Child abuse and neglect in Berrien County jumped 19 percent over the decade while more than half of Berrien K-12 children now qualify for free and reduced price lunches, the latest Kids Count in Michigan Data Book concludes.

Michigan’s long economic struggle is reflected in the new Kids Count findings. Children qualify for school-based meals if their family income is 185 percent of poverty or less. Studies confirm that families need income of about 200 percent of poverty – at least $44,226 for a family of four – to cover basic needs without assistance. Poverty also drives up neglect cases.

“The findings show that kids in Berrien County and across Michigan are still suffering the fallout from our long recession,” said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, the Kids Count in Michigan director at the Michigan League for Human Services. “Poverty in Michigan is as big a threat to our children today as polio was to a previous generation. Fortunately, we can do something about this. We know that public policy can improve children’s social and economic environment.”

This year’s report,  Health Matters, focuses on child health and the role the social and economic factors in children’s lives play in good health.

The annual Data Book is released by the Kids Count in Michigan project. It is a collaboration between the Michigan League for Human Services, which researches and writes the report, and Michigan’s Children, which works with advocates statewide to disseminate the findings. Both are nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organizations concerned about the well-being of children and their families. The report ranks counties on 16 indicators of child well-being (with No. 1 being the best), though data is not available to rank smaller counties on all 16.

County figures
Berrien County’s best ranking was 11th out of 39 counties for teen deaths with a rate of 47 deaths per 100,000 teens compared with a statewide rate of about 56. The county’s worst ranking was No. 70 for births to teens, ages 15 to 19, with a rate of about 48 births per 1,000 teens compared with a statewide rate of 33.

State figures
Statewide, the biggest improvements were in the area of education with fewer students considered not proficient in math and among adolescents with fewer births to teens, fewer teen deaths and fewer high school dropouts.

Michigan saw a small improvement in infant mortality from 2000 to 2009, although African American infants have triple the risk of mortality than that of white infants. There was also a 25 percent improvement in the rate of child deaths over the decade with 318 children (ages 1 to 14) dying in 2009, down from 471 in 2000.

Worsening trends included the rate of children confirmed as victims of abuse and neglect, which rose 34 percent statewide over the decade. In 2010, 32,500 Michigan children were confirmed victims with four out of every five suffering from neglect.

In 2010, almost half of K-12 public school students (46.5 percent) qualified for free or reduced price lunch, jumping from 36.2 percent in 2006. The percent of children living in poverty jumped from 14 percent to 23 percent between 2000 and 2009.

Even more startling is the rate of children living in extreme poverty – roughly less than $11,000 a year for a family of four – jumped from 5 percent of children to 11 percent. That means that more than one in every 10 kids in Michigan is living in extremely desperate circumstances, living at half the poverty level.

Consequences
Children growing up in poverty face lifelong consequences. They are less likely to graduate and more likely to suffer from heart disease, obesity and high blood pressure as adults.

“The impact of high unemployment and declining wages is leaving its mark on a generation of children,” said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, the Kids Count in Michigan director at the Michigan League for Human Services. “Unfortunately, policymakers have cut family supports aimed at blunting the impact of the economic downturn on kids.”

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THE Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR) says the cost of living in Zambia is still high, despite the inflation rate being stable in 2011. JCTR information officer Twaambo Kanene-Mwale says the Basic Needs Basket (BNB) analysis for 2011 shows that the cost of living remained consistently over K2.9 million for an average family of six.

Mrs Kanene-Mwale said this in a statement issued in Lusaka at the weekend. “When the inflation rate is stable, it is expected that the purchasing power will also remain stable. However, while 2011 was a good year at a macro-economic level, at a micro level the cost of living remained high and this may be exacerbated by the debt crisis with the Kwacha weakening and a decline in purchasing,” Mrs Kanene-Mwale said.

She said Zambia has experienced profound improvements in macro-economic performance in the last decade, having recently attained middle-income status. Mrs Kanene-Mwale said there has been consistent improvement in gross domestic product at six percent in 2011 and a drastic stability in the inflation rate from around 30 percent in 2000, to an average of 7.2 percent in 2011.

