Italian Schools Support Fair Trade

Today, David Cronin reported that Roman school-children can help alleviate poverty by eating chocolate among other foods:

When schoolchildren in Rome tuck into a banana or a chocolate bar, they are making a real difference to families in poor countries.

Italy is leading the way in a European drive to convince public authorities that they should adopt a policy of buying goods produced in a socially and ecologically responsible manner.

Last year, the Italian government issued a new regulation stating that public authorities should take account of sustainable development when they are issuing calls for tender.

Because schools are required to sell fair trade products in their canteens, it is estimated that this will lead to weekly sales of fair trade bananas and packets of biscuits of almost 300,000 each in 2007-12.

“It’s very important that public authorities give a good example in promoting poverty reduction and sustainable development,” said Anja Osterhaus, coordinator of the Fair Trade Advocacy Office in Brussels. “If public authorities contribute to slave labour by buying the cheapest things without thinking, then that wouldn’t be a good example.”

Read entire article by David Cronin.

I like to see fair-trade goods bought over other goods that come from sweat-shops, slave labor, and such. Although, I don’t want the government to limit free-trade by offensively forcing people to buy fair-trade. Still, it makes sense for the government to set a good example by having government institutions such as public schools buy fair trade. (Granted, I would like to see public schools privatized.)

Fair trade not only helps alleviate poverty, but it also helps undermine “unfair” vendors such as slave-owners and terrorists, which I like to see.

Serving & Learning about Poverty

Gladys Terichow recently reported about a program in Ontario, Canada. The program combines helping unfortunate people with educating the fortunate.. I include an excerpt:

TOOLS coordinator, Allan Reesor-McDowell, said the program is designed to offer challenging and faith-enriching experiences that change participants’ lives. It combines opportunities for service with learning, group discussions and personal reflections on realities of poverty, homelessness and people living on the margins of society.

“Serving is important but it’s all about learning,” he explained. “It’s about creating awareness of poverty and breaking down stereotypes of people so far removed from our reality.”

“When we hear the stories, all of sudden we realize there are reasons why people end up on the street and the reasons are not usually what we had assumed,” he said. “The majority of people leave this type of experience with a transformed view of poverty.”

Read entire article by Gladys Terichow.

In a unique way, that combination offers a mutually beneficial arrangement that can help relieve poverty and increase social unity. Despite some religious undertones, I support it.

Poverty, Violence, and Health

In a recent article from Watching The Watchers, Lee Russ concludes the following:

Poverty and violence are not, it seems, merely some abstract philosophical states that matter only in the context of some partisan discussion of economic and social policy (nor are poverty and violence unrelated to each other). There is considerable evidence indicating that both poverty and violence affect the physical and mental health of those who experience them. And if they do, is there any doubt that the rest of society is affected in various adverse ways by this impact on the poor and violence-exposed?

Read entire article by Lee Russ.

That conclusion interests me. He also gave some interesting evidence and cited some sources to reach it. Nonetheless, I think common-sense tells us that poverty correlates with violence. In other words, we know that poor people more often experience violence, which in turn leads to more violence and poverty.

For example, a child who leaves his poor home to try and walk to school hungry everyday only to get interrupted by gangbangers, well, that child has more of a chance of learning violence than math. He has more of a chance of turning into a drug-dealer than a college-student.

This shows not only that the prevalence of poverty causes a poverty cycle, but also that those effect even the so-called non-poor. Allowing innocent children to grow up in poverty and failing to give them adequate education leads to more violence in our society among other problems.

Quality Schools Defeat Achievement Gap

A recent editorial on jconline.com describes how some schools have overcome the achievement gap. I include an excerpt:

Chenoweth cites schools from coast to coast that have extricated themselves from what she calls the demography myth — the one that implies low-income means low-achieving.

High schools in Worcester, Mass., Elmont, N.Y., and elsewhere where poverty is an issue and most students are minorities are posting consistently high achievement scores, at times outscoring wealthier, less ethnically diverse counterparts across their states.

