FAMVIN News

The Edmund Rice Center of the Australian Catholic University writes in a piece that looks at the austerity discussions taking place in so many countries in the world… “As several countries try to pay off huge public debt due to the financial crisis and apply spending cuts – voices of caution say this is ‘a [...]

 InvisiblePeople.tv: Changing the story of homelessness. ** Mother’s Day is this Sunday. Support Moms who are homeless and everything they go through for their families, by sharing these stories.      and forward to a friend for Mother’s Day. Jean and her five children live in a motel. Every day, even in the Missouri rain, she rides a bicycle to her minimum wage [...]

Half of Australians seeking help for homelessness are under 25 and almost twenty per cent are under 10, according to new research by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. The report, Specialist Homelessness Services Collection: first results, also reveals that over 90,000 people were assisted by specialist homelessness agencies in the July to September [...]

As members of the Vincentian family invisible people should be visible to us. From the InvisiblePeople blog… “The purpose of this video blog is to make the invisible visible. I hope these people and their stories connect with you and don’t let go. I hope their conversations with me will start a conversation in your [...]

The website good.is presents a probing reflection on the value of “Pretend to be poor” experiments. Do such experiences give you a good glimpse into “the other side?” A new challenge called “Live Below the Line Week” started yesterday. Organized by the Global Poverty Project, Live Below the Line asks people to pretend to be poor [...]

In an eerie echo of the way Charles  Dickens “The Tale of Two Cities” is playing out across the globe today, the Australian CM site draws attention to a piece entitled “Struggle St vs Easy St – ‘no-one knows’ how to fix it”  ”News.com.au’s Cost of Living survey, now completed by more than 30,000 Australians, has found [...]

A new documentary film, “Blood in the Mobile,” powerfully addresses both the limits of the imagination and our sense of connection to atrocities committed on the other side of the world. STORY HIGHLIGHTS In Congo, militia groups and army factions control many mines, says Robin Wright Minerals in these mines go into cell phones, laptops, digital cameras [...]

Homelessness from A-Z Younger homeless people from the CONNECTION’S  Digital Group TOUCHBASE  have developed an inspiring A_Z series to warn other people about the harsh realities of being homeless.  They have created  ”A-Z” to help educate and prevent other people from becoming homeless. A FOR APPETITE B FOR BUS C FOR COPS D FOR DRINKING E FOR [...]

A new website and mobile app looks at your purchases and determines the amount of forced labor that’s gone into everything you own. The number may surprise you. It’s not easy to be a socially responsible consumer. Even if you buy mostly local products and diligently keep track of corporate environmental footprints, you may still [...]

Most of the world’s newspapers are running features on how to survive in a bad economy. But I have seen no articles on “How to survive on less than $2 a day”. Yet over 2.7 billion people in the world live on $2 or less a day. How do they do it? How do they manage [...]