(ABP) — Hurricane Katrina forced many people to focus on an often-ignored image — poverty in America. But will that awareness produce long-term solutions to poverty? Or will the attention fade away when the next big story comes along?
“It seems like it's almost in our DNA: We respond to the immediate crisis, but we don't think about systemic issues,” said Jimmy Dorrell, director of Christian community ministry in Waco, Texas. “We'd rather give, feel good about it, and then it's over. It's a quick-fix mindset that's hard to overcome.”
“When a big disaster happens, it heightens the philanthropic impulse,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a charity watchdog group in Chicago. “There will be a few billions more given as a result of the disasters,” but that won't necessarily mean more money to address poverty's long-term effects or root causes, he said.
“Katrina was more about poverty than it was about a natural disaster,” Borochoff said. If Katrina's victims had not been so disproportionately poor, he said, they would not have been so severely affected by the hurricane.
Agencies working for long-term poverty solutions say it will take both increased charity and changes in public policy to avoid a repeat of Katrina's double disaster — a natural disaster made worse by entrenched poverty.
So far the signals are mixed.
Donations to aid victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma surpassed $2.7 billion by mid-December — almost as much as the $2.8 billion given after the 9/11 attacks — according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. About 67 percent of donations have gone to the American Red Cross.
Southern Baptists have donated at least $21 million to Katrina relief, about half of it distributed to the disaster-relief units of state Baptist conventions. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has received $1.1 million.
Some charities that help the poor, such as Habitat for Humanity and America's Second Harvest, have seen donations grow significantly since Katrina. Other charities, particularly those not involved in immediate relief, suffered in the months after America's most devastating hurricane.
Overall, charitable giving has rebounded toward the end of the year, reported the Chronicle of Philanthropy. But contributions that benefit human needs are still in a multiyear slump, observers say.
“It is the only category of giving that has experienced a decline in each of the last three years,” said Borochoff. While Americans donate approximately $250 billion a year to all charities, including churches, only $19 billion goes to meet human needs, he said.
“I think it parallels some of the political thinking of the government cutting back,” he said, pointing to efforts to cut welfare, food stamps and other programs for the poor. “Some people are being judgmental, viewing some poor people as less deserving victims than others.”
After a random disaster like a hurricane, people open their wallets because they recognize they could easily have been the victims, Borochoff said. “Unfortunately, Americans have been less generous toward those they feel are poor because they have made bad choices,” such as out-of-wedlock births that trap women in poverty.
Americans have yet to decide how to handle “the personal choices that low-income people make that make it worse,” said Yonce Shelton, policy director for Call to Renewal, a faith-based anti-poverty group. Conservatives like to focus on those bad choices, while progressives tend to ignore them, he said.
When it comes to public-policy decisions that impact poverty, Americans “have to figure out what our priorities are,” said Shelton. He pointed to the current battle in Washington over the federal budget. While politicians say they want to help hurricane victims, the budget will cut food stamps and assistance for low-income kids, while maintaining tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he said.
“Essentially, it's going to hurt a lot of the same people — the poor,” he said, noting conservative leaders are using the popular support for hurricane relief as an excuse to cut other social programs.
Shelton said religious leaders need to challenge politicians to make long-term poverty solutions a priority — in the hurricane region and nationwide. That will require being open to solutions offered from both ends of the political spectrum, he said, and “breaking down barriers that keep those two from talking to each other.”
“If we can find some ways to drop some of the traditional battles, overcoming poverty can really be a non-partisan issue,” Shelton said.
While no such shift in thinking is evident in the political arena, Katrina has already changed charitable-giving patterns, perhaps permanently, say some observers.
More than half the donations to Katrina relief were made through the Internet, reported CharityNavigator.org, an independent charity evaluator. Many charities report the average Internet donation post-Katrina was larger than the average mailed gift. Yet the hurricane also has emphasized the value of each gift, whether small or large, Donna Fisher-Lewis of Associated Black Charities of Baltimore, told the Christian Science Monitor.
Poverty fighter Tom Prevost also senses a changing “national mood” toward poverty.
Katrina and other recent disasters are “hammer blows to the conscience,” forcing Americans to see poverty differently, said Prevost, national coordinator of Together for Hope, the Coopertive Baptist Fellowship's rural poverty initiative, a 20-year commitment to fight poverty in the nation's poorest counties.
“It does appear that Katrina response is riveting more attention on endemic poverty in America,” said Prevost, who admits to being a perennial optimist. He is encouraged by the unprecedented international Christian response that followed the tsunami in South Asia.
That interfaith cooperation triggered some long-term commitments to fight the poverty that made the tsunami worse, he said, and the same thing can happen in the fight against American poverty.
“Katrina did bring some sort of raised awareness,” agreed Alice Archibald, development director for America's Second Harvest, one of those charities that has benefited from the post-Katrina generosity. The organization, which collects both funds and food to supply a network of 200 food banks nationwide, sent 1,700 truckloads of food — worth $82 million — to the Gulf region after Katrina. It also provided warehouse space for other relief organizations and pitched in in other ways.
Bouyed by cash gifts of $26 million for Katrina relief, Second Harvest will easily make its $32 million fund-raising goal this year, Archibald said. But it's too early to tell if that generosity will last, she said, and turn into long-term support — both for aid groups like hers that address immediate poverty needs or those that try to bring people out of poverty. Nonetheless, she is encouraged.
People gave to Katrina victims because the needs were so obvious, she said. But they also saw how poverty put hurricane victims at higher risk. And they recognized that poverty puts people at risk all over the country.
“People understand the issue more now,” she continued. “It does allow us to tell our story as we move forward.”
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