The minimum cost for an average family of six to meet basic needs was K2.9 million for the month of December and the JCTR December release projects the cost of food items at K818, 750 and the cost of essential non-food items at about K2 million for Lusaka residents. She said Zambians should begin to realise the benefits of macroeconomic improvements, especially in relation to inflation, with a commensurate reduction in the price of commodities. Mrs Kanene-Mwale said a stable inflation rate reduces the severity of the impact of economic recession, allowing the labour market to adjust to changes.

He said the Patriotic Front (PF) government should sustain the economic gains of the last decade and remain fully cognisant of the practical anxieties of global developments on the average Zambian. Mrs Kanene-Mwale said the cost of living in Zambia continues to be high with an estimated poverty rate of 60 percent and in December, the price of mealie meal and bread reduced nominally.

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A young girl named Heman, daughter of the late Ratan Kumar, has been training to become a beautician for the last one month, and now feels that she has learnt enough to start practicing. All the members of the family — her six sisters, two brothers and mother — work in different professions to provide the family with financial stability.

“I started training a month ago along with 30 other girls. In the beginning, we used to practice with a learning group on how to set hair styles and apply mehndi and make-up. But now we’ve convinced some of our female relatives to participate. Some are reluctant, and fear we may upset their natural hairstyle and face, while there are others who are keen to cooperate,” she explains.

Sharing her previous working experience, she says “before I started learning here, I used to stitch old clothes”. Young girls belonging to the congested and socially neglected area of Ghera Basti, which is located in Hyderabad city and is comprises some 450 households, probably never imagined that one day they would have access to a beauty and sewing coaching centre where they could learn skills to find alternative sources of income. After living in a deplorable atmosphere for generations, the youth – both male and female — have joined hands to try and create some kind of economic stability and prosperity in the area.

The men sell odd items in the streets of Karachi and Hyderabad, such as glass jars, plastic buckets and tubs, in exchange for old clothes and shoes. The women alter and redesign old clothes and shoes, and make them ready for resale.

The Sindh Agriculture Forest Workers Coordinating Organisation (SAWFCO), in collaboration with UN-Women, is responsible for setting up this vocational training centre. Their goal is to help strengthen the economic status of home-based boutiques and garment alteration workers in a non-formal arrangement.

Not only do these women go to the centre to procure different skills, they also attend training workshops for “home-based workforces” to build their confidence and awareness.

Before Heman reaches the centre every day, she helps family members alter and press old clothes that are then sold in the market. In reply to a query, she said quite confidently: “I would prefer to hunt for a suitable job in the local market so I can continue marketing my skills.”

She believes that all women, especially young girls, love being beautified; hence, she thinks there is substantial demand for such work in the city neighbourhoods.

Roshni, who is deaf and dumb, is lauded by many as being the most competent worker at the centre. Roshni’s teacher, Azeema, gave her high praise, saying that her interest in learning is evident in the amount of concentration she puts in her work.

Roshni has also learned a number of additional skills, such as embroidery and ornament-making, which uses to make products that she then sells in the local market. Her husband brings her lots of old clothes from Karachi, which she alters and then sells on the local market.

Beautician trainer Hassan Zareen told us that all the women at the centre are learning various skills such as bleaching, facials, threading, hair styling, make-up, mehndi design and facial cleansing.

Shabana Imtiaz, the leader of the SAWFCO team, says that there are 85 girls enrolled in the home-based working programme, 25 girls training to become beauticians, and another 60 who are learning stitching and embroidery. They have formed five groups comprising 17 girls each.

Imtiaz believes that they all the students have potential, but since they have been living in an uncertain atmosphere for such a long time, they are reluctant to share their issues with others. It is only after multiple training sessions that some of them begin opening up to outsiders.

The organisation had initially donated sewing machines and material, but a number of women are already involved in similar work in their homes and already have such machines for alteration of old clothes. But, they say, preparing new dresses needs more care and skill as compared to just making alterations.

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Now that snow and cold weather have finally arrived, we will again have public conversations about shelters, food banks, and general poverty. It seems that those conversations have been heard as a matter of course in B.C. during the past few years.

