Poverty

What dreams do we have for our children? What future do we seek to chart for them? What supports do we endeavor to give them as they transition into adulthood? When we address these straightforward questions for our own children, all of the complexities of reforming the nation's beleaguered foster care system disappear. The answers are self-evident. We want our children to have a good education, a stable, loving environment, and the opportunity to grow into healthy young adults. Our nation's foster children deserve no less.

Anti-poverty advocates urged lawmakers to establish a new federal poverty measure. A poverty threshold is the minimum level of income deemed necessary to achieve an adequate standard of living. Those making less than this level are considered to be living in poverty. The McDermott bill notes that "the official poverty measure, while helpful, is based on outdated assumptions and fails to accurately measure economic deprivation or take into account the availability of many economic resources." Instead, it proposes a measure of poverty that would be based on current consumption patterns for food, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities.

Churches are providing financial counseling and pointing people to local and state programs that help with finances. The churches' efforts are timely. Consumer debt, which does not include mortgages, reached $2.56 trillion in April, up from $2.28 trillion at the end of 2005, according to the Federal Reserve. Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, said the problem for some church members is that "Christianity has always had a complicated relationship with money."

Nelson Mandela celebrated his 90th birthday Friday by urging the wealthy to share their prosperity with the less fortunate and by saying he wished he had been able to spend more time with his family during the anti-apartheid struggle. In an interview at his home in rural southeastern South Africa, the anti-apartheid icon was asked if he had a message for the world. "There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty," Mandela said.

Benedict XVI is calling for solidarity and responsibility in national and international policies on water, saying water is a right and profit should not be the only reason to protect it. There is a "right to water," based on the dignity of the human person, and it is not simply an "economic good" the Pope affirmed in a message to the international exposition on "Water and Sustainable Development," under way in Zaragoza, Spain. In regard to the right to water, the Holy Father also stressed that it is "a right that is based on the dignity of the human person." It is "from this perspective that positions of those who consider and treat water only as an economic good must be carefully examined."

With the price of oil shooting upward, food security a danger for billions of the world's poor, and climate change already taking its toll on crops, water, and health, members of the Group of 8 rich nations need to cooperate now - and not make vague promises for the distant future. Tomorrow's crises have arrived, and they are intertwined. The food shortage is caused partly by oil prices and global climate change. And the industrial countries' addiction to carbon-based fuels has the world's climate at a cataclysmic tipping point.

Pope Benedict XVI urged world leaders from the Group of Eight to put the needs of the poor and weak at the forefront of their discussions. The pope's appeal came the day before leaders of the world's most industrialized nations began their annual meeting, held this year July 7-9 in Toyako, Japan. Talks this year were to focus on the rising costs of food and fuel, the world economy, development in Africa and global warming, as well as establishing a framework for fair greenhouse gas emissions targets. The pope said he was adding his voice to the "urgent appeal" set forth by the presidents of bishops' conferences associated with the G-8.

The U.S. bishops' conference approved an additional set of grants for the Church in Latin America, bringing the total for the first half of 2008 to $4 million. The Church in the States supports Latin American faithful with grants each year. The majority of the funds come from a Sunday collection, taken up in most parishes in January. The financial support provides aid for seminary and religious formation, religious education, catechesis and youth ministries, evangelization, lay formation and ministry, diaconate training and research.

One of the most beautiful places in Mexico, Oaxaca has a gorgeous main plaza and never-ending market, but 75 percent of its people, most of them indigenous, suffer grinding poverty, thanks to NAFTA and multi-national corporations. The plight of Oaxaca, of course, symbolizes the world. While the average yearly income of U.S. households is $60,528.00, nearly half of the world’s six billion people live on less than $2 a day. The U.N. estimates that some 900 million people are currently starving. Perhaps 100 million people have joined the ranks of the starving this year alone, the U.N. says. That number will continue to climb as long as U.S. policies support the greedy multi-nationals, and their total disregard of the world’s poor and the environment.

Due to consecutive failure of rains, farmers in many pockets of southern and eastern Ethiopia have no crop to harvest. Combined with a spiraling rise in food prices, thousands of families are now left with nothing to eat. The Ethiopian government is taking action to address the impact of this year's drought by distributing emergency food rations and setting up feeding sites for malnourished children. But more help is urgently needed. Many of the pockets most affected by drought this year are within some of Ethiopia's most productive agricultural regions. These poor farm families are made up of hard-working people who are usually able to grow enough food to meet their needs.