Issuu

September October 2017

Where Christian faith gets down to business

Audrey Voth Petkau:

Travel that builds relationships Peace by Chocolate: refugees give back Tech firms discuss inequality

Inside this issue: MEDA So What? 1

The Marketplace September October 2017

Roadside stand

Travel, monks and addictions While putting together the cover package about Audrey Voth Petkau and TourMagination, I came across an article on Christian Week’s website that touts the spiritual benefits of travel. In the piece, Benjamin L. Corey argues that travelling exposes us to the fullness of God’s creation and can expand our heart’s capacity to love others. Saving savings? Fascinating story in The New York Times a while back about a monk who abandoned the monastery to pursue a new calling — healing the broken retirement savings plans of New Mexico school teachers. The epiphany that led to Doug Lynam’s dramatic career swing was the recognition that most of the visitors to the monastery with spiritual issues had a related financial problem. Lynam Financial Services, the company that he started in order to provide better retirement account options for teachers, has entered into partnership with another firm that includes a Hindu nun and a Buddhist chaplain. Lynam sees his calling as being a “suffering prevention specialist.” He told The Times that fear and sloth contribute to some people’s financial misfortunes. Add to those human failings the failure of many governments to require financial salespeople to put client interests first, and there is a recipe for many broken dreams. Holy coffee Speaking of monks, people who consider their morning cuppa to be a sacrament will be pleased to know that the cappuccino is named after a group known as the order of Capuchin friars. An article in Christian History magazine notes that Cover photo of Audrey Voth Petkau by Steve Sugrim

The Marketplace September October 2017

the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, a group formed to bring Franciscans back to the ideals of St. Francis of Assisi, were nicknamed “Capuchins” because of their brown hoods. These cappucio later became associated with both overpriced bitter beverages and also monkeys known as organ grinders. No word on whether any enterprising firm has taught the latter to whip up the former. Digital cancer? On the topic of addictions, it was only a matter of time before someone would theologize about digital gizmos. Tony Reinke’s new book, 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You, looks at negative impacts from a biblical viewpoint. Some findings are not new, like the distraction (on average) of checking phones every 4.3 minutes (85,000 times a year). Or the hazard of texting in traffic, which multiplies the chance of a mishap 23 times. As noted by reviewer Jeff Haanen in Christianity Today (“Do Smartphones Give Your Soul Cancer?), the craze threatens spirituality by creating isolation, addiction and idolatry, to name a few ills. Reading the book prompted him to ponder “true freedom” in biblical terms: “As I began deleting apps and setting new boundaries, I found myself catching an appealing vision of a better — and slower — life. And my phone once again became just a tool, to be used like all good things given by God (James 1:17).” Reining in tech — The 10 TechnoCommandments cited by Becca J. R. Lachman in her Upside-Down Living: Technology study (see Soul Enterprise, pg. 5) may cause pause for some digital addicts (guilty as charged- digital Scrabble, anyone?) But many of her reflections on the value of unplugging are worth considering. Elsewhere in the booklet, 2

she notes that Apple founder Steve Jobs was a low-tech parent who limited technology use in his home. The Jobs family had tech-free dinners each night, and his children had to get along without iPads. The reason for this should make us all stop and think: “he and his business partners knew the power of what they were selling and creating.” Science or religion? If you think of economics as being “the dismal science,” or perhaps not a science at all, pick up John Rapley’s new book Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a Religion and How it all Went Wrong. “Over time successive economists slid into the role we had removed from churchmen: giving us guidance on how to reach a promised land of material abundance and endless contentment.” Economists suffer from a false conviction that their work can be a science, when it neither is nor can be one, and “has always operated more like a church,” Rapley writes. It “rests on a set of premises about the world not as it is, but as economists would like it to be.” He points to the Swedish central bank’s struggle to decide who should win the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics — a scholar who argued the markets get the price wrong, or another who insisted the opposite, that markets always got the price right. “Thus it opted to split the difference and gave both men the medal — a bit of Solomonic wisdom that would have elicited howls of laughter had it been a science prize.” Yet Rapley argues that describing economics as a religion doesn’t discredit the study. We need it, particularly its potential to be a force “for tremendous good. But only if we keep its purpose in mind, and always remember what it can and can’t do.”