Here's what we still know about the province: the child poverty rate in B.C. has reached 12% again and is the highest in Canada for the eighth consecutive year; the overall poverty rate in B.C. is the highest in Canada with more than half a million people living in poverty in 2009; and single mothers, aboriginal people and people with disabilities have historically been some of the most susceptible to poverty, but are now accompanied by more and more other groups.

Here's what we know about Nanaimo: more than 5,000 residents used food banks in Nanaimo this Christmas; there were 695 shelter "stays" in Nanaimo just between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31; there are seven (of 16) census areas in Nanaimo where more than 10% of families have members living in poverty (two areas have more than 20%); and the majority of other residents struggling under the weight of poverty tend to fly under the public radar, but are suffering nonetheless and falling farther and farther behind.

Here's what we also know: Despite these staggering numbers over many years, B.C. is one of only three provinces in Canada that still does not have a comprehensive poverty reduction plan. You would think that there would be a province-wide political will to provide the poor with real opportunities to better their own lives with a charitable act of a civilized, caring society.

Failing that, however, you would hope that there would be a desire to help because of a realization that helping the poor actually helps the entire community. A recent, comprehensive study on poverty even speaks the language of our government and points out that helping the poor also makes good economic sense.

The study I'm referring to, The Cost of Poverty in B.C., was completed and presented to the CCPA in July by Iglika Ivanova, an economist and researcher. In short, Ivanova points out that the costs of ignoring rampant poverty are far greater than the costs of preventing it.

Just one part of the lengthy study reveals, for example, that poverty is largely accompanied by poor nutrition, poor or non-existent housing, little opportunity for dental care, vision care, prescription drugs, and so on.

The result? A disproportionately high use of other health services, such as acute care, costing about $1.2 billion annually. Another part of the study points out that "the biggest cost of poverty comes in the form of lost productivity and foregone earnings."

It points out that finding a way to increase household incomes to only $33,500 would inject $6.2 billion into the GDP in B.C., reducing the drain on employment insurance and other social support programs and help to boost local economies.

In other words, after revealing a wide variety of the costs that poverty inflicts either directly on provincial confers or indirectly through a variety of social consequences, the study shows that it makes good economic sense to finally build a plan to reduce poverty in our neighbourhoods.

It crunches the numbers and predicts an $8-$9 billion benefit to the provincial treasury and society in general, a twofold return on the cost of actually investing in a good plan.

The fact that the province did little to help the disadvantaged even during strong economic times is both telling and troubling. It suggests a blind adherence to an ideology that has little to do with fact-based policymaking, which is in the best interest of communities.

Hopefully this study is causing them to think in a different way. - Kim Slater is a retired Nanaimo educator and seniors' advocate. His next column will appear on Feb. 3.

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LAHORE – The Lahore High Court on Wednesday dismissed the petition of a widow seeking financial assistance under the Benazir Income Support Program. A deputy attorney general on behalf of federal government informed the court that the woman Jannat Firdos did not fulfil the criteria of the programme and also not fall in any category charted out by the programme for the assistance of poor women in the country.

After the government reply, Justice Mansoor Ali Shah dismissed the petition. Jannat Firdos Bibi had submitted that she along with her seven children living below the line of poverty and she had no money to meet the routine expenses due to no income sources. She had knocked every appropriate forum for financial aid but no one paid head on her problems, Ms Firdos said and requested to issue directions to authorities concerned for providing her financial assistance on monthly basis under the BISP.

Dr Mughees: The Lahore High Court on Wednesday ordered Dr Mughees Uddin Sheikh to file rejoinder on his petition challenging acting charge to Dr Mujahid Kamran as Vice Chancellor of the Punjab University. On Wednesday, the court was informed that Punjab chief minister had approved a summary for appointment of Dr Kamran as Vice Chancellor of PU. The government law officer added that it was a policy matter and could not be dragged into the court. He requested the court to dismiss the petition for not being maintainable.

At this, Justice Sheikh Ahmed Farooq asked the petitioner to file his rejoinder by February 2, the next date of hearing.Dr Sheikh, former director of Institute of Communication Studies, had filed the petition and then a civil miscellaneous application seeking restraining order against any stopgap arrangement to keep Dr Mujahid glued to the slot of VC even after his retirement.

