Solving poverty begins with seeing what is present, not what is missing.

Words used to describe poverty often focus on what is not present: clean water, food, education, health care, and opportunity to name a few of the most common descriptors.

Describing poverty based solely on what is not present detracts from what is present: people.

People are central to a meaningful understanding of poverty.

Clean water, while essential, cannot love a family member, friend, or community, but people can.

Education, often a perceived guarantee of future success, cannot enable survival in impoverished circumstances, but the minds of people who have battled poverty their entire lives can.

People, including those among us who live with poverty, are capable, smart, and able to create transformation in their own lives and communities.

In short, to understand poverty and do something about it that is meaningful and long-lasting, we need to see what is present: people.

Focusing only on what is not present, especially in terms of resources like clean water or food, can inadvertently detract from what is present: people who will create solutions to their poverty.

In the end, people solve poverty – people like you who help, and people who are working hard to lift themselves out of poverty with the help you give.

We Can Only Be Human Together

“Your humanity is bound up in mine, for we can only be human together.” Said by Bishop Desmond Tutu, this statement is true everywhere in the world.

Humans are made to rely on each other. Congregation is the pulse of any community, but what happens when we do not gather? How are children raised when there is no village?

With the help of the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation, the Sustainable Urban Centres Project is responding to the growth of urban poverty in Hosur Town, India. With parents working long hours and for little pay, children are left to navigate a growing world that depends more and more on technology and globalization. As the world becomes more connected, these children are becoming less connected and are losing world-at-your-fingertips access that a globalized world promises.

The Sustainable Urban Centres Project creates a space for high school students to congregate while learning skills they can use in a globalized world.

Beyond what students are learning, they see opportunities for a future that exceeds what they believed to be true. For example, Talent Promotion Classes enable young girls to interact with role models who have made their passions into careers. School gardens have been established on campus, and students are learning basic agricultural skills to pair with nutrition classes. The program enables youth to support one another as they face and conquer obstacles. All classes are held after school, encouraging youth to spend their free time learning holistic life-skills.

The Sustainable Urban Centres program not only teaches youth practical and fundamental skills; it gives them the chance to be human together.

Have dinner with us this fall and witness an incredible transformation as families in the Philippines journey from despair to hope.

Join us for a wonderful meal, the company of friends, silent and live auctions, great music, a short feature film, and an important opportunity to transform lives through your giving.

View a brief update about how giving at last year's film premiere and dinner transformed lives.

VIEW DATES & LOCATIONS

HOPE International Development Agency has been helping families worldwide since 1975, enabling them to transform their lives as they gain access to clean water, learn new ways to earn a sustainable income and provide support to each other, grow more food, and restore the environment upon which they depend.