What Can One Person Do?

Pray
Pray at church or home about working to end poverty. For example, take one poverty-related issue a week and pray for it.
Look up the information from a source such as the Human Development Report (www.undp.org/hdr), then pray for one country and issue a week (e.g., one week pray for the people of Tanzania, one-third of whom are HIV-positive, then the people of Pakistan, 57 percent of whom have not had a primary school education).Pray for the Global Call to Action, and the Christians and churches that are participating in it, that this will be an opportunity to renew the churches and serve those in distress.
Join the Micah Challenge Prayer series, which sends out prayer requests each Friday. (www.michchallenge.org)

Learn More
Pick one issue (such as maternal mortality), or one country, and spend an hour a week- or a day a month- reading from a book on that one issue.
Log on to one of the many websites about the Millennium Development Goals or the organizations that are working to make those goals a reality.

Start a book study group around a book concerning a poverty-related issue. You could even start a Christians Ending Poverty group in your own area.
Talk to church leaders about poverty-related issues and provide materials for them so they can preach about our unique opportunity to live as global Christians.

Attend a Christians Ending Poverty meeting. See our events calendar.
Read biographies of people who lived inspirational lives of service. They had the same number of hours in a day as you or I. How did they do it?

Raise awareness
Join Us in Planning an awareness event
Organize a “Micah Sunday” (www.micahchallenge.org) in your church. Endorse Micah Challenge by signing the Micah Call. Ask your Secretary or appropriate person to sign online.
Add a link to www.micahchallenge.org on your church website.

Give
Give 0.7 percent of your family’s income every year to reduce global poverty.
Donate to a charity or organization of your choice.  Your donation will help to coordinate international advocacy and resource national campaigns.
Have every household in your church collect pennies in jars (kids love doing this), then have a “penny harvest’ every six months with the proceeds being split between local outreach and international development.
Do a fund-raising activity and then let the fund-raisers decide where to send the money! Help them to find certain sites-like globalgiving.org-discuss considerations, and choose a project.  You could have all Sunday school classes do this and invite each class to make a presentation at church about their decision.
Join a fund-raising event such as Cropwalk or World Vision’s 30-hour famine.
Organize a seasonal giving project such as Operation Christmas Child through Samaritan Purse.

Connect
Organize a church work trip to a low-income country, connecting with the church there.
If you go to a developing country on business, take an extra day and find a place to visit that you wouldn’t ordinarily. You might want to write about it on the way home and share it with someone upon your return.

Take Action
Have a vigil or prayer service to pray for global leaders meeting to make economic decisions. Give people candles to take home and keep the light burning.
Wear a white armband and be prepared to answer people’s questions as to why you are doing so (www.whitearmband.org).
Tie a white ”armband” around your church to signify a public commitment to work to end poverty.

Advocate
Find out how your representative has voted and what his or her positions are on poverty-related issues.
As a symbol of your faith commitment to ending poverty, sign the Micah call (www.micahchallenge.org).
Join a mailing list and write a letter or an e-mail or telephone your representative once a month.
Arrange for church leaders in your town to meet with the local newspaper editorial board to discuss the campaign to end poverty.
Organize a letter writing campaign at your church. Go to www.bread.org