Faith-based organizations are warning finance ministers from the world’s 20 richest economies they will not meet the majority of their own goals to help the world’s poorest nations.

The Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of 75 faith-based and human rights organizations, issued a report Wednesday (Sept. 16) outlining progress on the 13 goals the so-called “G-20” set for itself last April.

According to the report, the G-20 is “on track to meet five of these goals, is failing to meet four and is unlikely to meet four without major attention.”

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“Eye-opening.” “Shocking.” “A wild scramble.”

Those are some of the sentiments expressed Wednesday by participants in East Cooper Community Outreach’s poverty simulation exercise.

The event was designed to expose people with stable incomes to the daily anxieties and challenges experienced by the poor.

Participants were assembled into family groups, assigned roles (mother, father, child) and provided with a set of circumstances. The goal was simple: to survive.

One “family” was comprised of a single mom, her boyfriend and a 1-year-old baby. Another included an out-of-work dad and rambunctious children. Another featured a dependent senior.

Read it all from the Faith and Values section of the local paper.

Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America’s Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

Born in 1914 in rural Cresco, Iowa, where he was educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work ending the India-Pakistan food shortage of the mid-1960s. He spent most of his life in impoverished nations, patiently teaching poor farmers in India, Mexico, South America, Africa and elsewhere the Green Revolution agricultural techniques that have prevented the global famines widely predicted when the world population began to skyrocket following World War II.

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John P. Hoffmann, a professor of sociology at Brigham Young University, examined the harm caused by gambling. Gambling has generally been placed in the category of victimless crimes, but he argued this terminology is not correct.

Problems such as gambling have substantial negative effects on marital relations and family functioning. Many people gamble with no apparent problems, Hoffmann admitted, but studies point to about 9% of gamblers having some risks, with another 1.5% classified as problem gamblers, and 0.9% as pathological gamblers.

The percentages might seem low, but they translate into substantial numbers — millions of people, in fact — when you consider the total population of the United States, he commented.

When it comes to family life Hoffmann observed that pathological gambling is associated with mental health problems and divorce. When gambling reaches problem levels, children are also often acutely affected. Not only does it influence the time parents spend at home, but children also suffer from a sense of diminished personal attachment to their parents and a loss of trust in them.

In my mind, one of the colossal failures of the church in the last generation. Read it all

Christians and Muslims share concern and compassion for those suffering in poverty and can find common ground to work toward eradicating both the causes and the problems it creates, the Vatican said.

In its traditional message to Muslims at the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue called attention to poverty as “a subject at the heart of the precepts that, under different beliefs, we all hold dear.”

As “brothers and sisters in humanity,” the letter said, people of both faiths can help the poor “establish their place in the fabric of society.”

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But for a long time he stood alongside his colleagues, handing out bread and butter as people held out their trays.

O’Sullivan told me the kitchen averages 245 lunches served per day. This is up about 10 percent from last year. He also praised Leavy for “putting his considerable faith in action.” O’Sullivan called Leavy “a remarkable fellow.”

At 12:30 p.m. it was quitting time. Leavy took off his apron, picked up his cane and called Whitney Center to ask for a ride. Within a half-hour a car picked us up and brought us back to his place, where he planned to relax, take a nap and play Bach on his piano.

When I asked him if getting downtown, working and getting back was tiring, he replied with a grin, “At this age, anything makes you tired!”

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In the small trailer her family rented over the summer, 9-year-old Charity Crowell picked out the green and purple outfit she would wear on the first day of school. She vowed to try harder and bring her grades back up from the C’s she got last spring ”” a dismal semester when her parents lost their jobs and car and the family was evicted and migrated through friends’ houses and a motel.

Charity is one child in a national surge of homeless schoolchildren that is driven by relentless unemployment and foreclosures. The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities ”” and the federal mandate ”” to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil.

The instability can be ruinous to schooling, educators say, adding multiple moves and lost class time to the inherent distress of homelessness. And so in accord with federal law, the Buncombe County district, where Charity attends, provides special bus service to shelters, motels, doubled-up houses, trailer parks and RV campgrounds to help children stay in their familiar schools as the families move about.

Still, Charity said of her last semester, “I couldn’t go to sleep, I was worried about all the stuff,” and she often nodded off in class.

Caught this one last night on the plane. I keep thinking of the boy in the story who takes the bus one and one half hours to school one way. That’s a long time. Read it all.

The Knights have also helped to heal the pain of parents of aborted children. Working with Project Rachel, the Knights have sponsored two conferences on the effect of abortion on fathers.

In addition, with the John Paul II Institute in Rome, we sponsored a conference last year on the effect of abortion on parents, and the effect of divorce on children.

Whether locally or nationally, Knights have been defenders of those with no one else to defend them. And it has been this way since our founding.

People often speak of the Church’s preferential option for the poor. And we often hear reference to Christ’s words that tell us that what we do for the least we do for Him. This is a great part of the reason that the Knights of Columbus have had as a consistent mission an outreach to those on the margins, to those forgotten by society, to those society considers the least!

