Agros Blog

I’ve just returned from an extended time in the field. Driving through some of the poorest areas of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala I was struck by the faces and stories of so many people without land, without jobs, and without hope. People begging on the roads, fathers abandoning their families to work in another country, single mothers risking everything because they don’t have anything.  There are so many thousands of families with children living in borrowed houses on borrowed land, with no security for tomorrow and often having to migrate to secure even just a little food for their children.

Even though I’ve been working with the rural poor for many years, it is still easy for me to feel overwhelmed, overtaken by the enormity of the sheer human need that exists. These are the questions that keep me up at night - How can Agros possibly make a difference given the scale of suffering that exists? How can we have an impact in the lives of these families? How can this impact go beyond the short term, but create tangible and lasting transformation?

Returning home from this trip I am clear that merely feeling overwhelmed by the needs of the poor is just not good enough. We MUST be willing to be moved by the plight of the poor, but I know that there is a more powerful question to ask:

“The needs that exist are clear - but what do these families hope for and dream about?”

Rather than enumerate a list of the needs that exist for the rural poor, at Agros we’ve learned over the years that it’s more powerful and effective to create tangible plans and development models that are based on the values and dreams of the people we serve. And further – we must also be able to articulate the dreams of Agros.

In the face of so much need, at Agros it is our dream to make a difference in the lives of these families that will last for generations; to enable villagers to obtain the security, permanence, and dignity of land ownership and economic opportunity within strong, healthy communities. We are dreaming about starting new projects so that more families will have security and opportunity. We are working hard so that children will have enough to eat, be able to attend school, and have the opportunity to dream their own dreams, with the tangible resources to fulfill them.

It is our dream that in the years to come thousands more rural families will be able to see their dreams realized with crops harvested, houses built, new businesses launched, food provided for their children, and the brutal cycles of poverty ended for good.

So I am back from this trip feeling the needs of the rural poor like never before – yet knowing that ‘need’ is just one part of the whole. We must be willing to weep over the needs of the poor, and then to go to work driven by the values, ambitions, and dreams of those we serve.