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Shearer: Poverty 'no issue to play politics over'

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New Labour leader David Shearer asked National to reconsider its decision to exclude Labour from the poverty committee it will set up under the confidence and supply agreement with the Maori Party. He made his call in his first major speech in Parliament since being elected last week.

He said the other day a woman came into his office - she was educated and motivated, wanting to work. But for a variety of reasons, she had fallen on tough times. "She came into my office hungry. Hungry. She was forced to swallow her dignity to visit her MP to ask for help.

Everyone else had turned her down - or couldn't help in time. "This is not what anyone expects in NZ. "Mr Shearer said the Maori Party had been right to force poverty into the Government's line of sight. "And today I repeat my invitation to the Government: Make that committee a committee of this House.

"The Prime Minister should know this is not an issue to play politics over."Mr Shearer, a former humanitarian worker for the United Nations said he had and there as no excuse for poverty in New Zealand. "So this is a sincere offer and I hope the Government sees fit to revisit its position. "Just as Labour will embrace good ideas when we see them, I urge the Government to do the same.

"It's what New Zealanders want from us. "Mr Shearer said that in the wake of the election, Labour was ready to turn the page. "Labour Opposition put our ideas in front of the people of New Zealand, and our side didn't win.

"And therefore Labour will be different in these coming three years. "We will turn a page."Mr Shearer spent a large part of his speech talking about economic leadership.

He said Labour would put "growing the pie for all New Zealanders" at the front of its agenda. "We cannot be content dividing an ever shrinking pie. It means growing the nation's wealth."New Zealand had to build an economy that produced good jobs and decent incomes, that generated wealth and opportunity, without sacrificing natural assets, lifestyles or communities.

He himself has kept the spokesmanship of science and innovation. He said he had given economic development, and small business, and regional development, and skills and training, and also environment and education to his senior team, all on the front bench.

While agriculture and primary industries were the backbone of the economy, the dairy industry could not be multiplied to catch Australia's economy. The Government's strategy of meeting the growing demand from Asia for protein was more a hope than a strategy.

"It's a hope that we won't have to change so that we can keep doing more or less the same thing we've done since the 1960s," Mr Shearer said. He wanted to unleash New Zealand's innovation and see New Zealand create global businesses and he referred to specific example.

"A couple of years ago, I bumped into Sean Simpson a guy who had founded a company called Lanzatech. "It had developed some clever technology to turn waste gas from steel mill smoke stacks into liquid fuel.

"The potential is huge. "If China converted just half of its steel mills to use Mr Simpson's technology, it would generate 20 per cent of their liquid fuel needs. "That's worth billions and it's a New Zealand company.""The potential is amongst us. We just don't recognize it - unlike other countries."

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Poverty reduction strategy discussed

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A WORKSHOP on ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy’ was held here in a local hotel by the United Nations Development Programme’s project Poverty Reduction Strategy Monitoring Punjab which was attended by planning officials, development practitioners and representatives of Civil Society.

Prominent among those who attended the workshop were Ms Shaheen Attique ur Rehman, chairperson of Bunyad, Abdul Qudus, director general of the Punjab Economic Research Institute, Shamim Rafique, director general of the Punjab Bureau of Statistics, DCOs, chiefs of section of P&D and other senior officials of social protection sectors.

The workshop was inaugurated by Punjab Chief Economist Arif Anwar Baloch, who, in his address, said that the government was making all-out efforts to alleviate poverty in the province. Under the guidance of the Punjab chief minister, many pro-poor initiatives had been taken which were ameliorating the lot of the poor people.

Renowned poverty economist Haroon Jamal from SPDC, Karachi, discussed various dimensions of poverty. It was agreed that at micro level of poverty reduction, development of human capital, universal education, vocational training, population control, safety nets, social insurance in health and employment in pro-poor sectors were to be ensured.

At macro level of poverty reduction mechanism, pro-poor economic growth is to be accelerated so that employment opportunities are generated. It was the consensus view of the participants that direct taxation was more beneficial for pro-poor efforts as indirect taxation was trickling down the burden on consumers. Development expenditure, domestic and foreign investment, land reforms, agriculture diversification and non-farm employment were identified as recipes of poverty reduction.