In this issue

Travel that builds relationships

Audrey Voth Petkau views her work as president of TourMagination as providing a way to add significance to sightseeing. Faith prints, wisdom exchanges and connecting with other cultures are on the agenda for their tours. By Mike Strathdee

Creative business solutions, honesty and integrity, MEDA president Allan Sauder says.

EDGET program helped farmers grow more rice

So What

Peace by Chocolate

Challenges in a booming region

Departments 22 24 20 21 22

Roadside stand Soul enterprise Review Letters News

Volume 47, Issue 5 September October 2017 The Marketplace (ISSN 321-330) is published bi-monthly by Mennonite Economic Development Associates at 532 North Oliver Road, Newton, KS 67114. Periodicals postage paid at Newton, KS 67114. Lithographed in U.S.A. Copyright 2017 by MEDA. Editor: Mike Strathdee Design: Ray Dirks

What’s Mennonite about MEDA?

Change of address should be sent to Mennonite Economic Development Associates, 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201, Lancaster, PA 17601-4106.

MEDA’s EDGET (Ethiopians Driving Growth through Entrepreneurship) program helped boost income for thousands of rice farmers and weavers by improving market linkages. By Wally Kroeker

A Nova Scotia chocolate firm run by former Syrian refugees gives back to Canada, the country that welcomed them.

Christians working in the Kitchener-Waterloo technology sector and local social service agencies are grappling with issues around inequality and how to understand each other. Faith Tech is helping them to have that dialogue.

To e-mail an address change, subscription request or anything else relating to delivery of the magazine, please contact subscription@meda.org For editorial matters contact the editor at mstrathdee@meda.org or call (800) 665-7026, ext. 705 Subscriptions: $25/year; $45/two years.

Postmaster: Send address changes to The Marketplace 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201 Lancaster, PA 17601-4106

Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA), whose dual thrust is to encourage a Christian witness in business and to operate business-oriented programs of assistance to the poor. For more information about MEDA call 1-800-665-7026. Web site www.meda.org

Visit our online home at www.marketplacemagazine.org, where you can download past issues, read articles and discuss topics with others, all from your desktop or mobile device.

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Soul Enterprise

Churches can be champions of children’s rights The International Labor Organization estimates that more than 215 million children between the ages of five and 14 are in the workplace worldwide. About half of these children work full time to support their impoverished households, note John Pattison and C. Christopher Smith in their book Slow Church — Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus. “Approximately 126 million children are subject to the worst forms of child labor, including slavery or other forms of forced labor; drug trafficking, prostitution, involvement in armed conflict and work in hazardous environments.” According to Not for Sale, which fights human trafficking worldwide, there are now upwards of 30 million slaves in the world, the largest number in human history. “And human trafficking is not just happening halfway around the world. It’s happening in our own cities and towns. Portland, Oregon, for example, is frequently cited as one of the most progressive and livable cities in the nation, but it has been confronted in recent years with evidence that is has become a regional hub for sex trafficking. The community is starting to respond.” How can we respond? Smith and Pattison suggest the communities of faith do multi-session series to educate people about child labor and human trafficking. “Churches can also help prevent work-related injustices by providing services to local runaway and homeless teenagers, refugees, and undocumented workers, speaking out at town hall meetings and at the local chamber of commerce, and by using media and the arts to tell the stories of real people harmed by abusive labor.” They encourage churches to find ways to hold corporations accountable. “The site free2work.org tells ‘the tale of the barcode,’ providing customers with information on how companies are or are not addressing forced and child labor. Anti-Slavery International, a British charity founded in 1839, has an interactive map at productsofslavery.org that depicts slavery in the supply chain.”

Are you a professional?

