The Human Development Campaign Collection Nov. 22 will directly benefit some of the poor in the mountains of North Georgia.

All of the 25 per cent of the collection which stays in the archdiocese will go directly for the poor. None of the money will be used for administrative costs.

The administration will be handled by volunteer persons or groups or by agencies already in existence. Yet there will be strict accounting of all money received and reports will be made to the archdiocese regularly.

Poverty in the mountains is extreme. The median family income is less than half that of the five metropolitan counties of Atlanta. About 40 percent of the families are living below the poverty level.

Poverty is never pleasant, always depressing, and always dehumanizing. But poverty in the mountains in the wintertime is even worse. The children have colds much of the time because the floors are drafty and the diet inadequate.

Being confined to an unpainted, drab three room house restricts the spirit. Food, fuel, and clothing bills increase at the same time that work in the lumber yards and pay checks decrease. The kids don’t want to go to school because their clothes are old, and they don’t want to do their schoolwork because the lighting is poor.

The programs, written by people working in the mountains and approved by the Department of Catholic Social Services and Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, will not duplicate any government or private program to help the poor. The programs include assistance for the elderly, glasses for school children, tuition aid for day care services, and assistance in craft training.

The isolation, which is a special scourge of rural poverty, is intensified for the elderly poor in winter. They are really alone then.

They often cannot or do not cook adequate meals and they live lonely, uncreative lives. Sr. Cathryn Concannon and Sr. Mary Bean, S.S.N.D., of Demorest, Ga., would like to be able to bring low income elderly people together, cook some good meals for them, show them how to make simple crafts, and let them share with each other. They need money for food and materials; they need $870 to run the program for a year.

School children cannot learn with poor eyes. The Public Health Nurse examines the eyes of the school children and sends a letter home if the child needs glasses. If the parents are not able to pay for the glasses, the child goes on without them, squinting, to the detriment of his education. Some civic clubs help, but the needs are greater than their resources.

In Dahlonega, the Lumpkin County Ministerial Association has sponsored a preschool child care center, but often the children who need the center most cannot pay the weekly fee. Three partial scholarships could be set up for $1,170, so that three more children could learn the joys of childhood and the possibilities open for them.

People who are partially disabled, or who are old, or whose yearly family income does not exceed $3,600 need to supplement their income somehow. One hundred persons in the mountains have joined together to develop a craft co-op to do that. They have one store in Tallulah Falls, Ga. and one at 161 Spring St. in Atlanta. They need to learn new crafts and new designs. This takes material and material takes money.