tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78184292024-03-04T20:50:06.466-08:00Magpamana Ng PagasaPartners Changing Nations Through Changed LivesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-43968423571387150772014-08-10T12:04:00.003-07:002014-08-10T14:49:43.858-07:00<h1 class="title" id="page-title" style="background-color: white; clear: right; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em;">
Quality of life</h1>
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<span class="article-author-info"><a href="http://www.philstar.com/opinion/2014/08/11/1356198/quality-life">AS A MATTER OF FACT By Sara Soliven De Guzman</a></span> <span class="article-entity-info">(The Philippine Star) </span>| <span class="article-date-info">August 11, 2014</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">Does our government really care about the quality of life of every Filipino? With the bad traffic, pollution, brownouts, expensive water and electricity rates not to mention tax increases and poor services offered – we’re doomed!</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">Quality of life (or QOL) is defined as the general well-being of individuals and societies. It covers various fields: international development, healthcare, politics and employment. Standard indicators used to measure the quality of life are: employment, environment, health, education, recreation time and social being.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">The most commonly used international measure of development is the Human Development Index (HDI). This measure is a combination of life expectancy, education, and standard of living. The HDI is used by the United Nations Development Program in their Human Development Report. The UN also ranks countries by happiness which is said to be the ultimate outcome of a high quality of life.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">How happy are the Filipinos? Last year according to a study of 142 countries comprising 96% of the world’s population conducted by the London-based Legatum Institute Prosperity Index, Norway is the happiest country in the world, the United States ranked 12th and the Philippines 67th. The study was based on 89 indicators grouped into eight categories – economy, entrepreneurship and opportunity, governance, education, health, safety and security, personal freedom and social capital.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">It is every government’s ultimate goal to improve the lives and well-being of every citizen. Sad to say, this is not what is happening to us. We continue to live a miserable life. Our government, our environment and the present demands of our society makes us very unhappy.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">The survey conducted by research firm Pulse Asia last December 2013 showed that nearly five in ten Filipinos do not see any improvement in their quality of life. Of the 1,200 adult respondents, 45 percent said their personal circumstances will be the same in 2014 while 37 percent expressed optimism and 19 percent thought it will be worse than the previous year.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">Despite what the government has been ranting about a booming economy, more Filipinos remain vulnerable to poverty. Quality of life remains the same as in the past years. In its 2013 Human Development Index, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said the Philippines ranked 114th out of 187 countries with an index of 0.654. By the way, in 2011, the Philippines already ranked 114th with an HDI of 0.651. Not much improvement at all.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">The UNDP said 18.4 percent of the country’s population lived below the poverty line of $1.25 per day between 2002-2011. Nine percent of the population is considered vulnerable to poverty while 5.7 percent is living in severe poverty.</span></div>
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<span class="article-date-info">At the end of 2012, the Philippine population stood at 96.5 million. Recent count has reached 100 million. By 2030 our population may balloon to 126.3 million. Sanamagan!</span></div>
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The point is – life is harsh in this country. Our people may be a naturally happy race but deep within our hearts is sadness. If only we could have a better life in our own land. What life do we want to have? Nothing really out of the ordinary, I guess. We just want a life that is pleasant and one that gives us dignity and pride.</div>
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Is it too much to ask the government to improve public services? We pay exorbitant taxes (personal tax and business tax) to help the government provide efficient service to the citizens of this country. But until now, no significant changes have been made to improve our quality of life. No one in government is courageous enough to stop corruption. Yes, P-Noy may be on the right track in curtailing corruption but his way of doing it has been questioned several times. If only our people can speak up – things would really change.</div>
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What makes us unhappy? Traffic, crime, pollution, expensive commodities to meet our basic needs, hospitals that are dirty and lack doctors and facilities, not enough classrooms and untrained public school teachers, public markets with no ventilation and poor sanitation, and streets with no lights at night making them dangerous much more so because no policeman is on sight. These are but some of the many disheartening conditions we have to face every day as we toil to live a better life. Clearly, we have been shortchanged by the government. </div>
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Our government officials who belong to all the three branches seem to have become the ‘enemies of the state.’ They have actually replaced our colonizers and are now exploiting our land. They are the encomienderos of today. As in the people of the past, they own vast lands, are very wealthy (but most with unexplained wealth) and are very influential in this society. The masa are treated like Indios. Nothing has changed. Nothing!</div>
