Social Enterprises take on Poverty Reduction

The below articles looks at how social entrepreneurs are modifying their approach to addressing poverty alleviation in developing countries. Although many entrepreneurs focus on one issue at a time, FXB goes beyond single service delivery to holistically lift communities out of poverty, including access to health and education facilities.

NexThought Monday: FXB, Intervening Holistically for Economic Empowerment

By Heather Esper

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Ugandan families are among the recipients of FXB assistance. (All images by Alan Wicht, courtesy of FXB).

 

Whether it’s clean water, access to finance, or sustainable energy, social enterprises and foundations alike often hone in on a specific focus with the goal of reaching a wide scale of impact in the long run. One could argue that FXB takes the opposite approach by examining the big picture causes behind poverty first and tailoring a diverse set of services to help families reach economic independence.

The donor funded FXB utilizes a three-year approach to improve the lives of children by working with their families to provide comprehensive support in a customized way. Their approach focuses on economic empowerment and includes providing families with a subsidized and integrated set of services, while gradually moving families toward financial sustainability by the end of the third year. Within each “FXB-Village” their team consists of a social worker, nurse and logistician.  By focusing on economic empowerment FXB is able to leave communities after three years.

During the first year, FXB looks to strengthen the foundation of the family by improving their access to health care, housing, education and psychological health. In the second year, FXB identifies diverse income generating activities that are a good fit for the family by engaging them in both individual and group income generating activities. For example, FXB might train a family to grow beans on their own, but also link them to a labor cooperative that is raising pigs. During the second year, FXB covers 75 percent of the cost of services, with the majority related to educating the household’s children. The third year begins with families covering 50 percent of expenses and ends with the families paying for 100 percent of costs.

I spoke with FXB CEO Sean Mayberry, who joined the organization in 2011. Previously the chief operating officer of VisionSpring, Mayberry discussed FXB’s approach and direction for the future.

Heather Esper: Besides providing families with income generating activities, FXB also helps families access a number of other services including health care and education. Do you think it would be possible for FXB to intervene in communities by only introducing income generating activities, or do families’ other needs need to be met first?

Sean Mayberry: FXB has developed its FXB-Village model over 20 years of trial and error. Over that time we have learned that poverty is complicated, and families need a strong foundation upon which to integrate economic empowerment.  FXB’s experience has been that simply introducing an IGA (income generating activity) without the rest of our comprehensive approach will not result in the same success that we have seen with the FXB-Village model. Economic empowerment without the rest is like building a house on sand, it won’t last. It has become very clear to me and our team that addressing individual needs does not solve poverty. In order to make a dent in the poverty faced by the poorest of the poor it takes a comprehensive approach.

I used to work in the DR Congo and socially marketed mosquito nets around that country.  I can still see some of our customers, in rural villages, who were so pleased to purchase such a net, but these same people also wanted much more from my team—they needed jobs, they needed more comprehensive health support.  I always left those villages feeling slightly disappointed that my team was not providing the full solution.  Today, with FXB, we are providing the full solution, and I leave after visits with our beneficiaries knowing that these families are succeeding.

Heather Esper: Why did FXB decide to focus mainly on economic empowerment?

Sean Mayberry: As you know poverty is an extraordinarily complicated issue. There is no single, silver bullet solution. You can do a lot of good in many communities by providing just mosquito nets, or solar lights, or clean water, but to get to the root of the issue, to make real progress, it takes much more than that.  FXB strengthens the foundations of families in order to permanently lift parents and children up and out of poverty.  The foundation for us includes areas like strengthening the family’s health and psychosocial stability, ensuring adequate shelter, enrolling their children in local schools and ensuring a quality education, to name just a few areas.  Once the foundation is secure, typically after our first year working with them, we shift our focus to economic empowerment.

One of our best practices is that FXB’s approach to economic empowerment is customized to each family based on their unique circumstances.  For example, a rural household with eight children requires a different economic approach than a smaller household in an urban setting.   We work collaboratively with our families to evaluate potential IGAs.  We look at the options and help families to choose the best possible IGAs to meet their needs and that have the greatest chance of success.

