Category Archives: Poverty

by | December 21, 2015 · 1:28 am

Feeding Forward

Here is someone who really puts the Work into Feeding the Hungry!

Feeding Forward

A Mighty Girl – December 19, 2015

A chance encounter with a homeless veteran made 21-year-old Komal Ahmad realize that she wanted to devote her life to eradicating hunger around the world — with 356 million pounds of edible food thrown away daily, she considers hunger “the world’s dumbest problem.” Four years later, the now 25-year-old is the founder and CEO of Feeding Forward, a non-profit organization which has built a real-time, web-based platform to connect businesses with leftover food to organizations that feed the hungry. Thanks to its unique system, 780,000 pounds of high-quality, fresh food have gone to feed over 600,000 people in need instead of ending up in landfills!

Four years ago, a man approached Ahmad to ask for money for a sandwich; instead, the then undergraduate at UC Berkeley took him to lunch. “We sat and had lunch and I asked him his story and he said, ‘I just came back from my second deployment in Iraq, I was evicted from my house last week, I’ve been waiting for several weeks to have my benefits kick in, but until then, I don’t have any money and I don’t have any food,’ she recalls. “I’m sitting in front of a veteran – someone who had made the most selfless sacrifice possible and something I was planning to make myself as I was about to enter the U.S. Navy – and this guy is now quite literally on the streets begging for food.”

Determined to find a way to eradicate hunger, Ahmad started an on-campus food recovery program to donate leftover meals from the dining hall. But she quickly realized that getting perishable food to people was a huge challenge. In one memorable incident, the dining hall offered 500 sandwiches from an event that was poorly attended, but they had to be used that day since they were perishable. “I rent a Zipcar and I drive to our dining hall dock, and I’m by myself, so it takes me 30 minutes to load the food,” Ahmad says. “Then I call our entire list of recipient agencies…a third of them don’t answer the phone, a third of them said they were good for that day and the last third said they would love to take 15 sandwiches.” She remembers thinking that “It shouldn’t be this hard to do something good. It’s so frustrating and so difficult to find the people that need the food.”

To address this problem and make food donation easier and more efficient than standard food donation initiatives found in many localities, Ahmad started Feeding Forward. When a company or event planner has extra food, all they need to do is use the Feeding Forward app or website to provide details of the donation and a volunteer driver is sent to deliver the food to food banks or shelters based on those organization’s current needs. These donated meals are also often much more nutritious than organizations could provide on their own: Eric Venable, San Francisco City Director of City Team, says “They are giving us very high-quality food….With this really good donated food, there’s more protein. That just really helps those who are eating one, maybe two meals a day.” And, as in most big cities, a tremendous amount of food goes to waste in the San Francisco Bay area. After one food conference featuring celebrity chefs, Feeding Forward received over 5,000 pounds of food donations, which fed over 4,200 people in eight different shelters and food banks and diverted more than 25,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions from landfills.

Feeding Forward already operates in six cities in Northern California, with a 99% pickup rate and over 780,000 pounds of food donated so far. According to Maen Mahfoud, the group’s Head of Internal Operations, there are plenty of opportunities for expansion: “We’ve gotten more than 6,000 requests from people who want to expand nationally and around the world – from Brussels to Israel to Berlin to France.” Ahmad says that’s exactly what she wants to see. “Just like you can hail an Uber, you should be able to donate your food in minutes. My dream was never for this to be just nascent here.” After all, she observes, “These are huge cities that have absurd amounts of food thrown away every day. We are trying to make the Bay Area a case study to say ‘Hey, if it works here, it can work anywhere.'”