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If our leaders were ever sincere in improving our lives and the conditions of our environment, then, our country today would have been the best in Asia. We were already there in the 1950s going on that upward climb but all of a sudden we crashed. And the rest of our neighboring countries beat us to the finish line while our very own government allowed the termites to take over our land.</div>
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It is said that during the colonization, we were governed with rules and manipulations. We were victims of slavery, maltreatment, discrimination, militarization and injustice. Force labor was enforced and human rights were denied. We suffered and lost our freedom.</div>
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Our heroes died to help us regain that freedom. But as the years go by, the question lingers on. Are we really free? This social contract that P-Noy has with the Filipino people whom he calls his ‘bosses’ seem to have been drawn on water. No traces of what it has actually done to answer the needs of the lowly citizens of this country. The contract contains the same old baloney – promises that are meant to be broken! No amount of rhetoric can alter the reality that we are still a nation caught in the shackles of poverty and injustice.</div>
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Our leaders should learn from our past mistakes. F. Sionil Jose in his article Romancing Colonialism and the Colonized Mind said, “For us who are colonized, it is important that we are freed from it, to use it not to glorify the colonizer, but to remember he was the enemy and could still be – and that from history, we should be able to extract those aspects of it which could bind us, which could lead us to freedom and justice.” He added, “The colonizers laid down the structures of oppression, the institutions of coercion which exists to this very day, for colonialism dies hard – it persists in actual forces of domination, of control, and most of all, its insidious virus is in the mind, not of the colonizer and his remaining acolytes, but in the feelings of inferiority, of helplessness and apathy in the colonized. And this is perhaps the most enduring and formidable obstacle in the building of a nation – the colonized mind.</div>
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Such is the state of mind of our leaders. If this will not change, we will remain as indios, obreros and sacadas in our own land!</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-91710437020468482592013-12-08T16:11:00.000-08:002014-01-24T17:41:17.088-08:00Poverty in the PhilippinesPoverty remains the most critical social problem that needs to be addressed. Philippines' poverty line marks a per capita income of 16,841 pesos a year. According to the data from the National Statistical Coordination Board, more than one-quarter (27.9%) of the population fell below the poverty line the first semester of 2012, an approximate 1 per cent increase since 2009. This figure is a much lower figure as compared to the 33.1% in 1991.<br />
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The decline in poverty has been slow and uneven, much slower than neighboring countries who experienced broadly similar numbers in the 1980s, such as People's Republic of China (PRC), Thailand, Indonesia (where the poverty level lies at 8.5%) or Vietnam (13.5%). This shows that the incidence of poverty has remained significantly high as compared to other countries for almost a decade. The unevenness of the decline has been attributed to a large range of income brackets across regions and sectors, and unmanaged population growth. The Philippines poverty rate is roughly the same level as Haiti.<br />
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Poverty level on per capita income - $374<br />
Percentage of population of 100,000,000 living under $2 per day level - 41.53%<br />
Per Capita Income - $4,380<br />
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Poverty in USA</div>
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The USA government's definition of poverty is based on total income received. For example, the poverty level for 2012 in USA was set at $23,050 (total yearly income) for a family of four (one person in each family unit is $11,490).<br />
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In November 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau said more than 16% of the population lived in <b>poverty in the United States</b>, including almost 20% of American children, up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in poverty.<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span>California has a poverty rate of 23.5%, the highest of any state in the country.<br />
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Per Capita Income - $51,704<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-25673359260218647452013-01-25T13:06:00.000-08:002014-01-24T13:23:08.307-08:00Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs <span class="watch-title long-title yt-uix-expander-head" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="Immigration, World Poverty and Gumballs - Updated 2010">NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that favors an environmentally sustainable and economically just America and seeks to educate the public about the effects of high levels of immigration on U.S. overpopulation, the environment, jobs, and wages. We use government data to conduct research on the impacts of U.S. population growth, consumption, sprawl, and current levels of immigration and educate the public, opinion leaders and policy makers on the results of those and other studies.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Console', Courier, 'Courier New'; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=LPjzfGChGlE&feature=player_embedded">http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=LPjzfGChGlE&feature=player_embedded</a></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-70792476159617815982012-08-23T21:29:00.001-07:002012-08-23T21:29:52.373-07:0040% of U.S. food wasted, report says<div class="cnn_first">
Forty percent of food in the United States is never eaten, amounting to $165 billion a year in waste, taking a toll on the country's water resources and significantly increasing greenhouse gas emissions, according to <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf">a report from the Natural Resources Defense Council</a> released this week.</div>
