What does poverty mean? It all depends.

What does poverty mean to a child orphaned by cancer and abandoned by his father? It means he has to learn how to dream again.

What does poverty mean to the great aunt taking care of him, and his six year old sister? It means fear. Fear that someone may take the children away from her.

What does poverty mean to a mother who lost her two-year old child to pneumonia while waiting at the hospital for treatment? It means the Body of Christ is a refuge.

What does poverty mean to a man once persecuted because of his faith? It means he becomes a pastor and serves His Savior for 28 years and counting.

What does poverty mean to a boy who learns about Jesus Christ on a regular basis? It means self-respect, self-esteem and the ability to love.

What does poverty mean to you? I don’t know exactly.

But I do know it’s an opportunity to provide an opportunity. And it means possible discomfort and sacrifice.

It definitely means joy too.

It means hope for one who may have given up hope.

It means a future.

What does poverty mean to a child without a sponsor? It means a sponsor is needed.

To the masses of poor, poverty means dependence, marginalization, scarcity, incapacity and restrictions on rights and freedoms.

Poverty is defined by the World Bank as hunger, lack of shelter, being sick and not being able to see a doctor. It’s not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty means not having a job, fear for the future and living one day at a time. Poverty is powerlessness.

But the most important question we need to ask ourselves and each other is,

What does poverty mean to God?

Photos by Keely Marie Scott and Patricia Jones from the Compassion Bloggers trip to Ecuador.

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The eight Millennium Development Goals were adopted by world leaders in 2000 to provide specific benchmarks and a framework for the international community to tackle all aspects of extreme poverty and cut in half the number of people living in extreme poverty (less than $1.25 a day) by 2015.

One of the first targets, reducing by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, was reached three years ago … and went unnoticed.

Read “With Little Notice, Globalization Reduced Poverty” at YaleGlobal Online.

“Official estimates of global poverty are compiled by the World Bank and stretch back 30 years. For most of that period, the trend has been one of slow, gradual reduction. By 2005, the year of the most recent official global poverty estimate, the number of people living under the international poverty line of $1.25 a day stood at 1.37 billion – an improvement of half a billion compared to the early 1980s, but a long way from the dream of a world free of poverty. …

“By combining the most recent country survey data of household consumption with the latest figures on private consumption growth, we generated global poverty estimates from 2005 up to the present day. Poverty reduction accelerated in the early 2000s at a rate that has been sustained throughout the decade, even during the dark recesses of the financial crisis. Today, we estimate that there are approximately 820 million people living on less than $1.25 a day. This means that the prime target of the Millennium Development Goals – to halve the rate of global poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level – was probably achieved around three years ago. Whereas it took 25 years to reduce poverty by half a billion people up to 2005, the same feat was likely achieved in the six years between then and now. Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.”

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And then we shared our belief that “references in Scripture to the poor or to poverty should be taken to mean economic poverty,” which is something that we believe can be eliminated in a generation (The Poor Will Not Always Be With You).

Today, Scott Todd, our Senior Ministry Advisor, continues to explain what forms our definition of poverty so you have the basis for our holistic approach to ministry.

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, lack of representation and freedom.

This description of poverty includes lack of access to social services, “fear for the future,” “powerlessness” and “lack of representation.” This description shows a broadening of the World Bank’s understanding of poverty, but it does not replace or contradict its own $1.25 per day standard for extreme poverty.

The World Bank has also developed indicators to assess non-income dimensions of poverty. These indicators include education, health, access to social services, vulnerability, social exclusion, and access to social capital.

During the mid to late 1990s, Robert Chambers, research associate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and others questioned the definitions of poverty and asked who should determine those definitions. The argument was that the poor themselves should define poverty.

How Do the Poor Describe Poverty?

