Category: Connect To Poverty Fridays

Connect to poverty Fridays: A global glance at those affected by poverty

8/28/2015

As Christians, we need to ask: does it matter to us that people live in poverty and in conditions that prevent healthy stable, safe lives and a more positive and fruitful future?

Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population—more than 3 billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day.
More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty—less than $1.25 a day.
At least 80% of humanity (or 5.5 billion) lives on less than $10 a day.

Number of children in the world: 2.2 billion; number of children living in poverty: 1 billion (almost every other child).
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due one or more issues of poverty.
805 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat.
Close to 1 billion people on the planet lack adequate access to clean drinking water.
Diarrhea caused by inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene kills an estimated 842,000 people every year globally, or approximately 2,300 people per day.
In 2011, 165 million children under age 5 were stunted (reduced rate of growth and development) due to chronic malnutrition.
Preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia take the lives of 2 million children a year who live with families too poor to afford proper treatment.
As of 2013, 21.8 million children under 1 year of age worldwide had not received the three recommended doses of vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis.
One forth (1/4) of all humans live without electricity—approximately 1.8 billion people.
Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names

Overwhelmed? You should be. Poverty stats stare us right in the face. These stats (and far many more) can be found on almost any poverty website, NGO website, or among the number anti-poverty agency websites here in the USoA or around the globe. A quick Google search will hunt them down for you.

What I am most concerned with here, however, is not just simply connecting you with issues of poverty, but that you understand these statistics are not numbers but real, living human beings--our neighbors, locally and globally. One should recall as you are reading these stats what Jesus referred to as the command like unto the first, Love your neighbor as yourself.

What is most overwhelming is the BIG picture. What can I do? My suggestion is pick one, choose a focus, adopt a neighborhood, do something within your potential sphere of influence, neighborhood, or passion. Harness either your time, your talent or your treasure (or all three) and do something to ameliorate the causes of poverty. Do one thing. My suggested resource: Mae Elise Cannon's book Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World, is a great place to start, for she lists many resources and organizations, ministries, and non-profits by issue or activity. I suggest you read through this volume.

Open your mouth for the mute,
For the rights of all the unfortunate.
Open your mouth, judge righteously,
And defend the rights of the afflicted and needy (Proverbs 31:8–9).

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Connect to poverty Fridays: facts suggest unequal access

8/14/2015

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Children who live in poverty are

1.5 to 3 times more likely to die in childhood
2.7 times more likely to have stunted growth
3 to 4 times more likely to have iron deficiency before school begins
1.5 to 2 times more likely to be partly or completely deaf
1.2 to 1.8 times more likely to be partly or completely blind
about 2 times more likely to have serious physical or mental disabilities
2 to 3 times more likely to die from accidental injuries
1.6 times more likely to catch pneumonia

One might, at first glance, think these statistical conclusions are somewhere overseas, on some foreign soil. However, these statistics actually come from the State of Connecticut (Facts about Homelessness in Connecticut, Child Poverty Council State Plan). When people talk to me of equal opportunity—that is everyone in American has the same opportunity to be up-ward mobile, to experience the American dream, to fulfill the benefits of our constitutional rights to the pursuit of happiness, I wonder what playing field are they playing on?

“Everyone should just pull up their bootstraps and get to work, then they won’t be dependent on government or charity.”

How many times do I hear this or something akin to it in words and attitude? Problem is, some people don’t even have boots; and some don’t even live long enough to put on these mysteriously, magically appearing boots. (As if everyone is born with these boots.) But enough of the clichés. Fact is we all certainly not on the same playing field; some experience major setbacks, obstacles, and barriers that prevent them from playing the game well, even on the field they have. (Sorry for another cliché and metaphor, but you get the point.) Children—at least the children that make up these demographic profiles—do not have the same level of access to the advantages of our own constitutional rights and economy.

To put it in biblical terms, there are unjust situations within our communities that prevent children from growing up, getting an even start out in life, that oppress their abilities to access the same advantages of other children. Might this be what Isaiah meant when he rebuked Israel?

“So as to deprive the needy of justice
And rob the poor of My people of their rights,
So that widows may be their spoil
And that they may plunder the orphans” (Isaiah 10:2).

In light of facts like those listed above, we, too, should hear the prophet’s words, “Now what will you do in the day of punishment?” (Isaiah 10:3a). Perhaps, considering what you will do in these days can be a remedy for our indifference and privileged arrogance and the blight of those living with disadvantage.

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Connect to poverty Fridays: A global glance at those affected by poverty

Connect to poverty Fridays: facts suggest unequal access

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