Boston — Uplift Academy
I was there. I witnessed it. I will attest. What happened? Well, many wonderful and good-hearted people joined together in strings of conversation about uplift. What is uplift? Let’s jump on the elevator headed for good.
Jeffe Ashe and his co-worker Vinod from Oxfam explained savings-led microfinance. Fascinating stuff. To me it:
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encourages self-sufficiency
rejects foreign aid dependencies
leverages community capital and social capital
contains community profits (rather than leaching them outside)
builds capacity and skills for entrepreneurship
spreads virally and independent of specific NGOs…
Sounds like the values we picked up in the theoretical portions of our discussions. Straight from the mouths of pale white men to the ears of this pale white woman, we have the academic analysis of how complex systems need to work in the global environment–late-binding, core/periphery networks, Reed’s law…
We came across our disciplines to develop a common language and a common vision. We might not have crossed as many boundaries (national, ethnic, “otherness”) as I might have liked, but we held the world in our hearts and spoke of love, healing, strength, connectness, community, and understanding.
I will be watching, listening, questioning, inquiring, probing, delving, weaving.
People I will be paying attention to?