progress!

maybe a week ago i was asking a group of friends for advice on starting this blog, about how i could write about human rights and development in a way that would impact and fascinate them. sadly (although predictably), they honestly answered that i probably couldn’t do anything that would make them want to visit this page and read about atrocities, seemingly hopeless governments, famine, etc. as i began to passionately take the conversation in the unwanted direction of the history of development, trying to draw emphasis on why it is so important to understand our past mistakes, my co-workers quickly started to look around the room for any

entertainment more fascinating than this. i understand. this isn’t friday evening happy hour conversation.

but then one person asked me “when is it enough?”. dumbfounded, i demanded clarification, “when is what enough?! when do we stop helping people?!?”, and he said, “yes, when do we decide that

we have exhausted everything, when do we accept that development and aid isn’t going to work?”

there are so many ways to respond to that, many of them would have involved a raised voice, incredulity, but a few weeks later, i choose to respond with this: every small victory gets us a little bit closer, and there are so many small victories every day. so often in the media, in articles and books and scholarly conversations, we review and criticize the means that have not worked, pointed at what has gone wrong in the countless attempts to end poverty, disease and warfare. i think that this constant disappointment and guilt exhausts people, and i want to take a moment to appreciate all of the extra pieces of bread that filled a hungry man’s belly if only for a day, the soccer balls that brightened dusty afternoons for four brothers, the anti-retroviral medication that gave an HIV+ woman ten more years of life. these things happen every day. let it make you smile.