December 2019 | Vol. 19 Iss. 12
FREE POVERTY HASN’T RETIRED. WHY SHOULD HE?
By Alison Brimley | a.brimley@mycityjournals.com
H
e was a Fulbright Scholar in Cairo. He’s studied 16 languages and can converse in six. He’s authored eight books and dozens of articles, traveled the equivalent of 38 times the circumference of the globe and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 65. He’s the most interesting man trying to save the world. Dr. James Mayfield, who will turn 85 this month, is co-founder of CHOICE Humanitarian. CHOICE is a nonprofit located in West Jordan whose goal is to eliminate extreme poverty across the world. Extreme poverty, as defined by the World Bank, means that an individual lives on less than $1.90 per day. That sum doesn’t just cover food and shelter but everything--utilities, transportation, internet and more. To put it in perspective, consider that in the United States, “poverty” is defined as living on less than $34 per day. Chances are you live on much more per day than you realize. Eliminating extreme poverty is no small goal, considering that 736 million people across the world fall into that category. But CHOICE works one village at a time. And in many villages, they’ve achieved it.
REFINING THE EXPEDITION MODEL
CHOICE was preceded by another organization, the Andean Children’s Foundation, started by dentist Tim Evans with the goal of bringing clean water to Peruvian villages. Mayfield, then a University of Utah political science professor and expert on village development, joined forces with Evans in 1983. Though CHOICE started with a focus on giving families opportunities to take humanitarian expeditions, they’ve since moved away from that model. It doesn’t allow them to
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Jim Mayfield with Bishnu Adhikari, former in-country director of CHOICE Nepal. (Courtesy of CHOICE Humanitarian)
be most effective. The term “voluntourism” has a bad rap. If you want to do some good for an overseas community living in poverty, many say, don’t take a humanitarian trip. Take the chunk of change you would have spent on a plane ticket and send it directly to
those who need it. In the early years of CHOICE’s operation, Mayfield saw another flaw in the expedition system: Many of the projects completed eventually failed because they were not sustainable. If a volunteer group built a pump or a school, eventually, “the pump wouldn’t Continued page 5
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