Latest News
Latest News on August 2008
- August 21
Facing Poverty -
A small Jesuit college in the South does what it can to face the poverty of its surroundings.
August 21, 2008
Spring Hill CollegeMOBILE, Alabama — The primary purpose of the Facing Poverty site is to provide a better understanding of the nature of poverty, to inspire moral and civic responsibility, and to promote justice for all. By bringing together information with documentary photographs and personal stories of area families struggling to make ends meet, we hope to raise awareness of the issues and challenges facing those who live in poverty, changing it from an abstraction to a reality, humanizing the lives of real people and the difficulties they face. It is our hope that by raising awareness both within our college community, and among voters as a whole, of the extent and scope of poverty, and of the unfair policies that underpin its continuity, we can help generate public support for change.
Project Background
Last year Spring Hill College began Facing Poverty as an interdisciplinary pilot project, conceived and directed by Associate Professor Barbara Starr. A number of community service agencies helped find low income families willing to participate; families were free to leave the project at any time, no questions asked, and given veto power over the information used on the website. Students involved received training concerning issues related to poverty and in approaching families with sensitivity and respect. Then, working in teams of two, students in the advanced photography course of Professor Tom Loehr visited the families to document their lives through photography. The advanced composition class of Professor Margaret Davis interviewed families in their homes to record their stories and later wrote essays about the social problems the families encountered. Theology students gathered quotations from various faith traditions. Political science students studied poverty and contributed the factual information. Then a graphic design class under the direction of Assistant Professor Janden Richards designed and constructed the website. This has truly been a collaborative effort. It has been much more difficult and time consuming than any of us could have imagined, and much more rewarding. All told, the project has involved some fifteen community liaisons, eighteen faculty and staff and over forty students. We extend our grateful thanks to the families for their generosity in sharing a bit of their lives with us. We learned so much from them. Spring Hill has adopted as its annual theme for 2007-2008 Weaving the Social Fabric: Facing Poverty, and the Facing Poverty Project will continue.
What You Can Do
- August 19
Charles MacCormack Op-Ed -
A perilous combination of factors - including soaring energy prices, bad weather (possibly linked with climate change), poor harvests, and dwindling food stocks - has created the most dangerous hunger crisis in decades. Adding to the crisis: a growing demand for biofuels that is further depleting the food supply.
Note from Billy Shore, Executive Director of Share Our Strength:
The Ethiopian famine in 1984 was the catalyst for starting Share Our Strength. Now more than two decades later, Ethiopia finds itself again facing the terrible effects of famine. One of the partners whose work we most admire is Save The Children, led by Charles MacCormack. Charlie published an op-ed in the Washington Times this past Sunday which explains why this famine is different, and why our response must be different as well. It is well worth reading, and follows below:
Ethiopia: Warning for children worldwide
by Charles MacCormack, President and CEO of Save the Children
Washington Times
Sunday, August 17, 2008Millions of children worldwide face a gathering storm that poses a greater threat this summer than any tsunami, cyclone or hurricane.
I have just returned from Ethiopia where severe malnutrition, especially among preschool-age children, is beginning to spike alarmingly. Save the Children, working closely with the Ethiopian government and international donors, is ramping up efforts to help 900,000 Ethiopians, including 325,000 children.
Five years ago, when I visited Ethiopia during its last major food crisis, tents teaming with hungry children grabbed the world’s attention. Things are different this time - a cause for both concern and hope.
In 2003, severe drought conspired with ages-old subsistence farming technology, small land-holding plots, poor market access, high fertility rates, and inadequate social protection networks to plunge Ethiopia into a severe food crisis. The bad news is that the current crisis is exacerbated by new factors that connect what is happening in Ethiopia with equally vexing challenges in countries as dissimilar as Haiti, Egypt and Tajikistan.
No longer is localized drought the only threat. Like children around the world, Ethiopian children feel the impact of the steep, global increase in food prices that will likely persist for years. Ten pounds of corn flour in Ethiopia, thanks to this new combination of factors, now costs 5 times as much as it did just three years ago, putting unbearable demands on limited household budgets.
American families typically spend on food 10 cents of every dollar that reaches the household; for families in developing countries, food typically consumes between 50 percent and 80 percent of their household budget.
