Breaking Out of Poverty
- Leadership class November Program

By SCANEWS. Staff

	Thanksgiving and Christmas are around the corner. Salvation Army's X'mas
tree is lit.  People plan to go home for a family reunion with many gifts in their hands.  We, the fortunate ones, tend to forget there are estimately 800,000 homeless people on the street every night nationwide, and about 2.5 to 3.5 million people a year experience homelessness, 17,000 in St. Louis area.  Participants of the Leadership St. Louis 2002-2003 sat among many homeless for lunch on Friday,  November 15, 2002.  This is a day hard to forget for many of us. St. Patrick Center downtown serve meals to more than four hundred people daily. As McGraw Milhaven, KMOX radio talk show host, said with tears in his eyes, "It made me to think how fortunate I am, and what can we do to help."

	This Friday morning started with site visits to one of the eight social service agencies providing services to newborn babies, teenage mothers, abused children, AIDS patients and children with HIV positive, child care center and one legal service agency.  According to the United Way of Greater St. Louis, there are over  3,000 agencies in this area and serve 8400 Sq. miles providing some kind of programs to help the needy.  The U. S. Census Bureau set the poverty threshold for the average family of four at $16,029 in 1997. Poverty statistics show over 10% of St. Louis population live below the official poverty line.  With recent influnx of immigrants, it also found that racial minorities in the region generally experience a disproportinately high rate of poverty.

	Voluntary homelessness is just a tiny percent of larger problems. Ordinary people might be only a pay check away from becoming homeless.  Many working poor faced with family problems, such as divorce, domestic violence, child abuse, battered wives, pregnant teenagers, elders, serious sickness, loss of jobs, etc. are possible to be thrown out of home and forced to live in the street. In addition, there are people with mental illness, chemical dependency, AIDS patients, released prisoners, illegal immigrants, children exit from foster care, veterans, and many others are potential candidates of homelessness.  Many human service organizations work with collaborative effects to face the challenges in helping people and to ensure the basic needs of all individuals are met.

	Leadership afternoon program gave partitipants a chance to gain an overview of the health care system in St. Louis.  Gary Dollar, President and CEO of United Way of Greater St. Louis, praised the state of Missouri for being very generous.  Last year's donation amounted to 67.5 million and ranked the 9th in the nation.  With this year's economic difficulties, United Way of Greater St. Louis may receive the 6th largest donations nationally.  However, local service agencies face dramatic changes in federal welfare policies with long-term decreases in government funding, plus an emerging trend toward service consolidation have created an uncertain future for many of these services.

	St. Louis is rich with health care resources, with the Missouri Foundation for Health being one of the top 50 foundations in the United States, and more hospital beds per capita than any other place except Boston.  The accessibility to the health service, however, is very poor with the major reason of being lack of health insurance, in addition to geographic and cultural barriers.  It is estimated that 43 million of the population are without health care annually due to financial difficulties.   The St. Louis Regional Health Commission (RHC) is an example of collaboration between various organizations and indiviuals to improving health in the St. Louis area. The RHC is comprised of community members, health care providers, and government leaders from St. Louis City, St. Louis County, and the State of Missouri.  (Part 1 of 2, to be continued.)