I came across this TED Talk yesterday. It is given by Sasha Dichter of the Acumen Fund (which provides venture capital for projects serving the poor).
While Sasha covers a lot of different ground in the talk, I really appreciated the essence of the talk regarding his personal generosity experiment. He realized that he had been conditioned to say "no", and didn't like that about himself. As he points out (paraphrased) . . . if we want to live in a compassionate and generous world, then we must be compassionate and generous ourselves.
I also like his point that sometimes we don't do what is right because we want to do what is smart. In closing his talk he emphasizes, perhaps over-emphasizes, that we should ask the hard questions in a business like manner before giving (which I personally think didn't fit entirely with his talk . . . but perhaps it was a CYA statement . . . "cover your ass") but then says . . . "at the same time, be as generous as you can be."
Hey!! I'm That Poverty Guy . . . let's make a world of difference together.
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THAT was very interesting, both from a personal challenge and from an investment strategy.
ReplyDeleteWith the Market losing money maybe to get your money back and do good is a real option.