Love wins

So I'm currently living in Hamilton, a city in Ontario on the edge of lake Ontario, about 40 minutes drive from Toronto. It's a great city with lots going on but there's also lots of poverty. Almost 20% of Hamilton's population, or 95, 650 out of 504, 559 residents, live in households with incomes below the poverty line*. So that means that when i'm walking down the street going to buy some new clothes, music, or more food, 1 IN EVERY 5 people I walk past could be living in poverty. And these figures DON'T include poeple who are 'wealthy' but face the poverty of no friends, broken relationships, dying relatives, the list goes on.

There are so many people (some christian, some not), however, doing incredible work for the people of Hamilton. Just this Saturday as a church we went to help out at the Eva Rothwell (http://www.mohawkcollege.ca/external/robertland/about.html) which is a community centre doing fantastic stuff. Turns out the guy who runs the place, Don MacVicar, got awared Hamilton's citizen of the year.

So as I get involved in different projects during my time here I don't want to forget that things are being restored: beauty in the broken.

Let's face it. Love wins.



*These stats I found class you as in poverty if you earn less money than the Low-Income-Cutt-Off rate which is the average cost of BASIC necessities (food, clothing, housing) + 20%. A family of three, for example, their LICO is $26,396 = £14,161 for the year.