Poverty
Taking the poor ahead: Leaving poverty behind
We cannot pretend not to see the problem of poverty—it is everywhere.
About 800 million people living in poverty.
85% of them live in rural places affected by environmental crisis.
- 01. : Four out of five people below the international poverty line lived in rural areas.
- 02. : Half of the poor are children. Women form a majority of these materially poor in most regions and among some age groups. About 70 percent of the global poor bout 15 years plus and have no hope for schooling or only some basic education
- 03. : Almost half of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa live in just five countries: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Madagascar
- 04. : More than 40 percent of the global poor live in economies affected by fragility, conflict and violence, and that number is expected to rise to 67 percent in the next decade. Those economies have 10 percent of the world’s population.
- 05. : About 132 million of the global poor live in areas with high flood risk.
- 06. : Many people who had barely escaped extreme poverty could be forced back into it by the convergence of COVID-19, conflict, and climate change.
The Answer
Poverty is a cycle. ... It can be broken
THE ANSWER
THE ANSWER
I am of the conviction that poverty is not created by the poor people. Poverty is artificially imposed on poor people by those who are endowed with the same unlimited potential for creativity and energy of any human being in any station of life, anywhere in the world. The land, water, and space masses are still not fully utilized appropriately. Our experiential scarcity and its mentality is therefore artificial.
Creating prosperity is a question of removing the barrier faced by poor people to release their creativity to solve their problems. They can change their lives; if only we give them the same opportunity the rest of people have.
Helping that Hurts
Many people seek to serve the material poor out of a good heart. However, the caution is that good intentions are not enough. We must think through the results our charitable actions would give, with respect to not just ourselves, but the receivers, and seek to avoid damaging, unintended consequences. e.g. dependency. Sometimes we end it at the satisfaction we would feel and not think through to the state it would leave our beneficiaries. But how do we connect our good intentions to solutions that work?
The A-B-C-D method/Appreciative Inquiry
- We teach/show communities to look and see their in-dwelt resources and opportunities and how to use it to solve their problems themselves
- We teach/show them to see their assets, within their individual selves, what we call, their gifts of their heads, gifts of their hands, and gifts of their hearts. The is what we call the ABCD…Asset Based Community Development. And teach them to use it to solve their problems
- We teach/show them to see the potentials that exist in the community itself, e g, groups, associations, cultures, markets, unity, opinion leaders’ e t c. and teach them to use to solve their problems
- Starting them with what asset they have and using it to solve their problems.
- We ONLY inject into them what “we consider as what” they never do or learn to do, by themselves, within a particular time frame
In our principle of subsidiarity (assignment of power to small units), we mean that social and economic problems should be solved by those closest to them whenever possible (i.e., the family, the church and neighborhood, the community), e. t. c.
External assistance is only when necessary, and with deep awareness of the dangers of institutionalizing external aid. The complementary principle of solidarity—which emphasizes the inherently social nature of the human person and humanity’s common bond as creatures makes it pleasurable to solve problems together within a community of interest.
This is why we call ourselves “The Catalyst”
We Believe That the Poor Have CAPACITY.
We rather believe in helping those caught in poverty to identify and deploy their creative abilities and capacities, because there exists this long time culturally destructive effects of continuous social welfare for the suffering poor. Good intentions are not enough, it must have the right why, and the right how.
In the same manner, these poor also have a calling and capacity to be generous stewards of the things entrusted to them.
We must Pay The price
The price to this, is that we must work in Humility. It must be a humble partnership approach matching creating of relationships, educations, training in good work habits and skills, solidarity and face to face compassion, till we build an entrepreneurial momentum. We must work with this philosophy of humility that “ALL the faces of men carry the image of God” and share in the abundance of the wealth of God.
The benefits of this Method in solving community problems
1.Their human dignity is kept intact as we only help them to solve their problems by them selves
2.Their participation in solving their problems is 100%
3.They own the solutions to their problems by themselves.
