DO WE HAVE THE EYES TO SEE? – PART 2

I concluded the last entry with an overview of the danger of viewing resources as static and limited.  Such a perspective can have a deep and lasting impact on a person, family, or community’s ability to develop as God intended.  To compliment this idea of zero-sum and limited good I would like to introduce two development theories that often formulate our poverty alleviation strategies.  The first theory is the need-based development strategy.      

Need-based development focuses first on determining areas of need then seeks ways to address them.  The theory asks: “What needs, deficiencies, problems or gaps exist that need to be addressed?”  The downside of this approach is that it focuses much of the attention on what is missing rather than on what exists.  A better question to ask is:  “What is currently present that could be built upon?” 

A need-based approach leaves the community or individual with a laundry list of deficiencies that can become overwhelming and discouraging.  Such a mindset of inadequacies and failings can leave a person defeated looking for answers that seem impossible to reach.  “Which one do we address first?”  “Who is responsible for these deficiencies?”  Overcoming seems impossible. 

Julie N. Zimmerman in “Building a New Perspective: Asset-Based Development” gives a helpful metaphor for explaining this theory. 

“For example, when we think of a need-based approach, especially as it relates to funding, a metaphor that we can invoke is one of going shopping.   When we go shopping, we usually stop, take stock of what is missing, and then leave our homes in search of filing those gaps.  After all we don’t go shopping in order to purchase what we already have.  We go to obtain items we don’t have and cannot fill with our existing store of household items.  This metaphor can also reflect how many approach community and economic development.  We take stock of where our gaps are, identify what is missing and then go looking for opportunities to go and fill them.”  (Zimmerman pg. 1)

Zimmerman goes on to say:

“While a need-based approach may be common, and it is one often pursued, it need not determine how we pursue our futures.  There is another approach.  After all, if we try to build our futures based on what we don’t have, all we do have are empty hands.”  (Zimmerman pg. 1)

To simply enter into a community, identify its needs and seek to answer them with outside resources does injustice to the gifts, abilities and potential that exists in the people of that community.  They may be materially “poor” but they still have the capacity, when motivated and driven, to collaborate together and accomplish great things for the good of the group.  Which leads to the other development theory I want to share:  the asset-based theory or potential-based theory.  

The potential-based development theory as an alternative to listing the deficiencies and problems that exist in a community, instead, takes inventory of the broad array of actors and assets in a community, identifying how they can be mobilized for development.

Again Zimmerman gives us a good analogy to describe the potential-based development theory:

“An asset based approach is like cooking dinner.  After all, I don’t decide what I will make for dinner based upon what I DON”T have in my cupboards.”  (Zimmerman pg. 2)

The key for believers working in potential-based strategies is changing the conversation from deficiencies to solutions.  However small or grand, what does the community have to give or offer towards this development process?  What exists within the DNA of this community or its people that can be used to bring change? 

According to Zimmerman two influential individuals in promoting and popularizing the development of this model are Kretzman and McKnight.

“The starting place of asset-based development is first and foremost to identify and build on the strengths that exist.  For Kretzman and McKnight, while communities vary in size, place, and endowments, they all already have the two most important ingredients: their people and their institutions and associations.  All people have abilities, talents, and knowledge.  And as individuals organize themselves into institutions and associations, these too have talents and abilities and strengths.” (Zimmerman pg. 2)

Men and women made in the image of God are the most powerful and instrumental resources any community has at its disposal.  By mobilizing the talents and skills of the individuals in a community, great difference can be made. 

I believe God’s command in Genesis 1:27-28 is to be taken with great confidence:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  

God has given man everything he needs to design, create, organize, invent, produce and develop.  He commands us to increase, subdue, rule and be fruitful.  The one caveat?  We must be good stewards of that which we have been given.  

As believers we need to change the conversation.  Instead of asking, “What are we missing?” we need to ask, “What do we have?”  What can we use that already exists, to get where we want to go? 

“Asset-based action is no more a silver bullet than need based or any other approach.  And, an asset-based approach does not mean that needs, gaps, and deficiencies do not exist.  The key difference lies in our outlook: seeing these gaps and needs exclusively, or seeing them in conjunction with the strengths and assets that exist right along side of them.”  (Zimmerman pg. 4)

Our approach should not be to shop, but rather to cook.  To take that which is already in the cupboards, mix the ingredients together with creativity and good stewardship and create a better more developed future for the community.  As Christians, our greatest most powerful responsibility in community development is to empower the locales to recognize that which already exists in their midst.  The potential that God has given in them and around them, take it, rule it, subdue it, and multiply it for development and God’s glory.   As we permit them to SEE, we encourage them to BE the difference. 

DO WE HAVE THE EYES TO SEE?     

I realize that much of this is theoretical and seemingly impractical.  Thus, I intend to present an example of this empowerment in action and application in the next entry, before concluding with a biblical perspective on resources.

For more explanation and the source of the above quotes read Zimmerman’s article “Building a New Perspective: Asset-Based Development”:

http://www.ca.uky.edu/snarl/CommunityResources/BuildNewPerspect.pdf

DO WE HAVE THE EYES TO SEE?

