Thanksgiving Dinner 2013

La Loma, Haiti: A girl, whose Haitian-born grandfather emigrated to the Dominican Republic in 1950, watches cornmeal cook for breakfast at her family's home. A court ruling retroactively denies Dominican nationality to anyone born after 1929 who does not have at least one parent of Dominican blood




Link: http://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2013/oct/13/weekend-in-pictures?CMP=twt_gu#/?picture=419831971&index=2

Jon's Jail Journal (by Shaun Attwood)

ploaded on Feb 22, 2012 Prison survival tips: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com/2...... Jail survival guide: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com/2...... Hard Time http://shaunattwood.com/index.php?opt...... .. Brutal murder of inmate, Robert Cotton, by Aryan Brother, Pete Van Winkle, in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Maricopa County jail. Phoenix, Arizona. Category News & Politics License Standard YouTube License Introduction to his Blog:


I started Jon's Jail Journal back in 2004 to expose the conditions in the maximum-security Madison Street jail, Phoenix, Arizona, run by the infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio. I wrote with a golf pencil sharpened on a cement-block wall or metal door, and my aunt Ann, who visited every weekend, smuggled my writing out of the jail. My parents in England posted my writing to the Internet. The blog went on to attract international media attention, and the Madison Street jail was shut down a few years later.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is still in charge of the Maricopa County jail system and its various facilities. His detractors call him the Angel of Death, not just because of the abnormally high amount of murder and death in his jails, but also because he actually promoted guards that the federal court had found responsible for murdering inmates.

Where I was housed, there were only two guards supervising hundreds of inmates, so gangs like the Mexican Mafia had more control over the inmates than the guards. I got used to the sound of heads getting smashed against steel toilets and bodies getting thrown around. Here's a video of an Aryan Brother murdering another inmate in the jail:


On the right hand side of this blog below the banner is an archive menu you can click on. If you click back to March 2004 you can read the early blog entries.

Here are excerpts from the first two blogs I wrote:





Source:
http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.ca/2009/12/welcome-guardian-readers-i-started-jons.html


 Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba_vGzkcdHQ

Poverty harms brain power, hard to escape: study

 
See more Pictures at : http://digital-photography-school.com/17-images-of-poverty




Poverty harms brain power, hard to escape: study

By Sheryl Ubelacker The Canadian Press



TORONTO – Dealing with poverty takes up so much mental energy that the poor have less brain power for making decisions and taking steps to overcome their financial difficulties, a study suggests.

The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, concludes that a person’s cognitive abilities can be diminished by such nagging concerns as hanging on to a place to live and having enough money to feed their families.

As a result, there is less “mental bandwidth” left over for education, training, time-management and other steps that could help break the cycle of poverty, the researchers contend.

“Previous accounts of poverty have blamed the poor for their personal failings, or an environment that is not conducive to success,” said Jiaying Zhao of the University of British Columbia, who led the study, conducted while she was a graduate student at Princeton University.

“We’re arguing that being poor can impair cognitive functioning, which hinders individuals’ ability to make good decisions and can cause further poverty,” she said.

The study had two parts. In the first, about 400 people at a New Jersey mall were randomly selected to take part in a number of standard cognitive and logic tests. The participants’ annual family income ranged from $20,000 to $160,000, with a median of $70,000.

Subjects took the computer-based tests after being presented with a hypothetical financial problem that they would later have to solve: how they would come up with the money to pay for having their car fixed when the cost was either $150 or $1,500.

With the lower amount on their minds, those with low incomes fared as well on the tests as better-off participants. But when the amount was 10 times higher, low-income subjects performed far more poorly on the tests, said Zhao.

On average, a person preoccupied with money problems showed a reduction in cognitive function equivalent to a 13-point drop in IQ or the loss of a night’s sleep.

“It’s a big jump,” she said of the dip in IQ. “It pushes you from average (intelligence) to borderline (mental disability).”

In the second study, the researchers went into the field to test their theory in a real-life situation — with about 460 sugarcane farmers in 54 Indian villages who earn all their yearly income at the time of the annual harvest.

“That creates interesting dynamics because in the months before the harvest, they’re really poor, they’re running out,” Zhao said. “Whereas, in the months right after the harvest, they’re rich.

“So you can literally look within the same individual at how he or she performs when poor versus when rich.”