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The group says more than 20 pounds of food is wasted each month for each of 311 million Americans, amounting to $1,350 to $2,275 annually in waste for a family of four. Think of it as dumping 80 quarter-pound hamburger patties in the garbage each month, or chucking two dozen boxes of breakfast cereal into the trash bin rather than putting them in your pantry.<br />
The report points out waste in all areas of the U.S. food supply chain, from field to plate, from farms to warehouses, from buffets to school cafeterias.<br />
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"Food is simply too good to waste," the report says. "Given all the resources demanded for food production, it is critical to make sure that the least amount possible is needlessly squandered on its journey to our plates."<br />
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<span id="more-136768"></span>Most of the waste comes in the home, the report says.<br />
"American families throw out approximately 25% of the food and beverages they buy," the report says. It cites several reasons, including that food has been so cheap and plentiful in the United States that Americans don't value it properly.<br />
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"Food represents a small portion of many Americans' budgets, making the financial cost of wasting food too low to outweigh the convenience of it," the report says. "This issue of wasted food is simply not on the radar of many Americans, even those who consider themselves environment- or cost-conscious."<br />
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Enticed by impulse buys, sales and savings by buying in bulk, Americans simply buy more food than they can eat, the report says. Part of that problem comes from poor planning<strong> –</strong> such as impromptu decisions to eat out when there's still food in the fridge<strong> –</strong> and when we do cook at home, making enough to fill the plate rather than what we actually need to eat. The average size of the U.S. dinner plate is 36% bigger now than it was in 1960, the report says.<br />
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Portion sizes account for significant food loss in restaurants, too, it says. Seventeen percent of the food in restaurant meals is not eaten, the report says, but too much food is served.<br />
"Today, portion sizes can be two to eight times larger than USDA or FDA standard serving sizes," the report says.<br />
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And restaurants stock more food than they serve, it says.<br />
"Particularly wasteful are large buffets, which cannot reuse or even donate most of what is put out because of health code restrictions," the report says.<br />
Changes can be made in school cafeterias, too, according to the report. It encourages schools to serve lunch after recess so students would have more time to eat and therefore eat some of what they waste now.<br />
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Retailers also bear some responsibility, the report says.<br />
"The retail model views waste as a part of doing business," it says, noting that stores may be looked at suspiciously by their corporate parents if their waste numbers are too low. "Industry executives and managers view appropriate waste as a sign that a store is meeting quality-control and full-shelf standards."<br />
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Among the problems at the retail level, according to the report:<br />
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<li>Stores overstock displays of fresh produce to give an impression of bounty, leaving items at the bottom bruised and unsellable.</li>
<li>They make too much ready-to-eat food. "One grocer estimated that his store threw away a full 50% of the rotisserie chickens that were prepared," the report said.</li>
<li>They throw out food in damaged or outdated promotional packaging (think holiday cookies) that is still edible.</li>
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Waste also occurs on the farm and in the packing house.<br />
"Approximately 7% of planted fields in the United States are typically not harvested each year," the report says.<br />
Among the possible reasons cited in the report: Growers can't get a good enough price for their crop to make harvest profitable, or they overplanted and have more crop than there is demand for, or the food is of edible quality but not marketable.<br />
"A packer of citrus, stone fruit, and grapes estimated that 20% to 50% of the produce he handles is unmarketable but perfectly edible," the report says.<br />
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All that waste has environmental costs, the report says.<br />
Food production accounts for 80% of the country's fresh water consumption, but the waste of food means 25% of the fresh water is actually wasted.<br />
And wasted food rotting in landfills accounts for 25% of U.S. methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere as long as 15 years and is 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.<br />
The report says there are places to look for better examples on how to use our food resources. For example, American food waste is 10 times what is experienced in Southeast Asia.<br />
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And we can also look to our own history. Waste is up 50% since the 1970s, the report says.<br />
One key recommendation of the report is standardization of date labels on food. Americans may be throwing out a substantial amount of edible food simply because they misinterpret a "sell by" date as a "use by" date, the report says.<br />
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It also says the economic model of the food chain may need to change.<br />
"There is the plain economic truth that the more food consumers waste, the more those in the food industry are able to sell," the report says.<br />
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If these problems can be fixed, the nation's hungry could benefit, according to the report.<br />
"Reducing losses by just 15% could feed more than 25 million Americans every year," the report says.<br />
