Explainer
Change
Development
Film & TV
6 min read

Finding an answer to poverty

A new TV ad challenges stereotypes around how to help the poor. Tarryn Pegna unpacks the impact of one of the most effective ways to eradicate poverty.

Tarryn Pegna is a writer for aid and development charity, Tearfund. She helps to communicate where, why and how the organisation works. 

A woman carries a plastic bucket on her head and held by raised arms and hands.

We’ve all seen them – haunting images of starving children, flies on their faces, begging for help – powerless to change the cruel lot they’ve landed in life… There’s more to the story, though. More to the people in the pictures. 

Extreme poverty is a very real problem. The living conditions faced by many around the world are, indeed, truly devastating, and in hoping to urge a response and to help, we can fall into a clichéd portrayal (and understanding) of need that strips people of a sense of dignity and agency.  

But, the answer to poverty can be uplifting, sustainable, restorative and empowering: the answer can be the Church. 

You may have seen Tearfund’s new TV ad. If not, you can watch it now. With some humour it challenges some of the stereotypes about how those in the developed world go about trying to eradicate poverty elsewhere.  

The ad shows a number of excellent things that a community in Burundi has achieved which have transformed the lives of the people living there. It features them talking about the training that made it possible – but what is this training? And what does it have to do with Tearfund or the church? 

Well, here’s how it works: 

It all starts with Bible studies. These are designed to help people identify the skills and resources that already exist within their community, and to see new ways they can use them to respond to their needs. 

Local church members (or leaders) receive training to facilitate these Bible studies and share the message within their community. 

Each Bible study ends with a call to action. This may be something small to start with – like a change in a harmful way of thinking – but can quickly grow in scale to things like improving or building schools, health centres and roads. 

Tearfund and our local partner organisations help to provide the practical knowledge and skills training needed to make it possible to carry out these plans. 

In this way, churches and communities can find themselves working together to lift themselves out of poverty for good and to realise their God-given potential and thrive. 

I played my part in the construction, even if I was not strong, I worked with others in digging the road and moving rocks.

The ad features Cecile, a young married mum with one daughter. She tells us her experience: 

‘We understood the power of coming together as a church and working together for our own development. A changed church changes the community for the better. Our congregation was able to build a health centre, a road and bring up water. 

‘I am happy to be part of this church as I come to know God and see his hand. I now have a church family, we love and support one another. I played my part in the construction, even if I was not strong, I worked with others in digging the road and moving rocks, and we also contributed some money. 

‘It is like an awakening. People are more engaged, we have been inspired to change and to change our community and we are now active.  

‘Apart from building the health centre, more people are working hard to change their situation. Some have started small businesses, I’ve also been selling vegetables and I hope that once I get enough capital, I’ll be able to start a small business at the market and earn more money to help [me and my husband] improve our lives and build a house.’ 

Every day, thousands of people around the world suffer and die because of poverty. Christians don’t believe that this is God’s plan. At Tearfund we believe that the church is part of his plan to respond – and that we all have a part to play in ending extreme poverty. 

Is the church even still relevant though? 

Here in the UK, it might seem strange to be so focused on faith and the church. The most recent census showed that, as a nation, we have a steadily declining affiliation with Christianity, and the news last year made much of the fact that only around ten per cent of the population regularly attend a church service. It might be worth wondering whether the church has lost some of its ability to influence change.

Almost three million UK adults sought help from churches or faith organisations because of the cost-of-living crisis. 

In England, Anglican bishops are still members of the House of Lords, so they have some voice, but for the rest of us…why the faith? Where does God fit into things and is the church even practical or relevant in society these days? 

It actually works 

In spite of the declining number of worshippers, in 2022 almost 3 million UK adults sought help from churches or faith organisations because of the cost-of-living crisis.  

During the worst of Covid, churches across the country provided a hub for making sure the most vulnerable in their communities were fed and provided for. Many church buildings became food preparation and distribution centres and local church members became temporary delivery drivers. 

The local church around the world 

In the same way, around the world, the church is often first on scene in times of need.  

From its unique position right within a community, the local church knows intimately the needs of the people it serves.  

And in many places where Tearfund works, the church has a significant and trusted influence, giving it a voice for change and for justice in society. 

The church, as a vehicle for transformation, has the capability to work powerfully and effectively in a way that lasts. 

No matter where it is, the Christ-following church has always been about the transformation of lives and about community: called by Jesus to first love God (allowing him to transform Christians’ own lives), and then to love our neighbours as ourselves (bringing transformation to our communities).  

More than could, the church should be the answer to poverty.  

The church is a sustainable, efficient, empowering and highly cost-effective way of helping whole communities lift themselves out of poverty. 

The church (in all its various forms and denominations) is the largest non-governmental, non-profit organisation on the planet. Tearfund itself was born out of the church, and recently an independent study that we commissioned confirmed in numbers what our own experience, stretching back over 50 years, had already shown us: the church is a sustainable, efficient, empowering and highly cost-effective way of helping whole communities lift themselves out of poverty.  

By equipping the local church within a community facing poverty to find solutions to their needs, the people being supported can become agents in their own rescue.  

Like many charities, there are questions about the impact they have. Just how effective is working through the church really? 

In fact, researchers discovered that a social value of £28 was released for every pound invested in community transformation work through the church.  