The researchers found that farmers showed diminished cognitive performance before getting paid for their harvest, compared to after the sugarcane crop was gathered in, when they had greater wealth.

They said these changes in cognitive abilities could not be explained by differences in nutrition, physical exertion or stress.

“So the very context of not having enough resources impedes your cognitive function,” Zhao said. That reduces a person’s mental ability to address elements that could help them break out of poverty, for instance, a higher level of education, a better-paying job and enrolment in social programs to help attain those goals.

“You are simply unable to notice those things when you are preoccupied by poverty concerns.”
The fallout from neglecting other areas of life can exacerbate already trying financial woes, said co-author Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton.

Late fees tacked onto unpaid rent and other bills or a job lost because of poor time management can make an already-tight money situation worse, Shafir said in a statement. 

And as people become more impoverished, they tend to make decisions that perpetuate their financial hardship, such as excessive borrowing, he added.
The researchers suggest that services for the poor shouldn’t “cognitively tax” them. 
Positive measures could include simpler aid forms, more guidance for receiving assistance, and more flexibly structured training and educational programs.

“When (people living in poverty) make mistakes, the outcomes of errors are more dear,” Shafir said. “So, if you are poor, you’re more error prone and errors cost you more dearly. It’s hard to find a way out.”

Dennis Raphael, a professor of health policy and management at Toronto’s York University , said the findings are consistent with previous research on the effects of a lack of “attentional resources” among the poor.


The authors’ recommend that “services for the poor should accommodate the dominance that poverty has on a person’s time and thinking … so that a person who has stumbled can more easily try again,” he said.






Read more@
Source: http://metronews.ca/news/victoria/781039/poverty-harms-brain-power-hard-to-escape-study/

Once Suicidal and Shipped Off in what is known as Greyhound Therapy

David Theisen, a homeless man at the center of a lawsuit against the State of Nevada, said, “Technically, they shouldn’t have been allowed to send me anywhere. They should have put me in a little room until I got better.”

September 21, 2013
Once Suicidal and Shipped Off, Now Battling Nevada Over Care
By RICK LYMAN


SAN FRANCISCO — David Theisen keeps his legal papers in a frayed yellow envelope in his tiny transients’ hotel room, a toilet down the hall, the covers of his beloved comic books, with titles like “Dark Mysteries” and “Vault of Horror,” lining the drab walls.

A lot has changed in the year and a half since Mr. Theisen, 52 and homeless, threatened to kill himself with a butcher knife and ended up in a Las Vegas psychiatric center. After one night, Mr. Theisen found himself on a bus to San Francisco, several sack lunches and a day’s worth of medication clutched in his lap.

“Technically, they shouldn’t have been allowed to send me anywhere,” Mr. Theisen said. “They should have put me in a little room until I got better.”

Now, Mr. Theisen is at the center of a class-action lawsuit brought this month by San Francisco’s city attorney, Dennis Herrera, against the State of Nevada on behalf of 24 mentally ill and homeless people. 


They were all, like Mr. Theisen, bused out of Nevada and left on the streets of San Francisco with little or no medication.

But that is just a small sampling, Mr. Herrera says, of the estimated 1,500 people who were bused all over the country in recent years from the state-operated Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Center in Las Vegas and other Nevada institutions, 500 of them to California.

“It’s horrifying,” Mr. Herrera said. “I think we can all agree that our most vulnerable and at-risk people don’t deserve this sort of treatment: no meds, no medical care, a destination where they have no contacts and know no one.”

But what makes it “even more tragic,” Mr. Herrera said, “is that on top of the inhumane treatment, the State of Nevada was trying to have another jurisdiction shoulder the financial responsibility for caring for these people.”

Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, who has several weeks to respond to Mr. Herrera’s lawsuit, has declined to comment in the meantime.

Mary Woods, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services, laid out the state’s position in an e-mail. Outside a handful of instances, the state believes that its Client Transportation Back to Home Communities program was operated properly and that it is not dissimilar from programs in other jurisdictions, including San Francisco.

Hospitals in several cities have programs intended to reunite discharged psychiatric patients with their families and hometowns. Where abuses occur, Mr. Herrera and others say, is when patients are shipped off with little or no oversight about where they are going and what will happen once they get there.

