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.

Some wonderful old books....

So I was checking out Google Reader which has more than a few digital books (hundreds--if not thousands perhaps). I searched for Sierra Leone for the subjects and it came up with several books written back in the 1800s. The one I'm looking through currently is..."A Residence at Sierra Leone...Letters from Sierra Leone" written by a lady living in Sierra Leone. It is a compilation of letters she wrote to friends and family at home in England. It's pretty interesting...many things have changed a lot while other things haven't changed much at all.

Here's an excerpt:

"Next day it was beautifully clear, and on going upon deck I had my first look of the land I was so truly thankful to see. On one side of our ship, Sierra Leone, like an island, forming one chain of mountains gradually sloping upwards from the Cape to the right, but in front seeming as if they sprang perpendicularly from the sea--was pointed out to me; while, in the opposite direction, the only visible tokens of land were tall trees, appearing as if planted in the water. ...

There was no sea-breeze to carry us in: we were not near enough to discern, without the aid of a spy-glass, the houses on the shore; but I could see Freetown like a white spot at the very foot of the hills, and before it the masts of vessels rose like clustered spires. We had also a view of the Bananas--a few small green islands lying to the southward of the long low cape which stretched far out, on our right....

I looked eagerly out and saw fantastically painted buildings glittering in the glorious light of a tropical sun; and beyond, the lofty mountains of Sierra Leone. Through the faint shadowy haze, their verdure appeared more soft and beautiful than that of the foliage near us, which flashed on the eye with a supernatural tint, and formed a striking contrast to the deep cornelian colour of the earth in the paths and banks of the river--the whole landscape conveying the idea of a perpetual summer. ..."