Comment on the Church in Africa

A great commentary in the Guardian today about the Church's role in Africa.

As many world travelers and aid workers will tell you, despite being hungry, sick and destitute, the children are still happy. The women who have lost the spouses to AIDS and have to provide by themselves still have hope. The Church gives them that hope and joy.

Mark Frost is an executive at the relief agency Tearfund. And he gives some concrete examples in his commentary.

The church is one of the few movements that is both local and global. It draws from an impressive portfolio of highly professional church-based organisations and denominational structures robust enough to fill the gap when states fail in their duty to provide vital services for the marginalised and poorest in society. As an international network it also has the ability to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to lobby policy makers to take up their responsibilities to eliminate poverty and provide those basic rights and services for all.

For more than 20 years, Tearfund partner Kigezi diocese has been delivering water and sanitation to households in remote mountainous parts of south-west Uganda, several hundred metres above ground and surface water supplies. Since 2006, 23 voluntary women's groups have been trained in masonry and have now installed 4,000-litre rainwater catchment tanks for the benefit of the poorest households. Kigezi diocese is now influential in national policymaking on water.

Elsewhere in Africa, the Churches Health Association of Zambia, a network of church-owned hospitals and health centres, provides nearly a third of Zambia's healthcare, and half of its rural healthcare provision. Ethiopia's Kale Heywet Church – which fields 6,000 congregations and more than 5 million individual members - is the largest local provider of antiretroviral drugs for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. A network of 1,000 local church leaders in Rwanda are now rolling out a three-year programme to train 2.5 million Rwandans on how to combat malaria and rebuild peace through reconciliation.

And, in the thick of Zimbabwe's political crisis, church leaders have played a key role in disseminating information about what is happening throughout the remote rural communities, and have been some of the loudest voices speaking out against injustice. In addition, the practical day to day relief comes when pastors with their sleeves rolled up are providing water from huge tanks in church compounds, or running food distribution centres.

Takes on the global credit crisis from Kofi Annan and Jefferey Sachs

As stated on the previous post, aid commitments from wealthy countries are falling far short from being payed out. The nations pledged $12.3 million dollars, but only $1 billion has been disbursed so far. The pledges came from an emergency meeting earlier this year that was called to deal with the jump in food prices.

The wealthy nations blame the credit crisis for not fulfilling their pledge. But two people we respect a lot say that it is wrong to.

From this Associated Press article found in the the Santa Cruz Sentinel, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says poverty should not be ignored.

"The financial crisis deserves urgent attention and focus. But so does the question of hunger. Millions (this year) are liable to die. Is that any less urgent?" Annan told journalists at the Fighting Hunger conference attended by 200 foreign-aid experts from Europe, Africa and the United States.

"I agree that politicians being what they are, and under pressure from their own voters to improve their own local economic conditions—they will take their eyes off of poverty," he said.

Annan suggested that the US$12 billion pledge was an illusion.

"How much of that $12 billion has been paid out? How much of that $12 billion was new money? How much of it had been pledged before and pledged again?" he said.

Meanwhile, Jeffery Sachs said the credit crisis excuse was a false one.

"Even during the boom years, it was impossible to get traction on this issue. So, honestly, now that we're in tougher times, you ask me: Now is it hard? It's always been hard—period!" said Sachs, a Columbia University expert on Third World development who has been a special adviser to Annan and his successor, U.S. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Lessons to learn from the food crisis

OXFAM has relaesed a new position paper on how the world should react to the global food crisis. The report titled Double Edged Prices has 10 actions that OXFAM would like to see the world take to prevent another food crisis.

Among the 10 steps, are the importance of investing in agriculture, having trade policies that ensure food security, and designing social protection systems that protect the poorest.

Our snippet from OXFAM includes some stats on how many people have been pushed into poverty from the food crisis, and the profits that food manufactures have made since prices went up.

