NORWICH – A special program focused on poverty in Chenango County – Poverty in Rural America and our Christian Response – will be offered to the general public at 6 p.m. Feb. 27 at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 37 West Main St.

Led by Father Charles Taylor, pastor at the Emmanuel, St. Andrew’s and St Matthew’s Episcopal churches, the program will feature guest speakers Ken Smith, executive director at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Chenango County, and Katha Root, WIC program coordinator with Opportunities For Chenango. According to Taylor, it’s an opportunity for residents countywide to educate themselves on fundamental changes that are taking place at what he called a rapid pace in America, particularly as it concerns the impoverished.

“If you still have a warm, comfortable home to sleep in, you should be thankful,” said Taylor, who oversees St. Andrew’s food pantry, which serves a number of families in the New Berlin area each year. “It’s easy to disregard the statistics we see today, and there are many people who believe that there is no such thing as rural poverty.”

The truth, however, is that one in six people in the United States are currently living in poverty; one in seven receiving inadequate nutrition; and one in six children tonight will sleep in a car, a shelter or with no

shelter at all, reported Taylor. America, he added, is simply getting poorer, with an estimated 46.2 million living in poverty, up 2.6 million from last year and the single largest increase in that statistical category since poverty across the country has been monitored, he said.

“As poverty spreads, so to do despair and hopelessness, and there’s definitely a reason the economy should be the number one issue right now across the board,” said Taylor. “A shrinking job market and increased dependence on the government, the suffocating cost of health care, not to mention the millions without health care, from that perspective I’ve been blessed with opportunities such as an education, family support and working in a field I believe in for more than 30 years. It’s unsettling to think my children have to struggle to fill their tank with gas just so they can get to work. Other people can’t even do that, and that’s sad.”