You can learn more about Feeding Forward — or sign up to help out as a volunteer food delivery driver — on their website at https://www.feedingforward.com/ or in a recent People profile at http://bit.ly/1FjGcQh

For a heartwarming new book that addresses an issue kids rarely hear about — hunger in their local community and how they can help — we highly recommend “Maddi’s Fridge” for ages 4 to 8 at http://www.amightygirl.com/maddi-s-fridge

For more books for children and teens that explore different aspects of hardship in local communities in sensitive and compassionate ways, check out our blog post, “Cultivating Compassion: 15 Books About Financial Hardship Close to Home,” at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=10049

And, if you’d like to encourage your Mighty Girl’s interest in programming — and help her discover how she can use technology to change the world — check out the recommendations in our blog post, “Wrapped up in Science: Top 40 Science Toys for Mighty Girls” at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=10528

Source:
facebook.com/amightygirl/photos/a.360833590619627.72897.316489315054055/942325295803784/?type=3&theater

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Filed under Poverty, Veterans

by | December 4, 2015 · 7:17 am

I believe …

… that climate change is natural, not man-made.

… that draconian measures to reduce man-made greenhouse gasses will badly damage local and global economies while having no impact whatsoever on pollution, climate, weather, or sea levels.

… that efforts to suppress fossil fuel use in the name of saving the planet are at best misguided and at worse deeply anti-human.

… that no society has ever grown out of poverty without an abundant, affordable, reliable source of energy.

… that at this time, fossil fuels are the best energy source for Third World nations struggling to eliminate poverty.

… that demanding Third World countries stop using fossil fuels means denying them the right to ever have clean, reliable water and labor-saving devices that allow local farmers to produce food in abundance.

… that refusing to allow the 1.2 billion any chance at having electricity for refrigeration and other food preservation processes condemns them to hunger and disease, not due to a lack of food, but to a lack of a consistent, year-round supply of safe, edible food.

… that demanding impoverished peoples continue to heat and cook with smoky open fires does nothing to help the environment, while causing many of them to go blind.

Deepak Lal quotation

Tell our leaders to stop the climate change crap. Sign the Petition @ http://www.cornwallalliance.org/energyempowersthepoor/#

Sources:

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Filed under Climate, Economy, Environmentalism, Poverty

by | September 8, 2015 · 5:41 am

If you believe that Democrat policies are good for people …

… then explain why Detroit isn’t the greatest city on Earth.

Democrats and Detroit

CJ Pearson Dem party slavery

2 Comments

Filed under Crime, Democrats, Poverty, Race Relations, Unemployment

by | May 17, 2015 · 11:51 pm

This program helps poor black kids escape the ghetto

So why do Democrats keep trying to kill it?

Because Democrats owe the unions whose only income is the dues paid by public school teachers.

2015_05 Obama tries to cancel DC scholarships AGAIN

Democrats fight home schooling, vouchers and other school choice options. They make a big deal about how everybody should go to a public school, while they send their own kids to private schools. Their solution to bad public schools is always the same … throw more money at them. BUT … more money hasn’t worked.

Education spending vs education success

So why do Democrats keep fighting school choice and demanding we throw more money at public schools?

Because Democrats owe the unions whose only income is the dues paid by public school teachers.

Donations from Teachers Unions

PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THIS ARTICLE … if your blood pressure can handle it.

Obama’s Continuing War against D.C. Kids By Akash Chougule — May 14, 2015

For the seventh year in a row, President Obama has proposed defunding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school-choice program that allows inner-city students in the nation’s capital to escape failing and often dangerous public schools.

As Stephen Moore detailed recently in the Wall Street Journal, the Opportunity Scholarship Program serves nearly 5,000 students, 95 percent of whom are African-American. It funds private-school tuition for poor families, so that their children can attend schools they would otherwise not be able to afford. It accounts for a minuscule 0.0005 percent of the federal budget.

Nevertheless, the president — who recently stressed “opportunity gaps” in inner cities — has never missed a chance to try to end this program that benefits almost exclusively poor, minority, inner-city children. Of course, there is no speech, photo-op, or press release to go along with this annual tradition of his.