The sharp rise in global food prices has pushed 119m more people into hunger, taking the global total to 967m. Higher food prices mean people are eating less and lower quality food, children are being taken out of school and farmers are being forced to migrate to cities to live in slums (see case studies below). Women are especially vulnerable because they rarely own land and have limited access to credit and other services, but they bear much of the responsibility for feeding and caring for families.

Meanwhile, some of the biggest international food companies have made windfall profits. Commodity-trader, Bunge, saw its profits in the second fiscal quarter of 2008 increase by $583m, or quadruple, compared with the same period last year. Nestlé’s global sales grew nearly 9% in the first half of 2008, and UK supermarket Tesco, has reported profits up 10% from last year. Seed company, Monsanto, reported a 26% increase in revenue to a record $3.6bn in the fiscal quarter that ended May 31, 2008.

Oxfam criticizes the international community’s inadequate response – both in terms of money and coordination. At an emergency meeting in Rome earlier this year, $12.3bn was pledged for the food crisis, but little more than $1bn has been disbursed so far. This is in stark contrast with the response to the current financial crisis, where huge financial resources have been mobilized by the international community in a matter of days.

OXFAM also provided some case studies that show how their suggestions are working in specific countries.

In Haiti, existing deep poverty has been exacerbated by food price rises and hurricanes. Five million Haitians live on less than a dollar a day and in 2007 almost half the population was undernourished. Haitians have labelled the food price crisis Clorox after a brand of chlorine tablets for water purification, which cause terrible stomach pains if swallowed – like permanent hunger.

In Malawi, government subsidies have successfully boosted production levels in many areas, resulting in consecutive surpluses at the national level (a reversal of previous shortages). However, pockets of serious food insecurity still exist and some poor households are already facing a food crisis, eating only one meal a day. In some areas, women have resorted to cooking wild beans, which are poisonous if not prepared properly. This means cooking them for hours, using scarce water and firewood.

In Cambodia, soaring food prices are impacting hard on the poor in both urban and rural areas. Even rice farmers who are supposed to benefit from the high prices are struggling to feed their family, as many of them are net food buyers. Overall, 1.7 million people are facing food insecurity. Von Siphou, 42, sells fruit at a stall in Phnom Penh. She says: "I am working as hard as I can and it is not good enough. The only thing left to do is to not eat."

In Honduras, which is highly dependent on imports, food consumption among the poorest families has reduced by 8%. The most affected are urban poor, subsistence farmers, day labourers, and non-farming rural poor. 60% of the rural population is affected.

In Tajikistan, an exceptionally severe winter followed by a hot spring led to large losses of livestock and crops. Locusts in the south also destroyed crops. One third of the rural population is now food insecure (at least 1.7 million people).

In Brazil, well-targeted government agricultural policies have shielded small farmers and consumers from the harshest impacts. The urban poor, among others, are however, still feeling the effects of higher prices.

Video: the child soldiers of Uganda

Wow! This is a stunning video.

25,000 children have been kidnapped through the years in Uganda. They are taken and turned into soldiers for the Lord's Resistance Army.

A heavy amount of brainwashing is done on these children to turn them into soldiers. When they escape the army, the process of undoing the brainwashing is difficult and delicate.

Rev. Donald H. Dunson first traveled to northern Uganda in 2001. He has kept going back to get to know more of the former child soldiers. Rev. Dunson has now written a book that tells their stories. The book is called “Child, Victim, Soldier,”, but we were unable to find more info on the book thru a quick web search.

Rev. Dunson is featured in this video, which does a good job of giving some background on the situation in Uganda.

One note though, the video is from the newspaper the News Herald from northern Ohio. You will have to sit through their :15 ad before the story begins..



The accompanying article also has more on the first meeting of the boy mentioned in this video Sunday Obote. Here is more from Rev. Duncan about the meeting.

Dunson remembers the exact day he met Sunday Obote: July 4, 2001. The tall, handsome teen with the broad smile and bullet in his leg joined Dunson under the tree.

