A while back, after reading Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, some friends and I decided to stop dumping and start investing the in poor. We (well, I) had (ve) always bemoaned the idea of dumping aid. I really felt like giving a man a fish every day kept him dependant upon me for the fishes.
He’d become my slave.
My slave to my generosity.
It was almost as though my guilt was fueling my giving so that my conscious could be satisfied.
Oh my, “My” showed up a lot in those sentences, didn’t it? That’s just the problem. While we have the most abundant educational and monetary resources on earth, we want to free people, both from poverty and aid. (We don’t want a newer, nicer, colonialism, right?)
What Christian have done in the past is turn to education. If we empower people with knowledge, they can build a better lives for themselves and their communities. What we found was that people, once educated, left their impoverished homes and went West. There was no credit, no opportunity in their homelands. Our education was actually a brain drain on the poor!
You can teach a man to fish, but if there is no pond and no fish in that pond, he’ll go find such a pond.
Opportunity International builds ponds and stocks them with fish.:
Opportunity offers a mix of loan products, including individual loans, group loans, and loans tailored to clients in areas such as education and agriculture. A typical first point of entry, the Trust Group brings together 10 to 30 entrepreneurs who elect leaders, receive training and pledge to guarantee each other’s loans. Because the group guarantee replaces the need for collateral, credit becomes available to those previously locked out from formal financial services.
Libier Flores Lopez opened a sewing buisiness near Guadalajara, Mexico, with no White Savior TM in sight.
Because they lend to a group of people, they become accountable to one another and to the group itself. This, in my opinion, is the genius here. Not only are the opening credit to people who can’t get it through other means, they are creating trust and accountability in these communities. Furthermore, because the individuals have to pay back the group, and the group, Opportunity International, the gift of 1,000 to the organization is given time and time again.
While other aid organizations do good work, I encourage you to take a look at microfinance institutions such as Kiva and Opportunity International. They don’t dump, and they don’t exploit. The teach people how to fish and give them the tools to succeed.