Nevada officials say that besides a single, well-documented case, they believe that the Rawson-Neal staff followed proper release procedures in almost all of the remaining cases they have investigated.

That single case, involving a man named James F. Brown who was sent by bus to Sacramento, a city where he knew no one, from the Vegas hospital in February, was the subject of an article in The Sacramento Bee.

That newspaper article not only prompted the San Francisco city attorney’s office to look into the Nevada policy, but it also led to a federal investigation.

“This has certainly elevated attention of a practice that, frankly, has probably gone on for many years in a number of states,” said Ronald S. Honberg, legal director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Washington. “We’ve never done a study, and I’ve never seen one anybody else did, but we have certainly heard over the years a number of stories that this sort of practice goes on.
It’s something we refer to, euphemistically, as  Greyhound therapy.”

Mr. Theisen’s experience began when he and another homeless man tried to hitchhike across the Mojave Desert from Las Vegas to San Diego. They made it about 45 miles to the small town of Primm, little more than a cluster of casinos.

The two men, desperate and hungry, ordered a meal and then ran before the bill arrived. They did not make it. His friend was arrested, but Mr. Theisen went to a pay phone and called the authorities. “I told them I had a knife and was going to kill myself,” he said. “After the dine-and-dash, I just gave up.”

He begged not to be sent back onto the streets of Las Vegas, he said, and did not care where they shipped him. “They asked me what kind of work I had done, and I said I was a cook,” he said. “So some young woman said, ‘Well, there are a lot of restaurants in San Francisco.’ ”

Mr. Theisen said he eventually wound up at the Rawson-Neal facility, where he spent the night. 

The next morning, he said, his doctors sent him to a Greyhound station with seven sack lunches and a day’s medication for the 14-hour ride. 

He arrived with three lunches left and $30 on a food stamps card, and bounced from shelter to shelter until he managed to get a room in a downtown transients’ hotel.

Rumors of such journeys had become part of California homeless lore.

“In San Francisco, it’s been urban myth for decades that this sort of practice was going on,” Mr. Herrera said. “But this is the first instance that I am aware of where we have been able to document a state-supported and state-sanctioned effort.”

Ms. Woods, the spokeswoman for Nevada’s health agency, said that from July 1, 2008, to March 31, the state bought out-of-state bus tickets for 4.7 percent of the patients it discharged, an estimated 1,473 people. 

“The findings show there were 10 instances in the course of five years where there was not enough documentation to know for certain if staff confirmed there was housing/shelter and supportive services at the destination,” she said.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, however, said last month that its inquiry showed a more widespread problem. 
About 40 percent of the mental patients discharged by the hospital went into local homeless shelters or were shipped elsewhere, the federal investigators said, and most of those were sent directly to a Greyhound bus station with a ticket but without proper documentation or instructions on what they should do when they arrive.

Some medical staff members at Rawson-Neal were fired after the furor following the Bee report, Ms. Woods said, and the hospital strengthened its discharge protocols. Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada pushed the Legislature to approve, which it did, $30.4 million in additional mental health spending, including $2.1 million for Rawson-Neal.

Mr. Herrera is not satisfied. He wants proof that the new protocols are in place, as well as compensation for all the city has spent to care for the patients from Nevada. He is also talking to other California cities about joining him in the lawsuit.

“I am hopeful that shining a light on this will also shine a light on other jurisdictions around the country to make the point that this is not going to be tolerated,” he said.

It has been a tough year for Rawson-Neal. In July, it lost its accreditation, a decision that it did not fight. Of greater concern is a move by federal officials to possibly end Rawson-Neal’s eligibility for Medicare financing.

Mr. Theisen now subsists on $100 in assistance from the city every month, which with his free room, is just enough if he is careful. He gets the medication he needs for his depression and spends his days at the public library or roaming the city looking for work as a cook. The important thing is that now, for the first time, he can see a way forward.

“I guess they shouldn’t have done what they did in Nevada, but I cannot say enough about what this city has done for me,” he said. “It’s awesome, really. I have to struggle, yes, but otherwise life is good. I don’t wake up sad anymore.”









Source: Once Suicidal and Shipped Off

Robbie Burns and Fickle Fate

Good one!  Be here now.  Awaken to the moment because it is all we really have.

