Release from Poverty?
After yesterday’s post and a few bits of feedback and some healthy skepticism about the good of donating to certain relief efforts, I would like share two things with you.
First, my own experience with the child we sponsor in Uganda with Compassion.
What you see are the medical treatment records of our sponsored child, Doreen. These records were more than an inch thick. They were carefully taken and tracked.
Doreen was brought into the Compassion’ Child Survival Program at 1 year old because she was felt to be at high risk. Without medical treatment, immunizations, regular doctor’s visits, mosquito nets for her bed, treatment for her mom, training for her mom and grandmom, Doreen and I would probably have never met because she would have not survived the two and a half years before I met her.
The second picture, of Doreen with me, reveals to you how great a tragedy that would have been for both Doreen and her family, as well as my family and me. Where God will take Doreen, how she will respond to the love of God and the opportunities she has, are really outside my control. But, I can help give her a chance 
at life, a group of people who will help her meet Jesus, my daily prayers, notes and cards, and the assurance of the basics of life — in other words, I can help release her to have an opportunity at life — for about 110 pennies a day!
Second, I’d like to point you to my friend, Shaun’s blog to learn more about what it means to “release children from poverty in Jesus’ name.” Check out Shaun’s clear and vivid explanation.
You see, we’re not donating to a cause or an organization, we’re helping children … we know … we’ve held … and we pray we’ll know forever.
Click the Sponsor a Child with Compassion button at the top right and see for yourself!
Today, the Census Bureau released new figures showing that poverty has increased, with the number of Americans living in poverty rising to 37 million, up 1.1 million from 2003. Of these, a third are children. As a percentage of the population, 12.7% of the population lives in poverty. In 2000, 31.1 million Americans lived in poverty. Since then, the number has risen steadily, to 32.9 million in 2001 and 35.8 million in 2003. In addition, the number of American without health insurance rose to 45.8 million, up from 45.0 million last year.
This may or may not have anything to do with President Bush — I’m not about to make that judgment here — but it’s interesting to note that this increase in poverty is occurring in a time of solid economic growth. Whoever, or whatever, is to blame, I think that John Edwards is right: “America should be showing true leadership on the great moral issues of our time — like poverty — instead of allowing these situations to get worse.”
And so, still, is Michael Harrington: “The other Americans are those who live at a level of life beneath moral choice, who are so submerged in their poverty that one cannot begin to talk about free choice. The point is not to make them wards of the state. Rather, society must help them before they can help themselves… This suffering is such an abomination in a society where it is needless that anything that can be done should be done… In any case, and from any point of view, the moral obligation is plain: there must be a crusade against this poverty in our midst… How long shall we ignore this underdeveloped nation in our midst? How long shall we look the other way while our fellow human beings suffer? How long?”
Glenn Waters
17 Apr 08 at 1:28 pm
You do not have to leave the USA to find starving children. If you spend a day in a malnutrition clinic, you will see a dismal parade of babies and toddlers who look much younger than they are. Underweight and developmentally delayed, they cannot perform normally for their ages. Some are so weak that when you hold them in a standing position, their knees buckle. When they lie on their stomachs, they cannot push themselves up. Long after they should be able to roll over, they can only flop around listlessly.
Doctors describe these conditions as “failure to thrive.” If President Bush’s budget is enacted, there will be many more children in America who fail to thrive.
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The most direct reason is his proposed cut in food stamps. But there is another cause of hunger, less obvious and no less damaging: his budget’s diminished housing subsidies, which will leave more families exposed to escalating rents.
It may seem odd to think of housing causing hunger, but the link becomes clear when you talk with parents who bring their children into a malnutrition clinic. They usually lack government protection against the private market’s steeply rising housing costs. They can’t get into public housing; they are languishing on a long waiting list for vouchers that would help pay for private apartments. Or they are immigrants ineligible for government programs. As a result, some find that rent alone soaks up 50 to 75 percent of their earnings.
They have no choice. They have to pay the rent. They have to pay the relentless electricity and telephone bills. In most of the country, they need automobiles to get to work, which means car loans and auto insurance. None of these can be squeezed very much. The main part of the budget that can be squeezed is for food. What happens then is documented by a soon-to-be-published study in which nearly 12,000 low-income households in six cities were surveyed. It found an increased incidence of underweight children in families without housing subsidies.
There has been a lot of talk since Sept. 11, 2001, about the need to “connect the dots” to share intelligence and combat terrorism. It’s about time that the country did the same to fight poverty. The factors that retard children’s futures are interrelated; connecting the dots is the clearest way to see the lines of cause and effect.
Housing costs contribute to malnutrition, and malnutrition affects school performance and cognitive capacity. It weakens immune systems and makes children susceptible to illness, which diminishes appetites and thereby increases vulnerability to the next infection. The downward spiral can lead to frequent absences from school and expensive hospitalization.
Even when hungry children are able to go to school, they don’t do well. “Learning is discretionary, after you’re well-fed, warm, secure,” says Deborah Frank, a pediatrician who heads the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center. She treats infants who look like wizened old men, and older children who are bony and listless.
What is not visible may be more serious. Inadequate nutrition is a stealthy threat, because its hidden effects on the brain occur long before the outward symptoms of retarded growth. Several decades of neuroscience have documented the impact of iron deficiency, for example, on the size of the brain and the creation and maturation of neurons and other key components. If the deficiencies occur during the last trimester of pregnancy or the first two or three years of life, the results may last a lifetime.
Long after malnutrition ends, such children have lower IQs. In adolescence, they score worse than their peers on arithmetic, writing, spatial memory and other cognitive tests. Parents and teachers see in them “more anxiety or depression, social problems, and attention problems,” according to a volume of studies compiled in 2000 by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.
Practically every factor that contributes to malnutrition is worsened by a lack of cash. A child’s food allergies are harder to address if a family can’t afford to offer an array of choices, buy high-nutrition baby formula or live in a neighborhood with stores that stock fresh fruits and vegetables. Eating problems are compounded when working mothers have to pass their children among multiple caregivers who don’t provide healthy diets. Malnutrition is also exacerbated by welfare caps and time limits, Frank and other pediatricians observe.
Youngsters who cannot succeed in school usually drop out and go on to fail in other ways. So the Bush budget exchanges a short-term gain for a long-term loss, overlooking the simple fact that the less we invest in children now, the more we will have to invest in prisons later. Connect the dots.
Glenn Waters
17 Apr 08 at 1:36 pm
I did not think there was a cap on the number of women and children who are offered WIC. I have lived in two states that have offered it. Is it not available everywhere? This was designed to counteract the effects of what has been stated. It was my understanding that it included a WIC store to ensure the availability of the products.
M. Craig
19 Apr 08 at 6:42 am
Doreen is absolutely beautiful. The blogging trip has been so moving to our family, thank you for sharing your story.
My husband and I and our five children live under the poverty line in America. We have have been blessed by programs such as wic and gov assistance, so that we are able to live off of one income. Never have my children seen the poverty of Uganda. Never have they went days without food. Many times the cupboards have been bare but yet we are so blessed in the country that we live in to have access somewhere, someway. Even the garbage in our trash cans is “first class” garbage. I don’t think we as Americans fully understand or can comprehend. Or receive the blessing when only the Lord can provide.
I hope one day we are able to hold our sponsored child as you have Doreen. Many blessings to you!
melanie
20 Apr 08 at 7:52 pm