Cleaning up Some would say her job was lowly — cleaning offices at night. She wanted her work to glorify God, but how? Everyone was gone by the time she came in. At least she could do a good job, menial as it was. She decided to also pray for the people whose offices she cleaned. Some had family photos on their desks; she prayed that they’d have a good day. Then she started writing a note to one person each day: “I hope you had a refreshing evening and that you are blessed as you come to work tomorrow. Love, the Cleaning Lady.” One night several months later she started work as usual, fetching her cleaning cart from the closet. She was shocked when people jumped up from behind their desks and a cart with punch and cake appeared. “We had to meet you,” they said. “We’d all noticed how the atmosphere in our office changed over the past months. We were getting along better, doing better work, and even our customers commented about the changes. We couldn’t figure it out — until we all started sharing the unusual notes we were getting. Perhaps you are the cause and we all wanted to meet you and thank you.” — Adapted from Business as a Holy Calling? by Tim A. Dearborn

The professions are important “because they stand for, and in part actualize, the spirit of vocation,” Kathleen A. Cahalan writes in her book The Stories We Live: Finding God’s Calling All Around Us. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2017) “One way that Western societies have linked work and vocation is through the professions,” she says. “A professional, according to philosopher William Sullivan, is someone who professes a body of knowledge and engages in skillful, competent practices, on behalf of others, in the setting of colleagues, for the purposes of serving the common good. The promise professionals make is to use their knowledge and skill, not for their own gain, but for the good of those the serve. When you visit an accountant, you expect her to represent your best interests, to know the tax code and interpret it correctly, and to use her time efficiently. In other words, you would not trust an accountant who was out to make a lot of money for herself, who missed the deductions pertaining to your tax return, and who cut corners to get the job done quickly.” The Marketplace September October 2017

ments

mand Ten Techno-Com

chman logy, Becca J.R. La no ch Te : ng vi Li n scrap paper e Dow In her study Upsid a piece of yellowed on d le aw cr “s is below tion books. notes that the list k of morning devo ac st d ol eh us ho ” of our particular order) and kept on top mandments (in no om -C no ch Te n “Our Te e after 8 p.m. Look away 1)Limit screen tim when spoken to. d on sp re to e us pa 2)On any device, check a text. . en re from the sc n to take a call or tio sa er nv co a t up 3)Try not to interr riod. on the phone. Pe le hi w g in iv dr 4)No g other people. in st siting or ho vi n he w an being. f of s ce 5)Devi rtant than a hum po im e or m er ev ng is 6)No technology better than anythi d friendships are an k or w ld or w 7)Real unplug it. n, put it away or virtual or online. tio ec nn co t no y, et it away. 8)If it causes anxi put it away or give e, tim er ov it ug pl 9)If you can’t un eek. al email once a w on : Technology rs pe ck 10)Che side Down Living Up m fro n io iss rm s reserved. Reprinted with pe ald Press. All right er H by 16 20 © . chman by Becca J. R. La

Faith at Work is Important

It’s

ce Ita’sbaobout balan ut alance ut b bal o b a s ’ It anc It’s about balance e We shouldn’t fear new devices such as smart watches and Google Glass, a blog post entitled Darth Vader Versus Dick Tracy in Your Daily Work suggests. The post, which appeared in The High Calling — Everyday Conversations About Work, Life and God, notes that the “world needs good people exploring new technologies thoughtfully and prayerfully. Your good thoughts, your good prayers about technology use will help us sort through the challenge of our generation. But don’t forget to anchor yourself in something solid. If I am not careful, I can lose myself in the promise of technology. In fact, this has happened in the years since I began leading The High Calling, and it was a long and painful road back to good mental health. Today, I maintain careful disciplines so that I will not lose my ability to focus. I run. I pray. I read books, actual books with no purpose other than to deliver the printed text. I hike in the woods. I eat dinner with my family. I unplug on Sunday for a screen Sabbath. These small, simple focal practices keep my mind and spirit fit for another day in the technology wars, where we fight to see people before we see technology and we work to use these amazing tools to build God’s kingdom rather than our own.”

