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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.

All of us are here for the same general purpose, of course, but the slight differences really begin to stand out when it comes down to simple phrasing and word choice.  The space between ideals and realities,  economics and sociology, academic and altruistic reasons; seemingly little differences became magnified in a long and arduous road to consensus.  Not to stir up what we all pray is settled, but why are we here?  The root of every disagreement and revision comes down to that simple question.  So where am I coming from?

I’m not a particularly altruistic person, so what am I doing in a non-profit development project?  I like microfinance because I don’t believe that charity has any sort of long-term beneficial effect (and I hesitate to call microfinance charity.)  I like it because I don’t believe in any doctrine of inherently deserved equality, but I believe strongly in egalitarianism.  I was sold on the phrase “a world in which every individual can realize their potential through hard work,” as steering the ship away from a charity program and towards something intended to level the playing field for those who wanted to put forth the effort to take the opportunity.

The first draft of our final statement began “We believe in a world” etc, but we don’t.  Here’s the difference between and ideal and reality.  If we believed that this egalitarian world were real, we wouldn’t be here.  We envision it, we intend to do our small part to realize that world, but we sure as heck don’t believe in it.  This small change met with some resistance, and carried great meaning for me, personally.  We can’t operate a company on ideals.  We have goals, absolutely, but we need to be realistic and pragmatic about every single thing that we do if we want to succeed in the long run.  When you’re dealing with people, especially struggling people, that mindset is hard to keep, but it’s one that I believe we need to try our hardest to hold on to it if we intend to stay in business and expand to even more clients.  If the right decision is emotionally hard to make, we still have to make it.  If we’re failing, we need to look realistically at why we’re failing and change what we’re doing.  Not to channel Rand, but the business of mysticism gets us nowhere.  We need to remember that we operate in a cruelly objective reality.

The greatest controversy, of course, was over the replacement of “poverty” in the final sentence with “inequalities.”  I agreed wholeheartedly with Dr. Humphrey that it had to come down to a rational economic determination of causation.  Philosophically, I’d love to reference my belief in egalitarianism as the reason to choose “inequalities,” emphasizing my personal reasons for participating in these projects.  That would contradict my previous assertion that we can’t run a business on ideals, and we do need to be able to explain our word choice.  Still, in terms of pure economics, I’m willing to throw my lot in with “inequalities” as both the original root of and the perpetuating factor of the cycle of poverty.  Geographic and environmental inequalities are largely to blame for stunted or non-existent economic growth, and that poverty which first stems from inequality breeds more inequality.  It’s something of a “chicken or the egg” question, but unless we’re willing to concede that people become poor by choice, it’s clear to see that inequality is the egg.  (Fun Fact: the egg came before the chicken; it’s science.)

As others have been addressing in their posts, we have spent the last few weeks drafting and redrafting our mission statement…a process I never imagined would have been quite so difficult. I assumed going into the mission drafting process that since we were all very devoted to building La Ceiba it would be easy to define why we want to form a microfinance program and how we are looking to achieve that goal.

We all had very different ideas on what a mission statement should include. After weeks of going in circles and not making progress, David and I were tasked with forming a couple of mission statements that would then be voted on during our Thursday class period. Even with the two of us the process deemed to be difficult. As I was constructing drafts I considered three factors that needed to be included:

1. Our purpose, 2. Our Business, and 3. Our principles/beliefs.

All of these components needed to be included, yet I felt that it needed to also be a phrase that would be moving. As Dr. Humphrey put it, we want our mission statement to remind us why we do what we do when things are tough and not going smoothly. We want it to motivate us every day.

David and I talked a lot about the difference between the mission, vision, and values statements. We did some research into other non-profits’ mission statments and realized that in most cases the statements are separate from one another. For example, Big Brothers Big Sisters separates out their mission and vision statement but includes them on the same informational page. We noticed, however, that they did not include a values statement. We assume the reasoning behind this is because most of their followers will already understand why their work is important and therefore they do not need to specifically define their values. As La Ceiba, however, we are often asked about the significance of our microfinance work. David and I agreed that whether included in our mission statement or not, our values statement needed to be specifically highlighted.

In the end, David and I drafted a couple of mission statements that were discussed during Thursday’s class. The first was more of a traditional mission statement, short and to the point:

The Mission of La Ceiba is to enable impoverished workers in Honduras to develop microenterprises and buttress their famillies against the indignity of poverty.

