An Appalling Reality: Children in Poverty at Home

A sponsorship programme used to feed starving children in Third World countries is now being used to help poor Kiwi kids.

Children’s charity Variety has launched a scheme that allows people to sponsor an individual Kiwi child living below the poverty line for $35 a month, or about $1.15 a day.

The money will pay for things such as school trips, stationery, doctor’s visits, books and prescriptions.

- Jo Moir and Michael Forbes, The Dominion Post

How much worse does this situation have to get before the government steps in and actually does it’s job?  This is a huge violation of the social contract that we are all bound to.  We, the people, pay taxes, in return the government is there to protect us.  That is how First World countries maintain their status as a First World country.

The fact that there are 270,000 children living in poverty right now shows the gravity of the problem.  According to the last census in 2006, the total population in New Zealand was 4,027,947.  That was projected to have risen to 4,405,200 by 2011.  Children under 15 years of age were projected to total 893,700.  So that’s a staggering 30%.  Almost a third of this country’s children.  I’m embarrassed.  That’s far too many to just be put down to parents not doing a good enough job looking after their children.

And the fact that this isn’t even the first charity program to be launched to attempt to cover this need.  KidsCan has had one running for nearly a decade, to ensure that at least some children have access to the necessities that some of us take for granted.  Even Fonterra got involved by starting their Milk for Schools program.

The government shouldn’t just be standing back, letting charities and businesses fill in the gaps that they continue to ignore.  The lack of effective response to the current housing crisis, particularly in Christchurch and Auckland, certainly isn’t helping the whole situation.  They need to get their shit together.  At least try to develop a more effective way to combat the increasing unemployment that isn’t just finding ways to exclude people from being eligible (it’s now at 7.3%).    Change policies so that the minimum wage is raised to something that is actually a living wage, so people can start to actually support themselves and their families, as well as providing extra support for those still in need.  It’s disgusting.

H/T Holly Walker, frogblog; Bomber, TUMEKE!; Idiot/Savant, No Right Turn, one and two

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If you’re reading this anywhere but That Girl, Fae or a feed reader without attribution, it has been STOLEN! Who knew that my stuff was that good? ~ Fae

That Girl, Fae by R Simpson-Large aka Fae Teardrop is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.

Because It Affects All of Us

This is a pretty fantastic post about a cis white guy and his response to an equally pretty awful post which appeared in the UK’s Observer:

Here’s why I take transgender issues personally…

Because I or someone I love might get cancer at some point, and a trans person who is capable of discovering the cure is otherwise occupied defending their right to exist.

I live in a world that needs leadership, and a smart, tireless trans person who should maybe be President is busy arguing that they deserve basic human respect.

I want to drive a fucking flying car someday, and the trans person who might invent it is stuck responding to Guardian editorials that treat them like they’re subhuman.

- Dan Solomon, The Frisky

It shows that there are actually people don’t live solely in their own bubble, not caring about the consequences of what they say/do.  There are people who realise that unless we get our shit together and treating everyone else the way we expect to be treated, the way they deserve to be treated, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, and the way they choose to display their identity.  If we can’t do that, then every single one of us is fucked.  And that makes me despair for humanity a little less, and the future is a little less bleak.

H/T Violet Blue

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If you’re reading this anywhere but That Girl, Fae or a feed reader without attribution, it has been STOLEN! Who knew that my stuff was that good? ~ Fae

That Girl, Fae by R Simpson-Large aka Fae Teardrop is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.

Wanna Contribute?

I haven’t had a guest post since forever.  In fact I’ve only ever had one (on Sexuality and the Sex-Positive Community by my friend Alexis) and that was back in February 2011.  Nearly two whole years ago!

So, I’m pretty keen in seeing if anyone would like to compose a guest post for me, or participate in a collaboration.  The topics I’d be interested in are pretty broad:

• fat-acceptance/activism
• queer theory and LGBTQ rights
• experiences with sexuality and sexual/gender identity
• sex-positivity
• paganism
• polyamory and non-monogamous/non-traditional relationships
• mental health
• social history (any era, though my area of study is modern world)
• philosophy
• Woman’s rights

I would love to talk to anyone who’d like to join me.  You can email me, leave a message on my Facebook Page, or @ me on Twitter.

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If you’re reading this anywhere but That Girl, Fae or a feed reader without attribution, it has been STOLEN! Who knew that my stuff was that good? ~ Fae

That Girl, Fae by R Simpson-Large aka Fae Teardrop is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.

Obesity is Getting Out of Control, Don’t Ya Know

There’s a recent blog post by QoT at Ideologically Impure which really took me back to the roots of why I started this blog in the first place.  (I know, right? After my last post? Crazy.)

Anyway, there’s this article over at The New Zealand Herald, and it seems to be wondering why there’s this whole apparent obesity problem still and why no one is talking about it, when  meanwhile, “young children [are] joining weight-loss schemes.”

Yup, you read that right.  Young children.  In “weight-loss schemes.”  Because that’s totally going to encourage the children to have a healthy relationship with food and themselves.

While the director of SureSlim New Zealand, Phil Pullin thinks it’s a-ok for their “lifestyle programmes” to include plans for children as young as SIX, you have to think there might be at least a couple of issues with that.  If there wasn’t, then surely Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers would be all over that potential market, and they’re not.

Further into the article, the spokeswoman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic, Dr Robyn Toomath, claims “children joining weight-loss programmes was nothing to do with fashion-conscious mothers concerned with their child’s image.”

I see Dr Toomath’s claim, and raise her this (same article):

Good Talks speaker on body image Rachel Hansen said children were bombarded with unattainable messages from the media, peers and even their parents that girls should be thin and beautiful and boys strong and muscular to be accepted by society.

Of course parents enrolling their children in weight-loss programmes is due to societal pressure.  We are all pressured to be this highly unobtainable ideal, constantly being told that we’re all too fat, that there’s this epidemic of fatness.

There’s something very wrong with all of us if three and four-year olds are saying, “I’m too fat, I can’t eat that.”  That isn’t a concern they should be having.  They shouldn’t be having any concerns, they’re children.

Like Ms Hansen goes onto say,

 …healthy body weights ranged widely for children and instead of focusing on weight, parents should instead be subtly encouraging a healthy lifestyle with a nutritious diet and plenty of physical activity… parents could foster healthy habits without creating complexes by getting children involved in meal preparation, not having inappropriate food in the house, being more relaxed about their own body shape, and not “fat shaming” their children with comments such as: “Don’t eat any more chips or you’ll get fat.”

Body weights range widely for everyone, not just children.  Fat shaming helps no one, neither does making foods forbidden (unless there’s an allergy or something, then duh).  If we continue to do this, then, as a society, we are going to develop some very unhealthy relationships with food and our bodies.  Who wants that kind of future for our children?

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If you’re reading this anywhere but That Girl, Fae or a feed reader without attribution, it has been STOLEN! Who knew that my stuff was that good? ~ Fae

That Girl, Fae by R Simpson-Large aka Fae Teardrop is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.