There is a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1785, and was included in the Kilmarnock volume. According to legend, Burns wrote the poem after finding a nest full of mice during the winter.

Robbie Burns talks about the futility of trusting foresight in the face of fickle fate in his note to a mouse:

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough:

 

 But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!


Still you are blessed, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

The first stanza of the poem is read by Ian Anderson in the beginning of the 2007 remaster of "One Brown Mouse" by Jethro Tull. Anderson adds the line "But a mouse is a mouse, for all that," at the end of the stanza, which is a reference to another of Burns' songs, "Is There for Honest Poverty", commonly known as "A Man's a Man for A' That".

 My spell checker doesn't like Gaelic...

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

	Standard English translation

	Small, crafty, cowering, timorous little beast, O, what a panic is in your little breast! You need not start away so hasty With argumentative chatter! I would be loath to run and chase you, With murdering plough-staff. I'm truly sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union, And justifies that ill opinion Which makes you startle At me, your poor, earth born companion And fellow mortal! I doubt not, sometimes, but you may steal; What then? Poor little beast, you must live! An odd ear in twenty-four sheaves Is a small request; I will get a blessing with what is left, And never miss it. Your small house, too, in ruin! Its feeble walls the winds are scattering! And nothing now, to build a new one, Of coarse grass green! And bleak December's winds coming, Both bitter and keen! You saw the fields laid bare and wasted, And weary winter coming fast, And cozy here, beneath the blast, You thought to dwell, Till crash! the cruel plough passed Out through your cell. That small bit heap of leaves and stubble, Has cost you many a weary nibble! Now you are turned out, for all your trouble, Without house or holding, To endure the winter's sleety dribble, And hoar-frost cold. But little Mouse, you are not alone, In proving foresight may be vain: The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often awry, And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy! Still you are blessed, compared with me! The present only touches you: But oh! I backward cast my eye, On prospects dreary! And forward, though I cannot see, I guess and fear! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Mouse#cite_note-1 A Man's A Man For A' That 1795 Type: Song Tune: For a' that. Is there for honest Poverty That hings his head, an' a' that; The coward slave-we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that. Our toils obscure an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The Man's the gowd for a' that. What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man's a Man for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that; The honest man, tho' e'ersae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, an' a' that, His ribband, star, an' a' that: The man o' independent mind He looks an' laughs at a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; Butan honest man's abon his might, Gude faith, he maunnafa' that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities an' a' that; The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, Are higher rank than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, (As come it will for a' that,) That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That Man to Man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that. http://www.robertburns.org/works/496.shtml Quotes about FICKLE: http://quotes.dictionary.com/search/fickle   "Fame is a fickle food Upon a shifting plate." -Emily Dickinson  Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits. - Mason Cooley The passion for money is never fickle. - Mason Cooley    Fame is fickle, but Obscurity is usually faithful to the end.  - Mason Cooley We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases. -  Ralph Waldo Emerson    Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists , there may be moods--moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former--but no opinion.  -- Hannah Arendt Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they ar e most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted. -- Aristotle Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested--for a while at least.  The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.   -- Emma Goldman Gratitude is a fickle thing, indeed. A person taking aim presses the weapon to his chest and cheek, but when he hits, he discards it with indifference. --Franz Grillparzer  All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.  -- Gerhard Manley Hopkins fick·le [fik-uhl] Show IPA adjective 1. likely to change, especially due to caprice, irresolution, or instability; casually changeable: fickle weather. 2. not constant or loyal in affections: a fickle lover. Origin: before 1000; Middle English fikel, Old English ficol  deceitful, akin to fācen  treachery, fician  to deceive, gefic  deception Related forms fick·le·ness, noun un·fick·le, adjective Synonyms 1. unstable, unsteady, variable, capricious, fitful. 2. inconstant. 1, 2. Fickle, inconstant, capricious, vacillating describe persons or things that are not firm or steady in affection, behavior, opinion, or loyalty. Fickle implies an underlying perversity as a cause for the lack of stability: the fickle seasons, disappointing as often as they delight; once lionized, now rejected by a fickle public. Inconstant suggests an innate disposition to change: an inconstant lover, flitting from affair to affair. Capricious implies unpredictable changeability arising from sudden whim: a capricious administration constantly and inexplicably changing its signals; a capricious and astounding reversal of position. Vacillating means changeable due to lack of resolution or firmness: an indecisive, vacillating leader, apparently incapable of a sustained course of action. Dictionary.com Unabridged

Quotes

Life is a state of consciousness.      - Emmett Fox

 

"Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you." - Arnold Palmer

"Failure isn't the opposite of success. Its a stepping stone to success."  

