Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – The Spiritual Mission of Microfinance

By Mark Russell
February 2009

Poverty is a daily reality for billions of people. The numbers are so staggering that we can simply become numb. Approximately three billion people live on less than $2USD a day. The World Bank estimates that 1.4 billion people are living in extreme poverty. (Extreme or absolute poverty is defined as living on less than $1USD per day.) The result of this is real.

Consider the following facts:

• Over 140 million children in developing countries are underweight, and over two billion are undernourished.
• Every year, more than ten million children die of hunger and preventable diseases—that’s over thirty thousand per day and one every three seconds.
• 800 million people go to bed hungry every day.
• Every year, nearly eleven million children die before their fifth birthday.
• 600 million children live in extreme poverty.
• The three richest people in the world control more wealth than all 600 million people living in the world’s poorest countries.
• Income per person in the poorest countries in Africa has fallen by a quarter in the last twenty years.¹

And the situation is only going to get worse. Recent increases in the price of food have had a direct and adverse effect on the poor and are expected to push many more millions of people into absolute poverty. What are we, as the people of God, supposed to do about this?