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[Music]
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the reality of poverty is one of the
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great moral challenges of our time a
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billion people around the world live in
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extreme poverty and don't have the
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chance to develop their natural talents
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it's a barrier to human flourishing
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[Music]
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now as christians we're called to do
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something
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it's an essential element of our faith
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we have a need as christians to be
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generous
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we have a need to reflect god's
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character and god's image
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and part of god's image is that he is a
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very generous god
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when we look at the life of jesus we
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know that he's calling us to love and
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this means that we can't be indifferent
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to the suffering and the crying of the
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poor jesus is calling us to be his hands
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to be his arms around the world this is
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about more than a duty it's about the
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love of christ that stirs the spirit of
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god in our hearts
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[Music]
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i'm michael miller and i'll be your host
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for this series
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we're going to meet and listen to people
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from all over the world religious and
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political leaders development experts
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entrepreneurs and people working in the
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mission field
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we're going to engage difficult
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questions about charity enterprise the
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role of business and the role of the
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church
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and look at positive examples of
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partnering with the poor
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we'll study what christianity brings to
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the table and we'll examine questions of
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justice and explore the moral
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theological and economic foundations
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that allow people to create prosperity
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and get out of poverty
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a central theme running through this
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series will be the dignity and creative
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capacity of the human person created in
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the image and likeness of god
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understanding the destiny and nature of
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the human person is the foundation for
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everything we'll discuss
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[Music]
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in the last few decades we've seen
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increased awareness of extreme poverty
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celebrity campaigns like live aid make
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poverty history and the one campaign
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have made great strides to raise
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awareness and get people involved in
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helping the poor
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we've seen the growth of social
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entrepreneurship non-profits and ngos
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we've sent trillions of dollars to the
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developing world and thousands of people
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have volunteered and dedicated their
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lives to working with the poor
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some of these things have done a lot of
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good
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unfortunately
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others haven't had the positive effect
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that were hoped for
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this brings us to another core focus of
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this series
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how do we connect our good intentions
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and desire to help with things that
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actually work
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the rock star bob geldof who's worked
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with bono and other celebrities to
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increase awareness about extreme poverty
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once said we need to do something even
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if it doesn't work
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now geldof's commitment and his advocacy
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for the poor is an example for us but
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notice that his remark overlooks a
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possibility
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the something that we do may actually
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cause harm
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our good intentions may have unintended
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consequences
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[Music]
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i have my eyes open to this through a
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friendship with jean and john was a
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friend in rwanda and he told me the
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story that after the rwandan genocide
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that he had a church from atlanta that
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started sending over eggs and ended up
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just distributing eggs in his small
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community outside of kigali and this
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seems like a great thing to do right the
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church wanted to help after the genocide
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but jono a few years before had started
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a small egg business himself he put this
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investment in all the materials that he
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needed to start this egg business his
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business was starting to grow it was
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starting to take off and then all of a
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sudden in one summer
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there become this surplus of eggs that
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were flooding the market in his area and
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so this desire that the church had to
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really take care of a need it did take
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care of a need but the problem is that
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it put jono out of business he ended up
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selling his hens and then the next year
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the church decided to focus its
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attention to somewhere else in the world
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jonah was out of business no one else
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was there providing eggs and so they had
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to bring the eggs in from another
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community
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so this desire to help in that community
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according to jono actually had a
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long-term negative impact on that
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community
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[Music]
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when i was growing up
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we didn't have second-hand clothing from
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europe and the us and canada in kenya
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my mother took me to a store
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and she bought me a beautiful t-shirt
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that said made in kenya
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kenya cotton
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today
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i would struggle to find a t-shirt like
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that for my daughter
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why because the influx of second-hand
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clothing
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that makes its way here from europe and
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the us and canada
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has negatively impacted on our textile
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industry in kenya
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massive layoffs in the 80s and the 90s
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factories that shut down
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what happened to our cotton farms
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when i was growing up in this country
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we could have bought cotton
