Poverty is a multi-faceted problem. We know that it adversely affects the behavior and mentality of people. Living in a slum environment makes people hungry, sick, unproductive, angry, desperate and hopeless. It keeps people ignorant and is the perfect breeding ground for crime and violence. Poverty strips people of their dignity and allows prejudice to breed as others tend to look down upon the poor with pity, shame or fear.

Gawad Kalinga believes that poverty is not an economic problem but rather, a behavioral one. The root cause of poverty is not a scarcity of resources but a deep and painful lack of caring and sharing in our society. We have focused on ourselves and our loved ones, forgetting that we are all connected to each other. In reality, we are one global family.  If we succeed and yet many of our people are suffering, we really have not succeeded at all. By leaving the poor behind and forgetting to be our brother’s keeper, we have not built a better world for the generations after us.