As I witnessed in Ethiopia, poor families there and elsewhere are resorting to coping strategies that will lead to long-term harm - such as eating less protein-rich foods, skipping meals, pulling children out of school, selling off livestock and family assets and even foregoing health care.
This crisis in rising food and energy prices threatens to undermine improved child survival and school enrollment gains we have seen in recent decades. The World Bank estimates these price increases could reverse seven years of progress in overall poverty reduction worldwide, and push more than 100 million people into poverty. For Save the Children, this food price shock - especially when coupled with localized droughts - represents a fundamental threat to the well-being of vulnerable children and women. Children living with HIV and AIDS, conflict and instability are most at risk.
But the news is not all bad. Compared to 2003, Ethiopia has more trained health professionals and volunteers and a government-established network of therapeutic care sites. The increased availability of portable foods such as Plumpy’Nut (a vitamin-fortified peanut paste) has significantly streamlined emergency responses in Ethiopia as elsewhere. That means more lives can and are being saved.
On a global scale, the good news is that G-8 Summit leaders, the World Bank and the United Nations recognize the challenge and the international community has begun to respond. U.N. agencies, for example, endorsed a Comprehensive Framework for Action at a May summit that provides a platform for cooperation.
The stakes are high: The well-being of vulnerable children as well as continued development of countries less well-off hang in the balance. So the United States and other leaders must drive hard and fast this nascent international response. Among the top priorities for near-term action are:
- Ensuring that the World Food Program and other aid agencies have adequate ongoing funds to support governments to meet new and existing needs for food assistance.
- Supporting development or expansion of social protection and basic nutrition programs, focused on the needs of the poorest and most food insecure families.
- Committing to boost dramatically investment in agriculture in the world’s poor countries to reverse decades of neglect.
- Re-examining policies toward biofuels in G-8 countries.
- Traditional food aid will not conquer hunger. Emergency assistance, trade, climate change and other policies must also be revamped and better integrated.
When the world’s leaders gather at the United Nations in late September to review progress toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals, it is essential they commit to more decisive action to overcome hunger. A genuine solution also requires investment by world leaders to move that bold development agenda forward. Success will mean saving 6 million children a year from preventable deaths and ensuring all children have access to a basic education. It can and must be done.
Charles MacCormack is president and chief executive officer of Save the Children, based in Westport, Conn.
- August 10
Just Three Stops -- but a World Away -
Our founder, Billy Shore, writes an Op-Ed in the Washington Post on the sacrifices of our soldiers.
August 10, 2008
Billy Shore
The Washington PostWASHINGTON, District of Columbia — Recently I went to Arlington National Cemetery to pay my respects at the grave of Geof Cayer, a Marine lance corporal who died in Iraq in July 2006. That year I had been on a US Airways flight that was escorting his body to Washington for burial. I’ve been visiting his grave ever since.
The Metro train I took to Arlington Cemetery was packed with people on their way to work, a few listening to music players and many reading the paper. I got on the train at 7:59 a.m. Three stops and six minutes later, I was there. It was a six-car train full of people, but no one else got off at Arlington Cemetery.
The last time I’d visited Geof’s grave, it was located in the newest row of Section 60. Now three more rows are filled in front of his, and, of course, a seemingly infinite number of white headstones flow behind. Two Marines in their dress blues were standing by 10 chairs that had been placed at a freshly dug grave for one of the 28 funerals that would be taking place this day.
As I stood silently, a woman walked over from where she had parked her car. She must be a family member, I thought, as only relatives have driving privileges on the grounds.
She was dressed in dark clothing and held a light green straw hat in her left hand. She stopped and stood looking out at the graves and then started to move slowly toward one in particular. She had a slightly uneven walk, not a limp, but was a bit bent over almost as if moving one leg took some extra effort. Her face was pale and brittle in the glare of the early morning sun. She seemed to find the stone she was looking for and then reached down with her right hand to rub and gently pat the top of it.
I assumed that this was her son’s grave. But then she walked slowly down the row, never taking her eyes from the graves, even when she softly nodded “hello” as she passed me. After careful study she found another white stone where she stood with head bowed for a long time, a grimace contorting her mouth. She bent to touch it as well. About 10 minutes later and two rows away, she did this again.
