Do not miss it.

Bush never stipulates that the rest of the world must “become like America” in so many words. How could he? The whole point of his rhetoric was to assure himself that he was at the helm of the gigantic killing machine that is the United States military not merely to protect and promote American interests, but in order to bring the blessings of liberty to every corner of the earth. The final paragraph of Bush’s introduction reveals the self-deception:

Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilization. Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s ­triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.

One is hard pressed to imagine a more utopian vision—freedom’s triumph over all its foes! But Bush was president of the United States, not of the world. Moreover, this document and its urgency stemmed from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. There can be no doubt that Bush was concerned for the weal and woe of Americans.

We can substitute America or American interests for the key word “freedom” in this final paragraph without altering the strategic implications. Indeed, if we make these substitutions, Bush’s words become more faithful to events. Here is my rendering in that spirit:

Being American is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilization. Throughout history, American interests have been threatened by war and terror; they have been challenged by clashing wills of powerful states and evil designs of tyrants. . . . Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further America’s triumph over all these foes. The United States welcomes our responsibility to lead in this great mission.

To speak about America in this way seems rather grandiose. But in truth, both versions, Bush’s actual words and my rendition, border on the delusional. This is perhaps to be expected. Baby Boomers were intoxicated by the fusion of hard responsibilities with the most exalted moral idealism. An intoxicated person has blurred vision and a tenuous grasp on reality, and he often makes bad judgments.

Read it all.

Cursed by the Boomers by R. R. Reno | Articles | First Things https://t.co/qLylAU4XXl

— Allen Mendenhall (@allenmendenhall) February 14, 2023

China is in the midst of a quiet but stunning nationwide collapse of birthrates. This is the deeper, still largely overlooked, significance of the country’s 2022 population decline, announced by Chinese authorities last month.

As recently as 2019, demographers at the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations were not expecting China’s population to start dropping until the early 2030s. But they did not anticipate today’s wholesale plunge in childbearing.

Considerable attention has been devoted to likely consequences of China’s coming depopulation: economic, political, strategic. But the causes of last year’s population drop deserve much closer examination.

China’s nosedive in childbearing is a silent alarm. It signals deep disaffection with the bleak future the regime is engineering for its subjects. In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in President Xi Jinping’s rule.

Read it all.

"China’s nosedive in childbearing is a silent alarm. It signals deep disaffection with the bleak future the regime is engineering (…). In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in (Xi’s) rule."https://t.co/Yx3m7HXGeA

— Chris Alexander 🌻 (@calxandr) March 1, 2023

NBC: “Only a fraction of the nation’s educators are Black men, pushing four Philadelphia teachers to work together in a school that serves Black male students. The goal: to provide an image that’s more than academic. NBC News’ Rehema Ellis spoke with them about how their students motivate them.”

Watch it all.

As the Lion seemed to have finished, Jill thought she should say something. So she said “Thank you very much. I see.”

“Child,” said Aslan, in a gentler voice than he had yet used, “perhaps you do not see quite as well as you think. But the first step is to
remember. Repeat to me, in order, the four signs.”

Jill tried, and didn’t get them quite right. So the Lion corrected her and made her repeat them again and again till she could say them perfectly. He was very patient over this…

But long before she had got anywhere near the edge, the voice behind her said, “Stand still. In a moment I will blow. But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs.

–C S Lewis The Horse and his Boy, cited by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon at the early service (emphasis mine)

One of the drawbacks about adventures is that when you come to the most beautiful places you are often too anxious and hurried to appreciate them.

C.S. Lewis
The Horse and His Boy#BookWormSat pic.twitter.com/tZvX80nFxv

— TWhatley (@whatters1) July 2, 2022

When asked about their aspirations for their children when they reach adulthood, parents prioritize financial independence and career satisfaction. Roughly nine-in-ten parents say it’s extremely or very important to them that their children be financially independent when they are adults, and the same share say it’s equally important that their children have jobs or careers they enjoy. About four-in-ten (41%) say it’s extremely or very important to them that their children earn a college degree, while smaller shares place a lot of importance on their children eventually becoming parents (20%) and getting married (21%).