“Sunday Obote was the very first child soldier I met. He was the one who opened a door that would become a floodgate,” Dunson said. “Within five minutes of talking to Sunday Obote, I knew for sure I was in the presence of the most vulnerable person I have ever met in my life. He had been kidnapped at age 7.

“He killed several hundred people. He used to eat lunch seated on the dead bodies of the enemy. How can a child survive that and go back to normality? He was gone for at least eight years with the rebel group. He forgot the face of his mother and father, what they looked like. He forgot what love is like.”

Obote was one of Joseph Kony’s bodyguards. He abducted beautiful women who would be forced to marry Kony. He was once beaten for bringing back a girl who was not pretty enough.

Now, Dunson and Obote correspond frequently and Dunson visits him when he annually returns to Uganda. Obote is a student now, not a soldier. He’s in fourth grade, though he’s in his early 20s.

There is some good news in Africa...

... but you will have a hard time finding it. Perhaps we're partly to blame.

The International Federation of Red Cross is so concerned about the negative press that Africa receives that they did a survey to get other opinions on press coverage.

The Red Cross thinks that press coverage on Africa is too focused on war, famine, poverty. So much so that positive developments are never reported on.

So the Red Cross wanted to see if other groups shared the same view. Our clip includes some quotes on what gives aid groups hope. Our clip comes from the Red Cross press release on the survey found on Relief Web.

Equally, respondents see hope in continued economic growth, democratization, nation building and accountability, as well as Africa's human capital, conflict resolution in some countries, regional cooperation and international support.

Officials cited economic growth over the past half decade, as well as rising income from resources and commodities, expansion in the private sector and market reforms.

On the political front, more than half the interviewees mentioned continuing democratization, new leadership, accountability, decentralization and Kenya's "return from the brink".

According to a British respondent: "…the conflict situation is better than it was five years ago. The political process is better…"

"There are a growing number of countries in Africa that are showing very good GDP (1) growth," said a US interviewee, "serving as examples of very market-oriented, democratic, secure countries that are improving the lives of their people."

A German official wished Africa could be "not just a producer of raw materials but also increasingly a processor" of them.

A Spanish interviewee's hope was to "get very basic social services all over…Africa" in the next five years.

To balance this post, here is the bad stuff. The people interviewed said the biggest challenges facing Africa are the crises in the Horn of Africa and Darfur and the Great Lakes, food insecurity, health issues and climate.

But lets face it. It's the bad stuff that sells the papers, or nowadays make you click on the headlines that will expose you to more ads.

Economic crisis on another kind pushing Pakistani's into poverty

Up until the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we had a lot of links to stories from Pakistan news sources on this blog. But at the time of the killing we had concerns about the state of the free press in that country. So we instead only linked to stories about Pakistan.

This is all to say, that when we see a story about Pakistan in the western press we look at it with great interest, as a kind of catching up.

We haven't changed our policy on Pakistan's press since democracy came back to the country. I will have to look into it. But, it looks like democracy is having a real struggle there. A struggle that could push millions back into poverty in that county.


McClatchy newspapers has an update on the crisis in Pakistan, our snippet's come from the Miami Herald.

A worsening economic crisis in Pakistan is pushing millions more people into poverty, and experts fear that it could help Islamic extremists recruit new converts.

The crisis began early this year, as democracy was restored after more than eight years of military rule. Now Pakistan's hard currency reserves have shrunk to $3.5 billion, and without an international rescue package, America's key ally in the fight against al-Qaida is likely to default on foreign debt repayments in the next two months, economic experts said.

Inflation is running at 25 percent, according to official figures, electricity is in short supply, and Pakistan's currency, the rupee, has been devalued 25 percent against the dollar. Investor confidence has fallen so low that on Monday, police had to surround the Karachi Stock Exchange to protect it from angry investors. The Exchange already had lobbied the government unsuccessfully to be allowed to close for two weeks.

