi-ciaries, according to Fred Sandoval, director of HSD’s Income Support Division. Sandoval, himself a former caseworker, cites a number of vacancies, but also points to “significant improvements.”
For example, Santa Fe’s Income Support Division office, he says, recently conducted three customer-service trainings. A new filing system should be completed by the end of this month to streamline the paperwork requirements. And for the first time, potential clients can sign up for food stamps at area hospitals with no need to visit the office.
“Clients come first for us,” Sandoval says.
He might want to post that on Craig’s List.
Health Workers Needed: Poor Left Without Care in Africa’s Rural Areas
from the World Bank
Despite billions of dollars invested into health in Africa, the shortage of appropriate health workers particularly in rural areas in many countries is a major barrier to health service coverage for the poor.
‘‘I was assigned to a very remote area some 38 km from the local town and 18 km off the main road but I did not go,” according to one physician from a provincial town in Ethiopia. “Two years later, there was a new graduate who was sent there. He served for one month and could not collect his salary unless he traveled 18 km by horse. After two months he packed his belongings, managed to collect his salary, and then left straight for Washington, DC [1].”
Despite major investments in health in Africa, populations -- particularly those in poorer parts of many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) -- continue to lose out in terms of health service coverage.
“To a great extent, the problem lies with a shortage of appropriate, well-performing health workers, particularly in remote and poorer parts of many countries,” says Ok Pannenborg, senior health advisor for the World Bank Africa Region. “The poor cannot benefit from new health investments and programs without the appropriate workforce to translate them into health services.”
Urban Areas Are Better off
In most if not all countries in SSA, urban and more prosperous areas are disproportionately home to the countries’ skilled workforce. In Zambia, there are 20 times more doctors and over five times more nurses and midwives in urban than rural areas. In Malawi, despite 87 percent of its population living in areas considered rural, 96.6 percent of doctors are found in urban health facilities. In Burkina Faso, there is one midwife for approximately 8,000 inhabitants in the richer zones, against one for nearly 430,000 inhabitants in the poorest zone. Many remote regions and districts do not have a single doctor, nurse or midwife to provide assistance to those that need it most.
Christopher H. Herbst, a public health analyst, working on health workforce issues in the Africa Region at the World Bank, says that there are good reasons why many health workers prefer urban postings, or postings outside of SSA altogether.
“Health workers often earn more, can specialize, and enjoy a higher quality of professional and private life in urban areas.”
Inadequate management, equipment and supplies, as well as the absence of quality schooling and lack of opportunities to earn additional income are all reasons that keep health workers away from rural areas.
A Combined Effort to Find Solutions
In 2006, the World Bank, with funding from the Gates Foundation and NORAD, started a program to assist governments in Sub-Saharan Africa design and implement country-specific solutions to the Human Resources for Health (HRH) problem in the region.
“Innovative and pro-poor policies that focus on improving management and education capacity, as well as interventions that motivate health workers and those that address HIV/AIDS are all key to ensuring health service coverage for the poor in Africa,” according to Agnes Soucat, lead economist and team leader of the Bank’s Africa Human Resources for Health Program. “The aim is not only to shift the rural/urban balance of health workers in many countries, but also to ensure that health workers made available to the poor are accessible and responsive to the needs of the poor.”
The HRH program closely coordinates efforts with other multilateral and bilateral organizations as well as both local and international NGOs. It is supporting governments to obtain and interpret the necessary country-specific evidence and baseline information required for targeted policy and program development on HRH.
In some countries in SSA, the combined effort to address the shortage of appropriate heath workers in rural areas is showing early results. In Ethiopia for example:
“All roads today lead to health extension workers,” says the country’s Federal Minister of Health, Dr. Tedros Adhanom.
Ethiopia has trained and deployed more than 27,000 female health workers in remote areas. They were chosen from amongst communities to provide basic curative and preventative services in almost every community throughout the country.
"We make house calls three times a week," explains Fantaye, a health extension worker in Thero Boro kebele, Mulo district. "Sometimes we have to walk up to two hours, but we are not discouraged by this [2].”
It is programs like these that may be necessary to accelerate Africa’s path towards development.
“Unless we all work together and come up with innovative strategies to ensure that the billions of dollars invested into health in Africa reach those that need it most, the Millennium Development Goals are unlikely to be achieved,” noted Pannenborg, referring to goals set by the United Nations to end poverty by 2012.
Despite billions of dollars invested into health in Africa, the shortage of appropriate health workers particularly in rural areas in many countries is a major barrier to health service coverage for the poor.
‘‘I was assigned to a very remote area some 38 km from the local town and 18 km off the main road but I did not go,” according to one physician from a provincial town in Ethiopia. “Two years later, there was a new graduate who was sent there. He served for one month and could not collect his salary unless he traveled 18 km by horse. After two months he packed his belongings, managed to collect his salary, and then left straight for Washington, DC [1].”
Despite major investments in health in Africa, populations -- particularly those in poorer parts of many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) -- continue to lose out in terms of health service coverage.
“To a great extent, the problem lies with a shortage of appropriate, well-performing health workers, particularly in remote and poorer parts of many countries,” says Ok Pannenborg, senior health advisor for the World Bank Africa Region. “The poor cannot benefit from new health investments and programs without the appropriate workforce to translate them into health services.”
Urban Areas Are Better off
In most if not all countries in SSA, urban and more prosperous areas are disproportionately home to the countries’ skilled workforce. In Zambia, there are 20 times more doctors and over five times more nurses and midwives in urban than rural areas. In Malawi, despite 87 percent of its population living in areas considered rural, 96.6 percent of doctors are found in urban health facilities. In Burkina Faso, there is one midwife for approximately 8,000 inhabitants in the richer zones, against one for nearly 430,000 inhabitants in the poorest zone. Many remote regions and districts do not have a single doctor, nurse or midwife to provide assistance to those that need it most.
Christopher H. Herbst, a public health analyst, working on health workforce issues in the Africa Region at the World Bank, says that there are good reasons why many health workers prefer urban postings, or postings outside of SSA altogether.
“Health workers often earn more, can specialize, and enjoy a higher quality of professional and private life in urban areas.”
Inadequate management, equipment and supplies, as well as the absence of quality schooling and lack of opportunities to earn additional income are all reasons that keep health workers away from rural areas.
A Combined Effort to Find Solutions
In 2006, the World Bank, with funding from the Gates Foundation and NORAD, started a program to assist governments in Sub-Saharan Africa design and implement country-specific solutions to the Human Resources for Health (HRH) problem in the region.
“Innovative and pro-poor policies that focus on improving management and education capacity, as well as interventions that motivate health workers and those that address HIV/AIDS are all key to ensuring health service coverage for the poor in Africa,” according to Agnes Soucat, lead economist and team leader of the Bank’s Africa Human Resources for Health Program. “The aim is not only to shift the rural/urban balance of health workers in many countries, but also to ensure that health workers made available to the poor are accessible and responsive to the needs of the poor.”
The HRH program closely coordinates efforts with other multilateral and bilateral organizations as well as both local and international NGOs. It is supporting governments to obtain and interpret the necessary country-specific evidence and baseline information required for targeted policy and program development on HRH.
In some countries in SSA, the combined effort to address the shortage of appropriate heath workers in rural areas is showing early results. In Ethiopia for example:
“All roads today lead to health extension workers,” says the country’s Federal Minister of Health, Dr. Tedros Adhanom.
Ethiopia has trained and deployed more than 27,000 female health workers in remote areas. They were chosen from amongst communities to provide basic curative and preventative services in almost every community throughout the country.
"We make house calls three times a week," explains Fantaye, a health extension worker in Thero Boro kebele, Mulo district. "Sometimes we have to walk up to two hours, but we are not discouraged by this [2].”
It is programs like these that may be necessary to accelerate Africa’s path towards development.
“Unless we all work together and come up with innovative strategies to ensure that the billions of dollars invested into health in Africa reach those that need it most, the Millennium Development Goals are unlikely to be achieved,” noted Pannenborg, referring to goals set by the United Nations to end poverty by 2012.
'I work sick all the time'
from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
For families without health insurance, illness can lead to lost wages as well as high medical bills
Ninth in a yearlong series on the struggles of Tarrant County's working poor.
Ofelia Luevano prays that three of her children don't get seriously hurt or ill.
Not only for their well-being but also because they don't have health insurance.
The four children she and her husband, Antonio, took in about three years ago qualify for Medicaid, but the couple's natural children don't.
So Ofelia said she stockpiles over-the-counter medications for when Carlos, 17, Antonio, 12, and Omar, 11, get colds and other illnesses that "I can fix."
The three Luevano youngsters are among the estimated 9 million children living in the U.S. without health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit healthcare research organization. Of those children, 75 percent come from low-income families.
