What’s the theme of Ecumenical Advocacy Days this year?
Children. As a community of Christians from many places and many situations and many viewpoints, we are taking time to look at where the children are in our world as a standard to hold our way of life by. Children are some of the most vulnerable members of our society. If our faith is about a life-giving, nurturing God who gathers us in like her children, then we must respond in a like manner and care for those who are our future and who are hurt most by the evils of our world.
I am part of the Domestic track at Advocacy Days. This morning, a group of over 100 hundred Christians and activists gathered to hear words and information on the effort to create free healthcare for all children in the US. It is estimated that over 9 million children in America do not have health insurance. There are programs out there - SCHIP and Medicaid - but there can be barriers for children to receive them. In addition, SCHIP comes up for renewal this year, and activists are working to expand the program and improve it so more children and families can be healthy.
The Children’s Defense Fund presented an intriguing plan that would fund and cover all children without private healthcare. The plan includes creative ways to automatically enroll children in a variety of situations, trying to move away from the need to submit pages and pages of paperwork, which many families do not have time to submit. This will be one of the focuses of the weekend - to call Congress to account on this issue. It is not simply a reality of our world - it is a moral failing that we do not have a system in place that can provide children with the care they need.
I’ll be blogging more about this issue as the weekend goes on. Tonight, I’ll share a little bit about the Not For Sale Campaign and have some audio from some of the awesome Disciple participants. I’ve already seen quite a few Disciples here - Jessica Vasquez, Amy Gopp, Sara Critchfield, Lee Hull-Moses, Ken Brooker Langston, Kaye Edwards, Emily Bowen, and more. I’ll share more as I get a chance.
March 11, 2007
PICO, a national network of faith-based community organizations, has a new campaign site http://www.coverallchildren.org designed to serve as a resource for congregations and faith organizations fighting to win health coverage for all children. Four hundred families and clergy from PICO just returned from a Faith and Families Summit on Children’s Health in Washington. Along with many other children’s health organizations we’re pushing Congress to put $60 billion over five years in the budget this month for children’s health.