This Little Light of Mine: A Reflection on the 2020 RESULTS Conference
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”- George Bernard Shaw
I watched my laptop screen in awe as Sam Daley-Harris, the founder of RESULTS, beckoned me to be an agent for change as he read this quote to everyone watching the RESULTS 2020 Zoom Conference. “[Life] is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible”, and I do. From the time I was little, I was taught to whom much is given much is expected, and I know that I have been blessed to have been given much— maybe sometimes too much. Nevertheless, I agree that “my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can”; I understand that there is a lot to be expected from me in this endeavor.
After hearing first-hand, the transformative power of economic empowerment through listening to the testimonials of women participating in a microcredit program in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and seeing how fruitfully social businesses were affecting sustainable change in Moshi, Tanzania, I realized that a way to take hold of my torch is through creating a social business dedicated to empowerment, to plant the SEED., and to let my light shine.
RESULTS (Raise Your Voice to End Poverty) is a movement of passionate, committed everyday people who use their voices to influence political decisions in order to bring an end to poverty (RESULTS, 2020). This past week’s conference included workshops lead by amazing world leaders like Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director- General of the World Health Organization; Kul Gautam, former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations; and my celebrity crush Professor Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Prize winner for founding the Grameen Bank. All of their amazing sessions shared a common theme that there is a desperate need to redefine the future.
“Old roads will never lead to a new path”, Muhammad Yunus said as he challenged the people watching the conference to look toward a better future. Yunus did just that in 1974 after noticing the discomfort he felt when teaching advanced economics in the comfort of a classroom while extreme hunger and poverty ravaged the streets of Bangladesh due to famine. Though Yunus had a PhD from Vanderbilt, he learned true economics from the villagers.
“I wanted to see if I could be some use to somebody even if only for a day”, he explains his reasoning for first taking to the streets. That day he met a woman selling bamboo furniture but was dismayed when learning despite her abilities as an artisan she was only earning 2 cents per sale. He learned that the cause was vicious loan sharks who were taking advantage of her and the other villagers. Yunis paved a new road by creating the Grameen Bank which specializes in microlending and economically empowering people by reversing “conventional banking practice by removing the need for collateral and created a banking system based on mutual trust, accountability, participation and creativity” (Grameen Bank, 2020).
Similarly, he writes in his op-ed “A post-pandemic world should deliver a new future for capitalism” (2020):
Right now, the whole world has to address a big question. It is not about how to get the
economy running again. We know how to do that. The big question that we have to answer is: Do we take the world back to where it was before this corona virus came? Is that a worthy goal? Or, do we redesign? The decision is entirely ours.
Even before Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, the world had operated off of values of the masculine economy such as profit worship, the vilification of poverty, materialism, competition and ego. “Or, do we redesign?” What if we pivoted and operated off of values of empathy, honesty, sustainability, resourcefulness, and cyclical growth? As he holds the torch of life in the palm of his hand, Yunis prompts us “as we reimagine the future economy, I propose that we harness the engine of business to achieve social purpose.” Yunus is planting the seed.
Sowing Empowerment Every Day., LLC. is unique— like a wildflower growing on the side of a highway refusing to be contained by the construction of society. We are a social business that wants to redefine the future, the economy, and giving in order to maximize social benefit in a sustainable and empowering way. We are on an adventure, holding the torch of life in our hand and searching for new paths.
This little light of mine, this unrelenting determination to help make the world a better place, I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.