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Poverty of children demands attention

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Odds are he’d be a poor person. Poverty is now epidemic among America’s children, and getting worse. Yet none of the presidential candidates, and neither the Republican majority in the House nor the Democrats in the Senate and White House is engaging the issue in any meaningful way. As Christmas sermons and carols appeal for love and compassion, there is an open window on poverty thanks to census data released last month.

The bottom of the poverty barrel is home to 43.6 percent of the nation’s children, whom the census reports are the most likely of any age group in  America to live in the “poor or low-income” category. When the Census Bureau factored in healthcare and other child-rearing costs, it calculated that 56.7 percent of all U.S. children live near poverty.
To repeat, by any measure, about half of America’s children live in poverty or painfully close to poverty. This is a radical fact that speaks to growing economic inequality. It amounts to a scary warning of possible social unrest.

The official poverty level for all Americans is 15 percent; 22 percent for children, the highest since 1993. But according to an analysis by  The Associated Press, when people living near the poverty line — defined as people earning less than $22,278 annually for an individual and $44,628 for a family of four — are included, 48 percent of Americans currently live in or near poverty.

The Census Bureau reports that 29 percent of white children are considered in or near poverty, along with 64 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children. There is a link between poverty and a rising number of out-of-wedlock babies born every year, with 24 percent, 38 percent and 42 percent of white, black and Hispanic woman-headed families, respectively, living in poverty. These harsh facts are an ugly consequence of American family breakdown and political inertia in a time of congressional fights for political advantage over budgets and tax breaks.

Given the Republican intransigence to countenance higher taxes for people who earn more than $1 million annually, last week’s congressional debate on the payroll-tax cut turned into a discussion about cutting spending to pay for the tax break. The cuts under consideration included limits on unemployment benefits, reducing entitlement spending on poverty programs and freezing federal pay.

“If Congress and the states make further cuts we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan professor who studies poverty programs, told The AP.

As if on cue, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported last week that in a survey of 29 cities they found a rise in demand for food stamps and the WIC program, which gives aid to low-income women who are pregnant or breastfeeding and/or have children younger than 5.

The only American politician talking about children and poverty this Christmas is former  Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga). In a speech at Harvard earlier this month, Gingrich decried child labor laws as “truly stupid” because they restrict jobs for kids under the age of 16. He suggested that one way for children to escape poverty might be to make them janitors in their public schools.

Gingrich argued: “I will tell you personally, I believe the kids could mop the floor and clean out the bathroom and get paid for it and it would be OK.”In the face of criticism, Gingrich doubled down on his idea: “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works.”

I wrote a book, “Enough,” calling for civil rights leaders to deliver a positive, can-do message about the power of taking personal responsibility to the black community. But Gingrich is wrong to suggest laziness and poor values are the whole problem for low-income children of any color.

The number of families in which someone has a job and yet the family remains in or near poverty has gone up for the last three years to 31 percent of the nation. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 83 percent of all poor children live in households where at least one adult works. Very often, their parents are working two or three jobs just to pay the rent and put food on the table. Often low-wage jobs offer little or no benefits.

It has long been true that a child with a high school diploma and a job who marries before having children of his or her own is almost certain to avoid poverty. But poor schools and a scarcity of jobs now combine to depress the odds, making the poor feel disconnected from people with education and opportunity, their government and their country.

It has long been said that change in politics is easy to talk about but difficult to bring about. Changing political indifference to poverty this Christmas is at the heart of America’s effort to love the child in us all — Baby Jesus.

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The poverty debate

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While a healthy debate has been going on for a long time on the methodology used to assess the size of the poor population, including on the relevance of a nutrition-based approach (as opposed to more multi-dimensional criteria) and on the actual demarcation of the poverty line, of recent the discourse has taken a somewhat less-pleasant and non-academic turn.

The controversy revolves around the last official headcount poverty ratio estimate available, for the year 2007-08. Showing a dramatic decline to 17.2 per cent, from a peak of 35 per cent less than a decade earlier, the estimate produced in the Musharraf-era has been dogged by the same credibility issues that have clouded the reliability of much of the economic data pertaining to that period. As such, apart from the Planning Commission, leading poverty specialists in the country (such as Dr Akmal Hussain and Dr Sohail Jahangir Malik), have dismissed the poverty estimate as flawed and misleading.