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The National Resources Defense Council is an environmental action group with more than 1.3 million members. It works to combat global warming, defend wildlife, create clean energy, cut pollution, protect waters supplies and revive the world's oceans, according to its website.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-24205182322372491292010-12-23T22:11:00.000-08:002012-08-23T21:17:30.146-07:00American Dream<a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/23/my-take-why-my-church-rebelled-against-the-american-dream/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link:My take: Why my church rebelled against the American Dream">My take: Why my church rebelled against the American Dream</a><br />
By David Platt, Special to CNN<br />
December 23, 2010<br />
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We American Christians have a way of taking the Jesus of the Bible and twisting him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with.<br />
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A nice middle-class American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts.<br />
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A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who for that matter wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings comfort and prosperity to us as we live out our Christian spin on the American Dream.<br />
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But lately I’ve begun to have hope that the situation is changing.<br />
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The 20th-century historian who coined the term “American Dream,” James Truslow Adams, defined it as “a dream… in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are.”<br />
But many of us are realizing that Jesus has different priorities. Instead of congratulating us on our self-fulfillment, he confronts us with our inability to accomplish anything of value apart from God. Instead of wanting us to be recognized by others, he beckons us to die to ourselves and seek above all the glory of God.<br />
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In my own faith family, the Church at Brook Hills, we have tried to get out from under the American Dream mindset and start living and serving differently.<br />
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Like many other large American churches, we had a multimillion-dollar campus and plans to make it even larger to house programs that would cater to our own desires. But then we started looking at the world we live in.<br />
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It’s a world where 26,000 children die every day of starvation or a preventable disease. A world where billions live in situations of such grinding poverty that an American middle-class neighborhood looks like Beverly Hills by comparison. A world where more than a billion people have never even heard the name Jesus. So we asked ourselves, “What are we spending our time and money on that is less important than meeting these needs?” And that’s when things started to change.<br />
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First we gave away our entire surplus fund - $500,000 - through partnerships with churches in India, where 41 percent of the world’s poor live. Then we trimmed another $1.5 million from our budget and used the savings to build wells, improve education, provide medical care and share the gospel in impoverished places around the world. Literally hundreds of church members have gone overseas temporarily or permanently to serve in such places.<br />
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And it’s not just distant needs we’re trying to meet. It’s also needs near at hand.<br />
One day I called up the Department of Human Resources in Shelby County, Alabama, where our church is located, and asked, “How many families would you need in order to take care of all the foster and adoption needs that we have in our county?”<br />
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The woman I was talking to laughed.<br />
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I said, “No, really, if a miracle were to take place, how many families would be sufficient to cover all the different needs you have?”<br />
She replied, “It would be a miracle if we had 150 more families.”<br />
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When I shared this conversation with our church, over 160 families signed up to help with foster care and adoption. We don’t want even one child in our county to be without a loving home. It’s not the way of the American Dream. It doesn’t add to our comfort, prosperity, or ease. But we are discovering the indescribable joy of sacrificial love for others, and along the way we are learning more about the inexpressible wonder of God’s sacrificial love for us.<br />
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Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my country and I couldn’t be more grateful for its hard-won freedoms. The challenge before we American Christians, as I see it, is to use the freedoms, resources, and opportunities at our disposal while making sure not to embrace values and assumptions that contradict what God has said in the Bible.<br />
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I believe God has a dream for people today. It’s just not the same as the American Dream.<br />
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I believe God is saying to us that real success is found in radical sacrifice. That ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of him. That the purpose of our lives transcends the country and culture in which we live. That meaning is found in community, not individualism. That joy is found in generosity, not materialism. And that Jesus is a reward worth risking everything for.<br />
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Indeed, the gospel compels us to live for the glory of God in a world of urgent spiritual and physical need, and this is a dream worth giving our lives to pursue.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-7286437415916238432010-12-20T11:22:00.000-08:002011-12-20T17:09:18.474-08:00LINKS<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://magpamanangpagasa.org/">Magpamana Ng Pagasa</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ciyhopeofglory.org/">Christ In You Ministries</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://isomphils.org/">International School of Ministry</a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://avivjudea.org/">Temple Aviv Judea</a></div>