If children don't get routine medical care, their parents probably don't either, according to Jennifer Tolbert, Kaiser Family principal policy analyst. In Texas, more than 39 percent of working-poor parents are living without insurance coverage, according to foundation research. Ofelia isn't covered, but her husband, the family's main wage earner, has health insurance through his employer.
"If he gets insurance for the rest of the family from his job, we'll end up with no groceries at home," Ofelia said. "We can't afford it."
A growing problem
Vedat Lika, who teaches low-income people how to cook, earns $40,000 a year and pays $29.16 a month to insure himself through his employer, the Tarrant Area Food Bank. A family medical plan that would cover Vedat and his two 5-year-old children would cost $422.18 a month, or $194.85 per two-week pay period, so he pays for his children's immunizations, checkups and other medical bills in cash. He believes it's cheaper.
He hopes to boost their immune systems by giving them vitamins, forbidding junk food and preparing organic meals.
But he spends $41.80 a month through his employer to put his children on his dental insurance.
Vedat, 52, applied for Blue Cross Blue Shield medical insurance for his children. It would cost about $180 a month, if they get approved.
His daughter, Madison, is generally in good health, though she needed fillings. But his son, Arman, has Asperger's syndrome. The Fort Worth father worries that the pre-existing condition could make Arman uninsurable. His son receives special services from the Fort Worth school district, but Vedat said he is also talking to specialists at Cook Children's Medical Center and at the Child Studies Center in Fort Worth to get additional help for Arman.
"The teachers are fine, but there are so many kids with problems," Vedat said.
Vedat struggles to balance his budget. He is still repaying loans from relatives and friends who sent him money during the eight months he was unemployed before he got his job May 1. Vedat also declared bankruptcy last summer and must make monthly payments toward his debt. And he wants to make sure to have enough in the bank for emergencies, such as a recent $500 car repair.
The issue of high healthcare costs has not been lost on the electorate. About 61 percent of likely American voters rated healthcare as very important, according to a Rasmussen poll released Feb. 3.
Between 2003 and 2006, the number of uninsured people in the U.S. grew about 8 percent, from 43 million to 46.5 million, because of rapidly rising health premiums and lost or stagnant wages, Tolbert said.
"Certainly the problem has been getting worse over time," she said.
The Luevanos, whose annual income is about $31,000, receive Medicaid, the federally subsidized health insurance program, for four of their children -- Victor, 5; Juan, 8; Fabian, 6; and Juliette Martinez, 7. The Martinez children were provided with Medicaid, which covers health and dental expenses, with the help of Texas Child Protective Services.
CPS is helping the Luevanos adopt the Martinez children because the youngsters' family cannot care for them, said Fort Worth attorney Frank Adler, who is handling the adoption.
Ofelia, 40, who works part time at a bridal shop, said she has tried to get Medicaid for her other three children but was denied. The Haltom City couple earns too much money. She never applied to the Texas Children's Health Insurance Program, which has more generous income limits.
"I didn't apply because I don't think I would qualify for it if I didn't qualify for Medicaid," she said.
Even though Antonio has health and dental insurance, his co-pays can still sink a budget. He recently had a tooth and a silver bridge in his mouth break, requiring surgery.
"Out of pocket it cost him about $800, although the insurance paid the rest," Ofelia said.
Antonio, 38, a welder, was fortunate to have dental insurance. About a third of adult Americans don't, according to 2004 figures provided by Kaiser.
Sick days
With three children and five sick days, Terri Rushing, 49, of Grapevine has to use her time carefully.
The single mother will often suffer through work with a hacking cough or a hammering headache.
"I work sick all the time," said Rushing, a trainer at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center. "You just have to put yourself aside when money stretches thin."
Her son, Caleb, 11, was sick with strep throat for several days last month and went to an urgent-care clinic this month for the flu.
That day, Rushing had to take off work to take care of him, forfeiting her pay because she had used all her sick time.
She was four days shy of the anniversary of her start date, when her annual sick time would have been replenished.
She spent her allotted week of vacation traveling with her children on overnight school field trips and to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. She also has to take time off over other holidays because day cares are closed.
To try to pre-empt colds, Terri refers to her dog-eared book of natural-healing treatments for an herbal remedy.
For quick fixes, Terri carries a bottle of colloidal silver for when her kids are sick and drops the serum on her tongue to boost her immune system at the slightest sign of a sore throat or runny nose.
Still, she's better off than many in her income level of $27,600 a year. Her children are covered under an insurance policy paid for by their father.
But expenses not covered by insurance, such as Tamiflu received at Caleb's recent hospital visit, can add up to hundreds of dollars quickly.
Terri estimates that she paid $1,200 last year for medical expenses that insurance didn't cover, including prescriptions, urgent care, and part of the cost for glasses and eye exams for her daughters, Gabriella, 12, and Hannah, 11.
Terri hasn't been to a medical doctor in years but carries insurance for herself in case she falls dangerously ill.
In the coming year, Terri hopes to earn enough money to put her children on her plan.
That would cost an extra $400 out of her paycheck per month.
Costly cuts
Bobby Lockwood cut his leg Dec. 30 in the family's back yard while installing a swing set that a friend had given his children.
The two gashes, each about 12 inches long, didn't require stitches. However, the pain caused Bobby to miss 2 1/2 days of work.
His family nearly had to seek emergency food assistance, said Edwina Lockwood, Bobby's wife.
Bobby's job in the shipping area of an Arlington industrial plant doesn't come with paid sick days.
He used his one week of annual vacation time in August, so he misses a day's pay for each day he stays home.
That can spell big trouble for the Arlington family of five, which gets by on $29,000 a year.
"I tell myself, 'No, I can't afford it,' and I go to work," said Bobby, 38.
His wife stays home to take care of the couple's three children: Michael, 13, Robert, 5, and Clayton, 3.
Since May, they have had private medical, dental and vision insurance through Bobby's job, for about $160 a month. The deduction from his checks was initially a shock, but the couple is glad to have the coverage.
When Bobby started his full-time job in November 2006, he waived insurance coverage because Medicaid covered the children.
But the family lost Medicaid coverage in February because Bobby was making too much money.
So Edwina just prayed that the kids would stay healthy until the family's private insurance kicked in. They were among the 15.8 percent of Americans and 24.5 percent of Texans who have no health insurance.
During that time, a prescription to treat 13-year-old Michael's attention problems topped $200. Edwina sought and received help from his school.
With insurance, the pills now cost only $15 a month. That came as a relief to Edwina, who says her son is "a totally different child" without Adderall.
Bobby, who has had all but eight teeth removed because of dental problems, would like to get dentures.
He fears that the co-pays would be too much if he gets the procedure through his new insurance.
"I haven't really looked into my dental, the full extensiveness of it," Bobby said. "But I don't think they do pulls unless it's emergency root canals. It's hard because some of the foods I like the most -- I love the raw carrots, and I love my celery -- but with my teeth as bad as they are, I can't bite into stuff."
Getting medical help
Low-income families have several low- or no-cost options for healthcare. But the regulations can be cumbersome, and some programs cannot meet demand.
Government programs
Medicaid: The federal health insurance program will cover most children whose family income is no more than 100 percent of the federal poverty level, or $20,650 a year for a family of four. In Texas, Medicaid will not cover the vast majority of low-income adults.
For information, call 877-543-7669 or visit www.chipmedicaid.org.
Texas Children's Health Insurance Program: Children in families that earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $41,300 for a family of four, are eligible for CHIP. However, families that make more than 150 percent of the poverty level, or $30,975 for a family of four, are subject to an assets test. Assets such as cars and most bank account balances are considered when determining whether a child will be accepted. There may be enrollment fees. For information, call 877-543-7669 or visit www.chipmedicaid.org.
Private or nonprofit programs
Albert Galvan Health Clinic, 2106 N. Main St., Fort Worth. The clinic provides medical care, immunizations and management of chronic diseases. The clinic accepts Medicare and Medicaid and charges a sliding fee based on a family's income and size. Call 817-625-4254 or visit www.aghc.org.
Cornerstone Medical Clinic, 915 E. Peach St., Fort Worth, is a free clinic in the Cornerstone Community Center. The faith-based operation for underprivileged Tarrant County residents is headed by doctors who volunteer five times a month. About 40 patients are given full medical exams, prescriptions, mammograms and other medical services at each clinic. Eligibility depends on space and a phone interview. Call 817-336-1922 or visit www.canetwork.org.
JPS Health Network, which includes John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, provides low-cost medical services. Eligibility is determined by the household's size and monthly income. JPS Connection is available to those who don't have Medicaid, Medicare with a prescription plan, or any medical coverage that covers all or part of medical services and prescription costs. People must also provide proof that they live in Tarrant County. For information, call 817-222-2577 or visit www.jpshealthnet.org.
