Feed The Baby, Fuel The Future
Sun Herald
Sunday December 21, 2003
Long after Bob Hawke's 1990 target, many Australian children still live in poverty, Peter Jensen writes.
AUSTRALIAN children are still going hungry each day. What can we do about it? For most Australian children, Christmas is a time of joy and celebration, a time of receiving presents and joining in the family feasting. But for others there is a more sombre, aching reality to Christmas.
For Christians, this season is a time to have fun and to feast as we remember God's overwhelming generosity to us.
We celebrate the graciousness of our God in Christ who humbled himself as a baby born in a manger, and who lived his life as a servant obedient even to death on a cross for our sake.
So, for the vast majority of us it is incomprehensible to think that Australian children, during Christmas 2003, are going hungry.
But that is the sad truth revealed by a report launched last week by Anglicare.
The study looked at the accessibility and availability of good quality food for 133 families from Anglicare's offices in Marrickville, Rooty Hill and Wollongong.
It is the level of child hunger exposed by this pilot study that is most shocking. Almost 85 per cent of families that have relied on emergency relief have at some time run out of food, while two-thirds have skipped meals because there was not enough for the whole family.
Of greatest concern, almost 8 per cent of the families surveyed reported that their children were going without food for whole days at a time.
The heartbreaking truth behind this statistic is that a substantial number of these children are aged under four. Among the health consequences on such children is a range of psychosocial, behavioural, learning and academic consequences. These include:• Higher levels of aggression, hyperactivity and anxiety as well as passivity;
* Increased need for mental health services;
* Impaired cognitive functioning and diminished capacity to learn;
* Poorer overall school achievement.
This level of hunger will lead to diet-related diseases, low birth weight babies, anaemia, reduced immunity to infectious diseases, diabetes, heart problems and strokes and dental diseases.
What is urgently needed are structural solutions relating to employment and income distribution, community development, aid, health and education.
This year, Anglicare aims to pack almost 5000 hampers for families in Sydney and the Illawarra region in need of support families that Anglicare has worked with throughout the year.
These hampers not only provide physical nourishment but spiritual nourishment as well. Each contains an explanation from the Bible about God's love for the world that is at the centre of our Christmas celebration.
I thank each one of you who have helped for allowing a tiny spark of hope to enter the lives of at least one family. This spark could make a difference not only this year but for eternity.
© 2003 Sun Herald
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