Small town, any town, we can partner with others to help change the world.
Jimmy Carter was born in and lived most of his life in Plains, GA, population around 600, then and now. He learned nuclear engineering, governed a huge nation, and traveled the world, but he never lost his empathy for people in small towns. We would do well to emulate him.
Putting faith into action: Working to eradicate Guinea worm
At President Carter’s state funeral on January 9, 2025, his grandson, Jason Carter, who chairs the Board of Trustees of the Carter Center, described how his grandfather spent 40 years putting his faith into action, working with love and respect “alongside the poorest and most marginalized people in the world.” He captured in one telling story the power of solidarity in partnership with people in small towns.
In 1986, Jimmy Carter took on the scourge of Guinea worms. That year, 3.5 million people around the world suffered from Guinea worm disease. It begins when people drink water contaminated by Guinea worm larvae, which mate in the human abdomen and grow there. After about a year, the female Guinea worm, now a meter long, causes excruciating pain by tunneling through the human victim’s flesh toward the surface of the body, and then slowly emerges through the skin and inches out into daylight. Throughout the long process, the human victim is often incapacitated by pain. If the emerging parasite comes in contact with water, larvae are released, and the cycle is repeated.
Thanks to the work of the Carter Center and other organizations, last year there were only 14 Guinea worm infections in the entire world. Jason Carter said, “And the thing that’s remarkable is that this disease is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated essentially by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. And those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the last 40 years.”
According to the Carter Center, no medicine or vaccine can prevent Guinea worm disease. The only effective response is to work community by community to educate people, find the sources of contaminated water, help people change behaviors where necessary, and teach techniques such as water filtration that can help prevent transmission.
Jimmy Carter became a driving force in the fight to eradicate this terribly painful, economically disruptive, and deeply dehumanizing disease.
Jimmy Carter partnered with those in need
Jason Carter commented:
And as this disease has been eliminated in every village in Nigeria, every village in Sudan or Uganda, what’s left behind in those tiny 600-person villages is an army of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carters who have demonstrated their own power to change their world.
And that is a fundamental truth about my grandfather. . . . When he saw a tiny 600-person village that everybody else thinks of as poor, he recognized it. That’s where he was from. That’s who he was. And he never saw it as a place to send pity. It was always a place to find partnership and power, and a place to carry out that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. (“Transcript: Jason Carter remembers his grandfather Jimmy Carter’s life, achievements and frugality,” Associated Press, 9 Jan. 2025)
We don’t have to be from a small town to empathize with and partner with people in far-off rural communities, as they address their water, food, education, health care, and economic needs. We just have to care.
Highly effective nonprofit groups such as World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and the Carter Center will put our support to good use, in partnership with the communities that are affected. All we have to do is decide to lend our support.
Solidarity is a core Christian value
When we take up the cause of other people as though we faced the problems ourselves, it’s called “solidarity.” It is a core Christian value and one of the fundamental themes of Catholic social teaching.
Christians are called to practice solidarity. Jesus taught us to treat every person in need as our neighbor (Luke 10:25-37) and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt. 22:34-40). We are called to seek the good of all people (1 Thess. 5:15), not just our brothers and sisters or the people in our own social group or country. For Christians, the needs of all are our concern.
Jimmy Carter is a role model for how to show solidarity. We don’t have to live in a 600-person town to embrace the pain of people in need in rural towns or anywhere else. It’s a choice – a choice that Jimmy Carter made over and over again, and a choice that we too can make over and over again.
I'm glad that Jimmy Carter’s story, the story of a man of faith putting his love for Jesus into action day after say, was told on a national stage. May it galvanize us and our entire nation to seek out partnerships in solidarity with people in need, wherever they live.
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