Ending the program would be a devastating blow to the thousands of students whose futures depend on it. Students in the program have a 91 percent high-school graduation rate, compared with 56 percent for D.C. public schools. One parent asked the obvious question: “If you’ve got a program that’s clearly working and helping these kids, why end it?”

Other families who benefit from the Opportunity Scholarship Program describe it as “a godsend for our children,” a “life-saver,” and “our salvation.” One father told Moore, “I truly shudder to think where my son would be today without it.”

Unfortunately, President Obama will never hear this testimony for himself — he refuses even to meet with these families. He is joined in opposition by nearly every Democrat in Congress, including Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents D.C. and the families benefiting from the scholarship program.

Fortunately, the program is kept alive by conservatives in Congress like House Speaker John Boehner, Representative Paul Ryan, Senator Ted Cruz, and others who stand in solidarity with these families — despite the fact that most of them represent populations demographically very different from inner-city Washington.

So why are conservatives standing with poor inner-city families, while President Obama and his liberal allies try to take away their opportunity? Well, it is probably not a coincidence that many liberal campaigns are huge beneficiaries of teachers’-union largesse — and teachers’ unions feel threatened by school-choice programs, which create competition and accountability in education (rather than monopolizing the system and trapping kids in union-controlled schools). Of course, the union leaders don’t say this. When defending their actions, they claim that school choice strips funding from public schools.

But Congress addressed these funding concerns when setting up the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Because the program provided $20 million for choice vouchers, they gave an extra $20 million to the public schools. Moreover, we know from experience that dumping more money into the public-school system does not improve outcomes. The country as a whole has more than doubled education spending over the past 40 years, but achievement has flat-lined — and still the unions oppose school choice. As one parent put it, unions “aren’t afraid that the voucher program won’t work — but that it will.”

There also is a degree of hypocrisy in President Obama’s opposition to the scholarship program. While he sends his own children to the elite, $30,000-per-year Sidwell Friends School, poor students who live just a couple of blocks away from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would have no choice but to attend failing, inner-city schools if the Opportunity Scholarship Program were shut down. Should these kids not have the same educational opportunities as President Obama’s daughters?

One parent half-joked, “He lives in public housing too — why should he get school choice because he’s rich and we’re not? If it’s good for your children, it’s good for our children.”

Education is the first step to a brighter future, and school choice is creating just that for millions of students around the country, and thousands every year here in Washington. President Obama’s desire to defund the Opportunity Scholarship Program is at best ironic, coming from the leader of a movement that lends so much lip service to ending income inequality and uplifting poor communities.

Fortunately, the conservative legislators mentioned above and many others stand up to President Obama and defend the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program year after year. By advocating for this and other school-choice programs, conservatives are the ones actually providing thousands of impoverished students “hope” and “change” they can believe in.

Source:

Sources linked in this article:

3 Comments

Filed under Democrats, Education, Poverty, Unions

by | December 1, 2014 · 8:02 pm

America Plummets Past Nigeria on the Way to Achieving Zimbabwe Status in the Well-Being of Our Poor

Well, this is one way to solve an immigration crisis. The “Give me your tired, your poor…” line from the Statue of Liberty is only meaningful if we can truly boast that our poor are better off in some way from the worst slums and ghettoes of the third world. Otherwise, who would want to come here? According to a recent urban youth well-being study, we have already lost out to Africa in this struggle. As Diogenes put it, recently, President Obama and his suicidal sycophants in the Black Community share much blame in this:

The destruction of black America under the leadership of Barack Obama is unprecedented since the abolition of slavery, yet they follow blindly, yelling racism.

In the Vocativ graphic below, urban Baltimore is rated below Ibadan, Nigeria in all three categories of well-being. Hat tip to Diogenes’ Middle Finger News Service for the story.
ChildLives.r4

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Filed under Barack Obama, Poverty

by | August 10, 2014 · 11:12 am

Left vs Right in Simple Terms

Last month at the left-wingnuts’ Netroots conference, Sen. Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren (D-MA) issued Eleven Progressive Commandments.