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Watch this whole great story to find the answer–but please guess first.

With all of the talk in recent months from activist groups like Greenlining and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy about how charitable foundations need to devote more of their resources to urban areas and racial minorities, observers may have forgotten how much of American poverty is white and rural.

Earlier this month, the Council on Foundations, a national association for philanthropic organizations, attempted to chart a progressive course aimed at combating problems facing rural America. It hosted a three-day conference at Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library, which sits only a short distance from the Mississippi River Delta, home to some of the country’s most abject poverty.

According to a new report from The Bridgespan Group, which analyzed grant-making in 2006 by the top 1,000 foundations, grants to rural America accounted for only 6.8% of overall giving even though 17% of the nation’s population is rural and 28% of that rural population lives in poverty. A 2003 analysis of poverty by U.S. Department of Agriculture revealed that of the 14.2% rural Americans who lived in poverty, 11.3% were white, 30.5% were black, 25.4% were Hispanic and 19.5% were classified as belonging some other ethnic group. With respect to corporate gifts, only 1.4% of the 11,000 grants made by 124 Fortune 500 companies in 2000 went to rural organizations.

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Crime in South Africa is commonly portrayed as an onslaught against the wealthy, but it is the poor who are most vulnerable: poor people conveniently accessible to poor criminals. Diepsloot, an impoverished settlement on the northern edge of Johannesburg, has an estimated population of 150,000, and the closest police station is 10 miles away.

To spend time in Diepsloot over three weeks is to observe the unrelenting fear so common among the urban poor. Experts point to the particularly brutal nature of crime in this country: the unusually high number of rapes, hijackings and armed robberies. The murder rate, while declining, is about eight times higher than in the United States.

In Diepsloot, people usually bear their losses in silence, their misfortune unreported and their offenders unknown. If a suspect is identified, victims usually inform quasi-legal vigilante groups or hire their own thugs to recover their property.

This ran on the front page of Tuesday’s New York Times. It is a sobering account of just some of the plight of the urban poor globally. Read it all–KSH.

Pope Benedict XVI signed his latest encyclical Monday, a text on ways to make globalization more attentive to meeting the needs of the poor amid the worldwide financial crisis.

The document, entitled “Charity in Truth,” is expected to be published soon.

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When you begin watching this lovely piece, guess where the featured man lives. His home will be shown toward the end–watch it all.

Homeless advocate Eric Sheptock uses technology to get his message out. Though he’s homeless himself, he keeps a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Sheptock, who lives in Washington, D.C., says he wants to educate the public about what he and many others like him are up against.

He spends a lot of time in the city’s public libraries, where he gets free access to a computer. There he can check his e-mail account and write his blog ”” called On the Clock with Eric Sheptock ”” which has so far attracted hundreds of readers. He recently wrote about his concern that the homeless shelter he now lives in is in danger of closing.

Read or listen to it all and watch for the Episcopal Church reference toward the end.

South Carolina needs to build a stronger network of services and support to prepare for a “new onslaught of homeless” created by a crushing recession and the horrors of war, state Rep. Wendell Gilliard told a group Monday.

The Charleston Democrat called together outreach counselors, government representatives and others at North Charleston City Hall to discuss how best to meet the needs of the Palmetto State’s homeless. After visiting shelters and makeshift encampments, Gilliard said he is troubled by reports that some of the needy are being refused help and that homeless veterans aren’t getting services they deserve.

Gilliard said the state doesn’t even know for sure how many homeless veterans are living in South Carolina. Nationally, it is estimated some 300,000 veterans are homeless. That is shameful in the most prosperous nation in the world, Gilliard said.

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Watch it all-makes the heart glad.

As millions of people seek government aid, many for the first time, they are finding it dispensed American style: through a jumble of disconnected programs that reach some and reject others, often for reasons of geography or chance rather than differences in need.

Health care, housing, food stamps and cash ”” each forms a separate bureaucratic world, and their dictates often collide. State differences make the patchwork more pronounced, and random foibles can intervene, like a computer debacle in Colorado that made it harder to get food stamps and Medicaid.

The result is a hit-or-miss system of relief, never designed to grapple with the pain of a recession so sudden and deep. Aid seekers often find the rules opaque and arbitrary. And officials often struggle to make policy through a system so complex and Balkanized.

Across the country, hard luck is colliding with fine print.

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MARK LEVINE, Founder, Credit Where Credit is Due: And I was just struck by how few had bank accounts and how many used check-cashing stores in lieu of banks, how many, when they needed credit, went to pawnshops and loan sharks.

SPENCER MICHELS: Now, you say there are loan sharks. What is that about?

MARK LEVINE: Prestamista is Spanish for “loan shark.” And unfortunately, it’s an industry which is alive and well here in Washington Heights. The interest rates are astronomical, as high as 5 percent to 10 percent a week. There is a threat of violence if you don’t repay.

SPENCER MICHELS: He said he understood why commercial banks didn’t lend.

MARK LEVINE: Frankly, for them to make a $500 loan, it’s as much work as making a $50,000 loan. It’s not profitable for them, and they’re generally not interested.

