In its annual ritual of deciding who mattered most, TIME Magazine this year picked the world's richest couple and its most famous rock star—Bill and Melinda Gates, and Bono of U2, respectively. A cynic might conclude that TIME knows how to sell magazines, but the rationale given for the choice is worthy of note.

Editor Jim Kelly said the immense natural disasters of the preceding year (Tsunami, Katrina, earthquakes, etc.), got him to thinking about the nature of giving, and...

...what makes for temporary relief vs. lasting change. Sudden disasters get the big headlines, but day after day other tragedies of avoidable dimensions unfold: the one child who dies of malaria in Africa every 29 seconds, the one person who is infected with HIV/AIDS every 6.4 seconds, the 8 million who die every year because they are too poor to stay alive.

Kelly is right to look beyond the disasters—terrible as they were—to the chronic problems of disease and poverty. An estimated 250,000 died in the tsunami of December 26, 2004, a few more than 1,000 from hurricane Katrina. In Africa, people die of Malaria at the rate of four tsunamis a year, from HIV/AIDS at the rate of a tsunami every month. But worldwide poverty beats them all: 8 million per year (the number Kelly cites) is the equivalent of a tsunami-sized disaster every eleven days.

Statistics don't grab the heart like photos of New Orleans flooding, and it is callous to compare the suffering of some to the suffering of others. Yet it remains that 1.2 billion human beings subsist in our world on less than one US dollar per person per day. That statistic is a euphemism for disease, despair, and death worldwide.

Which is why it is good that Bono uses his star power to advance the cause of poverty alleviation, and the Gates their billions to infuse urgency into world health. Cheers for them.

Still, I wonder... does associating fame and fortune with fighting poverty make the situation clear, or is "making debt reduction sexy" (as TIME puts it) a flawed strategy? A year from now, how many of Bono's ONE Campaign wristbands to "make poverty history" will still be around? What happens when poverty-as-pop-culture looses sizzle and becomes yesterday's cause du jour?

The Gates Foundation money will be around a long time, that’s for sure. But money has failed repeatedly to make a dent in poverty. Bruce Wilkinson, whose bestseller Prayer of Jabez sold an estimated 13 million copies, took some of the profit and spent it in Africa. He is only the latest to rush to the rescue, flashing his wad and throwing his weight around, only to abandon the cause in frustration. What’s wrong with this picture?

Basically, it is upside down. Poverty will not yield to “top down” solutions, however well intended and well funded they may be. Pouring in money causes as many problems as it solves. A “bottom up” approach is needed, which begins from a fundamentally different starting point.

Poverty cannot be solved like a disease—like polio, smallpox, or leprosy, which have been virtually eradicated by research and immunization programs. Poverty is not a thing, a virus or microbe. The reality of which we speak when we refer to poverty is people—human beings, in all their complexity—who happen to be poor.

People who are poor are not less than human on account of poverty. They think, feel, choose, and long for dignity and security, as we all do. To treat poverty as a project demeans the very people we mean to help—which explains the resistance and resentment Wilkinson ran into. Simply put, nobody likes somebody else telling them how to solve their problems.

But to work with people who are poor as human beings, with all the enormous intrinsic capabilities this implies, is the great need, and the best reason to believe that suffering, misery and poverty can be overcome. Which brings me to the point.

The real heroes in the war on poverty are not people who want to help, but people who are poor. They will never fly on a personal jet to exotic locations or lobby politicians for a few million more, but they cope, care, and overcome their terrible circumstances day after day. And the majority of these are women.

The so-called feminization of poverty is well documented. Of poor adults worldwide, 60% to 70% are women. They have less access to education, and earn half what men make. They do the bulk of physical labor but are last to be fed. They are often abused, divorced, or simply abandoned, left to feed the children, tend the garden, and somehow survive.

Women die at higher rates than men due to complications of childbearing. They are targets for human trafficking. In Africa, over half of those infected with HIV/AIDS are women and children. Most have no legal or traditional rights to land or other assets. They are often trapped in a vicious circle of cultural taboos, social traditions, and sheer want.

It is not far from reality to say that poverty is a problem of the mistreatment of women and children.

