Poverty Facts and Information Introduction:

As you go about your day today, pay special attention to the seconds, minutes, and hours as they slip through your life. Think of all the wonders of modern technology that you have available to you. You have running water: for cooking, drinking, to brush your teeth, flush the toilet, shower and wash clothes. You have incredible means of communicating with the world: telephones, cell phones, pagers, blackberries, radio, TV, satellite news, cable television, and the internet. You have means of transportation: cars, trains, airplanes, boats, bicycles, skateboards, scooters. You have a myriad of household gadgets to make your life "easier": dishwasher, microwave, stove, washing machines and dryers, coffee makers, lawn mowers, and more. You can, with the flick of a switch, turn on lights, heat your home, cool your home.

• 1.1 billion people in the world don't have access to clean drinking water
• 1.6 billion don't have electricity

Think of the opportunities that are available to you. You have choices of where you will live. You can go to school. You can read any book that you want. You have numerous news sources to choose from. You can voice your opinion. You even have several choices about where you shop for food. You have every medical specialist and procedure available to you.

Take a moment and think of all your opportunities, all of your options that are available to you today, and every day. You live in a western country where the wonders of modern living are available to take care of our daily needs. For most of us, there is food, shelter, medical care, transportation, entertainment of some sort, communication with coworkers, friends, and loved ones. Not everyone is so lucky.

While you go about your day, also think about these statistics:

• every 1.2 seconds a child is born into poverty
• every 3 seconds a child dies from disease
• every 7 seconds a child dies from hunger
• 24,000 people die each day from hunger and hunger related diseases
• 8.8 million people each year, every 8 seconds, a child dies from water-born illness due to unclean water supplies

With every death, the world is not only losing a person but losing the potential of that person. What if Einstein, or any other essential person to current Western life, had been born and had died in infancy in Africa? The deaths are economic loses for not only that nation, but for the world. And the sad thing is that most are preventable. We, the Western World, are allowing these deaths to occur.. We have some very difficult questions to ask ourselves. Would these deaths happen if these third world countries were white? Should we on moral issues alone, forgive third world debt so that these countries can redirect debt money to pay for health, education and most important food for their people? Our country has spent $309,000,000,000 for the war in Iraq. Could we have put that money to better use by providing health, education, nutrition to third world countries? As religious people of any faith, as members of a world community, should we be supporting bombs or providing food for babies? Have we created more hatred? More animosity towards the USA? What would the world be like today if we had spent the $309,000,000,000 on improving the health, education, and welfare for the Third World Countries?

Consider these statistics:

• Third world countries 75% of the population live on less than $2 a day.
• The United states in 2005 spent $1.2 trillion in military spending.
• One trillion per year would eliminate global avoidable mortality.
• 60% of these deaths are children under 5.

It is startling to look at a map of world malnutrition. It is like the world is divided in half: the haves and have nots, clearly marked. USA, Canada, Europe, British Isles, Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, Russia are doing fine while all of Africa, South America, Central America, Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East are all either red (really bad) or yellow (bad). Does it seem to you that malnutrition has a racial element? Consider this:

• USA 2.5% malnutrition
• Congo 71% malnutrition

Look at life expectancies: USA life expectancy is 78; Haiti 53; Mozambique 40. Life expectancies world wide, the top 24 countries are: Japan, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Israel, Switzerland, France, Canada, Norway, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Austria, Malta, Greece, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, Finland, New Zealand, Luxembourg, USA, Barbados. The lowest life expectancy countries are: Botswana, Mozambique, Swaziland, Malawi, Lesotho, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Burundi, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Namibia, Central African Rep., Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Uganda, Niger, Chad, Gambia, South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Guinea. Does there also seem to be a racial divide in life expectancies?

What a person can learn, accomplish and contribute in 78 years is vastly different from 40. You don't even get to have a mid-life crisis -- you die. We take for granted that we'll live into our 80s; but what if we grew up knowing that we only have maybe 40 years, and only if we are lucky enough to live past infancy and childhood? We take so much for granted in the world we live in. Others are not so lucky.

Would you, could you, should you give up one latte per month to help the Third World Countries? That $4 alone doesn't make much difference but for those who live on $2 a day, it could mean the difference between life and death. How about if everyone in Newburyport gave up one coffee a month? That would total $68,000 for one month, $816,000 for one year. Now if everyone in Massachusetts gave up one cup of coffee per month for one year: $288,000,000. How about the entire USA? That would be 14.4 billion. That one cup of coffee, by not having it, can keep a child from dying from hunger.

Can you give up one cup of coffee a month? Please help.