"The Real Answer to Poverty"

It is gratifying to place some unobtainable thing in an open outstretched hand, but is that what addressing poverty means?

The nature, or symptom of poverty can be addressed externally by the giving of what a person lacks, but the cause of poverty runs at a much deeper level.

To the extent that projects transform situations, they do so at an external, unsustainable level.

Something else, something much more fundamental, something much more basic to real human need is required to bring real, long lasting, systemic transformation on the inside … at the heart of who a person really is, where the spring of well being is found.

Dr Myers, interviewed here, says the answer is found in transformed relationships. A transformed relationship with God and one’s personal situation, transformed relationships within community, with those called “others,” with the environment, and with one’s self will transform a person.

That transformation will result in an outcome that does not need much money at all to get something successful going, because a person so transformed becomes an active participant rather than a passive recipient.

That person begins to act out his role as a person with something to contribute, working for change, instead of sitting passively hoping to be given something for nothing or by being found in the grip of some kind of fatalism.

Dr. Myers makes the point that “Projects don’t transform people. People transform people. It is relationships that are transformational.”

I invite you to invest ten minutes of your time and listen to this excellent Poverty Unlocked interview.

Wendy McMahan interviews Dr. Bryant Myers, professor of Transformational Development at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Previously, Dr. Myers served at World Vision International as Vice President for International Program Strategy.

An author and leading voice in his field, Dr. Myers is Professor of Transformational Development at Fuller Theological Seminary. Previously he served at World Vision International as Vice President for International Program Strategy.