“I have witnessed extreme poverty and suffering before, but today, for me, it felt like it just didn’t stop. After a point, the weight of all the people and all the difficult circumstances made my whole body hurt. It was suffocating.”

I shared these words with our staff as I sat in my comfortable hotel room in Madagascar after day 2 of our recent trip. Members of the Crown team and members of our partner organization, Foundations for Farming, met in Antananarivo to visit the Program Pfumvudza Crown (PPC) Stewardship Center and to help PPC leaders host a 2-day conference combining practical farm training and biblical stewardship principles.

This was the fourth trip to Madagascar for some of our team. I don’t think anyone who was present will ever forget the pain Chuck brought home with him after his first trip. He was completely undone … and this from a man who has traveled and experienced what poverty looks like all over the world for more than 2 decades. My frame of reference headed into this trip consisted of the extreme poverty I witnessed first-hand in Haiti more than 10 years ago, and the devastating pictures and stories of children I’d served but was never able to meet face to face in Kenya and Uganda. I was prepared, yet still stunned.

Before I’d arrived, I’d learned that there could be as many as 5000 street children in Antananarivo. Sure enough, the first night, they were approaching our car from every side, asking for food, children the same ages as my own, nursing mothers, young girls 12-13 years old holding babies I prayed were their siblings not their children. We’d been warned that to stop and give anything out the window would result in a mob around our vehicle, so as painful as it was, we continued driving.

I’d heard the statistics – According to World Bank, Madagascar is the world’s 5th largest

island and is endowed with considerable natural resources and unparalleled biodiversity. However, its population, estimated at 30.3 million in 2023, faces a poverty rate of 80.7%, $2.15 per person per day.

The next morning, as we drove to our destination a couple of hours outside of Tana (the locals’ name for Antananarivo) I understood the statistics and all that had been described to me.

In the city, it felt like all 4 million of the population were out in the street, trying to do anything they could to sell something or make something or come up with something of value. There are no traffic rules: no lanes, no stop signs, no traffic lights, just complete chaos and regular hours-long traffic jams. The taxi system consists of what appeared to be vehicles meant for 15-20 people transporting more like 40-50 people at a time.

I’d heard even the dogs are hungry and that, too, proved to be accurate. I looked out my window and watched a puppy and a chicken fight hard for a scrap of food on the side of the road.

The poverty isn’t just physical – its spiritual as well. Idol worship, cultic rituals and exhuming bodies for worship of the dead are among some of the common religious practices. One of the girls we interviewed even shared that the more she went to church, the worse her circumstances got to the point that her husband told her to stop going to church and start worshiping idols. She refused. A few months later she was one of the first trainers selected to go to Zimbabwe to be trained in the PPC program and it transformed her life. She found new faith in Christ, hope overcame depression, and she returned home to become one of the most passionate trainers at PPC. Her husband has also accepted Christ and now serves within their church.

Our drive to our destination continued … the further we got from the city, the more I could breathe. The poverty was still just as real, but the devastation was now strangely contrasted by the beauty of the land – and there’s so much of it! I was beginning to see why our solution just might work.

A couple of members of our team who have traveled throughout Africa more than me commented that a lot of times with poverty, despondency sets in, and you’ll find people unable to take any sort of action. This is not what we found in Madagascar. The people are incredibly hardworking, busy, moving from place to place, trying to be resourceful … if only they had the right tools in their hands, some sort of equipping.

One of the core principles we teach is that we all have something, based on The Widow’s Oil in 2 Kings 4. In Madagascar, they have land, a desire to work hard to create a better future for their nation, and a spiritual hunger.

At the PPC Stewardship Center trainers learn a no plowing, no burning, conservation agriculture solution for turning small scale farms into commercial farms. They are simultaneously equipped with God’s stewardship principles through Crown’s African Money Map and/or Money Map Game. They are taught that God owns it all and we are just his managers. Before starting with any practical farm activity, trainers kneel and pray and commit to faithfully do their part while trusting God with the results. And they are equipped with the biblical financial principles they need to lift themselves, their families, and their communities out of poverty.

In a world where people are growing weary of throwing endless resources at complex problems with unsatisfactory results, this is my takeaway. Poverty is massively complex. It’s not about discovering a new, simple answer. It’s about discerning between effective and ineffective solutions. We’ve developed an effective solution that is working and transforming the lives of those it reaches. We heard their stories over and over again and will be sharing them with you in the months ahead. In Madagascar, God has opened the doors for the right leaders to be in place at the right time with the right solutions to truly be able to affect change across the nation … a change that is desperately needed. Thank you for your participation and partnership with us in critical projects like this.

For more information about our initiatives in Madagascar, click here.