Ultimately, to lift families out of poverty permanently they need the long term ability to create their own revenue streams. That is exactly what economic empowerment does. FXB participants receive grants to start micro-enterprises; they learn how to sell their goods, how to budget and plan their expenses, and how to save funds – things we in the western world take for granted. Economic empowerment is the capstone of what FXB does, because without income families would remain locked in the cycle of poverty.

Esper: FXB’s approach seems similar to Jeffery Sach’s belief that a one-time infusion of assistance can make a large difference in an individual’s life.  Or in other words that ‘poverty traps’ exist as Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo refer to them in their book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. In the book Banerjee and Duflo suggest that whether poverty traps exist or not takes a case by case basis, therefore I was curious how FXB decides which villages to work in?

Mayberry: FXB’s mission of lifting people up and out of poverty is accomplished through our selecting the poorest of the poor communities where we work, from Colombia to Uganda to India.  We actively work with local government officials and local leaders or elders to really identify those most in need.  This is very much a collaborative approach, where we spend much time speaking with the entire community, so that everyone in a community ultimately understands and supports those families selected to participate in our FXB-Village program.  This “buy in” from the local community ensures we target those most in need, and it also helps to avoid any feelings of rivalry between those we serve and those who are in better economic condition.  It is really quite amazing, when you look at our results and see that for a total cost of less than $500 per person over three years, these “poorest of the poor” radically improve their lives, and their economic condition.  These families take very significant steps up and out of poverty, and our research shows that this improvement continues for years after our FXB-Villages end.  We at FXB are excited to be publishing next month in April the results of a new study that tracked the progress of families we worked with in Uganda and Rwanda eight years ago, and the findings indicate very strongly that our customers continued to prosper during this interval after our FXB-Villages ended.  While we at FXB cannot and should not take complete credit for these positive findings, we are heartened to find the ongoing success of our beneficiaries, and we are excited to share this story, and our learnings, within the anti-poverty sphere.

Esper: What are some of the most important changes you see in families’ well-being, especially children, as a result of their parents becoming empowered economically?

Mayberry: Each time I meet a family participating in FXB’s programs I ask them how they see their future after the FXB program ends.   I am always struck that the huge majority of families have a positive outlook on the future, are confident that they will succeed, and feel that they can weather any adversity. The really remarkable thing here is that FXB’s beneficiaries have developed confidence – they know they have the tools and skills to live a better life, and they know that they can rely on themselves.

Esper: Do you think we need more BoP enterprises with a focus on economic empowerment as opposed to enterprises focusing mainly on social empowerment? If so, how can more enterprises do so?

Mayberry: I strongly believe you need both approaches combined in one, holistic model in order to be effective.

It is easier for organizations to focus on fewer issues, such as clean water or reproductive health.  But the results of those interventions are constrained when the bigger picture is ignored.  I think there are many opportunities for BoP enterprises to integrate economic empowerment into their work, and the first step in doing so is to be mindful of identifying the business opportunities in the communities where we all work.  For example, the India FXB program is now starting large scale production of sanitary pads for women, using our beneficiaries as employees, because we recognized the need for women to have access to this important health product.  A social empowerment approach may have resulted in giving out these products for free; but an economic empowerment approach is to produce the product locally and sell them at an affordable price for the BoP population.

Esper: How do you see FXB’s approach evolving over time?

Mayberry: We are continuously learning, refining our model and looking for new services to include. At the moment we are adding an early child development component to our FXB-Villages because we have found it successfully strengthens families. Additionally, we are searching for partners who can help us accomplish our goals more efficiently and reduce our costs. We are also focused on exploring related projects that will generate income for FXB so that we can rely less on external funding.

In the long run our goal is to convince local governments to adopt our holistic model. It is much easier to ‘sell’ programs to governments when they work and you can prove it. I think governments will be drawn to the FXB-Village program because of its proven success, which is being increasingly verified by independent research. Ultimately, governments can scale our model effectively and lift millions out of poverty.

The State of our Union

I’m a sucker for drama. I love it; love the intrique, the storylines, the passion, the risks. Throw in some humor and you have the ideal screenplay for my Friday night! It’s no wonder then that drama is what has attracted me to the profession I’m in – So many personalities, priorities and problems to go around that drama really is bound to follow and everybody has an opinion and much to the chagrin of our democracy, we have to listen to them.  

