What is POVERTY?

Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, hopelessness, helplessness, lack of representation and freedom.

Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action -- for the poor and the wealthy alike -- a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.

To know what helps to reduce poverty, what works and what does not, what changes over time, poverty has to be defined, measured, and studied -- and even experienced. As poverty has many dimensions, it has to be looked at through a variety of indicators -- levels of income and consumption, social indicators, and indicators of vulnerability to risks and of socio/political access.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

The Bible is full of God's demands on behalf of the poor. A concern for the poor is at the very centre of who God is and this suggests it should be high on our agenda too.

Poverty is something very saddening. You would never know how it feels and how it is like unless you are physically in a poverty situation. Try to picture yourself having needed to drink brown murky water everyday, to starve your tummy due to the lack of edible materials or even hungry to the extent that you can't help it but eat insects, animals' excretion to just satisfy your stomach temporarily, to live in a condition where no shelters are available, where sun exposure is the most, where rain falls on you like hailstones... Imagine all these. All the aforementioned is just something very mild. Some people in poverty-stricken countries are experiencing the worse.. none of us has the rights to complain when none of them has even made a complaint about what they eat and drink. You may think they are accustomed to the way they live, then why not you try to live in there for a couple of days and see if you can adapt to the living condition there?

Count your blessings my friends...