These students are graduating from high school at higher rates as well.

What is happening in these schools in which children are succeeding, regardless of their cultural background or income levels?

According to Chenoweth, teachers and administrators have placed high expectations on them, have worked hard to bring the kinds of learning experiences that will help them excel and created an environment where learning for learning’s sake is valued.

Teachers and administrators have examined students’ needs, adjusting teaching methods in a way that best fits them.

Read entire editorial on jconline.com.

Finally, some good news! I often refer to education as the most important tool in the fight against hunger. Luckily, the schools above actually use it to give poor kids a quality education, thus stoping the poverty cycle. Unfortunately, those schools only represent a tiny minority of schools. Most schools still have a huge achievement gap, and as a result the economic gap between rich and poor also increases because poor kids never get a fair shot. With the same potential and motivation, a poor kid will live a life of under-education and poverty, whereas a wealthy kid would live a life of success.

Jeske & Poor Nicaraguan Villagers

In a recent commentary, Christine Jeske explains how she and her husband learned from poor villagers Nicaragua. I include an excerpt:

One special influence to us was a man who quit grad school to move to El Salvador, where he lived through a civil war. He challenged us, “Don’t go somewhere thinking you have the answers. Go somewhere to learn from the poor.”

So we lived for a year in a Nicaraguan village, with no running water or electricity. Many nights I would sit on a rock at Carla’s house. She would rest her large frame on a bucket, her only furniture, and rock her little boy on her lap while she told stories of poverty. Always she was thankful—that her husband narrowly escaped death in a hurricane, that her daughter could go to high school, and that we had come.

Also there was Rodolfo, father of 10, who spent a year learning to write his name, and Naya, the anemic mother who begged me to teach her to crochet, and Neno the village president struggling to make ends meet.

We returned to America with a hunger to connect the world of these poor to that of North America. We studied economic development in grad school and worked in China, but many of our influences continued to be ordinary people with questioning and generous hearts, among them friends in Oshkosh.

Even now I feel my work is as much for America as it is for Africa. I want my children to know they are akin to every nation we might set foot in, and for the people there to know the same.

Read entire commentary by Christine Jeske.

That line by the unnamed man moved me. “Don’t go somewhere thinking you have the answers. Go somewhere to learn from the poor.” How wise!

Christine Jeske connects the situation in the United States to that in the so-called third-world. We have both similarities and differences. For example, the U.S. has shockingly high poverty rates, as one in 8 U.S. citizens lives below the poverty line, but U.S. poverty has a different nature. Nonetheless, as a global community we can best eliminate poverty by seeing the world as a single intricate community rather than a bunch of unconnectedly individual nations – whether we divide those nations by race, region, or religion. We cannot afford separatism. None of us can.

King’s Dream for an End to Poverty Goes Unfulfilled

Lethia Swett Mann recently wrote an article describing her hope that one day we will fulfill King’s dream:

Four days before his death, on March 31, 1968, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Dr. Martin Luther King said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.”

Sadly to say, as of today it seems we do not have the will.

[…]

The article based on 2005 census data goes on to state that nationwide, racial disparities in income, education and home ownership persist decades after the civil rights movement, and by some measurements, are growing.

Throughout the U.S. white households had incomes that were two-thirds higher than blacks and 40 percent higher than Hispanics.

Read entire article by Lethia Swett Mann.

I see it as a terrible disgrace that we still have poverty in this day and age. Even worse, racism still plagues our society.

We cannot ignore this problem. The poverty trap keeps racist poverty alive, generation after generation. Our society neglects children born into poverty. At best, poor children receive second-rate education and healthcare, and inadequate food, clothes, and shelter. As a result, they neither gain the skills nor the opportunity to succeed by growing into self-sufficient adults. Thus, most children born into poverty remain in poverty their entire lives. And racism plays its part in two major ways. First, more blacks get born into poverty. Then, poor black children face yet even more obstacles, such as racist police and Eurocentric education curricula.

Why did we let Martin Luther King’s plan die with him?