Yet, women are the single most important factor in bringing change to impoverished communities, a reality now recognized by nearly all agencies, Christian and otherwise, who work with the poor. Most micro-economic development (MED) programs, for example, are designed around women. Money given to men is often squandered. Bono never fails to remind us that tribal chiefs, dictators, and corrupt businessmen have stolen billions of dollars from well meaning aid organizations. Loaned to women with children, money gets invested, turned to profit, and repaid on schedule.

In the work of my own organization, helping communities help themselves, 75% of those serving their neighbors as 'medical ambassadors' are women—and they do it as volunteers, because they long for their own children and their friends to live, and to know a better life.

With due respect for the Gates and Bono, who are doing very well while doing as much good as they can, we ought to remember that generals plot grand strategies and politicians write checks, but front-line solders shed blood and bring home the victory. In the trenches where the struggle to survive poverty goes on day after miserable day, the troops are mainly women.

These are the real heroes.

'Chronicles' Conk Out 'Kong' on New Year's Weekend

"Right now, we believe we'll outdistance King Kong," said Chuck Viane, Buena Vista's head of distribution. "The next target for us is catching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and hopefully outperforming it. The next two weekends I believe will be really good. I think there's a lot of gross still left in this movie."

Box Office Mojo

The miracle that wasn't. It will take more than a mantra to end suffering in Africa

Bruce Wilkinson not only believes in miracles but thinks we should expect them, and he wrote a small book on the subject—The Prayer of Jabez—that made him wealthy. With his wealth he launched Dream for Africa, a Christian organization focused on solving problems of AIDS, orphans, poverty and hunger in Africa. Making Swaziland his base of operation, he aimed to put 10,000 orphans in group homes with Swazi supervisors. The homes, grouped in mini-villages of 50-some homes, would also function as a bed-and-breakfast sites where tourists could stay for $500 a week—combining charity and vacation. Wilkinson's plan ultimately failed, according to the Wall Street Journal (December 19), because the Swazis saw his efforts as one more form of Western colonialism. He had asked the king of Swaziland for a 99-year lease on 32,500 acres near two of the country's best game reserves, in addition to control over the game parks. The American ambassador to Swaziland had advised Wilkinson against taking the orphans out of their native villages and placing them in an alien environment. Wilkinson eventually resigned from the organization he had established. He says, "Somewhere in this it's got to be all right to attempt a vision that didn't work and not to make it an overwhelming failure."

The Christian Century

"For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!" pleads Kenyan Economist James Shikwati. He insists that well intended but carelessly conceived aid often does more harm than good.

SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags ...

Shikwati: ... and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany -- for three times the price. That's insanity ...

SPIEGEL: ... and hopefully an exception.

Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They're in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria's textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.

Der Spiegel

For those who stay up nights worrying that Bono and the Gateses self esteem, this week's TIME Magazine will put your fears to rest

Patty Stonsifer and Bill Gates Senior head the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates Senior is described as the one who keeps the foundation "humble and mindful".

Whenever the staff congratulates itself on a particularly positive media story, (Bill Gates) Senior loudly complains that the focus should have been on the good works the foundation supports, not the foundation or its founders. "If you spend a lot of time saying, 'Hey, look at me," people resent it," he told me in an interview at the foundation. "I resent it."

TIME Magazine

Community Health Evangelism Addresses the root causes of poverty

Medical Ambassadors International (MAI) is the principal developer of a distinctive approach to working with people who are poor called Community Health Evangelism (CHE).

In CHE, trained volunteers become agents of change in their own communities, disseminating knowledge home to home on disease prevention, infant care, sanitation, nutrition, and agriculture, and organizing income generating enterprises, with the gospel an integral and essential component.

Research shows this people-centered approach dramatically reduces infant mortality and malnutrition, improves enterprise and grows dynamic churches, all with local leadership. CHE Is extremely cost-effective and highly adaptable. Successful programs exist in 71 countries.

Based in Modesto, California, MAI has trained over 20,000 community volunteers world wide, and staff from over 350 organizations that use CHE methods and materials. MAI helps people who are poor gain capacity to help themselves, and dignity as human beings created in the image of God.

For more information go to www.medicalambassadors.org

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