A survey conducted in Niger in 2002 by the Office of the Prime Minister asked the poor of that country to describe poverty. Their answers provided the following:

• Dependence was mentioned by 40 percent of the respondents, with some noting that a poor person always had to “seek out others” or to “work for somebody else.”
• Marginalization was noted by 37 percent, who defined a poor person as one who was “alone,” had “no support,” did “not feel involved in anything,” or was “never consulted.”
• Scarcity was included in the poverty definitions of 36 percent, who used statements such as having “nothing to eat,” a “lack of means to meet clothing and financial needs,” a “lack of food, livestock and money,” and “having nothing to sell.”
• Restrictions on rights and freedoms were associated with poverty by 26 percent of the respondents, who stated that “a poor person is someone who does not have the right to speak out” or “someone who will never win a case or litigation against someone else.”
• Incapacity was mentioned in connection with poverty by 21 percent, including the incapacity to make decision, to feed or clothe oneself, or to act on one’s own initiative.

Only 36 percent of the poor in this survey described poverty in terms of material lack [scarcity]. Here, the poor described the experience of poverty primarily in terms of suffering relationships and lack of belonging, dignity and freedom. Similar descriptions were found in a major World Bank study published in 2000, Voices of the poor: Can anyone hear us?

The poor describe poverty in terms of suffering relationships. Relationships are central to a person’s belonging, identity, affirmation and other socio-emotional needs.

The relational fabric of a person is his or her means for navigating social norms, accessing resources and mobilizing the skills of others toward common goals. “Whom you know” matters a great deal in any context, including that of a poor man [or woman] navigating his way out of poverty.

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How do you define a miracle? I heard once that it is “a divine or supernatural invasion into human affairs.” Pretty simple explanation, don’t you think?

I find myself praying for miracles every day and they all look and sound quite different. Some are for healing for friends who are sick. Some are for perfect provision for families. Some are for little, personal things like …  returned e-mails. Perhaps that seems trivial or petty, but there has been an e-mail I have been waiting for, hoping for really, for months now. At this point, it would seem like a miracle to get a response.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but here at Compassion many people believe that we can eliminate extreme poverty in our generation. Let’s put a little more structure in that statement, shall we?

To eliminate means to remove, to expel, to exclude, even to murder.

How big is the problem of extreme poverty? Three billion people worldwide and 1 billion children deep.

You might think we’re “drunk on the spirit,” and that our goal is unrealistic, completely irrational or even not Biblical. I will be honest with you, I thought it was out of reach, too. Truly, I thought it to be an impossible task.

But lately, both personally and professionally, God has been asking me this simple question — “Do you have any idea who I am? I know you think you do. But do you believe that I am the God of the Bible? The one who parts seas, makes rivers in the desert, and brings bread from boulders?

“Do you believe I am a God of signs and wonders? Do you believe I am as big as you tell others I am? Do you believe I still perform miracles, Meredith?”

I wonder if I am the only one who preaches bigger than they pray. I used to be Baptist, which means I get excited when I talk about Jesus and I get loud when I read Scripture. You could say I’m passionate.

But I also play my prayer life safe. I don’t pray big prayers because I’m scared they’re too lofty, too much. And in the event that God would say “No,” to one of my astronomical prayers, I don’t want to be disappointed. So I don’t even risk asking.

Here’s the thing — this is not how we are instructed to pray or live. As Christ kneeled in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked the Lord to take the cup of sacrifice from Him. God said no. But Jesus obeyed, did as He was told, and saved humankind for all time.

We, as believers, are called to defend the poor and needy, to advocate for the oppressed, to fight injustice. If we do as we are told, if we obey God’s call and mandate on our lives, we would be crazy to think that He won’t show up in a big way, being faithful to what He has promised to do.

He cannot deny Himself — and if He is present in your soul, making Himself manifest in your thoughts, words and actions, then He will not deny you or your request.

Pray bigger with me. Pray for miracles. Pray for signs and wonders.

Pray that extreme poverty would come to an end in our lifetime. And after you pray, do something.

It’s not radical …  it’s Biblical.

