I could call this blog "the gap". Because the gap between the richest and the poorest, both within nations, and globally, is growing and with it a whole range of social disorders from addiction and domestic violence to organised crime (see R Wilkinson and K Pickett, The Spirit Level-why equality is better for everyone. See also Max Rushbrooke, ed; Inequality-a New Zealand Crisis; and the 2014 study by Inner City Mission Speaking for Ourselves-the truth about what keeps people in poverty by those who live in it).

I'm not an economist. I hear arguments from those who think the current free market/open competition flavour of Capitalism is the solution to all the world's problems and those who believe the opposite, that it is the cause of growing poverty and all the social ills that come with it. The one thing I am convinced of is that those who defend the current capitalist ideas and spout the now well worn belief that "economic growth" of a nation as a whole will "trickle down to the poor" are wrong. This has been thoroughly debunked for many years. What I do not fully understand is the mechanisms by which the opposite seems to happen fairly consistently. Economic growth following the current ideologies seems fairly consistently to increase the gap between the richest and poorest in a nation. Wilkinson and Pickett document one or two nations who have intentionally taken radical steps to close the gap between the richest and poorest and show how this has benefited everyone, including the richcst in those nations.  There are obvious reasons why economic growth might only benefit the wealthiest and not those who are poor. We only need to ask who is in control of such measures to create economic growth. wealth and power go hand in hand just as poverty and powerlessness do.  So measures to create growth are bound to favour those in control of those measures. However I think there are other mechanisms besides the self-interest of those in power. I think many political and business leaders genuinely believe the poor will benefit from their effort to generate growth in a nation. 

What is needed is a recognition that the gap between the richest and poorest in a nation will only be closed by taking intentional steps to ensure that the needs of the poorest are met. In other words, a nation must gradually give to all its citizens some things as a right that comes with being alive. When  certain targetted basics are freely given to all, not means tested, simply given, no matter how poor or wealthy, that reduces the suffering of poverty and  powerlessness in a nation. Three basics come to mind: a minimum access to nutritious food, free medical care and free education. These things are not new but have been relentlessly undermined in nations which have bought into the current dominant idealogies.

The other thing which I believe is needed (and this will seem to contradict what I have just said above)  is bottom  up grown by intentionally supporting entrepreneurial initiatives by people who have no employment. When I recently visited Kenya I was struck by the reality that, without a safety net to provide for unemployed people, every "unemployed" person was self-employed, selling fruit and veges, selling clothes, people with cars driving people without them, and so on. In this country so many businesses fail. In Kenya, if your business fails, you starve. It does seem to breed certain survival skills in small businesses that our easier environment does not.

How could these two be reconciled? If some hardship is necessary to build into a nation's citizens from their birth the kind of work ethic and basic understanding necessary for self-employment AND some level of fundamental provision of needs is necessary as well, can these be balanced? 

Perhaps a way to think about this is to keep our eyes on the connection between poverty and powerlessness. People who are poor often know some single thing that might change everything for them. Sometimes that has to with education and upskilling. A person knows that, with a particular qualification, they could get work. Sometimes it  has to do with undercapitalisation.  A person has a sound business  plan but no money in the bank to get it to a point where it can generate income. Gifting a person the fees to get a qualification or providing micro-loans to people to enable them to get a business off the ground are ways that empowering a person reduces  poverty. 

Similarly though, as the Uganda UNSFP quickly recognised, feeding children enables children to learn. And Paul Odiwuor whose Kenyan Permoafrica school teaches permaculture gardening and farming to marginalised people has recognised that, for young women, the lack of underclothing and sanitary products is a barrier to education. Kayamba Enock in Uganda has identified the same issue in his high school. So the lack of basic needs, in itself, creates powerlessness and hopelessness. So does natural disaster like drought  or flooding. GIven people hope that, with hard work and support, they can change their  situation, is a key to addressing poverty. 

Which perhaps points to a weakness in my first suggestion of simply treating certain basics as a right for being alive.  Perhaps that right needs to be combined with some fundamental responsibilities, like hard work. St Paul wrote to one Church, "If they don't work, don't let them eat."  He was not addressing unemployment. He was addressing people who were travelling around sponging off the local churches. "Work" as Paul was meaning it, did not necessarily mean they had to have a paid job and be contributing financially but that they had to be contributing to the community if they were receiving from it.

This doesn't address how the lack of a social welfare safety net in nations like Kenya motivates people to be self-employed.  I have often said fear is a lousy motivation for anything yet fear of death does seem to have one good affect on some nations! 

I think I will leave this blog right there, leaving some gaping holes in my arguments, and invite a conversation from people who know far more than I about some of these things.   

In a previous post I spoke of loving our neighbour AS we love ourselves not AFTER we love ourselves. My point was that the second greatest "commandment" in the Jewish Torah as taught by Jesus is not  about giving others our leftovers. It is not about satisfying all that we consider as our needs, first, then seeing what we have left to respond to others' needs.  Nor is it about giving enough to "charities" to feel less guilty, to feel we are generous. It really is about setting others life realities beside ours and exposing ourselves to the challenging question, "Is it appropriate for me to spend this money on this "need" when my friends are facing this level of deprivation?

Having said that there is wisdom in taking care of our own needs first, literally first, as the safety instructions on an airline tell us, "If a mask appears in front of you, put your mask on first, and then help others." And to make the point, the "other" in the picture is usually a child, one whom a parent might instinctively help first.  Why take care of your own mask first? Because, if you don't, you will likely die and will be no use to anyone, whereas if you do, both you and your child may survive. 
 
