NEW YORK (WordNews.org) Jan. 23, 2013 – The week leading up to Valentine’s Day is being dubbed National Marriage Week and hundreds of events are being planned across the country and in more than 20 countries, organizers said.
A group in Kankakee County, Illinois, is setting up a booth in a shopping mall from Feb. 7-14, offering free marriage counseling services. A team in the Chicago area has 500 churches sponsoring Date Night events. A Louisiana group is looking for the state’s top 10 longest married couples. A Sweetheart Dinner and Dance in Ohio will offer a renewal of vows ceremony.
“Small town stories across the nation are exciting,” says Sheila Weber, executive director of the national campaign.
United Marriage Encounters and National Marriage Week USA are co-sponsoring a 2-minute video contest with the winner receiving a free trip to Hawaii for the couple with the winning marriage story. [For more information].
Organizers say marriage is an anti-poverty program.
The Brookings Institution noted that if the United States’ marriage rate today was the same as the marriage rate in 1970, there would be a 25 percent drop in poverty.
The Heritage Foundation reported that marriage drops the probability of a child living in poverty by 82 percent.
“It has been long proven that children fare best at every level if they can grow up with both their father and mother,” Weber said. “Since more than 40 percent of U.S. babies today are born out of wedlock, which is the greatest predictor of poverty for women and children, and we have an alarming drop in marriage rates — nearly 80 percent of all adults were married in 1970, only 52 percent today.
“The need is greater than ever for a positive campaign to strengthen marriage,” Weber said.

To view a four-minute video on National Marriage Weekend

For more information visit http://www.nationalmarriageweekusa.org