Editor’s note: Extreme poverty is the severest state of poverty. People living in extreme poverty cannot meet their most basic needs for food, water, shelter, sanitation and health care.

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than U.S. $1.25 per day, and estimates that more than 1 billion people currently live under these conditions and another 2 billion survive on less than U.S. $2 per day.

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Being a mother takes courage. Being an expectant mother in desperate poverty takes courage and so much more.

Each year more than 500,000 mothers die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications, most of which are preventable. The babies who survive while their mothers die are much more likely to die in their first year of life.

Facts About Child Survival

• About half of all deaths of children younger than 5 are caused by malnutrition.
• Brain development starts five weeks after conception and is most affected by nutrition between mid-gestation and 2 years of age.
• Four million babies die each year in their first month of life. Half of these babies die in the first 24 hours of life.

Our Child Survival Program strives to reduce the troubling mortality statistics.

Child Survival Program Mission

The mission of our Child Survival Program is:

To rescue infants at risk of dying by providing nutritional information to the pregnant mothers, assisting in the birth, and providing prenatal and postnatal health care and nutrition assistance.

Since infant mortality is extremely high in the developing world, our first priority in promoting effective child development is to ensure that children survive the early years when they are most vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. That means educating the mother or primary caregiver, before and after her child is born, about providing critical care during the earliest years.

Our Child Survival Program provides:

• prenatal care and infant survival training for mothers and caregivers, as well as spiritual guidance and education, such as literacy and income-generation training
• ongoing health screenings and immunizations for the children
• child development training for mother’s of children under 4

We have adopted a strategy (GOBI-FFF), developed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, to ensure that we address all the issues affecting immediate child survival and children through the first years of life.

GOBI-FFF is an acronym for:

• growth monitoring
• oral rehydration therapy
• breast-feeding
• immunization
• female literacy
• food supplements
• family spacing

Child Survival vs. Child Mortality

The underlying and structural causes of child mortality include:

• poorly resourced, unresponsive and culturally inappropriate health and nutrition services
• lack of food
• inadequate feeding practices
• lack of hygiene and safe water or sanitation
• female illiteracy
• early pregnancy

Basic health interventions such as breast-feeding, immunization, insecticide-treated mosquito nets and vitamin A supplements are highly successful in lowering a child’s risk of death. And according to the World Bank, immunization and vitamin A supplementation are two of the most cost-effective health interventions available today.

Child Survival Program: How It Works

Our local church partners carry out this ministry and contextualize the program to each situation individually and culturally. The church provides the critical interventions such as nutritious food and medical assistance.

Ultimately, success is based on building open and trusting relationships with the mothers and caregivers, so our church partners invite the mothers and caregivers to get involved in a loving, supportive community. The mothers and caregivers learn how to create a safe home environment and provide the essential developmental opportunities needed to raise happy, healthy children with bright futures.

The families also receive spiritual discipling so they can develop a dynamic lifelong relationship with Christ. Children are stronger, caregivers are more confident, and families and communities benefit from their newly discovered physical, emotional and spiritual strength.

The Child Survival Program is a one-to-one home-based program in which Survival Specialists from the church visit homes and educate mothers in the child’s own environment. There, the actual needs of the baby, mother, family and community will be known, seen and met accordingly.

The program is primarily home-based so we can address the immediate needs of the baby and mother.

When you get into a community and find that most children are malnourished, the best way to get to the root cause of this problem is to visit families in the community.

During the visits, we see and learn what the children are fed and why. We observe the cultural reasons for certain practices, and come up with an action plan from a knowledgeable perspective.

In home visits, mothers learn about parenting practices, including hygiene and nutrition, using locally available foods. Only during home visits can we assess whether what we have been teaching has been put into practice.

Home visits create one-to-one relationships where mothers can open up and share their innermost fears, problems and needs.

Support a Child Survival Program

Sources:

• The State of the World’s Children 2009: Maternal and Newborn Health – UNICEF
• Better Brains for Babies – University of Georgia
• Zero to Three – National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families

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This is the fruit of seeds planted with hope, watered with hard work and dreams, and, at last, harvested with joy.