This criticism has been rejected by the person responsible for overseeing much of the economic data for the Musharraf
period, the economic adviser between 1998 and 2008, Dr Ashfaque Hasan Khan. Dr Khan believes that since the World Bank has ‘validated’ the poverty estimate, it should be accepted. Ironically, Dr Khan as economic adviser had himself rejected the World Bank’s poverty assessment in the early 2000s — going to the extent of accusing the World Bank’s lead specialist on poverty at the time, Tara Vishwanath (of Indian-origin), of deliberately acting against Pakistan’s interests by reporting a higher poverty estimate under Gen Musharraf!

Unfortunate ironies apart, what are the specific reservations regarding the poverty estimate of 2007-08. These can be summarised as:

— No specific drivers of such a large purported poverty reduction are readily recognisable. While GDP growth was indeed reported to be very high for a three-year period (fiscal years 2004, 2005 and 2007), it is unprecedented for such a large poverty reduction to occur over such a small period — quite apart from the serious questions raised about the quality of the growth statistics.

— Doubts have also been raised for several other good reasons. Wage employment rose nominally during the period in question, given the capital-intensity of the growth (forcing the government to add ‘unpaid family help’ to the labour data in order to boost employment figures). In addition, real wages remained static (and quite possibly declined). In sum, it is difficult to square the data with the poverty estimate.

— In fact, at around the same time, an inter-agency assessment of the United Nations estimated that at least 77 million Pakistanis were food insecure (roughly 48 per cent of the population). Given that the assessment methodology used approximated the same core criterion used in the official poverty estimate, such a large divergence between the two is hard to explain.

In the light of such weak foundations, the halving of poverty in Pakistan would be unprecedented. However, doubts aside, the reduction could conceivably still be possible given the high concentration or ‘bunching’ of the population around the poverty line.

A period of ‘bubble’ growth in the economy could result in a large movement of people above or below the poverty line. If this indeed was the case, however, then it raises serious questions about not only the longevity and sustainability of the claimed poverty reduction in the country, but more importantly, about the desirability of the economic policies pursued that produced such transient gains.

The debate on poverty is extremely important — and has been surprisingly completely missing from the policy discussion for the past four years under a supposedly ‘awam dost’ government. Without placing poverty reduction and alleviation at the core of the country’s economic vision and any government’s economic programme, an unacceptably large number of Pakistanis will continue to fall through the cracks.

Policy drift on this count has been exacerbated by the ‘freshwater’ thinking of the Chicago-trained deputy chairman Planning Commission, who believes that unfettered markets and properly incentivised private economic agents are all that are required for an economic revolution (and ‘no government’, of course!).

Dr Nadeem ul Haq is in good company. This thinking is not new to Pakistan, where elitist policymakers since Independence have been growth-centric to the point where achieving high rates of GDP growth has been an end in itself. As a result, without addressing the weak and skewed institutional foundations of sustainable and inclusive growth, growth has been episodic with volatile boom-and-bust cycles, while largely favouring the ‘middle classes’ — leaving well over half the population untouched (actually, worse off in relative terms).

(Several years ago, when ‘India Shining’ was a hot political slogan, respected columnist and editor M.J. Akbar summed up the iniquitous nature of India’s economic boom with a heading for his column ‘India’s 9% growth for the 9%’). By and large, the narrow base or ‘capture’ of the benefits of growth has not been too worrying to our policymakers — much like the ultra-hawk general in the classic Stanley Kubrik film Dr Strangelove, who believed that 20 to 30 million Americans killed in a nuclear
exchange with the Soviet Union would be ‘perfectly acceptable’!

The only exception to this ingrained policy apathy was, not surprisingly, the period under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Statist, interventionist and welfare-driven policies were pursued. For all its fatal flaws, ZAB’s philosophy and economic vision delivered arguably not only amongst the biggest social welfare gains the country has seen, but has also managed to sustain his party through years of lacklustre performance in government subsequently.

The debate about the poverty estimate goes well beyond a mere statistic, and touches upon the fundamental nature of the social contract of the state with its people. The writer is a former economic adviser to government, and currently heads a macroeconomic consultancy based in Islamabad.