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in
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varieties and types
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inc that are incomparable but that's all
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gone because of the impact the negative
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impact of the apparel
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at a second-hand level
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[Music]
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i recall very well when i first heard
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the news reports of the haitian
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earthquake the republic of haiti has
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been hit by a massive earthquake entire
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neighborhoods of haiti's capital city of
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port-au-prince have been leveled and the
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country has declared a state of
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emergency as i was getting ready for the
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day
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my first emotion
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was i need to get on a plane and go
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there
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and help
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and i suppose that's an admirable
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response to human tragedy but as the day
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wore on and i thought about it and heard
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more reports i thought how unpractical i
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would be in the way
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i think it's a moral instinct that human
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beings share with other human beings it
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is the recognition of ourselves in the
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other what would i want someone to do
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for me if i was in this situation
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but we need to take that emotion and
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mature it
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we need to take that impulse
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and systematize it so that what we
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actually do what we really bring
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to the table isn't just a feeling isn't
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just a sentiment but as an action on
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behalf of those who are really in need
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and that takes some thought more than
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emotion
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[Music]
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the important thing to remember is that
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compassion is not simply
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expression
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of a point of view
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and that
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the compassionate person has to consider
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the practical effects of what he is
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proposing
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[Music]
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the issue of giving is a very difficult
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tension
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we have been entrusted with a lot
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and
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we want to be generous with that in fact
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scripture tells us that we need to be
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generous
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but when our
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generosity gets in the way of others
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becoming generous
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when our stewardship gets in the way of
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others becoming good stewards
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therein lies the problem
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christians
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have a natural
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commitment to fighting poverty
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that comes from the foundation of
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christian beliefs
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but that
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motivation must be allied with being
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smart
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um the world is complicated
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and so the actions we take we must be
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confident that they're going to help and
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not make things worse
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i witnessed the unintended consequences
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of charity when i visited within t
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masamuah a ghanaian entrepreneur whose
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company manufactures medical equipment
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for local hospitals
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and team and his 15 employees are
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meeting local needs generating profits
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and using much of their income in the
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local economy it's how economies develop
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but a team faces an unlikely adversary
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charity in the form of free medical
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supplies
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they show up in the country at
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unexpected times meaning that every so
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often he has to compete against free
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goods usually without warning
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you see why they coming like that
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you know hospitals or hospital products
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it doesn't it doesn't spoil it
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quickly
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so why they bring it a lot it will take
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time before they buy our own
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so this is a very big challenge it's a
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very big challenge it it helps my
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business
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help my business a lot
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when we learn about the unintended
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consequences of charity
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it can be easy to get discouraged
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and when we realize how vast and urgent
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the problem is
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a natural reaction is to look to
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well-funded initiatives of governments
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and international organizations like the
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united nations or the world bank one of
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the dominant ideas in the last century
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was that if we could just marshal vast
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sums of money through government to
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govern foreign aid
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we could jump start economies and begin
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the process of development
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in the last 60 years over two trillion
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dollars has been spent on foreign aid
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yet the results have been less than
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hoped for and even done harm and many in
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the developing world are beginning to
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question this model
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when we come into a country and provide
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a whole load of aid unfortunately then
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that creates a real problem for local
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manufacturers and producers and affects
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them in in terms of their economics
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and sometimes we live with the legacy of
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these
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you know unintended consequences
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[Music]
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aid has delayed
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the development of
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of business in africa modern business it
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has
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kept africa behind
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[Music]
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aid has been the predominant model over
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the past 60 years and data is
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increasingly pointing to another
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direction it is showing us that foreign
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aid is not the
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solution you need to know
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we are no longer getting excited by
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aid from
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imf from the
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world bank
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they perpetuate your misery by giving
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you a loan make you a slave economic
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slave and you also end up
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paying the raw materials because you are
