When asked during an interview last week about the focus of his ministry, the Archbishop of Sudan, the Most Revd Ezekiel Kondo, had a simple answer: “To see that my people survive.”

Visiting the UK this month to raise awareness of the conflict in the country that has produced the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, he spoke in an interview with the diocese of Salisbury about the “terrible” hunger in Sudan.

“Some of them eat trees, eat animals’ food,” he said. “People are scattered all over. [The humanitarian crisis] is huge. And we thank God there are some organisations which are trying, but because of the security situation it is difficult, particularly in Darfur.”

More than 21 million people in Sudan — 45 per cent of the population — are not getting enough to eat, the World Food Programme (WFP) reports.

Read it all.

Atrocities inflicted ‘may be worse than Gaza or Ukraine’ he says on visit to the UK https://t.co/IONgmfcy53

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) November 21, 2025

‘[John] Alle handed a flier to a man from San Antonio, who said he couldn’t possibly go home, because that’s where militants had been conspiring to control him and spying on him through tiny holes in the walls. A woman waiting outside a day shelter said she might be willing to go back home to Oklahoma, or maybe it was North Carolina, or wait — maybe it was Tennessee. But first she needed to shower, because it had been three weeks since the last time she bathed.

“Do you think we can help her?” Gibson asked. “Too entrenched,” Alle said. “She needs more than a bus ticket.”

Read it all.

To Get People Off the Street, He Pays for a One-Way Ticket Home https://t.co/9HhjBEqUJh

— Berangere Cagnat (@berangerecagnat) September 25, 2025

Amid cuts to statutory services, churches are well placed to serve as early responders to families in need, “before thresholds are met, before trust is broken, and before families reach breaking point”, a new report says.

The report, More than Sundays, was produced by the Children and Families Alliance, comprising three Christian charities working with vulnerable children and families: Safe Families and Home for Good (Features, 27 March 2023); Transforming Lives for Good (News, 27 August 2021); and Kids Matter (Features, 27 September 2019).

It describes the current landscape for early intervention. Local-authority spending on this fell by 46 per cent in real terms between 2010-11 and 2021-22, according to a study by Pro Bono Economics. In contrast, spending on “late intervention”, such as youth justice and children in care rose by 47 per cent over the same period, making up four-fifths of spending on children’s services.

“This shift is not just fiscal,” the report says. “It reflects a fundamental transformation in how the system operates . . . locking councils into a reactive mode that responds only once harm has occurred.”

Read it all.

The report, More than Sundays, was produced by the Children and Families Alliance, comprising three Christian charities working with vulnerable children and families: #SafeFamilies and #HomeforGood; @Tlg_org; and @KidsMatterUK

Read more 👇https://t.co/lIIHaLqOwl

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 24, 2025

Severe hardship in Britain is being “normalised”, the foodbank charity Trussell warns.

Its second Hunger in the UK report, published on Wednesday, suggests that 14.1 million people experienced food insecurity last year through a lack of money — a rise from 11.6 million in 2022, when the last survey was carried out.

The survey also found that 61 per cent of households that reported going without food did not obtain any form of charitable food support. Trussell defines food insecurity as “going without or cutting back on quality or quantity of food due to a lack of money”.

When asked why they had not sought such support, more than half (55 per cent) said that they did not feel that they should because they were not facing financial hardship. One third (32 per cent) did not think that they were in enough need, and one quarter (23 per cent) thought that others were in greater need.

Read it all.

Ipsos polling for the Trussell Trust suggests that 14.1 million people experienced food insecurity last year through a lack of money — a rise from 11.6 million in 2022, when the last survey was carried out.https://t.co/k9zXu83atf

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) September 10, 2025

More than two two years after it began in April 2023, the war in Sudan shows no sign of ending, with deadly consequences for the people of Africa’s third-largest country. On August 5th the World Food Programme (WFP), a UN agency, said that residents of el-Fasher, in the western region of Darfur, faced starvation. It was a grim sign of the humanitarian toll of the war at a time when the locus of the conflict is shifting westwards, raising the prospect of a permanently fractured state.