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Child poverty will soar under Tories, adviser to David Cameron warns

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CHILD poverty is to rise “for many years to come” under David Cameron, one of his advisers warned yesterday. Former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn urged ministers to "come clean and make clear" that the Government will not meet its goal of eradicating it by 2020.

But he warned all political parties they had a duty to either "put up or shut up" over the target in the light of research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing it would take £19 billion to make it "in any way achievable".

In a speech to The Children's Society today Mr Milburn, who was appointed the independent reviewer on social mobility and child poverty by the Coalition, said: "Progress on child poverty is stalling. "Worse than that, it has almost certainly started to reverse.

"Child poverty is set to rise and, if things go on as they are, it is likely to go on rising for many years to come. "The child poverty targets that Labour first set and the Coalition have since backed will simply not be met. "Child poverty strangles progress. It stunts potential. It stifles talent."

Mr Milburn, who left Parliament last year, said there were 1.4 million children living in absolute poverty but 2.6 million youngsters are living below the relative poverty line - set at 60% of median household incomes.

He called on ministers to "end the confusion in Government" caused by separately tackling child poverty, increasing social mobility and beating social injustice, warning there was a "danger here of too much resulting in too little".

He warned that while the public was "overwhelmingly sympathetic" to ending child poverty, tolerance for the poorest had "fallen dramatically". But it was "inconceivable" that poverty or disadvantage could be overcome "without the State playing its part", he added.

That help must focus on education, housing, training and childcare. He also urged Government to help create jobs and put in place the right incentives to get people off benefits and into work, adding the new Universal Credit, if implemented in the right way, "could be a major step forward in that regard".

But he added: "People have a responsibility to help themselves. At the simplest level it is parents who bring up children, not governments."Mr Milburn urged ministers to end the "mealy-mouthed approach" to investing in early years services, comparing the amount the UK spends on childcare, around 0.5% of GDP, to the 2% spent in Sweden and Denmark.

And he called for an end to the "all-or-nothing approach to tackling poverty". "If everything is a priority, then nothing is. The priority in my view for these next few years has to be children aged under five."Mr Milburn, who will publish a report in spring next year, claimed the debate around tackling child poverty was consumed "in a fog of fantasy and fallacy, of confusion and complexity".

He said: "The fantasy is that the aim of eradicating child poverty by 2020, set by Labour and adopted by the Coalition, will somehow still be realised.

"The confusion is that the current approach to tackling poverty and speeding mobility is mired between policy agendas - of income distribution and opportunity creation - that have been made to sound like enemies when they are actually friends.

"Many can see what is happening - but no one seems prepared to reveal that the Emperor has no clothes. So long as that remains the case we will not have a firm foundation for making progress in what are inauspicious times for attempting to do so."

Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, said: "Save the Children backs Mr Milburn's stark warning this morning of the worsening situation of child poverty in the UK. "The poorest are bearing the brunt of a stalling economy, and of cuts in child and other benefits.

"But instead of urging the Government to 'come clean' that its 2020 target to eradicate child poverty is unachievable, Mr Milburn should be insisting that more is done to meet this goal - something which all the main political parties agree on.

"We cannot write off the future prospects of a generation of poorest children, no matter how tough the economic downturn. We know there are ways in which they can be helped, including investing in affordable childcare, and helping the poorest families back to work. These must be an urgent priority for the Government."

Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said: "Alan Milburn is absolutely right that we should not be narrowing our child poverty strategy to just early years investment and must also tackle low income.

"We need a broader strategy than we have seen from government that covers childcare, job creation, skills, adequate benefits and housing. "Now that the Government's analysis shows the poorest are paying the most for deficit reduction, we need them to urgently look again at making sure the burden is shared more fairly.

"Given where the economic crisis originated, hard-pressed families will have a hard time understanding why their security now seems to be such a low priority. "The Prime Minister should restate his commitment to making British poverty history and adopt Alan Milburn's call for the Government's top priority to be preventing child poverty rising."

Anne Marie Carrie, Barnardo's chief executive, said: "The scandal of child poverty in this country will only be tackled with a strategy that focuses both on improving the income and the access to services that the poorest families have.

