A Social Enterprise Christmas Present

Looking back today on warnings made in the past about the present leads me to question why social enterprise  has failed to make a significant impact on the problem of poverty

It was in 1999 while he was in Siberia, that my late colleague and I had met online. discovering that the Ignorance and Want allegory from Dickens' Christmas Carol was a favourite passage for both of us:

"They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing." 

Scrooge's enquiry as to the parenthood of these two provokes a rebuke by the Ghost of Christmas Present: 

'They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.”'

The server at St John's University  on which our conversation took place was one of the casualites of 9/11.It was from Crimea in 2003 that my correspondent wrote:

"By leaving people in poverty, at risk of their lives due to lack of basic living essentials, we have stepped across the boundary of civilization. We have conceded that these people do not matter, are not important. Allowing them to starve to death, freeze to death, die from deprivation, or simply shooting them, is in the end exactly the same thing. Inflicting or allowing poverty on a group of people or an entire country is a formula for disaster.

These points were made to the President of the United States near the end of 1996. They were heard, appreciated and acted upon, but unfortunately, were not able to be addressed fully and quickly due primarily to political inertia. By way of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US out of Afghanistan – on which the US and the former Soviet Union both inflicted havoc, destruction, and certainly poverty – I rest my case. The tragedy was proof of all I warned about, but, was no more tragedy than that left behind to a people in an far corner of the world whom we thought did not matter and whom we thought were less important than ourselves.

We were wrong."

As we would see over the  next decade, this attitude that some lives matter less would come much closer to home. We have seen rising numbers of vulnerable people excluded from benefit, the ascent of food banks, payday lenders and zero hours contracts.  

We begin working together in 2003 and it's in London where the new Scrooge is first identified, in a business plan to tackle poverty. He's pretty much alone at this point in naming the leading character::

"Capitalism is the most powerful economic engine ever devised, yet it came up short with its classical, inherent profit-motive as being presumed to be the driving force. Under that presumption, all is good in the name of profit became the prevailing winds of international economies — thereby giving carte blanche to the notion that greed is good because it is what has driven capitalism. The 1996 paper merely took exception with the assumption that personal profit, greed, and the desire to amass as much money and property on a personal level as possible are inherent and therefore necessary aspects of any capitalist endeavour. While it is in fact very normal for that to be the case, it simply does not follow that it must be the case."

"While the vast majority of people in poverty suffer quietly and with little protest, it is not safe to assume that everyone will react the same way. When in defence of family and friends, it is completely predictable that it should be only a matter of time until uprisings become sufficient to imperil an entire nation or region of the world. People with nothing have nothing to lose. Poverty was therefore deemed not only a moral catastrophe but also a time bomb waiting to explode"

That same year, 2004, in an interview about Crimea

"The problem is that profit and money still tend to accumulate in the hands of comparatively few people. Money, symbolically representing wealth and ownership of material assets, is not an infinite resource. When it accumulates in enormous quantities in the hands of a few people, that means other people are going to be denied. If everyone in the world has enough to live a decent life and not in poverty, then there is no great problem with some people having far more than they need. But, that's not the case, and there are no rules in the previous capitalist system to fix that. Profit and numbers have no conscience, and anything done in their name has been accepted as an unavoidable aspect of capitalism."

Scrooge  is identified again in 2006, when the "Death Camps for Children in Ukraine" article gains widespread attention. It described the way in which childcare facilities were being run to maximise profit by minimisng care.  Again it did not follow that it must be this way:

"Excuses won't work, particularly in light of a handful of oligarchs in Ukraine having been allowed to loot Ukraine's economy for tens of billions of dollars. I point specifically to Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Poroshenko, and Kuchma, and this is certainly not an exhaustive list. These people can single-handedly finance 100% of all that will ever be needed to save Ukraine's orphans. None of them evidently bother to think past their bank accounts, and seem to have at least tacit blessings at this point from the new regime to keep their loot while no one wants to consider Ukraine's death camps, and the widespread poverty that produced them.".

