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On Monday, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo won the Nobel Prize in Economics, along with economist Michael Kremer, for what was described as their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty". The couple grew up in completely different worlds, Banerjee in Kolkata, Duflo in Paris. Their perspectives on poverty were radically different: Duflo drew hers from a book, Banerjee from playing football with children in the shanties. Together, they set out to challenge the clichés that often underlie poverty alleviation efforts. Caricatures of what it means to be poor, that lead to simple definitions of the problem with equally simple, but partial and sometimes misguided, solutions. Instead, they invite us to meet real people, whose lives are complex and difficult, yet rich and multi-layered. Their work on nutrition is fascinating: even in places of malnutrition, a sizeable proportion of household budgets is spent on TV, festivals or treat food. In other words, the portrayal of these communities can never be reduced to survival: to be human means that we look for social belonging, for celebrations of life that go beyond individuals; we look for beauty and meaning through story, film, music or dance. This longing to express ourselves artistically, to reach beyond survival, is what sets us apart from all other species on earth. This expression of our deep humanity cuts across social classes and culture. The Christian tradition has long spoken of incarnation, of being with others, rather than simply doing things for or to them, in the model of God coming to live among us in Jesus, rather than dictating solutions from heaven. I believe that if we want to truly understand and reach out to another community, then we need to look beyond survival and economics, sit with real people, and spend time with them, listen to their stories, to their longings, to the things that bring them together and connect them to the wider human tapestry. Then, in this interaction, we might recognise both our commonalities, and our deep differences. The things that make us human together, and the need to attend to specific people, places, stories and culture. If we do this, then a different community can never be reduced to a label, such as ‘poor’ or ‘deprived’, but tell its own story, so that, together, we may change the path of our common history.