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People and Action

Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

Mother Teresa is among the most well-known and highly respected women in the world in the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1948 she founded a religious order of nuns in Calcutta, India, called the Missionaries of Charity. Through this order, she has dedicated her life to helping the poor, the sick, and the dying around the world, particularly those in India. Her selfless work with the needy has brought her much acclaim and many awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. 

She was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia. Her parents, Nikola and Dronda Bojaxhiu, were Albanians who settled in Skopje shortly after the beginning of the century. Since her father was co-owner of a construction firm, her family lived comfortably while she was growing up. In 1928 she suddenly decided to become a nun and traveled to Dublin, Ireland, to join the Sisters of Loreto, a religious order founded in the seventeenth century. After studying at the convent for less than a year, she left to join the Loreto convent in the city of Darjeeling in northeast India. On May 24, 1931, she took the name of "Teresa" in honor of St. Teresa of Lisieux.

In 1929 Mother Teresa had been assigned to teach geography at St. Mary's High School for Girls in Calcutta, south of Darjeeling. At the time, the streets of Calcutta were crowded with beggars, lepers, and the homeless. Unwanted infants were regularly left to die on the streets or in garbage bins. On a train back to Darjeeling in 1946, Mother Teresa felt the need to abandon her position at St. Mary's to care for the needy in the slums of Calcutta. After receiving the consent of her archbishop, she began her work. 

Founds the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta

In 1948 Pope Pius XII granted Mother Teresa permission to live as an independent nun. That same year, she became an Indian citizen. After studying nursing for three months with the American Medical Missionaries in the Indian city of Patna, she returned to Calcutta to found the Missionaries of Charity. For her habit she chose a plain white sari with a blue border and a simple cross pinned to her left shoulder.

Mother Teresa initially focused her efforts on poor children in the streets, teaching them how to read and how to care for themselves. In 1949 she was joined by her first recruit, a young girl from the city of Bengal. Many of those who joined her order over the next few years were former students from St. Mary's. Each recruit was required to devote her life to serving the poor without accepting any material reward in return.

In 1952 Mother Teresa began work for which the Missionaries of Charity has been noted ever since. Her order received permission from Calcutta officials to use a portion of the abandoned temple to the goddess Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. Here Mother Teresa founded the Kalighat Home for the Dying. She and her fellow nuns gathered dying Indians off the streets of Calcutta and brought them to this home to care for them during the days before they died.

Establishes a Leper Colony

In the mid-1950s, Mother Teresa began to help victims of leprosy. The Indian government gave the Missionaries of Charity a 34-acre plot of land near the city of Asansol. Under Mother Teresa's guidance, a leper colony was established here, called Shanti Nagar (Town of Peace). For her work among the people of India, the Indian government gave her the Padmashree ("Magnificent Lotus") Award in September of 1962.

In 1965 Pope Paul VI placed the Missionaries of Charity directly under the control of the papacy (the office of the pope). He also authorized Mother Teresa to expand the order outside of India. Centers to treat lepers, the blind, the disabled, the aged, and the dying were soon opened worldwide, including one in Rome in 1968. Mother Teresa also organized schools and orphanages for the poor. The Brothers of Charity, the male companion to the Sisters of Charity, was formed in the mid-1960s to run the homes for the dying.

Receives Nobel Peace Prize

In 1971 Pope Paul VI honored Mother Teresa by awarding her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. The following year the government of India presented her with the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding. In 1979 she received her greatest award, the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa accepted all of these awards on behalf of the poor, using any money that accompanied them to fund her centers. By 1990 over 3,000 nuns belonged to the Missionaries of Charity, running centers in 25 countries.

In 1988 Mother Teresa sent her Missionaries of Charity into Russia and also opened a home for AIDS patients in San Francisco, California. In 1991 she returned home to Albania and opened a home in Tirana, the capital. At this time, there were 168 homes operating in India. Later in 1995, plans materialized to open homes in China.

In the 1980s and 1990s Mother Teresa's health problems became a concern. She suffered a heart attack while visiting Pope John Paul II in 1983. She had a near fatal heart attack in 1989 and began wearing a pacemaker. 

