In the Fall of 2008, a team of five Warehouse core members traveled to southern Africa to explore ways that we can partner with African leaders to create transformation in the lives of Africans who are disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Our purpose is to explore the long-term viability of an Income Generating Activity (IGA) partnership with the local churches in Africa.

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What is an Income Generating Activity?

IGAs model the economic stability articulated by the “betterment to development” philosophy championed by Warehouse, and articulated by Robert Lupton, in chapter 7 of his book “Compassion, Justice, and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor.” In short, this philosophy of charity reminds us to never do for someone else what they can do for themselves. Or as one leader shared, “The purpose of aid is to get people off aid.”

What are you learning?

AIDS is a thief. We aim to put it to work.
It is one thing to be robbed of your health and face a grim future, but it is personal apocalypse to also be robbed of your dignity. And that is what we saw in Africa; people living with so much shame they would not even mention the word “AIDS” even as it destroyed their entire world. Where there was dignity before, there was now only shame. Dignity is God-given to all humans. We are created in His image, designed to relish the beauty of our souls and skins as we go through this world. When God came to live amongst us, he chose to witness this dignity-in-skin to us—Jesus, the God-Man. When Jesus suffered and died he offered “the restoration of all things” and amongst those things restored is human dignity. Jesus suffered all the indignities of crucifixion so that we might be restored to our original dignity. That restoration is not yet completed, so Warehouse 242 is engaged in the struggle for its completion in its partnership with SIM’s Hope for AIDS.

There are many links in the chain of suffering caused by HIV/AIDS in Africa and we could choose to apply efforts to any one of those links. Governments and large NGO’s have dealt with the immediate threat of the pandemic; providing access to anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs), condoms and HIV education. But we chose the link of poverty. Why? Because in so many ways poverty is one of the main, underlying sources of fuel to the fire of the pandemic in Africa. When you get sick with AIDS you miss work, when you miss work you lose income and can’t afford food, when you don’t have food you can’t take your ARVs and when you don’t take your ARVs death is near. By developing businesses and “income generating activities” people with HIV/AIDS are more likely to have the money they need for food, staving off the precipitous fall.

Investing in economic development provides a rare opportunity to address the immediate threat that HIV/AIDDS creates to lives and helps to restore stolen dignity. We were created to do work and somehow dignity creeps back into our souls when we receive our “daily bread” by the work of our hands, and not through charity.

We are passionate about reducing the suffering caused by HIV/AIDS in Africa and in restoring God-given dignity amongst its victims. By creating a partnership between Warehouse 242 and Christian leaders in Africa, we will advance the development of self-sustaining economic models, targeted at improving income levels in communities hardest hit by the preeminent healthcare crisis of our day.

For further reading

Wikipedia on The Bottom of the Pyramid
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C.K. Prahalad
The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier

To watch-and-learn

Paul Collier: 4 ways to improve the lives of the “bottom billion.”
Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world.