"Barnardo's knows that intervention early on is proven to improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children and we welcome Alan Milburn's challenge to the Government to make early years services a priority.

"However, early intervention should apply to all children, not just the youngest - as poverty affects two in five 16 and 17-year-olds who are currently out of work and in desperate need of support."

Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, said: "4Children agrees with Alan Milburn that long term investment in life chances and moves to boost family income should not be seen as mutually exclusive and we welcome his reminder to the Government that both these factors are vital to reducing child poverty and increasing social mobility in the long term.

"It is right and prudent to focus on achievable long term goals such as increasing life chances through early intervention, good early years provision and affordable child care, but these should buoy rather than dent our ambitions to reduce the levels of poverty experienced by millions of children every day.

"Spending on longer term outcomes should not be a smokescreen for forgetting that children are living in poverty today - if we allow this to happen we are looking at a lost generation of children whose life chances are simply going to be forgotten."

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said: "The IFS, the Office for Budget Responsibility, and now Alan Milburn, who was personally chosen by David Cameron to give impartial advice, have all confirmed that this Government is undoing a decade of progress on child poverty.

"Yet at the Autumn Statement, we saw the Government choose not to enact a fair tax on bankers' bonuses but to squeeze working families further with a freeze on tax credits. "The Government should listen to its own adviser. They need to act on child poverty fast, before they do irreparable damage to a generation."The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the 2020 target was set out "in an Act of Parliament".

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Measuring poverty – and making it worse with welfare cuts

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cIn your plea for public understanding about the inadequacy of unemployment benefits (Editorial, 8 December), it is wrong to call Seebohm Rowntree's "primary" poverty budget in support of a more critical approach to those forced to live on low incomes. Rowntree's research at the end of the 19th century identified poor people as all those living in "obvious want and squalor". He firmly maintained that the non-poor classes shouldn't criticise if they didn't understand the difficulties of living on too low an income, and he recognised that poor people "crave for relaxation and recreation just as the rest of us do". The point of the "primary" poverty measure was not to separate essential from superfluous expenditure; on the contrary Rowntree aimed to show affluent people who assume all poverty is caused by drink and improvidence that they are wrong.

"Secondary" poverty was the condition in which poor people lived, with enough money for merely physical subsistence but not enough for, as Rowntree put it, "other expenditure, either useful or wasteful". He emphasised that no one could actually live a human social life at the primary poverty level (even though many workers earned less), but it has been wrongly adopted by those who refuse to hear the truth about how much income people need to live decently. What that is today is shown by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's minimum income standards research, more intensively examining the general population's views on the minimum acceptable level of living for everyone than the BSA can do. The government should act on it and ensure that the poorest, especially children, are protected – as it claimed it would do. Benefit cuts make matters much worse.

•?Tackling the scandal of exorbitant interest rate charges by payday and doorstep lenders is long overdue (Tougher rules considered for payday loan companies, 8 December). But while government considers controls on lenders, its actions elsewhere will escalate the need for people to borrow from such companies. The welfare reform bill will abolish the social fund – the state's only statutory safety net for destitute people – and transfer these funds to local authorities to administer as they wish, completely unregulated and entirely discretionarily in the shape of "local welfare assistance".

Some councils will offer payment in kind such as vouchers for food banks (not a lot of help if the electricity meter needs topping up), and already three-quarters of people who apply to the social fund are refused. With the tightening of eligibility and extension of sanctions as a result of the bill's other proposals, there will be increased destitution. Councils seem unaware of the nature of the toxic waste being offloaded on to them in the name of localism, or have been deluded by being offered a bit more cash. It's not too late for them to challenge this abandonment of responsibility by the state.

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Nationwide poverty survey of BISP wins int’l praise

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The step of conducting nationwide first ever poverty survey in the history of Pakistan has won the international praise for following best international practices, maintaining transparency and conducting the entire process in highly efficient manner.

It has been learnt that various international organizations contributing in social safety programme world-over including the World Bank has appreciated BISP for the successful process of conducting nationwide door to door poverty survey.

It may be recalled here that in the 1st phase of the programme, all parliamentarians were taken on board irrespective of their political affiliations. Similarly, in the 2nd phase, on the launching of the nationwide poverty survey, letters were sent to all parliamentarians from all parties for their cooperation and to facilitate the survey teams.