In August 1996 the world prayed for Mother Teresa's recovery. At the age of 86, Mother Teresa was on a respirator in a hospital, suffering from heart failure and malaria. Doctors were not sure she would recover. Within days she was fully conscious, asked to receive communion, and requested that the doctors send her home. When she was sent home a few weeks later in early September, a doctor said she firmly believed, "God will take care of me." 

In late November of that same year, Mother Teresa was again hospitalized. She had angioplasty surgery to clear two blocked arteries. She was also given a mild electric shock to correct an irregular heartbeat. She was released after spending almost a month in the hospital. 

In March 1997, after an eight week selection process, 63-year-old Sister Nirmala was named as the new leader of the Missionaries of Charity. Although Mother Teresa had been trying to cut back on her duties for some time (because of her health problems), she stayed on in an advisory role to Sister Nirmala. 

In April 1997 filming began on the movie Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor with actress Geraldine Chaplin playing the title role. The movie aired in the fall of 1997 on "The Family Channel" even though, after viewing the movie, Mother Teresa refused to endorse it. Mother Teresa celebrated her 87th birthday in August, and died shortly thereafter of a heart attack on September 5, 1997. The world grieved her loss and one mourner noted, "It was Mother herself who poor people respected. When they bury her, we will have lost something that cannot be replaced." 

In appearance Mother Teresa was both tiny (only about five feet tall) and energetic. Her face was quite wrinkled, but her dark eyes commanded attention, radiating an energy and intelligence that shone without expressing nervousness or impatience. Many of her recruits came from people attracted by her own aura of sanctity, and she seemed little changed by the worldwide attention she received. Conservatives within the Catholic Church sometimes used her as a symbol of traditional religious values that they felt lacking in their churches. By popular consensus she was a saint for the times, and a spate of almost adoring books and articles started to canonize her in the 1980s and well into the 1990s. She herself tried to deflect all attention away from what she did to either the works of her group or to the god who was her inspiration. She continued to combine energetic administrative activities with a demanding life of prayer, and if she accepted opportunities to publicize her work they had little of the cult of personality about them. 

In the wake of the 1979 Nobel Prize for Peace she received many other international honors, but she sometimes disconcerted humanitarian groups by expressing her horror at abortion or her own preference for prayer rather than politics. When asked what would happen to her group and work after her death, she told people that God would surely provide a successor ó a person humbler and more faithful than she. The Missionaries of Charity, who had brothers as well as sisters by the mid-1980s, are guided by the constitution she wrote for them. They have their vivid memories of the love for the poor that created the phenomenon of Mother Teresa in the first place. So the final part of her story will be the lasting impact her memory has on the next generations of missionaries, as well as in the world as a whole.

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Bill Gates

Bill Gates Spends Billions on Health Needs of The World's Poor

WASHINGTON – Giving away money steadily, tens of millions of dollars at a time, Bill Gates has become the single most influential force attempting to reverse the growing health crisis afflicting the world's poor.

With his wife, Melinda, he outspent the entire U.S. government by almost $300 million last year in the battle against global health threats such as AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. The man who led the computer software revolution now accounts for more than a quarter of what all industrialized countries spend for the health needs of underdeveloped nations. His foundation gave $1.44 billion last year, compared with about $5 billion from industrialized nations.

It's a stunning figure and, Gates believes, a shameful one. It's time, he says, for the rich nations to act less like Scrooge. "The world hasn't been allocating its resources properly at all in global health," the Microsoft founder said in a rare interview from his office in Redmond, Wash. "Rich governments should be doing more."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made 60 separate grants in the last year, including $171.2 million in 10 awards to New England organizations. The Gates contributions underscore the emerging role that private individuals are having in international affairs. Ted Turner, founder of Cable News Network, is another example, offering last week to put up $34 million to bridge the shortfall in U.S. dues payments to the United Nations, after giving the U.N. $1 billion three years ago.

Gates, 45, said he traces his interest in helping the poorest of the poor to the days when he would "travel internationally, in my 20s, to Brazil and see the favelas right next to the rich city, or to Mexico."

"I remember saying to myself, `Wow, there's a big difference here,' " he said. "It was kind of strange staying at a resort and having guards making sure this artificial world wasn't invaded by the real world. I didn't know then about children's deaths in poor countries. I knew the vaccines were there ... but not much else."