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NEWLY released figures have revealed that one in every six children in Crawley is "living in poverty". There are also concerns that the gap between the rich and poor in the town is getting wider. A report by the Campaign to End Child Poverty into the issue at a local level has highlighted that some families are struggling to afford basics such as school uniforms, meals and trips.

Town wide, 17 per cent of children are said to be living below the poverty line. Broadfield South has more youngsters (29 per cent) living in poverty than any other ward. At the opposite end of the scale, just six per cent of children in Maidenbower are affected.

Broadfield South councillor Alan Quirk acknowledges child poverty is a significant problem in the ward but is positive about the future. He said: "It is scary that families are living through this and I think we have to work on building the aspirations of the people who live in Broadfield.

"We find that many families move into the neighbourhood and then out once they can afford to. It is not a place where people appear to come to for the long term and this then creates a cycle of people on lower incomes living in the area."Mr Quirk believes struggling parents must not be ashamed to ask for help.

He said: "We want to see these children and families go on to prosper but they have to want to get themselves out of the mire. "We have services available here, such as the vibrant community centre, the churches, the schools which are very proactive and Talk Broadfield which is there for people to let us know of any problems."

Brian Quinn, a councillor for Broadfield North, where 25 per cent of children are living in poverty, agrees that Broadfield is the most deprived of Crawley's neighbourhoods.
 
"We have a lot of single parent families who are obviously struggling," he said. "In the 1970s and 80s it was a very good neighbourhood and on the up but in recent times there has been a marked decline.

"Services are being cut and the families here are being hit the hardest. "My worry is that if this continues the gap between the rich and poor will continue to widen. "If you look at Crawley there is a huge gap between Pound Hill and Maidenbower to Broadfield. "There is a frightening statistic that you could die seven years earlier if you live in Broadfield compared to other areas of the town."

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ISLAMABAD: Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) Chairperson Farzana Raja on Monday said that poverty is a global phenomenon, and no country could achieve sustainable development without addressing this problem.

Raja was talking to a delegation of ex-Finnish parliamentarians, comprising Vappu Taipale and Ilkka Taipale, experts from social and health sector. She said the government, despite various economic challenges, had decided not to ignore the needs of the poor and downtrodden segments of society, as this approach was imperative for the overall progress and development of the country.

She informed the delegation that the women empowerment had always been the top priority for Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and its leadership. Therefore, BISP was advancing the same vision through its various initiatives that were basically designed to benefit the poor, she added. Raja said that besides reaching out to downtrodden segments of society across Pakistan, the BISP had introduced them with the state of the art technology.

The BISP chairperson said the government was fighting against terrorism as well as poverty simultaneously. The BISP was a transparent and objective programme designed to serve the people indiscriminately, she added. She informed the delegation that a poverty survey was conducted across the country to provide every deserving family a fair opportunity to get registered with BISP. The poverty survey, towards its final stages, was underway in FATA which was the region worst effected by terrorism, she informed the delegation. The Finnish delegation applauded the steps taken by BISP for the poor and termed the scale of poverty survey unprecedented and highly admirable.

Earlier, Provincial Minister for Finance Murad Ali Shah, along with Provincial secretary finance, met Farzana Raja and discussed various issues pertaining to BISP’s beneficiary families from Sindh, Waseela-e-Haq Scheme and disbursement of financial assistance. Murad Ali Shah, on the occasion, assured BISP chairperson of full cooperation of Sindh government, particularly in effective disbursement of financial assistance to beneficiary families.

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School cafeterias could hold the winning ingredients in the struggle to break down the cycle of inter-generationally transmitted poverty, a research report conducted last year by Bogaziçi University’s Social Policy Forum suggested.

According to the report entitled, “Is it possible to provide free lunch at primary public schools?” global statistics paint a grim picture of the situation for children in Turkey living beneath the breadline. One in every four children in Turkey lives in poverty and despite the fact that Turkey has the 16th largest economy in the world, the country ranks bottom amongst the 34 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The institutionalization of free lunch programs in countries worldwide has become an increasing phenomenon over the course of the past decade. From community driven grassroots schemes in rural villages in Mali and legislative protection of school feeding programs in India, the provision of free meals to children who need them has become increasingly recognized as an effective social policy tool for supporting vulnerable and poor populations.