The objective of this exercise was to make sure that authentic information about every household across Pakistan is collected. The global organizations working in the social sector have particularly praised the endeavor of BISP for making outreach to far flung areas of Pakistan to identify poor population.

The survey was launched in October 2010 in all districts of the country, including AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan to provide equal opportunity to every Pakistani who holds a Computerized National Identify Card (CNIC) to get registered with BISP regardless of caste, creed and religion. So far, almost 98% of the households in the country have been surveyed while survey work in FATA has also been launched.

The new system of targeting aims at a much higher degree of objectivity, using international best practices, to minimize inclusion and exclusion errors. The use of GPS (global positioning system) devices has also been made mandatory in this phase to uphold the dignity of households by conducting the survey at their doorsteps.

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Citizens take part in poverty simulation

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More than 75 people from Leadership Amarillo and Canyon and Leadership Perryton participated in a unique poverty simulation at the Wesley Community Center Thursday afternoon. The idea behind the poverty simulation is to help people better understand the realities of poverty stricken people and what they go through every day to survive.

The participants essentially role-played the lives of low-income families. They had the stressful task of providing basic necessities and shelter on a limited budget during four 15-minute weeks.

"There are certain things built in, such as being turned away for services or maybe being evicted from their home or some people may lose their social security cards or identities along the way," said Leesa Wood Calvi. "Lots of times there's a shortage in workers in these departments and people just have to stand in line a long time to get service and if they're in a line for a couple of hours that means they can't be working."

The simulation also gave all these people the chance to look at poverty from all kinds of angles. "There are certain things built in such as being turned away for services or maybe being evicted from their home or some people may lose their social security cards or identities along the way."Participants saw what it was like to have no transportation and not enough money to buy a bus ticket.

"We don't have a car that works, so the boyfriend has to take public transportation to work. There's not enough money with public assistance to meet all of the needs we have, so having to learn to stretch all of that throughout the month," said Simulation Participant, Terry Estes.

Estes says sometimes we forget how hard it can be for those who have had obstacles thrown at them from all directions. "It's hard realizing there are people that have such a difficulty making it through their everyday lives and this is really being able to see what they go through, it just kind of gives you a taste for what it is."

In addition to the simulation, Leadership Perryton toured the High Plains Food Bank, and Leadership Amarillo and Canyon toured the Guyon Saunders Resource Center.

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Imagine poverty

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In her book, “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain,” art educator Dr. Elizabeth Edwards explains the importance of imagination in the successful performance of odd tasks like shooting the ball into the basket or hitting the target with a long bow. Imagine the ball going into the hoop. But not just that. Imagine its trajectory going there. The advice is also a technique for shooting the arrow. Things never travel in a straight line. There is a necessary curve. And it is this curve that the brain must account for before the target may be successfully hit. And if one takes this as a metaphor for all human acts, then Edwards was really also saying, you’ll need a bit of imagination to achieve anything at all.

And so it is with the country’s poverty. People already know how bad it is. We do not need the Catholic bishops to explain that to us. And they are right to say the current government has done nothing fundamental by way of solving the problem. Certainly government should do more. But what?

Is the incarceration of GMA a contribution to solving the problem of poverty? Only if it becomes a deterrent to institutional corruption. It helps that the current president has no reputation for corruption. But one cannot help but wonder if corruption is really the reason we have so many who are poor. It is one of the reasons but not all there is to it, and one has cause to worry as one reviews what has transpired in  recent events. If they share anything in common, it is that big names surface every time: Ongpin, Tan, Cojuangco, Arroyo, Corona, etc. At day’s end, the ordinary man cannot help but think, these are problems of the ruling class. They fight their battles between themselves, and it is all about money and power. But

what have these to do with us? What have these to do with making the country better?
The most fundamental questions are seldom ever asked especially in the high strata of power in our country. What kind of country do we envision for ourselves? How do we get there? How do we imagine our future? What trajectory may we project that would get us there?

Where this is concerned the Marxists always have the advantage. They have their ideology to guide them. And this has reached such a level of imaginative elegance they have produced a whole vocabulary to describe themselves. Such words as Maoist, Stalinist, Internationalist, protracted struggle, etc. all describe their imagined world, and so if you ask a Marxist what country they imagine for us, they will always have a clear answer. And they will always add, it is a “scientific” vision.

