Poverty Awareness Week at Neumann College, Aston, Pennsylvania

The College will hold its third Poverty Awareness Week from November 12-16. Events will include the week-long sale of Fair Trade coffee and crafts, a lecture, an evening of reflection, a poverty awareness concert, and opportunities for community service. All activities are free and open to the public.

The Fair Trade movement is committed to social justice by returning proceeds of product sales to workers who made them. Its coffee and crafts will be on sale from November 12-16 in the lobbies of Bachmann Main Building and the Abessinio Building. For specific times, see the schedule below. In addition, the main corridor of Bachmann will be outfitted with statistics and images about the plight of the world’s vulnerable throughout the week.

Mark Chmiel, Ph.D., the author of The Book of Mev, will deliver a lecture on Monday, November 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the Schmidt Multipurpose Room. The book is the story of Mev Puleo, an American photojournalist and young Catholic who actively confronted a world of injustice, poverty and violence. From witnessing homelessness in the United States to struggles for social change in Haiti, El Salvador, and Brazil, Puleo used photography and interviews to be a bridge between poverty and affluence, the First World and the Third World. Her familiarity with suffering was dramatically intensified when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of thirty-one and died twenty-one months later. Chmiel will also facilitate an evening of reflection on Israel/Palestine entitled “Is Peace Possible” at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, on the second floor of the Abessinio Building.

A group reading and discussion on themes of poverty and wealth from The Book of Mev, for the annual Poverty Awareness Week.