El-Fasher, the capital of north Darfur, is the last major city in the region under the control of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), one of the two main belligerents. The other, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has besieged the city since April 2024 to secure its Darfuri stronghold. Some residents have been able to flee the city and the Zamzam refugee camp on its outskirts, but a common destination, the nearby town of Tawila, is crammed and in the midst of a cholera outbreak. Since the RSF was ousted from Khartoum, the capital, in March, it has tightened the noose around el-Fasher.

That has made it harder for food to get in—and for people to get out. Aid agencies report that food prices are five times higher than in the rest of the country. Often food is unavailable, rendering redundant the mobile-money payments and community kitchens that have so far averted starvation. Local journalists report that many of the 300,000 remaining residents are turning to animal feed. The WFP says it has lorries ready to enter el-Fasher, but the RSF is blocking access.

Read it all.

Outsiders claim to want to stop the war in Sudan, which has displaced 13m people and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Sadly, that notion seems as remote a possibility as ever https://t.co/c21lFgtUyl

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) August 7, 2025

Nearly 10 million American children are living in poverty, the most since 2018, according to the latest Census Bureau figures from 2023. 

Tens of millions more—like the Meazler kids—are precariously close. Their families have been pushed to the edge by a storm of economic factors, including the expiration of Covid-era relief programs and the impacts of inflation on food and housing. 

The strain is expected to be worsened by cuts to federal spending on aid programs, including food benefits and Medicaid. President Trump on July 4 signed legislation passed by Congress that reduces funding and tightens work requirements for government assistance, and will likely result in less food aid and millions losing health coverage.

Even before the new cuts, several markers show that households with children are falling behind, though statistics around poverty have been complicated by the upheaval the pandemic brought to jobs and living arrangements, and the unprecedented federal aid distributed in response.

The share of families with children living in poverty jumped to 12.9% in 2023, the most recent year available, after plummeting to a record low of 5.6% in 2021, driven down by temporary pandemic programs like the expanded Child Tax Credit and extra unemployment insurance, according to census data compiled by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. 

Poverty for all ages has inched up, but no other age demographic has seen a sharper rise in poverty between 2021 and 2023 than children, data compiled by the center show. 

Read it all.

Earning More but in Worse Shape: Hardship Overwhelms Many American Families

Nearly half of kids in the U.S. live in households below the middle class as inflation and the end of Covid relief hit working parentshttps://t.co/MmvB2XmIdG via @WSJ

— Lindsay Wise (@lindsaywise) August 5, 2025

Today, almost 700 million people (8.5 percent of the global population) live in extreme poverty – on less than $2.15 per day. Progress has stalled amid low growth, setbacks due to COVID-19, and increased fragility. Poverty rates in low-income countries are higher than before the pandemic.

Around 3.5 billion people (44 percent of the global population) remain poor by a standard that is more relevant for upper middle-income countries ($6.85 per day), and the number or people living on less than this standard has barely changed since the 1990s due to population growth.

In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 16 percent of the world’s population, but 67 percent of the people living in extreme poverty. Two thirds of the world’s population in extreme poverty live in Sub-Saharan Africa, rising to three quarters when including all fragile and conflict-affected countries. About 72 percent of the world’s population in extreme poverty live in countries that are eligible to receive assistance from the International Development Association (IDA).

Based on the current trajectory, 622 million people (7.3 percent of the global population) are projected to live in extreme poverty in 2030. This means, about 69 million people are projected escape extreme poverty between 2024 and 2030 compared to about 150 million who did so between 2013 and 2019. In addition, 3.4 billion people (nearly 40 percent of the world’s population) will likely live on less than $6.85 per day.

If growth does not accelerate and become more inclusive, it will take decades to eradicate extreme poverty and more than a century to lift people above the $6.85 per day poverty line

Read it all.

Global #poverty reduction has slowed to a near standstill. At the current pace of progress, it could take more than a century to eradicate poverty at the $6.85 per day poverty line used for upper-middle-income countries.

