Breathing in silence

Poverty living

Suffocating life

Empty, ungiving

Living with little

Sadly, no escape

Seeing no future

Desolate landscape

Bonding together

Despite life’s darkness

Overcoming much

Home lives with starkness

Searching, any job

Family needs food

Tasting emptiness

Life feeling so skewed

Thinking of future

Numbing journey calls

Shattering each dream

Poverty’s pitfalls

Facing each crisis

Today’s worries leave

Finding work again

Hope now smiles, believe

Different levels of poverty strike the world everywhere.  Some areas face more daunting challenges than others.  Here are a few sobering statistics:

• Ten percent the world lives in extreme poverty.
• For every 1,000 children born, 39 will die before reaching five years of age.
• Over 60 million children, ages 6-11, are not attending school.
• Seventy-five percent of extreme poverty is found in Africa and Asia.
• About one third of the world’s least developed countries are the least churched in the world.