 The pessimist see problems in every opportunity. The entrepreneur see opportunity in every problem. 

 "It doesn’t matter much what the subject is. Find a real teacher, and you may open yourself to transformation" 

 Mae West once said that “Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly”

 

Woody Allen once said, "I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens." 

"If you want to know where technology is headed, looks at how artists and criminals are using it." William Gibson

 

"If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule - never lie to yourself." -Paulo Coelho

Think long-term. There are no shortcuts, no tricks, no hacks. It's all about hours, days and years applied to your craft, to your passion.

 

 

 

 

"No matter how great your dreams or destiny, the greatest thing you can do on any one day is a small act of kindness."

Lost Freedom

 

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/book-ban-shes-come-undone-_n_3803697.html 

Update from Local Second Hand Bookstore

 In this edition drawing attention to our:

Outreach Program in the Vancouver Island Correctional Centre. 

This is another of our programs whose time has come. Partnering together with

Corrections Management and John Howard Society, we have already achieved success but our intention is to achieve much more. 

Together we plan to establish a leading model that engages increasing numbers of inmates and presents many of them with an offer they can’t refuse.

 

Supports are in place that will help them be successful when released but everyone involved knows there are many other influences out there that will impact his decisions.  

We only have time to plant the seeds, pass on some new skills and give a glimmer of hope.

Will we be there to carry on if he is not successful this time? You betcha because that’s what it takes, we are in the hope business. I am not speaking about the percentage of inmates that cannot be helped...

When people suffer abuse and trauma throughout childhood, coping and survival skills along with hyper vigilance become deeply imbedded, sometimes a set of circumstance, even if self-created, will bring unbearable fears to the surface causing another string of impulsive choices. 

The primal need to survive is often at any cost.

Recovering and becoming well is a choice followed by a difficult process. It takes courage.

Literacy Central is a very unique organization, one of a kind. We can reach much deeper and have much more of an impact because of valuable partnerships. We are developing models within the model. Over time we hope to be in a position to share our findings, efforts, successes and challenges with other communities that feel our experiences would be helpful with their particular challenges.

...while in the midst of a cultural shift in our organization.

Projects of this nature and timeline require assembling the right team, a shared vision (enthusiasm), reason-able budget estimates, a willingness to risk “failing forward” (a tip to one of my favorite leadership thinkers, John Maxwell) and leadership from the ground up.

When staff and volunteers throughout the organization have the support and freedom to explore and test critical, independent thinking, combine it with their experience and knowledge and actively share their thoughts and suggestions, we make better decisions as a
result.

Relationship building and trust are critical for this leadership model to succeed.  The potential  results on many levels soars above most other models, particularly in the Not for Profit world where 'taking ownership' nurtures the soul of the organization.

Enjoy life long learning and life long adventures! 

 ..........................................

 
Corrections Canada 2003 Research:

Offenders without a high school diploma -79%

Offenders who tested lower than grade 10 - 82%

Offenders who tested lower than grade 8 - 65%

.............................................

Source: http://www.literacycentralvi.org/newslett/sepoct09/sepoct09.pdf

Quotes

 Soulseedzforall

3h

You’re writing the story of your life one moment at a time. #DocChildre http://tinyurl.com/a9393du 

Soulseedzforall8h

If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. -- Jim Rohn

11h

If you realize that all things change, you hold on to nothing, including regret. http:// --D.a-anon.

Soulseedzforall13h

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live. #Borysenko http://tinyurl.com/8g65xlt 

KeithHalsnik612h

“A problem is a question you haven’t yet answered to a level that has fulfilled you.” —Anthony Robbins @tonyrobbins

Worry does not help any situation to improve.

The sea like life itself, is a stern taskmaster. The best way to get along with either is to learn all you can, then do your best and don't worry especially about things over which your have no control.

