Poverty is about lacking essentials: not just material things like clean water and a reliable food supply, but less tangible things too – such as education or spiritual hope. Christian community development – initiatives that address the whole person in the community where they live – takes account of these needs. And this concept is at the heart of Tearfund’s work with local churches and Christian agencies around the world.
Currently, more than 800 million people in the world still don’t have enough to eat – many rely on what they can grow themselves. When their harvest is bad, there isn’t the money to buy food to make up the shortfall.
Making the most of local skills
But while people might be economically poor, they still have the resourcefulness to find their own solutions. Tearfund supports initiatives that build on local people’s existing abilities, helping them take responsibility for their own programmes.
This is exactly the kind of scheme being run in Burkina Faso, West Africa. The local people are used to coping with a lack of food when there’s lack of rain, but sometimes it becomes a question of survival. Ramata lives in the village of Tangaye, northern Burkina Faso. ‘Life is very hard for us,’ she says. ‘There are times when we haven’t got food to give to the children, and that really hurts.’
In Tangaye, initiative came from the local church. With Tearfund’s support through local charity AEAD – the Evangelical Association Supporting Development – they had the vision to tackle poverty head-on in the local area, and bring the good news of Jesus to people in deeds, as well as words.
Help for the long-term
AEAD boosted families’ ability to grow food by giving them oxen to help plough more land for crops. ‘Since we got the oxen in our family, it’s made a real difference,’ says Ramata. ‘It’s good for us.’
Oxen-pulled ploughs save back-breaking work and enable more land to be cultivated.
In keeping with Tearfund’s principles, the scheme was developed locally and designed to be sustainable: the oxen can be sold when mature and provide money for more to be bought and put back into the project.
‘It’s very efficient and very practical,’ says Philippe Ouedraogo, director of AEAD. ‘Its value is that it gives dignity to people. It’s very appropriate to the village and the people we work with.’
Help for all
Ramata and her husband Adama are one of the many couples to have benefited. Like most people in the village, they are Muslim, but that’s not a problem for the local church leaders involved in the programme. ‘If we only give to Christians we’re not obeying God’s word – we need to do good to all people,’ says Naguetin Ouedraogo, an elder in Tangaye’s Assemblies of God church, which is backing the initiative.
And there’s more…
Tearfund supports a wide range of community development programmes, including:
- Clean water and sanitation
- Community health, and mother and child healthcare
- Literacy and basic education
- HIV/AIDS care and education
- Improving food production and nutrition
- Drug rehabilitation
- Street children
You can find out more about how Tearfund is working to transform lives by reading Tear Times, Tearfund’s quarterly magazine. Click here to receive your free copy.