Everyone who is not a Marxist will give the somewhat less clear answer. And this is to their disadvantage. Ask the typical Filipino politician. The answer will most likely have to do with infrastructure. More roads. More bridges. More buildings. Few will imagine beyond mere concrete and steel bars. For some, that might as well be spelled “steal” bars, and perhaps one may see here why despite its universal decay elsewhere in the planet, Marxism is still very much alive here. They at least have the clearer vision of where we ought to go, though the trajectory they prescribe would seem quite awful.

The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines seems no better than government. Where the poverty issue is concerned, they have become a church of paradox. At the same time that they rail against the current government’s shortcomings, they have also positioned themselves against the most fundamental efforts to contribute to easing suffering and misery. Their position against the Reproductive Health bill is an indicator. They could simply have said, “To Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…” But instead they launched their fight in the halls of Philippine traditional politics and soiled themselves there.

Yet, besides the Marxists, only the Catholic Church has the long tradition of dealing with the poverty problem. This tradition fell under the aegis of “social action.” We know it is a long tradition because they have developed their own vocabulary as well. Such words as: Basic Ecclesial Communities, liberation theology, praxis, etc. all speak of an imagined process that would take the poor out of where they are now. These are words that suggest the need for education as the key step to solving the problem of poverty. But it is not education the way they dish it out in schools now. It is education of the type where the poor educate themselves so that they understand their situation better and from there search for ways to liberate themselves. But the church must put itself back on track in this effort. Somewhere between Edsa and now, something fell from place that has yet to be restored.

Educating to liberate, called by educator Paolo Friere “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” is not a hopeless or forlorn effort. Most of the educated in this country know exactly why there are so many who are poor. They know that the main reason they are better off was that  they managed to educate themselves or got education from schools. The main problem is really how to share this education to those who need it the most. All the better if there are ways so that the poor may educate themselves. All the better if they could imagine themselves out of misery and suffering. After that, we may all begin to imagine a better country for ourselves.

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Poverty worsens for local school-age children

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The percentage of local school-age children living in poverty is increasing even as programs designed to meet their needs erode amid ongoing federal and state budget cuts.

The poverty rate among children ages 5 to 17 living within Burbank Unified boundaries inched upward by 0.9% to 13% in 2010, according data released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the percentage of impoverished children in Glendale Unified increased 1.9% to 18.5%.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” said Rick White, director of social services and volunteer coordinator at the Glendale Salvation Army, which operates a local food bank. “We are seeing more than double the number of families we saw just two years ago.”

The Burbank and Glendale figures are considerably lower than in Los Angeles Unified where 27.3% of students are classified as impoverished. Still, the percentages represent a third year-over-year increase. In 2007, the poverty rate among children ages 5 to 17 in Burbank and Glendale school districts was 11% and 16%, respectively.

The data, published on Nov. 29 as part of the Census Bureau’s annual Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates , included statistics for school-age children living in 3,142 counties nationwide and nearly 14,000 Title I-eligible school districts across the United States.

The local numbers mirror a national trend. Between 2007 and 2010, about 20% of counties across the country recorded significant increases in poverty rates among school-age children. In addition, one third — or 1,011 — of counties had school-age poverty rates significantly above the national poverty rate of 19.8%.

The increases come in tandem with shrinking resources intended to service impoverished children. Glendale Unified was forced to downsize its Early Education and Extended Learning Program — which includes preschool as well as before- and after-school programming for low-income students — by about $1.2 million, or 12%, during the current school year.

The reduction should carry the program through June 2012 despite anticipated midyear cuts from Sacramento, said director Kelly King, but added that she is already nervous about what the 2012-13 school year could bring for those dependent on the free and low-cost school-based services.

The needs of families vary greatly from school to school, King said. “Because Glendale Unified ranges from La Crescenta down to south Glendale, the economics of our schools are very dramatically different across the district,” King said.

It is important for administrators and teachers to know their students, she said. “You don’t want to assume that families can afford things,” King said. “Even at some schools where they don’t have as many children on free and reduced lunch, families are still struggling with this economy.”

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