Diversity

Diversity

Pentecost 138

The University of Alabama, a major university whose football team is again competing for the national number one slot in collegiate football and is forty miles from Hale County, Alabama.  The bustling metropolis of Birmingham is only one hundred miles away.  Yet, for the children of Hale County, Alabama, they might as well live on the other side of the country.  They live in a rural and an impoverished area of Alabama in what is known as the Blackbelt region of the state.  Residents of this are at an economic disadvantage with very limited resources. The high school graduation rate is only 34% with 74% of households earning less than $30,000 per year. Almost 200 families live without plumbing and healthcare is nonexistent for most.

According to the United Way of West Alabama, 1 in 4 Alabamians is functionally illiterate, unable…