Sixintheworld.com

I have a husband who measures his success with the yardstick of goodness. At the end of the day he needs to feel the world is a better place for him having been it. Cynics might scoff, especially since he is an executive for a for-profit company, but he honestly has a philosophical and spiritual need to contribute. Like Sky Dayton, who founded EarthLink in 1995, Tom has visions of connecting friends and families throughout the world with internet technology. His vision transcends access and encompasses life-transforming technologies and applications which are just beginning to surface. He sometimes torments himself because as with everything in life, where there is good there is evil. On particularly bad days, he brands himself “purveyor of smut,” but then it’s my job to remind him of all the knowledge, empowerment, and efficiency the internet generates, which in my mind clearly outweighs the porn, predators, and scams.

Tom’s career path has been greatly influenced by the need for safety. We are by nature risk-averse and have never had the gumption to start our own venture or forego a steady, generous paycheck for something less sizable or reliable. With four college funds to grow, four sets of teeth to align, and four bodies to clothe, feed, and shelter, we’ve chosen for him to work for solid companies with great people, pay, and benefits. Others we know have openly embraced their desire to improve the world by taking far riskier paths. A good friend from college spent many years in South America working to create sustainable microlending models, a trend we have since learned much about. Under the tenets of microfinance, organizations loan small amounts, often less than $100, to individuals (almost always women) in developing nations to help them start businesses. A woman in India might receive a loan sufficient to buy a goat. She may then use the milk from the goat to feed her children and sell the excess to repay the loan. Once the loan is repaid she might take out a second loan to buy a second goat. With the additional profits, she might buy a used sewing machine and begin mending her neighbor’s clothing to generate an additional income stream. Within a matter of months, she will have gone from economic powerlessness to self-sufficiency. RSO, mentioned in the last post, is rapidly increasing the loans it makes in southern India and has a 100% repayment rate.

Tom’s cousin Josh married a brilliant woman last year who is completing her dissertation at the business school at UNC-Chapel Hill and has been actively involved in microfinance in the field and in the classroom. She was the third person in our little world who had made microcredit part of her personal mission. We began to think it a strange coincidence until last month when I received an email from a high school classmate with a link to Time’s Top 100 cover story of May 8, 2006. It seems my high school class president, with whom I attended a dance our senior year, is one of the 100 most influential people in shaping the world and is doing it through microlending in India. (Vikram Akula). His company, SKS Finance, is now funded by Unitus, a microfinance accelerator. Now we’ve gone from coincidence to downright eerie. We feel there must be something we can contribute to the field and hope that our trip will help us figure out what it might be.

One of the greatest frustrations of parenting is that you cannot force feed all the wisdom you’ve gained into your children. After 30+ years of life Tom and I understand the joy that comes from putting the needs of others above your own. After all, we forsook the freedom of our 20’s to have kids, lots of them, and have made raising them our top priority. We chose diapers over designer clothing, swim meets over concerts and art openings, and homework over doctorates. We have no regrets and, in fact, are thrilled for every day that we have to share with these four intriguing people. They challenge us to grow in ways we never imagined possible and give us often frightening insights into the composition of our character.

We have tried to model service for our children by helping wherever and whenever we can. Usually these efforts involve people we already know–friends, Anne’s Sunday School students, family members–but last year’s hurricane provided an unusual opportunity to serve strangers. In September, Tom, his dad, Lou, and Dax traveled to Hattiesburg, Mississippi with members of our church after Hurricane Katrina and cleared trees and debris from homes and schools. Tom returned to New Orleans in October where he ripped out moldy drywall and encountered smells and sights that still haunt him.

While it takes a major force of nature to penetrate the walls of our comfortable, suburban existence at home, we are hoping that our upcoming year will abound with opportunities to witness, feel, and act on behalf of others. Abigail Adams mirrored this thought when she wrote to her son John Quincy, “When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.” We’re not encouraging anyone to go into politics, but we’ll take a hero any day. We are assuming that we will find the most vivid of such scenes in India, where we plan to stay at least one month. Much of that time will hopefully be spent working for Rising Star Outreach, a charitable organization founded by a friend and dedicated to rescuing the “cast off” of Indian society. RSO began by providing basic medical care to those suffering from leprosy (which can now be cured for about $1.50) and expanded to serve the children who are denied access to schools, medical care, and the basic necessities of life because a family member suffers from the debilitating disease. RSO’s children’s homes provide a safe, nurturing environment for leprosy-affected, orphan, and mentally and physically handicapped children. Becky Douglas, the founder of RSO, claims what these children need most is love and attention. That most certainly we can give, and hopefully all of us will be better for it.

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