By Julia Smith-Blake
Speaking of
heroes, I
recently got to meet one of mine. At the beginning of March, a few of us from Chab
Dai were lucky enough to recieve some coveted tickets to a Social Business Hub
event to hear Professor Muhammad Yunus speak. Having had the opportunity (and
squandered it!) a couple years ago to meet another development hero of mine,
Amartya Sen, I was not going to chicken out this time!
The event was wonderful,
it began with a panel discussion on the infrastructure of social businesses which included the different definitions of what a social business is, the biggest challenges that can arise and the kind of
achievements you can expect in this sector. After a session of workshop
presentations, Professor Yunus gave a thorough and superb talk emphasizing the concept of freedom within economics. At the end of the event, a Cambodian social business acrobatic
group, Phare, gave an amazing performance (http://www.pharecambodiancircus.org/circus/).
What I love
about leaders such as Mohammad Yunus and Amartya Sen is their ability to link,
so eloquently and well-thought out, the connections of economics to freedom.
Sen’s theoretical model is based on helping individuals and communities achieve
freedom. This freedom can be economic freedom, personal freedom, societal freedom and/or
the freedom to be who they want to be. Ultimately, all development should be
viewed through the lens of freedom. Yunus’ foundational logic for lending money
to the poor, which led to the creation of microfinance itself, is essentially,
“If I lend money to the poor myself, they won’t have to go to a loan shark, and
they will be free!” So many of the poor stay poor or sink even more into a
cycle of debt and poverty because of predatory lending practices; and though
there is no such thing as a silver bullet in poverty reduction, Yunus saw
microfinance as a powerful tool to combat the violence of these practices.
As an aspiring
economic sociologist engaged in counter-trafficking, this is music to my soul.
It also, in my opinion, promotes the thought that communities have within
themselves the potential to end exploitation and trafficking, and the
counter-trafficking community’s job is to come alongside them to enable and
support their journey to freedom.
Yunus is an
inspiring person; after all the challenges he has faced, he remains so positive
and hopeful for the future. He truly believes this generation’s youth has the
most power and potential in history, and keeps pushing the boundaries of
innovative business and economics. At the end of his address, he said (paraphrased), “Poor people are like
bonsai trees, there is nothing wrong with the seed, society just didn’t give
them room to grow. We need to fundamentally change the system to give them room
to grow.”
I am a big
believer in “doing with” in development, not “doing for,” and Yunus’ ending
words inspire me. Fighting poverty and violence not only requires giving the
poor and the oppressed space to grow and achieve their potential, but also
working tirelessly to change a system that accepts the status quo and allows a
continuous cycle of violence and poverty in the world.
