It always hits the poor the hardest....

So I've been thinking over the past few months as we hear constant consumer news reports show that the price of basic food is gradually going up all over the place. More recently we've been seeing reports of the price of rice skyrocketing across the world. All this comes at a bad time economically when many western countries are looking at the prospect of recession and the value of global reserves (mainly held in USD) is rapidly declining. Whenever these types of situations occur it always hits the poor the hardest.

I just got this report in the most recent Servants Newsletter:

Cambodia: The inflation of rice prices (up to a $1 a kilo) has caused great suffering for the poor leading to chronic hunger and illness. The TASK AIDS homecare project has been forced to stop providing rice to patients and their families because the budget has run out. At the very time that those who are most vulnerable and least able to earn money are suffering servants is unable to help. Please pray urgently for this situation or contact one of the servants offices if you feel you can help in any other way.

Rice is a basic necessity of life in Cambodia. If people have no rice, they have nothing else to eat. This is an extremely difficult problem and those who are poor, displaced, and ill often have no social support in place to get them through it. It's even sadder to hear the double burden that now the agencies who had been providing food support (such as TASK's AIDS home care programme) have been forced to stop providing it because of lack of resources.