housing relief bill that passed the Senate last week.

What? You're too busy staving off calls from creditors or working a third job to keep up?

Here's what's been happening, in a Capitol Hill soap opera that could be called As Foreclosure Turns.

Republicans slowed down the bill, squawking about sweetheart loan deals for some Democratic leaders, as if the impetus behind all this was petty political corruption and not a national foreclosure crisis.

Meanwhile big banks piled out, pressuring Congress to cut items that would have allowed communities to buy and refurbish foreclosed properties or given bankruptcy judges the power to rework loans and allow homeowners to keep their homes.

As Representative Bradley Miller, who proposed the doomed Emergency Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act that included the bankruptcy provision, observes: "'This [bill] has all that's possible, because the lenders can count on all but two Republican votes to keep whatever they want out of the legislation."

Just the same, the progressive advocacy group ACORN is calling for sympathizers to ask their representatives to add the bankruptcy provision back in.

Then early this week, the White House convinced senators to tack on a plan to save the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This gave Dems an excuse to slip back in the provision to help communities buy and restore foreclosed properties. As Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, noted:

When the administration asked for an open-ended commitment to calm the capital markets, it's kind of hard to tell the mayors and the governors that they don't get some help with foreclosed property.

Let's hope, after all the back and forth, homeowners get some help too.

Celeste Fraser Delgado is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Worthy Causes. Her Do-Gooder blog appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.

rescued from six years of captivity by Marxist rebels in the jungle, the one-time Colombian presidential candidate has been called a "saint," compared to Nelson Mandela, and been awarded the Legion of Honor by French president Nicolas Sarkozy on Bastille Day yesterday. Chile's president Michelle Bachelet has promised to nominate the French-Colombian survivor for the Nobel Peace Prize.

While fellow hostage, US military contractor Marc Gonsalves, who denounced their captors as "terrorists with a capital T", Betancourt told French radio that she wished her rescuers, the triumphant Colombian government, would tone down their own denunciations of her captors: "I think we have reached a point where we must change this radical, extremist vocabulary of hate, of very strong words that intimately wound the human being."

That seems a strangely psychoanalytical statement from a woman who has -- among other ill treatment -- been chained to a tree for 12 hours at a time. Does the half-century-long Colombian war really boil down to wounding words? Can changing the lexicon end the war?

There is probably a great deal more that Betancourt can't quite come out and say, so soon after her rescue. The "intimate wounds" Betancourt mentions might also refer to the paramilitary death squads who have made Colombia the most dangerous place in the world for union organizers and who some critics suggest President Uribe has not pursued as intensely as he has leftist guerrillas.

But maybe not. Maybe Betancourt believes that changing the way people talk about each other can change how they treat each other. It would be wonderful, and certainly worthy of a Nobel Prize, if Betancourt could teach her compatriots a new vocabulary of peace.

Celeste Fraser Delgado is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Worthy Causes. Her Do-Gooder blog appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.

end poverty. That's what he told a skeptical Guy Raz on NPR's Talk of the Nation the other day.

"But you've been out of elected office for four years," Raz protested. "What can you do?" (Okay, I'm doing this from memory, folks, so that's a paraphrase).

Edwards countered with the Al Gore argument: "He's been out of office for eight years and look what he's been able to do."

Driving along, I thought to myself, well, okay, but climate change is new and sexy, and hits everyone. Poverty is old, grinding, and only harms the unlucky many.

Besides, Leonardo DiCaprio can't make a big statement by hiring a poor family to pull him around in a rickshaw. Che Guevara t-shirts notwithstanding, poverty's never been chic.

Yet, a new poll conducted by Spotlight on Poverty reveals that, even though Edwards got kicked off the presidential island, more than half of the voters in the United States actually want to hear more about poverty.

Here's what Spotlight's Tom Freedman and John Bridgeland have to say:

The study of likely and registered American voters, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates and led by Republican pollster Jim McLaughlin, demonstrates that voters want to hear more about poverty from their candidates and they want the media to cover the topic more. When we asked likely voters for the 2008 presidential campaign, "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: 'The media has spent an adequate amount of time during the presidential campaign covering the issue of how to fight poverty in the U.S.,'" we found that 56% disagreed, 41.2% of those strongly disagreed. The desire to hear more also cut across different demographic groups. Even among Republicans and Democrats the answers were similar - a majority of each felt there hadn't been adequate amount of time spent on the topic.

So John, keep those "Ed Words" coming. Hopefully, Obama and McCain will catch on.

Celeste Fraser Delgado is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Worthy Causes. Her Do-Gooder blog appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The success of recycling depends on several things, including efficient collection of recyclable materials, and a continuous demand for those materials to produce recycled products. Consumers play a key role in ensuring that this recycling loop remains strong. Here's how to help.

Find out how to donate clothing or organize a clothes donation drive. Links provided to pick-up instructions and drop-off collection locations for The Salvation Army and Goodwill

If you notice someone who is exhibiting symptoms of depression, ask the person how he is feeling and explain why you are concerned. Realize that you cannot diagnose the problem or offer treatment options, but you can be part of a support system. Tell the person that he is valued and deserves to feel better. Listen without passing judgment. Recommend that he discuss depression with his doctor and offer to accompany him to the first appointment. It may not be the easiest conversation you'll ever have, but it might be one of the most worthy. And whether or not the person chooses to take your advice, keep checking-in with him on a regular basis and extending invitations to partake in social activities so that he will feel he belongs.