We’re interrupting our series on the elderly to consider another topic of major importance, especially during the month of November. It’s at this time that we focus on one of the most important actions of our bishops in the last decade.

It will be three years this November that the national bishops began a massive anti-poverty program in the United States committed to the human development of all Americans through education, development and funding.

The Campaign for Human Development is an education-action program to combat the economic, social and psychological conditions that hold millions of Americans in a cycle of powerlessness and dependency. It informs all Americans, especially Catholics, about the urgent complex dimensions of domestic poverty and social injustice.

Each year a national collection is held the Sunday before Thanksgiving in every Catholic church. Twenty-five percent of the diocesan collection remains in the diocese for local funding. The campaign funds only self-help projects initiated, organized and implemented by poor groups so that they have the opportunity to gain control over their lives.

For the next few weeks we will look at projects here in our archdiocese that have received both national and local funding.

This week the North Fulton Child Development Association project is discussed.

In 1968, Mrs. Lillian McNair and Mrs. Joan O’Connor, both members of St. Jude parish, helped start a pre-school enrichment program that is now known as the North Fulton Child Development Association, Inc.

The association sponsors a nonprofit licensed day care center for children of low-income families in Roswell. It is the only center of its kind within a 30-mile radius.

A major turning point in the history of the association took place when it received a $10,000 grant from the bishops’ Human Development Drive in 1971. For three years the half-day program had been staffed completely with volunteers and had been run on donations from local clubs, civic organizations and churches in the community.

But with the gift from the Human Development Drive six workers were hired for one year with the program still sponsored by the community. These six ladies now form the backbone of the existing day care center staff.

The token salaries offered in 1971 greatly helped stabilize the program. Because of its worthwhile work, the association then qualified to receive financial help from Community Coordinated Child Care of Atlanta and met the requirements to run a licensed day care center for 40 children.

This center prepared young children from deprived backgrounds for their future school situation, readying them with adequate skills and concepts to enter school on an equal footing with children from adequate socio-economic backgrounds.

This kind of program deals with a root cause of poverty, i.e., enabling deprived youngsters to develop and strengthen abilities that their deficient environment can’t provide.

This is what Human Development is all about. These children will now have a realistic chance, with a good educational background, to “make it” economically in the future.