What I'm Reading: The Poor Will Be Glad

I got this idea from my internship at Opportunity International.  Once a week they do a blog post "What We're Reading" and it's a review of an article or book someone at Opportunity has read on poverty, microfinance, development, etc. Running with that idea, I'm going to try and occasionally do a "What I'm Reading" post.  This first one is actually a post that I wrote for the Opportunity Blog.

I recently finished reading the book The Poor Will be Glad, written by Peter Greer and Phil Smith. I don’t know about the poor, but reading the book made me glad. The first thing I felt when reflecting on what I had read was the hope it gave me. It also gave me realistic, practical steps that I can take to make a difference in the lives of people living in poverty. Through its stories of financial success and failure, as well as direct, practical guidelines for eradicating poverty, accompanied by incredibly moving photography, The Poor Will Be Glad provides a great balance of the sad reality of poverty with the hope that exists for a revolution.

The book’s stories of failed attempts to help the poor really makes you step back and think: “By trying to help, how can I avoid becoming part of the problem?” At the same time, the book’s presentation ofmicrofinance and the way it has revolutionized development efforts gives cause for great hope.

At Opportunity, we know exactly what the authors mean when they say that microfinance can change the world. In fact, we’ve seen it. The book actually highlights Opportunity as one of the best models for an MFI that does its work in a way that helps the poor build themselves up, creating independence rather than dependence.

The authors also address how faith communities and individuals can get involved in fighting poverty. While they clearly want people to be excited about microfinance (as they should be!) they don’t want their readers getting carried away and running off to try and start their own MFIs without properly examining the feasibility of such an attempt. They do encourage individuals and churches to get involved with MFIs as a way to fight poverty.

Key suggestions for how to have an impact on global poverty:

• Be an advocate – Spread the word about microfinance whenever you get a chance.
• Make a donation – Any amount of giving can help. For the price of a Christmas present one can make a practical difference in the life of an individual in the developing world.
• Fund a community bank – Members of a faith community can work together to raise enough money to fund a community bank loan portfolio. In this way, one community can reach out to directly impact another.
• Fund a project – Pick a specific project to support that is being done by an MFI .

Another important topic with which The Poor Will be Glad deals is the balance between the emphasis on the social needs and the spiritual needs of people living in poverty. For a long time, churches and mission organizations focused only on saving souls. This emphasis ignores the fact that we should spend our time on earth bringing God’s love to the world. That means addressing spiritual and social needs, not one or the other.

This book argues in favor of the very thing that motivates Opportunity’s work: empowering people to work their way out of poverty and responding to Christ’s call to love and serve all people. It is a message of openness and inclusion that resonates with me.

Opportunity International Amazing Race

I'm in the middle (more like on the home stretch really) of a competition among interns here at OI.  We get points for different things we do (read a book on poverty, comment on a blog post, write on Opportunity's Facebook page, write a blog post for the Opportunity Blog, etc.).  For most of the semester I had a good lead, but in the last 2 weeks one of the other interns has almost caught me.
The great thing about this is that all the things we can get points for only help to spread the word about Opportunity International and microfinance in general.
I hope I win, but more than that I hope that all the writing and "liking" and commenting I'm doing makes someone take a second look and consider supporting the transformational work of organizations like Opportunity.

New Opportunities

This may seem like an odd time to be re-starting my blog, seeing as the semester is coming to a close, and with it my internship in Chicago is also ending.  My original goal had been to blog throughout the semester, telling of my experiences in Chicago and what I'd been up to at my internship. Unfortunately that didn't happen, so here I sit in my last week of my internship, blogging about  what I wish I had blogged about all semester.

This semester has been an incredible 4 months, and a great chance for me to learn a lot about life, international development, microfinanace, non-profit organizations, and myself. For those who don't know, I spent the semester interning with the Resource Development Department at Opportunity International.  I was responsible for writing  reports on our microfinance initiatives around the world, doing research on potential new programs, writing stories about our clients, writing proposals for funding, and writing position papers for the organization.  It was an awesome experience, and I really appreciated that I was pretty much treated like a member of the staff.

Living in Chicago was also a ton of fun. I'll write more about that later though, for now you can check out the blogging I DID do this semester, as I was the student blogger for Chicago Semester Fall 2010.  You can check that our here.