The Birth of Freedom

One of the most thoughtful organizations I know of is the Acton Institute. This clip is an introduction to the upcoming film, "The Birth of Freedom". They are very good at describing how God used His people to form much of our culture. In this case "human dignity" and freedom of the slave and culture. Thank goodness someone is getting this message out in light of the rest of media. Best quote, "Can you imagine if they had asked the abolitionists or Dr. King to leave religion out of their movement or public speech?" Amen!

The Value of Learning How to Help by Doing - Guest Post

Guest Post: Building value in the developing world

Photo courtesy of Joyce Ravid

by Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen Fund and author of The Blue Sweater

As a 25-year old banker, I decided to leave my career and change the world. This sounds like a move that a 25-year-old banker might make today–to escape the chaos.

But this was 1986. I thought I might start my new life in Africa. I discovered soon enough, though, that most Africans didn’t want saving, thank you very much. Certainly not by me–a young, unmarried American woman whose French was pathetic and whose understanding of the continent was limited to reading a few books.

I could have given up my dream. But I had a calling, so to speak. One sun-drenched day, I was jogging up and down the hilly streets of Kigali, Rwanda. Out of nowhere, a young boy, wearing a blue sweater, walked toward me. He was about 10 years old, skinny, with a shaved head and huge eyes, and not more than four feet tall. The sweater hung so low that it hid his shorts, covering toothpick legs and knobby knees.

My Uncle Ed had given me a blue sweater when I was in middle school. A soft blue wool sweater, with stripes on the sleeves and an African motif on the front–two zebras walking in front of a snow-capped mountain. This day in Rwanda, I ran over to the boy, who was obviously terrified. I grabbed his shoulders and turned down his collar. Sure enough, it was my name, Jacqueline Novogratz, on the tag.

My sweater had traveled thousands of miles for more than a decade.

Over the past two-plus decades, I’ve committed my life to understanding global connectedness and issues of poverty. In 2001, after working for more than seven years for the Rockefeller Foundation, I founded Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital fund that invests in the poor. We don’t believe in traditional aid. We hold the recipients of our loans and equity stakes accountable to clear goals.

We’ve funded A To Z, a company in Tanzania that today produces more than 20 million anti-malarial bed nets annually and employs over 7,000 people, mostly women. We’ve invested in Mumbai’s first emergency ambulance service that serves rich and poor alike (and whose yellow ambulances were ubiquitous in the news coverage of last November’s attacks in that city). We’ve supported the development and distribution of drip irrigation systems that allow hundreds of thousands of poor farmers in India and Pakistan to double or even triple their crop yields and income. We’ve invested more than $40 million in enterprises that have brought safe water, affordable health care, housing, and alternative energy to low-income people in South Asia and East Africa.

In writing my new book The Blue Sweater, I’ve thought a lot about what my adventures, experiences and the people I’ve met have taught me. I learned that it’s all too easy to veer toward the charitable–to have low or no expectations of low-income people. This does nothing but confirm prejudices on all sides. “Philanthropists should focus on supporting others to do what they already do well,” one of my mentors, the late John Gardner, told me back when I was in business school at Stanford. “Individuals don’t want to be taken care of. They need to be given a chance to fulfill their own potential.” (Gardner, who served in the Johnson Administration, founded Common Cause and headed the Carnegie Foundation before I knew him.)

I’ve also learned this: “I am part of all that I have met.” This is from Tennyson’s Ulysses. It’s one of my favorite lines in literature. I try to live it every day.

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty. Her new memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, tells the inspiring story of a woman who left a career in international banking to spend her life on a quest to understand global poverty and find powerful new ways of tackling it. Acumen Fund’s corporate supporters include Goldman Sachs (GS), Google (GOOG), Cisco (CSCO), Nike (NKE), Coca-Cola (KO), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Citigroup (C), Dow Chemical (DOW), Credit Suisse (CS), as well as the Skoll Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

BLUE LIKE JAZZ THE MOVIE

I'm working on an exciting new project with a couple of clients Steve Taylor and Dan Raines.

A recent review said the following: Gabe Lyons, author of UnChristian

Blue Like Jazz portrays a vivid tension between Christianity and the world that is. I thought it was fantastic. It was hard to swallow some the direct obligations towards Christianity – they are so true though. The times of hope and resolve allowed me to emotionally connect to the character of Don.