SPENCER MICHELS: But he was convinced there had to be a solution. So Levine became a social entrepreneur, raising grant money to open a credit union that had a bilingual staff, offering small loans to people with no credit, and giving free financial counseling.

Read it all. This was my favorite story which I caught over the weekend. This man is a hero–KSH.

. This involves our son’s school, Pinewood Prep. Watch it all.

Fortunately, some very kind folks at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Sycamore are more than willing to help.

The recent unemployment figures in DeKalb County are being reported at around 9.5 percent, an increase from about 6 percent last year, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

So the governing board of St. Peter’s simply saw a need within the community and decided to fill it.

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What a heroine this lady is–watch it all.

Here is a tale that sounds like it comes right from the pages of “Little Dorrit,” Charles Dickens’s scathing indictment of Victorian England’s debtors’ prisons. Unfortunately, it is happening in 21st-century America.

Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son. When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.

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A diverse coalition of religious groups is launching an effort to maintain attention on America’s poor as Congress takes up the 2010 budget and the White House tries to reignite a sputtering economy.

The group, The Mobilization to End Poverty, plans to bring thousands of religious and community activists to Washington later this month to urge President Obama to make the poor a priority and continue his goal of reducing domestic poverty by half in 10 years.

Both are reachable goals, said House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., who joined religious leaders to kick off the effort on Wednesday (April 1).

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UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Thursday that failing to act to halt the global economic crisis could lead to widespread social unrest and failed states, ahead of the G20 crisis summit here.

“What began as a financial crisis has become a global economic crisis,” the UN secretary general wrote in an article in the Guardian newspaper.

“I fear worse to come — a full-blown political crisis defined by growing social unrest, weakened governments and angry publics who have lost all faith in their leaders and their own future.”

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We write as religious leaders who share a belief in God and the dignity of human life. We wish to acknowledge with realism and humility the severity of the current economic crisis and the sheer complexity of the global and local challenge faced by political leaders. We pray for the leaders of the G20 as they prepare to meet in London this week. They, and we, have a crucial role to play in recovering that lost sense of balance between the requirements of market mechanisms that help deliver increased prosperity, and the moral requirement to safeguard human dignity, regardless of economic or social category.

Many people are suffering as a result of the economic crisis. The World Bank estimates that 53 million more people could fall into absolute poverty as a result of the crisis. The likelihood is that more will face significant hardship before it comes to an end, and those who are already poor suffer the most. Along with the leaders of the G20 we all have a duty to look at the faces of the poor around the world and to act with justice, to think with compassion, and to look with hope to a sustainable vision of the future.

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JN:

What is the nature of the moral challenge they face?

ABC:

Commitments have been made. The Millennium Development Goals I think provided a really important focus over the last few years for the responsibility of the developed nations to the less developed ones. This is no time to think of alibis for that because there is no economic problem that is just local in our world. We’ve already seen growth rates slowing down in Africa. It’s estimated that perhaps as many as over 50 million people could be in absolute poverty in the next few years – so I think that has to be at the top of the list this week.

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CHARLIE ROSE: Your thesis in [your new book] “Dead Aid” is?

DAMBISA MOYO: My thesis is two parts. Essentially first of all a critique of the billion dollar government to government aid packages that have gone to Africa, now totaling over a trillion dollars in the past 60 years. But the second half of the book which I consider actually more important, is, are the prescriptions for actually getting Africa on track to achieve long-term economic development and become an equal partner in the global stage.

CHARLIE ROSE: And aid is preventing that?

DAMBISA MOYO: Absolutely. The types of aid that I’m talking about, I’m not talking about humanitarian or emergency aid, sort of the aid that goes for tsunami, for example. Nor am I talking about NGO or charitable aid which is relatively small beer. I myself sit on the board of a number of charities. But I think it’s important where charities are concerned to understand what they can and cannot do. So they can provide Band-Aid solutions. So we can send a girl to school for example, but they cannot deliver long-term economic development growth and growth or alleviate poverty on the level that we want to see across the continent.

Read it all or if you prefer you may watch the video here.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said a make-shift tent city for the homeless that sprang up in the capital city of Sacramento will be shut down and its residents allowed to stay at the state fairgrounds.

Schwarzenegger said he ordered the state facility known as Cal-Expo to be used for three months to serve the 125 tent city residents, some of them displaced by the economic recession. The encampment may be shut down within a month, said Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The move comes after the Sacramento City Council last night agreed to spend $880,000 to expand homeless programs.

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Father Vincenzo Federico usually offers prayers when times are tough. As Italy lurches deeper into an economic crisis, the Roman Catholic priest is turning into a financial, rather than spiritual, adviser.

After he guaranteed a loan of 10,000 euros ($12,700) to a family of four earlier this year, his mornings are back-to-back appointments with churchgoers seeking similar aid.

“These days I feel like a banker,” Federico, 40, said by telephone from his parish in the medieval village of Padula in southern Italy. “In 15 years of priesthood, I never thought that this is what I would wind up doing.”

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