Local church strategies for poverty alleviation : an assessment of church-based projects using human scale development

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-142).This paper is an assessment of the viability of church-based poverty alleviation strategies. It hypothesises that churches have a valuable and significant role to play in the alleviation of poverty. The research looks at the activities of two churches within South Africa, that is, Jubilee Community Church in Cape Town, and Dihlabeng Christian Church in Clarens. The churches are then scrutinised as case studies in the light of Manfred Max-Neefs Human Scale Development theory. The theory of Human Scale Development is described. It is a radical alternative to mainstream neo-liberal approaches to poverty alleviation and development. There are three tenets of the theory: firstly, that development should involve the satisfaction of multiple needs simultaneously; secondly, that this is best conducted at the small or human scale; and thirdly, that dependency must be countered through the encouragement of self-reliance. Semi-structured interviews with key informants at the two churches provide the fieldwork data for this research. This data is then used to construct a thorough description of the churches' poverty alleviation programmes. Each church is discussed and the ten programmes at each are described in terms of their history and origin, their vision, and their core functions. The analysis of the data then occurs at two levels. Firstly, an assessment of the quantitative impact of the church-based projects is conducted. Secondly, there is a qualitative assessment of the churches as the data is combined with Max-Neefs three tenets of Human Scale Development. This analysis provides overwhelming evidence in support of the hypothesis. Churches are found to have a large impact on their communities. They are found to be building self-reliance as they satisfy multiple needs at the level of the human scale. The churches, therefore, are found to be valuable and significant role players in development