- Admiral Chester William Nimitz quoting his grandfather in E.B. Potter's Nimitz

Elyn Saks: A tale of mental illness -- from the inside

In this video, we are offered many insights into mental illness by Elyn.Saks

Published on Jul 2, 2012

http://www.ted.com 

Elyn Saks: A tale of mental illness -- from the inside

"Is it okay if I totally trash your office?" It's a question Elyn Saks once asked her doctor, and it wasn't a joke. 

A legal scholar, in 2007 Saks came forward with her own story of schizophrenia, controlled by drugs and therapy but ever-present. 

In this powerful talk, she asks us to see people with mental illness clearly, honestly and compassionately.

Source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6CILJA110Y

The Blue Sweater

For the first 5,000 copies of The Blue Sweater purchased, a $15 donation per book was made to Acumen Fund, a nonprofit that invests in transformative businesses to solve the problems of poverty.

Jacqueline Novogratz left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and to find powerful new ways of tackling it. It all started back home in Virginia, with the blue sweater, a gift that quickly became her prized possession — until the day she outgrew it and gave it away to Goodwill.

Eleven years later in Africa, she spotted a young boy wearing that very sweater, with her name still on the tag inside. That the sweater had made its trek all the way to Rwanda was ample evidence, she thought, of how we are all connected, how our actions - and inaction - touch people every day across the globe, people we may never know or meet.

From her first stumbling efforts as a young idealist venturing forth in Africa to the creation of the trailblazing organization she runs today, Novogratz tells gripping stories with unforgettable characters - women dancing in a Nairobi slum, unwed mothers starting a bakery, courageous survivors of the Rwandan genocide, entrepreneurs building services for the poor against impossible odds.

She shows, in ways both hilarious and heartbreaking, how traditional charity often fails, but how a new form of philanthropic investing called "patient capital" can help make people self-sufficient and can change millions of lives.

More than just an autobiography or a how-to guide to addressing poverty, The Blue Sweater is a call to action that challenges us to grant dignity to the poor and to rethink our engagement with the world.


Source:
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1480541060)


See more at: http://virl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/756116043_the_blue_sweater#sthash.hNnPS75x.dpuf

The Blue Sweater | Vancouver Island Regional Library | BiblioCommons

George Harrison-Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)

Link:  http://youtu.be/s-KAvPbO8JY

What Is Life - George Harrison

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XFfUt7HQWM

Johnny Cash - What Is Truth?

Social deprivation

Social deprivation has a measurable effect on brain growth http://goo.gl/eGQGQ

HOMELESSNESS, MENTAL HEALTH

& SUBSTANCE USE

Research Bulletin #4

HOMELESS PEOPLE WITH ‘CONCURRENT DISORDERS’

ARE MORE VULNERABLE THAN OTHER HOMELESS

PEOPLE AND FACE EVEN GREATER BARRIERS TO

HEALTH CARE & COMMUNITY SERVICES

 

In a survey by Street Health of 368 homeless adults in Toronto, one quarter (26%) reported both mental

health issues and regular drug or alcohol use, a condition often referred to as a ‘concurrent disorder’. Our

study compared this group with other homeless people and found that homeless people with concurrent

disorders were more socially isolated and more likely to be physically assaulted. Homeless people with

concurrent disorders also had worse health status, as well as worse shelter and health care access, than

other homeless people.

Kevin’s Story

Kevin has struggled with mental health and substance use issues for most of his life.

Diagnosed with schizophrenia in his twenties, the medication he was prescribed

didn’t work for him and eventually he began to use street drugs. For over twenty

years, he lived on the streets, in shelters, and in prison. Kevin’s life finally

began to turn around when, almost by accident, he was referred through the justice system to a residential treatment centre designed to address all of his needs in an integrated and holistic way. His discharge plan included finding him his own

apartment with supports attached. Throughout all these transitions, Kevin received ongoing support and encouragement from a community worker who has worked with him for over 18 years. All of these supports helped Kevin to improve his mental health and stabilize his substance use, and have helped him continue to stay housed. Today, Kevin’s involvement in various community-based activities and groups is vital to his current state of well-being and his motivation to keep doing well.

 

“Without counselling, how do you

know what’s out there? What helps

is having a partnership with your

worker ... and support. Giving

me encouragement ... it makes it

easier to endure it out there.

[My worker] helps me to figure out

the system, she opens doors.”

– Kevin, Street Health Survey

Peer Researcher with lived

experience of a concurrent

disorder