Breaking the Cycle of Poverty
Sarah Check of Floresta gave an insightful and
challenging presentation Jan 20th at Solana Beach
Presbyterian. Her subject was “Environmental
Destruction and its Connection to Poverty” but it was about so much more than that.
Sarah stressed the need to address not just charity,
but to go beyond that to creative support through
development assistance and through advocacy. It
was the creative programs providing development
assistance that Sarah concentrated on .
Sarah’s interactive and engaging presentation broke
down the subject of poverty into a complicated web
of root causes. Sarah emphasized the need to
understand and then respond to the root causes,
and not in a vacuum but as a whole. Sarah’s example
of projects created by Floresta showed how we can
encourage and empower those who personally battle
to overcome the effects of poverty, supporting them
in attacking root causes, encouraging creative
responses using their own community’s rich talents
and achieving a break in the poverty cycle. Sarah
closed with a reading from Isaiah 41:17-20, giving
clear personal witness to God’s goodness in restoring
His creation.