4.They can sustain the solutions by themselves for generations
5.They can replicate the solutions by themselves
6.They can up-scale their solutions by themselves.
This Our Method Avoids the following:
1.The Danger of Dependency:
“The first thing I would say to those who say that we must come and give, otherwise these people are incapable of improving their situation or getting out of their poverty, is to ask them ‘Why?'”- Theodore Dalrymple
Many of us in the fight against poverty have rather done more harm than good to their dignity by providing aids, free food, rather than making it an economic freedom.
A sop is easier to provide than a solution.
We chose to provide the solution. Anonymous
When people are caused to depend for too long a period of time on aids or handouts, whether from government or private charity, it weakens their ability to provide for themselves, and their dignity is threatened.
- Loss of Dignity of the Poor
There is dignity in Labour. Everyone who CREATES things for himself is in a certain dignity of life.
When the privileged and well-intended, view the poor just as objects of pity to be served with kindness of charity or other gestures; when we always take away from any one, the ability to create solutions by themselves through personal work or commitment, we unconsciously reduce them to victims of inferiority complex
Our desire to help, is rooted in the human solidarity with those who are suffering. This is why we call it, “Helping without hurting the poor, and ourselves”
- Avoids Paternalism
Telling people what is best: a style of governance or leadership, or an approach to personal relationships, in which the desire to help, advise, and protect may neglect the individual’s choice and personal responsibility
Our method avoids paternalism of resources, labor, knowledge, experience, skills, leadership e. t .c
The Responsibility of The poor
Learning is an Action
In our desire to serve the poor we do not jump at any one. We seek for those willing, wanting to learn, volunteering themselves for the relationship. Our Piety is not a substitute for this technique. But we must observe APTITUDE. Defined as:
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The Human Person: The Greatest Asset
How you see the human person determines how you see everything else, including leadership, business, politics and… poverty itself. If we get our anthropology wrong here, we will offer the wrong solutions and engage in un-helpful action. We must see the human person correctly; for when we view people as made in the image of God with creative capacity, we value him as the greatest asset.
This is taken to be as great as our Golden Rule. All human beings are made in the image of God. So we believe all are equal in worth, dignity. The more aware we are of this the more we know that service to humanity is service to God.
All human beings are not obviously equal in wealth, opportunity, rank or natural abilities. This is why we believe in the inter relationship of humans. And thus we love human beings and serve them.
Education versus Poverty Eradication
Education helps improve life in obvious ways, such as economic growth, political stability and personal health. Unfortunately, the poor are behind the rest of the world in basic education, especially women’s education. With education, as with most issues in poverty relief, good intentions need to be yoked to sound economics and…So we use education both in its informal and formal sense, as a life changing vehicle, for our poverty eradication drive. The Girls’ Science & Mathematics club is an education hub that teaches reading, writing, science and heart skills to girls in rural communities.
Entrepreneurship as a Solution
The developing world is teeming with entrepreneurs who are seeking to solve those social needs through business. Unfortunately, there are significant barriers keeping many of these entrepreneurs from being successful: The Lack of Entrepreneurship competencies and Capital.
This is why we adopted the MBS program (Master of Business in the streets created by Interweave Solutions U. S.A. A simple, technical, reliable, curriculum for our trainings to move people from poverty to prosperity It’s an entrepreneurship competencies training program fit for micro business owner start-ups or growers.https:interweavesolutions.org
How do Micro- Entrepreneurs Raise Their Capital?
With our supportive training, savings groups are sustainable; they depend solely on the resources of the group members. Savings groups affirm people’s resourcefulness and dignity instead of undermining them. And while no one size fits all approach is eradicating the scourge of poverty, savings groups provide modest economic, social, and spiritual benefits to their members.
We have only seen that the pool of these resources should be beefed up so that it can take them to bigger business to making more profits. The savings capital fund is our next dream