Several years later, the Kyiv Post would identify the same leading characters as Ukraine's Scrooges who had connections with the Blair cabinet.

In our story and I realised it just today, is another Ignorance and Want passage. This however is no fiction, it may be found in the paper Microeconomic Development and Social Enterprise - A 'Marshall Plan for Ukraine: He refers to the future for institutionalised children who through lack of education and opportunity are most likely to become involved in organised crime and street prostitution.

"We see a staggering array of social problems arising directly from poverty, including but not limited to tens of thousands of children in orphanages or other state care; crime; disrespect for civil government because government cannot be felt or seen as civil for anyone left to suffer in poverty; young people prostituting themselves on the street; drug abuse to alleviate the aches and pains of the suffering that arises from poverty and misery; HIV/AIDS spreading like a plague amidst prostitution, unprotected sex, and drug abuse; more children being born into this mix and ending up in state care at further cost to the state; criminals coming from poverty backgrounds, ending up as bandits, returning to communities after prison, with few options except further criminal activity. These are all part and parcel of the vicious negative cycle of poverty, and this threatens to destroy Ukraine, if Ukraine is defined in terms of people rather than mere geographic boundaries. "

In Dickens' tale, Tiny Tim reprsents the impoverished, those who are in need of of support lest they may cease to exist. We see this today in the disabled people who suffer benefit cuts through government austerity measures. As Dickens saw it, some no longer exist. There was a message on their behalf from my colleague and it is no longer specific to Ukraine:

'This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for "people-centered" economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority – as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine's poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a "top-down" approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way. '

The Jacob Marley of my story is clearly my late colleague, a man who did go forth in the world and to whom Marley's exhortation is entirely appropriate.  

'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'

It was his business a people-centred business which had first reasoned 18 years ago that business could be deployed for social benefit entirely if the directors and shareholders agree, that's the entire purpose. What he wrote about our purpose, was this:

"Our social purpose is poverty relief and childcare reform in the former Soviet Union.  Core framework is straightforward: to build bridges of friendship based on common ground for the common good in the former Soviet bloc.  We firmly believe that this "soft power" approach to international relations is inevitably the only solid ground for establishing and building understanding, good will and peace.  We have therefore pursued that strategy from the beginning of P-CED.  In this regard we consider that Peace is our Business. "

It was another Peace and Goodwill message he delivered to the US Senate in February 2008, calling for their support in Ukraine:   . 

It began:

“Honorable Ladies and Gentlemen:

I am writing to you to request your support in advancing critical relief for Ukrainian citizens – with first focus on children in state care, the worst result of Ukraine’s political machinations. This is mentioned in some detail in “A Marshall Plan for Ukraine” referenced at the end of this document. I will fill in some gaps here.“

and concluded:

"Thank you for your time and attention to this. I and others will look forward to hearing from you. I hope we continue to realize ever more fully that outside the box and inside the box have only a box in the way. We outside the box know quite a bit of what’s going on, many times in exquisite detail, perhaps in ways that those inside the box can’t quite as easily access if at all. We are grossly underfunded in favor of missiles, bombs, and ordnance, which is about 100% backwards. Now, with even the US Pentagon stating that they’ve learned their lesson in Iraq and realize (so says top US general in Iraq ten days or so ago) that winning hearts and minds is the best option, I and others shall continue to think positive and look for aid budgets and funding spigots to be opened much more for people and NGOs in silos, foxholes and trenches, insisting on better than ordnance, and who understand things and how to fix them. We can do that. We can even do it cost-effectively and with far better efficiency than the ordnance route. Welcome to our brave new world. Except it’s not so new: learn to love and respect each other first, especially the weakest, most defenseless, most voiceless among us, then figure out the rest. There aren’t oter more important things to do first. This message has been around for at least two thousand years. How difficult is it for us to understand?"