The roots of poverty and overcoming it

By Fr. Shay Cullen, Founder since 1974

Juan dela Cruz and 20 of his neighbors in a remote village in southern Mindanao are rejoicing. They sell their mangoes every year to an ethical enterprise and receive high prices from them; they also receive additional payments and other benefits. Before, traders rejected their mangoes because these were too small. Then, the enterprise bought almost all of their mangoes at fair prices and turned them into dried mangoes. The farmers then invested their bonus earnings in small enterprises like piggeries, chicken farms and sari-sari stores, helping them overcome their poverty.

What is urgently needed in countries like the Philippines — where inequality is great — is practicing fair trade principles. Implementing these principles helps people organize themselves into farmers’ associations and secure fair prices for their products. Together, they protect the environment, help educate people, ban child labor, go organic, and promote a healthy lifestyle and human rights. To end social injustice, government officials must follow fair trade principles and serve the people, not exploit them. To help people overcome poverty and hunger, we need to help them empower themselves; overcome their fears, lack of self-confidence and feelings of inferiority; and stand for social injustice and against exploitation.

The poor must stop their dependence on politicians for favors and financial assistance, since, in fact, the services of these officials are paid for by taxes. If development for the poor and an end to inequality are to be real and meaningful, there has to be a strong and well-organized national movement for social and economic justice that challenges the rich to control their greed for unlimited personal and corporate growth and profits, and redirects themselves to working for meaningful human development and espousing social responsibility.

Government officials must be persuaded to serve the people, not the interests of powerful corporations. Together with the people, the government and rich, socially responsible corporations can work together and build a more just society. Their goal must be to uplift more than 17.5 million Filipinos out of humiliating and crushing poverty and hopelessness.

There are good rich people who work for social transformation and to end poverty and hunger. But they are not enough. For some, national transformation and an end to poverty are considered an unreachable ideal or hopeless dream, because it calls on the rich to share their wealth with the poor in a sustainable way. But will they have the necessary change of mind and heart for this?

In the New Testament, when a rich young man was challenged by Jesus of Nazareth to share his riches with the poor, but cannot, Jesus said: “It is easier for a camel (or rope) to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” Many rich people worship money, and they don’t believe in a God that is unselfish love, compassion, justice and truth personified.

Blessed are the rich and all who have feelings of concern, understanding and solidarity with the poor and dedicate their wealth and even their lives to do good and end human suffering. There are an estimated 12,800 millionaires and 12 billionaires in the Philippines and 70 individuals with a net worth of at least $100 million, according to a Henley & Partners Private Wealth Migration report in 2025. If even a few of them focus on alleviating poverty, they could save millions of people from great hunger and suffering. Their lives would be worthwhile and have great value if they do so.

Beyond the Philippines, there are 5 billion people in the developing world suffering hunger without access to humanitarian aid, like those in Sudan. Approximately another 575 million people will suffer extreme poverty by 2030, the year the United Nations and rich nations said poverty would be eradicated. These are just empty promises. If every empty promise were a sack of rice, we could feed the world.

In 2024, there were about 2.59 million Filipinos unemployed and unable to feed their families. By August 2025, there were 2.03 million unemployed, the Philippine Statistics Authority said. A Social Weather Stations survey in September 2025 said 41 percent of Filipino families rated themselves “food-poor,” or unable to eat a full, healthy meal a day. The OCTA Research group has said in a report that approximately 11.3 million Filipino families suffered from food poverty. A UN Children’s Fund report from 2024/2025 revealed that around 18 percent (or 2 million) children in the Philippines suffered from severe food poverty, often eating primarily starch with little or no protein. That’s where “pag-pag” food comes in to help. The leftovers from the dining plates of the rich in fine restaurants are collected, recycled, and recooked and shared with the hungry poor.

The cause of poverty and hunger lies in the political structure of the country, where the super rich virtually hold the electoral process captive. A few hundred families are managing a nation of 115.8 million people. But there is always hope. Enough rich people might have a change of mind and heart, and work for the common good and dedicate themselves and their wealth to serving humanity, like Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Another source of change is possible by the emergence of a new generation of educated young people committed to human rights and social justice, and filled with compassion for the poor. These people are moved by the hunger, social injustice and inequality plaguing more than 17.5 million impoverished Filipinos. They want to change it, but how?

As David Boyd, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, said: “Powerful interconnected business and political elites — the diesel mafia — are still becoming wealthy from the existing system. Dislodging this requires a huge grassroots movement using tools like human rights and public protest, and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers.”

Filipinos’ peaceful grassroots movement for social justice and human rights is growing as hundreds of brave, socially committed, environment- and human rights-focused Filipinos sacrifice themselves in the service of the poor. They are inspiring many more and keeping alive the faith by doing good and opposing wrongdoing against the poor, believing in Jesus of Nazareth that they can and will win. With that kind of faith, how can they fail in due time to change the Philippines for the better?