The Mind of WebbWoman

Hello! Look for future posts about my "observations" Lord knows I am always making observations, movie reviews, whenever I see a movie I want to talk about, or I may just vent my frustrations...who knows?

Saturday, March 31, 2007

New Artwork: Hope for Kids

My friends, Bro. Dave and Susan Butts are missionaries to Romania. Along with their regular mission they founded Hope for Kids when they saw all the children begging in the street for food.

One of the tragic realities in Romania is the plight of thousands of street children that beg on the street corners and dig through garbage cans for something to eat every day. Many of these children do not go to school because their stomachs are empty and they must go out begging for food to survive. The result is an ongoing cycle of poverty among these very poor children. Because they are not in school they will not get jobs later on. Instead by the age of 12 or 13 these children are stealing to stay alive. Then by the age of 15 or 16 many of them are already in prison.

In January 2001, Bro. David and Susan Butts began Hope for Kids. We worked with the director of the schools where the poorest children live and should have been going to school. The program is to feed the children a sandwich lunch in their classrooms. This way the children must come to school to receive their lunch. If they are in school they can get jobs later on and not have to go to a life of stealing.

We began with about 200 children in the 1st through 4th grades. After they began Hope for Kids the children began coming back to school. They could either go out and beg for something to eat or they could go to school and be given lunch. The children began coming back to school! And by the end of that first year they were feeding 550 children. School attendance in these two schools doubled after we started Hope for Kids. Last year they were able to add the 5th -8th grades and they are now feeding over 1,100 children daily in their classroom.

A couple of years ago our church had the privilege to send hats, coats and gloves (along with Christmas presents) to these kids. We were able to help 1,000 kids. This year we are getting together hats, gloves and school supplies.

Anyway I wanted to do something that would reflect their work in Romania so I took photograps of several of the children and put them all together in a drawing:

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I also thought it would be cool to do a slide show of the work in progress:



And here's one more of a little girl eating her sandwich:

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I know people tend to be wary of charities because of the potential for corruption. But I personally vouch for these people as being on the up and up. It only takes $5.00 to help a hungry child for 1 month. They have no overhead as this is a branch of their other ministry and all the money goes to food and containers. If you’d like to support them you can send me a message and I can get you the contact info.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Another Post-Katrina Rant...sorry folks

Okay, I know everyone’s tired of people talking about Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing clean-up. Heck, I’m tired of it myself and want to get back to as close to normal as possible, but I heard some news today that really got the ole blood to boiling. It seems State Farm’s CEO got an 82% pay raise!!!

Now I’m not against anyone getting a pay raise if they earn it. Tell you the truth I’d like one myself. But this is the CEO of a company who recently looked into the faces of 8 to 12 hundred people whose homes were reduced to slabs and told them that they didn’t qualify for funds to rebuild because they weren’t sure if it was wind or water damage. Now I ask you kind folks to look at the photos below and tell me does it even matter? It was a category 5 hurricane for Pete’s sake!

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Wind or water damage? Hummmmmmmmmm……..

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Yep…this used to be someone’s home.

Here’s a little snippet of a full article in The Vicksburg Post:

03/06/07] State Farm Insurance's leader received an 82 percent raise after the company posted a record profit last year, a statement from the insurer said Monday.

The increase comes less than a month after the insurance giant said it would suspend writing new homeowners and commercial insurance policies in the state.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ed Rust Jr. got a $5.26 million raise. He received $11.66 million in 2006 with a base salary of $1.77 million and results-based bonus of $9.89 million, said the statement from the Bloomington, Ind., office. Rust made $6.4 million in 2005 and $5.5 million in 2004.

(For the complete article, go to http://www.vicksburgpost.com/articles/2007/03/06/news/news02.txt)

Now I have my home and my car insured with State Farm, mostly because my parents dealt with this company as far back as I remember and when I grew up I just went there. But Friday, when I went to pay my car insurance I was struck with the irony that the office had moved to its brand spanking new building, all pretty and shiny, a countless less than an hour’s drive still have slabs where their homes once stood and this fine company refused help. And I know, State Farm isn’t the only culprit here but they were mostly in the news here.

First, when they refused to honor the policies that residents paid faithfully for years,

Second when they claimed that they weren’t going to write new policies in Mississippi

And then I see on the news where they agreed to reopen 8-12 thousand Slab Cases No doubt after all the bad press and lawsuits.

I’m just plain ticked off at these suits who came down here, taking money from good, hardworking people who paid their policies in good faith, believing that if something happened they would be covered. And when a category 5 hurricane targets you with a storm surge that reaches 5 miles inland there’s not much hope for anything to be left behind, and that was indeed the case.

I’ll end with a fantastic video that shows not only the damage of the Mississippi Gulf coast, but reflects the resilient spirit of our people here.

Hurricane Katrina Tribute

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