Seeing potential in the midst of severe material poverty is very challenging.  Specifically, because poverty can be blinding not only for the individuals entangled in the web of its devastating lies, but also for those standing on the outside of material poverty looking in… attempting to help and alleviate it.  With that said, I would like to take a moment to dig into a topic referenced in my previous blog on empowerment: a biblical perspective on resources.  I will be splitting this blog into several different entries in order to shorten the length and enhance the content.

Before unpacking this concept it may be wise to discuss why I feel this topic is important.  For many Americans, when thinking of resources our minds immediately jump to wealth generating resources such as natural resources (wood oil, gold, the sun), or economic resources (technology, know-how such as entrepreneurship, computer sciences, and elements of infrastructure).  These are without a doubt strategic resources, and ones we must continue to develop and steward, but what else exists that is possibly overlooked or neglected?   If we allow our minds to end with the physical/material (which is our tendency since we live in a culture that promotes a secular belief system) we miss out on the most powerful resource of all…. humans.  Men and women created in God’s image.  Without a biblical perspective on resources our poverty alleviation and development strategies will inevitably focus on the material, which I believe significantly impedes biblical empowerment as discussed in the previous blog.  Thus, this is a critical discussion because it directly effects how we approach our work with the poor.   

   

To begin I would like to introduce two key development concepts into this discussion.  The first concept is limited good.  Limited good suggests that wealth and resources are static.  “Only so much to go around.” 

The second concept is zero-sum.  Zero-sum suggests that a person or groups gain is exactly balanced by the losses of another person or group.  “In order for someone to win, someone else must lose.”

To quote INVESTOPEDIA, an online resource for investment definitions, strategies, and philosophies the definition of zero-sum is:

“A situation in which one participant's gains result only from another participant's equivalent losses. The net change in total wealth among participants is zero; the wealth is just shifted from one to another.”

Read more:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zero-sumgame.asp#axzz1sD52z4b8

Both of these terms and concepts are crucial to the philosophy of poverty alleviation.  From the perspective of those living in poverty, the belief that resources are static and that there is only so much to go around, breeds competition.  It’s more or less a race to figuring out how one can obtain the precious resources that do exist.  Further more, if you live with a zero-sum philosophy (one person’s gain, is balanced by another’s loss), and you don’t receive the perceived resources you are than assumed to be the loser.  Put these 2 concepts together and you have a devastating effect.  A spirit of envy and jealous is fueled and communities, families, and cultures are pitted against each other in the fight for limited resources.  A variety of results could be expected.  One result could be a battle to undermine your neighbor who has “stolen” the resources (competition); the other could be as described below:

“The Theory of Limited Good helps us understand the cultural, as well as economic, life of pre-industrial peoples of the world. If the supply of economic goods is limited, then the supply of pleasure, beauty, and happiness may also be limited. When one family has too much of those things, they must be taking them away from other people. Your home and possessions should not be too pleasant, nor your daughters too beautiful, nor should you be too happy.

Members of a community might want to avoid accumulation of wealth because the resulting impoverishment of other families places community solidarity at risk. The Potlatch ritual (present in several Andean countries), in which a family that has accumulated a conspicuous amount of wealth must divest itself of that wealth by lavish gift giving, was common among many Indian tribes in North America and elsewhere.  In this case a family that had accumulated conspicuous wealth would feel obligated to throw a party for the village, providing chicha beer and rum, as well as food, to everyone in the village until the wealth was used up. Some of those parties would continue for two or three days, ending only when the drunken party thrower had spent all his money and all money he could borrow against future earnings.” 

Lyn Williams, Professor Emeritus, Ohio University.  Author of the blog: The Logical Middle: http://thelogicalmiddle.blogspot.com/2009/07/theory-of-limited-good.html

The unconscious goal for individuals living in cultures that promote this concept is perceived equality.  If fairness in response to resources is not promoted, then something must be done.  Either the person must be punished for stealing their unfair portion of the resources, or they must share, in order to make everyone happy and equal.  (see the Occupy Wall Street movement for a current example)  It’s a destructive theory, from the roots of secularism, that has profound impact on one’s ability to steward, save, and gather resources for development purposes.  Living with such theories as limited good and zero-sum actually, in many ways, promote material poverty and undevelopment.

A secular worldview sees resources as being solely physical and material.  At first glance one would not see this as being a harmful theory but with further study one realizes that the effects of this philosophy can have profound results.  Not only does it create competition and jealousy between individuals or groups as they compete for the rights to resources but it can also have devastating impact on the sanctity of life.  If humans are merely resource consumers, (mouths to feed) then what is the best way to preserve and safeguard the precious resources that are limited and static?  Through the elimination or restriction of human development.  Acts of genocide, euthanasia, and abortion can be justified through the framework of resource preservation.  Why rescue a dying child or abandoned baby from the gutters?  It’s nature’s way of eliminating the weak, and by doing so you are only impeding the natural selection process.

How we look at resources is vital to the poverty alleviation discussion.  In the next entry we will examine 2 different development theories and seek to find answers to some of the secularistic principles present in today’s poverty alleviation efforts.