This leads me to an NPR article about billionaire Tony Elumelu who also believes in hope. In 2014, he pledged to give $10,000 each to 10,000 entrepreneurs across Africa in hopes that it will start businesses and create employment. “What is important both in society and business is hope. A people who have hope for a better tomorrow will not kill themselves today.” This echoes the story from chapter 8 in A Path Appears of a successful initiative in which the poorest in a village were given livestock and assisted in starting a small business. After 18 months, those who received livestock reported significant improvements in mental health. The researchers hypothesize that this improvement in mental health gave the participants the energy to work more, save money, and invest in their children.
I think this idea of hope relates not only to ways in which to help poverty abroad, but also in our own country and in the challenge we face as a class this semester. Reading this chapter and writing this post have made me reflect on the effectiveness of hope. I am now more convinced that hope can be a powerful tool of change. A few of us have shared stories about rode models having a positive impact on us growing up. In a poor area, children might not have positive role models or people telling them they can succeed. We have discussed a lot about after school programs where this type of mentorship would be available. I think it’s important to encourage a sense of confidence in kids. If they are told that they can succeed, and have a role model to look up to, they will be more likely to.
Do you agree with this idea that hope can be a powerful tool of change, as opposed to just handing over aid? Do you see this relating to our challenge of where to give our money away? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts.
NPR article: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/01/27/464603499/a-nigerian-billionaire-s-plan-to-end-poverty-give-10-000-to-10-000-entrepreneurs
I completely agree with this idea. We should instill a sense of hope and confidence into people. I want to take it one step further and add that these people should not always receive from others because it will make them too dependent. If you look at countries in Africa that receive the highest GPD per capital from foreign aid, those countries have gotten worse in regard to the economy. I thought it was a great idea how Tony Elumelu would give 10,000 dollars to 10,000 people trying to start their own company in Africa, rather than giving the same amount of money (100,000,000 million dollars) to the poor. Probably some of the people will fail, however, most people who are successful fail at some point in life. If people have hope and confidence, this will rub off on their friends and family and hopefully they will then become inspired. At a certain point money and intelligence become secondary to those highly motivated a primary factor for success.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of instilling hope in others to help overcome obstacles is something I have thought about heavily. As a Human Development major, many of my courses on case management and social work have emphasized taking this positive approach in order to lift people up. This entails focusing on individuals strengths as opposed to highlighting the challenges they may be facing. In addition to this, these professions also specifically emphasize working to help create self-advocacy, as well as giving them the tools that they need to build themselves up for lasting success, rather than acting as a crutch. This is something I truly believe and think applies equally to philanthropy. In philanthropy, similarly, we are looking to help solve social issues and in order to do this we have to lift people up to ensure they can help create lasting change rather than putting a bandaid on an issue. Individuals are not going to believe in their abilities to do this is they do not have hope.
ReplyDeleteThe influence that a lack of hope has, specifically, on children's’ ability to learn is depicted a book I read recently called Somebody Else’s Children, by Jill Wolfson and John Hubner. In this book a few children in the system who come from rough upbringings are followed and the innumerable struggles they have in school are illustrated. These children were never taught to have hope in their lives and, therefore, do not have any future aspirations or motivation to succeed in school. I believe that by ingraining hope in children for their futures, we are providing them with the most important tool they need to accomplish their goals. This is something we can certainly keep in mind throughout the remainder of our class while deciding how to make the most meaningful impact.
This was a great post; I've written about/snuck in concepts similar to this in a lot of my analyses for this class. One of the social sciences I've taken that relates most to this class is sociology, a science which, when it addresses charity, defends the importance of social contact. After so much interesting information delving deeply into the concepts of giving in both sociology and philanthropy, I couldn't agree more that hope isn't just a buzzword, but rather a key part of what makes philanthropy mean something. Without hope from the receivers, any gift or donation would be empty. In relation to our class' philanthropy, there's no doubt that, especially since we're dealing with children, hope is something we have to impart, somehow. The question, now, is how we can accomplish this. Josie thank you again for bringing this up, I think that hope is a great word to consolidate the idea of the ultimate effect of what passionate and attentive philanthropy can afford the afflicted. And in our case, the word represents the potential for how effective our philanthropy can truly be, intrinsically.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that hope is essential when it comes to trying to help people. Without hope, we wouldn't have any aspirations or goals, and at that point all efforts to do anything become pointless. In our class, we have decided that we are going to donate our money to an organization that supports childhood education and I think that this principle holds true especially when it comes to education. Students need to have hope that they can do what they need to do and that maybe their education can help them build a better life. An example of this can be in the very first chapter of A Path Appears. When Lester Strong was in the third grade, his teachers told him and his parents that he was basically unteachable. With the help of his barber, his friend's mother, and a minister, he was able to pass the third grade and eventually attend Columbia Business School. These three adults were able to instill hope in him that he was actually capable of passing school, and that made all of the difference in his life. If they didn't have hope in him, and he didn't have hope in himself, he would have failed out of school at an extremely early age all because his teachers clearly didn't have any hope. This shows exactly what I think we are all trying to say here, that hope is essential in making a change.
ReplyDeleteI really love thinking about this idea in regards to our focus area because the reading in a Path Appears provides so MANY examples in which people overcame adversity simply by instilling hope in their futures. In addition to your article about Chapter 8, I also reflected back on some earlier stories with Rashada and Britny Hurley. Both situations proposed hardships that were not common to overcome within their communities. Despite this, Rashada's father had great hope for his daughter, which in turn lead to her recovery from club foot and set a precedent for other families in the community to follow. Britny Hurley also overcame the cycle of Breahitt County by enrolling in the Save the Children program, and seeking better opportunities for her young son Landon. The reason why this book is probably so enjoyable to me is because it provides so many great examples of how we can provide hope to people even as students. I also found it very interesting how approaching early childhood education may be more significant then approaches to secondary programs in breaking the cycle of poverty according to the text's random and control experiment data. I think this is something that will definitely be debated in our decision making process on which source of change is most effective to donate to.
ReplyDeleteFor me, hope is definitely an important characteristic in my life. I credit my mentors in High School for helping me grow and work hard to become the first person in my family to enroll in a four year College, and I plan to be the first person to graduate from a college in my family. I also relate your post and these stories of mentoring to my current experiences in the JC mentor program. I have already observed many great changes in the students I am working with because they felt that someone truly believed in their success, and these stories continue to remind me of the importance of my work at the middle school as well.