There are sharp differences by race and ethnicity when it comes to the importance parents place on their children graduating from college: 70% of Asian parents say this is extremely or very important to them, compared with 57% of Hispanic parents, 51% of Black parents, and just 29% of White parents.

In a nod to the adage about family life that parenting is the hardest job in the world, most parents (62%) say being a parent has been at least somewhat harder than they expected, with about a quarter (26%) saying it’s been a lot harder. This is especially true of mothers, 30% of whom say being a parent has been a lot harder than they expected (compared with 20% of fathers).

At the same time, most parents give themselves high marks for the job they’re doing, with 64% saying they do an excellent or very good job as a parent; 32% say they do a good job, while just 4% say they do an only fair or poor job as a parent. Mothers and fathers give themselves similarly high ratings, but there are differences by income and by race and ethnicity (upper-income and Black and White parents are the most likely to say they do an excellent or very good job).

Read it all.

Today’s parents are prioritizing Money & Work > Marriage and Parenthood for their own kids. Spells real trouble long-term for the future of the family. New from @pewresearch: https://t.co/TpG9TJcnrT pic.twitter.com/YZHbAxARQZ

— Brad Wilcox (@BradWilcoxIFS) January 24, 2023

Millennials and Gen Z are less enthusiastic about having children than their parents. The reasons are many: financial, social, and biological, along with the preference among younger generations for “freedom.”

America’s falling fertility rates have been a cause for concern for several decades. During the Great Recession in 2008, millennials delayed marriage and having children, causing fertility rates to drop.

Then, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a short-lived “baby-bust,” when conceptions fell slightly. Months later, the rates rebounded but were inconsequential compared to the huge number of daily deaths.

Over the next few decades, demographers expect the population growth to decline further. But there’s one hope for increasing the U.S. population: immigrants.

A report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Tuesday predicts that the nation’s population will near 373 million by 2053, up by almost 3 million from CBO estimates a year ago. The difference? An increase in immigrants over the next three decades.

Read it all.

The birth dearth is coming. And it's going to make the already tight labor market impossibly tight before long https://t.co/PRfYDqjxyz pic.twitter.com/NohDJvhlzq

— Alyson Shontell (@ajs) January 25, 2023

Today, as the once-cherubic choristers start to become grandmas and grandpas themselves, grandparenting has changed dramatically. Two big demographic trends are making nana and gramps more important. First, people are living longer. Global life expectancy has risen from 51 to 72 since 1960. Second, families are shrinking. Over the same period, the number of babies a woman can expect to have in her lifetime has fallen by half, from 5 to 2.4. That means the ratio of living grandparents to children is steadily rising.

Surprisingly little research has been done into this. The Economist could not find reliable figures for how many living grandparents there are, so we asked Diego Alburez-Gutiérrez of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany to produce some estimates by crunching un age and population data with models of kinship structures in each country.

We found that there are 1.5bn grandparents in the world, up from 0.5bn in 1960 (though the further back one goes, the fuzzier the estimates become). As a share of the population they have risen from 17% to 20%. And the ratio of grandparents to children under 15 has vaulted from 0.46 in 1960 to 0.8 today.

By 2050 we project that there will be 2.1bn grandparents (making up 22% of humanity), and slightly more grandparents than under-15s. That will have profound consequences. The evidence suggests children do better with grandparental help—which usually, in practice, means from grandmothers. And it will help drive another unfinished social revolution—the movement of women into paid work.

Read it all.

As lifespans stretch and fertility falls, the ratio of grandparents to children is higher than ever before. That has big consequences https://t.co/2bkUFA4NUi

— The Economist US (@EconUS) January 17, 2023

The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible.

The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s.

Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. Now, facing a population decline, coupled with a long-running rise in life expectancy, the country is being thrust into a demographic crisis that will have consequences not just for China and its economy but for the world.