Keeping this in mind, watching the State of the Union last night was my version of the Oscars. I don’t know all the actors, but I know the biggie’s, I enjoy hearing their responses and torts and the partisan interaction. I also kinda like seeing the outfits.

Over and over again, Obama blows me away with his speeches. I’m not even American and I get emotional! I like the priorities they’ve set out and the pragmatic manner in which they’re hoping to solve their obstacles (or so he says). Of course, reactions follow and debate errupts all over the networks, but its dialogue. I also like that the event has given the American people a chance to once again understand their leader, what their values are and where they see themselves in the future.

I know that I cannot say the same about Canada.

Is there consensus in Canada about what our challenges are? Do we have unified national values? Do we have a common vision for what the future of this country will look like? It annoys me that important issues arise in the public domain because the media covers them, not a top-down approach that sees executive leadership explain the state of our federation and attempts to move it forward. Instead, we have a protracted view of the political system that sees much power delegated to the provinces, where debate over central issues is not widely discussed or analysed, and as a result, ignorance results.

Politics is not an easy game and its riddled with tactics, timing and Oh the drama! but it has to be open and transparant to the electorate otherwise we compromise the system. Squashing funding for research and development in numerous sectors may balance the books, but it doesn’t make us stronger, it just makes us rich idiots. Neglecting to collect census data makes our programming based on nothing more than campaign contributions and who our leadership likes in government.  What are we doing and what are we striving for?! A Statement of Our Union would help. So would active debate. After all, Knowledge is power and the Canadian people deserve not to be left in the dark.

The Inadequacies of Language

As a new member of the Quality Assurance Committee at my community Children’s Aid Society, I not only get a chance to learn more about the organization, meet new people and brush up on my skills, but it’s also a chance to hear stories that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

This time, we heard from one of my colleagues, who happens to be a nurse, describe a short documentary that she’d seen, ‘Just a Routine Operation,‘ narrated by a British man who had dropped his wife off at the hospital for a routine procedure and expected to pick her up later on in the day. However, the procedure did not go quite as planned and resulted in her loss of oxygen, brain damage and eventual death. The story itself is entirely heartbreaking. The irony of it was that this man has built a career on behalf of airlines to identify communication gaps, prevent human error and provide clarity where it may not be aparent in order to avoid tragedy in the air. 

Similarly, as reports out of Italy describe, human error is the cause for the capsizing of the cruise ship, ‘Costa Concordia’ and causing the death of too many. These two incidents really makes me think just how many lives could be saved by effective communication and cooperation.

In our culture, we’ve been lead to believe that experience should not be questioned and to do so is an insult and could lead to unemployment. By following this norm, though, those nurses did not question or intervene on the doctor with 30 years experience. No one did. Out of fear? Inexperience? I wonder what the co-captain of the Costa Concordia was thinking when it chartered off course; chancing fate or impressing the tourists?

Whatever the reasons for the team’s failure to intervene, both instances drive home the fact that they had the trust of their patients or passengers to lead them through to safety, be it the recovery room or the resorts. Such responsibility should be due cause for a questioning thought or an assertive action to ensure their destination and yet there was silence.  Language is one thing to master, understanding and overcoming culture, however, is more difficult.

In learning a bit more about culture and its influence on communication, I came across a corporate training organization, VitalSmarts, which seeks to help firms address the discrepencies that language sometimes highlight and particularly so in a multi-cultural environment. By making more of an effort to bring the same sort of clarity to organizations that the air industry currently employs can only lead to greater collaboration, understanding and responsibility and hopefully result in fewer human errors.