Now he can't seem to learn enough.

Over the last several years, Gates has spent hundreds of hours seeking information about the problems and successes of global health, an issue that he believes is more important than any other because the lives of millions of children hang in the balance. He hosts dinners in his palatial home at which guests talk, for instance, about the intricate details of Rotavirus gastroenteritis, a killer of nearly 1 million people a year. By night, he devours books on the issue, such as one on the history of malaria. By day, he fires off e-mails to two of his most trusted global health advisers, Gordon Perkin and William Foege, asking about different types of immunity, for instance.

"Several times a week, sometimes every day, he sends us e-mails that probe intricate issues related to global health," said Trevor Neilson, director of public affairs for the Seattle-based Gates Foundation. "Very often it takes our entire staff an afternoon to find answers to these questions."

His foundation's health staff consists of just seven people, puny compared with other philanthropic groups that have hundreds of program officers. Gates has endowed his foundation with $21.8 billion, making it the world's largest philanthropic institution. Since late 1997, it has earmarked just over $2 billion for global health. The foundation will give about $1 billion a year – with slightly more than half going to the issue of global health – "throughout my lifetime and beyond," Gates said.

"I am a cultist when it comes 'Geez, am I going to find something that would have a clear impact?' A bit of me thought that I would find that the world really has allocated its resources well and I would have only a marginal effect. I was stunned to find that in terms of research and delivery in health care how little of the world's resources are focused on this."

Still, his motivation is bound to be questioned by some, especially considering the U.S. government's antitrust suit against Microsoft and the potential years of legal battles ahead.

But global health experts don't raise the issue, in part because it doesn't seem to matter to them if Gates is seeking to ease his tax bill or improve his image, in part because it seems that no one wants to criticize the hand that feeds them.

But they do note Gates's enthusiasm, his personal commitment, and the impact that comes from his dollars and the publicity from the grants. To them, he is nothing less than a blessing.

Over the past year, the Gates Foundation earmarked $1.44 billion for health programs for poor countries, which included some funds that will be spent over the next several years.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government allocated $1.16 billion last year for basic health care in poor nations, according to figures from the World Health Council. The U.S. amount does not include some funds for research at the National Institutes of Health. For the coming year, Congress – pushed by Senators Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and Bill Frist of Tennessee – has allocated $1.49 billion for international health.

But philanthropy can only go so far, Gates says. Wealthier governments, he believes, must shoulder more responsibility. In 1978, the United States and other nations signed an accord committing them to help "all the peoples of the world" to attain by the year 2000 "a level of health that will allow them to lead a socially and economically productive life." But as 2000 ends, some African countries are projected to see average life expectancy fall below 30 years in the next decade, because of the AIDS pandemic.

In 1988, rich countries spent an average of $15 per person infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS; a decade later, the allocation was $3 per person, according to research by Harvard's Amir Attaran and Jeffrey Sachs.

World Bank figures show that industrialized countries spend roughly 0.25 percent of their gross domestic product on assistance to the poorest nations, with the United States the stingiest of all, giving 0.1 percent of GDP. The World Bank estimates that all global health aid from industrialized countries totals $5 billion annually.

But now some hold out hope that Gates can help change things, even if the foundation's money has yet to show concrete results. It is too early to judge its impact on health systems in the poorest countries, yet many believe that Gates' single-minded focus is already inspiring many political leaders.

"This is not some obscure or quirky millionaire who has a pet project," said Nils Daulaire, president of the Global Health Council. "This is one of the smartest strategic thinkers in the business world, who says this really matters for the future of the world. The governments of the industrialized countries in the world really need to wake up."

It wasn't until the end of 1998, after Gates had set up a foundation and begun giving millions of dollars to public health and education, that he realized the depth of the health needs of people in poor nations. He decided that dealing with the basics – providing immunizations to children – should be his first focus.

"I knew we were going to do vaccines," said Gates, who at the time had just given $125 million to a program that tries to provide vaccines to all children. "So I had all these vaccine experts over to our house.

"Well, it was late in the dinner, and I said if I was going to do more, what would we do?" Gates said.

Seth Berkley, head of the New York-based International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, spoke up. "Seth said, `Well, there's AIDS,' " Gates recalled. "Somebody else thought malaria should get more focus, because hardly anything was being spent on it."