"In Pakistan, there are a huge proportion of people just above the poverty line. A slight shock in their income can push them below the poverty line," said Sadia Malik, director of the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center in Islamabad, the capital. "This is the kind of shock that would have pushed a huge number of people into the poverty trap."

The prices of wheat, rice and milk have more than doubled in the last year. The price of flour used to make roti bread, the food staple, has jumped from 12 rupees (15 cents) a kilo last year to 28 rupees (35 cents). Economists warn that prices would spiral even higher if Pakistan defaulted on its foreign debt.

Before the crisis, an estimated 56 million Pakistanis - around a third of the population - already were living below the poverty line, as measured by their daily caloric intake. Millions more are likely to have joined them now.

Of course, poverty breeds more terrorism. People are so angry that they are poor that begin to seek retribution for it. But it is exactly terrorism that is preventing foreign investment in the country. Investments that could help the crisis in Pakistan, and in turn, make the people better off. No ones going to put money in a country where that investment will get blown up.

Planning to provide water and sanitation in Asia

Money has been raised to help draw up plans for a major water and sanitation project.

The Asian Development Bank helped to pool together several loans to help fund the project. The total money that will be loaned is 1.5 million dollars.

The money will be used to draw up plans for water and sanitation for an area in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. As the local governments don't have the money to do a big project themselves.


200,000 people in 9 different towns will benefit from the project. The bank believes those towns could become tourism or transportation hubs when the right infrastructure is in place.

Again, this is just for drawing up the plans, I imagine more fund raising will have to be done to actually install the water works.

Here is a snippet from the ADB's press release that details the poor condition of the towns, and some more details about the project.

The towns identified for the planned project have high poverty levels and poor, or even non-existent, water supply and sanitation services. With improved infrastructure, they have the potential to develop into transport and tourism hubs.

The technical assistance will be used to determine the services needed for each town, the appropriate level of user charges, and the financial and technical capacity of participating public utilities and local governments, in order to design a project that is both realistic and sustainable.

At present, many local governments are unable to provide potable water and sanitation services 24 hours a day because of the high investment costs involved. At the same time, consumers face high tariffs that many cannot afford, or are unwilling to pay, making the rollout of new services financially unsustainable.

Major emphasis will also be given to improving sanitation services as few local governments in developing towns consider it a priority. Sanitation plans will be drawn up for each town, identifying cost-effective technologies, investment requirements, implementation and operating needs, and other actions needed to improve sanitation and promote hygiene.

Calls for debt relief amid the credit crisis

The organization Jubilee USA issued a statement yesterday that called on the international community to help Haiti and Liberia. The group says that delays in granting debt relief to the two countries have gone on long enough.

Jubilee USA asks the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to act quickly, just as they did to help the banks with the credit crisis.

Here are some quotes from leaders of Jubilee USA, clipped from their blog Blog The Debt

Neil Watkins, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network, said: “After four hurricanes in a month and an escalating food crisis it is outrageous that Haiti is being told it must wait six more months for debt relief. This is like Hank Paulson telling Wall Street he will get back to them in the New Year.”

“Haiti has been dealing with multiple crises in recent months. As a result it is still spending $1 million a week on debt service while its people starve. As we’ve seen this month, when Wall Street bankers are affected, they get fast tracked for debt relief. But the people of Haiti don’t seem to matter very much in Washington. Haiti needs the immediate debt cancellation of its illegitimate debt that it has long been promised now,” said Watkins.

Nick Dearden, Director of Jubilee Debt Campaign UK, said: “Liberia has a large, illegitimate commercial debt burden and both the government and its creditors are ready to make a deal via the Debt Reduction Facility, but are being held up by delays in the World Bank bureaucracy. The people working on the DRF should stop crisis-watching on CNN and get on with releasing funds that will save people’s lives.”

“Liberia is on the front line of the global food crisis, and yet it is still being told it must wait until 2010 for debt relief to be delivered. In such a rapidly-changing world, the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative is increasingly looking like an outdated process. It’s time for an urgent injection of political will to get some liquidity back into debt cancellation, and bail out the world’s poor from a mess they had no part in creating,” said Dearden.

