Garbage collectors look for waste to recycle at a garbage dump site in Sanya, China's Hainan province, last Tuesday. Growing populations and booming economies are threatening fragile coastal areas in East Asia, and the region's coral reefs could face total collapse within 20 years, according to a new United Nations study. - REUTERS

Almighty God, you are the supplier of our needs. We thank you for creating this earth and universe with adequate resources for our welfare. We thank you that you are concerned about our well-being and that your desire is that we will prosper in body and soul.

We confess that we have not been proper stewards of your environment. We have been greedy and therefore the needy have been starved. We have witnessed the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. We are ashamed that the majority of workers in the world are earning an average $130 a day.

Forgive us of our sins.

Lord, we thank you that Bangladeshi economist Mohammed Yunis was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2006, thereby highlighting the Grameen Bank concept of lending to the neediest who have no collateral. May this be a catalyst to intensify the struggle against poverty.

As we stand up with the rest of the world this week in the fight against poverty, we pray for the many who live below or on the poverty line. We pray for the minimum wage earners who cannot provide adequate balanced daily meals for their children, or educate or properly house their children. Lord, since 1938 until now we have been made aware of the many workers who have been struggling with low wages, high cost of living and burdensome taxation, and we pray for a new day. We pray that the unjust world economic order will be changed to allow all of God's people to prosper. We pray that the emphasis will be on fair trade and ethical trading.

Lord we pledge to eradicate poverty in Jamaica, land we love.

Amen.