So the foundation stepped up its giving, allocating $25 million to Berkley's group, $50 million for a malaria vaccine initiative, and then a whopping $750 million to the Global Fund for Children's Vaccines, which would assist developing countries to distribute routine vaccines, as well as provide money to develop new ones.

"I spend a lot of time thinking now whether we are striking the right balance, funding the right balance, working with the right institutions, measuring the problems in the right way," Gates said. "The last two years have been a positive trend ... of governments, philanthropists and the private sector facing up to a horrific problem. With the Cold War ended, what is the thing that we should all be looking at?" he asked. "I think the greatest inequality is the fact that 5 billion people on earth don't have access to the medicines that a billion people have. I'm sure for my whole lifetime, even beyond, that world health is going to be our top priority."

Bill Gates speaks about poverty

Disease leads to poverty, and poverty deepens disease. But the good news is that where health takes hold, women choose to have fewer children; and literacy, equality, the environment, and economic opportunity all improve. When health improves, life improves – by all measures. 

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thank you for this invitation to speak. It's an honor to address so many heads of state. And it's a particular honor to do so alongside Secretary General Annan and President Mandela, whose contributions to humanity make them two of the most admired men in the world. I'd also like to thank Carol Bellamy and UNICEF for their commitment to children and for sponsoring this meeting of world leaders. 

Is the world going to take care of its children? That is the question we came here to answer. 

While many important issues will be discussed at this historic Special Session, it's my belief that improving health is the best way to start improving the future for our children. 

Today, one in 12 children dies before the age of 5 mostly from preventable diseases - from measles, malaria, diarrhea. One in 12. 

Disease leads to poverty, and poverty deepens disease. But the good news is that where health takes hold, women choose to have fewer children; and literacy, equality, the environment, and economic opportunity all improve. When health improves, life improves – by all measures. 

My personal commitment to improving global health started when I learned about health inequities. I remember reading the 1993 World Development Report. Every page screamed out that human life was not being as valued in the world at large as it should be. 

My wife Melinda and I were stunned to learn that 11 million children die every year from preventable causes. That is when we decided to make improving health the focus of our philanthropy.  

The leaders here who face public health challenges know personally the inequities in global health:

• 95% of all new HIV infections occur in developing countries

• 99% of TB and malaria sufferers live in developing countries

Yet where demand for health spending is greatest, supply is lowest. 

Rich governments are not fighting these diseases because the rich world doesn't have them. The private sector generally is not developing vaccines for poor countries because poor countries can't buy them. Of the $70 billion spent globally on health every year, only 10% is devoted to research on diseases that make up 90% of the total disease burden. 

Market-based capitalism works well for the developed world, but our human values and compassion are needed to save these children. Markets alone won't do this. 

What will happen if we do nothing? 

On current trends, a hundred million people will have been infected with HIV by 2005. Without a decisive intervention, China could soon have 20 million cases. India also is at a tipping point – it can act aggressively and keep prevalence below one percent as Brazil has done, or see infection rates skyrocket as they have in parts of Africa. 

Without an aggressive global effort to reverse the course of the AIDS epidemic, the impact on our children will be catastrophic:

• Half of all 15-year olds in South Africa and Zimbabwe will lose their lives to AIDS.

• 44 million children in Africa will have lost one or both parents to AIDS by 2010.

We can't change the past. But we can change the future, as long as we start now. The challenge is daunting, but I am optimistic. 

I believe we have never been in a better position to make dramatic improvements in global health. 

Today, we have several unique opportunities: 

The first opportunity is to learn from our successes. Thirty-five years ago the United Nations launched a successful campaign to eradicate small pox. Looking back, that campaign has prevented 350 million people from contracting smallpox and 40 million from dying of it. 

It has also shown that eradicating disease is a good investment. The total twelve-year cost of the smallpox eradication effort was $300 million – the same as a single-year cost of small pox vaccination, quarantine and treatment the year the campaign began. In other words, we didn't spend any more, we just spent it more wisely, and now we're saving $300 million every year because we eradicated small pox. 

The same principles that led to that success are now being put to work to eradicate other diseases, including polio. 

