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HelenMottee.com
A Gateway into Change
I used to think ‘being poor’ meant having a less than ‘nice’ house to live in and not being able to afford new clothes every season and a holiday at the end of each year. I guess that’s how a child growing up in a country like Australia can’t help but think. Being poor is having ‘less’, less than all the people you know with whom you can compare yourself.
But over the past five years, especially, the concept of poverty has evolved from being simply an end result of particular circumstances and choices, to a condition that births and perpetuates multiple paradigms of desperation, disempowerment and despair.
Poverty is not just ‘being poor’. It is not just an empty plate or tattered clothes.
Poverty is having to walk miles for water that I would think twice about giving my animals to drink back home;
Poverty is not being able to go to school because your family needs your labour to survive another day;
Poverty is dying of acute diarrhoea because your family couldn’t afford the medicine that would have saved you;
Poverty is being an IDP in the country you love, on the run from rebel or dictator armies;
Poverty is sending your teenage daughter to the city to ‘get a good job’ to support the family, and then finding out a year later that she is HIV positive, because the ‘good job’ had been a sinister cloak for something else;
Poverty is being manipulated and used by landlords, shopkeepers and bank tellers because you’ve never learnt to read;
Poverty is killing your new- born daughter because of the crippling expense of her future dowry price;
Poverty is being a refugee with no country, no identity and little hope of a future.
Poverty is the person who has no voice and no advocate to speak for him.
Our world is constantly reminding us of our ‘global village’ status.
Yet the divide between the Global North and South is ever widening.
It is a very long road between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’, the ‘them’ and the ‘us’. But many people are walking this road nonetheless and because of that, lives are affected and changed - and saved.
Can one person make a difference?
We invite you into the lives of people who walk this road and who are changing their world, the sphere of influence they inhabit and work in.
As we see, truly see, the person in front of us, so we can make the difference to that one person.
And what can we do?
Like a precious jewel, this question is faceted to be ever inviting us in to explore the infinite ways we can indeed walk this precious road.
Whatever our personality, gifts, heritage and even weaknesses, we can begin the journey, not of Self discovery, the seeming catch cry of our times, but of Selfless discovery, and we can promise you it will be the most satisfying and adventure- filled journey you will ever take.
We hope and pray this site will challenge and move you toward a new freedom to act, without guilt or fear, on behalf of those whose voices are not heard.
For some this may mean changing their worldview, for others it will compel them to examine and begin changing their lifestyle; for still others it will mean writing a poem, painting a picture, organising their first fundraiser.
For some it will mean beginning to search out information about orphanages for Aids babies in Thailand or the horrific plight of child soldiers in Uganda.
And for others it will be simply to “Go”, and finally take those hesitating steps out of the familiar boat of their lives and begin to walk on the unfamiliar and daunting waters of what has challenged them.
As a hero of ours has said, all that has ever been required of any of us is ‘a thimbleful of willingness’.
Are we willing to move away from the illusionary safety of our protected towers and environments and open our ears and eyes and hearts to a global village that is grossly imbalanced in its equation of who has and who hasn’t?
When our heart breaks because of a failed relationship it is painful.
But when our hearts can be broken for the suffering and the isolated and the unheard, then pain becomes the conduit through which we can begin the journey.