Definitions of Poverty

• Varies depending on who you talk to. Within Western countries poverty generally refers to relative wealth or income. So if most of the population owns a Mercedes Benz, but you own a brown 1979 Datsun Sunny – you are poor. Global definitions of poverty are also typically economic but are absolute measures. The World Bank currently uses < US$1.25 daily income to indicate extreme poverty.
• A good definition can also be lack of choice or unfreedoms. You might have access to basic utilities, but you can’t send your kids to school, or participate politically, or have access to land – this is poverty.
• An even broader sense is that we are all poor – but in different ways. This is the impoverishment of broken relationships (with ourselves, with others, the environment, and with God).

Those of us from the West typically have a narrow material-based definition of poverty. Because we value materials and individual wealth highly, we tend to look at those who lack this as being poor. I believe we miss the mark with this view.

As we look at other cultures we tend to reduce things to economic outputs and inputs, and emphasise an extremely individualistic sense of identity.  We can misunderstand collectivism and the value of relationship.  To us, time is a finite linear resource (which is why we measure success by how much we can jam into a period of time). In the developing world, tasks and schedules take a back seat to the process of forming relationships.

Elephants Dancing Among Mice

• People and Process over Project and Product.
• Do not do for people what they can do for themselves.
• Always use local resources, bringing in external resources is a last resort.
• Bringing in outside resources can cripple initiative, and even promote a patronising ‘god-complex’ among those of us who are helping.  It can potentially harm existing networks, businesses in a small vulnerable community.
• Think twice about in-kind donations. Cash is almost always a better option. There are many reasons for this (which can be elaborated on in another post).

Better: First discover all assets, skills, talents among individual, and community networks, connections, and existing organisations, Figure out their wins and build on these.

The challenge: If one characteristic of the poor is low self-esteem and lack of voice, then how do we assess what tensions might lie behind their silence and compliance?

Many thanks to When Helping Hurts: Alleviating poverty without hurting the poor… or ourselves. Also Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power.  Photo (cc) evanlavine / flickr

Hating on Bono hit new heights (lows?) recently with AC DC singer Brian Johnston spouting forth his wisdom regarding charity donations:

“I do it myself, I don’t tell everybody I’m doing it,” Johnson said.

“I don’t tell everybody they should give money – they can’t afford it.

“When I was a working man I didn’t want to go to a concert for some bastard to talk down to me that I should be thinking of some kid in Africa.

“I’m sorry mate, do it yourself, spend some of your own money and get it done. It just makes me angry. I become all tyrannical.”

The ensuing comments (both on huffington post and the HeraldSun) make for some entertaining reading. AC/DC fans appeared to have crawled out from under their rocks to praise their shrieking overlord, and bag the self-aggrandizing Bono.

Johnson says that he doesn’t tell his concert-goers to care about causes because “They can’t afford it”.   Except of course they just paid $120 to get into the AC/DC concert.

Celebs walk a fine line when they advocate for causes. Our innate sense of fairness tells us that if we’re going to shell out cash, Celeb X better shell out ten times as much or else…

The Bono backlash seems to get louder as the years go on, and, so too I suspect, the growing distrust of Aid in general. Billions of dollars has gone the way of poor countries and things don’t seem any different.   The belief that we can fix anything and everything with money is flawed. It makes those of us with money think that we can fix everything.

To be fair to Bono – he calls his celebrity status “currency” – that allows him to rub shoulders with world leaders and help to shape policy. That is a good and gutsy thing to do. However, seeing Bono spout forth simplistic and cheesy save-the-world messages at a U2 concert made me cringe – as if understanding and fixing world poverty can be attended to with a 10 minute charade at a rock concert.

We love our entertainment, and it has a place in our hearts like no other. Let’s not kid ourselves.

World box office takings for the movie Avatar: $2,074 million.

Hope for Haiti Now concert donations: $61 million.

Maybe AC/DC has some wisdom on the matter:

You got me ringing Hell’s Bells
My temperature’s high, Hell’s Bells
I’ll give you black sensations up and down your spine
If you’re into evil you’re a friend of mine
See my white light flashing as I split the night

Okayee….

Every where I go, somebody wants my money.

Maybe it’s the circles I mix in. Maybe the voices of charity are getting louder and shriller during this time of recession. I’m amazed at the generosity of most people.  However a lot of us give whimsically, randomly, and sometimes under coercion.

How do you figure out what to give to? Are some charities more important than others?

Think about this story (inspired by Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save):

You donate a large sum of money to an art gallery. They buy some pieces to display. The gallery catches fire, you are walking past and hear a child screaming. Do you rescue the child or the pieces of artwork?

I guess most of us would rescue the child. If that’s the case then shouldn’t you have used the donation money to rescue a child (or many) in the first place? Certain aid agencies do exactly that – they save kids from dying from the most preventable of diseases (diarrhea or measles for examples).

Why would I donate to a sports club – just to fund someone else’s hobby? Perhaps it comes down to our own priorities, interests – the things that strike an emotional chord within us.  It’s something that we should not stop wrestling with. The combined amounts of money we give has the power to make enormous change in this world.

The sobering and painful realities about charity is that we don’t really have a whole lot of evidence to know if it is working. GiveWell – a charity that researches other charities says this (from their blog).

Even if $1000 can save a life, your $1000 isn’t unless it gets used well. There’s no charity that makes me even 90% confident this is happening, and with the “average” charity I’d bet that it isn’t.

It’s not just about being generous and giving more – it’s also about taking careful consideration of how your donations are going to be used.