Bankers to the Poor
A sermon preached for the congregation at Eliot Unitarian Chapel
in St. Louis, MO by the Rev. Dr. Daniel ÓConnell on April 20, 2008.
I have been struggling this week with the idea of compassion. Some anonymous person wrote me last week to the effect of: enough with the ‘free religious thought.’ What about compassion? Hmm. Ask and ye shall receive.
What is compassion? According to one dictionary,
Compassion is an understanding of the emotional state of another or oneself. Acts of compassion are generally considered those which take into account the pain of others and attempt to alleviate that pain. (Wikipedia).
Another definition puts it this way: Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it.
How do we know if someone is acting compassionately or not? We would have to know if (a) they had a deep awareness of another’s suffering, and (b) if they had a wish to relieve it; and maybe even (c), took action to relieve the suffering.
I grew up in a household without much compassion. My mother and father didn’t get along very well. They finally divorced when I was 14 years old, in the throes of adolescence.
So, I grew up without much modeling of compassion. I heard people talk about it. I didn’t see it very much. People would say– oh that poor dear to a beggar in the street– but they didn’t necessarily offer to give the ‘poor dear’ money or a ride home.
It was almost like instead of trying for a deep awareness of suffering, there was a sideways move to be ignorant of another’s suffering.
And not only did I grow up in a household where compassion wasn’t modeled very well. But I also grew up male.
And even today, boys are encouraged to hide their emotions– particularly pain and sadness. Because to admit pain is to admit vulnerability. And to admit vulnerability is to invite attack.
Among boys or even men, confidence and swagger serve a purpose. In the animal kingdom, to appear weak is to invite attack. The lions always go after the small elephants, the injured gazelle, the hunger-weakened zebra.
We have been animals for millions of years; we have been somewhat civilized humans for a much shorter period of time.
My own belief, is that men are at least as emotional or even sentimental as women are– broadly speaking– except that we learn as little boys to hide it better, to not talk about it, to keep it hidden. We are socialized by everybody this way– our parents, our teachers, everybody.
This can make men appear to be emotionally restricted– particularly when it comes to expressing sadness.
When I was in college, a woman I was dating broke up with me. Then in that same conversation, she hinted that I didn’t seem that upset about it.
But she had broken up with me– not the other way around– of course I was hurt. Of course, I was vulnerable. I remember thinking– why did she expect me to trust her enough to show her how I really felt?
And wasn’t this kind of sadistic? She knew she wounded me– now she expects me to display the damage?
Like many men, I learned to keep my true feelings– feelings of tenderness anyway– to myself. The journey to become more of a compassionate person has been a difficult one.
If ‘compassion’ is Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it. Then compassion has to begin with deep awareness.
For a long time, I didn’t want deep awareness. When I was in college I worried that if I truly became deeply aware of my own suffering, that I would begin crying and never stop. I would be unable to stop. I would cry until my eyes were dry, and then keep going until there was nothing left.
Even today, I know grown men, middle aged men who will not cry. And they won’t cry because they are afraid– in the inner recesses of their heart– that they won’t be able to stop crying.
If men shy away from deep awareness of their own suffering, can they truly develop a deep awareness of someone else’s suffering? Can they learn compassion?
After all, compassion is a goal of every world religion, and developing compassion is an important spiritual skill.
• In the Jewish tradition is the idea of tikkun olam (the healing, and repair of the world).
• In the Christian tradition is the story of the good Samaritan, who rescued a Jew from a ditch and helped him out.
• In Islam, compassion towards the poor is so important that the Prophet used to say that even if one person remains hungry in a locality no angel would descend until that hungry person is fed. Also the Prophet is reported to have said that it is more meritorious to feed a hungry widow than to pray all night.
• In Buddhism, compassion is wanting others to be free from suffering. It is said that to generate genuine compassion, one needs to realize that oneself is suffering, that an end to suffering is possible, and that other beings similarly want to be free from suffering.
• The founder of ethical culture, Felix Adler, put it this way: “to care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.”
