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

Lori (above) lives a humble life. The shed-like buildings behind her are her home (to the left), shared with 5 children. Directly behind is her shop. Two other families live in adjoining shacks.

It’s pathetic when compared to our vast dwellings, but it keeps the sun off, and the rain out (debatable). Lori received a loan of around US$100 to help with her small store (another one of those small shacks attached to the house). The loan was part of a micro-enterprise program from the Philippines-based Center for Community Transformation.

As Lori shared her story (sometimes in broken English, sometimes via an interpreter) – I came to the verge of tears. Emotionalism is unhelpful, so instead I smiled and laughed at the strength of these people.

Just after Lori had received the loan, her little daughter got sick. Very sick. She drank some of the water in a nearby well before it had been boiled. The diarrhea came rapidly and dehydration followed soon after. Lori said that she came close to dying and the loan was used to pay for the hospital visit that was to last for weeks. She was sure the child would have died without the loan.

The little girl came running up and jumped into her mother’s lap, and as I looked at her grubby face and those eyes… I just wanted to tear up. I felt angry at the injustice of their situation, and utterly humbled that a donation from me, in another country, came all the way through to this little family, and saved a little girls life.

The knife-edge of poverty has no mercy. One small incident (a 2 year old puts some water in her mouth) leads to pain and suffering, and economic hardship.

Lori’s little shop will recover but it will take years. By the end of our visit she was proudly taking us through her home (all one room of it), smiling and pointing at her kids.

She had hope.

And hope is one of the strongest forces in the universe. No matter how messed up life is.

Hope tells you there is more, there is purpose, there is meaning.

No matter how much material wealth we may have, without hope, we are still empty inside.

They were a fictional affluent African-American family who starred in The Cosby Show.  The sitcom debuted in 1984 – the decade of “Greed is good”.   Although it has been described as revolutionary (black, American AND rich) – I didn’t really get that bit.

I thought all Americans lived in lavish mansions and had astonishing amounts of material possessions.

Those were the kind of people I saw on TV.  Even a small house seemed to have 5 bedrooms, two stories, and 3 bathrooms and a menagerie of animals that never pooed inside.  There were 2 or more massive cars parked in the garage, and a new set of clothes for every occasion.

No-one told me about the underclass – about the huge numbers of homeless people, or about entire communities living in (relative) poverty in the US.

After a bit of study I’m now aware of two realities about the world we inhabit:

Reality One: The world is a much darker, unfair, and unjust place than I ever realised.

Reality Two: Fixing poverty and inequity is far more complex and difficult than I ever realised.

UNFAIR

Pick up a newspaper and you will see individuals ripping each other off.  Dig deeper into the geopolitical realities  of the world and you see systems that rip entire people groups off.

FIXING THE WORLD

Despite 50+ years of so-called ‘development’ – poor countries are still poor and people still die from bad water.  There are a vast array of opinions on aid – from the sterling work of Jeffrey Sachs (The End of Poverty) who believes that enough aid can fix the world and eliminate poverty in a generation to William Easterly (White Man’s Burden) who claims that Aid is part of the problem.

This is a gross over-simplification but you get the picture.  Well-intentioned assistance and aid can have unintended consequences.

So Where To?

A simple note to self: Practice justice, mercy, and humility rather than cynicism, arrogance and judgmentalism.

Simple does not = easy. But there is hope… hope that stems from every single small act of kindness.

US: “No we can’t say that”

EU: “It’s ok this is not my problem”

The concept of Somebody Else’s Problem (let’s call it SEP) runs right through society and all issues in the world. Peter Shirley in his book “The Life You Can Save” looks at this. He calls it the bystander effect.

Shirley cites some fascinating research that goes something like this:

Researchers got people into a waiting room where they met the facilitator. Then the facilitator goes into a side room where she climbs on a stool, then pretends to fall over (crash, bang, ouch). The subjects can only hear (the side room is concealed with a curtain).

Essentially — when the subject was by themselves they were very likely to go help the facilitator. When there were two subjects in the waiting room (the second is a stooge who just sits there doing nothing), then they were very unlikely to go help!

What happened there? SEP.

We are less likely to help out when others stand by and do nothing.

I can’t think how many times I do this. I justify may lack of action by telling myself “there are other people around – they will do something”, or “if everyone else is standing around then it must be okay”.  I hate it when I do this.

However we all do this to some degree on an international scale – probably because we feel so powerless to being change.

The golden rule sets the standard high: “Do unto others…”

Fair call – especially when you’re paying serious money to hear music. However at least someone is using their celebrity status to draw attention to issues rather than for endless self-indulgence. What you do with your millions if you were a celeb?

Recent history shows we have individuals who have changed the world. William Wilberforce taking a stand on slavery. Rev. Martin Luther King taking a stand on civil rights and racism. These individuals catalysed entire movements that resulted in real and powerful societal change.

