This is definitely a classic thread. Almost every post has added to the discussion. I understand your problem, and I feel the same way about the West not doing enough for people in Sudan. I agree that acting instead of sitting, feeling guilty and doing nothing is a good idea. I do volunteer work and am working on some creative fundraising activities (my day job is marketing so fundraising is a natural extention). I find that my problems (professional, love etc.) pale in comparison to the world's problems, and thinking of myself on a global continuum puts my relatively petty worries in their place.
I am just reading
The 8th Habit by Steven Covey and it is blowing me away. He talks about his interview with Nobel Prize Winner
Muhammad Yunus. Economist and academic Yunus is a pioneer of micro-credit. He was inspired to create it after he got out of his Ivory Tower and walked into the towns of Bangladesh. His idea of "the worm's eye view" really inspired me:
Quote:
That is what I learned in school, what I learned in the educational part of my life. Trying to acquire a kind of a bird's eye view. You drive hard and see everything. And that's called education because now you can see everything. Then I realized in my work here that when you fly high you really don't see things very clearly. You make it up because it's such a blurred reality. You make up stories and piece them together and then you lose touch of the reality because you fly too high. What I was doing in that village was talking to these women and trying to discover his/her everyday life. I was trying to create a new kind of bird's eye view.
So that gave me also a strategy for my work. In a bird's eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don't have that advantage of looking at everything. You just see whatever is close to you.
|
I think if more people stopped sitting, thinking and feeling guilty and instead did what Yunus did, our world would definitely have many more great initiatives like this.