Preachable Facts

[RCCAtl]

A Few Words about poverty and abundance from Barbara Crafton

Manna from the sky is the exception. Usually, God uses what's already there. Episcopal Relief and Development's work in poor countries mirrors that divine economy: use what is already there. Make what already exists in a community able to do better what it already does. Turn to local leaders, who already know their people, and give them the tools they need to do what they do better. Strengthen a community's capacity to sustain itself with the relationships of bartering, buying and selling it already has, and a small amount of money will go a long, long way.

In Puno, Peru, for example, where 78% of the population lives in poverty, ERD partners with the Anglican diocese and the Episcopal Church Loan Fund in offering loans to establish small businesses — very small by our standards, twenty-five or thirty dollars being enough to get one off the ground. Almost always, the indigenous Queucha and Aymara borrowers pay back their loans very quickly, something American lenders encounter only in their dreams. Thus the money becomes available to be lent again, and remains in the local market economy.

So the jar never empties, and the jug never runs dry. Because the people themselves continue to fill them.

On The State of Health Care in Georgia

• In 2003, 45 million Americans went without health insurance for the entire year.
• @ 45 million people, it would take one minute for 5 people to lose their insurance in the U.S.
• In 2003, 1.4 million Georgians went without health insurance.
• 21 percent of African-Americans in Georgia are uninsured.
• African-Americans have a 30 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than whites, and die from diabetes at twice the rate of whites.
• Over 40 percent of Hispanics living in Georgia are uninsured compared with 11 percent of whites.
• 22 percent of the uninsured in Georgia are children under the age of 18, as compared to 19 percent nationwide.
• More than 70 percent of the uninsured in Georgia have at least one full-time worker at home.
• Over 190,000 children in Georgia are enrolled in the PeachCare for Kids program ( the health care program in Georgia for uninsured kids who don't qualify for Medicaid).
• Over 40,000 children were dropped from Peach Care this year due to changes in eligibility requirements.
• Over 300,000 children in Georgia are currently uninsured.
• Uninsured children are almost 5 times as likely as insured children to not have seen a physician for a preventive care visit in the past two years.
• Last year, Georgia's unemployment rate hovered around 4.1%.
• Job loss is the primary reason why adults become uninsured at some point during the year.

Poverty

• 1.3 billion people in the world have no clean water.
• 3 billion people have no sanitation.
• 2 billion people (about one-third of the world's population) have no electricity.
• 20 per cent of the world's population consumes 86 per cent of the world's goods.

Simple compelling resource:The Poverty Tour