In a world where people change jobs and careers six times or more in their lives, humanity is in a crisis over work, Katherine Alsdorf argues. Alsdorf is the former (and founding) director of the Centre for Faith & Work in New York City, and coauthor of Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work. Faith at work is important because Christians very much need and want the faith and work connection, she argued in a plenary at the Faith@Work Summit. “Work opens up so many possibilities,” she said in a talk that is available online through The Theology of Work Project Inc. “Are you jealous of your co-worker? The gospel can change that. Do you fear that you’ll fail at what you’re doing? How does the gospel calm your fear? Are you having trouble getting up in the morning to face work? Or trouble stopping work in order to rest. As a matter of fact, work is a bit of an idol factory. It leads us to overvalue success or money or security or recognition or comfort. And the gospel helps us to root out those idols and turn to Jesus for our salvation. And when we do that, we change. Our hearts change.” Institutions need the gospel as much as people in our world do, she said. “We forget that God cares about our institutions, our culture, our earth, our nations, the whole world. He created it all, and without him, it We must continue to stand together would have all fallen apart by now. One of the to demand that the search for purposes of faith and work ministry is to help people of faith serve monetary profits not come at the in the world in a way that renews detriment of universal human dignity and brings hope to broken comOverheard: nor the undermining of ecological panies and workplaces.”

sustainability. — Amy Domini

The Marketplace September October 2017

A passion for travel Faith prints, wisdom exchanges part of TourMagination trips.

ven in her childhood, travel was a passion for Audrey Voth Petkau. “I always had a dream to see the world,” she recalls. “I remember early on, looking at a map of the world, and pointing to Switzerland, and saying, some day, I’m going to get there.” As owner of TourMagination (TM), a Waterloo, On-based provider of faith-based group tours for Mennonites and other Christians, Petkau has visited many countries on every continent. “I can honestly say I am much richer for the friends that I have made as I have travPetkau enjoys local hospitality in Ak Metchet, Uzbekistan in 2013 elled with TM.” Travel was a regular part of the Winnipeg native’s childences, and he taught me to approach Humanity Canada’s national office in hood vacations. Each summer, her the world with an open mind.” Waterloo. She raised their two sons, father, Toby Voth, would take two Other lessons learned from her worked in banking, went back to weeks away from his company, dad included how to relate to people, university to study apparel design, which designed and built large steel in life and business. “He and his then operated a small business for structures, and take the family on an brothers started a construction busia decade. “Like my father, I enjoyed adventure. ness in Winnipeg that prospered, being my own boss. As soon as I Trips included Florida, Texas, and became an industrial contractlearned my own trade, I went into California, Mexico and New York ing company. My father was very business.” City. “All seven of us, plus the dog personable, and made friends with Active in church and Mennonite in a station wagon, driving for days. everyone. Though he was a successBrethren conference boards, she We would almost always stay in one ful business owner, he paid attention found her interest in education and motel room. You can imagine the to people at all levels of society.” history prepared her for her current inevitable conflicts that arise with so “In business, my father set an ex- work at TM. many people in close quarters, but ample of honesty in all relationships. Initially hired by TM in 2002 as my father always made it fun.” He cared about people, even those office manager, she became coHer father became a pilot and who didn’t pay him. He wanted to owner with Wilmer and Janet Martin purchased a small plane so he could find a way to negotiate and work in 2010. She became sole owner in travel to his job sites, mostly in things out, rather than take things to 2016. northern Manitoba. “Occasionally, court, and he never held a grudge.” TourMagination started in Lanif we were lucky, he would take one Audrey attended Bible college caster, Penn. and did its first tour in of us to accompany him. That was in Winnipeg, then married husband 1970. Now headquartered in Watera thrill for me. He liked new experiTerry, who works for Habitat for loo, the firm has a receiving office in The Marketplace September October 2017

Petkau and Monica Shank (right) visit with Maasai people in Tanzania. Shank founded a community library in Monduli.