Turkey not doing enough for children
Speaking in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman, project co-researcher Dr. Aysen Candas from Bogaziçi University’s Department of Political Science and International Relations, said that such figures indicate that Turkey is not doing enough to address its childrens’ and accordingly, its own future. “Poverty as a form of injustice manifests itself as destiny only when its outcomes are translated into other areas where ‘money’ should be irrelevant, such as access to education and health,” she said.

Following the global food, fuel and financial crises of the past decade, such programs, Candas explained, have increasingly been used as social protection mechanisms due to their potential for both short and long term benefits for the overall welfare and wellbeing of societies that implement them. Over 100 countries are currently implementing free lunch programs at their primary public schools, according to Candas.

The benefits of such programs, the report outlines, span far beyond the supplementation of diet and nutrition levels, playing a pivotal role in increasing students’ cognitive capacities and concentration levels, encouraging healthy eating habits, preventing long term chronic illnesses, improving students’ academic performances, motivating poor parents to keep their children in school longer, increasing female students’ school attendance, cutting down child labor and contributing to an overall reduction in primary school drop-out levels.

Free food could keep Turkish kids in school
The report points to the sobering results of a study completed by a number of Turkish humanitarian organizations between 1999-2005 indicating that during this period 436,614 children progressed straight into the world of work without having first completed their primary school education.

A report from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) in 2007 relates that 20% of children who had dropped out of primary school at the time had been forced to do so because their family could not meet the financial costs.

Further, a World Health Organization (WHO) report found in 2008 that Turkey ranked highest in the number of complaints such as headaches, stomach aches, tiredness and broken sleep patterns in children aged 11-15. These are a handful of examples, Candas suggested, which indicate that the successes that such programs have achieved elsewhere could be matched in Turkey.

The report “Rethinking School Feeding,” published by the World Bank in 2009, emphasizes the need for a systematic and policy-driven approach to school feeding by both governments and development partners.

The study highlighted that such programs are relatively easy to scale up in a crisis and can provide a benefit per household of more than 10 percent of household expenditures.

“We are trying to encourage new conceptual thinking that considers the relationship between various types of inequalities and recognizes that these are interconnected, as opposed to separate, issues,” Çandas said. Following an in-depth period of field research in Istanbul and examination of the methods of implementation, sustainability, expenses and benefits of free lunch programs around the world today, the research team at Bogaziçi are proposing the launch of a pilot program in 20 primary schools in Istanbul. Locations of the schools include the districts of Sultangazi, Esenyurt, Bahçelievler and Gaziosmanpasa.

‘Free Lunch Isn’t Cool’
As studies such as that conducted at Bogaziçi seek to arouse public awareness about the fundamental role that school meals could play in tackling inequality in Turkey, Çandas and her research colleagues are aware of the uphill battle ahead. Aside from the challenge of implementation, support and reaching the right people, there are also issues of logistics, jealousies and stigma that may arise if only some children are fed.

An article in the New York Times in 2008 entitled “Free Lunch Isn’t Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry,” reported that many children who are in need of food are too embarrassed to be seen receiving free meals, so continue to go hungry.

Similarly, the 2008 Child Poverty Action Group report highlighted that 20 per cent of children entitled to free school meals do not access the service due to stigma. Yet, there are ways around this problem: The 2009 report by the World Bank notes that this problem can and should be solved by merging lunch lines and having all pupils served and seated together.

Inspiration from East to West
Perhaps the most telling sign of the value of free lunch programs are the benefits that have been noted in developed and less developed countries alike. The New York Times reported in November that in Tennessee the number of students receiving subsidized meals has grown by 37 percent since 2007 and research conducted in the UK in 2008 by the Child Poverty Action Group indicated that school dinners are the only hot meal received by one in four children in the UK.

Bogaziçi’s report points to a 2009 study, “International Approaches to School Feeding” by the Global Child Nutrition Foundation, which drew together experiences from Mali, Chile and India to highlight how different societies have succeeded in making a number of differences in this area.