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<a href="http://breadcom.org/">Bread From Heaven</a></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-73368818254517402432007-10-07T19:34:00.000-07:002012-08-23T21:20:16.048-07:00Hunger - One in five, or 3.8 million Filipino familiesSWS: Hunger hits record high, afflicts 3.8M Pinoy families<br />
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Hunger hit a new record peak nationwide as one in five, or 3.8 million Filipino families, had experienced having nothing to eat in September 2007. This was the result of the latest survey of the creditable pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS), where the national percentage of families having experienced nothing to eat rose to a high of 21.5 percent.<br />
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SWS, which published on Monday the results on BusinessWorld (<a href="http://www.bworld.com.ph/" target="_blank">http://www.bworld.com.ph/</a>), said this was a “dramatic" reversal of gains in June where hunger fell to 14.7% from 19% in February 2007 and November 2006. It added the 21.5% was almost 10 points above the 11.8% average for the 38 hunger surveys it had conducted quarterly starting mid-1998. This was despite government’s implementation of anti-hunger programs like the food-for-school program and the Gulayan ng Bayan to encourage backyard farming.<br />
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<strong>Earlier, President Arroyo claimed she herself experienced hunger, but was told that the hunger in the SWS surveys refer to involuntary hunger.</strong><br />
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<strong><a name='more'></a><br /><br /></strong>The highest rise involved moderate hunger, referring to those who experienced it “only once" or “a few times." It rose to a record 17.4% in September from 12.5% in June. Counted in this category were those who did not state their frequency of hunger. Severe hunger, meaning it was experienced “often" or “always," rose to 4.1% from 2.2% in June. However, it remained below the record of 6% notched in March 2001.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1176432900096040422007-04-12T19:53:00.000-07:002007-04-12T19:55:00.106-07:00More Filipinos feel their lives are worse now than 3 years ago, survey saysMANILA (AP) 04/12 8:10:27 PM - The number of Filipinos who feel they are worse off now than they were three years ago is rising, despite the government's claims that the economy has improved, a survey showed Thursday.<br /><br />The April 3-5 survey by independent pollster Pulse Asia showed 54 percent of respondents claimed they are worse off now than they were three years ago, up from 46 percent in April 2004.<br /><br />"It appears that the reported gains from the economic reforms put in place by the Arroyo administration are not yet being felt by most Filipinos," Pulse Asia said.<br /><br />Only 11 percent of the 1,800 adults surveyed said their quality of life is better, down from 16 percent three years ago. The number of people who felt the quality of their lives remained the same from three years ago also slid to 35 percent from 38 percent in 2004, Pulse Asia said. The survey, which comes ahead of May's midterm elections, had a 2.3 percentage points error margin.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1175043996471676542007-03-27T19:04:00.000-07:002007-03-27T19:06:36.480-07:00A fish now or how to fish?<a href="http://www.philstar.com/philstar/NEWS200703280716.htm">DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo ChancoThe Philippine Star 03/28/2007</a><br /><br />A Social Weather Stations survey earlier revealed that at least one in five Filipino households or a total of 3.4 million households experienced starvation at least once in the past three months. Hunger went up by three points in Metro Manila, from 17.7 percent in November last year to 20.7 percent in February 2007. It rose slightly in the rest of Luzon from 17.7 percent to 18.3 percent, and hardly changed in Mindanao, from 22.3 percent in the previous quarter to 22.7 percent. Hunger declined by nearly four points in Visayas, from 19 percent in November to 15.3 percent in February.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1162965529603078102006-11-07T21:57:00.000-08:002006-11-07T21:58:49.613-08:0026 MILLION FILIPINOS SUBSIST ON 72 CENTS A DAYBy: Katherine Adraneda, PhilStar.Com<br /><br />Manila – Twenty six million Filipinos can be considered poor, each subsisting on a meager budget of around P36 (around 72 cents) per day, mostly for food, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty-Philippines (GCAP-Philippines) said over the weekend.<br /><br />GCAP-Philippines said that with such a measly amount for his day-to-day needs, a typical poor Filipino is on a “bad diet” and almost incapable of satisfying his other non-food needs like clothing and entertainment.<br /><br />GCAP said government defines poor as “those who fall below the per capita povery threshold of P36 per person a day.”<br /><br />This means a person needs to earn at least $13,113 (US$262.26) a year in order to live beyond the poverty threshold and be able to spend no less than P8,734 for “food needs” and P4,379 for “other basic needs.”<br /><br />Over the weekend, GCAP-Philippines held “The 36-peso Challenge” to determine the acceptability of the per capita poverty threshold set by the government for each Filipino per day.<br /><br />This reporter took part in the challenge, along with a single mother, a retiree, a housewife, and a college student. The “Challenge” only confirmed what had been held by many: P36 per day is not enough to satisfy even the most basic need of a Filipino.<br /><br />“Definitely, we raise a resounding cry that ‘no, P36 is not enough’ … P36 will not lift the poor Filipinos out of their misery and help them live a life of dignity,” GCAP-Philippines said.<br /><br />GCAP-Philippines said a 2001 study showed that over a third of Class E and over a tenth of Class D Filipinos had resorted to eating “surrogate ulam” and “new viands,” consisting of salt, soy sauce, bagoong (shrimp paste), pork lard, soft drinks or coffee because they couldn’t afford to buy vegetables, fish or meat.<br /><br />Instant noodles, on the one hand, are now “being drowned” in water to provide full meal for many poor families. With scarce spending for food “there is a bleak future because of low nutrition levels,” GCAP said, adding that many Filipinos subsist on carbohydrate and calorie-heavy diets to keep hunger pangs at bay.