What does it really mean to live on a dollar a day? Abiy Hailu, head of our Ethiopia programme, faces up to the reality behind the statistics.
You do not need to go far to find the poor in Ethiopia – they are all around.
Begging for their survival on the streets and at traffic lights in the capital, Addis Ababa: the sick, the elderly, the disabled, mothers with children. Sleeping rough out in the open, through heavy rain and cold.
The poor of the Addis streets test your conscience. Whether to give alms and, if so, to whom, is a decision you make every day. But it is never a comfortable one.
What strikes me about these people is their anonymity. I wonder sometimes whether they are even part of the United Nations poverty statistics – the ones that tell us officially how many people are trying to get by on less than a dollar a day.
I do not know how they cope with life. How do they get treatment when they are ill? Do they even have someone to bury them when they die?
Yet they are people like you and me. And they are everywhere. I have been tempted to find out more about them. What aspirations do they have? How did they get into the condition they are in? Do they want to break out and take their destiny into their own hands?
The anonymous poor
These are the ‘anonymous poor.’ But the story of poverty does not end here. There are also those with a roof over their heads who are otherwise almost equally badly off. They may try to keep their dignity and refrain from begging, but the odds are against them.
Some are my own close family members. They live in poor accommodation, in poor neighbourhoods. Just getting to their homes along unlit, muddy tracks in the rainy season and in the evenings is a hazardous undertaking.
The poor of the Addis streets test your conscience.
Ato Fanta, 75, is a retired security guard from one such neighbourhood. He and his wife have two daughters and many grandchildren. They also have custody of children from their sons who have died. Whenever I visit the Fanta family, there are no fewer than seven or eight mouths to feed.
Ato Fanta has only a small pension, about 200 birr (£12.50) per month, and the contribution from the two working children (who have their own families) is negligible.
How do they cope with so little income? How do they afford school books and uniforms, or get treatment when they fall ill? And how, despite their deprivation, do they not only appreciate visits, but also receive me with generosity?
Average income: 15 pence a day
For the Fanta family, an income of a dollar a day would actually mean a step up in the world. For seven of them, that would be $7 a day, or about £4 – a very respectable income.
I doubt whether the Fanta family attain even a third of this in a country where the average income is only $100 a year – barely 15 pence a day.
Given that so many families are living in such poverty you may wonder whether aid is working at all. But Christian Aid’s partners are making a significant difference in the communities in which they work.
In the countryside they are helping strengthen people’s livelihoods and providing safe drinking water. Household hygiene and therefore health are improving dramatically because of a reduction in water-borne diseases.
They are also helping farmers to manage their environment better through water and soil conservation. More fertile soil is producing better crops and thus increased income.
But what those anonymous faces on the streets of Addis tell me is that we have such a long way to go. Because, for the thousands of families we are lifting out of poverty, there are thousands more that we have yet to reach.
More than money
What is needed is not just money, although that would help.
I believe we also need to awaken much more interest among the general public in the plight of the poor in countries such as Ethiopia.
The more interest there is, the more people can appreciate that we are all citizens of one world, with the sense of solidarity and equal rights and responsibilities that entails. Only then might we see the levels of giving, praying and campaigning for change which Ethiopia’s poorest people so need.