For the past few years, I’ve been in a lighthearted dispute with my dental hygienist about the amount of tea that I drink. She claims — quite correctly — that the tea stains my teeth excessively. I counter with the dubious assertion that, in some vague way, all that tea protects my health.

Figuring that the best defense is a good offense, I took the standoff to a new level over Christmas.

I gave her, and several others, packages of gourmet teas as Christmas gifts.

I expect we’ll have a chuckle over the gift in my next dental visit.

Then I’ll mention the real reason I purchased the tea (besides its taste and those nebulous health benefits).
I’ll talk about how I wanted to promote a low-income entrepreneur who also happens to be a beneficiary of the good work of the Intersect Fund, an organization in turn supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development in the Diocese of Metuchen.

Call it my own Three Cups of Tea strategy.

Greg Mortenson’s wildly bestselling 2006 book and spinoff activities have highlighted efforts to reduce poverty, especially among girls, in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan through the foundation of schools. The book takes its title from a proverb that claims that three shared cups of tea can make family members out of strangers.

I’m just hoping my gifts of Sharon Levy’s teas help in some small way to keep her in business.

All the better if a few people also get a positive sense of what the Intersect Fund and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development are aiming to accomplish in fighting poverty.

I figure I need to share three cups of tea of my own to tell three stories.

Cup One: Taking Tea in Style

Sharon is the owner of Taking Tea in Style, a business that not only offers a variety of blended teas, but caters tea parties and provides etiquette training classes for children. She grew up in Jamaica, where she first developed a passion for tea, and the “experience” of drinking it.

Her business recently received a boost when she graduated from a three-month business training course led by the Intersect Fund. She learned fundamentals of marketing, finance and administration, and has taken advantage of informal networking through the Intersect Fund to gain new customers.

Cup Two: The Intersect Fund

A few years ago, Rohan Mathew and Joe Shure were Rutgers University students and editors of The Daily Targum. Unlike many of their student peers and quite a number of their elders, they noticed the glaring poverty in New Brunswick. And, in a novel way, they set out to do something about it.

Using the plentiful resources of student goodwill and talent, Rohan and Joe founded an organization that would bring about an intersect of campus and community, to the end of sparking positive change in New Brunswick. Student volunteers at the Intersect Fund have served aspiring entrepreneurs with the business training classes Sharon attended, along with microloans and market access.

Because the Intersect Fund seeks to empower low-income people and to effect root-cause change, the group came to the very receptive attention of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

Cup Three: The Catholic Campaign for Human Development

For 40 years now, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has been the official curative anti-poverty strategy of the Catholic community in the United States. Many worthy Catholic organizations address poverty symptomatically through direct service, most notably Catholic Charities in our diocese. CCHD is a full-bore application of Catholic social teaching, resolute in insisting that the poor be the main actors in the drama of their sustainability.
CCHD is not for the fainthearted or those looking for the feel-good quick fix. As with the larger worldwide struggle to eradicate poverty, the losses always seem to outnumber the victories.

But I’m not underestimating the power of tea.

Father Joseph J. Kerrigan, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, New Brunswick, is diocesan director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.