It’s not uncommon for people and groups to rush into action without pausing to considering why they are acting in the first place. That’s not to say that inaction is a preferable option, just that too often people rush into things wanting to “make a difference” not thinking that sometimes the difference that is made is a negative one.

Because of that, understanding why we are all involved in this project is inevitably linked to La Ceiba’s success. Just a few weeks ago, we sat around a table at Hyperion Espresso and explained why each of us are involved in this project. The answers varied but for the most part were an exciting glimpse into my classmates’ ideas. One of my favorite responses was Christine’s. She talked about how a book she was reading (sorry, Christine, I can’t remember it) said that the only projects worth doing are those that helped one million people. She flat out denied that but went on to say that this project, our small little baby of an microfinance institution, could go on to ripple outward and affect one million.

I love that idea— the idea that empowering (there’s that word again) five or ten or twenty Honduran women can impact and radically change an entire community, city and culture. Radical doesn’t just mean wildly, but comes from the Latin radix, meaning root—that is, what we enable individuals to do can really start to get at the root of the problem. (Credit goes to Shane Claiborne’s

Muppets from Space movies book The Irresistible Revolution on that word knowledge.)

So the question becomes: what is the problem? What does economic development seek to do? And what should it seek to do?

As has been mentioned in previous posts by my classmates, we had quite a debate about whether poverty stems from inequality or vice versa. This is not just an academic debate. What we see as the problem informs our policy.

Campaigns and programs have seen economics at the root of the problem and just thrown money to solve poverty. That hasn’t worked yet. I firmly believe that economic empowerment increases equality and the situation of many groups of people has improved as their economic situation has improved. However, there are inequalities that aren’t solved by money and restrict people from reaching their full potential: geography, culture, government structure, history, etc.

We can’t fix all of those, to be sure. But we can work to create a holistic approach to microfinance that doesn’t just address the lack of income that poverty is known for. The idea of the indignity of poverty goes back to this notion that poverty is more than not having money but not having access to the resources that others have. And a lot of that has to do with inequality.

Maybe microfinance doesn’t solve world poverty or inequality. It may not. But we need to at least take a good hard look at the reasons behind the things we do.