Mal Fletcher comments

By releasing ourselves from the bondage of perpetual consumption, we can free up resources to help the poor - at home and abroad. We can adopt what might be called a more deliberately and strategically generous lifestyle.

Such a lifestyle begins with a choice to live more simply. Excessive comfort often breeds a mentality of reliance on things, where material possessions start to 'own' us.

Even before recession took hold, people in various sections of society were looking for ways to live more frugally; because of concerns for the environment and a desire to make a difference to issues of financial inequity.

Groups like the 'Frugalistas' - mainly middle class women who've taken to growing their own food, recycling clothing and reducing their carbon footprint - are helping to free resources for distribution to the less fortunate.

A simpler lifestyle involves a decision to adopt an attitude of contentment. This wasn't a popular concept during the years of our economic boom, where the major aspiration was to consume as much and as quickly as possible.

Yet given our present circumstance many people are rediscovering the joy and release of being grateful for what we still have, when our natural tendency may be to focus on what we've lost or to covet what belongs to someone else.

A simpler lifestyle also involves what I like to call giving dangerously. I am by no means a master of this, but it means going beyond the call of duty in our support of good causes, aid organisations and people in need.

Giving dangerously also means releasing resources in a very strategic way, with clear long-term goals. If we give only in response to the latest headlines, when the media moves on to another story, the money dries up.

Giving time can be just as value-adding as donating money - and it's more readily available in an economic downturn. A good friend has adopted what he calls the 'fifteen minutes of inconvenience' principle. He deliberately gives up fifteen minutes each day to do something which inconveniences him but benefits others in the community.

Volunteering time to help the work of NGOs or faith-based charities like Habitat for Humanity can also be both personally rewarding and a positive way to impact poverty.

Whether or not we do, in fact, make poverty history in this generation, whether or not we live up to Nelson Mandela's challenge, time alone will tell.

I suppose one has to wonder whether our innate human capacity to selfishness, greed and ware might somehow get in the way of our good intentions. But as Dr Campolo reminded me, for the first time in history the goal is within our reach and there is no excuse but not getting involved.