In the Meeting House

I was recently invited to attend a Meeting House discussion at the Public Library. I’ve never been to a Meeting House discussion so I’m not too sure what to expect (is a Meeting House in Canada the same as a Town Hall Meeting in the US?), but nonetheless, I’m curious.  The topic of the night will be the community – how it’s developing, concerns, fears, worries and in general, how we’d like to see it develop.  This is a particularly interesting topic as I”m all for positive change and seeing progress, yet the thought of going to the Meeting House has me strangely anxious. My family has lived in the areas for almost a hundred years; suffice it to say, I know it fairly well. But my anxiety makes me question, do I really? I know buildings, roads, landmarks and friends, but I feel it lacks the same sort of community, the type of place that makes you want to be home and strive toward making it better. This, perhaps may be one of the items on the agenda – how to make a town, a community and a home.

Bringing together different members of the community and the people who can implement change is a great idea and I’m very curious to know what sort of issues will surface. Will it be a safe and open space to express opinions or will biases and intimdation silence voices?

I’ve learned that the tremendous and rapid growth of the region has already caused major problems, especially regarding affordable housing and food security. Knowing this, I became a little alarmed (!) to learn that there really was no social plan in place to deal with the influx of people; no services, infrastructure or preparation to deal with the problems that could surface. What’s worse is there is no data and no research mechanism to provide evidence to support the creation of infrastructure or services. Basically, the strategy is to sit back and wait until problems arise, until they’ve gotten so bad that some money, time and effort need to be thrown at the problem. Really? Is this the way to run a healthy community? It really is maddening to see this type of logic applied to the community where you live.

The Meeting House is a start, but the main actors running it are already swamped with their own (contract) work that takes up much of their day. Let’s face it, this is a full time job of an entire department to create, establish and grow the social infrastructure that’s needed.  However, funding allocations tend to favor activities that will provide a return (ie economic development) without acknowledging the social sector until it’s too late; the down side of politics… Reactions to the Meeting House to come soon….

Importance of Relativity

Success! I’ve finally found employment!!! Wooooo0! I’m very excited and as a result, have rewarded myself with doing absolutely nothing! Well,  that’s not exactly true though either, because here I am blogging away – perhaps I’ll slow down later….anyways, what a great time to stop and let the heat of the sunshine drain out all your energy! Thankfully for me, 8 months in the tropics have adjusted my internal temperature so that this is wonderful Don’t get me wrong, I still feel how heavy the air is and yes, it’s hot, but I think I’m coping much better than others. I’ve always  loved the heat though. Remember a few years ago when Europe was suffering from heat waves and people died because of it? That was when I escaped the chill of Ireland to backpack around Spain – most Spaniards, however, had chosen the cool coasts of Barcelona, and there I was – the dumb tourist wandering around the deserted streets of  Madrid at 40 C degree heat at 7pm. Live and learn, or in my case, sweat! And at the end of my trip, back to my studies in Montreal, with arguably the coldest winters in Canada.

Point of the story? People adapt, everything is relative. The other day, we saw South Asians in full out cricket gear playing the under the afternoon sun. This heat must be nothing for South Asians, but for a place that is known for its snow fall, it is out of the ordinary. And so, hot topic of the day is, ironically the heat! And not just in Canada, but in the US as well.

The other day, the national news broadcasted a piece on the suffering of farmers who, with shortages of fresh water, were facing an ailing crop and having to sell cattle before their prime. While droughts are indeed awful, I reminded myself that 1) This is the US and 2) Farmers are not just farmers, but businessmen who control farms the size of small towns and who control the price of corn, much like the way that OPEC controls the price of oil. Silos are stocked to the brim full of supplies in order to control the price, instead of its former use to be dipped in to when supplies were low.  Knowing this, I was disgusted with the news piece to have neglected that point.

I’d like to think that people are good  people and  care about others when a crop dies or business is bad, especially in this economy. I suspect that’s why this news piece aired in the first place – to pull on the heart strings of the average Joe and to highlight the out of the ordinary heat waves.  But believing that Joe is inevitably good, he is not always educated to know that farming has joined the ranks with the rest of corporate America and so will pull up his socks, stop complaining and get back to work. What I find even more disheartening is that this made national news, but the droughts that the rest of the world experiences rarely makes the headlines.

I typed in ‘Somalia Droughts Heat’ in to the google search bar and the first news source, behind research studies, weather reports and alarms was a piece posted by ABC 5 days ago title, “Somalia Drought ‘One of the Largest Humanitarian Crises in Decades.’  Further on down the page, I found the CBC had declared, ‘Somalia drought aid hindered by armed groups.’ This to me, was more a more news worthy subject than farmers in the US.