This week, former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) issued the Conservative Response.

2014_08 Warren v Palin commandments

1. Elizabeth Warren: “We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it.”

Sarah Palin’s response: “We believe that Washington, D.C. needs to take less of our money. It needs more scrutiny, fewer bureaucrats, and it needs a reminder of the principles laid down in the Constitution that our leaders swear to defend. Furthermore, we believe crony capitalism is infecting both sides of the aisle in D.C. We’re working really hard to root it out of our party. Senator Warren, what are you doing to root it out of yours?”

2. Warren: “We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.”

Palin’s response: “We believe in science and God’s magnificent creation overflowing with natural resources. That means we have a responsibility to honor Him by protecting the earth as we develop our resources in an environmentally sound way for mankind’s use.”

3. Warren: “We believe that the Internet shouldn’t be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.”

Palin’s response: “We believe the Internet shouldn’t be censored by the world’s tyrants. That means President Obama should reverse his disastrous decision to hand over control of Internet domain names to the U.N., where it will come under the thumb of authoritarian regimes like Russia and China.”

4. Warren: “We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.”

Palin’s response: “We believe in lifting Americans out of poverty and into sustainable jobs. That means government needs to butt out of employer-employee pay issues. And quit over-regulating business and increasing taxes. It drives up operating costs — that’s what affects wages.”

5. Warren: “We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them.”

Palin’s response: “We believe … wait, I thought fast food joints … don’t you guys think that they are of the devil or something?  Liberals, I thought you wanted to send those evil employees who would dare work at a fast food joint to purgatory or something until they all go vegan?! Wages and picket lines, I dunno, they’re not often discussed in purgatory, are they?

“We believe in America where minimum-wage jobs are not lifetime gigs. They are stepping stones to a good job with sustainable wages. It teaches work ethic. We believe in helping Americans climb the economic ladder, not get stuck on the first rung. A strong economy with good-paying jobs comes from free enterprise, not from a top-down, bloated, big-government, command-and-control economy.”

6. Warren: “We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt.”

Palin’s response: “We believe that students learn to not make decisions that result in a lot of debt. And we believe that schools need to be more accountable for the insane increase in tuition.  …  It’s no accident, Elizabeth, that the rise in tuition corresponds with the rise in government intervention. More government isn’t the answer.”

7. Warren: “We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.”

Palin’s response: “We believe a pension is a promise. It must be honored. We do that by using common sense and prioritizing budgets that once and for all will end waste and fraud and the crony capitalism and the stupid political decisions that are bankrupting our nation. We believe that in order to keep faith with future generations and fulfill our current commitments to our seniors, we must enact sensible entitlement reform.”

8. Warren: “We believe — I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014 — we believe in equal pay for equal work.”

Palin’s response: “We believe — I can’t believe I have to say this in 2014 — we believe in equal pay for equal work. And President Barack Obama should abandon his hypocritical practice of paying women less than men in his campaigns, in his administration, and in the White House.”

9. Warren: “We believe that equal means equal, and that’s true in marriage, it’s true in the workplace, it’s true in all of America.”

Palin’s response: “We believe that all men and women are created equal. They claim that we are not tolerant? Well, we believe that tolerance goes both ways. That means respecting people’s right to disagree with you, instead of trying to intimidate or silence us. We believe the answer to free speech that you find offensive is more free speech, not less.”

10. Warren: “We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform.”

Palin’s response: “We believe that legal immigration helped make this country strong and vibrant. And that means welcoming law-abiding, hard-working immigrants who wish to come here legally and pledge their allegiance to the United States of America. Furthermore, we believe, as none other than Cesar Chavez believed, that illegal immigration hurts the country. It unfairly hurts working-class Americans of all races, all backgrounds who are seeking good-paying jobs, security for their families.”