Update on Michigan's Governor living on food stamps

Yesterday, we told you about the food stamp awareness scheme here in Michigan. Our Governor along with automotive executives have pledged to live on a budget of food stamps this week.

Instead of doing their usual shopping, 300 people have pledged to limit their food budget to only what food stamps can provide. It isn't much, only about $5.80 a day.

Here's is a quote from human services department chief Ismael Ahmed on how he is doing. We found this from Google's AFP news feed.

"It's my second day on 5.87 dollars a day," Ahmed told AFP by telephone. "I've already calculated that I'll be out of bread by Thursday."

Aid groups view on how the credit crisis effects them

A good story came out overnight about the major aid organizations worldwide and how the credit crisis will effect them.

Some groups have already starting cutting back on their efforts, while others don't know yet if it will effect donations.

All aid groups agree that this will trickle down to the poor at the bottom. The poor will have less help to fend of malnutrition, disease and more.

We boiled down our snippet to the actual reactions from the leaders of top aid organizations. But there is much more in this Associated Press article by Alexander Higgins. We came across the article from the Enquirer Herald website from Eastern New York.

Philippe Guiton of World Vision told The Associated Press that his agency plans to cut back hiring, which will have implications for delivering aid to the needy overseas.

"What we are going to do now is to issue an order to reduce spending, to delay recruitment, delay purchases of capital assets, etc., until we can see clearer how much our income has dropped," he said.
[..]
Robert Glasser, secretary-general of CARE International, said the agency has "a number of major donors who have invested heavily in the markets and have now seen their portfolios take a big hit."

What that will mean on the ground could take months or more to gauge - and perhaps years for a complete recovery, aid groups say.
[..]
In impoverished Haiti, funding for projects to rebuild from tropical storms that killed nearly 800 people and destroyed more than half the nation's agriculture hangs in the balance.

"It's too soon to tell yet because we haven't heard back positively or negatively from our major donors," Greg Elder, deputy head of programming for U.S-based Catholic Relief Services, said by telephone from the battered southern port of Les Cayes.

The group is waiting for word from the U.S. Agency for International Development on whether it will get $2 million for 10 new food-for-work projects, which provide Haitians with rations in exchange for building roads, irrigation systems and environmental projects.
[..]
Medecins Sans Frontieres, which runs AIDS clinics in the Cape Town township of Khayelitsha in South Africa, said it's "far too early" to determine the impact the crisis would have on donations.

"The money we're spending now was collected some time ago," said Henrik Glette, a South Africa-based spokesman for the group.
[..]
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said "the increases in the budget we had hoped for will not be forthcoming."

Alan Bernstein, head of Global Vaccine Enterprise, said the financial meltdown is "not good news for research in general and vaccine research in particular."

1 in 7 Japanese Children live in Poverty

It's rare that we get this kind of story from Japan. Statistical stories are hard to find from Japan because their government doesn't keep official poverty figures. Part of the reason for not keeping the stats is because of the rapid growth Japan experienced since World War II.

So, from the group called Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, is the followinganalysis of child poverty in Japan. Our snippet comes from Kazuo Otsu of the Daily Yomiuri

According to statistics released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, one out of every seven Japanese children under 17 lives in poverty.

Poverty has long been known to adversely effect children's health and education, but there also are concerns now that growing up in poverty tends to lock children into a cycle of poverty that leaves them economically disadvantaged all their lives.

According to a 2000 OECD survey, the child poverty rate in Japan stood at 14.3 percent, 2.2 percentage points higher than the average among developed nations and an increase of 2.3 percentage points from 10 years earlier.

WHO report calls for focus on basic health care

Good! The World Health Organization agrees with me.

I avoid medical care like the plague. It's dizzying, the amount of visits and tests you have to go thru just for one small thing. You see your doctor, then your referred to a specialist, then the specialist calls you back for tests, then again for more tests. Then finally your prescribed a drug that will give you unwanted side effects.