Admittedly, my knowledge of Somalia and its history is little and I’m very humbled by an Eritrean friend who attempted the topic in her PhD thesis because it’s incredibly complicated and starts dozens of years ago. What I do know is that Somalia hasn’t really had a formal government for 20-30 years and are divided by half that wants independence. More North Americans are more likely to recognize the ‘We are the World’ song in the 80′s that brought Bono, Boy George and many other artists together to raise money for the droughts Somalia was suffering from then. Oddly enough, a remake is in the works!

Mobilizing international food aid is not as easy as it looks – think the forms, red tape and bureaucracy that you have to suffer through when renewing your license and then multiply it by 1000 and throw in a few more countries and disgruntled farmers’ unions that don’t like to part with their stocks. Furthermore, with no formal government, getting food and supplies to people that need them becomes very dangerous and difficult. How to reach the most vulnerable? is likely what is on the minds of most international relief agencies.

As a result, people leave and leave en masse; traveling by (mostly) on foot to neighbouring Ethiopia or Kenya where refugee camps provide an alternative to the already cramped streets of Nairobi or Addis Ababa. Knowing how precarious living standards and conditions can be in a refugee camp, my sympathies are with them. During my grad studies, I was fascinated by environmental changes and what it meant for societies and had written a paper on Environmental Refugees, much like the ones escaping Somalia, only to discover that International Law had yet to include them; to be a refugee, according to the Refugee Convention, doesn’t include the escape of environmental degradation and therefore claimants cannot obtain asylum status or rights in their new country. As a Canadian, I’ll never have to experience this and few Canadians even think of it, but really, what do you do when there is no food or water in your homeland (and therefore no jobs) and  have to migrate to a land that won’t allow you to stay or give you any rights?

Knowing the reality of many Somalis and East Africans, makes me think how stupid we are to complain about the heat, when water is in abundance and air conditioners blazing. Agreed, the plight of farmers is an obstacle, but really it’s a small obstacle that will likely vanish in a couple weeks or when stocks are let out and the weather changes. Is it something that we really need to focus our energy on, complain about or generate sympathy? It’s all relative, I suppose.

 

It’s a Sustainable Life

Sus-TAIN-able!! Whoa, I hear it everywhere – from Oprah to Obama, on the news, in the papers, around town, in the grocery stores and I’m sure it’s one of those words that will be on next year’s Spelling Bee List. So what the heck does it mean? Seriously, it’s only within the last months, maybe a year that it’s been rolling off the tongue of everyone and it’s been evolving into, sustainable development, sustainable living, sustainable business…just throw a sustainable in front of it and all of a sudden my sentence has drama!

I like it because it has speaks to continuity and maintaining that whatever we have right now will last into the future. Maybe that’s why it pairs so nicely with the Green Movement – ensuring that businesses are responsible to the environment where they work, that our household products are friendly to our ecosystem and that economic and international development projects consider conservation, health and environmental concerns.  It’s a great concept and I happily embrace it. But I also think sustainability can go beyond our concern for the earth and can also be applied to our relationships with each other and among communities.

If I’ve learned anything over the last few decades is that things change, priorities change, people change. That’s why circles of friends are always changing and why the value of old friends and family increases over time. I think if you were to ask anyone, family and friends would be at the top of the list of ‘Most Important Things in Life’. But, it’s not easy to keep such a close network of relationships and it takes work, much more than simply switching laundry detergents or getting a hybrid. Adaptation and prioritizing are key and we’ve clearly done it regarding the environment, but for ourselves and those closest to us, I think many of us have fallen short. Do you think that sustainable relationships and communities are giving way to sustainable growth, innovation and paychecks? If our relationships really are the most important aspects of our lives, then the same fervor, passion and energy that many of us felt for green products, living and  technology, should be – if not more – applied to maintaining our network of relationships. If we did, perhaps we’d have more cordial and sustainable communities – after all, it’s the people that build them, not the other way around.

