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June 8, 2001 Foundations Focus on Poverty Park City, Utah ----- Sixty foundation representatives, church officials and anti-poverty workers, met June 1st for a conference and discussion on effective ways for funders to join the church’s efforts to fight poverty. "The poor can be part of a more human future", declared Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, New Mexico, a keynote speaker at FADICA’s conference on Poverty and the Christian Response. Bishop Ramirez, one of a dozen people addressing Catholic foundation trustees, discussed the impact of globalization on the poor and the growing disparities of wealth. "In 1985 the United States accounted for 5.2 percent of the world’s population and possessed one quarter of the world’s wealth," Bishop Ramirez said. "Fourteen years later," the bishop continued, "the U.S. has 4.1 percent of the world’s population but its share of the world’s wealth has increased to one third of the total." Bishop Ramirez, who serves on the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Social Development and World Peace, and who presides over a diocese in a state with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, told the audience that "how we relate to others, especially the poor, is a test of our relationship to God." Discussing a variety of approaches that lift the poor from poverty, five panelists explained small scale church-sponsored efforts including: community organizing, micro-lending programs, health services, parochial schools and opportunities for volunteering. Corey Timpson, a community organizer from Santa Ana California and a grantee of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, said that the key ingredients in effective anti-poverty work is "connecting people and identifying leaders." Mr. Timpson works with fourteen congregations serving 34,000 families in southern California. Speaking about the 40 million people living in poverty in neighboring Mexico, Carlos Danel, project director for Compartamos, a lending agency established in 1990, stressed with FADICA the importance of donor involvement over the long term in anti-poverty projects. "The kind of work we do takes more than money, it takes the strengthening of human values and relationships with the poor," said Mr. Danel. He explained that Compartamos, which makes very small loans to women in mostly rural areas of Mexico, was an outgrowth of his experience as a youth volunteer. The conference was planned in response to growing interest especially among the young adults in the FADICA organization on issues of poverty and economic justice. CRS Executive Director Kenneth Hackett, who addressed international dimensions of the poverty conference, told FADICA that his relief agency was looking for ways to work more closely in partnership with private foundations to combat poverty throughout the globe. "We want to work with you to impact the poor . . . and in the past we have not engaged you enough in this work," he said. CRS works in 90 countries of the globe and manages a staff of four thousand workers. "We are trying to change CRS to become a more responsive agile structure," said Mr. Hackett. The Utah based meeting marked the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the philanthropic organization. Established in 1976 FADICA’s mission is to "enable its members to be informed, involved and effective in addressing church needs by their philanthropy." The organization is comprised of forty-seven private foundations. |