Herman Noordegraaf, Netherlands

Dear friends,

I am working as a researcher in the field of diakonia. I am especially doing research in the involvement of Christian communities in the field of poverty and social exclusion. I was and still am involved in a project of the Council of Churches in the Netherlands and the Organisation for Industrial Mission regarding laws involving the poor of the Netherlands. It is out of this involvement that I want to make some remarks about the meaning of the concept of human dignity for diaconal work.

What are the consequences of the point of view that every man/woman counts because she/he has the image of God. I am working together with people, building alliances. Our campaign "the poor side of the Netherlands" started in 1987 with a large conference in Amsterdam.

I. This conference was prepared together with people who belonged to the poor side of the Netherlands. After the conference, we built up a network of local and regional groups. We formulated a golden rule for this group: poor people themselves must take part in it. Otherwise it is : "for you, but without you". I think that this has to do with human dignity; if you work as a church together you work with people and take very seriously their life stories, experiences and visions so they can take part in the decisions about what the curches should do. To avoid painting too pleasant a picture, I must say that the paternalistic model is still very strong even in churches, yet this way of working has received recognition in practice within the churches.

Working at the grassroots with people serves as an example for other groups in society. So working together with people is relevant to churches and has a broad influence in society. Explanations ……..

II. In the networks from the local to national levels, a wide range of activities has been developed. I will try to classify these activities in a broad way, these activities had to do with:

1. material and immaterial support to individuals and families,
2. support to organisations by poor people themselves,
3. making churches, society and politics aware of the problem of poverty, and
4. taking part in the public debate on the role of pleading for the betterment of the position of the poor.

I want to give an example of what it means to take seriously the dignity of people by churches in these activities.

Before our campaign started, we had a discussion about the fact that local churches were giving financial and other material support to poor people. There were protests from organisations of the poor themselves. They said: if you take us seriously you must strive for a structural betterment of our position in society, for instance, the increasing of social benefits. So in our campaign we developed the formula "helping under protest". Of course, you should help people when they are in financial need, but you have to make it clear to society and to politicans that you have helped, but that it should not have been necessary that this was done. We didn't want to go back as churches in our history int he sense that peole may become dependant on favours. Not, it is the desire of people to have a salary or social benefits by which they can fully participate in society.

So what I want to say is that the concept of dignity has strong political consequences. And this leads me to the question of the welfare state. I think that churches should stand explicitly for the essence of the welfare state: that there is the provision of social security and social welfare, health provisions and so on, that give real social security and are based on collective arrangements and formulated in laws and rights. We should strive for that on a national scale, in the EU and, I should like to say, world-wide. I admit that adjustments to the welfare state are necessary, but I beleive that the basic concept of welfare state is still relevant, and I think mroe and more so.

III. Finally, a remark on how to take part in the public debate as agents of diakonia. My experience in the Netherlands is that churches can offer their own contribution to the debate. They are working intensively with people in real life situations . Churches should bring the experiences they have in this field to the public debate and make visible the life of the world of the poor. The mechanisms of denial of poverty by non-poor people are very strong. And so you should help to make visible the real world and the experience of poor people. Diaconia has to do with combat against making invisible or not seeing poverty. this is a necessary pre-requesite for meaningful discussion about measures towards betterment of the position of the poor. For if you want to solve a problem, you must first recognise that there is a problem.

So I am strongly pleading for a connection between different levels of working, action at the grassroots and participation in the public debate.