More in our new report: https://t.co/62jsHp7rxf | #3PR pic.twitter.com/8PpEhOZ0S9

— World Bank Data (@worldbankdata) October 15, 2024

A South Sudanese bishop has warned that food is being used as a weapon by parties involved in the brutal civil war in Sudan, a country on the brink of famine.

“They harass humanitarian agencies,” the RC Bishop of Yei, the Rt Revd Alex Lodiong Sakor Eyobo, told the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales last week. “And, when humanitarian agencies are harassed, they stop delivering food because they also have to protect their own lives.

“The food aid sometimes is blocked by the RSF [Rapid Support Forces], not allowing them [the agencies] to enter. Because when you take food aid to the people, you are also going to feed their own enemies.

“So, they use food as a weapon, so that once food is not delivered, their enemy is weakened. That’s their point of view.”

Read it all.

A South Sudanese bishop has warned that food is being used as a weapon by parties involved in the brutal civil war in Sudan, a country on the brink of famine.https://t.co/mGd5sSFiPS

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 12, 2024

The head of the United Nations children’s agency, Unicef, says Sudan is one of the worst places in the world for children.

Catherine Russell says it now has the largest displacement of children anywhere, with millions facing malnutrition and most not in school

She is travelling to the country torn apart by more than a year of brutal civil war as warnings of famine grow louder.

The pillars of Sudan’s food economy have collapsed, and both warring parties – the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – are restricting the delivery of desperately needed aid.

Children were at the sharp end of this hunger crisis, Ms Russell told the BBC while en route in Nairobi: nine million don’t get enough to eat regularly, and nearly four million face acute malnutrition.

Read it all.

Millions of children going hungry in Sudan – Unicef https://t.co/eT49aHTHzz

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) June 24, 2024

The proportion of human beings living on the margin of subsistence is estimated to have fallen from close to 80 per cent in 1820 to just under 10 per cent in 2018. What makes this decline even more remarkable is that the global population rose from 1bn in 1820 to 7.7bn in 2018. Rising prosperity has also helped double global life expectancy to 71 years. In brief, we have moved from a world in which life was, for the great majority, indeed “nasty, brutish, and short” to something altogether better.

As recently as 1970, the rate of “extreme poverty” was still 50 per cent. This extraordinarily rapid recent reduction in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty is due to the huge progress in the much reviled age of economic globalisation. I will never regret this achievement. It shows that the combination of global economic opportunity with external assistance worked.

A crucial source of the latter has been credits from the International Development Association. Contrary to what many feared, ending extreme poverty was not like trying to fill a “bottomless pit”. As a recent report from the World Bank, The Great Reversal, notes, South Korea, China and India were once beneficiaries of IDA credits: 60 years ago, IDA was even informally known as the “Indian Development Association”. Progress has been remarkable and still is: life expectancy in IDA countries rose from 58 to 65 years between 2000 and 2021.

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We risk a lost decade for the world’s poor: Covid, post-Covid inflation, war-induced spikes in energy and food prices and rising interest rates had dire effects and ‘the risk of a lost decade, or perhaps something even worse.’ ⁦@FT⁩
https://t.co/U9G0n5GPOv

— Monica Araya (@MonicaArayaTica) April 30, 2024

Silence. Last September, when I visited a makeshift hospital in Adré, Chad, where young Sudanese refugees were being treated for acute malnutrition, that was all I heard: an eerie silence.

I had tried to prepare myself for the wails of children who were sick and emaciated, but these patients were too weak to even cry. That day, I saw a 6-month-old baby who was the size of a newborn and a child whose ankles were swollen, and whose body was blistered, from severe malnourishment.

It was equal parts newly horrific and tragically familiar.

Twenty years earlier I had visited the same town and met with Sudanese refugees who fled violence in Darfur, where the janjaweed militia, with backing from Omar al-Bashir’s brutal authoritarian regime, carried out a genocidal campaign of mass killing, rape and pillage.

Read it all.

Even after aid groups designated Sudan's humanitarian crisis to be among the world's worst, little attention or help has gone to the Sudanese people.

