Child Poverty and Fruit Pickers

Monday, November 30, 2020

Written by Alan Vink

Categories: Gospel and Culture

Comments: 1

gospel&culture

Good Morning and Welcome to this week’s Gospel and Culture update, by Alan Vink

Monday 30th November, 2020

Child Poverty

Poverty of any kind is sad enough but child poverty is doubly tragic. Though I accept that raising benefits is one solution and definitely needs to be considered it is also a double edged sword. We now have 4th and 5th generation benefit families in NZ that have become totally dependent on the Government to meet there material needs. Benefits have ended up unintentionally dis-empowering people. The challenge for this Government and successive Governments and indeed for all of us in the middle class is how can we in NZ solve this problem so that benefit families can come off the benefit and become financially independent? Financial Independence from Government or is the single most empowering experience for

I would recommend the Child Poverty Action Group as one very good organisation in NZ that can help you ‘think this through’. There are of course many others.

What could we do as a local church? What could we do as churches that addresses the systemic problems of child poverty? Should we find a way to ‘re-direct’ our giving to hand-ups rather than (mostly) hand-outs?

Fruit Pickers

We heard almost every day last week that vast amounts of summer fruit will rot if we don’t get thousands of horticultural workers onto orchards and fast. Good news that the Government will provide for 2000 people to come in from the Pacific Islands and also significantly incentivise young New Zealanders to go and work on orchards this summer.

Again, what can we do in the ‘church’ sector to assist? Perhaps encourage our young adults who are on summer holiday to head to a near-by orchard? Or can we offer accommodation or some other support especially if we are located in Hawkes Bay or Nelson or other ‘fruit bowl’ of NZ?

There are NO copyright restrictions on this email update. Got some feedback about this Update, or anything in the news? Would you like us to cover a story then drop me a note at alan.vink@leadershipworx.org.nz Alan is Executive Director of LeadershipWorx and blogs here.

Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.

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  1. Dante Dante | www.electricianhamiltonnz.kiwi: Ending child poverty or poverty is not something we cannot put to an end in a decade or so. It will take a lot of time, unless everybody will live according to what pleases God. Monday, February 22, 2021

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