<br /> The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), according to GCAP, has expressed alarm over the country’s 30 percent child malnutrition rate which has persisted for over a decade.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1162786108035326822006-11-05T20:01:00.000-08:002006-11-05T20:08:28.046-08:00Going a little hungry is healthy<a href="http://www.philstar.com/philstar/NEWS200611060710.htm">DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo ChancoThe Philippine Star 11/06/2006</a><br /><br />SWS reports that some 2.9 million Filipino families or 16.9 percent of a projected base of 17.4 million households experienced hunger in the past three months. That’s a real shame, not just for Ate Glue but for our society. If only the respondents were going hungry out of choice, rather than out of poverty, it wouldn’t be so bad. Latest reports from American health experts seem to indicate that going a little hungry is healthy, based on studies of laboratory mice, rhesus monkeys and even worms.<br /><br />This is not to say that what is good for mice, monkeys and worms are necessarily good for humans. Nor would it be right to say that because the poor amongst us live like mice in crowded shantytowns or urban sidewalks, going a little hungry will also be good for their health. In fact, the Christian conscience in all of us who are overfed should be bothered by the results of this SWS survey.<br /><br />According to SWS, there is an increase of more than 800,000 households experiencing severe hunger in September compared to June. Families who reported having gone hungry "often" or "always" went up by 4.6 percent in September from 3.4 percent in June. Those who experienced moderate hunger, or those who reported that they experienced hunger "only once" or "a few times" in the last three months, rose to 12.3 percent, or 2.1 million households, from 10.1 percent in the previous quarter.<br /><br />If I were Ate Glue, I would say this hunger problem in our midst is not just a government concern. It should move everyone of us into action, or at the very least, eat less so that the money we can save from paying personal trainers and gym fees could be contributed to Caritas instead, for feeding the really hungry. I personally know that’s easier said than done. But it is one of those things we must try to do for our own good.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1136611787080234612006-01-06T21:28:00.000-08:002006-01-06T21:29:47.090-08:00Survey: Hunger hits record high in the Philippines<span class="acontent"><a href="http://www.philstar.com/philstar/NEWS_FLASH010620065001_12.htm">Philippine Star</a><br />MANILA <b>(AP)</b> - The number of Filipinos who said they went hungry rose to a record high with nearly 17 percent of people surveyed saying they had nothing to eat at least once over a three-month period, a survey group said Friday.<br /><br />Of the Filipino households queried, 16.7 percent reported experiencing hunger in the last quarter of 2005, the independent Social Weather Stations survey group said -- a record high since it began hunger surveys in mid-1998.<br /><br />The survey also found those describing themselves as living in poverty rose to 57 percent from 49 percent in the previous quarter. <br /><br />The SWS said the proportional figure, or an estimated 2.8 million families, surpassed the previous peak of 16.1 percent in March 2001. The proportion of people going hungry has been in the double-digits ever since the second quarter of 2004. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1117941135569290032005-06-04T20:09:00.000-07:002005-06-04T20:12:27.293-07:00Forum for Family Planning and Development<span style="font-style: italic;">From: GMA’s lowest rating: A wakeup call - BABE'S EYE VIEW By Babe Romualdez - <a href="http://www.philstar.com/philstar/News200506052604.htm">The Philippine Star 06/05/2005 </a></span><br /><br />But our real problem lies in the fact that we have the worst fiscal situation ever since time immemorial because of the large government debt that as of February this year has already hit P4.08 trillion, a population that’s growing by leaps and bounds that could reach 160 million by 2030. As a matter of fact, at the Forum for Family Planning and Development which I attended the other day, it was disclosed that 11 million Filipinos are confirmed to be going hungry, 18 million are undernourished, and 25.4 million or about one third of the population live in extreme poverty and subsist on P34 per day.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1114821601458646612005-04-29T17:36:00.000-07:002005-04-29T17:40:01.460-07:00Hunger affects 13 percent of Filipino households<a href="http://www.philstar.com/philstar/NEWS_FLASH042920051039_11.htm">PhilStar.com 04/29 /2005</a><br /><br />MANILA <b>(AP)</b> - Hunger stalks 13 percent of all Philippine households, a survey by an independent pollster showed Friday.<br /><br />The Social Weather Stations' survey of 1,200 adults in the first quarter of this year also showed 41 percent of all working adults worry a great deal about losing their jobs, with the highest proportion in the southern Philippines, home to a three-decade Muslim insurgency.<br /><br />SWS said the survey shows that unemployment is "disastrous to family well-being," with hunger among families of the unemployed at 15.9 percent.<br /><br />The World Bank said nearly half of the 84 million Filipinos live below the poverty line of 2 US dollars a day. Unemployment, according to government figures, reached 11.3 percent as of January this year despite promises of new jobs.<br /><br />Of those who said they have experienced severe hunger-- defined as going hungry often or always in the last three months-- 12 percent are from families of the unemployed, 10.7 percent belong to families of the self-employed and 6.4 percent are from households of government employees.<br /><br />The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1106359764218221772005-01-21T18:04:00.000-08:002005-01-21T18:09:24.216-08:00 Poverty to remain a serious problem in the Philippines: economists MANILA : Poverty in the Philippines will remain a problem for years and government proposals to halve it by 2010 remain "unfeasible", according to economists. Former socioeconomic planning secretary and University of the Philippines (UP) economist Felipe Medalla was quoted in BusinessWorld newspaper as saying the government's failure to prioritize expenditures, given the little money it has, adds to the "improbability of resolving the poverty problem".
