Poverty Small Group Curriculum

What Is Poverty?

Can you explain what poverty is? You have heard the word hundreds of times, no doubt. But do you know what it is? Take the time to read through this study, whether with a group or on your own. I will venture to say that you will most definitely learn something.

To give you a "sneak peak" of the sneak peak, I've included a quote from the first lesson:

Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, staff members at the Chalmers Center for Economic Development, have conducted an informal exercise in dozens of North American, middle-to-upper-class churches. “What is poverty?” they ask the church members. Fikkert and Corbett report that, without fail, congregants begin to list a lack of material goods like food, money, clean water, housing, and medicine as the symptoms of poverty. On the other hand, when over 60,000 people living in material poverty were asked how they would define poverty, the results were surprising: “While poor people mention having a
lack of material things, they tend to describe their condition in far more psychological and social terms. Poor people typically talk in terms of shame, inferiority, powerlessness,
humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness,” say Fikkert and Corbett.