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With unemployment and poverty rates rising, health care becomes less accessible and more Americans become homeless and hungry.
Representatives of more than 40 organizations from around the globe are attending the Poverty Scholars Program Leadership School at Camp Virgil Tate outside Charleston.
Yesterday, the group heard some sobering statistics:
- Roughly 6.5 million jobs disappeared between January 2008 and June 2009.
- Home foreclosures in the United States are averaging 10,000 a day.
- The number of Americans living in poverty jumped by 5.7 million between 2000 and 2007 to 37.3 million.
- 47 million Americans don't have health care coverage, including 8.7 million children.
- The fastest growing group of people without health insurance earn between $50,000 and $75,000 a year.
- The number of Americans who relied on soup kitchens for meals has increased 9 percent since 2001 to 25 million; 36 percent of them were from households where at least one person worked.
- Of the estimated 3.5 million people who are likely to experience homelessness this year, the fastest growing segments include families with children and veterans.
- On average, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies make as much in one day as the average worker earns in a year.
Monday's sessions focused on poverty and the economic crisis.
Tuesday's sessions will include tours of Matewan, the site of a violent coal miners' strike in 1920 in southern West Virginia, and Kayford Mountain 35 miles east of Charleston, where miners have been blasting the mountaintop for more than 20 years.
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