Crisis of Dependency: How Our Efforts to Solve Poverty Are Trapping People in It and What We Can Do

This book will change your life, make you a better person, and enable you to be a more powerful asset in your community.
-TARREN BRAGDON, President and CEO, Foundation for Government Accountability

In The Crisis of Dependency you will discover key underlying issues that hold back millions of Americans from escaping chronic poverty and homelessness. You will also learn how many well-intended charitable programs undermine self-determination and fail to restore dignity. And you will see how growing government intervention crowds out more relational and effective approaches. The final three chapters will equip you with practical ideas that inspire hope for individuals and communities to reverse the current crisis of dependency. This is the book every true humanitarian has been waiting for.
-LAWRENCE W. REED, president emeritus, Foundation for Economic Education

The Crisis of Dependency will provide a breakthrough in your thinking so you can move away from perpetuating dependency to charity that achieves real freedom.
-TOM DE VRIES, President and CEO, Citygate Network

JAMES WHITFORD earned his doctorate from the University of Kansas Medical Center before he and his wife, Marsha, founded Watered Gardens Ministries in 2000. Then in 2012, they established True Charity, a local initiative that evolved into a national training organization championing the resurgence of civil society in the fight against poverty.

Their work has been featured in The Heritage Foundation's Index of Culture and Opportunity, The Christian Post, The Hill, and WORLD News Group-which also honored their work at Watered Gardens Ministries with their 2019 Hope Award. James has testified before the US Senate and US House subcommittees on poverty and welfare reform, advocating a shift from harmful government handouts to more effective relationally-based charity. The Whitfords have five children and seven
grandchildren, live in Southwest Missouri, and enjoy fishing the James River.