A Penny a Day…

As tax season comes to a close and accountants climb back in to their hiding places, the mood is either exuberant (“Yay, I can go on vacation! ) or dismal (“oh no, where do I cut back?). Unfortunately for the most of us, it is the latter. Nobody likes to do taxes – it’s not pleasant – but it’s one of life’s small things that are sometimes necessary, like a trip to the dentist, which will hopefully lead to a better quality of life – better health care, better roads, efficient civil service – all those nice things that make Canadian spaces some of the nicest ones  in the world. If it’s for those reasons, then my disdain for the taxman lessens a little bit as it disappears out of sight for another year. However, it’s when money – my hard earned money – that gets spent on ridiculous things that could have been spotted at Wal-Mart of half the cost or done more efficiently by my 12 yr old neighbour.  I’m not in the marketing business or know the most efficient plans for production, but I know how to balance my budget and I don’t think I can say the same for our government.

We’re all going through rough times and cutting back is necessary – finding money that otherwise wasn’t there. That’s why I’m wondering why exactly Ontario and Alberta’s GST & PST will be combined in to the new HST? It costs a lot to change something like that – money, man power and, well, more money. It claims to be the same percentage, in a different package, but it smells more like a marketing a markup. Last night’s CTV news delicately put it that haircuts, alcohol and construction supplies will be marked up after June 1st.

And so, we must look elsewhere – and yes, it’s come to this – to our own Members of Parliament. Ironic isn’t it, that the government yields the ability to look at everyone else finances, but we rarely get to look at theirs? And it’s looking like we won’t get that chance as the MP’s are refusing to let the Attorney General take a peek. Why would they do that other than to hide the elaborate escapades and bloated bank accounts? If you were really working for the people you represent and want to share in their burden, you’d at least allow the pro’s to take a peek and make suggestions about where to cut back, wouldn’t you?

Finding money is tough! Despite being reprimanded by the US, the UN and the EU, Canada is persevering and will find that money if it’s the last thing they do! Unfortunately it comes in the form of oil and in collaboration with China – I’m not so sure if this is the type of business that we want, from environmentally compromising to politically damaging, it doesn’t look good. Shouldn’t we learn from the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

In the meantime, it may be true that unemployment rates are slowly shrinking, but not in the way that most of us hope – favoring the low skilled and leaving the managers, executives and highly educated out in the cold. This is not wise, as they are the ones that might have been able to bring in more revenue and therefore more tax opportunities for the province and country. And attracting that type of business is daunting, though not as tough as you might think. Canada’s a great place to do business – close enough to the US border that trade with it is accessible; the dollar is nearly on par; the market has just as much spending power as what Americans do, if not more; and the quality of life and attractiveness of our cities would make any new exec be pleased. Of course, business varies from sector to sector, but in a nutshell – all we’d need to do is create tax incentives for development and support growth opportunities.

Canada is not the US and it never will  be, so finding money and cutting back will always be a challenge. Canadians aren’t dumb either, we know how great our country is and so we don’t let the cost our our taxes deter us from loving it. Our government, however, is a different story; unaccountable MP’s; investment to destroy the environment and lack of work for trained professionals. I love Canada, but the recent ways that we’ve been tackling our economic woes isn’t the way to make Canada better.

Healthy Confusion

Somewhere, mixed up in the mumbo jumbo of the good, bad and ugly of healthy eating, we’ve gotten our priorities mixed up. How else could you explain the mound of literature dedicated to both revealing the sickening trends in the food industry and de-coding the ingredients that dot nearly every package in the supermarket. Michael Pollan’s books In Defense of Food and Food Rules are prime examples, as are documentaries (Food Inc. was top of the list of Oscar nominees and Super Size Me was a box office hit!) and tv sitcoms (Law & Order: SVU just released an episode featuring the gruesomeness of the meat packaging industry).

All this makes me think that we’re not healthy – we just think we are! As consumer’s, I think most of us are blinded by marketing gimmicks, like KFC’s “Bucket for the Cure” campaign which has gone pink for the month in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. The irony and shock as I read about this is astounding – do they actually think that buying fried chicken will put an end to breast cancer?

