Poverty can seem like an enormous bucket that is impossible to fill. The stories and the pictures make us cringe and look away. We look at the size and scale of the bucket and we feel powerless because we know we don’t have the ability to fill that bucket. And it’s true – none of us as individuals have the time or the resources to fill that whole bucket by ourselves. So we look at the problem of poverty and it makes us sad, but we chalk it up as something that we can’t do anything about and we walk away sad, but unmoved.
But what if our perspective shifted. What if we looked at the problem of poverty not as a gigantic bucket we can never fill, but as billions of little cups of varying sizes and shapes. Poverty is a complex web of things not a monolithic thing. Poverty is a kaleidoscope, a tangled weave, made up of billions of individual people suffering the impact of centuries of evil, systemic injustice and greed.
Poverty is a farmer one drought or flood from hunger.
Poverty is a child watching himself become an orphan as a preventable disease takes away his mother.
Poverty is a child being forced to leave school and get a menial job to support the family after the father leaves.
Poverty is parents watching their daughter die because they can’t afford the medicine she needs.
Poverty is a mother watching someone steal her land after her husband dies.
Poverty is a mother forced to leaver her children at an orphanage rather than watch them suffer from malnutrition and a lack of education.
Poverty is all these things and more. Billions of people suffering, but they are not a single problem to be solved. They are unique individuals made in the image of God and deeply loved by God suffering from a variety of problems – we can’t solve them all at once, but we are not powerless to do anything.
You can’t fill the entire bucket. I can’t fill the entire bucket. However, I can fill a couple of teacups and so can you. It cost me something and it may cost you something. If we choose wisely some of the teacups we fill might overflow filling some of the surrounding cups. Those cups could in turn fill some more cups. What you may have thought of as an insignificant contribution will multiply and impact exponentially more people than we ever imagined it might impact.
Moving from the theoretical to reality. The amount of money required to be life changing is so small that we all have the opportunity to fill a cup and change lives.
Stop Malaria with a $10 mosquito net or provide a lifesaving dose of medication for another $10
Malnutrition can be prevented in a child for less than $30 a month
Vaccinating a child in the developing world from 12 diseases costs $45
Prevent an elderly couple from being evicted with $50
Send a kid to school for less than $100 a year.
This is a fact…. Empowering women is the best investment we can make in the developing world. The key to eradicating poverty is to empower as many women and girls as possible. In too many places women and girls are an afterthought – they are not considered of equal value and the impact they could have on their communities is ignored.
Savings groups and microloans made to women have a chance to do more than just fill a single cup.
When we empower a female entrepreneur in the developing world to fill her cup they will fill the cups of their children and their children will have a chance to be educated giving them an opportunity to fill their cup on their own.
When their cup fills they will have a chance to fill the cups of others in their community by hiring people to help as their business expands.
When people see that they have filled their cup and they are filling the cup of others, people will become more interested in participating in a savings group to fill their own cup.
They don’t lack the desire – they lack the opportunity and the resources. When we empower them we spark a transformation. Instead of perpetuating a cycle of poverty a cycle of improvement and empowerment can begin in their community.
As a Christian I believe this is both an incredible opportunity and obligation. Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and Isaiah 1:17 succinctly lays out this obligation:
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.
But the opportunity is equally clear – by all measures 21st century American Christians are the richest people to ever live – our opportunity to make a tangible difference in the lives of the poor and vulnerable is immense. With a focused and sacrificial effort we could improve the lives of billions of people across the globe.
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life. – I Timothy 6:17-19
This is why I’m so excited about the work that I will be doing with World Orphans in the area of economic empowerment. Because poverty is one of the leading causes of family disruption I will be actively seeking ways to serve and empower our caregivers to break the cycle of poverty. The majority of our participants will be women and all the studies show that when women are empowered economically their lives and the lives of their children, their families, their communities and their countries are improved.
Will you help me fill some cups?
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A Dangerous Question 