If you are interested in helping fund the school in Wilnard’s church or perhaps your church (Or a group of Christian educators, or any combination) is interested in adopting this school to help pay the teachers, provide uniforms and shoes, or even feed the students, please let me know.
If you’d like, we can plan a trip together and I can introduce you to Pastor Wilnord myself.
The needs in Haiti are still real. The opportunity is still huge. Please don’t forget.
If I had a dollar for every time someone said that to me about the people of Haiti I wouldn’t be $1700 short in my fundraising!
There are a few answers to that question. At least from my über limited perspective.
Haiti is so poor that they just don’t have the infrastructure and resources to even conceive of a solution. It’s just too big and they have been too dependent on the outside world to help them to solve it themselves.
Culture has put up some major barriers. There are laws and traditions to be obeyed which make seemingly easy problems to fix nearly impossible. For instance, you’d need a permit (which costs money) to haul away the rubble of a home you rent. (which you are still paying the rent for) You have to find the owner, (who might live in Haiti or the U.S., you’ve never met him but only paid his cousin) who has to provide the government (which fell down) with proof of ownership (which was destroyed when government buildings collapsed) before you can hire workers to remove the rubble. (which costs money, and the government hasn’t yet determined where to take all of the rubble)
The poorest of the poor don’t have the social currency to not worry about breaking the law/culture and looking past a lack of resources for the sake of doing some good.
I first thought of this often debated online phrase in the real world while in Haiti in February. Like a lot of relief workers I struggled with what I saw. It just didn’t reconcile with the world I know.
I’m not a sociologist. But this is how I think of social currency.
If my house partially collapsed, killing my family, what would I do? Obviously, I’d call 911 and 6 minutes later a miniature army of highly trained firefighters would show up. Then a news helicopter would fly overhead so that the entire metro area would know what had happened within the hour. In shock and not knowing what else to do, I’d get in an ambulance and go to the hospital. At some point soon after that my insurance agent would call me. I’d call some friends who would rally around me. Within about 48 hours I’d be planning funerals, talking to endless insurance people about life insurance and property insurance, while a group of friends would help me “get back on my feet.” In the meantime, I’d probably stay with some friends or relatives before settling into a long-term hotel that my insurance company would pay for (and going to a years counseling that my health insurance company would pay for) while they took care of hiring contractors to pull permits and level the house before rebuilding it.
That’s a lot of social currency. I’d call on all of those government and financial institutions without thinking about it because I’ve paid into those institutions! I’d call on friends to help because we have a perceived reciprocal society. Just the thought that “they’d do the same for me” would compel them to help.
How would that change if I were the poorest of the poor, living in a country with no infrastructure, and the entire city I lived in collapsed? Those with financial means would leave immediately. This would be the land-owners and business people. Those with no means (the homeless, the orphans, the widows) are just kind of frozen. They don’t know what to do because they don’t know the questions to ask nor the ramifications of what would happen if they “just fixed stuff.” Nor do they have the resources to fix stuff. Nor do they have the energy or equipment to fix stuff.
I remember Seth Barnes asking people what they were going to do and the dialogue always went like this:
What are you going to do about your home?
- I don’t know. I’m waiting for the government to help me.
Has the government ever helped you in the past?
- [laughter] Of course not.
The poorest of the poor are, unfortunately, dependent on help. The real question for them seems to be… what will accepting help cost them? Remember that Haiti is a place of both spiritual and real oppression. Accepting help may land them into a debt that costs a lifetime to repay. This is a place where children are trafficked and labor is unregulated. This is a place where, on a good day, the police are uncaring about your plight. But on a bad day, the police are just as dangerous as the oppressors. They may even be the oppressors in some neighborhoods.
What would you do? You’d laugh at those silly barriers in full knowledge that the landlord wouldn’t care that you cleared the property. At the very least you’d knock down your condemned home and pile up the rubble to be hauled away. Chances are pretty good that you’d also try to organize your neighbors into a group of workers who would go around clearing rubble for other people. Say, old women. That’s the power of social currency. You aren’t frozen. When everyone is stuck, you’d naturally rise up and take action.
This is why you should consider a relief trip to Haiti
If you are a reader of this blog I want to encourage you to find an agency of relief and pray about going to Haiti in the next 12 months. You have resources. You are ignorant of culture barriers. And you have social currency to spare.
Starting a new organization is an entirely different task than innovating to change an existing organization.
Both are hard. But changing and existing organization is way harder.
For most of my career I’ve been in turnaround roles. Kristen and I have a little joke… My entire adult work life has seemed like one roller coaster ride after another.
Click, click, click, click… up we climb.
Click, click, click, click. My heart races.
Wait for it. Wait for it… Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Arms up. Screaming bloody murder. Thinking of the Tom Petty song, Free Falling.
Down the big hill we go.
Over and over again I’m left to help try to innovate our way out of the mess.
And, so far, I’ve been pretty successful at it by most people’s judgement.
How does one innovate within an existing ecosystem?
Become Switzerland. There are political factions within any organization. If you want to get stuff done you need to be neither and empathetic both sides at the same time.
Spike the football. When you do something that everyone is happy with its OK to just look into the camera and say, “Thank you very much. Woohoo! Hi mom!” I’ve seen a lot of people fail in an organization because they were afraid to take the credit for their own ideas doing well. Don’t be an idiot. It’s OK to be the guy to do good stuff. Spike the football.
Own the data. Existing organizations are horrible at owning their data. I like to look at the results of a long-standing program that has had no results and say, “30 years of VBS and not a single new family? Why didn’t we just light that $300,000 on fire? At least we would have had a good BBQ.” When people are tied to tradition or the way they’ve always done things, sometimes you need to be the person with the frying pan who hits them in the head. Helping people in leadership own the data is the catalyst to getting stuff done in an existing organization.
Be creative. Face it. A fist full of money and a fat belly has never created a single good idea. Have you seen Bing? No budget, no time, no research, shot in the dark… that’s when good stuff happens. That’s when the best ideas pop into your head. Creativity and innovation come out of suffering and frustration. These are your friends and allies, not your enemies.
Opportunistic eyes. I keep a list of ideas I’ve got on ice. Then, when I’m in a meeting and everyone is scratching their heads looking for something new, bam… I’m pull out my concept. If I ran around screaming about every idea I had all the time I’d look like a mad scientist.
What are some ways you’ve learned to innovate within an existing ecosystem?
Lars Rood kept telling me, “You need to meet Phil and Amy, you’ll love them.” Lars even took the first step and set up a dinner where we could all get together. He was right.
It’s not hard making friends with them. In fact, our hearts beat for the same types of stuff in life. Justice, Jesus, adventure, family, and a good taco. The big difference between Phil and myself is that Phil is doing a lot of the stuff I only dream about. In other words, he’s brave while I’m a wuss with a keyboard and a camera.
Steps of Justice
Last month, when Phil was gracious enough to take me to Tijuana for a day, he showed me something he was just about to launch. It was this very visual and powerful 30 day prayer journal he is calling Steps of Justice.
Let me encourage you. If you hear about injustice in the world, whether in San Diego county or your neighborhood or on television in far away places, and you wonder how you can get involved… this is a great little resource. Allow Phil to take you on a journey, show you some of what he’s seen, and allow the Spirit to challenge you along the way.
Here’s the pitch
Phil is giving this thing away. You can go to the site and download a free version right now. He’s a little too nice if you ask me. Phil and Amy are full time missionaries, they have poured their lives into this little resource, at the very least pay $5 to download the high resolution version. Better yet, order some hard copies for $6 for your small group or youth group. It’d be a great encouragement to them.