Mission Fort Worth, 4401 Vermont Ave., Fort Worth, is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, two Tuesday mornings a month and one Saturday morning a month. Call 817- 207-0229.
The Allan Saxe Dental Clinic and the Bob Mann Medical Clinic at Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex, at Mission Arlington's campus at 210 W. South St. Patients are seen at the free medical clinic on a first-come, first-served basis. For medical clinic hours, call 817-277-6620. Come to the Mission's front office to make appointments at the dental clinic and to inquire about free eye exams.
Dental Health for Arlington, 201 N. East St., Arlington, treats children through its programs in elementary schools. The nonprofit program also operates a low-cost clinic for families that have no insurance and earn 125 percent or less of the federal poverty level, or about $25,812 for a family of four. Dental Health takes new appointments every two months. Call 817-277-1165 or visit www.dentalhealtharlington.org.
GRACE Outreach to Health Community Clinic, 837 E. Walnut St., Grapevine, provides medical care, lab work and medications. Patients must live in Grapevine, Southlake or Colleyville; have no insurance; and live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $41,300 for a family of four. Call 817-488-7009, ext. 100, or visit www.gracegrapevine.org.
About the series
Four Tarrant County families who live at or near the poverty level have agreed to be a part of a yearlong Star-Telegram project that examines the hurdles facing the working poor. The families were contacted on the paper's behalf by social service agencies, churches or charities. Today's installment looks at the cost of healthcare.
For families without health insurance, illness can lead to lost wages as well as high medical bills
Ninth in a yearlong series on the struggles of Tarrant County's working poor.
Ofelia Luevano prays that three of her children don't get seriously hurt or ill.
Not only for their well-being but also because they don't have health insurance.
The four children she and her husband, Antonio, took in about three years ago qualify for Medicaid, but the couple's natural children don't.
So Ofelia said she stockpiles over-the-counter medications for when Carlos, 17, Antonio, 12, and Omar, 11, get colds and other illnesses that "I can fix."
The three Luevano youngsters are among the estimated 9 million children living in the U.S. without health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit healthcare research organization. Of those children, 75 percent come from low-income families.
If children don't get routine medical care, their parents probably don't either, according to Jennifer Tolbert, Kaiser Family principal policy analyst. In Texas, more than 39 percent of working-poor parents are living without insurance coverage, according to foundation research. Ofelia isn't covered, but her husband, the family's main wage earner, has health insurance through his employer.
"If he gets insurance for the rest of the family from his job, we'll end up with no groceries at home," Ofelia said. "We can't afford it."
A growing problem
Vedat Lika, who teaches low-income people how to cook, earns $40,000 a year and pays $29.16 a month to insure himself through his employer, the Tarrant Area Food Bank. A family medical plan that would cover Vedat and his two 5-year-old children would cost $422.18 a month, or $194.85 per two-week pay period, so he pays for his children's immunizations, checkups and other medical bills in cash. He believes it's cheaper.
He hopes to boost their immune systems by giving them vitamins, forbidding junk food and preparing organic meals.
But he spends $41.80 a month through his employer to put his children on his dental insurance.
Vedat, 52, applied for Blue Cross Blue Shield medical insurance for his children. It would cost about $180 a month, if they get approved.
His daughter, Madison, is generally in good health, though she needed fillings. But his son, Arman, has Asperger's syndrome. The Fort Worth father worries that the pre-existing condition could make Arman uninsurable. His son receives special services from the Fort Worth school district, but Vedat said he is also talking to specialists at Cook Children's Medical Center and at the Child Studies Center in Fort Worth to get additional help for Arman.
"The teachers are fine, but there are so many kids with problems," Vedat said.
Vedat struggles to balance his budget. He is still repaying loans from relatives and friends who sent him money during the eight months he was unemployed before he got his job May 1. Vedat also declared bankruptcy last summer and must make monthly payments toward his debt. And he wants to make sure to have enough in the bank for emergencies, such as a recent $500 car repair.
The issue of high healthcare costs has not been lost on the electorate. About 61 percent of likely American voters rated healthcare as very important, according to a Rasmussen poll released Feb. 3.
Between 2003 and 2006, the number of uninsured people in the U.S. grew about 8 percent, from 43 million to 46.5 million, because of rapidly rising health premiums and lost or stagnant wages, Tolbert said.
"Certainly the problem has been getting worse over time," she said.
The Luevanos, whose annual income is about $31,000, receive Medicaid, the federally subsidized health insurance program, for four of their children -- Victor, 5; Juan, 8; Fabian, 6; and Juliette Martinez, 7. The Martinez children were provided with Medicaid, which covers health and dental expenses, with the help of Texas Child Protective Services.
CPS is helping the Luevanos adopt the Martinez children because the youngsters' family cannot care for them, said Fort Worth attorney Frank Adler, who is handling the adoption.
Ofelia, 40, who works part time at a bridal shop, said she has tried to get Medicaid for her other three children but was denied. The Haltom City couple earns too much money. She never applied to the Texas Children's Health Insurance Program, which has more generous income limits.
"I didn't apply because I don't think I would qualify for it if I didn't qualify for Medicaid," she said.
Even though Antonio has health and dental insurance, his co-pays can still sink a budget. He recently had a tooth and a silver bridge in his mouth break, requiring surgery.
"Out of pocket it cost him about $800, although the insurance paid the rest," Ofelia said.
Antonio, 38, a welder, was fortunate to have dental insurance. About a third of adult Americans don't, according to 2004 figures provided by Kaiser.
Sick days
With three children and five sick days, Terri Rushing, 49, of Grapevine has to use her time carefully.
The single mother will often suffer through work with a hacking cough or a hammering headache.
"I work sick all the time," said Rushing, a trainer at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center. "You just have to put yourself aside when money stretches thin."
Her son, Caleb, 11, was sick with strep throat for several days last month and went to an urgent-care clinic this month for the flu.
That day, Rushing had to take off work to take care of him, forfeiting her pay because she had used all her sick time.
She was four days shy of the anniversary of her start date, when her annual sick time would have been replenished.
She spent her allotted week of vacation traveling with her children on overnight school field trips and to Oklahoma for Thanksgiving. She also has to take time off over other holidays because day cares are closed.
To try to pre-empt colds, Terri refers to her dog-eared book of natural-healing treatments for an herbal remedy.
For quick fixes, Terri carries a bottle of colloidal silver for when her kids are sick and drops the serum on her tongue to boost her immune system at the slightest sign of a sore throat or runny nose.
Still, she's better off than many in her income level of $27,600 a year. Her children are covered under an insurance policy paid for by their father.
But expenses not covered by insurance, such as Tamiflu received at Caleb's recent hospital visit, can add up to hundreds of dollars quickly.
Terri estimates that she paid $1,200 last year for medical expenses that insurance didn't cover, including prescriptions, urgent care, and part of the cost for glasses and eye exams for her daughters, Gabriella, 12, and Hannah, 11.
Terri hasn't been to a medical doctor in years but carries insurance for herself in case she falls dangerously ill.
In the coming year, Terri hopes to earn enough money to put her children on her plan.
That would cost an extra $400 out of her paycheck per month.
Costly cuts
Bobby Lockwood cut his leg Dec. 30 in the family's back yard while installing a swing set that a friend had given his children.
The two gashes, each about 12 inches long, didn't require stitches. However, the pain caused Bobby to miss 2 1/2 days of work.
His family nearly had to seek emergency food assistance, said Edwina Lockwood, Bobby's wife.
Bobby's job in the shipping area of an Arlington industrial plant doesn't come with paid sick days.
He used his one week of annual vacation time in August, so he misses a day's pay for each day he stays home.
That can spell big trouble for the Arlington family of five, which gets by on $29,000 a year.
"I tell myself, 'No, I can't afford it,' and I go to work," said Bobby, 38.
His wife stays home to take care of the couple's three children: Michael, 13, Robert, 5, and Clayton, 3.
Since May, they have had private medical, dental and vision insurance through Bobby's job, for about $160 a month. The deduction from his checks was initially a shock, but the couple is glad to have the coverage.
When Bobby started his full-time job in November 2006, he waived insurance coverage because Medicaid covered the children.
But the family lost Medicaid coverage in February because Bobby was making too much money.
So Edwina just prayed that the kids would stay healthy until the family's private insurance kicked in. They were among the 15.8 percent of Americans and 24.5 percent of Texans who have no health insurance.
During that time, a prescription to treat 13-year-old Michael's attention problems topped $200. Edwina sought and received help from his school.
With insurance, the pills now cost only $15 a month. That came as a relief to Edwina, who says her son is "a totally different child" without Adderall.
Bobby, who has had all but eight teeth removed because of dental problems, would like to get dentures.
He fears that the co-pays would be too much if he gets the procedure through his new insurance.