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trained by the lawn
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that's what we do to africa we subsidize
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our agriculture we over produce then we
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ship it as a with a handshake
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and we we disempower the african farmer
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the united nations the world bank and
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the mf they keep doing the same things
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over and over and over and over again is
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the same old aid boondoggle
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whenever you have an aid agreement
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those consultants come into the country
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and they don't work for the country they
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work for the foreign aid establishment
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and so what you find is that the aid
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establishment severs the sovereign link
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between the leader of a country and his
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people
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every time you do aid to africa you
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create that parental relationship i'm
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helping you
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you should be guided by me because i
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have a bag of money
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the responsibility for your future is
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actually on me not on you because i have
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the resources to develop you
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it's patron client it's master slave
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it's donor recipient it's all broken
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i have never heard of a country that
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developed on it
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if you know of one just let me know i
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know about countries that developed on
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trade
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and innovation and business
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i don't know of any country that got so
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much aid and they suddenly became a
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first world country i've never heard of
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such a country so the track is wrong
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that track ends to nowhere
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herman tuner hessa is a classic
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entrepreneur he's been called by some
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the bill gates of africa he's working on
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software and technology solutions to
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connect local entrepreneurs directly
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with customers and markets throughout
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the world
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his business like many others in the
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region is creating jobs and putting
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ghana on the road to prosperity it's how
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hong kong the asian tigers in ireland
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developed and jesse wants to see his
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native country do the same
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i studied manufacturing in texas state
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university
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and i moved back to ghana and
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i intended to go into manufacturing and
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figured that i didn't have any money
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i was sitting around and realized hey
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wait a minute my little computer i had
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here was a a factory it could make
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software and i'd been doubling about
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with software and i thought hey i could
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turn this into my manufacturing business
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so
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i partnered up with an old older
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schoolmate and
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we started writing software and uh
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started selling and door-to-door in the
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early days you know hand-to-mouth we
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bought a second computer and we employed
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one person we were programming out of my
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bedroom sitting on my bed
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and then we evolved from there and grew
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and grew and grew over the years and
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became very large
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he's met with great success by
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developing what he calls tropically
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tolerant software
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programs that run well in places with
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frequent power outages
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but the story he tells is like that of
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many entrepreneurs in the developing
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world
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sometimes international foreign aid has
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been an obstacle to growing his business
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there are situations where i've set up a
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business deal i'm about to do a trade
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and sell something to a community i've
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made an investment
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and
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ngos will hear about it
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because it becomes topical
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and they find a way to bring aid money
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and provide it for free
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so what happens to my investment i have
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to lay off my staff
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to a large extent our governments
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have been held captive by the donor
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agencies international donor community
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who
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are not in my view particularly
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interested in seeing the growth of a
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local business when we talk to the
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government the government says hey we're
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not allowed to buy with donor money
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local products
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that's just the way it is it's their
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money they decide who gets it
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and this has been a big dilemma for us
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politicians they are more interested
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in a smile on the world bank
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country director's face
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than the success of my business
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for example five of us companies in
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ghana
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got together local companies to bid for
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our contract a government contract
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now
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everything was going very well we were
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competent to do the work
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guess what happens we're bidding against
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some european companies
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one of the companies got their
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government
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to loan our government money
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very soft loan
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for the project
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our folks in the government said hey you
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know we love you very much because
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nothing beats free money
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we lost our money you know what we ended
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up doing we ended up working working as
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subcontractors to the europeans
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they gave us the worst part of the
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business
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the most difficult and least profitable
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part we wound up doing it because we
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were we're better at as doing the work
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so they got the best of both worlds
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their government paid we ended up doing
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the work they took the money that's not
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developments that's not assistance
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that's
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thuggery
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a large part of aid is of course a
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subsidy to the companies that do the
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work
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in african countries i myself worked on