Over the last four decades, China emerged as an economic powerhouse and the world’s factory floor. The country’s evolution from widespread poverty to the world’s second-largest economy led to an increase in life expectancy that contributed to the current population decline — more people were living longer while fewer babies were being born.

Read it all.

“Government handouts like cash for babies and tax cuts, have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children.” https://t.co/RcBTHwCW7O

— Marc Porter Magee 🎓 (@marcportermagee) January 17, 2023

O ALMIGHTY God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths; Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

On this Feast of the Holy Innocents, collected 16th Century glass at Erpingham, Norfolk. One of Herod's soldiers kills a child in the foreground while the Holy Family escapes into Egypt beyond. The donkey is a later restoration. pic.twitter.com/lUes4I9Glm

— Simon Knott (@last_of_england) December 28, 2022

She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.

She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof.
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.
The baby was God.

And she jumped in the air
whirled around, dove into the sofa
and buried her head under the cushion
which is the only proper response
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

–John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected; one of my favourite Christmas poems, read every year on this day

Nous vous souhaitons à tous un très beau réveillon de #Noël !
(le musée d'Orsay sera fermé le 25 décembre)
🕯️🕯️🕯️
We wish you all a very nice #ChristasEve!
(the Musée d'Orsay will be closed on 25 December)
.
Edward Burne-Jones, "L'Adoration des mages"
👉https://t.co/t5yiNfP7oq pic.twitter.com/3Wjg80n4mI

— Musée d'Orsay (@MuseeOrsay) December 24, 2022

Watch it all.

The cost-of-living crisis is driving more parents and carers to resort to borrowing to get by, new research from the Children’s Society suggests.

In a survey of 2000 parents and carers of children under 18 in the UK, carried out in November and published on Monday, most respondents (86 per cent) reported being under financial strain.

Asked how well their household had been managing financially over the past three months, one third (34 per cent) said that they were “just about” getting by, 21 per cent said that they were finding finances “quite difficult”, while 12 per cent said that they were finding it “very difficult”.

The Children’s Society explains in a statement: “We considered those that said they found it quite or very difficult to manage financially during the last three months to be in financial strain; 33 per cent of those that responded indicated they were in financial strain.”

Read it all.

Increasing numbers of parents now borrowing to get by, Children’s Society survey finds https://t.co/VUAkVAZFc2

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 20, 2022

Some forces propelling secularization have come into better focus during the past ten years. One such has gone inexplicably unnoticed. That is the relationship between the decline in churchgoing, especially among Millennials and Zoomers, and the simultaneous rise of cancel culture on practically every campus in the Western world.

This connection between the rise in unbelief among twentysomethings and the rise of punitive anti-Christian social codes is obviously more than a coincidence. It’s a commonplace that many students, not only in America but all over, lose their religion in college. An atheist or other nonbeliever might propose one way of making sense of this: College is where students learn higher reasoning, and higher reasoning drives out the superstition of faith. This is another hypothesis that makes intuitive sense to some, even as the facts say otherwise. As we have seen already, better-educated people, as a group, are actually more likely to be found in church than those without higher degrees.

The more likely dynamic is that, thanks to the new intolerance, the social and other costs of being a known believer in the public square mount by the year — and students take note. Intimidation in higher education, multiplied over many years and campuses, has become another unseen catalyst of secularization. Cancel culture gives intimidated young people, including those raised in a faith, one more reason not to go to church. From New York to Paris to Sydney to Buenos Aires, it manifestly is doing just that.

The past decade also suggests that secularization continues to be driven by the fact that people are marrying later and having children later, if they have children at all. These trends appear to be even more entrenched than they were ten years ago, as the median age of marriage in the United States continues to rise. By 2022, it is over 28 years of age for women; for men, for the first time, it is over 30 years.