"I haven't really looked into my dental, the full extensiveness of it," Bobby said. "But I don't think they do pulls unless it's emergency root canals. It's hard because some of the foods I like the most -- I love the raw carrots, and I love my celery -- but with my teeth as bad as they are, I can't bite into stuff."
Getting medical help
Low-income families have several low- or no-cost options for healthcare. But the regulations can be cumbersome, and some programs cannot meet demand.
Government programs
Medicaid: The federal health insurance program will cover most children whose family income is no more than 100 percent of the federal poverty level, or $20,650 a year for a family of four. In Texas, Medicaid will not cover the vast majority of low-income adults.
For information, call 877-543-7669 or visit www.chipmedicaid.org.
Texas Children's Health Insurance Program: Children in families that earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $41,300 for a family of four, are eligible for CHIP. However, families that make more than 150 percent of the poverty level, or $30,975 for a family of four, are subject to an assets test. Assets such as cars and most bank account balances are considered when determining whether a child will be accepted. There may be enrollment fees. For information, call 877-543-7669 or visit www.chipmedicaid.org.
Private or nonprofit programs
Albert Galvan Health Clinic, 2106 N. Main St., Fort Worth. The clinic provides medical care, immunizations and management of chronic diseases. The clinic accepts Medicare and Medicaid and charges a sliding fee based on a family's income and size. Call 817-625-4254 or visit www.aghc.org.
Cornerstone Medical Clinic, 915 E. Peach St., Fort Worth, is a free clinic in the Cornerstone Community Center. The faith-based operation for underprivileged Tarrant County residents is headed by doctors who volunteer five times a month. About 40 patients are given full medical exams, prescriptions, mammograms and other medical services at each clinic. Eligibility depends on space and a phone interview. Call 817-336-1922 or visit www.canetwork.org.
JPS Health Network, which includes John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, provides low-cost medical services. Eligibility is determined by the household's size and monthly income. JPS Connection is available to those who don't have Medicaid, Medicare with a prescription plan, or any medical coverage that covers all or part of medical services and prescription costs. People must also provide proof that they live in Tarrant County. For information, call 817-222-2577 or visit www.jpshealthnet.org.
Mission Fort Worth, 4401 Vermont Ave., Fort Worth, is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, two Tuesday mornings a month and one Saturday morning a month. Call 817- 207-0229.
The Allan Saxe Dental Clinic and the Bob Mann Medical Clinic at Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex, at Mission Arlington's campus at 210 W. South St. Patients are seen at the free medical clinic on a first-come, first-served basis. For medical clinic hours, call 817-277-6620. Come to the Mission's front office to make appointments at the dental clinic and to inquire about free eye exams.
Dental Health for Arlington, 201 N. East St., Arlington, treats children through its programs in elementary schools. The nonprofit program also operates a low-cost clinic for families that have no insurance and earn 125 percent or less of the federal poverty level, or about $25,812 for a family of four. Dental Health takes new appointments every two months. Call 817-277-1165 or visit www.dentalhealtharlington.org.
GRACE Outreach to Health Community Clinic, 837 E. Walnut St., Grapevine, provides medical care, lab work and medications. Patients must live in Grapevine, Southlake or Colleyville; have no insurance; and live at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $41,300 for a family of four. Call 817-488-7009, ext. 100, or visit www.gracegrapevine.org.
About the series
Four Tarrant County families who live at or near the poverty level have agreed to be a part of a yearlong Star-Telegram project that examines the hurdles facing the working poor. The families were contacted on the paper's behalf by social service agencies, churches or charities. Today's installment looks at the cost of healthcare.
Highland 'food poverty' warning
from the BBC
An urgent appeal for food for families and individuals in need has been made by a Highland charity.
Blythswood Care, known for transporting relief aid to Eastern Europe, said there has been an increased demand in the Highlands over the winter months.
It warned that it had already helped 340 people this year and that stocks were running low.
The Highland Food Bank gives a three-day supply of foodstuffs to households in financial crises.
The scheme aims to make sure that no-one goes hungry while their problems are being resolved.
The charity said there could be a number of reasons for the rise, including an increased awareness of the service among care professionals who distribute vouchers and a delay in benefit payments.
Appeals are currently being organised through local schools and churches but Blythswood said public donations were needed now.
Co-ordinator Lorna Dempster said that the Highland Food Bank helped more than 1,700 people in 2007 - an increase of 70% over the previous year, when 1,000 clients were helped.
An urgent appeal for food for families and individuals in need has been made by a Highland charity.
Blythswood Care, known for transporting relief aid to Eastern Europe, said there has been an increased demand in the Highlands over the winter months.
It warned that it had already helped 340 people this year and that stocks were running low.
The Highland Food Bank gives a three-day supply of foodstuffs to households in financial crises.
The scheme aims to make sure that no-one goes hungry while their problems are being resolved.
The charity said there could be a number of reasons for the rise, including an increased awareness of the service among care professionals who distribute vouchers and a delay in benefit payments.
Appeals are currently being organised through local schools and churches but Blythswood said public donations were needed now.
Co-ordinator Lorna Dempster said that the Highland Food Bank helped more than 1,700 people in 2007 - an increase of 70% over the previous year, when 1,000 clients were helped.
Mozambique aims to cut poverty and create jobs
from Reuters South Africa
By Charles Mangwiro
MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambique wants to reduce poverty significantly by 2009 through creating more jobs and small enterprises in the agriculture sector, a government minister said on Tuesday.
Planning and Development Minister Aiuba Quereneia told Reuters in an interview that 54 percent of the southern African country's 20 million population currently lived in poverty.
he government aims to cut this to 45 percent in 2009.
"We are pressing for the establishments of small and medium enterprises, a 'Green Revolution' in agriculture, its marketing and transportation," he said.
"Therefore we are allocating an annual $205 million to 128 districts in order to cut poverty from the current 54 percent to 45 percent by 2009."
Quereneia said Mozambique would lay the groundwork for subsistence peasant farmers to be transformed into commercial farmers.
This will need improvements in distribution of seeds and fertiliser, production diversification, good use of water, and ensuring that there are buyers for crops.
"It is a broad programme which also includes the simplification of business processes in Mozambique when it comes to investments in other sectors, we have a Public Reform Programme whose key platform is to remove barriers when one wants to start a business", he said.
The International Monetary Fund has praised Mozambique for its impressive annual growth rates but said this does not filter through to ordinary people.
"Despite the authorities' efforts, poverty levels are still high, and there is a need to develop policies towards employment generation and improvement of income distribution within the different regions of the country," the IMF said in a statement last week after a visit by a mission of IMF executive directors.
Mozambique was one of the poorest nations in the world at the end of a 17-year civil war in 1992, but has had one of the fastest-growing economies in southern African in the past decade.
By Charles Mangwiro
MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambique wants to reduce poverty significantly by 2009 through creating more jobs and small enterprises in the agriculture sector, a government minister said on Tuesday.
Planning and Development Minister Aiuba Quereneia told Reuters in an interview that 54 percent of the southern African country's 20 million population currently lived in poverty.
he government aims to cut this to 45 percent in 2009.
"We are pressing for the establishments of small and medium enterprises, a 'Green Revolution' in agriculture, its marketing and transportation," he said.
"Therefore we are allocating an annual $205 million to 128 districts in order to cut poverty from the current 54 percent to 45 percent by 2009."
Quereneia said Mozambique would lay the groundwork for subsistence peasant farmers to be transformed into commercial farmers.
This will need improvements in distribution of seeds and fertiliser, production diversification, good use of water, and ensuring that there are buyers for crops.
"It is a broad programme which also includes the simplification of business processes in Mozambique when it comes to investments in other sectors, we have a Public Reform Programme whose key platform is to remove barriers when one wants to start a business", he said.
The International Monetary Fund has praised Mozambique for its impressive annual growth rates but said this does not filter through to ordinary people.
"Despite the authorities' efforts, poverty levels are still high, and there is a need to develop policies towards employment generation and improvement of income distribution within the different regions of the country," the IMF said in a statement last week after a visit by a mission of IMF executive directors.
Mozambique was one of the poorest nations in the world at the end of a 17-year civil war in 1992, but has had one of the fastest-growing economies in southern African in the past decade.
Fairtrade vs food miles
from ic Wales
By Steve Brooks, Acting Head of Oxfam Cymru
What do you do? Buy the fair trade strawberries from Kenya or the asparagus tips from Pembrokeshire?
It’s a dilemma more and more of us will face. We all want to do our bit to help make poverty history and protect the environment from climate change, but what happens when our concern for people appears to clash with our concern for the planet?
Put more simply, should we avoid fair trade goods from the developing world to help cut down on food miles?
For some, the initial answer is obvious: surely opting for food transported halfway across the globe is “worse” than buying produce grown locally? Isn’t importing produce from different continents just adding to climate change?
