So today is Giving Tuesday, a much more important day than Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

One of the most fun and innovative ways to give is through a gift catalog.

This is what Food for the Hungry has been doing for a few years now, and it’s pretty cool. They have a catalog of items, except the items are not consumer goods that you buy for yourself or those on your Christmas lists. Rather, the catalog consists of items that you buy for the poor and which they can use to meet their needs and sustain themselves.

You can buy seed, cows, goats, wells, water purification facilities, and much more — all for the poor. This is pretty cool. It’s a whole other dimension than simply giving a gift of money, because you are able to purchase specific things that are needed.

Food for the Hungry’s efforts here represent a great way to bring innovation and creativity to the fight against global poverty. Their efforts show that innovation and creativity shouldn’t just apply to the for-profit sector — they are just as important in the cause of social good as well.

Their gift catalog is online and is well worth looking through. Plus, as I mentioned above, it’s a lot of fun!

This is a great article in the latest issue of Christianity Today on a new approach to helping lift Africa out of poverty through commerce.

My friend Paul Larsen, who is doing great work in this arena, is quoted several times in the article. (You can also check out the in-process website for the organization he is starting, called the 128 Foundation. Its mission is to drive social, economic, and spiritual progress in the developing world.)

Here’s the start of the article:

Three years from now, the largest port in all Africa is set to open its docks in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. But the hands that are building the $10 billion port are not Tanzanian; they are Chinese.

China has emerged as a powerhouse in the global market, and many expect it to surpass the United States as the world’s economic superpower in years to come. But the same growth that has improved the quality of life for millions of Chinese is arguably hampering it in Tanzania, Nigeria, Mozambique, and other African countries where China is buying land at astonishing rates. For example, in just two years (2011 to 2013), China’s investments in Tanzania grew from $700 million to $2.1 billion. “China is very keen on establishing brand-name equity or recognition among African consumers, because the African population is going to double by the middle of the century,” Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent, recently told NPR.

Critics of “land grabbing” say the widespread practice displaces local workers, provides fewer jobs, and extracts natural resources (oil, coal, gold) that skip local communities and go straight to international corporations. “Poor farmers and cattle herders across the world are being thrown off their land,” says investigative journalist Fred Pearce. “Land grabbing is having more of an impact on the lives of poor people than climate change.”

One for-profit corporation founded by Christians, however, sees growth potential in poor people themselves. Part of a relatively new investment category called “impact investing,” the company is tilling fertile ground in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ukraine not only for economic growth but also for spiritual revival.

Read the whole thing.

From Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just:

If you are a Christian, and you refrain from committing adultery or using profanity or missing church, but you don’t do the hard work of thinking through how to do justice in every area of life – you are failing to live justly and righteously.

PovertyCure now as an app that makes their content easily available for your iPhone.

I love PovertyCure’s vision because they actually understand how to overcome poverty. It can be done — as long as we understand the correct principles (which most initiative so far haven’t). So I highly recommend checking out their site as well as their app.

Here’s their vision:

PovertyCure is an international coalition of over 250 partner organizations and 1 million individuals spanning 143 countries and counting. We produce films and educational resources advancing partnership-based solutions to poverty that challenge the status quo and champion the creative potential of the human person.

In our efforts to combat poverty worldwide, we too often fall into paternalistic, donor-recipient models that fail to distinguish short-term relief and long-term sustainable development. Oftentimes this approach can have tragic unintended consequences. Our call to solidarity with the poor means more than providing institutional assistance and aid. It demands a deeper view of the human person predicated on an appreciation for the creative capacity of each and every human person. Effective compassion situates those afflicted by poverty not as objects of our charity, but as subjects and protagonists of their own integral development. When we understand people as made in the image of God and endowed with his divine creative spark, it changes absolutely everything about how we understand poverty and development.

It’s time to shift our focus from aid to enterprise, from paternalism to partnerships, from poverty alleviation to real human flourishing.

Sometimes people argue that we should not help those in need when the need is a result of “their own fault.”

This is a deadly view. For example, imagine if Christ had said that about us? “I will not go help them and deliver them from their sins — they brought their misery upon themselves by their own disobedience. I will give to the good angels instead.” To refuse to help someone on the grounds that they “did this to themselves” is a denial of the gospel itself.

This view, however, is not just deadly; often, it has just plain misunderstood the situation.

Sometimes a person’s situation is indeed a result of their own sin or poor choices. But very often when we think the person has brought their difficult situation upon themselves, our assessment is actually incorrect. What looks like “their own fault” is, in fact, nothing of the sort.

The great 18th century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards brings this out very well in his sermon “The Christian Duty of Charity to the Poor.” In answering a set of “objections to giving to the poor,” one of the objections Edwards takes up is the objection that “he has brought himself to want by his own fault.” Edwards’ response is incredibly insightful:

In reply, it must be considered what you mean by his fault. If you mean want [lack] of a natural faculty to manage affairs to his advantage, that is to be considered as his calamity. Such a faculty is a gift that God bestows on some, and not on others; and it is not owing to themselves.