Over the past months I have demonstrated in a negative way the consequences of not "putting on my own mask first."  I have responded to others needs in a way I felt compelled by love to do, and have ended up in such a tight spot financially that I am now no use to anyone. I am having to focus solely on sorting out my own financial mess. 

So I'm learning that part of "putting my  own mask on first" is not borrowing from the future. There are always unexpected costs, whether with a car, an oversees trip, one needs to assume things will cost more than anticipated. One approach is to set aside a generous "rainy day" fund which one does not "dip into" for others but only for unexpected costs of one's own. Would I have the self-discipline to leave such a fund alone? When faced with a friend in real crisis? Honestly I don't know.  Where I went badly wrong though, was that I did have some generous amounts set aside for my car and for my trip to Kenya. But when faced with others needs, I trimmed those budgets down and down and gave away money I later found I needed. 

So perhaps for me a better approach than a "rainy day" fund is to simply budget generously for the future and then, if money budgetted is not required, it may be transferred to the "philanthropy" fund. Somehow, if you are soft hearted like me, you need to create a wall between money for philanthropic giving and money for personal needs.

This doesn't absolve one from treating others needs as  just as important as ones  own. For me it is as basic as whether I go out for a coffee  when a friend in Kenya hasn't even been able to eat cabbage for  several weeks, only beans and maize day after day.  I have promised myself that coffee when my friend's situation improves a little. 

I am not suggesting legalism. If your mental health demands a coffee or a visit to your local pub, then that might be "putting your mask on first."  There is a difference, though, between real needs and habitual extravagances we allow to swallow up money which could be relieving the suffering of our friends.        

I haven't written a blog for some time as I have  been in Kenya for the whole of February with no access to internet on my laptop. Being in Kenya was a real eye opener to the issues people face in many so called "developing" nations. Despite doing my best to befriend and respond to the needs of friends in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan there was much they would tell me about their daily realities that I still fed through the lens of my privileged experience living in Aotearoa. Kenya is more prosperous than many African nations yet I had no comprehension of how difficult and costly transport is there. Many people do not own cars but travel in a matatu or minibus which might be designed to carry 14 people but would somehow fit as many as 20 or more people were waiting beside the road. Alternatively one could pay more for a private driver who would likely be one of the many qualified professionals who could find no work fitting their university training so driving becomes their means of survival. And that is the other reality. There is no unemployment benefit yet a great deal of unemployment. So many people are out in the towns selling fruit or clothes or whatever they can to scratch together a living. The wealth pyramid in Kenya reminds me of stories of the Roman Empire in which the vast majority of people were very poor. Then a relatively small number ranged from having secure employment and income through to the obscenely wealthy old families of Rome with the Emperor at the top of pyramid.

Sadly, some of the obscenely wealthy in Kenya are "Christian" ministers who pressure people who are living in poverty to give so they can live in luxury. A favourite Biblical source of support for this seems to be the book of the prophet Malachi who addressed the opposite situation of a wealthy and complacent Jewish community who were neglecting the tithe which paid for the upkeep of the temple and the livelihood of the priesthood. So it was entirely proper to challenge such a community. To apply such a message to justify wealthy clergy and huge money spent on building programmes when a congregation is living in poverty is nothing short of obscene. The "offertory" in Kenyan Churches is a very public affair with people coming forward, placing their gift in the large bag placed on the altar for this purpose and a leader calling out the amount given by each person and everyone clapping. In fact if the congregation fail to clap they will be instructed to do so. I'm not quite clear how this is seen as obeying Jesus teaching in Matthew 6:1-4.  

Recently  a young friend, himself an orphan, who runs an orphanage for nine other street children in Uganda, was evicted by the landlady because he could not find the monthly rent money. He asked me to explain what a western supporter meant by this message: "But...may there be other properly funded ministries or existing charities? Do pray about possible solutions to compare and so will I!" I thought, "Yeah, sure, you really get it don't you!!! NOT! Show me a 'properly funded ministry or charity' in Uganda". If there are any I have yet to come across them. EVERYONE I know who is trying to help vulnerable people in Uganda is hopelessly underfunded and over stretched as they try to simply help a few. Ten orphans who are evicted because they cannot pay the rent simply do not have other places to turn. That is why they have banded together to form their own little solution and managed for most of the time time to have beans and posho to eat, a roof over their heads, and somehow have scraped together enough money to attend school, until the next rent bill came.

Of course when I first met this young man online I was, in my ignorance asking similar questions. "Why did you start this orphanage if you did not have the resources to run it?" As he told me the sad story of how he was orphaned when his parents died in a car accident, how he lived on the streets until a woman took pity on him and took him in, how she then died but for a time he was allowed to live in her home, how he then did what she had done and tracked down some of his street friends who were the closest thing to family he had, how her family then turned them out so he found the place they had been renting ever since, how he had worked to pay the bills and grown their down food in the garden he had planted, until bad weather destroyed everything he had grown, and the person who gave him work moved away. And now that I have been in relatively wealthy Kenya for a month I understand. There is no social safety net to bail people out in such situations. People use their survival instincts to get by somehow, or they become criminals, or they die. 

This is  Africa, and this is life in much of the world. Those of us who live in a different world have a responsibility to do what we can to make a difference for a few, in our own communities, because poverty and powerlessness to change one's situation is is just down the street from us, or only a suburb or two away, and in nations in which this is the life of most of the population