Invisible Sisters

admin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:50:00 +0000

The loss of a loved one can wreak havoc on the closest of families. There doesn’t seem to be a formula that can predict which families will survive a tragedy and which families will break apart as a result. In her painfully honest and touching memoir, _Invisible Sisters, _Jessica Handler revisits the heartbreaking losses of not one, but two of her sisters: Susie (from leukemia at age eight) and Sarah (from a rare blood disorder in early adulthood).

Survivors’ guilt is a term that describes the feeling that arises when one pulls through an unimaginable situation while others do not. Whether it be victims of genocide, natural or man-made disasters, or plane crashes, the survivors are left to ponder “why them and not me?” Handler writes about the burden she carried of being the “well sibling” in a family that slowly foundered under the weight of sorrow and tragedy.

She describes her father, a union lawyer and activist who found it easier to help those less fortunate, but was helpless when it came to rescuing his own family. Her mother’s focus was to keep moving forward and hold the family together at any cost: chairing the PTA, saving newspapers for fundraising drives, and chauffeuring Jessica to piano, clarinet, and ballet lessons all the while navigating an endless round of doctor’s appointments. After Susie is hospitalized (again), she writes about the death of her parents’ marriage in spare but moving terms: “That night while I slept, my parents began the slow and terrible turning away from one another that erodes families facing the death of a child. My father became heart. My mother became mind.”

By the end of Invisible Sisters Handler has journeyed back into the past to revisit the journals she kept as a teenager and has also gained access to the voluminous medical records that charted the course of her sisters’ illnesses. Her bravery in revisiting her family’s story and her decision to choose life over the memories and images of the past that continue to haunt her to this day is inspiring.

Written by: Gita Tewari, September 25th 2009

Creating a World Without Poverty

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:38:00 +0000

By Muhammad Yunus

Public Affairs

He’s known as the “Banker to the Poor.” He pioneered the concept of microcredit: providing modest loans to poor entrepreneurs to allow them to move out of poverty. And for these efforts, most know him as the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. In Creating a World Without Poverty, Muhammad Yunus tells the story of why he founded the microcredit organization Grameen Bank, and how it has evolved over time to adapt to the changing needs of Bangladesh’s poor citizens. Yet unlike his first book Banker to the Poor, Yunus directly situates Grameen Bank and the concept of microcredit in the field of social business—a “new kind of business” in pursuit of social goals with limited personal gain. No, social business is not the PR dream that multi-national corporations hide behind, according to Yunus. Social business, he feels, is the solution to the global poverty crisis.

Well, is it? The answer lies in Yunus’ analysis of our current global economic crisis. He points to free market economics for failing to address growing social problems. Yet don’t expect him to look solely to government, nonprofits, or multilateral organizations for the solution. Governments can be corrupt, inefficient, and are prone to power politics, according to Yunus. Nonprofits rely on a stream of limited and unreliable donations. Multilateral organizations such as The World Bank are bureaucratic and self-serving. Instead, Yunus believes wholeheartedly in social business. The pursuit of profit should be coupled with the intent to increase social good. Moreover, the poor should have some ownership of microcredit organizations—like Grameen—who loan to them. In this way, Yunus believes that social business can operate in the capitalist system, just so long as it’s regulated, reformed, and fair.

Yunus’ analysis, which captures the severity of the current conditions and holds corporations accountable, is well-founded. However, his solution is contradictory. While he argues that it is conflicting for businesses to pursue profit maximization and social benefits, he admits that his model of social business encourages the pursuit of profit in order to repay investors and expand social efforts. Moreover, he encourages corporations like Danone to start offshoot social businesses—like Grameen Danone—without acknowledging the contradiction in creating a social business while maintaining a vast profit maximizing corporation.

Other potential pitfalls arise. How can social business succeed and eventually overpower the profit maximizing business model, simply through the belief that people want to do good? Even with a global environmental and economic crisis before us, the systems of power will continue to benefit from exploitative and destructive profit maximization practices. They will not reform on their own, regardless of whether their CEOs believe in the inherent need to create positive change or not. Let’s not forget the words of Fredrick Douglass that “power concedes nothing without a demand.” The type of change Yunus writes of—substantive positive change—cannot arise in a global economic system that is fundamentally flawed. It will not come from a relatively small number of wealthy entrepreneurs and corporations who seek to serve the poor, but from the majority the world’s ordinary people that rise up to demand a real change—accepting nothing less. While Creating a World Without Poverty is an informative introduction into alternative theories of poverty reduction, Yunus fails to prove his claim that the social business model is the solution to poverty.

Written by: Arwa Ibrahim, March 13th 2009