Poverty leads to orphans and homelessness.

• 150 million children live on the street.
• Action International says that by 2020 there will be 800 million homeless children.
• The UN says that the street children situation is one of the worst crises facing the nations of the world.
• This is a disaster

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” – Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 25, par. 1

Average Gross National Income for every man, women, and child in America is $35,060. World Development Bank, 2003.

• Of the 24 mostly Western Developed Nations (including NA, Western Europe, Australia & New Zealand etc.)  Population of 900 million, the GNI is $27,000 USD
• Compare this to the fact that 1.2 billion people live on under $1.00 a day and 2.7 billion people live on under $2.00 USD a day.
• 500 million people are hungry and another 500 million are so poor that they don’t consume enough food to render them productive.
• Because of poverty 33,000 children (mostly under-five-year-olds) die every day due to preventable diseases – diarrhea, measles, malaria, and malnutrition – that is more than one child dying every 3 seconds.
• 55% of all child deaths (17 million deaths a year) are just because the children are hungry.
• Poverty is at the root of most of that which contributes to 'children becoming at risk'.

City: Merauke, Papua
Project:  Orphanage - New Family Home (part of Mem's Complex)
Partner:  Yosts
Number of Children: 13

Mem's Complex is community center that began ten years ago when the Yosts started a rehab center in Sentani. The rehab center has grown into an entire community development complex with a rehab center, a women's crisis shelter, a children's shelter, a health clinic, and several businesses to help employ those living in the shelters.

Every day 5,760 more children become orphans

UNICEF and global partners define an orphan as a child who has lost one or both parents.

By this definition there were over 132 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2005.

This large figure represents not only children who have lost both parents, but also those who have lost a father but have a surviving mother or have lost their mother but have a surviving father.

Of the more than 132 million children classified as orphans, only 13 million have lost both parents. Evidence clearly shows that the vast majority of orphans are living with a surviving parent grandparent, or other family member. 95 per cent of all orphans are over the age of five.

Add your voice to Stop Human Trafficking through Stop the Traffik Australia

Warning: Some of the content of this article is disturbing - reporting treatment of trafficking victims.

What is human trafficking? According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), human trafficking is defined as, "the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation."

Natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods can often come at the least expected time. Others, such as hurricanes and cyclones are increasing in severity and destruction. Typically, the poor are the worst hit for they have the least resources to cope and rebuild.

When poor countries face natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and fires, the cost of rebuilding becomes even more of an issue when they are already burdened with debt. Often, poor countries suffer with many lost lives and/or livelihoods. Aid and disaster relief often does come in from international relief organizations, rich countries and international institutions, but sometimes poor countries are still paying millions of dollars a week back in the form of debt repayment.

HIV/Aids
Of the 22 million people who have died of AIDS, 4.5 million of them have been children.

In 2006 there were 11 million AIDS orphans in the Sub Sahara. That is a staggering 10%, or one in every ten children is an orphan. This is twice as many as society can care for.

In South Africa, 50% of all the teenage girls who are now 15 years old, will be dead of AIDS in ten years.

Malaria
Around the world, 3.3 billion people are at risk of contracting malaria.

Tuberculosis
There were an estimated 8.7 million new cases of TB in 2011 (including 1.1 million cases among people with HIV) and an estimated 1.4 million deaths (including 430,000 people with HIV), making this disease one of the world's biggest infectious killers.

I have an 11 year old daughter. I read a story this morning about an 11 year old Cambodian girl who has lived a very different life to my daughter. She lives with the belief that a girl is pure like white linen, but once she has been "stained" she is stained forever and no longer valuable. You can imagine what this means for that little precious girl - living in poverty - there are a few distinct industries where there is money to be made...