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Generous Christians are changing the world. Habitat for Humanity will soon be the largest private house builder in the world. They have already built 60,000 houses for the poor around the globe. World Relief Corporation has resettled over 125,000 refugees. Christian microloan organizations have made hundreds of thousands of small loans to very poor people.

Opportunity International alone will make loans to one million families in the next five years. On average, each loan costs about $500, which includes training costs, and these loans are repaid with interest. Often a loan lifts the standard of living for a family of five by 50 percent within one year.

Christians today have a total annual income of over $10 trillion. Let's suppose the Christians of the world gave just 1 percent of their income for microloans of $500, the average loan needed to help a poor family of five. Assuming the efficiency ratio of Opportunity International, it would take just one year to improve dramatically the lot of the poorest one billion, often by 50 percent.

I'll never forget Mrs. Kumar's joyous, confident smile. She lives in a tiny one-room house in a poor village in South India near Bangalore. A couple of years ago the Bridge Foundation (a Christian microloan organization funded by Opportunity International) gave her and her husband, Vijay, a small loan of $219. They purchased a small, inexpensive sound system and a bicycle. With this equipment, the Kumars are able to provide the sound system for weddings, funerals, and other celebrations for poor villages in several surrounding communities. They now own three sound systems and hire a couple of employees.

Mrs. Kumar proudly showed me the new lighting equipment and the bicycle loaded down with their third sound system. Their little one-room cement house with a thatched roof has no indoor plumbing, but I could see many improvements. Family income had grown significantly. Most important, the Kumars had new dignity, hope, and confidence.

Most of the poor want to earn their own way. They have enormous social capital: intact families, a desire to work, pride, and integrity. But, like the Kumars, they need some help.

Globally, we are making progress. In 1970, 35 percent of all people in developing countries were chronically malnourished. Today that figure has dropped to 20 percent. In 1980, only 20 percent of the children in developing nations received immunization for typical childhood diseases; today—thanks in part to Bread for the World's advocacy work to set in place a U.S.-funded Child Survival Fund—80 percent do.

There is still a lot to do. About 34,000 children die every day of hunger and preventable diseases; almost one person out of four in our world—1.3 billion people—lives in grinding poverty, struggling to survive, the World Bank says, on a dollar a day; 1.45 billion have no access to health services; and 1.33 billion lack safe water.

According to the United Nations, it would cost only $30-$40 billion a year to provide all people in developing countries with basic education, health care, and clean water—the same amount spent on golf every year.

I think many more American Christians would find a way to give $500 this year to help a poor family with a small loan if they could look into the eyes of Mrs. Kumar and see her joy and gratitude. I believe many more Christians want to be generous—if they can discover successful programs that really work. And if they can take concrete, doable steps without the feeling they must solve all the problems of 1.3 billion poor people.

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September 7 1998, Vol. 42, No. 10