La Ceiba has settled upon a mission statement, marking a significant step in its development.  Here it is in full:

La Ceiba envisions a world in which every individual can realize their potential through hard work.  As a microfinance program that provides financial, social and educational support, La Ceiba empowers struggling Hondurans to overcome the inequalities that have denied them this right.

This statement is the single most important one we will articulate.  Legally the mission statement will  dictate everything we do as an organization, and psychologically it will serve as the manifestation of our identity.  While months later it may sink to the back of our minds, it will always serve as a point of reference for any questions we encounter in our development.  Therefore it is important that the statement be focused enough that we can attain our goals, yet flexible enough that we are free to grow in relevant new ways.

The most challenging aspect of writing the mission statement was coming to consensus.  After two weeks of not progressing very far, Dr. Humphrey tasked Megan and me with the responsibility of drafting a preliminary mission statement to be modified and confirmed by the team on the following class.  The task was difficult even for two people, but we managed to come up with something that would be slightly tweaked and accepted at last.  In both drafting and finalizing the mission it helped to adopt a systematic methodology that would cover all the bases:

1. What is the purpose of the mission statement? Before you tackle what you want to say in the mission statement, first tackle what you believe the mission statement means in itself.  Will the mission articulate our goal, our vision for the future, or both?  Will the mission statement mention the values that guide our leadership?  Not all mission statements are the same in this regard.  Once your board agrees upon the purpose of the mission statement, its contents should become much more obvious.
2. What is the purpose of the organization? Regardless of how you define the mission statement, it must in some way articulate the purpose of the organization.  What gap do you see your organization filling?
3. What do you deem critical to success? Your purpose should be driven by at least one overarching goal.  By what means will your organization fill the social gap it has identified?
4. What do you see as fundamental to your identity? Your purpose is driven by your identity, which may include the values you deem necessary to guide your operations.
5. How will you communicate your mission? Your statements of purpose can be written in whole or in parts.  Will you conjoin your purpose, vision and values all in one statement; or will you divide them into separate, respective statements?  Both methods will fulfill the same goal in different ways.  The manner in which you articulate the mission will depend upon which one you see as more fitting to its rhetorical purpose.  I recommend writing the mission both ways, then selecting the one that delivers the tone you are looking for.  La Ceiba, for example, agreed that it could not feasibly isolate its purpose from its values or vision and therefore conjoined them into a single statement.

Poverty or Inequality?

In the last fifteen minutes of class, as the mission was just a proposal away from acceptance, one word threw the entire discussion into a heated passion.  Was it the poverty or the inequality that we strive to help struggling Hondurans to overcome?  For the past two weeks we were set on eradicating poverty.  But Rachel suggested that perhaps there was something more to it; that while the indignity of poverty weighed down these people from prospering there was a glass ceiling physically denying them the ability to even attempt.

I was not immediately sold on the idea, nor was Dr. Humphrey who, as the chief economist in the room, rightly defended the case for targeting the word “poverty.”  But rather quickly we began to see a paradox: does poverty beget inequality, or does inequality beget poverty?  Can you explain the propensity for women to be comparatively underpaid on economic terms, or is there something more purely social or psychological at work?  Dr. Humphrey upheld the assumption that those with economic power would overcome such social constraints.  But the crux of the argument lay in the fact that we are dealing with economic development, and those social constraints prevent many people from attaining the economic power to overcome them.  Prosperity yields power, yet power is a requisite of prosperity; therefore prosperity cannot be attained by the powerless.

La Ceiba witnesses a situation of powerlessness—poverty—in which people lack the most basic means of social and economic advancement.  Banks will not grant these people the initial capital they need to start a business; they are considered a risk if only because they lack collateral.  In this case, yes, poverty is the root of the problem.  But what caused the poverty to exist in the first place?  Most of those people were either born into poverty or thrown into it when Hurricane Mitch destroyed everything they knew; they had no say in the condition in which they live, and they have no say in changing it.  That they have no say in changing their lives is a result of the economic system that their society adheres to, not of poverty in and of itself.

Were there any institutions to enable the poor to prosper, then poverty would not be a problem.  But those do not naturally exist in a capitalist economy, which functions marvelously for those with even a smidgen of economic power but completely fails for those either with nothing or with no way to feasibly utilize what they own.  As an American economics class, we believe in the power of capitalism. But my sense is that we are skeptical of its capacity to deliver to the poor.  That is why La Ceiba exists: to lend to those to whom none else dare.  That is how La Ceiba helps struggling Hondurans to overcome the inequality, not just the poverty.  And that is what we settled on.

In the end…

An ideal mission statement would capture the purpose of the organization it serves as collectively perceived by its authors.  But nobody can communicate their thoughts perfectly, and there is no guarantee that everyone will share exactly the same thoughts anyway.  Therefore no mission statement can ever be assumed to be ideal

Brother Bear 2 release

.  What we can strive for instead is consensus, a state in which all stakeholders can accept a proposal.  There has been some give and take on all our parts, but La Ceiba has come more or less to a consensus on how it ought to articulate its purpose.  The end result is a product of our collective effort, a statement that will remain a fixed mark of our heritage while we sway, stumble and stride—as humans do—toward our goals.