Poverty Olympics to protest penury

VANCOUVER - Itchy the Bedbug, Creepy the Cockroach and Chewy the Rat don't sound like Olympic mascots, but they are - at least they're the mascots of the first annual Poverty Olympics.

Anti-poverty advocates say they will stage the games Sunday in Vancouver, including such events as the Welfare Hurdles, Poverty Line High Jump, and Long Jump over a Bedbug-Infested Mattress.

Wendy Pedersen of the Carnegie Community Action Project, one of several groups behind the poverty games, says Vancouver and B.C. suffer from what she calls world-class poverty and homelessness.

She's hoping that displaying the problems for the global media will spur Canadian governments to use their surpluses to hike welfare rates and build social housing.

“We want to be able to put some pressure on the government to do something about welfare, housing, and minimum wage,” Swanson said by phone. “It has been hard lately, not so much with housing, but there has not been much interest with the other things. So we thought we would do this.” Swanson promised to e-mail international media to “show the world coming to the Olympics what the real poverty situation in Vancouver is”.