| Welcome
to the e-Voices MONDAY MINUTE, your weekly email newsletter from New
Mexico Voices for Children. Please take a minute to add your voice to the
pressing issues of the day. Also, tell us what issues you'd like to know more
about so we can tailor the MONDAY MINUTE to your interests. Thanks! August
28, 2006 Water, Water Everywhere...
It was one year ago this week that the nation watched in shock as stunning poverty, drawn so clearly along racial lines, was uncovered by the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina. As we gathered around our televisions, we also watched in anger as our government failed to make rescuing the victims of this disaster a national priority.
New Mexico is facing its own disaster, albeit one that moves more slowly than a hurricane and does not have the same sense of life-or-death immediacy. It is deadly, nonetheless. We’re not referring to the flooding many of us have experienced in our own communities and homes over the past several weeks. We’re talking about the health and well-being of New Mexico’s children.
New Mexico’s children have long suffered from a statewide drought of services and opportunities. The state’s investment in high quality early education, for example, falls far short of making this critical service accessible to everyone. Auto-closure policies have made it more difficult for parents to maintain their children’s Medicaid coverage. And outdated eligibility requirements mean working families face a huge cliff between qualifying for public assistance and earning enough income to be independent of the need for it.
New Mexico Voices for Children has worked hard over the past 19 years to ease this drought. We concentrate on shaping public policies so they reflect and support our four core values: human rights, economic justice, healthy communities and civic participation. While we’ve enjoyed a great number of victories, our work is far from done.
Your financial support makes our continued work possible. That’s why we’ve started our Let It Rain! campaign. Please help us fill the rain barrel so we can work toward ending the drought.
We know you’re busy, so we’ve made supporting Voices as easy as possible. By clicking on the link below, you can set up your credit card account for an automatic monthly charge to be sent to us. Even a modest monthly contribution makes a big difference.
Your support is crucial to us, especially as we have just begun a new fiscal year. Your gift now will keep us in the fight to end the drought for our state’s most valuable and vulnerable resource: our children.
Thank You! Your financial support is critical to our work. Please consider making a contribution today at http://www.nmvoices.org/donate.htm |