Okay, so compassion is important in pretty much every religious tradition. But sometimes to understand compassion, we have to put things in perspective. How many people here have a
• checking account?
• some savings?
• a retirement plan?
• A credit card?
• A mortgage?
• A loan for a car or vehicle?
• A roof over their heads
• Clean water to drink
• a heater and air conditioner?
Who here, if they needed to, could get their hands on a $500– from a bank or a friend, or somewhere? If you said yes, you are in the top echelon of the world’s population in wealth.
With that in mind, let’s consider: more than half the globe’s population– 3.2 billion people survive on less than $400 a year. 4 billion people live on less than $3 per day.
This isn’t because all those people are lazy. It’s because of the life they were born into. Many poor people are extremely resourceful and become good entrepreneurs, because their very survival depends on it.
And yet, really poor people have no access to things like a checking account, never mind all the rest of it.
“During the famine of 1974 in Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus, an economics professor at Chittagong University, found the theories he was teaching irrelevant; so he went into a neighboring village and began talking to the poor.” The New Yorker, October 30, 2006.
Yunus met a woman who made bamboo stools and had to borrow from the village money lender to get her materials, usually at the rate of 10% a week or 520% interest per year. After paying interest, she had barely enough money left to eat.
So, he loaned the equivalent of $27 to a group of 42 basket weavers, and every cent was paid back. Yunus went on to win the Nobel Peace Price in 2006 for his work in micro-finance.
It turns out that for the 3rd world poor, access to small amounts of capital, can make all the difference in the world. A lot of other people have gotten on board because the need is so great.
There simply is not enough money to give direct aid to 3 or 4 billion people. So, there needs to be some sort of self-replicating model to do it. Hence, micro-finance and micro-credit.
A man named Geoff Davis went to Mexico, where he started a program to issue credit to local entrepreneurs. A woman came to him for a $35 loan. She wanted it to buy a thermometer. She sold goat cheese in the public square, and pasturized cheese sold for double what non-pasturized cheese sold for, but she needed a special thermometer she couldn’t afford to save up for. He made the loan, she paid it back.
When Mr. Davis saw her again, she was wearing the same old clothes and shoes. When he inquired about this, she beamed. Since school would start in the fall, she had saved enough money to afford bus fare, school supplies, and school uniforms to send her first child– ever– to school. “Lending A Helping Hand: micro-loans aid in alleviating global poverty,” in Alaska Airlines Magazine, June 2007.
A successful mutual fund manager retired at age 49 and became involved in micro-finance with the Vietnam Women’s Union. She relates some progress:
When the women first came for loans, they sat hunched, looking down into their laps. They would take the money and fold it into a hairpin behind their ears, looking so frightened; because, they said, they were afraid they couldn't pay it back.
Two or three years later, these same women were running businesses, and were often involved in politics in their village." She continued, "Does everyone succeed? No. But it is the same in the investment business. You don't want to take a lot of risk? Buy some ducks. But the more risk-taking borrowers will pool their loans and buy a baby water buffalo and rent it to men for farming.
There was a woman who started out with a mud hut. When we came back, she had a three-room house with a cement floor, and the pigs were in the hut she had stayed in before. New Yorker.
A different woman– Ingrid Munro– and her husband lived in Nairobi, Kenya. They started with 50 beggars from the slums. The idea was you could borrow double what you had saved. Over the last 7 years, their group, Jamii Bora– which means ‘good families’ in Swahili– has expanded to 61 branches serving 130,000 members. It mostly pays for itself.
It is expensive to work with the poorest of the poor, because it costs just as much to administer a loan of $30 as it does for $3,000. But they shoulder on. Some of the micro-lenders have even added “housing loans, health, and life insurance.”
Ingrid Munro thinks we would all be impressed if we visited these projects. She says:
You know, when people visit the worst kinds of slums; even worse than anyone can imagine; and they walk around and meet people in their little businesses and little homes, almost always, their first comment is 'Why are they so happy?'
And I say, 'It's because they have something today which they didn't have a month ago, and they have a plan and dream of something they're going to have in a month's time that they don't have today.' "
I am reminded of an inscription on a church in Sussex England. The inscription was engraved into the stone of the church around the year 1730. It says:
“A vision without a task is a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world.”