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<br /> "Poverty will remain a serious problem in the Philippines for quite some time," Medalla said. "To begin with, it doesn't seem the government will be able to achieve its growth targets and it doesn't seem that it will be able to resolve its fiscal deficit." In 2003 government debt totalled 78 percent of gross domestic product while public sector debt stood at 138 percent of GDP. According to the World Bank some 51 percent of the country's 84 million people live on less than two dollars a day.
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<br />In a report on population and poverty published by the UP School of Economics last December it said that while countries like Thailand and Indonesia have managed to bring their population growth down over the past 30 years, the Philippines has not. It has been estimated that with the current rate of population growth of 2.3 percent the Philippine population could double within the next 30 years.
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<br /><a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific_business/view/128447/1/.html" target="_blank">Channel NewsAsia</a>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1099892191390258462004-11-02T21:30:00.000-08:002004-11-07T21:48:41.953-08:00Poor Filipinos reduced to eating garbage<a href="http://beta.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=15672&col=56">By Neal Cruz - Inquirer News Service - Oct 22, 2004</a>
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<br />TWO young children died the other day because they ate rotten food recovered from a garbage can and brought home by their father. Did you get that? Poor Filipinos have been reduced to eating garbage -- literally -- and are dying because of it.
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<br />As the cliché goes, they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They'll die of starvation if they don't eat, but they'll die anyway if they eat the garbage that they are able to scrounge from the trashcans.
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<br />Can you see the irony? Officials of government financial institutions take home millions of pesos in salaries and politicians travel in style around the world and eat the most expensive steaks while their constituents eat garbage! Generals amass wealth and squirrel them away in other countries while the people whom they are sworn to serve wallow in poverty! Our own President travels all around the country and the world with a retinue, shakes hands and delivers speeches and cuts ceremonial ribbons, while her constituents living in appalling conditions not very far from Malacañan Palace are dying because they are forced to eat garbage!
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<br />Read more: <a href="http://beta.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=15672&col=56">Inquirer Opinion</a>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1099892854418725222004-11-01T21:42:00.000-08:002004-11-07T21:47:34.416-08:00There's The Rub : Hungry By Conrado de Quiros - Inquirer News Service Oct 07, 2004
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<br />I FIRST heard it at a meeting with Sixto Roxas and several other economic experts. The crisis staring the country in the face, they said, was not really a fiscal or financial one, it was a social one. Specifically, it had to do with hunger. That was what the figures were showing, and that was more and more likely to happen over the next several months. It wasn't just that the banks would go kaput, it was that the people would go hungry.
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<br />Well, the papers have just confirmed what they've known all this time. The good news is that hunger reached its highest peak not during Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's term but Joseph Estrada's, or shortly after Estrada's. That was in March 2001, a couple of months after Estrada was overthrown, when the incidence of hunger reached 16.1 percent. Though that happened in President Arroyo's time, we may safely conclude it was still the product of Estrada's mismanagement, a euphemism for the mess he made of this country.
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<br />The bad news is that the second highest incidence of hunger happened during President Arroyo's time. The even worse news is that it happened two months into her second term. Hunger rose spectacularly. It did so as prices soared, putting food and other necessities beyond reach of the poor.
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<br />Read More - <a href="http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=14104&col=77">Philippine Daily Inquirer</a>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1098049238872487872004-10-17T14:37:00.000-07:002004-10-17T14:40:38.873-07:00The “Perfect Storm” that is about to hit the PhilippinesExtreme poverty and hopelessness, the continued burden of rising costs, the utter lack of faith of people in their leaders, crime and corruption, the fiscal crisis — all these are combining in a force and fury crying out to explode in a perfect storm.
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<br /><a href="http://www.sixsigmaway.us/blogs/index.php?title=the_perfect_storm_that_is_about_to_hit_t_1&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1">Read article of William Esposo of the Philippines Inquirer dated October 17, 2004</a>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1095566426612146742004-09-18T20:52:00.000-07:002004-09-18T21:00:26.613-07:00Poverty in the PhilippinesSAD STATISTICS
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<br />Despite the more-or-less sustained economic growth from 1985 to 1997, the poorest 20% of the population only improved their income 0.5% for every 1% growth in average income. In other words, they slipped further behind and income inequality became even more extreme.