The world’s silence and inaction need to end, and end now.

My piece in the @nytimes ⬇️https://t.co/ie90VMmIzX

— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) March 18, 2024

Medicaid payments are “the lifeblood of our health centers and their ability to serve,” said Dr. Kyu Rhee, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Community Health Centers, which treat roughly one in 11 people in the United States and rely on Medicaid and federal grants to provide a financial cushion for the uncompensated care they give uninsured patients.

Since last spring, Medicaid enrollment has dropped by almost ten million, including around four million children, according to researchers at Georgetown University. States have removed people for a variety of reasons, including for changes in income and age. Some people have been dropped because they did not return paperwork. Others have lost coverage because of technical errors, including computer glitches.

The loss of reimbursements for millions of patients has contributed to an already difficult financial picture for facilities that treat the poor: Unless Congress reaches a funding agreement, nearly $6 billion for federally financed health clinics, which serve over 30 million people, most of them low-income, could lapse in early March.

Read it all.

“Jessica Tucker, a single mother, broke into tears after receiving a $90 bill for her 3-year-old son Raylan’s primary care visit and tetanus vaccine at Bethesda, pleading with her mother by phone for help paying it.” https://t.co/M3r48C3Voy

— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) February 26, 2024

Hardship and poverty are often associated more with urban than with rural areas. Rural hardship in the north Cotswolds, for example, is often hidden, because of inequalities and the relative affluence experienced by the majority, and the high levels of tourism in the area.

This is a problem, because the significant minority who experience hardship are more hidden. This means that rural hardship is often not adequately addressed by local and national policy-makers and community leaders.

This is the focus of the exhibition “Hidden Hardship”, which Coventry Cathedral is hosting until 26 February, and which is part of my new participatory research project at Coventry University. This has sought to understand hardship in the north Cotswolds better.

The exhibition consists of illustrations by the artist Beth Waters, based on the research participants’ interviews and diaries of their experiences of hardship and/or responding to hardship. It focuses on people’s experiences of rural hardship, their coping strategies, and the barriers to their improved well-being.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Hardship is a rural problem, too

In areas that appear more affluent, poverty is often hidden, writes @SJ_Denninghttps://t.co/8T0KmRxzFZ

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) February 9, 2024

A homeless shelter has warned it may have to close because it only has enough money to run for another “four to five months”.

Churches in Reading Drop-In Centre (CIRDIC), a shelter based in St Saviour’s Church Hall in the town, says it costs £100,000 per year to run, and it currently only has about half of that.

Manager Mabel Gregory said it would be “dreadful” for the community if the centre had to close.

She said rising prices had made running the shelter “very, very difficult”.

“Our gas bill has gone up to £1,000 a month,” she said.

Read it all.

It would be beyond terrible were CIRDIC to close. It's been providing vital services for Reading's homeless for many years.https://t.co/dZDISP2hyP

— Karz From The 'Ding 🙄💙🦆☕🍺🍷🥃🦉🐧🧀 (@FFSKarz) January 17, 2024

Faith leaders in London and the south-east have joined forces with the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, in calling on the Government to address the leave-to-remain status situation for asylum-seekers, and the increasing risk of homelessness this winter…. They want practice to match policy, better communication, and for the timeframe to be extended.

Forty-five of them signed the letter, sent last week to Michael Tomlinson MP and Baroness Scott of Bybrook, ministers respectively in the Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Signatories included the Bishops of Chelmsford, Southwark, and Rochester, and their area and suffragan bishops.

Welcoming the Home Office’s efforts to tackle its backlog on asylum claims, the faith leaders say that they are “concerned at the number [of refugees] who, on receiving their leave to remain, are becoming street homeless”. They report growing demand in London’s churches, mosques, gurdwaras, synagogues, and temples, for support with accommodation from those with new refugee status.

Read it all.

Faith leaders in London and the south-east have joined forces with @bishopSarahM in calling on the Government to address the leave-to-remain status situation for asylum-seekers, and the increasing risk of homelessness this winterhttps://t.co/MW6noWWnJo

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) December 22, 2023

Read it all.