The second was a mission and values statement combined:

We believe in a world where hard work allows every individual the opportunity to achieve their inner potential. As a microfinance program that provides financial, social and educational support, La Ceiba empowers struggling Honduran communities to combat the indignity of poverty that has stripped them of this right.

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While it seemed the majority of our members agreed that our mission statement should be more of a mission/values statement, we still debated over the word choice. Specifically, as David addressed in his post there was a very heated discussion over whether to use the term “poverty” or “inequality.” In the end, the concensus seemed to be that inequality better described our mission. While it was a very frustrating last fifteen minutes of discussion, I hung up my Skype call thinking that I am very fortunate to be a part of a group that is so passionate that we spend large periods of time debating the word choice of our statement. In the end, I believe we settled upon a mission that is specific enough to guide our work, yet broad enough to grow as we grow as an organization. Here is our final mission statement:

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.

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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.

When the La Ceiba team first committed to completing our mission statement, I unwisely assumed that a group of 11 people who are all dedicated to the same project and share the same ideal of improving the lives of impoverished Honduran women in their families through a holisitic MFI would easily be able to put their sentiment in words. It “just” had to express what we were trying to do.  I was, therefore, completely taken aback at the amount of time we spent crafting our mission from start to finish… the hours spent brainstorming, drafting, agreeing, then deleting and starting over again. Working on the mission statement has helped us to examine our motivations and goals. Perhaps that is why it ended up being one of the most difficult tasks to complete. When everyone cares about what we’re doing, but in slightly different ways, for slightly different reasons, it can be difficult to figure out exactly what everyone has in common and what we want the world to understand about why we’re here and what we’re trying to do.

When we first decided to tackle the mission statement we all met at a local coffee shop and wrote down what we thought were important concepts to include. We talked about our personal motivations for taking part in the project and we discussed the importance of including enough specifics to make us stand out, but leaving enough openings to ensure that we could grow with time and experience on the ground. We didn’t want to be restricted to a definition of La Ceiba that would prevent us branching out beyond microfinance, beyond Siete and Villa, or extending loans to other types of individuals than the ones we’ve initially identified as our target group. However, finding that balance proved difficult.We quickly realized that the slightest change in word choice, style or phrasing could alter the whole message we were sending. We also found, after several fruitless attempts, that working on a sentence as a large group frequently meant starting with something somewhat acceptable, then modifying it to death, reaching a point where there was no fire, no clear goal, and little to recommend the final statement. We’d try to keep it broad, include everyone’s favorite expressions, and somehow we’d find ourselves with something that had very little to do with the reasons we started La Ceiba in the first place, and a mission that wouldn’t reach out to the people we were trying to speak to. 

Having acknowledged that repeated efforts in the vein of large group cooperation had proved relatively unsuccessful, we tried splitting the group up into 3 and each segment worked on a different part of our goals. It was during the initial split that our default policy was finally resolved, so things began to take a turn for the better, or at least I believe they did, once we stepped outside of the 11 person setting and broke it down into 3s and 4s. In smaller groups there were less competing ideologies. One important part of how it was divided, however, was that each group included a representative of each of the ideologies involved in the debates we’d been having in class. Like-minded individuals were separated, and we were to try to work together and convince each other, hopefully reaching a group opinion that took all views into account. 

In the end, while this led to a more defined direction for the statement, we were still unable to find something we were satisfied with committing to in the long run. David and Megan were tasked with collaborating on a final sentence for the rest of the group to vote on. They brought their ideas back to the group, and after some last minute modifications, the mission statement was decided upon. La Ceiba’s mission statement will be, as other posters have listed:

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.

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It contains the key concepts that all of the members believe in, and it speaks to both our long term and short term goals. While I might wish it had a little more action to it, it really allows us a lot of flexibility, and I believe that our vision can make up for the sense of activity and spirit that may be hard to grasp in the mission statement. A young, growing, and changing organization, La Ceiba’s mission statement will introduce people to the ideals that drive us and help to give focus to our long term plans. I’m so glad that consensus has been achieved. Now La Ceiba can advance with a clear direction provided by the definition we’ve established for who we are and why we’re doing all of this in the first place.

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

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.  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.