In India, the constitutional right to food was recognized in the Supreme Court in 2001, whereby the government is obliged to provide a cooked, midday meal to all students in government-assisted schools.

Chile, where the government has operated a school feeding program for over forty years, is often lauded as one of the best examples in the world of government commitment to school feeding, whilst food-assisted-education programs in Mali have placed particular impetus on the theme of developing community commitment to school feeding.

“If you want to sit in the shade of a tree tomorrow, you have to water it today,” a Malian mother told researchers, quoting an old proverb.

As the implementation of such a program edges closer to reality, Candas is hopeful that such a move would represent baby steps in the right direction in the eradication of child poverty. “Child poverty breeds more poverty at the societal level,” Çandas said, “so this is not a struggle about individual rights. It is our responsibility to support the future of society and we have to remember that.”

“Is it possible to provide free lunch at primary public schools?” was conducted by Dr Aysen Candas and Basak Ekim Akkan, with the research support of Sevda Günseli and Mehmet Baki Deniz.

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She argued that women may be more impoverished due to societal biases and incomprehensive governmental definitions of what constitutes “productive work”. Societal biases include giving last portions to sons since they need the energy for school work and, ultimately, breadwinning.

Abdullah criticised the government for ignoring women’s contributions to the Gross Domestic Product, saying that cotton, Pakistan’s largest cash crop, is picked entirely by women but the government records make no such mention.

“Women face a triple burden,” Abdullah argued. The first is the domestic work they do free of charge, which if quantified comes out in billions of dollars. The second involves the numerous years lost in childbearing and rearing which leads to a loss in income. Lastly, productive work such as picking crops goes unaccounted for.

Using extensive research statistics to validate her point, Abdullah stated that women are disproportionately impacted by the WTO, globalisation, liberalisation and deregulation. She enumerated the causes as being the “the lack of fledgling social protection mechanisms and removal of agriculture subsidies”.

Women have traditionally been seen as the “seed keepers”. However, with multinational corporations and their monopoly on seeds, women are no longer able to transfer the extensive knowledge reserves on agriculture to subsequent generations, Abdullah said.

The result is a foregone conclusion: a reduction in food security and kitchen gardens. These acts are seen by Abdullah as “criminal neglect by the agriculture industry”, especially with the knowledge that it is the backbone of the nation’s economy.

Abdullah also questioned the Benazir Income Support Programme’s “Poverty Reduction and Alleviation Programme” that gives Rs1,000 per month to eligible candidates. “It fosters dependence, poverty, beggary and mostly serves as a vehicle to secure votes for the next elections.”

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Forseeing a bleak future for the country's children, an independent report said poverty was leading to malnutrition, stunted growth and high school dropout rates. The 'Impact of Growth on Childhood Poverty in Andhra Pradesh' was conducted by NGO-Young Lives from 2002 and has collected data on 2,011 children aged between six to 18 months and 1,008 children aged between seven-and-half to eight-and-half years. Findings from its third round of data collection were released on Wednesday.

According to the study, despite falling poverty, considerable economic growth and the development of significant policies, two-fifths of the world's malnourished children live in India. "A third of children surveyed are stunted, which has serious long-term implications for health, psychosocial well-being and educational achievement," said Renu Singh, Young Lives director.

The study found that while households were aware of social protection schemes like MNREGS and Rajiv Arogyasri (health insurance) cards, these welfare programs failed to provide a sufficient buffer against spiraling food prices.

The study found that 70% of the households accessed NREGS in 2009, but only 13% accessed the full 100 days' employment. Alongside this, 83% of the households (88% of the rural and 67% of the urban) have Rajiv Arogyasri cards but less than 4% of the families utilized them. ``This shows that out-of-pocket expenditure on health is high and so is one of the reasons that families are unable to get out of the debt trap,'' the research found.

"Research also shows that despite higher enrolment, drop-out and school quality remain critical issues," she added. For instance, while average enrollment had increased by age 15 years only 75% children remained in school,'' Singh said.

"Improving the impact of education for children, however, requires improving the quality of schools as well as retaining children in school, and ensuring that other pressures - including poverty - do not undermine children's ability to learn," said Singh.

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