What is Poverty?

Since being back here in Ethiopia I’ve been thinking a lot about this basic question: 

What is poverty?

Every day I pass people on the street, I sit and have coffee with people, and I enter the homes of people that would be described as living in poverty.  There are the tell-tale signs of bare feet covered in dirt and children’s’ stomachs distended from malnourishment, but still I’ve been thinking about the definition of poverty.  Many straightforward answers are probably popping into your head, such as:

• Living on less than $1 a day

• Not having enough food to eat or clean water to drink

• Children not being able to attend school because they can’t afford the fees or are needed at home

• Living on the streets and having to beg for money

The way we answer this question determines how we view the poor and how we view our relationship with them, and in my line of work that is really important.  Poverty is complex and we know enough to understand that it goes beyond money and material resources, but often we can’t grasp the systemic problem of poverty and where its roots truly lay.

In the 1990s there was a study conducted by the World Bank to answer this question.  This study directly interviewed more than 60,000 poor people from 60 low income countries across the world.  Here are some of the descriptions that the poor gave of their own situation:

“When one is poor, she has no say in public, she feels inferior.  She has no food, so there is a famine in her house; no clothing, and no progress in her family.”

“Your hunger is never satisfied, your thirst is never quenched; you can never sleep until you are no longer tired.”

“For a poor person everything is terrible-illness, humiliation, shame.  We are cripples; we are afraid of everything; we depend on everyone.  No one needs us.  We are like garbage that everyone wants to get rid of.”

“During the past two years we have not celebrated any holidays with others.  We cannot afford to invite anyone to our house and we feel uncomfortable visiting others without bringing a present.  The lack of contact leaves one depressed, creates a constant feeling of unhappiness, and a sense of low self-esteem.”

Typically we westerners describe poverty in terms of material poverty and lack of resources, but here we can see that the poor describe their poverty in different terms.  The poor talk of poverty far more in terms of psychological and social aspects, referring to shame, powerlessness, inferiority, and hopelessness.  This isn’t meant to depress you or make you feel bad, it’s just meant to show that the problem of poverty goes far beyond the material realm, and therefore so must the solutions.

One reason that I’m so passionate about the work that we at Water is Life are doing is because we seek to not just address the material symptoms of poverty (like water and sanitation), but we are striving to be personally involved in people’s lives and promote individual transformation of the mind, spirit, heart, and soul.  My heart breaks for women and children who have to spend hours out of their day collecting water and I feel unsettled knowing there are people just outside my window who have no choice but to drink water that will make them physically ill.  These are issues that particularly pierce my heart and grab my attention, but I also know that it’s not just clean water that people need.

One way that we are seeking to partner with individuals and promote emotional, spiritual, and psychological transformation is through working with the local church with Sustainable Living Groups (SLGs).  SLGs are organically formed groups of 15 to 20 individuals which organize around saving money.  These groups aren’t given any starting capital (this is different from micro-finance groups), and so individual agency is immediately established as the poorest of the poor begin to save their own money (often beginning with the cost of a ‘buna’ (cup of coffee) per day which is about 10 cents).  Aside from the savings component, SLGs provide group accountability, a unique social setting for discussion and support, and the opportunity for neighbors and acquaintances to begin loving and encouraging one another.

That’s a brief description of SLGs, but the concept is that not only are material needs being addressed through savings, but also people’s deeper emotional and spiritual needs.  I was talking to a friend out here the other day in regards to the work that they do, and they made the observation that people without hope do not save.  Someone with no hope doesn’t think they have a future, so why would they save money?  I began to think about that in regards to the SLGs, and realized that that is a part of the internal transformation of individuals.  Through the restoration of their individual agency and sense of dignity, SLG members begin to willfully save money because they have hope for their future.  They begin to believe that their actions, even small actions, can have an impact on the future of their family and the lives of their children.

That is the kind of change in mindset and spirit that I so long to see in the people here in Ethiopia that I work with.  That is the kind of poverty alleviation that I believe in, and that we are working towards.  By combining the provision of water and sanitation resources with this individual transformation we are hoping to have an impact far beyond the physical, and longer lasting than material changes.

 PS-many of the concepts and facts in regards to the World Bank study at the beginning of this post are taken from ‘When Helping Hurts’ by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.  I am currently reading this book for the second time and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in biblically based poverty alleviation (which is not nearly as nerdy as it sounds)!