Well, actually no.Firstly, the technical bit: food miles is only a measure of the amount of carbon emitted by taking food from one place to another – the distance it’s travelled from where it is grown or raised to where it is consumed. What it doesn’t measure is the before and after. Strawberries grown in the shadow of the Preseli mountains: low food miles? Maybe. But what about how the crop was fed and watered? And what about electricity-guzzling lights in the heated greenhouses?
So, food miles don’t take into account the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated in production. Substituting tropical production of fruit, veg or flowers with local growing of similar products to reduce food miles may result in a greater volume of emissions because of the energy requirements needed to maintain artificial conditions necessary. We need to start thinking from plough to plate.
Secondly, let’s think about the impact food miles could have on the developing world. More than 70% of people living in poor countries depend on agriculture to make a living. In Africa an estimated 1.5 million people depend on agricultural exports to the UK for a living. For poor people producing and farming the crops that fill our fridges, these livelihoods, some of them founded on fair trade agreements, are the gateway to self-sufficiency, long term sustainable development and ultimately a way to work out of poverty.
Switching away from fair trade and other goods produced in the developing world to cut food miles would be harming those who are least responsible for global warming.
As consumers, were are increasingly understanding the consequences of our purchasing decisions but as Oxfam points out the power of the pound needs to be channelled in the right direction.
And fair trade’s a deeper investment than business. Buying a bag of Fairtrade rice will also support social and economic development projects like schools, clinics, clean water supply and proper sanitation.
So consider this while you’re doing your next weekly shop – food transportation at present contributes relatively little to carbon dioxide emissions. If you and everyone in the UK, switched one 100W light bulb to a low energy equivalent, we would over the course of a year, reduce CO² emissions by 4.7 times the amount which would result from a boycott of fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa.
By Steve Brooks, Acting Head of Oxfam Cymru
What do you do? Buy the fair trade strawberries from Kenya or the asparagus tips from Pembrokeshire?
It’s a dilemma more and more of us will face. We all want to do our bit to help make poverty history and protect the environment from climate change, but what happens when our concern for people appears to clash with our concern for the planet?
Put more simply, should we avoid fair trade goods from the developing world to help cut down on food miles?
For some, the initial answer is obvious: surely opting for food transported halfway across the globe is “worse” than buying produce grown locally? Isn’t importing produce from different continents just adding to climate change?
Well, actually no.Firstly, the technical bit: food miles is only a measure of the amount of carbon emitted by taking food from one place to another – the distance it’s travelled from where it is grown or raised to where it is consumed. What it doesn’t measure is the before and after. Strawberries grown in the shadow of the Preseli mountains: low food miles? Maybe. But what about how the crop was fed and watered? And what about electricity-guzzling lights in the heated greenhouses?
So, food miles don’t take into account the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated in production. Substituting tropical production of fruit, veg or flowers with local growing of similar products to reduce food miles may result in a greater volume of emissions because of the energy requirements needed to maintain artificial conditions necessary. We need to start thinking from plough to plate.
Secondly, let’s think about the impact food miles could have on the developing world. More than 70% of people living in poor countries depend on agriculture to make a living. In Africa an estimated 1.5 million people depend on agricultural exports to the UK for a living. For poor people producing and farming the crops that fill our fridges, these livelihoods, some of them founded on fair trade agreements, are the gateway to self-sufficiency, long term sustainable development and ultimately a way to work out of poverty.
Switching away from fair trade and other goods produced in the developing world to cut food miles would be harming those who are least responsible for global warming.
As consumers, were are increasingly understanding the consequences of our purchasing decisions but as Oxfam points out the power of the pound needs to be channelled in the right direction.
And fair trade’s a deeper investment than business. Buying a bag of Fairtrade rice will also support social and economic development projects like schools, clinics, clean water supply and proper sanitation.
So consider this while you’re doing your next weekly shop – food transportation at present contributes relatively little to carbon dioxide emissions. If you and everyone in the UK, switched one 100W light bulb to a low energy equivalent, we would over the course of a year, reduce CO² emissions by 4.7 times the amount which would result from a boycott of fresh fruit and vegetables from sub-Saharan Africa.
Poverty fuels trafficking of Yemeni children
from the International Herald Tribune
SANAA: Ali Abdu, a slim boy of 14, just wants to go home to his family in the Yemeni mountains. His dream of making money in Saudi Arabia ended in a hospital bed.
"First I worked as a goatherd, then in a car-wash for three months. Then I was hit by a car and spent 29 days in hospital," he mutters. "After that I gave myself up so I could come back."
Abdu is one of thousands of children, mostly boys, who U.N. officials say are trafficked from impoverished Yemeni villages to Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf countries to work illegally as beggars, camel jockeys, domestic servants or labourers.
The murky cross-border business is run by gangs who recruit boys directly from their families or from the army of child workers already seeking survival on Yemeni city streets.
"It's just underground," Aboudou Adjibade, the Yemen representative of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, told Reuters. "It's difficult to control because there's a lot of complicity from the community level and the authority level."
Driven by poverty and greed, the trade exposes children to the risks of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. Worldwide, UNICEF says about 1.2 million children are trafficked annually.
"I went to Saudi Arabia with a friend. We walked all the way," said Abdu, from Mahwit, a rugged region northwest of the Yemeni capital and about 100 km (60 miles) from the border.
Feet tapping nervously, he told his confused story in the courtyard of the Centre for Protection and Rehabilitation of Children in Sanaa. The government-run institution had received its first batch of a dozen boys only a few days earlier.
All seemed bewildered. Staffers said some were traumatized. The atmosphere was awkward and formal, with few signs of purposeful activity for the boys, who had been transferred from a bigger reception centre at Harad, near the Saudi border.
"We will care for them while we try to trace their families," said Abdulillah Thabet, the centre's director.
BACKWASH OF POVERTY
UNICEF, which supports the Sanaa and Harad centres, says traffickers move several thousand children a year, perhaps many more, from Yemen. It plans a survey for accurate figures.
"It's a heavy phenomenon in deprived, remote governorates, where there is not much opportunity for work and even agriculture is deteriorating for lack of water," said Adjibade.
He said desperate families with too many mouths to feed might hand a son over to traffickers on the promise of future earnings. In Yemen's patriarchal society, boys are anyway expected to shoulder responsibility early in life.
"The dramatic consequence on children is that when they go to Saudi Arabia, it's a horrible form of exploitation," Adjibade said. "They beg or work on farms in painful conditions."
Abdu's voice shook as he recalled his tiring days washing cars with a few older Yemeni youths. He said he had slept alone in a nearby room and had been paid 500 rials (67 pounds) a month.
Asked if he had been lonely, the black-haired boy said: "I don't know. I used to finish work, sleep, then go back to work."
Abdu had saved 1,500 rials to bring home to his family before he was run over by a Saudi driver, who paid for him to stay in hospital until his leg had mended.
"I would love to go back to school, learn something," he said. "I would like to have a shop near my house. I'll do anything, any work, but it must be halal (permissible)."
TABOO SUBJECT
When UNICEF tried to alert the Yemeni, Saudi and other governments to the trafficking problem 10 years ago, Adjibade said the common response was denial, on the grounds that such a practice contradicted Islamic injunctions to protect children.
"The reality is completely different," he said. "It took some time, in Yemen and the region, to recognize the facts."
The International Organization of Migration (IOM), which trained Yemeni staff at the two centres for trafficked children, also says government attitudes are slowly changing.
"Two years ago, we couldn't even talk about this problem officially," said IOM representative Stefano Tamagnini. "Now they start accepting the word trafficking."
Acknowledged or not, the flow of youngsters to Saudi Arabia goes on, spiking each year around the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca, when child beggars can expect the faithful to show more generosity than usual.
The Saudi authorities dump the children back over the border whenever they catch them, although UNICEF is promoting a Yemeni-Saudi dialogue aimed at a more coordinated response.
Some boys at the centre in Sanaa had made several trips to the kingdom. Others had been intercepted at the border.
"I've been to Jeddah three times with my cousin and his group," said Khaled Ali, 18. "I used to herd goats in the morning until 11 a.m. and then work on the farm until the night. It wasn't easy ... I don't want to go back there again."
UNICEF spokesman Naseem-ur-Rehman said children were victims of the poverty eroding Yemen's social fabric as population growth outstrips resources. Parents often did not realize what awaited their sons in Saudi Arabia or on city streets.
SANAA: Ali Abdu, a slim boy of 14, just wants to go home to his family in the Yemeni mountains. His dream of making money in Saudi Arabia ended in a hospital bed.
"First I worked as a goatherd, then in a car-wash for three months. Then I was hit by a car and spent 29 days in hospital," he mutters. "After that I gave myself up so I could come back."
