Bread or stones for our children?

Dianna Cheramie
July 12, 2016
Plaisance named Interim Athletic Director at Nicholls
July 13, 2016
Dianna Cheramie
July 12, 2016
Plaisance named Interim Athletic Director at Nicholls
July 13, 2016

I am always amazed at how our community – like others – responds in an overwhelmingly good way when we are informed of one child or one family that is in trouble, perhaps because of financial problems that come from loss of a job, or illness, or any other twist of fate.

Sometimes it’s not an emergency that places people in need. Sometimes it’s just the way things are.


Yet as giving and charitable as we are on a one-to-one basis, we often appear to embrace political philosophies and personalities who would blame the poor for being poor and leave it at that. This is why Louisiana is consistently at the bottom of lists like that produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. In the 2016 AECF’s Kid’s Count data we rank 48th out of 50 states in overall child well-being. Closer to home, 27 percent of Terrebonne Parish’s children live in poverty, placing us 26th out of Louisiana’s 64 parishes in that regard.

As we ask how this should be dealt with, it is good to know that a few people are and have been. They don’t get a lot of credit for this, but the work is being done.

The Bread or Stones campaign is a joint effort by churches here to address the needs of children and families through programs and policies. A meeting was scheduled for Tuesday where ideas were laid out.


The “Bread or Stones” moniker comes from the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus asks: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?”

“We have a moral obligation to improve our children’s health, reduce their poverty, help them to stay and succeed in school and support their families,” says Rob Gorman of Catholic Charities.

The campaign focuses primarily on improving services in maternal and child health, school readiness and school dropout prevention, marriage and family supports, and child poverty reduction.


The program’s thrust is a belief that child well-being can be improved through close work between churches, non-profits, and civic organizations through education, social services, citizenship through advocacy, and community building.

The news is not all bad, and in some ways the path to building better lives for children is already being paved.

“Louisiana has shown that child well-being can be improved through such programs as the Louisiana Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Louisiana Earned Income Tax Credit, and Maternal and Child Health Care Initiatives, among other programs,” program organizers have said. “The state has begun to reduce teen pregnancy rates and has shown improvement in decreasing the number of low-birth-weight babies. We have improved our rankings in several of the child well-being indicators.”


The Affordable Health Care Act is seen as a help too, by making insurance more available to Louisiana families, despite some of the difficulties inherent to the law.

The work may be made harder by the current oilfield recession that is being felt so hard locally, but that provides even more incentive for people of good will to get cracking. What matters is that hundreds of Louisiana churches representing 16 Christian denominations are committed to this.

“We share a common concern for our children, as the Gospel demands,” is what the organizers maintain through their literature. “Every child in Louisiana is a child of God and deserves our unwavering commitment to improving his or her life. By serving our children we are serving God most tenderly.”


Truer words were never spoken. In keeping with the old adage which says “If I am not part of the solution I am part of the problem,” it would be a good thing for those of us who are interested in contributing our ideas to get in touch with our church leaders and offer to help.

Our children have far too little bread and have been given far too many stones for us to leave any stone unturned in the quest to make and keep them whole and healthy. •