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<br />MALNUTRITION and HUNGER
<br /> <p>There are now approximately 4 million (32%) preschool children who are underweight-for-age, 3 million (20%) adolescents who are underweight-for-age, and 5 million (13.2%) adults who are chronically energy deficient. Vitamin A deficiency is a serious problem, with 7% of pregnant women and 8% of infants under six months being severely deficient. Iron deficiency anemia affects 57% of infants, 51% of pregnant women, and 46% of lactating women.</p> <p>The primary cause of malnutrition is the inequitable distribution of food, which is related of course to poverty. The typical Filipino diet is grossly inadequate for energy and other nutrients, causing human bodies to compensate for inadequate energy intake by utilizing protein as an energy source; the usual result is PEM. This situation is unlikely to improve as long as an estimated 28 million Filipinos are unable to buy food to meet basic nutritional requirements.
<br /></p> <p>Read More and click:
<br /><a href="http://www.apmforum.com/columns/orientseas49.htm"><span class="big">Clarence Henderson's Pearl of the Orient Seas</span></a></p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1095521513186826252004-08-18T08:27:00.000-07:002012-08-23T21:30:35.976-07:00Philippines is now a case of humanitarian disasterOpen letter to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from the Citizens Committee on the National Crisis
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Dear Madam President:
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<a href="http://www.sixsigmaway.us/blogs/">The Philippines is now a case of humanitarian disaster</a>. Late last year, the Food and Nutrition Research Institution of the Department of Science and Technology (<a href="http://www.fnri.dost.gov.ph/htm/insti.htm">FNRI-DOST</a>) released a survey finding that “8 out of 10 households are hungry.” This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the government, through an important agency, acknowledged the fact that mass hunger -- and not only mass poverty -- now grips the lands.
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The reported FNRI-DOST finding that 8 out of 10 households are hungry, if true, can only mean that the Philippines has become a case of humanitarian disaster warranting the urgent concern of the international community and a program of international aid and assistance.
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The human dimension of the FNRI-DOST statistic is reflected in this news report: “Mothers now selling their babies, while fathers sell their kidneys, and farmers eat field rats.”
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The FNRI-DOST finding, Madam President, was made public through the November 2, 2003, issue of Today, which front-paged the story. But that story didn’t elicit any public reaction, even from the media. Today appears to be the only paper that published it.
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The explanation for the public indifference, one supposes, is that the finding was just another piece of gloomy statistic, and the public has been numbed by gloomy statistics. But perhaps, if one recognized the human dimension behind that statistic, the conscience of a nation, heralded as the “only Christian nation in Asia,” might conceivably have been stirred, even if only a little, and even if only for a passing moment.
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The statistic, Madam President, presented in human terms, explains why others are now selling their babies in Nueva Vizcaya, why farmers in rice-rich Nueva Ecija are scrounging for field rats to eat, and why infants in the nation’s public hospitals including the PHG -- are dying every day.
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It might also explain why a devoted family man was impelled to leave home to work abroad, even in a terror-stricken land like Iraq. He had to eat and earn enough to enable the loved ones he left behind also to eat.
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<a href="http://www.sixsigmaway.us/blogs/index.php?title=they_might_even_get_a_house_and_lot_upon&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1">Angelo de la Cruz, Madam President, isn’t the symbol of the new Filipino heroism </a>that your corny press relations people describe him to be. Angelo de la Cruz is the symbol of the humanitarian disaster that has engulfed this nation.
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Hunger, Madam President, is the problem. Not the “fiscal-debt crisis” so ponderously written about by those U.P. economists. And to focus on the “fiscal-debt crisis,” particularly after the fact of mass hunger had been formally acknowledged by a government agency, is to say the least, weird and even funny if it weren’t so weird. For the so-called fiscal-debt crisis is merely symptomatic of a social cancer that is eating one’s intestine away, symptomatic, that is of the conditions that have brought the mass hunger about. And to focus on the “fiscal-debt crisis” at this time is to trivialize a natural disaster. It is even to trivialize the Office of the President.
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It isn’t the “fiscal-debt crisis” that has brought about the hunger, Madam President. For this nation has been in the grip of mass hunger long before the FNRI-DOST released its finding officially confirming the fact and certainly long before the “fiscal-debt crisis” came about and about which the UP economists so scholarly write about.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7818429.post-1091323434791980022004-07-31T18:21:00.000-07:002011-12-20T09:15:57.738-08:00Mission of Magpamana Ng Pagasa1. To further the social, cultural, educational, economic, spiritual, emotional and general well being of the youth by promoting and organizing community improvement and personal character development activities;
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2. To establish facilities for spiritual care and leadership training to: (a) impart basic Christian moral values among youth;and (b) equip the youth to become catalysts of positive change in their communities;
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3. To support Christian ministries working to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ among: (a) the youth, (b) the "unreached" ethnic minority groups of the Asian nations;
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4. To encourage, facilitate, administer, and manage gifts and donations to further the purposes and objectives of the foundation; and
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5. To exercise any and all powers, rights and privileges to accomplish any of the purposes and objectives of the foundation.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0