The second opportunity comes from proven models of collaboration. One of our earliest grants was to establish the Vaccine Fund, a fundraising arm for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, or GAVI, whose goal is to fully vaccinate every child in the world, which would save the lives of 3 million children every year. 

GAVI is a collaboration of our foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Health Organization, the World Bank, our host UNICEF, the vaccine industry and governments in both developed and developing countries. This is a phenomenal range of talent, resources, and experience. 

One recent example of the work of GAVI and the Vaccine Fund is a $40 million grant, which will be matched by the government of China, to dramatically increase the use of hepatitis B vaccine in China. 

Just before this luncheon, I helped announce another example of a promising global collaboration, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, or GAIN. GAIN is a coalition of national governments, multilateral organizations, foundations, and private companies that are fortifying foods to address micronutrient deficiencies in low-income countries. 

It costs relatively little to fortify foods with Vitamin A, iron, iodine and other micronutrients, and by doing so it will save lives, reduce health care costs, improve productivity, and help children reach their potential. 

These are the kinds of initiatives that break new ground in collaboration and prove that it is possible to launch global responses to global health challenges. 

The third opportunity comes from the increased attention being given to global health. Take the last year alone:

• The United Nations, under the leadership of Kofi Annan, held a Special Session on AIDS.

• The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria was established and it has just announced its first round of grants.

• Global health was a central topic at the World Economic Forum.

• The President of the United States pledged to increase development assistance by $5 billion a year.

These things were not happening three or four years ago. They represent new opportunities. These opportunities can all work in our favor. But to build on them, we have to do three things: 

First, we must increase the visibility of what is happening to our children. Health inequities continue to worsen. I believe this is because people who see the worst of it don't have the resources to defeat it, and the people who have the resources to defeat it don't see the worst of it. 

I believe that if you took the world and you randomly re-sorted it so that rich people lived next door to poor people – so, for example, people in the United States saw millions of mothers burying babies who had died from measles or malnutrition or pneumonia – they would insist something be done. 

And they would be willing to pay for it. 

Second, we can't just tell people about the problems. We have to tell them about effective, affordable solutions - about how little money it takes to save a life.

• If people knew that the measles vaccine costs only a quarter…

• If they knew we could prevent children from dying of malaria with a bednet that costs just $4…

• If they knew we could prevent a child's death from diarrhea for 33 cents using Oral Rehydration Therapy…

If they knew these facts, more and more people would provide the resources needed to solve these problems. 

The third critical element is political leadership. This is something that only the distinguished guests in this room can provide. Foreign aid and foundation giving can achieve important advances, but the big examples of national success have all required political leadership. 

This is especially important on the issue of AIDS. Many of you have been willing to speak out about AIDS and its impact. That has been part of every national success story, including Uganda  – which brought its HIV prevalence from above 30% to below 10%; and Thailand – which cut infection rates of high-risk groups by two-thirds. 

Another important act of political leadership is to increase health budgets. A strong commitment from you will inspire a stronger commitment from your partners. These partners look to you for clear results and transparent accounting.   

Leaders in the developed world have said they will increase their support as you increase success. I believe you should take them at their word – and hold them to their word.

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Nelson Mandela’s speech in full

“Poverty is not natural – it is man-made and can be overcome"

I am privileged to be here today at the invitation of the campaign to Make Poverty History.

As you know, I recently formally announced my retirement from public life and should really not be here. However, as long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

Moreover, the Global Campaign for Action Against Poverty represents such a noble cause that we could not decline the invitation.

Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times - times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation - that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.

The Global Campaign for Action Against Poverty can take its place as a public movement alongside the movement to abolish slavery and the international solidarity against apartheid.

And I can never thank the people of Britain enough for their support through those days of the struggle against apartheid. Many stood in solidarity with us, just a few yards from this spot.

Through your will and passion, you assisted in consigning that evil system forever to history. But in this new century, millions of people in the world's poorest countries remain imprisoned, enslaved, and in chains.

They are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free.
Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

And overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.

The steps that are needed from the developed nations are clear.
The first is ensuring trade justice. I have said before that trade justice is a truly meaningful way for the developed countries to show commitment to bringing about an end to global poverty.

The second is an end to the debt crisis for the poorest countries.
The third is to deliver much more aid and make sure it is of the highest quality.
In 2005, there is a unique opportunity for making an impact.

