The needy or the poor are the society’s have-nots, they are community members that struggle to eat, clothe and shelter themselves. By poor we mean the people that are living in conditions of extreme poverty. They have often been defined as people living on less than a dollar per day or earning income of less than a dollar per day. On January 1 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) officially came to life. The first two SDGs seek to address poverty and hunger respectively which is a clear sign of how important the eradication of poverty and hunger is to humanity. Before the SDGs humanitarian and development efforts stood guided by the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). MDGSs too stressed the need to alleviate poverty. The first MDG was dedicated to this cause just to show again the seriousness of the need to combat extreme poverty if we are to make life bearable for every living person.
Kicking out poverty does not start and end with giving hand-outs or aid. Giving hand-outs is a short term measure that does not completely eradicate poverty and if sustained can promote another serious problem of the dependency syndrome. Giving aid has to be complimented by aggressive capacity building. The targeted poor need someone to let them know that they can change their lives and that their situation is not cast in stone. They need someone to equip them with the knowledge and skills to start their own income generating projects for self-sustenance.
The first step in capacity building is to change the worldview of the targeted needy people as most of them often suffer from lack of confidence and very little or no self-esteem. Some have even incorrectly accepted that they were born to be poor and are supposed to live a life of begging. Changing this mindset is very critical if we are going to take extreme poverty head on. “A worldview is a set of assumptions held consciously or unconsciously in faith about the basic makeup of the world and how the world works. The way we understand poverty and what causes poverty is very important, because it tends to determine how we respond to poverty”. (Bryant Myers). Through our Friendly Entrepreneurship training we aim to counter the inferiority complex some of the poor are suffering from and at the same time instill the culture of doing various income generating projects.
The Friendly Society is in full support of the Zero Hunger Challenge that was launched by the UN Secretary General in 2012. It is a humanitarian initiative that seeks to a world where every man, woman and child can realize their fundamental right to adequate nutritious food. The challenge has five main objectives namely to have zero stunted children under the age of two, to have 100 per cent access to adequate food all year round, to ensure that all food systems are sustainable, to have 100 percent in smallholder productivity and income and lastly to ensure zero loss or waste of food. The Zero Hunger Challenge blueprint guides some of our efforts as we endeavor to kick out extreme poverty.