I laughed out loud and swallowed hard at times when reading through the script. The story touched on every single issue that outsiders have with Christianity (Judgmental, Hypocritical, Antihomosexual, Sheltered, Too Political, and Proselytizing based on the research of unChristian). It’s an emotional ride that brought me to an ending that gave me much hope and confidence in (1) Being Christian (2) The story I am developing with God on a personal level and (3) Jesus.

The Evangelical viewer is going to come face to face with some tough criticisms. However, the honest Christian is going to come away feeling refreshed. The cultural elite are going to laugh at the cynicism and debate that takes place during the Reed College scenes and they will appreciate the genuine tension that Don has with God. Your Juno fans are going to love the the witty dialogue, emotional connection to each character and who they represent. They will also love the scenes dealing with rabbits, the Pope, condoms, college parties, and the journey Don is on. The dialogue comes off as very genuine, even when reading it. Conservative Christians are going to have the hardest time with it – but it is a necessary affliction they need to feel. The postmodern crowd of Christianity is going to rave about it. Since the story is about a guy who is in college your college students will love it on so many different levels, especially, the character development of Don. I think majority of criticisms will come from your extreme conservative and your extreme liberal – However, majority of the world rides the fence.

I can’t wait to see the motion picture.”

Help Me Please

These pictures are from my friend Josh MacLeod's trip to Darfur Sudan LAST WEEK, March 2009. Watch this video to see the beautiful faces of those effected by the genocide in Darfur. If you watch this video, be prepared to take action, ... I am committing to help put in a well in a southern Darfur camp if you want to help ask me how. If 380 friends on my Facebook list commit $40.00 and thousands will have clean water in the name of Christ. Will you join me? Checks made to:

Persecution Project Foundation
c/o 125 Greystone Drive
Franklin, TN 37069

I'll make it happen and post results on this blog! Blessings

Morning Quote

"The significant problems we face in life
cannot be solved at the same level of thinking
we were at when we created them."
Albert Einstein

Necessary Roadblocks

Have you ever wondered why so many times things just don't go the way you wish? I have. More than a thousand times I would guess! Yet for the man or woman loved by God could the hindrance be a "Providential hindrance"?

From my reading of scripture God of the Universe is sovereign and mindful of our needs. That said, it is hard to explain so many things. But for the man I met who was stopped in traffic and made late for his meetings on the 42nd floor of the Trade Centers of New York on September 11 that 'hindrance', which he saw before the towers were hit as a 'roadblock' ended for his good.

Perhaps we need more of the mind of God to understand our days and what appear to be "roadblocks"? I know that today I have seen at least four unplanned, and one very difficult, experiences in my own life...yet I am confident they were not without reason. Just thinking.

St. Patrick Celebration

ST. PATRICK'S DAY

The Real St. Patrick

Ted Olsen | posted 8/08/2008 12:33PM

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'Tis the season for parades, green beer, shamrocks, and articles talking about why St. Patrick's day isn't all about parades, green beer, and shamrocks.

First, a few misconceptions about Patrick:

Patrick isn't really a Saint with a capital S, having never been officially canonized by Rome. And Patrick couldn't have driven the snakes out of Ireland because there were never any snakes there to begin with. He wasn't even the first evangelist to Ireland (Palladius had been sent in 431,about five years before Patrick went). Patrick isn't even Irish. He's from what's now Dumbarton, Scotland (just northwest of Glasgow).

Patrick was 16 years old in about the year 405, when he was captured in a raid and became a slave in what was still radically pagan Ireland. Far from home, he clung to the religion he had ignored as a teenager. Even though his grandfather had been a priest, and his father a town councilor, Patrick "knew not the true God." But forced to tend his master's sheep in Ireland, he spent his six years of bondage mainly in prayer. He escaped at the suggestion of a dream and returned home.

Patrick was in his mid-40s when he returned to Ireland.Palladius had not been very successful in his mission, and the returning former slave replaced him. Intimately familiar with the Irish clan system (his former master, Milchu, had been a chieftain), Patrick's strategy was to convert chiefs first, who would then convert their clans through their influence. Reportedly, Milchu was one of his earliest converts.

Though he was not solely responsible for converting the island, Patrick was quite successful. He made missionary journeys all over Ireland, and it soon became known as one of Europe's Christian centers. This, of course, was very important to fifth-century Christians, for whom Ireland was one of the "ends of the earth."

Find out more about Patrick in CH issue 60: Celtic Christianity.

Patrick's Confesio, his only authentic literary remains, is great reading and available online at www.ccel.org/ccel/patrick/confession.i.html.