Traditional views of nutrition – the four food groups, portion control and weight loss myths – are also tough to beat and gets even more complicated when you throw in pesticides, fertilizers, GMO’s and substitutes. I’m convinced that buying local is the way to go – I’m over the moon that the weather is getting close enough to spring that the farmer’s markets will soon be opening up and I can peruse the aisles of fresh produce under the sun! My support of organic is also growing slowly – I really hate to admit it knowing that buying organic will put a dent in my wallet, but I think we just might be better off for it. Making wise decisions about our health is so important at all ages to ensure our quality of life well in to our retirement years that jeopardizing it now seems reckless.

Challenges of Development

Would the thought of losing your left hand be enough of a deterrent to not commit a crime? It certainly would be for me! Heck, the thought of a fine or public scrutiny would be enough to keep me at the speed limit! These are the thoughts going through my head when I read about a Nigerian Islamic Court baring a Twitter feed discussing dismemberment for criminal punishment. So not only are the sentences harsh, but the Islamic Court also ruled that discussion of it via Twitter should be silenced – just another sign of a blossoming theocracy!

Sharia law. I think the Iranian’s were the first to instill it during the ’79 Revolution and its institutionalization in several Islamic nations has since been adopted. The intermingling of Islamic tenets and the law dictate the conduct of the citizens. Yet I don’t think Islam and democracy are or should be ever contradictory.  Rather a bizarre interpretation of Islamic preachings are used as a political tool to instill fear, squash dissent and ensure that the ruling elite are never challenged. I’m not an expert, but in my ignorant eyes today, I see Sharia law as a cop out to real leadership and equate it with a police state.

On the other hand, harsh punishments for criminal offenders also take place in other areas of the world – drug traffickers in Thailand, kidnappers in China- though none that I can think of had ever enforced bodily dismemberment as a tool for justice. It reminds me of something out of the Middle Ages, one where human rights, international law and political retribution were obsolete.  These deterrents may be strong deterrents for criminal activity, but one that isn’t humane and life sentences or losing a hand for petty crime is not a solution. Economic development, social services and education may have lead these vagrants on another path away from criminality and a life sentence and towards prosperity and opportunity. Money put towards these goals would be money well worth it in the long run, yet the long run is rarely in the best interests of political leaders in nations such as these. Therein lies the challenges of development.

Something to Believe In

What a crazy world we live in! It’s no wonder that we look to God for guidance and perseverance every Sunday in the hopes that our strength will  be revitalized and courage invigorated. Yet, as we all know, the Church has its criticisms, notably the sex scandals that were uncovered over the decades. It’s ironic that, especially, the Catholic Church as an institution exists to lead the congregation on the conduct of their daily lives and yet itself strays from its own preachings. This alone would make anyone cringe and start searching for something else to believe in. But the Church recovered nicely, the crowds at the Vatican on Easter will attest to it, yet it never truly reformed, as the Vatican’s condemnation this week of  Catholic bishops and their cover-up of sexual abuse proves.

Pope Benedict XVI’s recognition that the abuse still exists and that bishops are turning a blind eye, shows the Pope’s commitment to ensuring the safety of young Catholics, (although critics say he hasn’t gone far enough), but also highlights the difficulties in enforcing a universal code of conduct throughout the globe. People look to the Church for guidance, not abuse and the Church’s role as a leader in society is again questioned. Should we follow the word of God if its representatives don’t?

I’m not sure if criminal acts make you any less Christian, but it certainly doesn’t do anything for your social status. So if you can’t trust the leaders of the Church, but know your instincts, the law and the respect that each human being affords to another, then perhaps faith in a higher being can be replaced by faith in each other and that their conduct will support you, give you courage and all the love that is needed in a lifetime?

I don’t think that spiritual enlightenment will never go away and people will always continue to search for evidence or guidance from a higher being (myself included). It’s interpretation though gets a bit muffled along the way, and hence brings the need for an ‘interpreter’. I just think that some people rely on and are so devoted to those religious leaders that it teeters on the edge of calamity – in all religions, not just Christianity.  A certain cautiousness has to be demonstrated when walking through that threshold to the congregation and common sense used in trusting religious leaders, after all we all need something to believe in.