It's an interesting challenge.
I fully agree with your perspectives regarding vision statements. Mission statements are similar.
I say your blog is challenging b/c it causes me to ask the question, how?
I myself am living below the poverty line (by American standards), yet I find ways to help others mostly by investing my time and skills, since I have very little actual capital. I am rich in many other ways however.
BitShares is in a similar position, in that our ecosystem is poor (in terms of marketcap) but rich in others ways, such as the strength of our human community. Fuzzy exemplifies the spirit of BitShares giving back to individuals in the community, empowering them by matching their individual skills they have to offer with a potential source of revenue from the blockchain.
I think we need to stay focused on helping people help themselves through improving their skill sets and economic understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur. If it's possible to teach people how to spot economic opportunities and how to apply their skills to capitalize on them, it's like teaching them how to fish and prepare them to eat as opposed to buying them a meal.
I am opposed to general welfare and grants of charity as an ongoing "solution" to poverty. Socialism doesn't work, the evidence for that has numerous examples. Yet many people expect a free lunch, a savior to "bail them out".
There's nothing wrong with short term help, financial or otherwise to help people overcome unforeseen circumstances that may lead them into a pit they can't get out of. Such help must only be seen as temporary and focused on getting the person back to a productive, self sufficient existence.
So again I ask, how will we help the average Joe get "back on his feet"? Vision statements are great to set high level goals, but we also need "lessor gods" to translate the vision into actionable reality.