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such a project and i saw myself
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the incredible waste
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it was a road project actually in
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tanzania
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and the foreign aid so called amounted
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to a huge subsidy
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for
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a company that could not possibly have
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got the contract in
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in a real market
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this same pattern can be found in
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africa's educational market
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with help from foreign aid
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the west african nation of ghana has
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built government schools all across the
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country these schools are relatively
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well funded and the tuition is free but
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the quality is low and there's very
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little accountability
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this has frustrated many parents and
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sent them looking for private solutions
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[Applause]
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[Applause]
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it
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[Music]
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james thule a professor of education
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policy at newcastle university has
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worked with schools throughout the
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developing world
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he's made a surprising discovery
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entrepreneurs are stepping in and
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meeting the need for quality education
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for as little as a dollar a week
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when i first came to ghana
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i met with just astonishment because
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private schools they say are for the
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rich for the elite for the middle
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classes
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what we found in my study was that in
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poor areas like this
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the majority of school children are in
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private school
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and these schools outperform the
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government schools at a fraction of the
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teacher cost
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i think it comes down to
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probably two main reasons one is
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when parents pay fees they demand more
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of the schools
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the second reason is that the schools
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themselves are accountable to the
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parents
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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these opportunities exist because of
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entrepreneurs like theophilus quay who
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founded the supreme academy in the year
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2000
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he began with only 14 students and no
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desks but today the school is
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flourishing and has over 350 students
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he's providing high quality education at
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a low cost
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because of countless stories like this
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many are looking for ways to encourage
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private local solutions in education and
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beyond
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[Music]
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[Applause]
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we don't need another un plan millennium
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development goals or another celebrity
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campaign like the one campaign what we
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need is a change in mindsets so that
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people can recognize the dignity and
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creative capacity of their brothers and
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sisters in the developing nations and
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support their own initiatives so we're
00:19:45
looking for a million americans
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to email us to join the one campaign
00:19:51
we're gonna end extreme poverty we're
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gonna make poverty history
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that's what's fallen to us to do
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[Applause]
00:20:00
for the record i love bonham i happen to
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know bono
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so
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i love his music and he's cool and i was
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born in ireland so we've got that in
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common
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now i have nothing against bono but i i
00:20:12
told bono for three four months ago
00:20:13
we're hanging out i told him
00:20:15
which is that there's a big fan club
00:20:17
around him
00:20:18
and he came in on a on a particular
00:20:21
agenda it was a world bank type
00:20:25
operation but
00:20:27
if someone like bono wants to help
00:20:30
he should adopt a new approach help
00:20:32
african countries
00:20:33
by helping them
00:20:34
with the implementation of their own
00:20:36
agenda not an important agenda
00:20:39
and instead of giving it away it should
00:20:42
be put into small business loans that
00:20:44
kind of thing
00:20:45
and tightly managed by professionals
00:20:48
not in a airy fairy
00:20:51
we love africa way that doesn't help us
00:20:53
[Music]
00:20:56
there's body then there's good aid
00:20:59
bad aid is one that makes people
00:21:01
dependent on aid good aid is that
00:21:04
short-term aid that empowers people to
00:21:07
be able to live on their own
00:21:11
i think there's been a very unhelpful
00:21:13
debate about aid polarized between
00:21:16
kind of theatrical extremes of aid is
00:21:19
the problem aid is the solution
00:21:22
and and surely it's neither um the
00:21:24
problems the poor societies are much
00:21:26
deeper than the fact that we've been
00:21:27
giving them some money
00:21:29
societies have to
00:21:31
basically lead themselves out
00:21:34
we external players can help that
00:21:36
process
00:21:37
but it's fundamentally an internal
00:21:39
process
00:21:40
in his popular ted talk and in speeches
00:21:42
around the world ghanaian economist
00:21:44
george aite sounds a similar note
00:21:46
he stresses the need to move from aid to
00:21:48
enterprise and describes this as a
00:21:50
battle between the hippogeneration and
00:21:52
the cheetah generation the hippo
00:21:54
generation are the ruling elites
00:21:58
they are those who uh have monopolized
00:22:01
political power
00:22:03
and they are those who are stuck in
00:22:05
their muddy pedagogical patch
00:22:08
and they believe that the only way you
00:22:10
can solve the problems in africa is by
00:22:12
giving the state more power and more
00:22:14
foreign aid
00:22:16
and it is on the back of this hippo
00:22:18
generation which the united nations the
00:22:20
world bank and the imf have been trying
00:22:23
to hit your right with this same old aid
00:22:26
driven boondoggle and that's why we're
00:22:27
not getting anywhere in africa okay
00:22:31
by contrast we have the cheetah
00:22:32
generation
00:22:36
they're not going to sit there and wait
00:22:37
for governments to come and do things
00:22:39
for them as a matter of fact they're not
00:22:40
going to say that i'm begged for foreign
00:22:43
because they can see that every social
00:22:45
need in africa
00:22:47
is a business opportunity the cheetah
00:22:49
generation is entrepreneurial
00:22:52
they are not just sitting there and
00:22:53
waiting for governments to come and do
00:22:55
things for them in fact their outlook is
00:22:57
refreshingly different
00:22:58
[Music]
00:23:01
asia has his tigers
00:23:03
africa
00:23:04
will have its cheaters
00:23:10
so what does this mean for those of us
00:23:11
who are called by god to help the poor
00:23:14
now love demands that we act
00:23:16
but it also demands that we act humbly
00:23:18
and wisely and pay attention to the
00:23:20
consequences of our actions
00:23:23
the call isn't to do nothing
00:23:25
but nor is it to just do something
00:23:28
we have to connect our desire to help
00:23:31
to things that actually work
00:23:33
and what actually works is allowing
00:23:35
these human beings created in the image
00:23:38
and likeness of god to create value and
00:23:41
prosperity for themselves
00:23:44
having a heart for the poor isn't hard
00:23:46
can we have a mind for the poor can you
00:23:48
really relate to the poor on a
00:23:50
one-to-one basis as equals as partners
00:23:53
as colleagues can we allow them
00:23:56
to put the locus of responsibility for
00:23:58
their own future on themselves
00:24:01
and then be willing to be guided by
00:24:03
their vision
00:24:05
we need to be able to move
00:24:08
from aid to production from existing to
00:24:11
living
00:24:13
to create capacities in people to
00:24:16
empower them to be able to stand on
00:24:18
their own
00:24:20
people have lots of energy lots of
00:24:22
capacity
00:24:25
business is the normative way in which
00:24:27
people rise out of poverty not
00:24:29
state-to-state aid not the largesse of
00:24:32
politicians and bureaucrats it might not
00:24:35
be very romantic to think that it's just
00:24:37
humdrum business
00:24:38
but it's true these people are the
00:24:41
engine of growth they are changing
00:24:44
slums into cities
00:24:46
instead of training job seekers we train
00:24:50
job makers
00:24:52
[Music]
00:24:54
a sense of independence a sense of human
00:24:57
dignity confidence knowledge empowerment
00:25:00
opportunity character responsibility
00:25:03
hard work vision self-esteem the new
00:25:05
moral purpose abundance of life
00:25:07
economies can grow anything is possible
00:25:10
and it's high time we stop telling our
00:25:12
people they can't do it
00:25:14
yes we shall do it in the name of god