More than 44.2 million Americans lived in households that struggled with hunger in 2022, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report released Wednesday — an increase of 10.3 million over the previous year. https://t.co/wkZNRuOkSM

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 26, 2023

Children are sleeping on the floor or sharing mouldy or soiled beds, because families cannot afford to replace broken beds and mattresses or provide adequate bedding to counter cold and damp, new research has found.

The children’s charity Barnardo’s, which describes the situation as “bed poverty”, commissioned a YouGov survey, conducted in August, of 1049 parents with children under 18 and 1013 children (aged 8-17) in Great Britain.

The findings were published on Thursday in the charity’s report, No crib for a bed: The impact of the cost of living crisis on bed poverty, in which frontline staff give countless examples of families having to prioritise essentials such as food, heating, and electricity over replacing mouldy bedding or fixing a rotten bed.

Read it all.

Hundreds of thousands of children suffer bed poverty, says @barnardos https://t.co/3Aly66SKr6

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 29, 2023

Millions of children as young as ten are most worried about not having enough money for their future, the annual Good Childhood report from the Children’s Society estimates.

The report, published on Wednesday, is based largely on a survey of 2001 children (aged ten to 17) and their parent or carer, conducted by the Christian charity between May and June. Of these, more than one third (37 per cent) said that they were either “very” or “quite” worried about having enough money in the future. If that percentage is applied to the whole population, it would suggest that about 2.3 million young people share such worries.

For the first time, the survey included a question on concerns about the cost of living. This proved to be more worrying to children than the environment. Almost half (46 per cent) were either very or quite worried about rising costs, compared with 37 per cent about the environment.

Other worries listed in order of concern were: crime (33 per cent); new illnesses/pandemics, inequality, and online safety (all 30 per cent); homelessness (26 per cent); unemployment (25 per cent); and the refugee crisis (22 per cent).

Read it all.

Cost-of-living crisis adds to children’s worries, survey finds https://t.co/jfS3zQMCKO

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) September 19, 2023

The 35,000 people who use a network of church-run food pantries in the UK are saving up to £1000 a year on groceries, research from Church Action on Poverty has found.

The findings, which also suggest that the scheme improves mental health and well-being, are set out in the social-impact report Your Local Pantry: So much more! published on Tuesday — the day that the network opened its 100th pantry in Aylesham, Kent.

Members of Your Local Pantry, co-ordinated by the charity Church Action on Poverty, pay a set fee of between £3.50 and £7 a week for ten grocery items of their choosing from their local pantry. Items are colour coded to promote a balanced diet.

These pantries are often held in church buildings and set out like a regular supermarket — different to a foodbank. This system works on the values of “dignity, choice, and hope”, including by reducing the stigma of asking for help, the report says.

Read it all.

Food pantries offer all-round benefits, Church Action on Poverty finds https://t.co/Mh0bmMLsF0

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) July 19, 2023

Nearly three million adults in the UK are estimated to have sought help from church or other religious organisations since the start of the year as a result of the cost of living crisis, according to research published today.

New findings show that overall almost four in 10 (38 per cent) of UK adults have sought help this year because of the squeeze on living costs, with family and friends the most common source of help at 24 per cent and 14 per cent respectively.

However the polling by Savanta, for the Church of England, also found that five per cent of UK adults, approximately equivalent to 2.6 million people, report having sought help from churches or other religious organisations.

Six in 10 of those who sought help from churches and other religions said they had received free food or groceries (60 per cent). Half said they received low-cost food or groceries (50 per cent) or hot food (48 per cent), and four in 10 (40 per cent) said they had been provided with warm spaces.

Read it all.

"Churches have been providing a lifeline to people struggling to balance their household budgets and provide for their families…"
– @BishopPaulB

Read more about how churches have been providing practical support at https://t.co/LhZxjDd0ZO.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) December 22, 2022

Debbie Sholley always imagined she would be living comfortably by the time she reached her golden years.

Instead, the 62-year-old former social worker worries she will soon be living on the streets of this growing city, after her landlord raised the rent more than she can afford.