Abdu is one of thousands of children, mostly boys, who U.N. officials say are trafficked from impoverished Yemeni villages to Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf countries to work illegally as beggars, camel jockeys, domestic servants or labourers.
The murky cross-border business is run by gangs who recruit boys directly from their families or from the army of child workers already seeking survival on Yemeni city streets.
"It's just underground," Aboudou Adjibade, the Yemen representative of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, told Reuters. "It's difficult to control because there's a lot of complicity from the community level and the authority level."
Driven by poverty and greed, the trade exposes children to the risks of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. Worldwide, UNICEF says about 1.2 million children are trafficked annually.
"I went to Saudi Arabia with a friend. We walked all the way," said Abdu, from Mahwit, a rugged region northwest of the Yemeni capital and about 100 km (60 miles) from the border.
Feet tapping nervously, he told his confused story in the courtyard of the Centre for Protection and Rehabilitation of Children in Sanaa. The government-run institution had received its first batch of a dozen boys only a few days earlier.
All seemed bewildered. Staffers said some were traumatized. The atmosphere was awkward and formal, with few signs of purposeful activity for the boys, who had been transferred from a bigger reception centre at Harad, near the Saudi border.
"We will care for them while we try to trace their families," said Abdulillah Thabet, the centre's director.
BACKWASH OF POVERTY
UNICEF, which supports the Sanaa and Harad centres, says traffickers move several thousand children a year, perhaps many more, from Yemen. It plans a survey for accurate figures.
"It's a heavy phenomenon in deprived, remote governorates, where there is not much opportunity for work and even agriculture is deteriorating for lack of water," said Adjibade.
He said desperate families with too many mouths to feed might hand a son over to traffickers on the promise of future earnings. In Yemen's patriarchal society, boys are anyway expected to shoulder responsibility early in life.
"The dramatic consequence on children is that when they go to Saudi Arabia, it's a horrible form of exploitation," Adjibade said. "They beg or work on farms in painful conditions."
Abdu's voice shook as he recalled his tiring days washing cars with a few older Yemeni youths. He said he had slept alone in a nearby room and had been paid 500 rials (67 pounds) a month.
Asked if he had been lonely, the black-haired boy said: "I don't know. I used to finish work, sleep, then go back to work."
Abdu had saved 1,500 rials to bring home to his family before he was run over by a Saudi driver, who paid for him to stay in hospital until his leg had mended.
"I would love to go back to school, learn something," he said. "I would like to have a shop near my house. I'll do anything, any work, but it must be halal (permissible)."
TABOO SUBJECT
When UNICEF tried to alert the Yemeni, Saudi and other governments to the trafficking problem 10 years ago, Adjibade said the common response was denial, on the grounds that such a practice contradicted Islamic injunctions to protect children.
"The reality is completely different," he said. "It took some time, in Yemen and the region, to recognize the facts."
The International Organization of Migration (IOM), which trained Yemeni staff at the two centres for trafficked children, also says government attitudes are slowly changing.
"Two years ago, we couldn't even talk about this problem officially," said IOM representative Stefano Tamagnini. "Now they start accepting the word trafficking."
Acknowledged or not, the flow of youngsters to Saudi Arabia goes on, spiking each year around the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca, when child beggars can expect the faithful to show more generosity than usual.
The Saudi authorities dump the children back over the border whenever they catch them, although UNICEF is promoting a Yemeni-Saudi dialogue aimed at a more coordinated response.
Some boys at the centre in Sanaa had made several trips to the kingdom. Others had been intercepted at the border.
"I've been to Jeddah three times with my cousin and his group," said Khaled Ali, 18. "I used to herd goats in the morning until 11 a.m. and then work on the farm until the night. It wasn't easy ... I don't want to go back there again."
UNICEF spokesman Naseem-ur-Rehman said children were victims of the poverty eroding Yemen's social fabric as population growth outstrips resources. Parents often did not realize what awaited their sons in Saudi Arabia or on city streets.
UN Chief Hails Country On Poverty Reduction
from All Africa
New Vision (Kampala)
By Francis Emorut
Kampala
UGANDA'S record in poverty reduction is commendable, the resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme, has said.
"Although poverty indicators in sub-Saharan Africa are still bad, Uganda has shown considerable improvement in poverty reduction," Theophane Nikyema noted.
This was during a charity walk in Munyonyo organised by the Rotary Club of Kampala North on Saturday.
According to the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics, the country's poverty rate decreased from 56% in 1992 to 31% in 2005/2006.
The walk under the theme "Walk for heath, water, and sanitation" aimed at raising sh60m to help the poor, according to the chairman of the organising committee, Charles Mwesige.
Nikyema commended the club for embracing the Millennium Development Goals.
The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and ensuring environmental sustainability by the year. Others are combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and developing a global partnership for development.
The president of the club, John Magezi said: "Unless we find ways of making our communities create wealth on their own, they will live in abject poverty."
The 10-km walk attracted over 30 Rotary clubs.
New Vision (Kampala)
By Francis Emorut
Kampala
UGANDA'S record in poverty reduction is commendable, the resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme, has said.
"Although poverty indicators in sub-Saharan Africa are still bad, Uganda has shown considerable improvement in poverty reduction," Theophane Nikyema noted.
This was during a charity walk in Munyonyo organised by the Rotary Club of Kampala North on Saturday.
According to the Uganda National Bureau of Statistics, the country's poverty rate decreased from 56% in 1992 to 31% in 2005/2006.
The walk under the theme "Walk for heath, water, and sanitation" aimed at raising sh60m to help the poor, according to the chairman of the organising committee, Charles Mwesige.
Nikyema commended the club for embracing the Millennium Development Goals.
The goals include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, and ensuring environmental sustainability by the year. Others are combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and developing a global partnership for development.
The president of the club, John Magezi said: "Unless we find ways of making our communities create wealth on their own, they will live in abject poverty."
The 10-km walk attracted over 30 Rotary clubs.
Two half-plans to reduce poverty
from The Toronto Star
Canadians who care about poverty will face a difficult choice in the next election.
Do they vote for a party with clear poverty reduction targets and a firm timetable? Or do they vote for a party with specific policies to improve the lives of low-income Canadians?
The Liberals are the party with the measurable goal. They would reduce poverty by 30 per cent within five years of taking office.
"We commit to an effort never before seen in Canada," says party leader Stéphane Dion. "Targets allow the electorate to know when something has been a success."
The New Democrats are the party with the detailed prescriptions. They would raise the National Child Benefit Supplement to $5,100 a year; invest $1.2 billion in non-profit child care; build 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years; increase the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour; and boost the Working Income Tax Benefit to $2,400 a year.
"I'm tired of sanctimony that gets wrapped up in targets," says party leader Jack Layton.
Ideally, Dion would flesh out his strategy before the next election and Layton would attach a definite objective to his. Realistically, it looks as if voters will have to pick between the two.
(None of the other national parties has a credible anti-poverty plan. The governing Conservatives may offer work incentives and modest handouts, but little more. The Green party advocates a Guaranteed Livable Income, but admits it needs work.)
The reason Dion is putting targets before tactics is that other governments have made substantial progress by aiming high and marshalling the resources to succeed.
The best example is former British prime minister Tony Blair, who pledged in 1999 to cut poverty by 25 per cent within five years. He achieved a 23 per cent reduction.
In 2002, the Quebec government enacted a law to "progressively make Quebec by 2013 one of the industrialized nations having the least number of people living in poverty." By 2005, it had lowered its poverty rate from 17.5 per cent to 11.8 per cent.
Recently, Newfoundland (2006) and Ontario (2007) have followed suit.
Food banks, churches, social agencies, low-income groups and legal aid clinics have all endorsed this approach. "It is time to get beyond heartfelt rhetoric," says Campaign 2000, a cross-Canada coalition of groups working to end child poverty. "We have called on all federal parties to commit to a minimum target for reducing child poverty."
The reason Layton is laying the planks of his anti-poverty platform before announcing a goal is that he has seen too many ambitious benchmarks announced with great fanfare and missed with a shrug.
There was the 1989 parliamentary resolution to eliminate child poverty by 2000. The rate hasn't budged. There was the Kyoto Protocol, which Canada adopted in 1998, pledging to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 6 per cent below their 1990 level by 2012. They've gone up.
"The Liberals are great at setting targets, but they don't ever meet them," Layton says.
Before opting for one approach or the other, voters might want to ponder these questions:
Are the reforms Dion has sketched out – an increase in the Working Income Tax Benefit (amount unspecified); an expansion of the Child Tax Benefit (amount unspecified); an increase in the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors (amount unspecified) – enough to produce a 30 per cent reduction in poverty?
Are they affordable in light of his other commitments, which include lower corporate taxes, a paydown of the national debt and federal support for green technology and urban infrastructure?