This delay of entry into adulthood, too, interferes with the possibility of apprehending the sacred. From time immemorial, mothers and fathers have regarded the creation of new life as the zenith of their own lives as human beings. The human patrimony reflects this primordial fact in all eras and incarnations, the Western canon perhaps exceptionally; from Greek tragedy to Shakespeare to Tolstoy to Succession, and everywhere in between, this civilization’s art and literature are unthinkable apart from incessant recourse to family and children.

The West’s increasing rejection of traditional family life undermines attachment to Christianity in more ways than one. Simultaneously, the broken-home situation from which more and more people hail cannot help but spur resentment for what has been lost. Many of today’s “nones” thumb their noses at the churches, even as the same churches teach the beauty of intact families, which more and more have never known, and whose missing benefits they cannot imagine.

Read it all.

.@NRO The great Mary Eberstadt reflects on 10 years since the publication of her book, "How the West Really Lost God.":https://t.co/jzCKzo13YX

— Templeton Press (@TempletonPress) December 16, 2022

God, whose everlasting arms support the universe: We offer thanks for moving the heart of Lillian Trasher to heroic hospitality on behalf of orphaned children in great need, and we pray that we also may find our hearts awakened and our compassion stirred to care for thy little ones, through the example of our Savior Jesus Christ and by the energy of thy Holy Spirit, who broodest over the world as a mother over her children; for they live and reign with thee, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Lillian Trasher spent a lifetime in Egypt, where she created one of the world’s largest orphanages with small resources but enormous faith. During her fifty-year ministry 25,000 children came under her care

Read my latest article: https://t.co/vKYGHRhc0y pic.twitter.com/OkwWldixZg

— J.John (@Canonjjohn) November 26, 2022

In 1960, just 13 percent of American households had a single occupant. But that figure has risen steadily, and today it is approaching 30 percent. For households headed by someone 50 or older, that figure is 36 percent.

Nearly 26 million Americans 50 or older now live alone, up from 15 million in 2000. Older people have always been more likely than others to live by themselves, and now that age group — baby boomers and Gen Xers — makes up a bigger share of the population than at any time in the nation’s history.

The trend has also been driven by deep changes in attitudes surrounding gender and marriage. People 50-plus today are more likely than earlier generations to be divorced, separated or never married.

Women in this category have had opportunities for professional advancement, homeownership and financial independence that were all but out of reach for previous generations of older women. More than 60 percent of older adults living by themselves are female.

Read it all.

More older Americans are living by themselves than ever before. That shift presents issues on housing, personal finance and how elder care will be managed in the coming decades. https://t.co/UN9r6VvRWA

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 28, 2022

It is not often in life when you have the choice to discover something about yourself, which could potentially rock your equilibrium and throw you into a completely unknown direction. Do you stay comfortable in the known, never really risking what it would take to understand a mystery, or do you trust in a faithful God, taking the chance that after the door has been opened, only one thing is certain: life will never be the same as it was before?

That was the position Father Chris Culpepper (52) found himself in 22 years ago, when as a 30 year-old youth minister at Saint Andrews parish in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, he received a call out of the blue from his parents asking him to come over to talk and go for a walk.

“That’s always how you know something happened in my family when you’re asked to go for a walk–usually it’s good, but sometimes you don’t know. And so, we went for the walk as we always did, and they asked me if I knew a lady named Sharon Kolb. And I mean, I was racking my brain from all facets of my life and just could not come to recognizing the name. And they said, ‘Well, she’s your birth mother.’”

Read it all.

Watch the heartwarming story of a rector who was adopted at birth and reunited with his birth mother later in life. https://t.co/ZOTlWzGYdf Read the full story or watch the full interview at https://t.co/M2J9O8ciEe #nationaladoptionmonth #adoptionstories #Adoption

— ACNA (@The_ACNA) November 8, 2022

Religious leaders have backed The Independent‘s call for free school meals to be extended to more children living in poverty and urged the government to make it one of its priorities this winter.

Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, said: “It is heartbreaking to think of children living in poverty facing this winter without free school meals and the impact this will have on their health, wellbeing and educational outcomes.”