“I think about what it would be like, and it’s scary. Where am I going to go?” said Ms. Sholley, whose ailing husband died of Covid-19 in 2020 and who suffers from various lung ailments that keep her from working anymore. “I never thought I’d be in this position.”

Ms. Sholley is one of a rising number of older people around the country who are on the verge of homelessness or now living on the streets after falling on hard times. Homeless shelters and aging-service groups in numerous cities say they are seeing more elderly people in desperate need of housing than in years past. A confluence of factors are driving the increase, they say, including soaring rents, a nationwide shortage of affordable housing and the winding down of pandemic-related aid programs such as the federal eviction moratorium.

Read it all.

Aging-services groups in numerous cities say they are seeing more elderly people in desperate need of housing than in years past https://t.co/bQACAOYH5y

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 11, 2022

The Church of the Holy Comforter, Sumter, is opening its doors providing shelter to the area’s homeless this winter. The church has been welcoming from 7 to 12 guests and is open from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. when the temperature drops below 40 degrees.

Sumter United Ministries (SUM) is overseeing the effort. The group provides a platform for Sumter churches to meet the needs of the elderly, working poor, disabled and homeless.

Ginny Corley, who serves as the chair of Holy Comforter’s Missions Committee reflected on how the church first decided to serve as a shelter. “We are the first church Mark Champagne (Executive Director of SUM) approached, and the timing was auspicious,” she said. “The first meeting with Mark Champagne was in August 2022 in response to a request from Mark to Fr. David for some space to use as an overnight winter shelter. During that meeting the ad hoc committee discussed the risks on both sides of using Walker Hall as a winter shelter for the unhoused. The main risk to SUM was we may lose the building at any time (SC Supreme Court ruling pending). As we were walking out of the meeting in general agreement that Walker Hall and the bathrooms could be suitable, Fr. John (Sosnowski) received a phone call letting us know that the buildings were ours. There was a definite sense we should share what had so graciously been returned. The vestry unanimously passed the subsequent proposal.

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Sumter winter shelter to help people experiencing homelessness https://t.co/aEDK2EgxsE

— News19 WLTX (@WLTX) November 30, 2022

Mark Seed now runs a community food project in Trowbridge, east Cardiff.

BBC Wales analysis of new Census data suggests six of Wales’ most deprived communities are in the city.

A charity warns that struggling households do not just appear in areas long associated with poverty and policy needs to focus on people not places.

Trowbridge lies in what Mr Seed calls an “arc of poverty” from east to west of the Welsh capital, with issues endemic in his area.

“I’m still shocked by the fact that we have people who are eating pet food,” he said.

Read it all.

People in Cardiff 'eating pet food' as cost of living rises https://t.co/TiJt4NWaT0

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) December 1, 2022

“Ahead of today’s statement one of our key concerns was to see benefits keep pace with inflation. So we welcome the Chancellor’s commitment in this regard but continue to call for the end to the two-child limit on Universal Credit, which hits some of the poorest families hardest.

“This is going to be a very hard winter for many. Our churches, in communities across the country, are already reporting alarming rises in demand for foodbanks and other services which have become a lifeline.

“It is heartbreaking to hear of people who just a year ago were donating to foodbanks but are now using them themselves.

Read it all.

“It is heart-breaking to hear of people who just a year ago were donating to foodbanks but are now using them themselves."

Read a response on the #autumnstatement2022 from @BishopPaulB and Bishop of St Albans, at https://t.co/Y7woEJn6EL.

— The Church of England (@churchofengland) November 17, 2022

Churches are being urged to share buildings regardless of denomination for lunch clubs and worship.

The Churches Together group that covers Northamptonshire, Peterborough and Rutland said it was reacting to “rising energy bills and worsening poverty”.

It said it had taken the “unprecedented step” of writing to every church to urge them to “work more closely at this critical time”.

“This has to be what we have to talk about,” a spokesman said.

Read it all.