Well, the World Health Organization says that this is exactly the sort of thing that drives up costs in industrialized countries. Instead of going to the press release for this snippet, a Reuters article written by Laura MacInnis summed it up nicely.

Medical care in the rich world has also become dangerously fragmented, according to the report. It said front-line health workers ought to better assess patients' overall needs instead of referring them to costly specialists.

"This contributes to inefficiency, restricts access, and deprives patients of opportunities for comprehensive care," it said. "In far too many cases, people who are well-off and generally healthier have the best access to the best care, while the poor are left to fend for themselves."

Profit-driven care has also increased the use of unnecessary tests and procedures, prompted more frequent and longer hospital stays, driven up overall costs, and excluded those who cannot pay, the Geneva-based agency found.

Annual government spending on health worldwide varies from just $20 to more than $6,000 per person.

But lets get back on topic. The WHO also says that primary health care models can also help developing nations.

The WHO says with a focus being made on eliminating diseases like AIDS and malaria. The international community has forgotten to provide care for the poor with preventative medicine.

The difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest countries still exceeds 40 years, said the report, whose launch coincided with a global financial crisis that could freeze aid flows and squeeze government budgets for health care.

Some 58 million of the 136 million women who will have babies this year will lack medical help during and after their births, it said.

Increasingly specialised and technical medicine in wealthy nations has also excluded and impoverished millions of patients, exposing failures of "laissez-faire" governance in health, according to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan.

And despite huge foreign aid sums earmarked for programmes fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other killer diseases in developing countries, the WHO said quality care remained scarce outside of those specific areas.

"Disproportionate investment in a limited number of disease programmes considered as global priorities in countries that are dependent on external support has diverted the limited energies of ministries of health away from their primary role," it said.

The full report can be downloaded and read by using this link.

Stand Up Against Poverty: October 17th - 19

Dont forget! I almost did!

Hundreds of events are taking place around the world this weekend, hoping to catch the eye of world leaders. "Stand Up Against Poverty" is a global effort that invites people to do something, it's better than sitting down.

There is a couple of differences form this year event from the past. Events will be during the entire span of the weekend instead of one day. Also, the events will invite people to take action such as sending letters to your government, organizing teach-ins, distributing books or other educational materials.

To find an event near you hit their website.A click thru map of the world will your guide to an event near you.

In our home state of Michigan "Stand Up"s are in Brighton, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Big Rapids, and Holland. I will have to do a little driving this weekend...

Global Hunger Index Released

It should go without saying, but hunger is closely tied to poverty. There are many hungry people in middle to low income countries. A report released today gauges the number of hungry thought the world.

The International Food Policy Research Institute says that thirty three countries have dangerously high levels of hunger.

The report is unable to take into account the current food price crisis, as the statistics used only go up to the year 2006. Which is the last year available.

Also, the report does not rank industrialized nations.

The five least hungry countries were Mauritius, Jamaica, Moldova, Cuba and Peru. While the hungriest were Democratic Republic of Congo, followed by Eritrea, Burundi, Niger, Sierra Leone.

You can download and view the full report here.

Here is more from the organizations press release. Our snippet also includes some police changes the institute suggests.

The Index measures global hunger by ranking countries on three leading indicators and combining them into one index. The three indicators are prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.

In the nearly two decades since 1990, some regions—South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean—have made major headway in improving food security. But South Asia still suffers from high levels of hunger, along with Sub-Saharan Africa. While South Asia has made significant strides since 1990, progress in Sub-Saharan Africa has been minimal.

In South Asia, the major problem is a high prevalence of underweight in children under five, resulting largely from the lower nutritional and educational status of women, poor nutrition and health programs, and inadequate water and sanitation services. In contrast, the poor performance of Sub-Saharan Africa is due to high rates of child mortality and a large proportion of people who cannot meet their calorie requirements. Government ineffectiveness, conflict, and political instability, as well as high rates of HIV/AIDS, have driven these two indicators in the region.

