WAMC: 51% Show # 1054 (2009-09-24)

51 % The Women's Perspective

51% Show # 1054

(2009-09-24)

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ALBANY, NY (WAMC) - There's been a national surge in the number of homeless thanks to foreclosures, job cuts and all the related problems they create. A recent New York Times article on one part of that population - America's schoolchildren, led political blog queen Arianna Huffington to rip up a speech she'd prepared and instead talk to some of the country's leading philanthropists and policy makers about the urgent need to do something to help. Many school districts across the country report the number of homeless children attending their schools is up by one-hundred percent. The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, an advocacy group, reports that there were more than one-million homeless students last spring...and that number is believed to be growing fast. There are legal protections ensuring those students get an education, but little federal money to fund those programs. Huffington argues Washington has to get serious about stopping foreclosures - especially for families with school age children. Who are the new homeless? They are us, ordinary people caught between the recession and a mortgage. Kathleen Krauss is one of them. She's been living in a California shelter with her children since April.

2:13 Krauss

The interview was part of KVCR's "Facing the Mortgage Crisis" series. It aired originally in July.

What can you do? Volunteer to help at your schools. Contact your legislators and tell them this has to be a priority. Contact a shelter and see if you can help.

What can you do about your own financial future? Personal finance expert Manisha Thakor says there is a strategy that's tried and true...and she's got the details.

3:50 Wisdom Thakor

For more from author and personal finance advisor Manisha Thakor, visit her website at manishathakor.com.

In most of the world, polio is a distant memory - fading photographs of President Franklin Roosevelt, of children on crutches, of people lying inside of iron lungs and a few older people who survived what was once a scourge are all that remains. The largest international public health campaign eliminated polio from most of the world in just twenty years. But the polio eradication campaign has hit a plateau. Every year about two thousand children become paralyzed and most live in four countries - Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria. Washington correspondent Laura Iiyama (ee-yah-mah) has more from polio experts including one woman playing a key role in vaccinations.

8:33 Polio Iiyama

A little village in Nepal looks out over the Himalayan Mountains. People there get by on subsistence farming, and milk provides a critical source of nutrients. But not the way you're used to drinking it. Laura Spero tells us how to turn milk to ghee.

4:42 Buffalo Spiro

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