Simon Cox Blog: Releasing Resources: Diaspora & Dollars

Friday 25 January 2019

Releasing Resources: Diaspora & Dollars

Affirmed and motivated, the diaspora Christians can be major contributors in supporting the global mission enterprise.

“That is impossible. We have limited resources.”

These are words I hear quite frequently in response to the challenge for national churches of low to middle-income countries to accelerate their participation in global missions.

It is unfortunate that many vibrant churches feel limited by funding, when it need not be so. The fact is, there exists a flow of resources found in one of their greatest exports – ordinary people – migrant workers. So abundant is this resource that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) highlights the role of remittances.

Additionally,according to IOM, migrants contributed 6.7 trillion U.S. dollars to the global GDP in 2015—a share of 9.4% of the total global GDP that year.” It just needs to be released and mobilized.

In April 2018, the World Bank reported figures from 2017 with top remittance recipients being India ($69 billion), China ($64 billion), the Philippines ($33 billion), Mexico ($31 billion), Nigeria ($22 billion), and Egypt ($20 billion).

In October 2018, IOM’s Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) released the Global Migration Indicators Report 2018, summarizing key global migration trends based on the latest statistics. It reported that in 2015 there were 150.3 million migrant workers scanned and documented, and that in 2017, “$466 billion remittances were sent to low and middle – countries in 2017. This [being] more than three times the size of official development assistance.”

While diaspora workers work and live in their receiving countries, spending and paying taxes towards stimulating host economies, they send dollars home to aid families and communities, including religious institutions.

We must dispel the ...