You ought to be thankful that God has given you such a gift, which he has denied to the person in question. And it will be a very suitable way for you to show your thankfulness, to help those to whom that gift is denied, and let them share the benefit of it with you.

This is as reasonable as that he to whom Providence has imparted sight, should be willing to help him to whom sight is denied, and that he should have the benefit of the sight of others, who has none of his own….

Edwards’ point here is deepened by modern research, which now has found that “being broke saps mental bandwidth.” A recent study has found that “just being broke, in and of itself, damages abilities to make good decisions in a way roughly equivalent to losing 13 IQ points — or constantly losing a night of sleep.”

In other words, in many cases “rather than the poor being poor because they make bad decisions, they make bad decisions because they are poor.”

This shows us just how important it is that we take Edwards’ counsel here. If some of those who are poor seem to be making bad decisions and we refuse to help lest we fear that we will be “aiding and abetting” their “bad decisions,” we will actually be making the problem worse. Hence, the solution is to get off the high-horse of our superiority complex and actually help tangibly, financially, and concretely. Counterintuitively, giving financial help in spite of the appearance of some bad decisions is often the way to help restore good decision-making.

This study also helps guard us from one mistake we could make in applying Edwards’ point. Though it would be totally contrary to what Edward’s is saying, one mis-application we could make is to begin setting ourselves up as judges of people who are in need who continually begin to stereotype the poor by too quickly saying to themselves “this person must intrinsically lack the ability to manage their finances well.” As Edwards’ points out, of course, there are some people that simply have less ability in this area. However, as this study helps us see, there are some people who are suffering not a permanent lack of ability in that area, but a temporary lack, simply because that can be the very effect that poverty has on a person.

What is the solution? The solution is not to set yourself up as the person’s superior, because you are “wise” and they are “unwise” and clearly in need of your superior understanding and guidance. The solution is not to begin giving the person advice. The solution is to stop being afraid of actually giving money to the poor, and to stop tying so many conditions to it. The solution is to have an approach to helping the poor that is based on respect for the individual, dignity, and empowerment. It means we need to see those who are in poverty as capable individuals. This means being willing to give money, among many other things, to help those who are poor get out of the condition of their poverty and, among those who may be experiencing this phenomenon, thereby enabling their decision-making faculties to heal back to normal.

In other words, sometimes the solution to poverty is not to seek to educate the person so that they can then get themselves out of poverty, but rather help them get out of poverty first, in which case we will find that the problem the whole time was not lack of decision-making skills at all, but simply the nature of poverty itself.

I saw this on Food for the Hungry’s Twitter feed the other day. What a great opportunity: For $25, you can provide medication and everything else necessary to deworm 500 children who have been infected with parasites due to poor sanitation.

Here’s the description on their site:

In the areas we go, dirty water, lack of sanitation and poor hygiene result in almost every child being infected with parasites. Malnutrition and even death can result. The good news is — on average, it costs about a nickel to deworm 1 child. Treatment keeps a child healthy for 6 months or until clean water and sanitation become available.

There is no reason not to do this. For a very small gift, you are able to make a very large impact in the lives of a large number of people. If you can, up your donation to 100 and help 2,000 people.

Here’s the trailer for 58: THE FILM from Live 58, a Christ-centered global initiative to end extreme poverty in our generation:

The film releases in October. Here’s the synopsis:

WE HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED. WILL WE DO EVERYTHING IT TAKES?
Premiering this October, 58: is the inspiring true story of the global Church in action. Witness bravery and determined faith in a journey from the slums of Kenya to the streets of New York. Confront the brutality of extreme poverty and meet those who live out the True Fast of Isaiah 58 and create stunning new possibilities for the future.

Travel from the sun-scorched plains of rural Ethiopia to British shopping centers, from Brazilian ganglands and the enslaving quarries of India to western churches, businesses and conferences.

58: invites audiences to discover the incredible work of God through His people in our hurting world. Meet ordinary people, hear their stories, and see their struggles and their victories as 58: shows the relentlessly loving God at work through His Church bringing hope to the darkest challenges of our day. Experience eye-opening reasons to lift our expectations of the future.

Woven with Biblical truth, this film draws audiences into life-changing examples of the True Fast of Isaiah 58 — a young British woman prevailing over the pressures of consumer society, Ethiopian Christians working to restore their environment, an American business owner promoting Fair Trade coffee and connecting his local community with the work of ending poverty, a local pastor in India working to be a Good Samaritan to those enslaved by bonded labor, and the sacrificial generosity of New York youth giving up their own food for the sake of those with even less. These impatient revolutionaries and ordinary prophets present viewers with an empowering vision of the Church rising up to its remarkable potential to end extreme poverty, by bringing God’s words through Isaiah to life in our time, in our day.

Experience 58: this October on television, online, on DVD, and at screening events throughout the U.S.

It looks like you can also do microfinance through World Vision, and that their approach is similar to Kiva (which I’ve mentioned before a few times).

Here’s the summary from their site:

World Vision Micro lets you fund life changing microfinance loans for hardworking entrepreneurs in need helping to alleviate them from poverty.

Here’s more info from their About page and more detail on how it works.