Good for RE and useful for GCSE RS: Church group urges denominations to share spaces to tackle poverty https://t.co/C4FblQdaoY

— RECornwall ن 🇧🇧🇨🇮 (@CornwallRE) November 8, 2022

FOODBANKS and charities have replaced social security and Universal Credit as the last line of defence in the cost-of-living crisis, but the faith and voluntary sectors are themselves in a precarious state, says an 89-page report from the religion-and- society think tank Theos, published on Monday.

In a foreword to the report, A Torn Safety Net: How the cost of living crisis threatens its own last line of defence, the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams write that compassion is not running out, but that money is, to the extent that some who have donated to foodbanks are now themselves relying on them.

They warn: “The shocking reality is that this winter, we are likely to see charities being forced to stop feeding the hungry so they can help the starving, cut back on support to the poorly housed so they can focus on the fast rising numbers of homeless, and give up on helping the down-at-heel because their priority has to be the destitute.”

The report was written by Hannah Rich and informed by a series of 48 interviews, conducted between January and August this year, in Cornwall, Glasgow, Wolverhampton, and the London Borough of Newham. It speaks of a real danger that churches and other faith groups will close “because they cannot afford to keep the lights on or find enough volunteers to sustain their social action”.

Read it all.

Charities may have to stop helping hungry and homeless, as they are struggling themselves, @Theosthinktank reports https://t.co/zTqYRwdLPp

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) November 7, 2022

…as The Times reported in July, San Diego has dramatically outperformed its neighbors to the north. Despite San Diego’s tight housing market, 100% of its emergency housing vouchers issued since June 2021 have placed people into permanent housing.

Two factors may have helped San Diego succeed where other cities are struggling, housing advocates and experts across the country told The Times.

First, fewer people fall through the cracks in San Diego’s system. In other cities, applicants may shuffle among as many as four organizations. San Diego’s housing commission minimized the number of agencies and individuals whom clients have to deal with as they apply for vouchers, wait for approval, and — the hardest part — search for housing. In San Diego, most voucher applicants interact with at most two agencies before they are placed in a home.

Second, the city calculates how much vouchers are worth on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, rather than using a flat rate across the city, making the vouchers much more flexible.

Read it all.

How San Diego’s achieved surprising success housing homeless people https://t.co/47TDw6ZAHp

— willa percy (@willapercy) November 4, 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.

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'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 Atlanta Medical Center sits on a vast stretch of urban land, just one mile south of Ponce de Leon Avenue — the street that segregationists over a century ago designated as the dividing line between Black and White Atlanta.

That distinction was palpable on Thursday, when a group of Georgia religious leaders held a press conference outside the hospital, calling on Governor Brian Kemp to meet with them, and find a way to stop the planned closure of the 120-year-old medical center, along with others like it in the state.

“Let’s be honest, this is about devaluing Black and Brown and poor people,” said Reverend Shanan Jones, president of Concerned Black Clergy of Atlanta. “Their lives are expendable. Their lives don’t matter.”

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The planned closure of a 120-year-old medical center leaves Atlanta with only one hospital that can handle the most serious medical emergencies https://t.co/uhQQmHtfQB

— Bloomberg (@business) September 16, 2022

Ronald J. Sider, organizer of the evangelical left and author of ‘Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger,’ died on Wednesday at 82. His son told followers that Sider had suffered from a sudden cardiac arrest.

For nearly 50 years, Sider called evangelicals to care about the poor and see poverty as a moral issue. He argued for an expanded understanding of sin to include social structures that perpetuate inequality and injustice, and urged Christians to see how their salvation should compel them to care for their neighbors.

“Salvation is a lot more than just a new right relationship with God through forgiveness of sins. It’s a new, transformed lifestyle that you can see visible in the body of believers,” he said. “Sin is a biblical category. Given a careful reading of the world and the Bible and our giving patterns, how can we come to any other conclusion than to say that we are flatly disobeying what the God of the Bible says about the way he wants his people to care for the poor?”

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Ron Sider has died.

He was known for his advocacy for the poor and was called the “burr in the ethical saddle” of the white evangelical horse. https://t.co/AMJQ5lWLqi

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 28, 2022