Naomi Harris

Muhammad Yunus reminds us of the importance of agency. In his article, “Social Business,” he highlights that a crucial component of eradicating global poverty is to allow the impoverished to help themselves. But his work is not a form of trickle-down economics or “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” mentality that essentially leaves the poor and disadvantaged in generational poverty. Instead he offers a solution called social business. His concept of social business is to combine our reliance on the free market with social activism. He defines social business as a “cause driven business” and that all profit invested can only be paid back once the company achieves the social success. Yunus reflects on his work with the microcredit Grameen Bank as an example of how social business can work. His organization gave the poor access to the free market and within this approach agency was a critical part. Nobody should feel like a charity case and through Yunus’ approach of social business he made sure the people in Bangladesh activated free will and decision-making.

I believe his work was assigned to our class in order to disrupt our binary concept of capitalism and activism. It is possible to be in the profit world while actively addressing social problems. Yunus reinforces this through his framework of social business. He explains that the free market failed majority of the world because half of the world lives on 2 dollars a day. He believes that such a social problem can be solved with new concepts beyond nonprofit and profit work. In fact people will become motivated in the free market world to solve social issues once we realize that social change does not equate limited personal success. But Yunus emphasizes the importance of keeping to the goal of social change while operating in a business model.

Overall, his article made me reflect on the past week or so as the Trump administration released plans for budget cuts. We need to rethink our reliance on government and nonprofit organizations as our answers to solving social problems. The Trump administration plans on cutting budgets for the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and the Department of Environmental Protection Agency, according to CNN. Such cuts will heavily impact social causes that the government helped protect in previous years. Our class must think creatively on how to address social problems and Yunus gives us an example through social business. There are many things to consider while we look for a nonprofit organization that aids in education. I believe collaboration is incredibly important and if I see a nonprofit that works in collaboration with business models it will show creativity and resourcefulness.

Graham Ragan

What does lasting change look like? The article “How to Help Those in Need (Without Treating Them like Beggars),” prompts us to reevaluate our traditional methods of charity for better, more sustainable outcomes for the poor. The article examines giving in a Christian context, and so was particularly relevant for me as I grew up serving on Christian mission trips similar to the ones mentioned in the article. Despite the personal growth I experienced through these trips, I in turn went on to question the effectiveness of our efforts, much like Lupton does in this article.

The issue of effective altruism seems to be especially problematic for the American church, as many of our missives end up creating aid-dependency instead of self-sufficiency. For Lupton, the first step to solving this problem is asking “Whose agenda is our mission really about?” This question needs to reorient church charity and should be asked before any new endeavor. Far too often church groups are sent to developing areas without assessing what the community really needs. We tend to meet chronic issues with temporary remedies: instead of creating jobs and stimulating economies we paint schools and run sports camps. We take away jobs that community members could do better and more efficiently just so that we can play a part in development work.

What it all boils down to is this: as the American church we need to get over our compulsive need to be the hero. If a church sent two experts to a community in need as opposed to 20 high schoolers, they could train community members in a specific skill and use the extra resources to provide materials necessary for them to turn these skills into careers. Better yet, a church could simply use this money to pay natives to do the training instead of sending anyone at all. If we can forego our desire to be a part of things, if we can give up the expectation for quick results, we will see a major shift in what our missions can accomplish, and we will begin to see lasting, sustainable change in the areas we target.

Nishka Hatten

In our discussion this past week, I was very intrigued by the emphasis we placed on organizations’ ability to measure their success, and on the possibility of a relationship with the organization we donate to. These were two of the top criteria we as a class felt were valuable, or often necessary, as we get closer to choosing the recipient of our donation. I believe that these two criteria go hand-in-hand and point to a larger trend within the philanthropic world of international giving of donors wanting to see the effects post-donation. Why is it so important to us to see a measure of the success of our donation? It is obvious that this could be useful in the decision of whether to donate to a given organization beforehand, in evaluating the potential impact of the donation before it is given. Also, such reporting could encourage future donations, in addition to being a useful tool for the organizations themselves in assessing their programs’ success and improving their impact. Despite these reasons, it seems to me that donors would still want to know about what their donation was used for, and moreover would desire an intimate relationship with the organization and recipients of the donation, even if they were never going to give again. Why is this? I believe that the motivation comes from the desire to see the fruits of our donation despite the separation that comes with international giving. The philanthropic climate has changed so much in the past 100 years, or some could argue 50 years, where our donations are often going to far off places many of us will never go to, to people we will likely never meet. How has international giving become such a common thing? With the interconnectedness of our economies and political systems, through the tools or technology and social media, philanthropy has grown immensely. Now, people at opposite ends of the world can see the need that is present, and view someone with a very different life from their own just as one would see a brother or sister. This, I believe is a case for investing in the infrastructure of a program. If donors value an organization’s ability to measure its progress and invest in connecting the recipients to the donors, than donors must be willing to fund the time and money that is required to build these international bridges. Though the question of overhead costs is very detailed and much larger than this specific topic of monitoring and relationships that we as a class desired for recipients of our donation, it serves as evidence in support of opening the door to discussion about overhead costs and startup in philanthropic organizations.

