If these corporations really want to find out how to best help, they have to go to them. These are people who are many times working two or three jobs and still not making ends meet. They don’t have leisure time. I bet you will find some focus groups at bus stops in big cities, either early in the am or late in the evening. Think outside the 9-5 box. In rural areas, maybe the local grocery store or in the center of town. Talk to them, but don’t waste their time.

Pay them a nominal sum to fill out a survey concerning their needs and wants – or give them an opportunity to win corporation products/services in exchange for filling out the survey. Offer prizes that give them time – i.e. subsidized daycare or another targeted benefit – i.e. gas cards, grocery store coupons/discounts.

Don’t give hand outs. Hand outs don’t work. They are just a quick fix. Ask local charities what people really need. They are the people with their fingers on the pulse of the poor. They already have the trust mostly likely, but the corporations will have to earn it.

“Economics, and indeed human civilization, can only be measured and calibrated in terms of human beings. Everything in economics has to be adjusted for people, first, and abandoning the illusory numerical analyses that inevitably put numbers ahead of people, capitalism ahead of democracy, and degradation ahead of compassion.”

http://www.p-ced.com/about/background/

One may discover that Creative Capitalism as proposed by Bill Gates, in the more inclusive form in which business, NGOs and government work together is more than a decade old, and has already delivered successful projects as proof of concept. Also, that the concept of information, poverty and microfinance has long been known.

Where one will not hear these ideas are from the words of those whose expertise and interests are tied up in the existing system, thus any attempt to inform otherwise will fall on deaf ears.

http://creativecapitalismblog.com/

The uncomfortable truth is that when Russia’s economy collapsed in 1998 following attempts to stimulate it by Harvard with a trick down approach, the bottom up microeconomic approach was a resounding success.

Ask yourselves why a successful project managed by the US State Department has been obliterated from web history and you may see what reformers of capitalism are up against:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ri-tomsk.org

If you want to encourage your employess to get involved, a matching structure is generally quite productive.

Depending on the size of your company, I would say that you might do something relatively small in scope (but very important) such as provide scholarships for job training or re-training to a few ambitious people who just miss qualifying for government help in this area. You could focus on people whose jobs were made obsolete by technology or on mothers who want to re-enter the workforce or on kids who have native smarts but didn’t do great in school and so need help getting skills training.

If you have enough money to do something larger in scope you might start a socially conscious business of some sort and hire poor people to work there. Given them on the job training and then plow a percentage of the profits back into the business. The Roberts Foundation in San Francisco is one of the institutions that has had success funding this kind of thing.

See my blog, Ripples and Wipeouts, at http://www.makewavesnotnoise.com

1. Choose an agency who is helping the poor, in my case an association that helps the blind, is located close to where I work and is recognised by Government and gives me Income Tax benefits on all my donations.
2. Give them a percentage of my monthly revenue by check when I distribute the monthly salary.

That is it. I do what I can do and they (the Association) does what they can do.

Rajeev Vaid

This led to the Tomsk initiative and microfinance ban in Russia 2000-2005 and the microeconomic ‘Marshall Plan’ for Ukraine which began to influence policy in the area of childcare reform since 2007.

The business for social purpose model has been replicated since in the UK in 2005 with the Community Interest Company form of incorporation.

The National scale strategy paper for Ukraine moves from full cost recovery to a mix of social and business components that enable economic development projects to be delivered at nil overall cost.

History
Russia
Marshall Plan

This is not a nonprofit approach but a business model based on a wider interpretation of capitalism as a replacement for the nonprofit approach. The microcredit bank in Russia seeded 10,000 new businesses with loans based on the moral collateral model pioneered by Grameen.

In Ukraine, so far, advocacy has prompted the government to create more than 400 rehab centres for disabled children. double the adoption allowance and create a pilot in the second largest city for every orphan to have a family type home at least.

The paradigm proposes that business is set up for specific social purpose to deploy at least 50% of profit to social purpose, just those who wanted to do it, competing and coexisting in the free market with conventional business models.

Jeff

I’ve found that the best reality of working authentically, to contribute in a reflectively meaningful way — meaning fully — is to do it your self; hands on, live, being in the space, contributing eye to eye. Rather than dropping some capital — what can you do, in the telling of your story that is live to them, live for you. It’s a life, it’s a live, it’s alive.

You’re in that circle, you’re doing the work, making the contribution — and it’s real. No financial smoke that distances you from the reality.

You’re there.

Do something and you’ve got the passion to spread the word. Write a check and the instant of giving dissipates in an instance, as well. Do both and deliver it by hand and do some work at the same time! The ring is reflective, the song is sung true and the circle of giving and heart fullness is unbroken.

Beauty full.

Tim

Tim Girvin | girvin@girvin.com | http://www.girvin.com
http://www.tim.girvin.com/ | http://blog.girvin.com/ | http://tim.girvin.com/Entries/index.php

No one wants to be poor, and the premise that they are lazy and unwilling to try is a misconception created to alleviate the guilt of the privileged. Telling a poor person to get a job – such as a position at a local fast food establishment – won’t enable them to pay for housing, insurance, child care, transportation, or food.

In most low income areas, there is little opportunity or access to jobs that pay a decent wage, provide health care, or allow for flexible schedules.
Poor people don’t need a one time handout – they need access to jobs, personal and professional education, and proper diet, to ensure they can sustain the responsibility of providing for themselves.

If businesses truly want to help they should start:

1. Paying decent wages, offset by the cost of company provided health insurance

2. Provide training – through partnerships with their state employment agencies and local colleges to keep the cost low

3. Move away from the 9-5 in the cubicle mentality and provide flex scheduling especially for people with children and those not in customer service positions.

4. Create a local coalition. ex. Local businesses could partner with a local grocers to provide discounts to employees and nutritional training. Grocers partner with local farmers who partner with local transport companies, and so forth.