If you care to read you will find a vignette about a family that foregoes a meal to be able to afford satellite television in the evening. That should not inure us to those caught in starvation by weather or war, but it should caution us not to make assumptions about the nature of poverty.

"The sheer number of business owners among the poor is impressive."

"There are more than a billion people who survive off of the earnings of their own farm or business. We must be impressed by their resilience. But these small businesses will probably not pave the way for a massive exit from poverty."

"The businesses run by the poor are also generally unprofitable, which may well explain why giving them a loan to start a new business does not lead to a drastic improvement in their welfare."

"Many business suffer from the "empty shelf" problem: a space a created for a shop, but no inventory fills the shelves. Even a small investment in more inventory will have large marginal returns, but once the shelves are full, the business has no further scope to grow."

"Despite initial large returns to small investments, many small businesses hit at point at which a substantial capital investment is needed in order to continue growing. However, few people are willing to give such large loans to the poor."

"Because of this trap, the poor may not invest as much (both money but also emotions and intellectual energy) into their businesses because they know that their business will always remain too small to make real money."

"Often, the enterprises of the poor seem more a way to buy a job when more conventional employment opportunities are not available than a reflection of a particular entrepreneurial urge."

"One of the most common dreams of the poor is that their children become government workers - a stable, though not always exciting, job."

from CHAPTER 9 "Reluctant Entrepreneurs"

Make the effort or not, the choice is yours. On a different note entirely, Objectivism clearly explains the metaphysical and epistemological reasons why charity is problematic at best. It is famous (if I am correct) that President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill to send federal funds to farmers in Texas wiped out by a flood. Others helped instead. The farmers recovered, apparently. Charity is not always so successful.