Eboni Scotland

In the article “The hidden costs of million-dollar donations,” Robin Rogers writes about a group of billionaires, known as the Good Club. This group including Warren Buffet, the Gates and Oprah Winfrey to talk about philanthropy and how to address pressing social issues around the world. I found this to be intriguing because they have taken pledge to give up half of their wealth to charity. I have always been outraged that people in the 1% percent in this country always complain about high taxes because they want to keep their money. Now I see that not all wealthy people feel the same way about money. The Good Club has a goal to engage all 400 of Forbes’s wealthiest Americans, which would lead to $600 billion for charities around the world.

Even though this sounds like the end the world’s problems, the article makes some on how philanthropic funding could hurt public policy such as education. The Gates foundation funded $375,000 to American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This group is made up of state legislators and private companies such as Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart and Koch Industries. Giving money to groups like ALEC leads to those same companies controlling public policy. They take money away from policies like education. It is infuriating to learn about I think something should be done to protect public policy laws.

The real problem with philanthropy is that goal of changing the world for the better is becoming tarnished with corporate interest.

I agreed with the author when he concluded that we need checks and balances on the power of billionaire philanthropy. I don’t want the United States to turn into more of plutocracy than it already is.

Pamela Kekst

In reading about Oprah Winfrey’s vision for her Leadership Academy for girls, a particular theme struck me: the role of the attitude those in power had towards population they were trying to help. Oprah herself describes how she encountered an unsympathetic attitude regarding poor black girls from many South African education officials. As she quoted to one reporter, “it was clear that the attitude was “these are poor African girls. Why spend all this on them?” It seems that those in South Africa who had the power to help change the education system were still affected by apartheid beliefs about the role of black women in society and what they should be educated for. Even as the government made statements supporting equality in education, implementing a new system was difficult.

Oprah remained unapologetic in her goal and her method. Her defenders later praised her for “sending a message to the world that blacks and women are valuable” and “having the audacity to spoil these Black African girls.” Oprah may not have used a community based model to address community issues, but she did bring a new perspective to the community that many would not have otherwise acknowledged. She sought out girls with leadership and academic potential in places where no one else would have looked, and developed a space where that potential could be tapped. She sent a very strong message to the world about women’s education and started many conversations among high profile celebrities who took up her cause.

In our class, I think we have an important lesson to learn from Oprah’s method. As the students deciding where our $10,000 will go, we are in a position of power to help others, and so we must be conscious of the attitude we have towards our target population. We must follow Oprah’s example of challenging the implicit beliefs that are held about who is deserving of education in the developing world. We must consider how can be impartial in our grant process and continue to develop methods that help us self-evaluate our progress. I hope Oprah’s example will be on all of my peer’s minds as we move forward with our decision-making.

Heather O’Connell

After an exciting class of presentations and debates, I was pleasantly surprised when the issue I chose to write my Global Issues Research Paper on, education, was chosen by the class. Though all of the issues were equally important and everyone made great arguments for each issue, I am proud that our class was able to come together and rally behind the cause of education.

My favorite part of this entire process was the passion I witnessed within the education group. We all came together over the idea that education was the universal solution to many issues and that it was the key to development. Though we continued to be open-minded, the more other groups spoke about their issue the more we each realized how education could help their cause. It was great to then see the class support us as our debates went on. I think we successfully presented the importance education can have on the world.

Overall, I think we did a great job as a class presenting our issues. Everyone showcased how they could solve a wide range of problems and how our $10,000 could help people. I believe that each and every one of us had the same goal in mind: to pick an issue that would help us make the the biggest impact possible with $10,000. I am excited for the rest of this process. Choosing an organization will be interesting since there are so many factors to consider. Our next step as a class is to decide what we are really looking for in an organization and then to find an organization that will most effectively put our money to use.

Justin Bevilacqua

Witnessing a group of almost 40 undergraduates—and increasingly, philanthropists in the making—coalesce upon a single humanitarian issue out of a universe of possible causes makes for quite an interesting afternoon. Being one of those in the debate and advocating for my own chosen issue however, seemed to highlight an almost Easter egg token of wisdom that I’ve since taken from this class; the fact that it is very likely that the great majority of philanthropy efforts aim at the same goal: to ease human suffering.

While I did chose to write my Global Issues Research Paper—an assignment that preceded our in-class discussion and votes—on the topic of women’s empowerment, I soon found myself at the end of class voting for education when women’s empowerment was no longer in the running. It would be remiss of me to say that I did not feel defeated in the slightest sense for my team’ shortfall of triumph. However, as I listened to my fellow classmates’ arguments for their own chosen cause, I couldn’t help but to notice how we all seemed to be aiming at the same end.

As each team of advocators stood to deliver their pitch, it further seemed that each issue would subsequently become the new subjective “foundational issue” that stood to improve all others with the introduction of philanthropic efforts. This, too, seemed to speak more towards the fact that we each cared about, and sought to improve, the problem of human suffering around the world, and that our own character traits and personal experiences paints a lens for each one of us to see the world. Accordingly, we would—and should—each have a different idea of how best to ease the plight of others.

As we move forward in class, it is clear to me that we are all aiming at the same goal and that we must realize this so that we can continue our efforts in unison. Choosing an issue to focus on may be a sizable stepping-stone, though I anticipate that it might vastly pale in comparison to our decisions lying ahead.