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Care for the Poor: Best Family Values News Articles of 2011

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mormon humanitarian aidAt the end of 2011, Deseret News named its best articles in six categories, one of which was care for the poor and needy.  This is a review of those best articles.

#10 — Turning Skills into Jobs

This article explains the charitable works of a non-profit organization called Global Artisans.  The organization helps skilled refugees open their own businesses using their unique skills.  The non-profit was founded by Ze Min Xiao, refugee services liaison for Salt Lake County in 2009.

In collaboration with the Utah Refugee Coalition and American Express, Xiao started Global Artisans to help refugees to put those skills to good use. On Thursdays and Saturdays, people from all over the world — Tibet, Iraq, Bhutan, Burma, Eretria — gather to knit, weave or sew together. To make their skills more applicable in an American market, Global Artisans offers business, finance and computer classes.  [Read more...]

#9 — Keeping Families Intact

This article profiles the House of Hope, a residential rehabilitation facility.  House of Hope is a government funded non-profit organization. Ten years ago the facility pioneered a family-centered approach to substance abuse treatment.   This is often the last hope for addicted mothers and their children, who begin by residing at the facility and then report on an out-patient basis.  Funding cuts have put the programs in danger.

The children manifest many problems due to the drug use of their parents.  Some are physically impaired because their mothers used drugs during their pregnancies.  Others are behaviorally impaired because their lives have been chaotic and insecure.  (Read more…)

#8 — Pennies for Change

The internet is transforming the way people make charitable donations.  While there are websites for large, well-known charities, the ease of building one’s own blog, website, or social media venue has enabled people to establish charities that work through very, very small donations.  As a result, nonprofits are beginning to rely less on the rich.

Using social media members of the Millennial generation who are movers but not spenders are able to mount their own charitable campaigns.  (Read more…)

#7 — It Takes a Village

Humanitarian projects that are mounted in third-world countries fare better when they have local leadership on site.  In the early 1980s, James B. Mayfield trekked from village to village in Indonesia, tracking down projects planned and paid for by the World Bank and USAID.   He found that over 80% of charitable projects had failed and fallen into disrepair and disuse.  The people were waiting for the Americans to come back and fix everything.  Mayfield decided to come up with a new idea —  he founded CHOICE Humanitarian, a Utah-based nonprofit that builds schools, water systems and micro-enterprise programs in Africa, Latin America and Asia, he would insist: “The local people will lead the way.”  (Read more…)

#6 — The Children Left Behind

More than 5,100 children are in the foster care system because their parents have been detained or deported.

Twenty-two percent of the 397,000 illegal immigrants deported in 2011 were parents to U.S.-citizen children, compared to just 8 percent from 1998 to 2007. If deportations continue on trend, the ARC estimates the country will add 15,000 immigrant children to the foster care roles over the next five years.

Immigration policies and laws are built around the assumption that families will, and should, be reunited, but this is very complicated.  (Read more…)

#5 — Hurting Charity

Obama and Congress are considering cutting back on tax deductions for charitable donations.  Many charities worry donors will give less and needy people will go without.   Because of the U.S. recession, donations are already down, and funding cuts have also hurt charities.

“People are struggling and donations are hard to come by,” said Steve Taylor, vice president of public policy at United Way Worldwide. “It’s the people at the bottom of the economic spectrum who were already hurt the most by the recession and, if these plans go through, they’ll be the ones to suffer again.” (Read more…)

#4 — A Judge Who Made a Difference

Judges who are compassionate enough to listen to the accused, have an effect on their future behavior.

A judge’s disposition — whether respectful and caring or mean and disinterested — may make the difference between a trip back to prison and an addiction-free life for a drug offender.

In a study of 101 drug courts across the country, NPC Research discovered courts where the judge spends an average of three minutes or more speaking with each offender were more than twice as successful at keeping participants from reoffending. The reduction in recidivism increased as one-on-one time with the judge increased.  (Read more…)

#3 — Seeds of Hope

Cindy Packard and her  husband founded the nonprofit Care for Life, which has brought her back to Mozambique many times.

In the villages where Care for Life works, the death rate has dropped from an average of 22 deaths every six months to five. The percentage of people with adequate housing is up from less than half to an average of 85. Thirty percent more children attend school. Employment statistics have more than doubled. Adult literacy rates have increased from 50 to 77 percent. More than that, though, Care for Life seems to have discovered a formula for inspiring hope among the destitute and giving them tools to help themselves.   (Read more…)

#2 — Water and Hope

This article profiles humanitarian aid work performed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often erroneously called the Mormon Church, in Seamay, Guatemala.  In rural areas of Guatemala, clean water was scarce and almost half of all students failed the first grade.

…the coffee industry, once the backbone of Guatemala’s economy, had essentially collapsed in the mid-1990s when, due to deregulation and free trade, factory farms in places like Brazil and Vietnam flooded the global market with cheap beans, resulting in the loss of half a million jobs in Guatemala. Seamay had been hit particularly hard.  (Read more…)

#1 — Stolen Innocence

The slave trade is alive and well in the United States of America, but some people are trying to stop it.

With job descriptions ranging in scope from prostitute to waiter to maid, more than 150,000 people in the United States are living in slavery, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Because of a deep-seated perception that slavery is a Third World issue, states have had a hard time getting the ball rolling on anti-trafficking initiatives.  (Read more…)

The Deseret News — Best Articles of 2011

 

 

 

 

 


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