Empowering destitute people towards transforming communities

4.3Community empowerment through caring for the environment

Healthy community development practices must eventually lead to greater concern for the environment: therefore this aspect of community development needs attention. The environment sustains us, and makes life possible. Yet the economy dictates how we make use of the environment to sustain life. Against this background, two seemingly opposing agendas arise: should we rather choose to protect the environment, or should we strive harder to make use of the resources of the environment so as to eradicate poverty?
At heart, economy and ecology should cohere; after all they both concern the earth, our oikos, or home. Ecology, as oikos-logos, concerns the wisdom of the way in which our home functions; while economy, as oikos-nomos, encompasses the rules that should govern the way we run our home (De Gruchy, 2007b:3).
We have only one earth; therefore the way we run our economy should never go outside the boundaries of what ecology can sustain. As Rasmussen (1996:112) states, “Economic production and consumption, as well as human reproduction, are unsustainable when they no longer fall within the borders of nature’s regeneration”.
The need to care for our environment in a way that will promote the sustainable regeneration of life is opposed to economic agendas, such as the plight of the poor. De Gruchy (2007b:2-5) describes these as the “brown” and “green” agendas.
“The brown agenda is concerned with poverty… The brown agenda drives us to deal with economics, for the solution lies in structuring the economy – globally, nationally and locally – so as to ‘make poverty history’” (De Gruchy, 2007b:3). The green agenda concerns itself with the environment. While we may hold that such concerns are born of the privileged way in which the non-poor can think about things other than poverty, this in itself does not make these concerns any less correct…And for those who believe that God has created the earth good, and that we human beings hold it in stewardship for the next generations, the green agenda is also of deep significance for Christian believers, according to De Gruchy (2007b:3).
De Gruchy (2007b:6-10) therefore proposes that we adopt an “olive” agenda, one that combines the brown (poverty) agenda with the green (environment) agenda. This metaphor simply facilitates the combination of both agendas in a balanced way within the boundaries of theological, ethical and sustainable social development. Simply put: we should care for the earth while also caring for the poor. In this way we really have only one agenda, an olive agenda that strives to care for the poor in an environment that can be regenerated and sustained.

5Conclusion

The social structures and fabric of our world are in chaos. Helpers serious about empowering destitute people must take note of the structural, environmental and socio- economical external issues that cause people to become destitute. It appears that an approach which reconnects destitute people to communities, and which strengthens those communities towards sustainable livelihoods, is the best one for outside-in missions. At the same time we should strive to provide those services that the destitute cannot struggle for by themselves, such as health, housing and reconnection to employment. These strategies and all they incorporate should go a long way towards creating an environment in which people would not have to become destitute anymore.

In this regard I concur with the words of De Gruchy: “The challenge is clear: we need to make poverty history. We have the resources, the skills, the organisational capacity, the vision, the passion. What we don’t seem to have is much progress!” (2007b:1) This clearly illustrates that it can be done; however, it seems that we are not living up to the challenge.

At the same time we should also remember that, “at the end of the day, any transformation, justice and peace will be because God made it so. We are not the authors of change, nor its primary actors” (Meyers, 1999:121). We would do well to remind ourselves that we are privileged partakers in God’s work.

Chapter 8: The Way Forward

This chapter summarizes and concludes the insights gained from the previous chapters, in order to give direction to helpers’ efforts at undertaking missions with the destitute. All these insights are then linked to the model developed in chapter 5. While, as remarked earlier, no model is perfect, a good model will serve to guide endeavours, and to make those more effective. This is also true of missions with the destitute.

1Introduction

In my undertaking of research for this study, the severe lack of coordination, skill, insight and resources allocated in efforts to help destitute people in the South African context became evident. At the same time the problems associated with poverty and destitution in this country are growing to alarming proportions, which necessitates an immediate response that currently seems to be minimal. Thankfully there are exceptions to this, certain organizations that shine like beacons of hope as they do missions with the destitute. We, helpers, and especially helpers in this country, need to develop better ways of doing such missions: the proposed model is a step in that direction.
It also became clear that very few helpers purposefully use an approach to missions with the destitute that simultaneously incorporates both an inside-out and an outside-in approach.
Against this background, let us consider the way forward for missions that empower destitute people towards SHALOM.

2Understand the complexity of the problems faced by destitute people

In Chapter two it became clear that destitution, and the problems faced by destitute people, are complex and varied. Yet these difficulties share a commonality in that all of them would seem almost insurmountable to the destitute. Some will be within destitute people’s abilities to address, most often with the right kind of help being provided as a prerequisite. But often these problems are of a kind and scope that are impossible for destitute people to overcome. Unless: dysfunctional societal systems are challenged and addressed; helpers speak on behalf of the silent voices of the destitute; the destitute are given voices of their own that are heard where they count; the destitute are reconnected into communities of care that possess collective strengths.
These problems are caused by many different factors, all of which interact dynamically in the lives of destitute people to create a downward spiral that traps people in the “poverty cycle”. Consequently real missions with the destitute must address all these dynamically interacting issues, causes and factors involved in destitution as holistically and comprehensively as possible, in order to empower destitute people effectively. This immediately leads to the realization that no single person or organization can do this alone: the problems of destitute people and destitution simply exist on too large a scale. Helpers need one another; we need to coordinate our efforts better. The model proposed could assist in two ways: (1) by helping helpers to evaluate their own effort, and determining how holistic and comprehensive those efforts are; and (2) by helping helpers to focus their efforts on specific parts of the model, so that other helpers can focus on other parts, in this way creating more specialized efforts of higher quality that should be more effective overall.
Efforts at missions with the destitute must also take into consideration the fact that different approaches will be needed to tackle the different problems involved in destitution. These approaches are developed in chapter two in terms of two categories, namely (1) approaches that will deal with the problems (causes, issues and factors) involved in destitution that function mostly from inside the individual; and (2) approaches that will address the problems (causes, issues and factors) involved in destitution that function mostly from outside the person. From these two categories more specific strategies are developed in chapter 6 and chapter 7 that will enable one to do missions with the destitute in ways that empower them from the “inside-out”, as well as from the “outside-in”.