To address the current food crisis and improve the long-term functioning of the world food system, IFPRI recommends three areas for high-priority policy actions:

1. Productivity and Research: undertake fast-impact food production programs in key areas and scale up investments for sustained agricultural productivity, including agricultural science policy and appropriate finance.
2. Nutrition and Social Protection: expand emergency responses and humanitarian assistance to food-insecure people and invest in social protection for nutritional improvement.
3. Markets and Trade: eliminate agricultural trade restrictions and facilitate rule-based and fair global and regional trade openness; change biofuel policies; support market-oriented regulation of speculation, and implement innovative virtual grain reserve policies.

IFPRI estimates that the additional global public investment required to overcome the food crisis, and still meet the first Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty and hunger by 2015, is at least US$14 billion per annum. For Sub-Saharan Africa, the annual additional investment is estimated to be about US$5 billion, if African governments fulfill their commitment to invest 10 percent of their national budgets to agriculture.

The Working Poor in America: Still Falling Behind

The Working Poor Families Project releases a new report on the state of the working poor in America.

It includes an update on their state by state ranking of low income families. This year, New Hampshire fared the best with only 15% of the state's families being working poor. Maryland and Connecticut tied for second.

On the other end of the spectrum, New Mexico was last with 41%. Mississippi was next to last.

You can download and view the entire report here.

Here is more from the project, as stated in their press release.

“Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short,” a follow-up to the 2004 report “Working Hard, Falling Short,” found that an additional 350,000 working families were low-income in 2006 compared to 2002. The report also found increasing income inequality, with a widening gap between the share of income the highest-earning families receive and that earned by the least affluent. This increase in income disparity and in the number of low-income working families came during a period of economic expansion, suggesting that those numbers will continue to grow during this economic downturn.

“Understandably, all eyes today are focused on the financial and economic crisis affecting America’s working families,” said Brandon Roberts, report author. “But the stark reality is that America’s working families have been in economic crisis long before this year.”

“Low-income working families pay a higher percentage of their income for housing than other working families and are far less likely to have health insurance,” according to the report. “At the same time, low-income working families work hard. Adults in low-income working families worked an average of 2,552 hours per year in 2006, the equivalent of almost one and a quarter full-time workers per family.”

Inadequate education plays a major role in preventing low-income workers from climbing the economic ladder, the report found. While almost half of all job openings require more than a high school education, 88 million adult workers are not prepared for these positions. According to the report, federal and state resources for adult education or skills development programs meet only about one-tenth of the need.
Additional report findings include:

* In 13 states, 33 percent or more of working families are low-income, while in Mississippi and New Mexico, more than 40 percent of working families are low-income.

* In 2006, California and Texas had more that a million low-income working families, while Florida and New York each had more than half a million.

* In 13 states, 50 percent or more of minority working families are low-income.

* Nationally, more than one in five jobs – 22 percent – pays wages that fall below the federal poverty threshold. In eight states, more than a third of all jobs are in poverty-wage occupations.

UN Secretary General on the Credit Crisis

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a statement Monday, expressing alarm that the poor nations will be neglected in the global credit crisis.

Our snippet of Ki-Moon's statement comes from a story in the Teipei Times

“I am deeply concerned about the impact of this crisis on the developing world, particularly on the poorest of the poor and the serious setback this is likely to have on efforts to meet major goals,” he said in a statement.

Ban added that while initiatives by the World Bank and the IMF to provide new emergency liquidity provisioning to poor nations could help them counteract some of the effects of the crisis, “more needs to be done.”

In his statement on Monday, the UN secretary general also stressed the need “to consider urgent multilateral action to alleviate the impact of recent events on the development agenda of the organization.”

He singled out the implementation of anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by a 2015 deadline, the food and energy crises as well as the challenges of climate change.

