hunger and homelessness awareness week 2009 villanova
TRANSCRIPT
Hunger and Homelessness Awareness
Week 2009
villanova
The average American spends $100 a day…
Half the world lives on less than $2 a day…
Half the food produced in the United States goes to waste…
800 million people go to bed hungry every night…
14% of Americans dropped out of high school in 2007…
72 million children of primary school age were unable to attend school…
• If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you have more access to health care than the one million who will not survive this week from completely manageable complications.
• If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the world.
• If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace, you are in the top 8% wealthiest people in the world.
• If you can read this message, you are more educated than the 2 billion people in the world who cannot read at all.
Village of 100 People If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following.
6 people would own 59% of the wealth of the entire community
43 live without basic sanitation
18 live without an improved water source
14 cannot read
13 suffer from malnutrition
1 is near death, 1 is near birth
7 are educated at a secondary level
12 have a computer, 3 have an internet
Global Hunger•CNN Report (October 15, 2009)
–1 billion undernourished people –More hungry people than ever
recorded before• Recent financial crisis
•World Foods Program: $3 billion required to combat world hunger (September 16, 2009)
1 in 6 people in the world is hungry.
• 1 billion undernourished separated by region:– Developed nations: 15 million– Asia & Pacific: 642 million– Sub-Saharan Africa: 265 million– Latin America, Caribbean, Near East & North Africa: 95 million
Nearly all of these undernourished people live in developing countries.
Global Hunger Index
• Worldwide progress in reducing hunger has been slow– GHI remains at alarming levels in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
Global Hunger Index
• 29 countries have “extremely alarming” or “alarming” GHI scores– Highest levels in Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of
Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone
• In most of the countries with high GHI scores, war and violence have given rise to poverty and malnutrition– Nearly all of these countries
are in Sub-Saharan Africa
Global Hunger Index• Current food and financial
crisis will have implications for food security– Poor and hungry are most
vulnerable• What needs to be done?
– Nutrition interventions: school feeding programs, programs for early childhood & maternal nutrition
– Reducing gender inequality
Global Hunger: Burundi (Central Africa)
• 88% live on less than $2/day
• Only 19% of population has food security
• 46% chronically malnourished
GHI:
38.3Extremely Alarming
Global Hunger: Democratic Republic of Congo (West Africa)
• Food prices have increased 52% since 2008
• Ongoing conflict over rich natural resources– Looting of crops by military
occupation
GHI:42.7
Extremely Alarming
Global Hunger: Haiti (Caribbean) • 78% live on less than
$2/day• 1/3 of newborns are
underweight• Extreme poverty, social
instability• High rates of HIV &
Tuberculosis
GHI:
24.3Alarming
Global Hunger: India
• 35% are food insecure• Nearly 50% of the world’s
hungry live in India• 9 out of 10 pregnant
women are malnourished• Due to
– uneven food distribution– natural disasters– low education rate
GHI:
23.7Alarming
Global Hunger: Yemen (Middle East)
• Over 1 in 3 Yemens suffer from chronic hunger
• Half of children are chronically malnourished
GHI:
29.8Alarming
• Economy highly dependent on oil export
Global Homelessness• Over 100 million people worldwide are
homeless– 20 to 40 million in major urban areas
• Developing world– India, Brazil, parts of South Africa, Philippines– Violence: forced evictions, ethnic conflict
Global Homelessness: Malawi (Southern Africa)
• Rapid urban growth rate– Cities ill-equipped
• 90% of urban population lives in slums
Global Homelessness: India
• Home to 63% of South Asia’s slum-dwellers
• Public perception of the homeless is extremely negative
Global Homelessness: China
• Recent economic progress has not helped alleviate poverty for everyone
• 150,000 homeless children live in China’s cities
• May 2008 earthquake left 5 million homeless
Did you know that hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed to accommodate for the 2008 Beijing Olympics?
Poverty in the United States• Poverty in the United States is
measured by the "poverty threshold" – set by the U.S. government
• Roughly 13 to 17% live below the federal poverty line at any given point in time – 40% fall below the poverty line at
some point within a 10 year time span
• 58.5% of Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75
Poverty in the United States• 2007 poverty threshold for a three member family is $17,070
– Poverty and Race
The US Census declared that in 2007 the poverty percentages by race were:8.2% of all white people 24.7% of all black people21.5% of all Hispanic people – Poverty and Age
The US Census declared that in 2007 the poverty percentages by age were: 18% of all people under age 18 10.9% of all people 19-64 9.7% of all people ages 65 and older
Homelessness in U.S.
