Compassion, poverty and the Pope

Those of us who have followed the media coverage of the visit of Pope Francis constantly heard the word “compassion” over the last several days, from TV commentators and resource persons, apart from the Pope himself. The word takes its origins from Latin, and literally means “cosuffering,” to the point of inducing an active desire to alleviate the suffering of another. Indeed, the papal visit was primarily motivated by his avowed desire to be among the survivors of Supertyphoon “Yolanda” that took countless lives and livelihoods 14 months ago. He felt a need to share in their pain and suffering. In Tacloban, he spoke of how he felt “I had to be here” as he witnessed the catastrophe unfold from Rome. “On those very days I decided to come here,” he declared. “I am here to be with you—a little bit late, but I’m here.”

The impact of Pope Francis’ messages was strongest where they were simplest.

In his meeting with the youth in the University of Santo Tomas, he spoke of how we can only see certain realities of life through eyes cleansed by our own tears. Moved by the tears of the child who asked why God allows children to suffer so much, he challenged us to learn to weep with a street child who has a drug problem or has endured abuse, and indeed anyone who is marginalized. He called to mind how Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus, not for Lazarus himself, but in sharing the pain of the family who had lost him. Pope Francis’ message was simple: Don’t be afraid to weep, in the sense of sharing in the suffering of others.

All these have moved me to look back to what I wrote some six years ago, as I pondered over the lack of progress in our efforts to fight poverty in the country, at a time when poverty incidence had actually risen as the economy grew. I noted then how roughly one of every four Filipino families was poor. Based on latest data, this has since improved to one out of five. But this also implies that four out of five are not poor. Hence, we need only one out of four nonpoor Filipino families to care enough to “adopt” and help one poor family get out of poverty. I surmised that if we take the fight against poverty to this individual level of caring and sharing, as against the grandiose programs that government normally pursues, we just might be more successful at reducing national poverty.

What would it take to help lift a poor family out of poverty? We all know the saying: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. So what could a caring family do to “teach another family to fish”? It is said that having at least one college graduate in a family would get it out of poverty. For those who can afford it, a concrete way of helping, then, is to support a promising child from a poor family through school all the way to the tertiary level, whether college or vocational/technical training as appropriate. My late father did so through most of his professional life and even in retirement, and he reaped the satisfaction of seeing his successful protégés uplift their families’ wellbeing and standard of living.

For Gawad Kalinga (GK), decent housing is the critical entry point. Founder Tony Meloto espouses the conviction that once you give poor people middle-class surroundings, they begin to have middle-class dreams, and other things start falling into place. GK provides willing donors and volunteers the opportunity to literally help build the houses of their beneficiaries alongside them. Still another concrete way of helping is to equip a poor family with the means (including skills, values, and financial capital) to start and sustain a livelihood enterprise. Government and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) get a mixed record of success when they try to do this en masse for groups of beneficiaries. My own sense is that such assistance will more likely achieve lasting outcomes when there is a one-to-one nurturing relationship involved, such as what a personal family-to-family handholding involvement would provide.

This kind of direct involvement, to my mind, is key. We tend to focus on the receiver, and overlook the side of the giver. People who care and are willing to share find greater meaning in sharing when they are able to somehow share in the suffering and challenges of those whom they help. True sharing, in other words, goes both ways. This is what compassion is all about. I believe that this is the element that has made Gawad Kalinga popular. When people spend weekends enduring pain and strain by literally helping build homes alongside those who will receive them, sharing is brought to a totally different level from simply writing out a check to one’s favored charity. Giving a scholarship directly to one’s chosen poor child and having a direct involvement in his/her progress through the years are quite different from simply sending a regular contribution to a scholarship-granting foundation. An entrepreneurial family that hand-holds a poor family into starting and growing an enterprise of their own finds greater meaning in sharing than just pledging a portion of their profits to an NGO fostering livelihood projects.

Only when we directly share in the pain of those whose lives we are helping to uplift—what Pope Francis must have meant by “weeping with them”—do we Christians truly partake of Jesus’ cross, and practice true compassion. This is the real meaning of caring and sharing in Christian love. To my mind, this element of genuine compassion could very well be the missing ingredient in our poverty reduction efforts all these years.

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