Serving My Community

Last week we read that:

The commitment to community doesn’t arise out of nowhere.  It comes from and is guided by values, principles, and assumptions that spring from our backgrounds and cultures, from our experiences, and from our conscious decisions about what is right. These values, principles, and assumptions shape our vision of the world as it should be, and motivate us to try to make it so.

Muhammad Yunus started the Grameen Bank by simply trying to solve the problem of the poor people in his community in Bangladesh. He lent tiny amounts of money to the poorest of the poor - those to whom no ordinary bank would lend. Most of his customers - as they still are - were illiterate women, wanting to set up the smallest imaginable village enterprises. It was his conviction that this new system of 'micro-credit', lending even such small sums, would give such people the spark of initiative needed to pull themselves out of poverty. Today, Yunus's system of micro-credit is practised around the world in some 60 countries, including the US, Canada, France and Kenya. His Grameen Bank is acknowledged by world leaders and by the World Bank to be a fundamental weapon in the fight against poverty.

The story of Yunus is inspiring because of its humble beginning, he was focused on solving a specific problem, started with the 17 dollars that he had with him and today the rest of the world is using his solution to change the whole banking system.
We may not have a grand solution like Yunus but yet again we just never know until we start! The key lessons here are:

• understand the needs of the community closely 
• take time to work out the best solution that 
• the community will embrace and own.

When I took a walk around my community, talking to people in the different age groups, I learnt a lot about the youth, the women and the children. I must however confess that even as I took the walk, one thing was important to me; I wanted to solve a community problem closely related to the young people and also one that would give them more opportunities in finding lasting solutions. Many youth in my community have no jobs. They need employment, they need additional skills including life skills and they need mentorship.

Looking at all the community needs can be overwhelming and even discouraging. The more you look around the more you notice. At some point I wondered what I was getting myself into and how I would move this forward.  That small voice actually asked me to quit as I wasn’t the local politician and I wasn’t looking at getting voted in for women’s rep!

I am however happy to report that I haven’t quit and instead I opted to press on and start small. My experience has been both rewarding and painful and I look forward to sharing some of these experiences with you next week.. keep following!