World poverty seen falling sharply but patchily, By Teresa Cerojano (AP), September 15, 2010, Washington Post: “It’s lunchtime, but the cooking pots are empty outside Nurain Dimalao’s shack. Her 7-year-old son plays amid the flies in garbage-strewn sand. She worries where his next meal will come from. Baseco Compound, a shantytown of 50,000 people on the edge of Manila Bay, is the familiar face of poverty in villages and urban slums around the world. Yet there’s also good news, albeit qualified: Worldwide, the poor are getting less poor, though not everywhere. The share of the population of developing regions who live in extreme poverty is expected to fall to 15 percent by 2015, down from 46 percent in 1990, according to the U.N. The gains stem largely from robust economic growth in countries such as China and India, the world’s two most populous countries. Ten years ago, the U.N. set eight ‘Millennium Development Goals’ to tackle the world’s most pressing humanitarian problems by halving rates of affliction in such areas as disease, poverty and lack of basic education by 2015, compared with 1990…”
Day: September 15, 2010
Farmers Markets and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Farmers’ markets draw few food stamp users despite outreach; distance, cost remain problems, By David Runk, and Sarah Skidmore (AP), September 15, 2010, Los Angeles Times: “Despite widespread efforts to attract low-income shoppers, farmers’ markets have had limited success in drawing people like Bishop Reed, who in the past three years has lost his job and his home. Reed signed up for food stamps six months ago and uses them to buy groceries for himself, his teenage daughter and a niece at either a local grocery chain or one of the discount stores. ‘What is a farmers’ market?’ asked Reed, a Portland-area resident, when told he could use his benefits there as well. About one-fourth of the nation’s 6,000 or so farmers’ markets accept food stamps, now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP. But the bulk of SNAP benefits redeemed last year – 82 percent – went to grocery stores and supercenters. Less than 0.01 percent was spent at farmers’ markets, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture…”
School Breakfast Program
Breakfast in class: Fight against kids’ hunger starts at school, By Martha T. Moore, September 14, 2010, USA Today: “At 8:28 a.m., the cafeteria ladies of Centennial High School take up positions in the second-floor hallway, just outside closed classroom doors. Each woman is pushing a cart loaded with milk, juice, whole-wheat doughnuts and individual packages of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereal. When science teacher Sue Aronofsky opens the door of her classroom, kids stream into the hallway. ‘You go around, you get your stuff, and you tell the lady thank you,’ she says. Students eat at their desks as announcements drone from the public-address system. After a brief pause to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag and toss empty milk cartons, Aronofsky’s freshmen turn to examining pill bugs under magnifying glasses. Time: 8:45 a.m. The same scene occurs all over the 1,034-student school. Last year, when Centennial served free breakfast in the cafeteria each morning before the start of classes, fewer than 100 students showed up to eat daily. On this morning four days into the new year, with breakfast delivered to classrooms, 864 students have been fed. That many children eating school breakfast is rare. Although the number of hungry children in the U.S. is rising, fewer than half of the kids who could be eating a free or low-cost breakfast at school are getting one…”