Nowadays we have big campaigns to Make Poverty History, or end 3rd world debt. We have massive initiatives like the Global Poverty Project that claim to “catalyse the movement to end extreme poverty”. These initiatives are exciting and inspiring. They lead people to think about the reality of the world outside our walls.

Can We Really Save the World?

The first rule of understanding aid and development is that is extremely complex. Like environmental interventions, the law of unintended consequences plays out over and over.

Could it be that we are a little bit… arrogant?

We in the West like to fix things. In much the same way as European colonisers thought they could save people in the rest of the world from themselves, we believe we can solve the worlds problems if we just have enough money.

We know best. We’ve got musicians and bands. We’ve got TV campaigns and the Internet. We’ve got power point.

Mea culpa. I want to change the world too. Maybe if I start buying fair trade chocolate I can end extreme poverty.

But then when I look into my own heart I realise I struggle to even stop doing things or having attitudes that I don’t like.

I can’t even save myself.

I watch my children fighting over a new toy. I didn’t teach them to do that – but they always want what the other one has.  I can’t even save my kids from their greed.

That doesn’t mean I don’t stop caring, or being moved by compassion to help those in need… but end the injustice and greed in the world when I find the same things in my own heart?  Maybe I just need to try harder.

Let’s do what we can, but let’s also get over ourselves.

Our enlightened civilizations in the West are also dogged by depression and suicide. Child abuse and wife-beating. Our enlightenment hasn’t seemed to have stopped us from endless self-medication in the form of drugs (US alone spends an estimated $57 billion to $91 billion per year on illicit drugs) and alcohol. Our money-laden countries are filled with lonely people.

We might have ended extreme poverty (in the OECD) — but we have not managed to create a utopia.

Are you sick of people who want to save the world?

- Photo cred: flickr/nimboo

On a global scale we use the figure US$1.25 income per day to indicate someone in extreme poverty, or US$2 income per day to indicate someone in “run-of-the-mill” poverty (source).

You might ask “US$1.25 in Zambia can buy me a whole lot more than in the US”.  It probably can – BUT these figures are adjusted for something called Purchasing Power Parity. This levels the playing field. Essentially; what you can buy in the US for $1.25 is what the people in Zambia can afford each day.

In the richer OECD countries we don’t use this measure. We talk in terms of relative poverty. Poverty is something that changes depending on how much stuff your neighbor has.  If a class of people get richer, then the other class gets poorer – even though they have the same stuff as they had last year.

We have an expectation. Of living a certain way. Of having a certain amount of stuff.

To meet that expectation some of us will spend more than we earn. Building up debt to have things we really don’t need.  When we can’t meet the debt — then we become the “new poor“.

For Example…

The KidsCan charity donates raincoats and shoes to poor (or “financially disadvantaged”) NZ kids.  Kids in raincoats and shoes in a cold NZ winter is a good thing. A very good thing. A kids raincoat from department store The Warehouse is NZ$29.99.  KidsCan have been the subject have a huge charity drive so that kind NZers can donate so more poor kids can have raincoats.

$29.99

Since kids don’t usually earn money, parents are responsible for clothing and feeding their kids.  We’re talking fairly basic needs here.

In a very poor country the parent will generally choose between food and healthcare. Pretty basic stuff.

We tend to have a few more choices…

Numbers from the 2006 NZ census (Table 13) show that the number of without household access to telecommunication systems (mobile phone, telephone, Internet) was 0.02%.

I’ll leave it you to figure out what the cost per month might be of having just one of these services.  Perhaps it’s something like NZ$30-60.

So, 99.98% of NZ households had access to this.

What else costs NZ$29.99?

• 2 1/2 weeks of access to Sky TV
• 1 CD
• 8 1/2 Espresso coffees
• 3 Packets of cigarettes
• 6 Lotto Lucky Dip tickets
• 3 Bottles of wine

We don’t have a poverty of money. We have a poverty of values. Could it be that by giving someone cash who made a poor choice – you are simply depriving them of the consequences of the poor choice? Will it help them to make a better choice next time?  Probably not.

• “Charity begins at home”
• “Let’s deal with the poor here in our own country first”
• “Not our fault”
• “Somebody else’s problem”

Are these comments fair?

The world is not what it was. Every day we consume products and information that came from another country. We can board a plane and within hours be standing in the middle of an impoverished community.

Modern technology and transportation has made us all neighbors.

Reality: The decisions we make and the lifestyle we live may directly and indirectly aggravate the lives of those in developing countries.

The Cycle of Resources from Poor to Rich

My rough diagram shows just one reason why.  If we crossed out “poor country” and replaced it with “my house”, then replaced dictators and corporations with “thieves” — then You and Me are effectively guilty of receiving stolen goods.

The trail is often very hard to follow, but it could include anything; coffee, cacao, rubber, oil, palm products, and copper.

We end up with more stuff to consume… and then throw into a hole in the ground (landfill).

The primary producer ends up impoverished – and with a degraded environment to boot.

So maybe I should care.

A whole lot more.