A vision of alleviating poverty without a means to do it, is just a dream. Living in poverty without a dream of how to get out is drudgery. But a vision of alleviating poverty, and a means and task to do it, is cause for great hope.
One of the largest efforts at micro-finance is a group called FINCA. This stands for the Foundation for International Community Assistance.
They know that 30-80% of the working 3rd world population are employed by micro-enterprises. And that small loans of $50 to $300 can lift people from absolute poverty to being able to adequately feed their family, have a house with at least a tin roof, and be able to send a kid to school.
One of the pioneering works of FINCA is the Village Banking group, which is a support group of 10-50 members—usually mothers—who meet weekly or twice a month to make small self-employment loans to their group, monitor each other’s savings plan, and provide a mutual support system.
The groups are run democratically and they guarantee their own loans. They come up with their own bylaws, the elect their leadership, manage their accounts, and enforce “penalties for non-compliance.”
FINCA lends primarily to women since 70% of the world’s poor are women, largely because they don’t get educated and don’t have access to credit.
Another issue is that “most victims of severe poverty are children. According to UNICEF, at least half of the 12 million children aged five or younger who die each year, die from malnutrition associated with severe poverty.” If mothers have a greater ability to care for their children, then child poverty can fall.
Despite the fact that FINCA is working with some of the world’s poorest, the average, on-time repayment is more than 97 percent--as good or better than most commercial banks expect.
And, FINCA’s aim is to help each program become self-sufficient. In fact, three FINCA programs have become regulated financial institutions able to take deposits from the public.
FINCA spends about 9% on administrative and fund raising costs, leaving 91% of the budget for direct program expenses. This efficiency is one of the highest not only in the micro-finance industry, but in the charitable sector, earning the highest rating, four stars, from the prestigious Charity Navigator.
FINCA is trying to create 100,000 Village Banks in the world's most destitute neighborhoods. Some of the world’s largest philanthropists are trying to reach an audacious goal: to eliminate the most extreme poverty on the planet by the year 2015.
Okay, this is all very interesting. What does it have to do with Eliot Unitarian Chapel? I was doing research on FINCA, and I came across something very interesting on their web site. I had heard about this particular feature from some other UUs, but I had to read it to believe it.
FINCA is funded by mostly private, and some public donations. Including churches. Now, here is the kicker. It turns out for a $5,000 contribution, Eliot Chapel can sponsor a Village Bank.
Such a donation could immediately give 20-40 families an opportunity to escape poverty, providing first loans to borrowers who can experience—for the first time—the opportunity to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
We could start a village bank in Haiti for women who sell food in market places. Or in Malawi, one of the world’s least developed countries, where more than half the population lives in dire poverty.
If we did this, we would get the
• Location and name of the Village Bank
• A group photo of the clients, their businesses and amount of each loan
• A profile of a typical Village Banker from our sponsored country
One year later, we would get a report to on the progress of our country program where our donation has been put into action.
So here is my thought. We take a shared collection today for FINCA. And I know we raise a lot of money already for a variety of charities. You can track this in your monthly newsletter. And I know we have a lot on our financial table.
But I have to wonder. Could we– you and I– over the next year– raise $5,000? And could we– you and I– Eliot Chapel– become Bankers to the Poor? Could wee could sponsor our own Village Bank
If we pay attention, we become aware of the suffering of others, of the extreme poverty lived through by billions of people around the globe. If we wish to relieve it, we now have a proven method.
I am not asking you to do anything that I would not do. So, I am comfortable in writing a check today for $100. To support FINCA and to support Eliot Chapel’s efforts at making the world a better place.
Would you do the same? Would you match me? I’m not asking everyone to match me– just those of you with the wherewithal and inclination.
“A vision without a task is a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision and a task is the hope of the world.”
Let us cast a large vision about alleviating poverty. Let us consider taking up a noble task. Let us contribute to the hope of the world. So let it be. Amen.
, #146.