Our Feed the Future campaign, in partnership with the Food Foundation and a coalition of charities, calls on the government for free school meals to be extended to all children living in families that rely on universal credit.

Mr Butler, who is lead bishop for the Church of England in the House of Lords on welfare issues, added: “The Independent has shone a light on the heroic efforts of schools to step in and support their pupils and struggling families through initiatives such as school food banks but it really should not be down to them to fill this gap. I have long held that all children in families in receipt of universal credit should receive free school meals and I urge the government to give this priority in their spending plans.”

Read it all.

#FeedTheFuture 🔴

Religious leaders back our campaign to urgently extend free school meals https://t.co/fK1hGv7uTE

— The Independent (@Independent) October 31, 2022

Watch it all–used in the sermon yesterday morning by yours truly–KSH.

From there:

Woodbridge, VA (October 15, 2022) – The clergy and lay delegates of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (DOMA) elected on the second ballot the Rev. Chris Warner to be the next diocesan bishop at a special electing Synod at All Saints’ Church in Woodbridge, VA. Pending the consent of the Anglican Church in North America’s College of Bishops in January, Bishop-Elect Warner will be consecrated at The Falls Church Anglican in Falls Church, VA on February 18, 2023.

Bishop-Elect Warner is the Rector of the Church of the Holy Cross, Sullivan’s Island/Daniel Island, SC. Prior to his time as Rector, he was an Associate Rector at Church of the Holy Cross, Rector at St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center, and Curate at Trinity Episcopal Church in Columbus, GA. He married Catherine in 1993, and they have three children (27, 24, and 23).

Bishop-Elect Warner addressed the delegates saying, “I’m honored and humbled to have been selected to serve DOMA as bishop-elect. I’m aware that those of us who serve the Lord in vocational ministry must never believe we do so because we ‘qualify.’ We serve because the Lord calls. And those whom He calls, He then equips. This keeps us dependent upon the Lord and Jesus receives the glory he rightly deserves. I ask your prayers and I pledge my prayers for you. I’m truly excited to see what God will do as we serve together in the years to come.”

On Sept. 14, 2021, Bishop John Guernsey called for the Diocese to begin the process leading to the election and consecration of his successor and to his retirement. On July 17, 2022, the Committee on Nominations announced the final slate of three candidates. As part of the process leading to the election, the candidates participated in two events on September 27 and 28 where they joined in a live Q&A session with delegates. For election, the Constitution and Canons of the Diocese require a majority of the votes cast by each order (lay and clergy) on the same ballot.

The Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic is a regional diocese of the Anglican Church in North America dedicated to reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic consists of 40 Congregations, Missions, and Mission Fellowships in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Delaware, eastern West Virginia, and northeastern North Carolina. Several more are in formation.

An index of the opportunities available to girls in low- and middle-income countries lays bare the link between lack of educational and economic opportunity and high rates of child marriage.

The index, devised by World Vision, found that where girls have opportunities to study and work, and have access to health care, they are less likely to be forced into an early marriage.

The charity calculates that about 110 million girls will be forced into child marriage between now and 2035 unless education in income improves in the worst-affected countries.

Forty low- and middle-income countries were studied to produce the index — 20 where there is known to be a high rate of child marriage, and 20 other countries with comparable economies.

The index showed that countries that offered girls the lowest opportunities included Chad and the Central African Republic, where 61 per cent of girls are married under the age of 18, and Niger, where 76 per cent of girls are married early.

Read it all.

An index of the opportunities available to girls in low- and middle-income countries lays bare the link between lack of educational and economic opportunity and high rates of child marriage https://t.co/LiA68POcI4

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 11, 2022

The Church of England has threatened to use its influence as a multimillion-pound investor in companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon to challenge them if they fail to protect children from harmful content.

Investing in big technology firms and social media sites “may not be consistent with Christian values”, the Church said. It has issued a list of demands to the companies it invests in, including a call for “enhanced protections” for children.