At one point she noticed that the stone marking the grave of a 23-year-old soldier killed in April 2007 had sunk down into the ground a few inches and was lower than all of the others. She called one of the groundskeepers over, pointed to it and asked that it be fixed. She spoke so softly that I could not hear her, but she must have been insistent, because he immediately called his supervisor on the radio and said, “One of the stones in Section 60 has sunk, and a family member has requested that it be raised. Today.” He assured her it would be. It was as if these were all her sons.
For the next hour she walked throughout Section 60, occasionally straightening a photo that had been left at the base of a stone, or leaning over to touch the white marble top of one. When she bent to pat them, she would stop and lean on the stone with the one hand that had been doing the patting, as if spent or exhausted by a weight that made it uncertain she would stand upright again. It seemed to take tremendous effort for her to walk from one row to another. It was the worst war wound I had ever seen.
If there is a kind of grief that does not subside with time, doesn’t erode or ebb or ease, surely this was it, the nature of a grief borne alone.
Finally she walked back to her car, still holding the light green straw hat in her hand, and got in behind the wheel. But the car did not move. As I began the long walk back to the visitors center and the subway, I turned around, and she was still sitting there.
At the Metro station, I got on another crowded six-car train, and again, no one got off.
What You Can Do
- August 6
Students in poverty falling behind -
For the second-straight year, students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches failed to meet state benchmarks in both math and reading.
August 6, 2008
Mike Longaecker
The Republican EagleRED WING, Minnesota — Red Wing school officials will take aim at bolstering achievement among economically disadvantaged students in light of state report card results.
For the second-straight year, students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches failed to meet state benchmarks in both math and reading.
“Poverty remains the stubborn issue in our schools and community,” Supt. Stan Slessor said. “We’ve got to begin different strategies.”
This week, the Department of Education released results of whether schools were making annual yearly progress toward federal No Child Left Behind standards.
Progress is gauged by how certain groups within school populations fared on the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment II tests.
Statewide results show the number of schools meeting AYP has slipped significantly since 2006. According to the data, 983 schools reached the benchmark this year, while 937 did not.
Red Wing’s districtwide data showed six of the eight defined groups were not proficient at reading.
Those groups were: American Indian, Hispanic, black, limited English proficiency, special education and students eligible for free and reduced price lunches.
In prior years, some of those subgroups have not met the 40-student threshold for statistical eligibility.
“As our community becomes more diverse, the more it affects our AYP status,” said Cathy Radmer, the district’s curriculum director.
Special education students at Red Wing High School and those eligible for free lunches districtwide were not proficient at math, according to the data.
The results mean that for the second consecutive year, the state is forcing Red Wing to take corrective action. That means submitting an improvement plan to the state and setting aside 12 percent of Title I funds — money dedicated to elementary-level math and reading improvement — for general school improvement efforts.
While state report card results identify specific areas for improvement, Slessor said he’s not frustrated; aggregate data paint a more positive picture, he noted.
“What heartens me was overall performance in Red Wing as a whole was up at a faster rate than the state average,” Slessor said.
Other improvements were seen at the district’s alternative learning programs, where Tower View school and the Red Wing midlevel Alternative Learning Center both reached AYP benchmarks after being flagged in 2007.
Meanwhile, Red Wing school officials are mapping out how they plan to turn subpar scores around.
Intervention programs, like those introduced in 2007, will play a major role, Radmer and Slessor said.
“Last year was a breakthrough for us,” Slessor said of intervention programs, which involve devoting intensified math and reading instruction to struggling students.
School officials have praised interventions for math score increases among some grades in 2008 tests.
Radmer said other fixes will include continuing to align curriculum to the state tests and outreach directly into households. She said results mailed to parents include options for online help that are specific to each student.
Another boost could come from the state, Radmer noted. The Department of Education deployed resources last year to Red Wing for math assistance.
“I’m hoping that in light of the state data, we’ll see some of those reading resources come to us as well,” Radmer said.
What You Can Do
- August 5
Kids' meals aren't for kids -
Some ‘kids’ meals’ pack a whole day’s serving of calories.
August 5, 2008
Nanci Hellmich
USA TodayUNITED STATES of America — The first comprehensive report on kids’ meals at popular fast-food and chain restaurants finds the servings are far too high in calories for a single meal.