Pastor Damian checks two sacks full of beans. It is just the beginning of the harvest and the fruits already look promising.

Another man, Brother Juan, a seasoned farmer with dark skin and gray hair, is a perfect example of a Salvadoran farmer – thin but somehow robust, quiet and wise. Juan has served as an adviser to Pastor Damian since they decided to implement program “Double Seed.”

Juan talks about the beans and how they should keep some leaves and dirt in the sack so the beans will not lose the humidity they need.

“This way, they can last for about a year,” he adds, and smiles, knowing that the efforts made these past three months have given results – promising results that translate into hope.

It has been three months since Double Seed started in the community of Corinto, in Zaragoza, a city located eight miles south of the capital city, San Salvador, in El Salvador.

These past months meant sweat and great efforts for the people, but it also meant hope for a future that did not seem so clear a few months before.

Declarations made by international organizations since the third quarter of the year contrast with the hope at Zaragoza.

On July 13, 2008, the president of the World Bank, Mr. Robert Zoellick, declared to news agencies that they estimated that poor countries will need over $6 billion in assistance because already rising food and energy costs will continue to climb until 2012.

The economy section of El Diario de Hoy newspaper the next day showed that the cost of staples has increased 40 percent. But numbers are not as compelling as individual stories.

The journalist recalled a scene at a street market where a woman who preferred not to be identified collected the grains of maize that fell on the floor after the salesman weighed the grain to put it in bags and sell by the pound.

After much effort, this woman collected about one pound of maize just from the grains that fell on the floor, which would her feed her family that night.

Since the global food crisis filled the headlines and breaking news segments, Compassion El Salvador and its partner churches began to create strategies to face this threat. Among the strategies are agricultural development programs for the families of Compassion-assisted children.

The crisis experienced all around the world has complicated roots, and the truth is that the most affected are the people in greatest need. Now Compassion is striving to provide help, hope and the Word of God to those families at greatest risk.

Compassion El Salvador created multidisciplinary teams at the country office level, which developed a strategy that first takes into account the valuable input of pastors and church leaders.

This strategy has been implemented in two stages. First is the short-term response, where families  most in need receive immediate relief through our Complementary Interventions program (CIV). They are receiving enough food for their families to cover six months.

The second stage involves the church more, since the purpose is to support the families at the child development centers, and start income-generating activities such as chicken farms and hydroponics.

Among these programs to secure food for the short term is Double Seed, implemented by our church partner, Iglesia Jesucristo es El Señor, which runs the child development center, Nuevo Amanecer (New Sunrise).

In rural communities like Corinto, most of the people do not have a steady job and survive with what they can harvest with the seeds they receive from the government. The real hope and help they have comes from churches and organizations like Compassion. Churches like Jesucristo es El Señor and Pastor Damian understand this and have taken the challenge to make a difference in the lives of the children.

Sister Sandra, partnership facilitator for Jesucristo es El Señor, says the church received $2,000, and there will be another $700. With that money the church was able to buy seeds and other materials they needed to begin the harvest.

The land was borrowed by the pastor’s family, and the labor was the result of the collaboration of the families of the children at the development center. So far, they have sowed five acres of corn and one more of beans.

The most impressive part of this plan is the name, Double Seed. “At the place where they have sowed the beans, the church has a small group that meets to share the gospel,” says Sister Sandra.

It is called Double Seed because they are not just planting grains that will secure food next year for the families of the children from the child development center and the church - they also are planting the gospel that will secure the salvation of the families that are not Christian.

For now, Double Seed has been a short-term immediate response to the food shortage and is intended to secure food for the families of the children enrolled in the program for the next several months.

The church is becoming a holistic oasis in that poor community, where people are not only finding support for their children, but also for their families and for their souls.

“The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will yield its harvest.” – Psalm 85:12 (NIV)

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