1.6 to 1.7 million people under the age of 18 will experience homelessness each year…
That’s more than the population of Philadelphia…
Homeless Veterans
• 131,000 veterans are homeless on any given night
• Conservatively, 1 out of every 3 homeless men has put on a uniform and served this country
Why is there homelessness?
Causes of homelessness• Poverty from a lack of good jobs and minimal
government assistance• Lack of affordable housing and inadequate housing
assistance• Lack of affordable health care• Domestic violence• Effects of war including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder• Mental Illness• Substance Abuse
Pennsylvania
• Today, 1.3 million Pennsylvanians, including 440,000 children, live in poverty
• 1.2 million people experience hunger each year in Pennsylvania, and an estimated 90,000 are homeless
Children in Philadelphia
• Philadelphia has one of the highest child poverty rates in the US– 1 child out of 3
live at or below the federal poverty line
In Our Backyard
• It is estimated that there are approximately 4,000 people who are homeless on any given day in Philadelphia
Recession
• In 2008, over 3 million jobs were lost and the average person suffered a loss of 10% of their income
• Those who live below the poverty line are still under conditions worse than those currently suffering from the recession
Ways to help
Organizations
• Where all the donations going?• Three main charity organizations:– Oxfam– Catholic Relief Services– Bread for the World
Oxfam• Provides tools to enable people to
become self-supporting, together with individuals and local groups– Saves lives– Helps people overcome poverty – Fights for social justice– Opens markets of international trade
where crafts and produce from poorer regions of the world can be sold at a fair price to benefit the producer
• Confederation of 14 organizations working with over 3,000 partners in more than 70 countries worldwide
• http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
Catholic Relief Services• Provides relief in emergency
situations and helps people in the developing world break the cycle of poverty through community-based, sustainable development
• Assistance is based solely on need, not race, creed or nationality
• Founded in 1943 by the U.S. bishops– Provides assistance to 80 million
people in more than 100 countries and territories around the world
• http://crs.org/
Bread for the World• Collective voice on college
campuses and in churches urging our nation’s decision makers to end hunger at home and abroad
• This advocacy-based organization works to create change in the systems that allow hunger and poverty to persist through education and lobbying of public officials
• http://www.bread.org/
On-campus Groups
• Amnesty International: part of the world wide human rights organization that monitors human rights and seeks the release of prisoners of conscience and an end to the death penalty
• Blood: Water Mission: a non-profit organization striving to build wells in depressed regions of Africa, in order to provide clean water for villagers living in poverty
• Bread for the World: a nationwide Christian movement that seeks justice and change for the world's hungry by lobbying our nation's decision makers through letter-writing, education and awareness, and meeting with public officials
• Fair Food :the members of Fair Food are committed to trying to understand how food affects all aspects of our lives and the world
Weekly Opportunities• St. Francis Inn Soup Kitchen: Mondays 3:00 – 7:00p Serve Philadelphians by
waiting, busing tables, dishing out food, cleaning dishes, helping hand out desserts, working the door giving hand-outs and sometimes organizing the extra food
• Northern Home for Children: Mondays 5:45 – 8:00p Tutor and interact with at risk children
• Northern Light Community Center: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays 3:15 - 6:00p Help out with the after school program
• St. Agatha’s Soup Kitchen: Wednesdays 4:45- 7:30p Prepare and serve food and clean up
• St. Barnabas Women’s Shelter: Thursdays 6:00 – 8:00p Work at a shelter for women and children as a role model for the children
• Habit for Humanity: Saturdays Work to build and rehabilitate simple, decent houses alongside the homeowner (partner) families
SIGN UP IN CAMPUS MINISTRY
Little ThingsVisit these sites:
•www.thehungersite.com •Click daily to donate cups of food
•www.freepoverty.com•Practice your geography to donate water
•www.freerice.com•Improve your vocabulary to donate rice
•www.searchkindly.org•Use this search engine to donate money
•www.goodsearch.com•Use this search engine to donate money
