MANILA, Philippines — In our concern with poverty, who are the recipients of our efforts? Who are the poor? And why are we concerned about them and what do we want for them? The welfare of our neighbors and all human beings is our concern, that they can live lives worthy of children of God who created them in His likeness and destined them to enjoy happiness with Him forever.

That is what our faith teaches us. There may be other humanitarian reasons but for us Christians that is the ultimate reason for our concern for our neighbor but especially the poor. Our neighbor is every human being on this planet today. We are therefore concerned with the present famine in Somalia. Yet our concern often may not go beyond saying a prayer for them and sending alms.

In the present dispensation we happen to be citizens of a country, the Philippines, and member of Filipino communities. These are the people and the neighbors we can directly and more easily help and for whom we have an obligation to help.

It could have been different but this is what it is. This is how the cookie crumbled. Those of us who are better able for some reason have an obligation to share not only with our immediate family or community but those in need in particular with the marginalized, the poor in our country and our community.

Who are the marginalized or the poor to whom we have an obligation? Obviously we are not talking of spiritual poverty. .We are talking of economic poverty but not only with legal poverty, namely with those earning below the poverty line.

The problem with using the poverty line between the haves and have-nots is that it is arbitrary and can be moved up or down by using different measures. For example instead of using food intake they may use measures of cost of transportation for setting the limits of sufficiency in welfare. (It is here that some people object to economic measures but want a measure of happiness which would be more germane but the difficulty is that happiness is difficult to measure because of considerable subjective parameters involved.)

Who are the poor? There are various categories of the poor. The lowest in the ranking are referred to as the poorest of the poor. Often the reason for their poverty is physical impairment such as being blind or lame or deaf. The best way to help them is a hand out so that personal alms giving or referral to the St. Vincent de Paul Society of a parish or other charitable institutions are the proper organizations to help them.

Then there are those who do not want to be helped out of their poverty. These are happy where they are. “Mababaw ang kaligayahan.” Then there are the entrepreneurial poor who can be helped with a little financing and access to technology.

These are the target of micro finance and much can be done and has been done to lift them out of poverty; first out of food poverty, then health needs, then education especially of the children, and finally decent housing. The nation has plenty of these people who with a little help can transform themselves and take advantage of opportunities.

Our experience in micro finance is that the poor are very honest and would pay their debts if they can. Sometime delays occur because they got sick or some other unexpected burden occurred but in the long run there is a very small percentage of less than 1% who will renege on a loan that was given without collateral.

The Lord said that the poor we will always have with us but we must make sure they can live decent lives if we can provide for them and to provide that all even the poor are able to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com>