Wed, 07/31/2013 - 10:00 — admin Theres an interesting article from Muhammad Yunus this month on the relationship between poverty and peace and the role of micro credit in improving lives: Adapted from his book Creating a World Without Poverty. it says this about the plight of those disenfranchised Poverty leads to hopelessness, which provokes people to desperate acts. Those with practically nothing have no good reason to refrain from violence, since even acts with only a small chance of improving their conditions seem better than doing nothing and accepting their fate with passivity. Poverty also creates economic refugees, leading to clashes between populations. It leads to bitter conflicts between peoples, clans and nations over scarce resources water, arable land, energy supplies and any saleable commodity. Its a theme that will also be found in our own work. For example in this economic development proposal for the Crimean Tatars, a Muslim community under pressure from external factions intent on destabilising these refugees returned to their homeland followind deportation by Stalin. It is a call for a soft power approach to terrorism: Tackling terrorism through compassionate economics In the emerging global war against terrorism, first response has necessarily been to target and destroy existing terrorist organizations. This is a case of global self-defense. Preventing terrorism is at least equally important. There is an emerging consensus that poverty provides the essential breeding ground for terrorism to emerge. People with nothing have nothing to lose and much to gain. In efforts to deal with communities in or near poverty, it will be useful to target progressive, peace-oriented communities just as aggressively as has been done in targeting terrorist cells. Both types of communities are quite similar, but, one has attempted a peaceful path whereas the other has not. Toward this end, the most promising and deserving communities must be “hit” with equal force as is brought to terrorist cells – the difference being delivery of resources rather than ordinance. The point is to grow the best, most promising communities with the same focus and passion brought to destroying terrorists. Rewards must come for being decent, peaceful people to the same extent that punishment is brought for those who are not. There is no more obvious a case to be made for such reward than that of Crimean Tatars. This is a community which deserves to be rewarded first, quickly, and strongly as the opposite example of terrorist threat. Attending to those communities which represent the strongest threat very simply invites others to follow suit and become threatening. Rewarding those who represent strong and clear commitment to democratic principles and peaceful resolution of conflict will have the same effect: inviting others to follow suit and become peaceful and democratic. This is the best possible outcome, and an excellent start toward building a better world based on democracy, peace, broad prosperity, and the fulfillment of basic human rights. The proposal describes a microlending approach based on a combination of the Grameem model and Good Works and alingment of a Community Funding Enterprise based on the P-CED social business model, with a credit union or CDFI. By combining a community-funding enterprise (CFE) with a micro-credit union, the limitations inherent in each one is greatly diminished. The CFE provides sufficient funding to ensure the operating costs of the credit union, reducing the risk that the credit union will have any need to use its capital to sustain itself. The credit union immediately makes available sufficient loan money to match the needs of the community, thereby eliminating the time needed for the CFE to generate the same amounts of money. Additionally, CFE profits over and above what is needed to help with the operating costs of the credit union can be put directly into the credit union. Over time, the amount of money used to originally fund the creation of the CFE is offset by CFE contributions to the credit union. The credit union is increased so that larger amounts of money become available either to make larger loans or to service more borrowers. Together, the CFE and credit union create an enterprise where the original funding not only remains but also increases with time. They complement and balance each other by addressing the economic goals both have in common and offsetting each other’s limitations. The concept of a business which operates primarily for the benefit of the community is described in the P-CED white paper for an altenative to capitalism. In subsequent application, we argued the case for a bottom line
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 03:15:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015