In September, world leaders will gather in New York to measure progress since they made the Millennium Declaration in the year 2000. That declaration promised to halve extreme poverty.

But at the moment, the promise is falling tragically behind. Those leaders must now honour their promises to the world's poorest citizens.

Tomorrow, here in London, the G7 finance ministers can make a significant beginning. I am happy to have been invited to meet with them.

The G8 leaders, when they meet in Scotland in July, have already promised to focus on the issue of poverty, especially in Africa.

I say to all those leaders: do not look the other way; do not hesitate. Recognise that the world is hungry for action, not words. Act with courage and vision.

I am proud to wear the symbol of this global call to action in 2005. This white band is from my country.

In a moment, I want to give this band to you - young people of Britain - and ask you to take it forward along with millions of others to the G8 summit in July.

I entrust it to you. I will be watching with anticipation.
We thank you for coming here today. Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.

Of course the task will not be easy. But not to do this would be a crime against humanity, against which I ask all humanity now to rise up.

Make Poverty History in 2005. Make History in 2005. Then we can all stand with our heads held high."

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Congressman Pete Stark's statement

Introducing the Child Poverty Reduction Act

February 5, 2003

Mr. Speaker,
I rise today to introduce the Child Poverty Reduction Act. I commend Senator Charles Schumer who will be introducing companion legislation in the Senate.

The Child Poverty Reduction Act makes reducing child poverty an explicit goal of welfare. It creates a high performance bonus grant for States that reduce child poverty. In fact, this legislation is more likely to reduce child poverty than last year’s Republican welfare reauthorization bill. This is because it provides the proper financial incentives for states to do so through the child poverty reduction bonus.

The goal of the welfare should be to reduce child poverty, not to simply kick recipients off the welfare rolls. Many former welfare recipients have been successful at finding work. However, far fewer have successfully escaped poverty. From 1996 to 2001, the number of people receiving welfare dropped 53 percent, while child poverty was reduced only 20 percent in the same period. As a result, almost one in six children - about 12 million - continue to live in poverty.

Simply reducing the welfare caseloads does not measure whether welfare has helped recipients get jobs and improved their economic standing. The fact that welfare caseloads decreased in 2001 by 106,000 recipients while the number of children in poverty increased by 170,000 children shows the shortcomings of using caseloads as a measure for welfare reform’s success.

Child poverty can have devastating impacts that last a lifetime. Studies show that poverty has harmful affects on children’s cognitive ability and school performance. Poverty can contribute to early sexual activity and pregnancy. Poverty can lead to crime, higher incarceration rates, and unemployment.

To encourage states to use funds to improve the well-being of our nation’s children, this bill amends the welfare laws by making reducing child poverty an explicit goal of welfare. It backs this up by creating a $150 million high performance bonus grant to states that reduce child poverty.

To receive this new welfare high performance bonus, states would have to reduce their child poverty rate from the previous year’s poverty rate. To ensure that states sustain their efforts to reduce child poverty, the high performance bonus is only awarded to states whose most recent child poverty rate does not exceed their lowest poverty rate since the beginning of this bonus program.

I find it even more troubling that more than 5 million children live in extreme poverty in which their families’ incomes are less than 50 percent of the poverty level ($8,980 annually for a family of four, or just $748 a month). This bill attempts to help those especially needy children by only rewarding states that reduce poverty for children at all levels of need. Thus, the high performance bonus is only given to states that both reduce the overall poverty rate and prevent any increase the percentage of poor children living in extreme poverty.

Children have no choice as to whether they are on welfare. I will continue to look for methods to protect them from the effects of the 1996 welfare reform bill. While this legislation is not the overall solution to reducing child poverty, it is a clear step in the right direction.

Let’s never forget, our children are our nation’s future. Reducing child poverty is one of the smartest investments that this Congress can make. It shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I urge my colleagues to join me in this small, but important initiative to reduce child poverty. We ought to devote ourselves to the well-being of all our children and restore new promise to their future. It is time to enact the Child Poverty Reduction Act.

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Source:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/12/24/214109.shtml
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/MediaCenter/Speeches/BillgSpeeches/BGSpeechUNSGLuncheon-020509.htm
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/
 

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