A Message from the Lead Facilitator
In the shadowed corners of our world, a child’s laughter is silenced by the cruel grip of hunger. A mother’s dreams dissolve into the dust of unrelenting despair. Entire communities cling to hope like a fragile thread fraying in the storm. There lies an unyielding truth that pierces the soul: our shared humanity demands action, not out of pity, but from the profound recognition that we are all woven from the same vulnerable cloth.
I remember my own young widowed mother as she would sit by a single lamp, stitching a torn school uniform while whispering a prayer that her daughter might wake up to bread and a chance to learn. That lamp, that uniform, that prayer—so small—represent the millions of quiet, urgent needs that go unseen every day.
In this quiet moment, if we allow ourselves to truly look, the weight of that truth becomes impossible to ignore. And in that stillness, a single question rises like a tide: What will we do with the power we held over the lives of others?
Givingtide answers with a quiet revolution. It affirms that prosperity is most secure when compassion is at its strongest—a modest yet mighty 1% of our abundance dedicated to the poorest 10%. This dedication transforms ledger entries into human stories of redemption.
Imagine a mother no longer lying awake in terror for her child’s next meal, her breath easing as hope returns. Imagine a father who no longer reaches for alcohol to dull the ache of not being able to pay his child’s school fees. Imagine a child, once denied hope, who now shouts with laughter, their hunger finally silenced. Imagine communities, once nameless to the powerful, finally free to plan, dream, and build with newfound dignity.
This is not mere charity, but our collective redemption. It is a sacred promise that no life is invisible, that another’s suffering diminishes us all. In wiping away tears, lifting hands, and forging futures, we find the deepest joy of being alive.
To withhold that 1% is to deny the light that could illuminate a billion shadowed lives. It is to turn away from faces that mirror our own vulnerabilities, and to forget that true wealth is measured not in vaults of gold but in the grief we prevent, the burdens we ease, and the humanity we reclaim. Extreme poverty is not just an economic anomaly but a moral crisis, a tear ripping apart the fabric of our shared humanity.
Give one percent. Make this the moment we mend the world. When we choose to give, we embody the profound truth famously spoken by Dr. Paul Farmer:
“The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.”
Givingtide asks us to choose boldly and without hesitation a world where every life matters equally—and where we finally act like it. This is our moment to rise: to rise above the shame of scarcity, to rise into the light and redeem our conscience. We declare resolutely that a child’s life in a distant village is as irreplaceable as our own, and that a mother’s struggle anywhere diminishes the dignity of mothers everywhere.
In lifting the poorest among us, we rise together toward a world where no one is left in the shadows, and every human story has room to shine.
With hope and resolve,
Dr. Abia Nzelu
Lead Facilitator
abia.nzelu@givingtide.org