I was in a quick meeting this morning looking at ways to help people reimagine their role in creating change in Africa. The idea was to move away from the “western money/ideas/structures will fix everything” mindset, towards a more collabrative approach- meaning- we have some of the answers, they have some of the answers, and together we may actually have the collective intelligence to find some practical solutions.

Those of us engaged with mobilizing people have to move past the “orphanage” model where a few lucky individuals are plucked from poverty and dropped into a western model of, quote unquote, sustainability, because for all intents and purposes this will forever be a drop in the bucket (Hands at Work alone is hoping to reach 100 000 orphans by 2010 and the total number of orphans in Africa grows by some estimates at up to 2.1 million a year). While it’s always worthwhile to save one child- if we are really going to turn the tide there needs to be more effective large scale strategies. These need to be community based initiatives that don’t try to emulate western living standards but attempt to find “actually” sustainable, culturally sensitive, African approaches.

Anyway, after all that, the comment that stuck with me was one Mark Crocker made. Essentially he said we’ve focused so much energy and marketing muscle on the idea of making poverty history when the real challenge is to make affluence history.

To make poverty history from a western perspective would leave little for anyone but an empty husk of a planet. We have to help people to reimagine their role not as bringing people up to our standard of living but in carving away at the margin between the rich and poor from both sides- because the brutal, honest, ugly truth for those of us on the inequitable side of the global equation is that the scope of the problem will take more than generosity and sympathy (sharing the feelings of another) but sacrifice and compassion (sharing in the suffering of another).