Is Layton's five-point plan, which he would pay for by cancelling the corporate income tax reductions scheduled by the Tories, financially feasible?
Would he get the provincial co-operation he needs to pull it off?
Two partial anti-poverty plans are certainly better than none. But Canadians are still waiting for a leader who can bring together the vision and the means.
Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Canadians who care about poverty will face a difficult choice in the next election.
Do they vote for a party with clear poverty reduction targets and a firm timetable? Or do they vote for a party with specific policies to improve the lives of low-income Canadians?
The Liberals are the party with the measurable goal. They would reduce poverty by 30 per cent within five years of taking office.
"We commit to an effort never before seen in Canada," says party leader Stéphane Dion. "Targets allow the electorate to know when something has been a success."
The New Democrats are the party with the detailed prescriptions. They would raise the National Child Benefit Supplement to $5,100 a year; invest $1.2 billion in non-profit child care; build 200,000 units of affordable housing over 10 years; increase the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour; and boost the Working Income Tax Benefit to $2,400 a year.
"I'm tired of sanctimony that gets wrapped up in targets," says party leader Jack Layton.
Ideally, Dion would flesh out his strategy before the next election and Layton would attach a definite objective to his. Realistically, it looks as if voters will have to pick between the two.
(None of the other national parties has a credible anti-poverty plan. The governing Conservatives may offer work incentives and modest handouts, but little more. The Green party advocates a Guaranteed Livable Income, but admits it needs work.)
The reason Dion is putting targets before tactics is that other governments have made substantial progress by aiming high and marshalling the resources to succeed.
The best example is former British prime minister Tony Blair, who pledged in 1999 to cut poverty by 25 per cent within five years. He achieved a 23 per cent reduction.
In 2002, the Quebec government enacted a law to "progressively make Quebec by 2013 one of the industrialized nations having the least number of people living in poverty." By 2005, it had lowered its poverty rate from 17.5 per cent to 11.8 per cent.
Recently, Newfoundland (2006) and Ontario (2007) have followed suit.
Food banks, churches, social agencies, low-income groups and legal aid clinics have all endorsed this approach. "It is time to get beyond heartfelt rhetoric," says Campaign 2000, a cross-Canada coalition of groups working to end child poverty. "We have called on all federal parties to commit to a minimum target for reducing child poverty."
The reason Layton is laying the planks of his anti-poverty platform before announcing a goal is that he has seen too many ambitious benchmarks announced with great fanfare and missed with a shrug.
There was the 1989 parliamentary resolution to eliminate child poverty by 2000. The rate hasn't budged. There was the Kyoto Protocol, which Canada adopted in 1998, pledging to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 6 per cent below their 1990 level by 2012. They've gone up.
"The Liberals are great at setting targets, but they don't ever meet them," Layton says.
Before opting for one approach or the other, voters might want to ponder these questions:
Are the reforms Dion has sketched out – an increase in the Working Income Tax Benefit (amount unspecified); an expansion of the Child Tax Benefit (amount unspecified); an increase in the Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income seniors (amount unspecified) – enough to produce a 30 per cent reduction in poverty?
Are they affordable in light of his other commitments, which include lower corporate taxes, a paydown of the national debt and federal support for green technology and urban infrastructure?
Is Layton's five-point plan, which he would pay for by cancelling the corporate income tax reductions scheduled by the Tories, financially feasible?
Would he get the provincial co-operation he needs to pull it off?
Two partial anti-poverty plans are certainly better than none. But Canadians are still waiting for a leader who can bring together the vision and the means.
Carol Goar's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Country Far From MDGs
from All Africa
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
By Edith Fortunate
Nairobi
Kenya is among the sub-Saharan countries that are not likely to meet their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline.
Mid-way to the set deadline, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to register high child mortality rates.
Kenya is also among countries that may not reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.
According to a new study, 'Progress towards the child mortality millennium development goal in urban sub-Saharan Africa', while urban population in Kenya increased at an annual rate of 7.2 per cent, the country's per capita Gross Domestic Product dropped annually by about 0.1 per cent between 1980 and 2000.
"Consequently, slightly more than half of households in Kenya's slums had access to piped water in 2003, compared to 87 paer cent in the early 1990s. Also, the proportion of urban children who were fully immunised dropped markedly from 76 per cent in 1993 to 48 per cent in 2003," the study stated.
Indeed, research has shown that children living in urban slums not only have poorer health outcomes, but also have higher chances of dying before the age of five compared to their counterparts living elsewhere. In Kenya, for instance, while other urban and rural areas recorded between 14-22 per cent increase in infant deaths, slums registered a 39 per cent increase.
Within slums, the document stated, immunisation rates were lower and dropped from 71 per cent to 43 per cent in the same period.
The East African Standard (Nairobi)
By Edith Fortunate
Nairobi
Kenya is among the sub-Saharan countries that are not likely to meet their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline.
Mid-way to the set deadline, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to register high child mortality rates.
Kenya is also among countries that may not reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.
According to a new study, 'Progress towards the child mortality millennium development goal in urban sub-Saharan Africa', while urban population in Kenya increased at an annual rate of 7.2 per cent, the country's per capita Gross Domestic Product dropped annually by about 0.1 per cent between 1980 and 2000.
"Consequently, slightly more than half of households in Kenya's slums had access to piped water in 2003, compared to 87 paer cent in the early 1990s. Also, the proportion of urban children who were fully immunised dropped markedly from 76 per cent in 1993 to 48 per cent in 2003," the study stated.
Indeed, research has shown that children living in urban slums not only have poorer health outcomes, but also have higher chances of dying before the age of five compared to their counterparts living elsewhere. In Kenya, for instance, while other urban and rural areas recorded between 14-22 per cent increase in infant deaths, slums registered a 39 per cent increase.
Within slums, the document stated, immunisation rates were lower and dropped from 71 per cent to 43 per cent in the same period.
£7M to solve poverty in developing world
from the Farmers Guardian
By William Surman
LEADING British plant researchers have been awarded £7 million to improve agricultural productivity in the developing world in a bid to cut widespread poverty.
Twelve research projects will tackle threats such as pests, disease and harsh climates that devastate agricultural yields across the developing world every year.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) are funding the projects as part of their four year flagship initiative - Sustainable Agriculture Research for International Development (SARID).
DFID minister Gareth Thomas, said: “Investing in science and research is essential to provide poor farmers with the seeds, knowledge and tools they need to make a better life for themselves.”
The research brings together UK, African and Asian scientists in an attempt to revolutionise farming in the developing world through bioscience advances.
Professor Brian Kerry heads a project aimed at reducing the damage caused by root-knot nematodes – a microscopic worm that feeds on plant roots. It is estimated that the nematode worm causes yield losses of £50 billion each year and climate change is expected to compound the problem.
“Along with our Kenyan colleagues we are harnessing a natural soil fungus to destroy the worms’ eggs and reduce the damage to crops,” said Prof Kerry.
Another project aims to improve the genetic tolerance to drought of pearl millet – which provides food security to over £500 million people in Africa and Asia.
Professor Julie Scholes leads a further project to develop crops that are resistant to witchweed.
“Witchweed attacks all staple crops of Africa and currently infests over 70 million hectares at a cost of £4 billion a year,” said Prof Scholes, adding that her research has already identified several varieties of rice that are resistant to witchweed and could be used to develop resistant crops in Africa.
DFID chief scientific advisor, Sir Gordon Conway, said:“We are very committed to the role of science to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals and find a sustainable industry in the developing world.”
DFID has allocated £200m over five years to fund its Strategy for Research on Sustainable Agriculture which was launched in March 2006. Support to SARID falls under this strategy.
By William Surman
LEADING British plant researchers have been awarded £7 million to improve agricultural productivity in the developing world in a bid to cut widespread poverty.
Twelve research projects will tackle threats such as pests, disease and harsh climates that devastate agricultural yields across the developing world every year.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID) are funding the projects as part of their four year flagship initiative - Sustainable Agriculture Research for International Development (SARID).
DFID minister Gareth Thomas, said: “Investing in science and research is essential to provide poor farmers with the seeds, knowledge and tools they need to make a better life for themselves.”
The research brings together UK, African and Asian scientists in an attempt to revolutionise farming in the developing world through bioscience advances.
Professor Brian Kerry heads a project aimed at reducing the damage caused by root-knot nematodes – a microscopic worm that feeds on plant roots. It is estimated that the nematode worm causes yield losses of £50 billion each year and climate change is expected to compound the problem.
“Along with our Kenyan colleagues we are harnessing a natural soil fungus to destroy the worms’ eggs and reduce the damage to crops,” said Prof Kerry.
Another project aims to improve the genetic tolerance to drought of pearl millet – which provides food security to over £500 million people in Africa and Asia.
Professor Julie Scholes leads a further project to develop crops that are resistant to witchweed.
