Thoughtful and Selfless Gift

A few days ago, a very special gift of $120.27 came in the mail, along with a large, hand-made orange and green card shaped like a house. The message from these extraordinary young citizens read:

Dear Habitat for Humanity,

We are moving and had a going away party. Instead of presents, we collected $ for you. We are lucky and have parents that can buy us a house. Thank you for all your work to help others get a house too.

From,

     Ben Skarnulis  (age 8)

     Zach Skarnulis  (age 8)

     Ryan Skarnulis  (age 10)

P.S.  All our friends that gave money signed this too.

18 Things You Should Know About Poverty: 2009

by Rebekah Daniel, Habitat for Humanity International

1.  If you know someone who supports a child on a minimum-wage job, you know someone who is poor -- There is no county in the United States where an individual can work 40 hours per week at the minimum wage and afford even a one-bedroom apartment at the local fair market rent, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

2.  There are different definitions of poverty -- Basic needs may be defined as narrowly as those things necessary for survival, or as broadly as the prevailing standard of living in the community. Poverty in one area or part of the world may have quite a different meaning than in another. In the United States, poverty thresholds are determined by taking the cost of a minimum adequate diet for families of different sizes and multiplying that cost by three to allow for other expenses.

3.  There is more to being poor than not having money -- Lack of access to essential resources goes beyond financial hardship to affect people's health, education, security, and opportunities for political participation. While economic growth is essential to lifting people out of poverty, it is not enough.

4.  The lower a family's income, the more difficult it is to find housing.

5.  Having a job does not preclude poverty.

6.  Owning a home does not preclude poverty either.

7.  Women often face more challenges than men in overcoming poverty -- Where women's land ownership is relationship-based, they risk losing access to land after widowhood, divorce, or desertion, which can lead to destitution.

8.  Yet women are an important part of the solution -- They use the profits from their microbusinesses to send their children to school and to improve living conditions and nutrition.

9.  Your "rainy-day cushion" probably isn't thick enough.

10.  Adequate housing is a basic human right -- In 1948, the United Nations identified housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living.

11.  Poverty directly affects many, many people every day -- Some 1.2 billion people around the world live on less than a dollar a day, while almost 850 million people -- almost 3 times the population of the U.S. -- go hungry every night.

12.  Education can help, but only if children can actually attend school.

13.  Poverty is not inevitable -- In 1960, roughly 20 million newborns did not live to see their fifth birthday; by 2006, the annual number of child deaths globally fell below 9.7 million.

14.  People still die from being poor -- More than 26,000 children under age 5 die each day, mostly from preventable causes. More than one-third of all child dreaths occur within the first 28 days of life.

15.  Reducing poverty here can reduce poverty there, too -- For generations, poor people around the world have left their homes to seek better wages abroad. Today, the money they send home totals an estimated $200 billion a year. In Latin America, remittances are worth more than direct foreign investment, official development assistance, and foreign aid combined.

16.  Children notice poverty.

17.  In the United States, the issue is affordability -- Severe rent burden can be a greater problem than severely inadequate housing.

18.  You can do something about it -- At Habitat for Humanity, we're making an impact together. We're helping others renew the feeling of dignity that substandard housing steals away. Like the Good Samaritan, we're stopping for our neighbor along the way, and lives are being transformed in the process, starting with mine, and perhaps with yours as well.

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