It has £10.1 billion in assets and investments across a range of sectors, and already uses its clout as a big-money investor in oil firms to lobby them to step up their efforts to tackle climate change.

Among its 20 biggest equity holdings are Amazon, Microsoft, Alibaba, Meta and Alphabet, parent companyt of Google. It does not disclose how much it invests in each.

Read it all (subscription).

The Church of England has threatened to use its influence as a multimillion-pound investor in companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon to challenge them if they fail to protect children from harmful contenthttps://t.co/bkFGnef57K

— Ann Mroz (@AnnMroz) October 3, 2022

“There’s a whole class of young men who are not flourishing personally and professionally. … The systems have broken down that help raise up attractive, successful men. Churches used to be one of those support systems,”…[Brad Wilcox] said, reached by telephone.

“The future of the church runs through solid marriages and happy families. The churches that find ways to help men and women prepare for marriage and then encourage them to start families are the churches that will have a future.”

The crisis is larger than lonely, underemployed and internet-addicted men. Rising numbers of young women are anxious, depressed and even choosing self-harm and suicide.

The coronavirus pandemic made things worse, but researchers were already seeing dangerous signs, noted San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, in a recent Institute for Family Studies essay. She is the author of the book “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood — and What That Means for the Rest of Us.”

Read it all.

On Religion: Faith, family and the dropping number of marriages – Hastings Tribune https://t.co/EFynhOUjHd

— Religion Tweet (@ReligionTweet) October 1, 2022

Read it all.

Alexis Temple started teaching English and Language Arts in Columbia at the height of a pandemic.

Her third grade students had fallen far below the S.C. Department of Education’s academic standards. The Greenville native said she was in survival mode.

In the capital city’s historic Waverly district, Carver-Lyon Elementary School serves nearly 400 students. Over 95 percent of the students are minorities and all come from low-income households, two groups whose academic progress was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. School administrators anticipated that their students’ learning was likely to suffer during remote learning. The school had to figure out a way to use what little resources they had to their full potential.

Carver-Lyon came up with a game plan. School administrators knew that by third grade, standardized tests look at whether students could read, but on how well they understood the material. They decided to help students with their reading comprehension through a combination of collaborative group exercises, freedom of choice in literature and the acceptance of toggling between dialects.

This combination ultimately raised their third grade students’ English Language Arts test scores by 78 percent over three years ending in 2021….

Read it all.

A Columbia elementary school raised it reading scores by over 78 percent during the pandemic.

Here's how it did this: https://t.co/duztdjbHWC

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) September 29, 2022

Child poverty in the UK is reaching worrying levels. Paltry wages, low benefit payments and a cost of living crisis mean the UK’s poorest families are getting poorer.

Analysis from the Resolution Foundation has projected that a further 500,000 children will fall into poverty by April 2023.

Children’s charities, schools and food aid organisations are working tirelessly to plug the gaps created by the welfare system. Food banks are now being set up in schools so children have enough to eat.

Children are perhaps the most vulnerable group in any society, and often first to feel the effects of rising poverty across society. Here are the basics on what child poverty is, what causes it and the impact it has.

Read it all.

'Children are perhaps the most vulnerable group in any society, and often first to feel the effects of rising poverty across society.'

This is why we're calling on governments across the UK to #ShiftTheDial on child health. @BigIssue https://t.co/zbUWmXcZU1

— RCPCH (@RCPCHtweets) September 22, 2022

The Man Behind the Red Bandana from Drew Gallagher on Vimeo.

Take the time–it is well worth it.

After Brandon, a teacher, learned that his new niece was delivered stillborn, his entire school was informed of the loss. None of his students talked to him the next day — except for one young student named Marissa

Take the time to listen to it all.

After teacher Brandon Martell learned that his new niece was delivered stillborn, his entire school was informed of the loss. None of his students talked to him the next day — except for one young student named Marissa.https://t.co/GWIdYnxDTT

— Hidden Brain (@HiddenBrain) September 7, 2022