Displaying items by tag: poverty
Zimbabwe: economic crisis, poverty
A shopper grumbled while returning a loaf of bread to a rack - the price had jumped by a third. Nearby a half-mile queue of cars waited at an empty petrol station hoping for a delivery. Zimbabwe has an economic crisis. Basic goods prices rise weekly as the value of the Zimbabwean dollar tumbles. Inflation was 785.6% in April, and poverty is deepening. UN aid agencies reported that 7.7 million people, half of the population, require food assistance. A loaf of bread went up 36% last month, and last week a 22-pound sack of cornmeal jumped 30%. Fuel soared by 152% recently; a similar rise in 2019 sparked national demonstrations and deaths. ‘Things cannot continue this way. These people should just admit they have failed,’ said a Harare resident, referring to President Mnangagwa’s government which took power pledging to revive the economy. Pray for food aid to reach the hungry.
Helping Europe's poor cope with Covid
The Covid-19 pandemic will increase the number of deprived people, and make it harder for those who are already struggling. Often they cannot afford to pay rent or utility bills, keep homes warm enough, eat good quality food, run a car, own a washing machine or TV, or pay for a telephone. In 2019, 5.6% of the EU’s population - 24 million people - found themselves in this situation. The risk of increased poverty is especially high for young people, those with low levels of education, and single-parent families, especially those headed by women. The highest levels of severe deprivation in the EU last year were in Bulgaria (19.9%), Greece (15.9%) and Romania (12.6%). Portugal also has over 2 million people in poverty or social exclusion, and unemployment is set to double in 2020.
Archbishop backs Real Living Wage
280,000 social care workers are in insecure and low-paid work, leaving them vulnerable to Covid-19. A petition has been launched appealing for Matthew Hancock to provide funding so that all social care sector staff can be paid the Real Living Wage of £10.75 an hour in London and £9.30 in the rest of the UK. Dr John Sentamu said, ‘It is morally wrong to put our care workers on the front line in the face of infection and potential death, with limited personal protective equipment, and to do that for poverty pay. I hope that if this epidemic teaches us anything, it will be to draw us back to justice, compassion and love. That is why I am proud to support the campaign for the Government to prioritise the proper funding of social care, ensuring that every care worker will get paid a Real Living Wage.’
Missionaries are special
Missionary workers are a special kind of people: restless, visionary, with a touch of adventure and a rock-solid belief that the message of the Gospel deserves to be heard by everyone. The impact of the pandemic will be enormous in the predominantly poor areas where missionaries work and where social abstinence is not an option. They are used to badly stocked stores and substandard medical care, and accept situations as they occur. They give us hope and confidence that a transition in challenging times is possible. To read their encouraging stories, click the ‘More’ button.
Lebanon: 'night of the Molotov'
On 29 April, banks across Lebanon were torched and vandalised by hundreds of demonstrators during the second night of protests over their currency recently losing 50% in value. The largest and most violent protests were in Tripoli, the second-largest, and poorest, city. One 26-year-old protester died from army gunshot wounds and many were hospitalised from heavy-handed responses to protests. Human Rights Watch called for transparent investigations into the death. Poverty has worsened during the nationwide pandemic lockdown. The social affairs minister estimated that 75% of the population require aid in a country of about six million - but that aid has been meagre and slow to come. Massive anti-government protests began in October but paused during lockdown. Now they are angrier and more desperate. On 30 April the Daily Star reported 23 soldiers wounded overnight in Tripoli and Sidon.
East Africa: coronavirus in locust-infested regions
By 2 April, there were 5,999 recorded coronavirus cases in Africa. 374 were in East Africa, a region already severely impacted by a plague of locusts and a food security crisis. WHO warned that Africa must ‘wake up’ and ‘prepare for the worst’ against the coronavirus pandemic. The UN has warned of an impending food crisis in East Africa, and concern is growing for Christians in affected regions, many of whom already face marginalisation and persecution for their faith. Pray for all people in East Africa as they are doubly tested by the coronavirus outbreak and the terrible locust swarms. Ask God to meet their needs and may they be comforted in the knowledge of God’s love for them. South Sudan is currently virus-free; may it remain so.
Buy one, give one foodbank
Giving Stream have launched 'Farming Food Bank' where church members buy a retail hamper from their church for £30 and another hamper is donated to local families in need. The hampers include 15 balanced meals. Giving Stream's Colin Kaye said, ‘We have the farm, butchers, chefs, equipment, and expertise to produce food. Churches have congregations and a local feeding programme or plans to launch one. This project links us all together, working as one, in the name of Jesus.’ Giving Stream will install a walk-in freezer on church premises at the company's cost; they will stock it with two different products - a retail hamper, which can be bought, and a free food hamper, used for donations only. Every time a retail hamper is sold a free meal hamper is donated to the church, who then feed people who are hungry.