Ephrata to receive US mail. Wilmer Martin, Petkau’s predecessor, did his first tour, an overview of European Anabaptist sites, in 1973, as a young lay pastor. By the late 1970s, Martin owned TM along with partner Henry (Hank) Landis. Landis sold his stake in TM to Martin in 2009. The firm does 16-20 tours a year. Audrey travels on four or five trips annually. Many of TM’s tour guides are academics or Mennonite church leaders. “All of our tour leaders share an open-hearted desire to learn from others, express a vibrant Christian faith, and share an expertise, either in Biblical scholarship, or related to a particular country we travel to.” Asked about her favorite destination, Petkau finds it difficult to pick less than a handful. But she concedes that Israel is a favorite. “If you ever doubted there was a Jesus, you don’t doubt it after coming back from Israel/Palestine. The Bible means so much more, makes so much more sense, and becomes more familiar after you have visited Nazareth, and Jerusalem, and other places that we have read about through the years.” Antarctica, Europe, Morocco and such rugged destinations such as

Uzbekistan and Tajikistan also make her list of favorite destinations. She has many fond memories of interac-

tion with Muslim people in the latter countries, finding them hospitable and kind. “It surprises you every time you go — one person will extend themselves to you, unexpectedly,” she said. “I have also been impacted by the generosity of strangers on my travels. I recall meeting a Muslim imam in a remote village in Uzbekistan… Though he didn’t know us, the imam invited our tour group to his brother’s home and shared a meal with us. His warm hospitality was touching.” One of TM’s distinctives is its efforts to connect participants to the work of MEDA, Mennonite Central Committee and Mennonite World Conference in the countries the tours visit. “Where possible, we expose our travellers to the fine works of these organizations around the world.”

Tips for Trips Layering, cultural sensitivity key

hen it comes to packing for an international tour, less is best, Audrey Voth Petkau says. Petkau, president and owner of the TourMagination travel firm, says that while folding clothes carefully and judicious color selection are helpful, she subscribes to the when in doubt, leave it out school of packing. “There’s a lot of little tricks that you can learn as you go, but the big one is — travel light.” Expensive watches and jewelry, as well as any clothing that is very informal top her list of things not to bring. “Leave all your fancy stuff at home. You try to dress respectfully in the country you are going to.” In Orthodox churches or Muslim countries, she needs to remind travellers that shorts aren’t allowed for men or women, and

that women should bring scarves for head coverings. Women must wear skirts in religious places, shoulders, sometimes arms and legs need to be covered. “There are a lot of tourists that don’t care, but we do, we care.” Some religious sites have skirts and scarves for women “and if you aren’t wearing them, they give them to you and insist you wear them.” “Sometimes our tourists have been caught in situations like that because they didn’t comply (with local cultural expectations).” Safety often dictates that men should leave their wallets at home or at least empty them. Likewise, women are advised to leave their purses at home. Layering, and wearing casual clothes that don’t show dirt are other best practices that she recommends. ◆

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“For us, travelling has always been beyond tourism. Over the past 40-plus years, TourMagination has worked hard to make each trip a meaningful experience. On our tours, we visit popular tourist sites, but we also learn about the cultures we are visiting while interacting with the people. As tour members hear from the people, their hearts are moved to pray, and at times, take action.” Faith prints and wisdom exchanges are the terms Petkau uses to describe her company’s efforts to add significance to sightseeing. “My goal is to live authentically,” she said. “I am challenged to live every day, to live a more God-centred lifestyle, and I see my work with TourMagination as an expression of that God-centred way of living.” A faith print is a generic experience, what TM promotes as a company. A wisdom exchange is a specific engagement on a tour that involves

talking to local people, sometimes learning from each other and sharing with each other, Petkau said. “These kinds of experiences leave a faith print on the hearts of

