HEADLINES OF THE DAY: ANOTHER 15,000 PEOPLE DIED YESTERDAY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO POOR TO LIVE. THE RICH INCREASED THEIR WEALTH YESTERDAY BY $0.3 BILLION. THE 21st CENTURY VERSION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION IS ONE DAY NEARER.
“O Ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.”
Bahá’u’lláh
A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis at willisdavid167@gmail.com. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 102). This blog is a continuation of the review of HOW THE POOR CAN SAVE CAPITALISM: REBUILDING THE PATH TO THE MIDDLE CLASS by John Hope Bryant, published in 2014.
Role models
All of us are who we are because of our role models. Whatever anyone has become in life, it began first with seeing that image somewhere. Being smart and working hard is not nearly enough if you don’t have a relationship with a mentor or a model of life success. A study by the University of Chicago, cited in Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, noted that it only takes 5% of a community to act as role models to stabilize a community. I find it amazing that only 5% of a community needs to stand up and show young people in their lives the path to a successful career in order to trigger an economic tipping point that can stabilize a neighborhood and eventually a nation!
Education is not connecting them to a sustainable career
After two years of data, the Gallup-HOPE Index has shown that, although 77% of students want to be their own boss, only 5% are currently learning the skills necessary to do so by interning with a local business. Present estimates indicate that 20% to 50% of students in many large urban high schools fail to graduate, in part because many students don’t believe their education is connecting them to a sustainable career. We must connect this next generation with a meaningful role in the workforce, through more private sector mentorship, cradle-to-career pathways, and positive role modeling in schools and communities.
This is our task, and this is our moment
The job of our generation will be to connect the 45% of youth who want to start their own businesses with more mentors and internships, so that more than 5% of them can have the job training and mentorship necessary necessary to embark on a successful career. If we can connect aspiration with career opportunity through increased role modeling for youth, everything could be different. This is our task, and this is our moment.
Chapter eight: The HOPE Plan
The Marshall Plan
Following World War II, the United States put together an initiative to provide economic and technical support to help Europe rebuild its cities and economies. Called the European Recovery Program but popularly known as the Marshall Plan, after Secretary of State George Marshall, the plan was designed to modernize European industry and remove trade barriers, in addition to revitalizing destroyed cities and putting people back to work. The program began in April 1948, ran for four years, and was an unqualified success. Those four years of American technical and financial assistance may not have been solely responsible for Europe’s recovery, but it certainly helped, and most leaders today would probably agree that this not only was the right thing to do at the time but was also smart politics and even smarter economics.
An economic Marshall Plan for our times
Today, bringing hope to the U.S. economy calls for an economic Marshall Plan for our times. Call it the HOPE plan. The command staff are American and global business leaders, backed by government leaders with both vision and courage, but more specifically by each of us. Making a place at the table for the poor and underserved begins with financial literacy and everything that goes with it.