Millions at risk of UC ‘lockout’
New research by the Salvation Army shows that millions of people risk being unable to access their sickness benefits due to faults in the Universal Credit system. Researchers found that 85% of people surveyed struggled to complete their claim. Of these, nearly 60% cited not being able to use a computer or not understanding the complicated system as the main problems they faced. Thousands of vulnerable people on low incomes - particularly those with mental illness - are at risk of destitution because they do not have the skills or support to apply for and maintain a UC benefit claim. There is ‘overwhelming evidence’ that many people find it a struggle to engage with the mainly digital benefit, leaving them unable to pay rent or buy food and effectively locking them out of employment support.
Good News - 2019 was the Best Year Ever
Let’s be encouraged and thankful as we reflect on some positive statistics and information that Nicholas Kristoff has compiled in the New York Times.
For humanity over all, life just keeps getting better.
If you’re depressed by the state of the world, let me toss out an idea: In the long arc of human history, 2019 has been the best year ever.
The bad things that you fret about are true. But it’s also true that 2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.
Every single day in recent years, another 325,000 people got their first access to electricity. Each day, more than 200,000 got piped water for the first time. And some 650,000 went online for the first time, every single day.
Perhaps the greatest calamity for anyone is to lose a child. That used to be common: Historically, almost half of all humans died in childhood. As recently as 1950, 27 percent of all children still died by age 15. Now that figure has dropped to about 4 percent.
“If you were given the opportunity to choose the time you were born in, it’d be pretty risky to choose a time in any of the thousands of generations in the past,” noted Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs the Our World in Data website. “Almost everyone lived in poverty, hunger was widespread and famines common.”
But … but … but President Trump! But climate change! War in Yemen! Starvation in Venezuela! Risk of nuclear war with North Korea. …
All those are important concerns, and that’s why I write about them regularly. Yet I fear that the news media and the humanitarian world focus so relentlessly on the bad news that we leave the public believing that every trend is going in the wrong direction. A majority of Americans say in polls that the share of the world population living in poverty is increasing — yet one of the trends of the last 50 years has been a huge reduction in global poverty.
As recently as 1981, 42 percent of the planet’s population endured “extreme poverty,” defined by the United Nations as living on less than about $2 a day. That portion has plunged to less than 10 percent of the world’s population now.
Every day for a decade, newspapers could have carried the headline “Another 170,000 Moved Out of Extreme Poverty Yesterday.” Or if one uses a higher threshold, the headline could have been: “The Number of People Living on More Than $10 a Day Increased by 245,000 Yesterday.”
Many of those moving up are still very poor, of course. But because they are less poor, they are less likely to remain illiterate or to starve: People often think that famine is routine, but the last famine recognized by the World Food Program struck just part of one state in South Sudan and lasted for only a few months in 2017.
Diseases like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis are on the decline, and global efforts have turned the tide on AIDS. A half century ago, a majority of the world’s people had always been illiterate; now we are approaching 90 percent adult literacy. There have been particularly large gains in girls’ education — and few forces change the world so much as education and the empowerment of women.
You may feel uncomfortable reading this. It can seem tasteless, misleading or counterproductive to hail progress when there is still so much wrong with the world. I get that. In addition, the numbers are subject to debate and the 2019 figures are based on extrapolation. But I worry that deep pessimism about the state of the world is paralyzing rather than empowering; excessive pessimism can leave people feeling not just hopeless but also helpless.
Readers constantly tell me, for example, that if we save children’s lives, the result will be a population crisis that will cause new famines. They don’t realize that when parents are confident that their children will survive, and have access to birth control, they have fewer children. Bangladesh was once derided by Henry Kissinger as a “basket case,” yet now its economy grows much faster than America’s and Bangladeshi women average just 2.1 births (down from 6.9 in 1973).
Yes, it’s still appalling that a child dies somewhere in the world every six seconds — but consider that just a couple of decades ago, a child died every three seconds. Recognizing that progress is possible can be a spur to do more, and that’s why I write this annual reminder of gains against the common enemies of humanity.
So I promise to tear my hair out every other day, but let’s interrupt our gloom for a nanosecond to note what historians may eventually see as the most important trend in the world in the early 21st century: our progress toward elimination of hideous diseases, illiteracy and the most extreme poverty.
When I was born in 1959, a majority of the world’s population had always been illiterate and lived in extreme poverty. By the time I die, illiteracy and extreme poverty may be almost eliminated — and it’s difficult to imagine a greater triumph for humanity on our watch.
By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist, NY Times
More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/28/opinion/sunday/2019-best-year-poverty.html
Pray: giving thanks for the positive steps that are being made across the quoted areas including life expectancy, poverty, literacy, education, health and access to utilities.
Pray: that these advancements will not falter and that governments will continue to invest in improvements in the quality of life of their people.
Harvest Festival and foodbanks
The arrival of the harvest has long been marked in Jewish and Christian worship. Harvest Festival is just one of the ways that the Christian tradition enriches the lives of children of all backgrounds as part of daily collective worship. It is a wonderful opportunity to help children and young people to think about how food reaches their plates, and to say thank you for all they have received, as well as giving to those in need. The majority of produce donated in churches will stock foodbanks; a recent survey shows that 60% of churches are involved in either running or supporting them - through volunteers, donations, and providing venues. The Trussell Trust’s latest figures show 1.6 million people receiving three-day emergency food from its foodbanks, a 19% increase on the previous year.