The next big meeting for the international community comes next month. A "finance for development" conference will give leaders a chance to take up this subject. Hopefully, they will have time for that world trade pact as well.

Food Stamp challenge in Michigan

This ought to be good.

Again, showing my bias to stories in my home state. Here is one I found about our governor and executives from the big 3 American automakers. They have pledged to limit their grocery bills to only what you can afford to buy on Food stamps.

Good Luck! In Michigan food stamps only get you $5.70 worth of food a day.

I was unable to find any actual quotes or stories about automotive executives coming to the realization that they would have to live on ramen noodles or anything. But found this from the Traverse City Record Eagle about one who volunteered for the challenge. Lindsay Vanhulle introduces us to her.

Valerie Shultz hasn't yet planned how she will prepare food next week for her family of three.

She'll only have about $30 a person to spend on five days' worth of meals, and these days, a dollar doesn't stretch far.

Shultz, of Cadillac, signed up for the Food Stamp Challenge, a statewide simulation project that will allow participants to learn what life is like for the thousands of Michigan citizens who receive food assistance.

At least for a week.

"I just wanted to see how it would be if we had to live on food stamps," Shultz said. "It's going to be a challenge."

Starting Monday, participants will have no more than $29.35 per person to purchase and prepare meals through Friday. That breaks down to $5.87 per person, per day.

The goal isn't just for participants to view the lives of the region's poor from a new perspective. The hope is that it also will boost donations to area food pantries.

Our state govenment has set up this website to give us more info on the challenge.

Walking Barefoot

Here's a unique fundraiser. A man is going to walk barefoot from Charlotte to Atlanta to raise money for shoes for African Children. The fundraiser is for the organization Samaritans Feet.

This snippet comes from the charity's press release. Guess what? A shoe company is the sponsor.

Fila is delighted to partner with Samaritan's Feet in its efforts to distribute footwear to people in need around the world. World Walk is a "barefoot walk" in which Samaritan's Feet founder, Emmanuel(Manny) Ohonme will complete a 300 mile walk in his bare feet to raise awareness and support for themore than 300 million children globally who have never owned a pair of shoes.

At the conclusion of the NASCAR Track Walk at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte on October 11th, Samaritan's Feet Founder Emmanuel Ohonme (Manny) will walk in his bare feet to Atlanta to kick off the "World Walk." Simultaneously, walkers will join across the globe on October 25th in a "simul-walk" to be orchestrated in more than 25 countries served by the Samaritan's Feet ministry. He will conclude at the Atlanta Motor Speedway on October 26th.

The goal is to raise $1,000,000 and 300,000 pairs of shoes during his 300 mile journey. Manny will stop at historic sites throughout his journey recognizing political figures and citizens who have changed our country for the better. Samaritan's Feet will also coordinate shoe distributions throughout our journey.

The Credit Crisis Will it Reach Africa?

Reuters has a great wide ranging analysis on the credit crisis. The article compiles different viewpoints and opinions on how it will effect Africa.

One side is of the opinion that it will not hurt Africa much because banking systems are under developed in the continent. The other side says the monies being used to bail out banks will cause cut backs in aid.

Writer Pascal Fletcher has within this story a breakdown from Oxfam on how the $700 billion dollars could have been used to help Africa. The $700 billion dollar figure is the amount that the US government used to bail out the banking system here in the states.

from Reuters

Oxfam GB has drawn up figures showing just how far $700 billion earmarked by the U.S government for a financial rescue plan could go in helping to solve the poor world's problems.

It says this is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years, based on a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calculation that it would take $300 billion to get the entire global population over the $1 a day poverty line.

The $700 billion could clear -- almost twice over -- the $375 billion accumulated debt of the world's 49 poorest nations.

According to Oxfam, the U.S. bailout figure is worth about 7 years of annual global aid levels ($104 billion in 2007).

The United States is also planning to inject $250 billion into its banks following European rescue pledges totalling more than $1.3 trillion.

Interview with Robert Zoellick