Practically, that means that when compared to people in communities that had not received training and equipping through the church, those that do are: 

  • 27% more satisfied with their lives in general 
  • 113% more likely to work with others on shared projects 
  • 51% more likely to have maintained or increased their income in the last year 
  • 46% more likely to speak up and raise issues with decision-makers 
  • 62% more likely to have invested in assets, such as property or livestock in the last year 
  • and 26% more likely to feel confident they could cope with unexpected events in the future. 

Working through the local church has the power to bring positive, whole-life transformation which spreads throughout a community – so that even those who aren’t directly involved in the activities still experience some benefits. 

You can read more about the study and its findings here. 

Snippet
Change
Development
Migration
5 min read

Travelling in a world of refugees

Reconciling the contrasting journeys of travellers and the migrant.

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

Migrants on a freight train reach for food bags held aloft by people on the track side.
Migrants on La Bestia being passed bags of food and water.
Pequeño Mar, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

I’ll never forget the sight, 10 years ago this month, as I hitchhiked north through Mexico, of dozens of migrants hanging off the side of a goods train as they made their own journeys towards their Promised Land. 

Like me, these migrants - of whom there must have been at least 30 - were heading for the United States. Unlike me, they were doing so not for fun but for their futures. 

“Come with us!” some shouted, as my wife and I lugged our backpacks towards what we hoped would be our next successful hitchhiking post, having begun our journey seven months prior at the southern tip of Argentina. 

We declined the offer, but I wondered then - and still do - whether they had known we were in a different position to them, or had simply assumed us to be in the same metaphorical boat. 

Around the same time, a new wave of refugees were making their way westward across Turkey and Europe, in a reversal of my first hitchhiking adventure, which took me eastward from the UK to Malaysia. And again, I found the contrast between the respective circumstances of our two journeys confronting. 

There I had been, a post-university thrill-seeker, taking to the road with my best mate to open my eyes to the big wide world beyond these shores, and now six years later, these poor souls were moving in the opposite direction - again, not for fun, but through sheer desperation. 

Many were fleeing ISIS, who took control of Mosul while I was hitchhiking through Brazil at the time of the 2014 Football World Cup. My chief concern during those days were the occasions hitchhiking proved less straightforward. On some days, we had to wait hours for a ride. Sometimes, night would set in as we waited, and we were forced to call it a day. 

There were times, too, when we fell foul of the law, such as in the States, where a policeman told us off for hitchhiking on the freeway. But undoubtedly the most challenging moment of that trip was the time we ended up back in the same hotel we had been in two days prior, having done a 1,000km round trip only to find ourselves right back where we started. 

This came about in Prince George, Canada, after we had been encouraged by a trucker on the so-called “Highway of Tears” to take a different route to our final destination: Alaska. I can still remember the feeling, as I woke up early the next morning, in the very same room of the very same hotel, of such a lot of effort wasted and a deep desire to get moving again as swiftly as possible, if only to enjoy a sense of progress. 

No doubt, there have been many refugees who have experienced the same emotions - only, one imagines, with much greater intensity. Perhaps they have been deported back to where they began their journey, or simply sent back to the last country from which they arrived, in the process undoing in their minds and hearts all of the efforts that went in to getting them there. 

No doubt, many of these refugees will also have fallen foul of the authorities. Some, will have been detained; others deported. Perhaps some will also have been told off for walking on a highway, or illegally crossing a border, as I myself tried to do between Bangladesh and Myanmar back in 2008 - only to be picked up by a border patrol and taken back to where I’d started again. 

Yet, unlike me, I doubt many refugees were offered helping hands by strangers along their way, or at least not so frequently, and I expect many more of them experienced harsh words from passersby than the few jokey thumbs-downs or shouts of “gringos!” that I received on my own journeys. 

And while I, with my Great British passport, was able finally to arrive at my goals and to feel the joy of that completion, many refugees will not have been so fortunate. And while I was able eventually to return home and continue my life - in whatever way I saw fit - for many refugees, their own journeys will still be ongoing, and there will still be a lack of clarity regarding what the future may hold. 

I always used to say, standing beside the side of the road, that if only we knew how long it would be until the next ride, we needn’t worry. If someone could tell us that in four hours we’d be picked up, or that although we wouldn’t get another ride that day, that on the very next we’d be adopted by a lovely family who would end up taking us with them for 10 days (as happened in northern Argentina), then all our worries would melt away. 

I felt the same way during the years in which my wife and I struggled to conceive, post-adventure. Were someone to have told us then that in a few years, we’d have three beautiful boys, we need never have suffered such heartache. 

So too for refugees: if only someone was able to tell them when, where and how their journeys would end, they would be able to come to terms with what lay ahead, and to stop feeling so anxious about the many unknowns. 

But of course that’s not how life works - whether you’re lucky enough to have been born with a British passport that enables you to see all the world has to offer without a second thought, or whether you’ve had the misfortune of being born in a country within which you find yourself unable to remain. 

I have long wrestled with the question of whether my travels were simply a selfish waste of time. Not that they didn’t bring me great joy and truly opened my eyes to the big wide world - they most surely did - but whether I might instead have used that time in some nobler endeavour. 

I find encouragement today in knowing that my love of people of different countries - and especially Iran - was birthed during those travels, and that I probably would not be doing the job I am now, had it not been for those experiences. But it doesn’t make it any easier to reconcile the contrasting journeys of travellers and refugees, which although they may share many parallels, also exhibit some stark differences.