Think of Africa and what often comes to mind are the sad, shadowy images of some of the world’s poorest people.

News reports and decades of photographs and documentaries have often focused — rightfully — on the dramatic and despairing effects of poverty, famine, disease and genocide on the people there.

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz found the reality of all of that on his recent trip to Ethiopia and Kenya. But he experienced something else, too.

He witnessed firsthand the grace and dignity of the African people he encountered. He became a part of their lives for a moment, he said, not just an outside observer or distant visitor.

And in that moment, the archbishop said, he saw God at work and experienced, face-to-face, “the goodness of humanity.”

During an interview last week at the Chancery, Archbishop Kurtz — a member of the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) board of directors — talked about his May 19-30 trip. During those 11 days, he came to appreciate the fortitude and determination present in many of the Ethiopians and Kenyans he met. They included not only those on the receiving end of aid from CRS, but people who help provide that aid, too.

The archbishop was familiar with the nature of Third World poverty even before his trip, having visited Haiti and Central and South America on several occasions.

People who visit impoverished nations for the first time often “come back with a primary awareness of the disparity” between those nations and their own, the archbishop noted.

“I’ve had the privilege of having been in Haiti and other Third World areas,” he said. “So my primary, deeply moving experience in Ethiopia and Kenya was not necessarily on that level, though I still can’t get used to the disparity.”

What touched the archbishop on this trip, he said, was the chance to visit, with the help of a translator, the home of a Kenyan woman who has HIV and “the great sense of dignity I was able to experience there.”

The visit took place in a poor area of Mombassa, a city in eastern Kenya near the Indian Ocean with a significant Muslim population. “I had the opportunity to visit with her and was perhaps the only Catholic presence this woman had ever experienced, other than members of Catholic Relief Services,” Archbishop Kurtz said.

“I was able to meet someone I’d never met before,” he said, “someone from completely different circumstances than mine, yet someone who has gifts from God and aspirations not only for herself but for her children.”

The woman was a community representative, someone who helps organize assistance for other people in that part of Mombassa, which is, for the most part, a slum.

“I guess that would have been the ‘life-altering’ experience for me on this trip,” the archbishop explained. “It was not unlike, really, visiting a parish here in some ways. The circumstances are so different, of course. But in many ways, if you listen, you kind of enter into the life of another person and see God’s grace at work in another person.”

Archbishop Kurtz said he was also struck by the way CRS efforts have moved beyond simply helping meet the survival needs of people to helping those in need help themselves.

“It’s called ‘capacity building,’ ” he explained, “and it involves giving people who have great abilities the opportunity to succeed.”

One of the projects the archbishop visited in Kenya was called a “livelihood fair,” and it involved the impressive “capacity building” effort. Rather that simply providing food — which is done, of course — the livelihood fair provides those who most need assistance with seeds to replant lost crops and food for their livestock.

Catholic Relief Services has established a voucher system, the archbishop noted, in which the poorest of the poor are given the equivalent of money to purchase what they need to re-start their livelihoods.

For instance, one man had used the funds to start raising bees and selling their honey, and his attitude left an impression on the archbishop.

“We asked why did he think he was chosen by the elders,” Archbishop Kurtz said, “and he did not begin by saying he was a person of great need. He said he thought he was chosen because he was a person of initiative, and that, to me, says a lot of things about the dignity of a person.

“He wasn’t waiting to see a handout, but he needed a jump-start financially,” he said. “He thought the engine was fine; he thought he was a person of great abilities and great initiative. He just needed a jump start to be able to begin a productive life.”

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the archbishop visited a home operated by the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. There were people “right off the street” being helped at the home, and some of them, the archbishop said, “who had come for help themselves were already assisting others.”

The visit included a Mass and the revealing of a perhaps 10-foot-tall icon created by one of the home’s residents, Archbishop Kurtz said.

“The young man who created it could neither speak nor hear,” he said. The sister who led the home heard that the man had creative talent.

“He had been sitting there for a week and somehow Sister Benedicta communicated with him, saying in effect, ‘don’t just sit there, do something.’ And gosh, what he created was a really beautiful icon.”

It was yet another testimony to the benefits of helping one’s self, of doing something rather than doing nothing — the “movement against passivity,” the archbishop said.

“It’s the notion of helping one another and helping yourself,” he added.

You don’t have to travel to Africa, India or any Third World country to experience a sense of the benefits — and grace — found among less fortunate people who love and care for one another.

“The sense of community is palpable, just as it is here in our community,” the archbishop said. “Pope Benedict has spoken about this; Pope John Paul talked of being in solidarity with others. I think that individuals who come in touch with human need in their own surroundings, with their families or neighbors, would experience the same relationships that they would see if they went to Ethiopia, Calcutta or wherever.”

When Mother Teresa visited the United States, Archbishop Kurtz noted, she would say “the neighbor who God wants you to serve is already at your doorstep.”

“I really think that is true,” he said. “I have this notion of a kind of expanding circle, that God’s grace moves us — perhaps at the pace we’re ready for — to include more and more people.”

Sometimes people think that life-altering experiences result only from dramatic change, such as a trip to Africa, the archbishop added. “People think I have to have this big conversion to somehow change my life,” he explained. “But I think there are times when it happens gradually. You discover that certain things start to mean more to you. It’s just the way conversion occurs — our values change, and our priorities change.

“It’s not just a matter of seeing; it’s expanding your horizons.”