Poverty statistics can be numbing. We scrabble for tangible images to translate sterile estimates of poverty's effects -- hungry, homeless, jobless - into terms people can grasp: daily deaths from AIDS are equivalent to x number of 747s crashing, avoidable deaths in childbirth to hurricanes. But it's still pretty abstract.
Last weekend Georgetown's Berkley Center organized a meeting in Guatemala to learn more about how the myriad faith-inspired organizations that work across Latin America see poverty and inequity and what they are doing about it.
The challenges are staggering. Catholic Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini from San Marcos, Guatemala, paints a vivid picture of his diocese as a microcosm of his country and region. Violence is an everyday fact of life. Paltry job opportunities drive migration but migration shatters families. Guatemalan illegal migrants who are deported by the U.S. back to Guatemala disrupt the families still more, as do the reduced remittances migrants are sending back from the U.S. because of the economic crisis. Schools fail young people, so they join gangs. Drug traffickers steadily become more powerful. Eons of discrimination against the Maya population - the majority in Guatemala - lock them into poverty. Women's lots are worst; infant mortality is high and malnutrition the highest in the western hemisphere. People's trust in their government is at an all-time low.
Our two days of discussion focused on young people, the large majority of the population. The cities' street children are a fast growing population, and youths who cannot obtain jobs find solace and identity in violent gangs. Teenage mothers are increasingly common. The scariest stories were about the impact of random violence, both in homes and in the streets. The fact that millions of children have so little love and hope is heartbreaking. The hordes of children living on the streets are only the tip of the iceberg - millions live in homes with a single, challenged parent. Reports of incest are on the rise.
But there are a host of programs that aim to help. They support mothers with food and funds, run schools, formal and informal, and counter the temptations of the gangs. A common thread was that groups go to communities, often through their churches, and try to respond to the sorest spots with help. But these programs are too few to counter the overall trends.
Our group of 16 practitioners brings passion and pragmatism to their work. A remarkable woman from Brazil, Dr. Zilda Arns Neumann, puts long experience as a pediatrician to work in a vast program manned (or womaned) by Christian volunteers who identify and track pregnant women and help them care for their babies. Brazil's Pastoral da Crianza is world famous for its creative work with mothers and families to cut infant deaths and malnutrition. Corina Villacorta from World Vision is convinced that simply bringing young people into programs can change the picture for them. Viva, a network of Christian, mostly evangelical, groups that work with children, finds that intervening rapidly when a child reaches the city streets can change his future.
There's a wealth of experience out there and it is not well enough known and understood. That's the broad point of the Berkley Center's study of faith-inspired work: we are convinced that better knowledge and stronger networks can lead to better programs and results.
But we also want to understand better what inspires these organizations. A powerful common denominator seems to be the core idea that each child is created in the image of God. Remembering that drives these faith-inspired workers to do their utmost.
Worries voiced by world leaders like Ban Ki Moon and Bob Zoellick that the global economic crisis will have its most devastating impact on poor countries are becoming realities, and they come on top of challenges of poverty and social tensions already so enormous they seem insurmountable. There's no better place to keep our bearings in looking for solutions than focusing on youth, and seeing them not as nameless statistics but as Maria and Juan. They deserve a better shot at life.