“Witchweed attacks all staple crops of Africa and currently infests over 70 million hectares at a cost of £4 billion a year,” said Prof Scholes, adding that her research has already identified several varieties of rice that are resistant to witchweed and could be used to develop resistant crops in Africa.
DFID chief scientific advisor, Sir Gordon Conway, said:“We are very committed to the role of science to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals and find a sustainable industry in the developing world.”
DFID has allocated £200m over five years to fund its Strategy for Research on Sustainable Agriculture which was launched in March 2006. Support to SARID falls under this strategy.
Denver building on new ideas for helping homeless
from The Denver Post
By Christopher N. Osher
Armed with data showing there's a hidden cost to leaving the unemployed, mentally ill and alcoholics alone on the streets, Denver officials are pushing forward with a $20 million plan to build 200 new housing units for the homeless.
The plan is in keeping with Mayor John Hickenlooper's homelessness initiative, which holds that the past patchwork system of shelters wasn't the best way to tackle the issue.
The proposal is still being finalized and then, depending on financial terms, could go before the City Council this spring. The council has emphasized the need to spread the housing instead of clustering it in strongholds of poverty. While support seems strong among most council members, some reservations persist over that issue, which could raise the ire of some neighborhood activists.
"I can't emphasize enough the importance of this project moving away from the traditional islands of poverty that just warehouse folks," Councilman Paul Lopez said during a recent council committee meeting on the subject.
The administration, sensitive to those concerns, is pledging to make sure the housing is spread around the city, in areas close to mass transit. They are also promising to include on-site managers.
"We would really do our due diligence and make sure these facilities are not in the same old spots," said Roxane White, director of Denver's Department of Human Services.
In the past, the emphasis was on getting a homeless person an emergency meal and bed for the night. Now, the Hickenlooper administration is stressing the need to get behind the root problems that cause homelessness in the first place.
And the best way to do that, officials say, is to provide actual, long-term housing first.
The homeless placed in the new units can stay for months, where they will be encouraged to take advantage of intensive support services, such as drug- addiction counseling, job training and medication for mental illnesses.
Savings can be big
It's a theory that first took hold in Philadelphia. More than 300 communities, including Denver, have now embraced it.
A two-year study by Denver CARES, Denver Health Medical Center's addiction rehabilitation and detox facility, found that the number of emergency admissions dropped by 76 percent among 82 clients directed into housing programs. The number of admissions dropped from 3,701 to 899.
Because detox treatment is so expensive, those reductions represented big cost savings, to the tune of more than $500,000, Denver officials say.
But Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz remains a persistent critic. She argues that voters didn't get to have a say on the proposal after the administration declined to put the new housing in the recent $550 million bond package that voters approved.
"This is a blatant violation of the trust of the voters," Faatz said during a recent meeting. "This is a way to go around the voters. They have been so generous to Denver, and then to turn around and slap them . . ."
She remains suspicious that the new housing will produce actual cost savings to the general fund and worries that promised federal and state funds might dry up.
Only by taking away the emergency pressures of surviving day to day on the streets can the homeless actually stabilize and get back on the road toward becoming productive members of society, administration officials counter.
"What we now know is that once we move them indoors and surround them with services, there is a cost of moving them off the streets," said Jamie Van Leeuwen, the project manager for the mayor's initiative against homelessness. "But compared to the cost of them living on the streets, there is a significant difference."
One success story
Denver CARES was where Paula Holland ended up after three months on a friend's sofa. The friend called police after Holland's vodka drinking got out of control.
Holland had crashed at her friend's place upon returning to Denver after spending four years as a semi driver in Fort Worth, Texas. The isolation of the truck-driving job brought her back to Denver, where she hoped to find new work and the supportive embrace of friends.
Instead, she found no work and resorted to drinking to deaden the pain. She would smoke cigarettes and drink the vodka until the bottle was empty and stop just long enough to buy another bottle.
"It was about getting numb and getting away from it all, and then I wanted to get away from that too, but I didn't know how," Holland said during a recent interview.
From Denver CARES, she got enrolled in a supportive housing program in August provided by Arapahoe House at the Wright Center — the type of housing Denver is looking to create. Her case worker there enrolled her in a job-training program that taught her cooking skills.
Holland went on to an internship as a cook at the Wright Center, where she learned how to judge proper portions for about 20 other residents.
Last week, she talked about how recent job interviews as a cook at a club looked promising. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she said she finally got the proper dose of medication and no longer experiences the crashing lows that once paralyzed her.
She is graduating from the Wright Center and moving into a studio apartment in Capitol Hill, where her rent will remain subsidized. Once she gets a job, she's expected to pay up to 30 percent of her income toward rent there. She can stay there for two years until she is able to live fully on her own.
By Christopher N. Osher
Armed with data showing there's a hidden cost to leaving the unemployed, mentally ill and alcoholics alone on the streets, Denver officials are pushing forward with a $20 million plan to build 200 new housing units for the homeless.
The plan is in keeping with Mayor John Hickenlooper's homelessness initiative, which holds that the past patchwork system of shelters wasn't the best way to tackle the issue.
The proposal is still being finalized and then, depending on financial terms, could go before the City Council this spring. The council has emphasized the need to spread the housing instead of clustering it in strongholds of poverty. While support seems strong among most council members, some reservations persist over that issue, which could raise the ire of some neighborhood activists.
"I can't emphasize enough the importance of this project moving away from the traditional islands of poverty that just warehouse folks," Councilman Paul Lopez said during a recent council committee meeting on the subject.
The administration, sensitive to those concerns, is pledging to make sure the housing is spread around the city, in areas close to mass transit. They are also promising to include on-site managers.
"We would really do our due diligence and make sure these facilities are not in the same old spots," said Roxane White, director of Denver's Department of Human Services.
In the past, the emphasis was on getting a homeless person an emergency meal and bed for the night. Now, the Hickenlooper administration is stressing the need to get behind the root problems that cause homelessness in the first place.
And the best way to do that, officials say, is to provide actual, long-term housing first.
The homeless placed in the new units can stay for months, where they will be encouraged to take advantage of intensive support services, such as drug- addiction counseling, job training and medication for mental illnesses.
Savings can be big
It's a theory that first took hold in Philadelphia. More than 300 communities, including Denver, have now embraced it.
A two-year study by Denver CARES, Denver Health Medical Center's addiction rehabilitation and detox facility, found that the number of emergency admissions dropped by 76 percent among 82 clients directed into housing programs. The number of admissions dropped from 3,701 to 899.
Because detox treatment is so expensive, those reductions represented big cost savings, to the tune of more than $500,000, Denver officials say.
But Councilwoman Jeanne Faatz remains a persistent critic. She argues that voters didn't get to have a say on the proposal after the administration declined to put the new housing in the recent $550 million bond package that voters approved.
"This is a blatant violation of the trust of the voters," Faatz said during a recent meeting. "This is a way to go around the voters. They have been so generous to Denver, and then to turn around and slap them . . ."
She remains suspicious that the new housing will produce actual cost savings to the general fund and worries that promised federal and state funds might dry up.
Only by taking away the emergency pressures of surviving day to day on the streets can the homeless actually stabilize and get back on the road toward becoming productive members of society, administration officials counter.
"What we now know is that once we move them indoors and surround them with services, there is a cost of moving them off the streets," said Jamie Van Leeuwen, the project manager for the mayor's initiative against homelessness. "But compared to the cost of them living on the streets, there is a significant difference."
One success story
Denver CARES was where Paula Holland ended up after three months on a friend's sofa. The friend called police after Holland's vodka drinking got out of control.
Holland had crashed at her friend's place upon returning to Denver after spending four years as a semi driver in Fort Worth, Texas. The isolation of the truck-driving job brought her back to Denver, where she hoped to find new work and the supportive embrace of friends.
Instead, she found no work and resorted to drinking to deaden the pain. She would smoke cigarettes and drink the vodka until the bottle was empty and stop just long enough to buy another bottle.
"It was about getting numb and getting away from it all, and then I wanted to get away from that too, but I didn't know how," Holland said during a recent interview.
From Denver CARES, she got enrolled in a supportive housing program in August provided by Arapahoe House at the Wright Center — the type of housing Denver is looking to create. Her case worker there enrolled her in a job-training program that taught her cooking skills.
Holland went on to an internship as a cook at the Wright Center, where she learned how to judge proper portions for about 20 other residents.
Last week, she talked about how recent job interviews as a cook at a club looked promising. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she said she finally got the proper dose of medication and no longer experiences the crashing lows that once paralyzed her.
She is graduating from the Wright Center and moving into a studio apartment in Capitol Hill, where her rent will remain subsidized. Once she gets a job, she's expected to pay up to 30 percent of her income toward rent there. She can stay there for two years until she is able to live fully on her own.
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