Give thanks, then...

By Tony Staley
Compass Editor

As we celebrate Thanksgiving next week we have a great deal to be thankful for, especially because of our basic freedoms and the nation's general wealth.

	Thanksgiving

Not that there aren't problems. Some 20% of America's children live in poverty. There also are the scourges of abortion, child abuse and drug addiction, among other human failures. But basically, we have a lot to be thankful for.

Worldwide, the situation is worse. While the number of people living on less than $1 a day has declined by nearly half since 1981, some 40% of the world stills lives on less than $2 a day.

But those are only numbers, the actual living conditions tell a starker story. Speakers from India, Kenya and Brazil talked about that reality at a Catholic Church-sponsored global poverty conference Oct. 27-28 at St. Mary Cathedral in San Francisco.

Sunitha Krishnan, founder and director of Prajwala, a large anti-trafficking organization in India, said young children, primarily girls, are sold into prostitution and raped before being "adopted" or sold into a lifetime of slavery. More than one-third of India's 1 billion people are poor. India has the second highest HIV/AIDS population in the world and sex tourism is thriving.

Kenyan Peter Kimeu, who runs a small farm and is a former high school headmaster, told of African villages that have no water so people must walk many miles to get a small amount of water that probably is not potable.

One-third of Brazilians - 55 million people - live below the poverty line. Some are so poor that they live in dumps on other people's garbage, said Marcia Hora Acioli, a university professor in Brazil and national secretary of a Caritas Brazil program for young people. Slave labor is rampant, as are environmental destruction in the Amazon and human trafficking of children for both drugs and sex, Acioli said.

In Zambia, 10 million people live on less than $1 a day; 46% have no clean water or sanitation; 67% are unemployed; 20% are HIV-positive; 50% of children are malnourished; and life expectancy is 33 years, said Charity Musamba, a political science doctoral student focusing on development and peace issues in Africa.

At Thanksgiving, we need to give thanks for our blessings. But, these experts say, we also need to: find solidarity in prayer for the world's poor; push for debt forgiveness and new policies in global trade and employment; and promote global development partnerships that empower the poor to take charge of their lives.

Such stewardship will give us all something to be thankful for.