I have spent the last decade studying both personally and academically all areas of social justice. Here is a list of some of my favorite resources including fictional, non-fiction, and academic.

TedTalks + YOUTUBE VIDEOS

“Poverty isn’t a lack of character, it’s a lack of cash.”

“Ideas can and do change the world,” says historian Rutger Bregman, sharing his case for a provocative one: guaranteed basic income. Learn more about the idea’s 500-year history and a forgotten modern experiment where it actually worked — and imagine how much energy and talent we would unleash if we got rid of poverty once and for all.

The hidden reason for poverty the world needs to address now.

Collective compassion has meant an overall decrease in global poverty since the 1980s, says civil rights lawyer Gary Haugen. Yet for all the world’s aid money, there’s a pervasive hidden problem keeping poverty alive. Haugen reveals the dark underlying cause we must recognize and act on now.

“Ending Poverty: How Health and Innovation Can Lead the Way.”

“By 2030, we will be the first generation in human history to end extreme poverty,” shared World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim at the Stanford Global Development and Poverty Initiative’s inaugural “Shared Prosperity and Health” conference on October 29, 2015. During his keynote, Kim argued that both individuals and society as a whole benefit when public and private actors invest in global health and development.

SERIES + STUDY GUIDES

Poverty CURE

A six-part series that explores the foundations of human flourishing and will change absolutely everything about how you approach charity and missions.

WHEN HELPING HURTS

“When Helping Hurts is a rallying cry for the Church that simultaneously convicts and compels. Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert set out to awaken American Christians to the stark contrast between their beach vacations and the grinding poverty in foreign slums. However, they don’t intend to stop at motivating just any action. They also provide a framework for understanding when “helping” is counterproductive  and how to make a real difference by “walking with the poor in humble relationships.”

DOCUMENTARIES + FILMS

Poverty INC

The West has positioned itself as the protagonist of development, giving rise to a vast multi-billion dollar poverty industry — the business of doing good has never been better. Yet the results have been mixed, in some cases even catastrophic, and leaders in the developing world are growing increasingly vocal in calling for change. Drawing from over 200 interviews filmed in 20 countries, Poverty, Inc. unearths an uncomfortable side of charity we can no longer ignore. 

From TOMs Shoes to international adoptions, from solar panels to U.S. agricultural subsidies, the film challenges each of us to ask the tough question: Could I be part of the problem?

THE TRUE COST

Filmed in countries all over the world, from the brightest runways to the darkest slums, and featuring interviews with the world’s leading influencers including Stella McCartney, Livia Firth and Vandana Shiva, The True Cost is an unprecedented project that invites us on an eye opening journey around the world and into the lives of the many people and places behind our clothes.

BOOKS + LITERATURE

Creating a World Without Poverty, Muhammad Yunus

In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe. But traditional capitalism has been unable to solve problems like inequality and poverty. In Muhammad Yunus’ groundbreaking sequel to Banker to the Poor, he outlines the concept of social business — business where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today’s most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet. Creating a World Without Poverty reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already underway.

Toxic Charity, Robert P Lupton

Veteran urban activist Robert Lupton reveals the shockingly toxic effects that modern charity has upon the very people meant to benefit from it. Toxic Charity provides proven new models for charitable groups who want to help—not sabotage—those whom they desire to serve. Lupton, the founder of FCS Urban Ministries (Focused Community Strategies) in Atlanta, the voice of the Urban Perspectives newsletter, and the author of Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, has been at the forefront of urban ministry activism for forty years. Now, in the vein of Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty, Richard Stearns’s The Hole in Our Gospel, and Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart, his groundbreaking Toxic Charity shows us how to start serving needy and impoverished members of our communities in a way that will lead to lasting, real-world change.