11. Warren: “And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!”

Palin’s response: “We believe women have a right to their bodies, just as babies have a right to their living, breathing bodies nestled in a mother’s womb. And anyone who wants contraception, more power to you. Continue to freely buy any kind you want, no one is stopping you. We’ll fight for the right of private businesses, including Hobby Lobby, to work with you to figure out health-care coverage themselves in any way the owners of these businesses (that they built themselves) want to, knowing that government intervention just always screws everything up.

“Furthermore, we believe that religious liberty is enshrined in our Constitution, remember?  The government has no right to coerce people to violate their religious beliefs. And if they try to take any of our Constitutional rights away, we will fight for them.”

Palin had “one final thought for Sen. Warren and her would-be progressive populists.”

“We conservatives believe, as Ronald Reagan said, that you can’t be for big taxes, big government, big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy. We stand with the little guy, who is being bullied and beaten down by the progressive left’s failed policies of yours, Elizabeth Warren.  We stand for free men and free markets — the twin ideals that made this nation strong, peaceful, and prosperous. We say, God Bless America. We hope you say the same, Senator Warren.”

Sources:

Commandments
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/07/Sarah-Palin-Gives-Conservative-Response-To-Elizabeth-Warren-s-Progressive-Commandments

Fauxcahontas
http://humanevents.com/2012/09/04/native-american-delegates-ask-fauxcahontas-to-explain-herself/

31 Comments

Filed under Crony Capitalism, Education, Elizabeth Warren, Environmentalism, Equality, Hobby Lobby, Immigration, Minimum Wage, Poverty, Religious Liberty, Sarah Palin, Taxes

by | June 26, 2014 · 2:15 am

Thanks for nothing, Obama voters!

Megyn Kelly says how bad it is [1:22]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGF_33OC4CI

DOHbama administration scandals

June 24, 2014: Economy shrank 2.9% in 1Q, worst drop since ’09
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/25/economy-first-quarter/11332011/

2014 Obama's FAILED administration

2 Comments

Filed under Barack Obama, Benghazi, Economy, Fast & Furious, IRS, National Debt, NSA, Obamacare, Poverty, Unemployment

by | May 28, 2014 · 6:25 am

Redistribution = Socialism

This is what the poor get under Capitalism vs what they get under Socialism.

The Poor's Share under Capitalism vs Socialism

April 7, 2010: Kelly interviews King about Obama policies hurting job producers

 

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Filed under Economy, Poverty, Socialism

by | April 5, 2014 · 2:54 pm

“Compassionate” Democrats … riddle me this!

You claim your policies are all about helping the poor, but the cities run by Democrats have the worst ghettos and crime rates, the states run by Democrats have the highest taxes and fewest jobs, and the nation under Democrat leadership is rapidly heading into bankruptcy.

Democrat policies don't help poor

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Filed under Democrats, Poverty

by | January 20, 2014 · 12:39 am

Poverty: It’s a Democrat thing.

Democrats would like us to buy their Big Fat Lie that welfare, food stamps and unemployment benefits boost people out of poverty.

But that’s all it is … a Big Fat Lie.

Poverty - It's a Democrat thing

Policy is set jointly by the House, the Senate and the President.

Whichever party dominates two or three of these three bodies dominates policy.

Each party has held dominance for a significant chunk of time in recent years, allowing their policies to have a real impact.

Thus we can easily see what effect real Republican vs. Democrat policies have had on real poverty rates.

1983 ff Poverty and Political party control

Sources:

Poverty rates are calculated annually by the U.S. Census Bureau. Basis for my graph is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States.

To see a graphical History of Political Party Controlin DC from 1953 to the present, go to http://tinyurl.com/kh6s6gf. Feel free to link or copy my graphics. The data I used came from Wikipedia where each session of Congress has its own page. You can start with the current Congress @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/113th_United_States_Congress and cycle back by clicking on the numbers at the bottom of the box with the Capitol building photo.

7 Comments

Filed under Democrats, Poverty, Republicans