"Good Jobs, Green Jobs"

In October the Jewish Council for Public Affairs teamed up with Catholic Charities and 34 other national religious organizations to bring attention to those in poverty. Obama promised to create over 5 million new green jobs and these organizations wanted to make sure that the impoverished were not overlooked in the training and hiring of these jobs. "The goal of the Oct.14-21 event is to encourage government officials to make sure the poor don't get left behind in the push to create and develop jobs focused on energy efficiency or environmentally friendly practices in sectors energy, construction and manufacturing." Candy Hill, the senior vice president of Catholic Charities said that, "good jobs are a pathway out of poverty." They called for activists nationwide to encourage lawmakers to "back increased funding for education and training related to the jobs." I'm not sure of the outcome of this week long "push" in favor of those living in poverty. However, it seems that people, nationwide, have recognized the enormous poverty problem and are striving to find a solution. If you'd like to read the article in its entirety, go to http://jta.org/news/article/2009/10/13/1008480/jcpa-works-for-good-jobs-green-jobs

'Tis The Season

As everyone knows, the holidays are coming up. This means gifts, spending time with family, and of course gorging on tasty treats. However, many people don't have this luxury. Many of the organizations here on campus are holding canned food drives to donate to the Brazos Valley Food Bank. Both of the organizations I'm in want members to not only donate, but also volunteer at the food bank around this time of the year because that's when places like these see an increase in people needing meals. There's another place in college station that I had discussed in an earlier post that will be helping out this holiday season with people in need: Twin City Missions. Twin City Missions will be serving a thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving for anyone who either doesn't have any food or just doesn't have anywhere to go. There are also many churches in the cities of Bryan/College Station that will be hosting Thanksgiving meals. No matter where you live, it's very important to donate either with food, money, or time to places like these to help those that have nowhere to turn during the holiday season. You never know when you could be in their shoes, and I know that if I was, I would hope that someone would help me out. Also, as it gets closer to Christmas, many of these places will be accepting coat donations as well as toys for kids that normally don't get gifts for Christmas. So my message here is to just be thankful for all that you have and help someone else out, give them a reason to be thankful.

Ungrateful

Today I'm just going to gripe about a situation I was in a few weekends ago. I went to Dallas with some friends of mine one weekend in October. We were having a great time and just driving around Dallas. As we were trying to find the restaurant we had reservations for, we drove under a bridge that had a few homeless people laying underneath it. My heart broke for these people. One of my friends looked away in disgust and said she couldn't believe that people would choose to live like that. I was furious with her because how could she say anything that harsh about people she didn't even know. I asked her how she knew that those people chose to be homeless. She stated that anyone who is homeless chose to be that way because they weren't proactive about maintaining a good lifestyle. Anger started to rise up inside of me because of her ignorance. Yes, some people become impoverished and homeless because they do nothing to fix their problems. However, just like any situation, sometimes things are out of our control. These people may have lost their job, couldn't find another one (which is very likely because I have a friend with a college degree that hasn't been able to find a job in a long time), and they may have lost all their possessions because they couldn't afford them. They might have lost their place of residence because they couldn't afford it with no job, and they may not have had anyone to stay with after losing everything. There are so many factors that she chose to ignore. I can't say this for sure, but she probably doesn't realize how hard her parents work to provide everything for her. I bet the homeless people that we saw would love to live my friend's life. She should be more grateful of what she has, because she never knows when it could all be taken away.

"casualties of the recession"

Today I read an article from Las Vegas, Nevada. The article discussed how the recession has caused many teens to be kicked out of their house. There are homeless shelters to help these teens, but many don't seek these shelters. Many of the girls become desperate and try prostitution or resort to "survival sex". Tim Mullin with the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth said that "many kids, sometimes as young as 13, have similar stories-dad lost his job, the family moved from a house to an apartment and parents tell kids they simply can't afford them." The number of homeless teens has greatly increased in the past 5 years or so and is now around 200,000. This is a tragedy in America. No one should be homeless, especially teenagers. Teens are so young and they shouldn't have to experience this type of life at such a young age. Hopefully being homeless will give them a great desire to better their lives and make something incredible of themselves. What angers me is the fact that I read another article today stating that 3 of Hitler's cars were on sale for $3 million each! If someone can not only afford to pay $3 million for a car, but is willing to pay that much, they should be ashamed at a time like this. I understand having a hobby, but there are so many better uses of this money. When there are less people living on the street or less people in poverty, then spending $3 million on a car might be considered ok (although there are so many other things to donate to like cancer or AIDS research....it never ends). People have such a skewed view on the world especially if they're not the ones suffering...and obviously this makes me ANGRY! Maybe if I hadn't read these two articles on the same day I wouldn't have such a sour attitude...but it's too late now. I know some people have the mindset that those who are homeless chose to be that way because they didn't try hard enough or get another job. I won't go into that argument here, but I will argue that this is not the case for these teens. They didn't choose for their parents to kick them out so I believe it's our responsibility, as a nation, to provide as much aid and help as we can. If you would like to read the article about homeless teens here's the link www.lasvegasnow.com/global/story.asp?s=11395817

