Notable Quote - Peter Greer - Granite Grok

Notable Quote – Peter Greer

A longish quote from Forbes on “Your Help Is Hurting: How Church Foreign Aid Programs Make Things Worse“:

When you try to help, you try to give things, you start to have the consequences. There’s an author Bob Lupton, who really nails it when he says that when he gave something the first time, there was gratitude; and when he gave something a second time to that same community, there was anticipation; the third time, there was expectation; the fourth time, there was entitlement; and the fifth time, there was dependency. That is what we’ve all experienced when we’ve wanted to do good. Something changes the more we just give hand-out after hand-out. Something that is designed to be a help actually causes harm. And so, microfinance turns that model on its head, and instead of going in and just saying, “We’ve got a lot of things you don’t, so we’re just going to give it to you,” it turns that model completely on its head and says, “Every single individual is created by a God who loves them, and that means there is worth and there is dignity and there is ability.” So we go in and say not, “What don’t you have,” but, “What do you have? What are you dreams for your kids? What are your aspirations? What are your hopes? What is it that is in your hand to do?” That changes everything. Microfinance then is the belief that everyone has ability, everyone has capacity, and it asks the question, “What is required to unlock that potential in that community to get them in productive employment?” And so, just real quick, just what that means is we do training, we do financial literacy, we do a place for people to save money, and then for people that are ready, we give them access to small loans so they can invest in their business ideas.”

– Peter Greer, President & CEO of Hope International

Peter is talking about international assistance.  Having seen the welfare system up close and personal here in central NH, there is truth to that bolded part.  Microfinance demands accountability – succeed and failure is part in parcel.  Dependency is not, or should not, be a desired outcome. Dependency is not a solution except for willing donors who want the feeling of having done good about themselves.  With Government, the donors are involuntary givers forced into it by those who have wielded the levers of Government so that they could feel good about themselves (and not about the donors).

Instead of the traditional welfare, perhaps it is time to try this in Detroit?  After all, the Democrat Blue Social Model has ended up a complete failure (especially for their continual insistence on electing corrupt officials who end up in jail, whose only feature beside skimming off the top for them and their crony criminal friends is satisfying the “gimme” generation).

Whatcha think – workable?

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