Gender and sustainable Human Development in Kenya, , 23rd October. Kenya Episcopal Conference. , Machakos

Abstract

Poverty can be defined as lack of essential goods and services. There are two main forms of poverty that have been identified i.e. absolute and relative poverty. Absolute poverty involves lack of both the physical and social needs. For instance, lack of adequate food, drinking water, clothing, shelter, education and health facilities. Each society has certain minimum standards of living that all its members have to achieve. Failure to achieve those standards constitutes poverty and this is what we refer to as relative poverty. This paper focuses on both forms of poverty. Poverty is usually a process that means that poor people become poor over time, for instance with land sub-division, low productivity, rising prices reduced government services, sickness, old age, retrenchment among other processes UNICEF, ODA & AMREF (1995). Similarly, reducing or eradicating poverty is a process which has to be achieved over time. Usually, governments in their development plans set a time frame within which they endeavour to complete programmes and projects aimed at reducing poverty. For instance, one or five years. The paper indicates that poverty is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that requires a multidimensional phenomenon that requires a multi-dimensional strategy in order to reduce it.