A billion people around the world live in extreme poverty. But addressing this problem is both essential and sizable. What can one person do? What can even one generation do? Over the past several decades, extraordinary efforts have been made in the areas of charity and aid. Unfortunately, these efforts have not always produced the desired effects. As PovertyCure began filming and researching, they found story after story where charity was actually hurting the very poor it was intended to help. They came to wonder whether we are truly helping people become self-sustaining or if we have created a poverty industry in which the poor stay poor and the rich get hipper.

Sometimes our good intentions have unintended consequences. This is why it is not enough to have a heart for the poor; we must use our minds to unite our desire to help others with our knowledge of the social, economic, political, and spiritual foundations of human flourishing. We need to unsimplify poverty and earnestly reflect on how we go about addressing these problems.

In this section we will analyze the two major forms of international development assistance: private charity and government-to-government foreign aid. We will hear what the indigenous leaders and recipients of such assistance have to say about it—the good, the bad, and the ugly.