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from Photographers Blog:
In the spirit of a Franciscan Pope
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
By Ricardo Moraes
It was Palm Sunday in Rio’s cathedral when I found them in a small group wearing their simple, traditional robes, with short hair and beards, praying, concentrating, amidst hundreds of other Catholics. I’m talking about the Franciscans, young followers of Saint Francis of Assisi who on some occasions I had seen roaming the city, almost invisible, helping Rio’s poor.
I knew nothing about them, but with the election of a Latin American Pope and his chosen name of Francis, I began to do some research. Apart from what I learned from the Internet and through phone calls to a monastery, there wasn’t a lot more information available. The Franciscan orders have existed for centuries around the world, but I wanted to know more about those youths who one monk had told me are the “Church’s rebels.”
I stood observing them during an important moment in the mass, with their eyes tightly shut and very serious faces. I really wanted to photograph them, but with so many people around me I didn’t want to disturb the mass. I waited, and when the mass finished I was finally able to talk to them and introduce myself. Their serious looks disappeared and with smiles they told me that I would be very welcome to visit them in their home.
It was a short conversation in which I barely explained that I wanted to do a photo essay about their lives motivated by the election of Pope Francis, and asked them how they felt about the papal choice. One of the brothers told me, “It’s a confirmation of all that we believe.”
from India Insight:
Turning a Bangalore shanty town into a mall
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily of Thomson Reuters)
The Bangalore city government and a private developer kicked more than 1,500 poor families out of subsidised housing in January, razed their neighbourhood and left them homeless. The reason? They want to build new, better housing – and a mall.
from Photographers Blog:
A roof for the roofless
Sao Paulo, Brazil
By Nacho Doce
It was close to midnight on Sunday night, the hour at which 1,200 families planned to occupy 11 vacant buildings in downtown Sao Paulo. Their mission was to improve their own living conditions by occupying and squatting in the buildings long enough to make their eviction a long, drawn-out legal process, and in the meantime, go on with their daily lives.
When I arrived at the meeting place for one of the building occupations, there were around 150 families sitting along a wall with their suitcases. The leaders were registering the names of all present, to keep control over who would enter the empty building. Elsewhere around the city, there were ten more groups like this one, ready to act.
from Photographers Blog:
Suffering in silence
Karachi, Pakistan
By Akhtar Soomro
Arriving for my trip to Edhi Home, I met an elderly man working as a driver sitting outside the building. He assisted me in entering the building and introduced me to the lady in charge. She welcomed me and let me in by crossing an iron grill gate separating this place from the outer world.
As I walked through the huge corridor housing a row of rooms, each consisting of a bath, windows, square holes in the roofs for ventilation and an iron bar door. In these rooms resided elderly women, victims of mental illness, children missing from their families and victims of domestic violence.
from Photographers Blog:
An American homeless family
By Lucy Nicholson
On her second day of camping near the coast north of Los Angeles, Benita Guzman lit a match, threw it on a pile of logs, and poured gasoline on top. As flames engulfed her hand and foot, her niece, Angelica Cervantes, rushed to throw sand over her. Benita thrust her burning hand into a pile of mud, and took a deep breath.
Camping’s not easy. It’s a whole lot rougher when you’re a pair of homeless single mothers trying to keep seven children fed, clothed, washed and in school.
from Photographers Blog:
On the edge of reality
The soul selects her own society, Unmoved, she notes the chariot's pausing
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
from Photographers Blog:
Hope Gardens
By Lucy Nicholson
Lilly Earp changes the diaper on her 5-week-old baby sister Emily with the confidence another child would have cradling a doll. She's only 8, but she already shows the street smarts of an older child as she helps her mother. It helps to be resourceful when you're homeless.
Her mother, Doreen Earp, 38, who is originally from Germany, and her three children ended up on the street after her relationship with Emily’s father fell apart. They stayed in a hotel for a month, then with people from their church and eventually ended up with no roof over their heads.
from Full Focus:
Homeless America
As a homeless child, Aeisha joined ranks with 1.6 million children living in shelters, motels, doubled up with other families or living on the streets of the United States last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness. That marked a 38 percent jump in child homelessness since 2007. To put a face to the breadth and depth of the homeless problem, a team of Reuters journalists fanned out across the country in the past week, for interviews with parents and children who are down on their luck.
from MuniLand:
The forgotten American homeless
CBS's 60 Minutes showed a heartbreaking story last night that described several homeless families with children in Florida. The segment, entitled "Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars" (embedded above), detailed families living at the absolute edge of economic survival as they slept in their cars, in hotel rooms and with neighbors. In a deflating economy with few available jobs, they are the invisible underbelly. Big kudos to 60 Minutes for bringing their plight to our attention.
In 1933, a freshly inaugurated Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a paralyzed nation with the following words:
from Photographers Blog:
Greece’s new army of the homeless
By Yiorgos Karahalis
Ragged clothes, small piles of belongings and a bleak future, Greece’s new army of homeless have swelled in numbers since the debt crisis hit the country.
As part of ideas to highlight the story that has dominated headlines for the past two years, I wanted to illustrate the emerging problem of homelessness in a country which has seen a rise in the number of homeless by 20-25 percent in the last two years alone - a staggering rise in a country where adult children live with their parents, in some cases until the day they get married, and pensions traditionally go to support young families.