Texas A&M gets involved

There are many ways in which A&M helps aid those living in poverty. I'll talk about two of these today. The first is a poverty demonstration hosted by "W-Power In Women". The event is called "60 hours of Homelessness" and the organization will be taking donations (food, clothing, bedding, hygiene products, etc.) and will give these donations to Twin City Mission. I'm not sure exactly what the demonstration will present, but I know that it should be a great opportunity to see how homeless people must live. Another event that A&M hosts is "Shack-A-Thon". This week long even is hosted by Habitat for Humanity. Habitat auctions off plots around Rudder Fountain (not sure where it will be held this year because of the construction) and organizations bid for a plot. The highest bidding organizations build shacks on their plots and members stay in their shacks for a week. It's not exactly a horrible situation to live in because many activities, music, and good food are provided for these students. However, Habitat for Humanity gets all the money that was promised in the bid. Last year, almost $17,000 was raised. Habitat for Humanity always needs volunteers to build homes for the less fortunate (I've helped many times through different organizations and think it is AWESOME, and I hope everyone gets an opportunity to help at some point in their life!), but they also need funds. A&M is very service oriented and I think that we prove this in many different ways.

Violence in the Congo leads to lack of aid

I found an article today on CNN.com and it's main point isn't about poverty, but it does mention it a little. Many humanitarian groups have tried to give aid to people in the Congo who have been attacked or forced out of their homes by the Lord's Resistance Army. Doctors without borders, a humanitarian organization, said "it has more than 150 people working in the Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele districts, where it has provided help to about 16,000 displaced people and treated thousands of patients." Thousands of civilians have been killed, raped, or fled the area. Those that have survived attacks have extremely mutilated or tortured. Over 6,000 houses have been burned down forcing many to seek shelter in host homes, the forest, or "in displacement camps with limited access to food and medicine." What I'm pulling out of this article is that many people have been forced to live in poverty because of this war. These people did not choose this life and they aren't getting as much aid as they need because not enough has materialized. The UN is working on getting more aid to the Congo region and until something is done to control the LRA, many more people will be forced into this situation. Hopefully, the UN will be able to provide enough aid that will allow people to rise up out of this forced poverty. To read the article in its entirety, go to http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/14/congo.civilian.attacks/index.html

Death of newborns due to poverty

I was recently on the Fox News website and stumbled across the article, "Report: 2 Million Babies and Mothers Die at Birth Worldwide". At the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics World Congress, a study was launched surveying the death of infants and mothers. Among the researchers were The Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins University, and Save the Children. The report released on Tuesday verified that "More than 1 million babies are stillborn and another 904,000 die soon after birth." South Asia and Africa lead the death toll by accounting for over 75%, "outnumbering child deaths from malaria and HIV/AIDS worldwide." The report determined that poverty plays a large roll in the death of these children. In countries that are more prosperous, most women give birth in hospitals with doctors or a "skilled attendant" present. However in poorer countries, giving birth in a hospital is a luxury. "Each year 60 million of the world's 136 million births occur outside health facilities while only one out of every five babies born in African hospitals are cared for by skilled staff." The report communicated that the death toll could be greatly decreased with "improvements in basic health care and training for local health care workers to perform emergency Cesarean deliveries and other lifesaving techniques." At the September UN General Assembly, various world leaders committed $5.3 billion for "maternal and child care". Hopefully this large sum of money will provide many more trained physicians in these poorer countries. I think it's great that there are so many world leaders interested in aiding countries that are much less fortunate. I'm not sure if America is one of the countries who has committed money, but I think that if we can spend so much money on a war, we can surely spend money on saving lives. Also, although $5.3 billion sounds like a lot of money, training people in the medical field can be very expensive, so the money may not go as far as you think. I believe that this a great start, but eventually more money will need to be set aside for this cause. If you'd like to read the article in its entirety, go to http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,561020,00.html