In fact, some of the meals contain more 1,000 calories, which is almost as many calories as some elementary-school children need for the entire day, according to the analysis from Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group.
The report shows, for instance, that:- Chili’s country-fried chicken crispers, cinnamon apples and chocolate milk has 1,020 calories.
- KFC’s popcorn chicken, baked beans, biscuit, Teddy Grahams and fruit punch, has 940 calories.
- Sonic’s Wacky Pack with grilled cheese, fries and a slushie, has 830 calories.
Overall, the findings reveal that 93% of the kids’ meals at McDonald’s and Wendy’s contain more than 430 calories, the average number of calories that children ages 4 to 8 should get at a single meal. The comparable numbers are 92% at Burger King; 89% at Dairy Queen; 69% at Arby’s; 60% at Denny’s. The latter’s kids’ meals don’t include drinks.
CSPI: Read for yourself, full report available »
On the healthful side, about 67% of the kids’ meals at Subway have fewer than 430 calories.
“When you go to most chain restaurants, ordering off the kids’ menu is a nightmare,” says Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and the mother of a 10-year-old daughter.
“Right now kids’ meals are almost all unhealthy meals when they should be almost all healthy meals,” she says “At the very least, restaurants should list calories on the menu so that parents can navigate through this minefield of calories and fat to find the healthy options.”
Sheila Weiss, director of nutrition policy for the National Restaurant Association, says over the last few years, “there have been a lot of changes to our restaurant menus, especially children’s meals. More and more options are available. Restaurants are offering low-fat milk, yogurt, apples and vegetables as part of the children’s menu. They are helping parents help their children make wise choices when they dine out.”
Elizabeth Ward, a registered dietitian in Boston with three children and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Feeding Your Baby and Toddler, says “kids’ meals can be outrageously high in calories, fat, and sodium, but it’s possible to go into just about any restaurant and cobble together a healthy meal for a child. If the children’s menu doesn’t look healthy, you have to look elsewhere.”
The average child, under 18, eats 167 restaurant meals in a year, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm.
“Eating out is no longer a special occasion, it’s a lifestyle now, so we have to be more selective about what we eat,” says Keith Ayoob, who works with overweight kids at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “This is a wakeup call that parents need to take advantage of restaurants’ healthier options, especially if kids are going to be eating out three or more times a week.
“Most kids don’t clean their plates so they are probably not eating all these calories,” he says.
For the latest study, nutritionists with CSPI analyzed the calories in 1,474 different meal combinations at 13 chain restaurants. The nutrition information was gathered from the chains’ websites and corporate offices. Many of the restaurants offer numerous kids’ meal combinations and each meal was considered separately.
CSPI used national nutrition standard recommendations from different groups to determine nutrient needs for children. The Institute of Medicine guidelines recommend that moderately active children, ages 4 to 8, consume about 1,300 calories a day. Therefore, the consumer group calculated that a single meal should not contain more than 430 calories.
The findings showed that overall 45% of the meals are too high in saturated (animal) and trans fat and 86% were too high in sodium.
Not surprisingly, kids’ menus include mostly foods such as burgers, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, french fries and soft drinks. Sodas are the most popular beverage offered to children. Subway is the only chain that does not offer soda as an option on kids’ meals.
Some healthier alternatives are available including grilled chicken, seafood, whole-grain wild rice, yogurt and fruit.
Among the kids’ meals that have fewer than 430 calories and weren’t too high in saturated and trans fats:
- Subway’s ham mini-sub, 1% milk box and apple slices, 405 calories.
- Subway’s roast beef (or turkey) sub with juice box and yogurt, 400 calories.
- Chili’s grilled chicken sandwich, apple juice and mandarin oranges, 338 calories
- Denny’s pancakes without meat with maple syrup, 373 calories; or macaroni and cheese with grapes, 413 calories. (The meals do not include beverages.)
- Arby’s popcorn chicken or junior roast beef sandwich, fruit cup and fruit juice, 422 calories.
Some major chain restaurants were not included in the study because they did not provide enough nutrition information to evaluate calories. Those chains included Applebee’s, TGIFriday’s, Outback Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Red Lobster and IHOP. Some places, such as Pizza Hut and Dunkin’ Donuts, don’t have kids’ menus and weren’t included in the report.
What You Can Do