”For us, travelling has always been beyond tourism.” those who travel on our tours, and on people in the communities we visit.” The faith print concept was coined at a TourMagination staff meeting five years ago. “It’s what we want to be identified as (providing

through tours),” Petkau says. To be more intentional about faith prints on tours, TM sometimes includes optional charitable projects. Volunteer service opportunities and wisdom exchanges in which tour members can participate. All service projects are developed in consultation with requests from the community. “We live out our faith by serving the people we visit. On some Holy Land tours, have volunteered at Nazareth Village in their harvest of olives. “As with our giving projects, we will ensure our service opportunities actually benefit the people we are trying to help.” Petkau describes her current business status as being well into the first year of 10-year plan. “Most people sell a company when they are 60, and I bought one. It’s ok. Because I have the energy, and I like the challenge, and I’m up for it, well, I feel I am up for it.” ◆

Changing times, interests Reinventing faith-based tourism

eeping-faith-based tourism relevant to changing tastes will force TourMagination to reinvent itself in coming years, the company’s president says. “My generation is probably the last generation that is looking at the historical, generational tracking’’ Audrey Voth Petkau notes. “The next generation isn’t as interested in stories about countries their great grandparents came from. We’re still doing great with our historical tours, but we can see where that eventually will time itself out.” Cultivating new clients and catering to the interests of 3050-year-olds will challenge TM to develop new tours that fit within its niche. About 80 per cent of the firm’s clients are of Anabaptist origin, but not necessarily currently attending

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a Mennonite church. For example, historians who have no current faith connection still want to understand their roots, she said. TM’s secular client base is likely to grow as church attendance declines. “We also do like-minded people travelling together … they just don’t want to travel by themselves, they don’t want to do all the logistics, and they know that if they go there — TourMagination, there are people who think the same as they do, on most things, and that they can have good conversation, and feel good travelling together.” Competition in the travel sector is intense, with larger firms adopting the language that TM has used for decades. “They are using engagement with local people, they are using (the term) purposeful travel. They are doing connecting and social projects.”

That imitation comes in response to a desire by travellers to incorporate meaning into their trips. “People want more out of travel than just the luxury, touristy things. Regular travel agencies are adopting that in a big way. It’s not just faith-based companies that we are in competition with.” Petkau recognizes that TM cannot serve the lower end of the travel market. “Bigger companies can offer cheaper fares than we can. We’ve always been elite in our fares. That doesn’t allow everybody to travel with us For the European Anabaptist tours, often there are people who have saved their money for years. It’s their first experience going over the Atlantic Ocean, probably their only experience, but they’ve saved their money, and this is where they want to go.” ◆

What’s Mennonite about MEDA? Practical solutions, integrity, building trust By Allan Sauder

cable. We are willing to share everything we learn to help others learn how to do it. If it works, we’re happy to share, and we’re also happy to share if it doesn’t work. Those are our standard mantras of operating values. But I believe there is something about MEDA that goes deeper. Sometimes people ask me: “Where’s the Mennonite in this? Where does the Mennonite name come (from), or how is it reflected in what you do”? I think the first thing is: practical, creative business solutions. If Nike hadn’t coined “just do it,” I think MEDA should have. Don’t waste a lot of time thinking about things, yeah, make a plan and just do it. If it doesn’t work, fail fast and fail early.

Photo by Carl Hiebert

ne of the things MEDA holds very important is our values. For us, it’s a faith-based value system that calls us to unleash what we believe is God-given potential in all people to earn a livelihood. Often, when we talk about MEDA’s approach, we talk about a mantra – will our work be sustainable? We have to leave something behind that can carry on long after MEDA’s no longer there. Businesses that will continue to support the poor. Our work has to be measurable, we have to be accountable for resources, we have to measure our results. Our board is constantly pushing us to make sure we can measure what we are doing, and to compare the results to the cost of doing it. We also believe all our work has to be scalable. It’s not enough to just help one community, one family. It has to be something that we can do across countries, across the world. Our work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has certainly pushed us in that direction. They are very concerned with having something that will scale to millions of clients, and help millions of families to change their lives. Finally, at MEDA, we say it has to be repli-

The other side of being practical is sharing risk. We’re one of the few organizations that don’t just do training. We actually make an investment alongside of those businesses, and take a risk with the poor. That’s a real distinctive for MEDA. The second way I think our Mennonite roots shine through is in our honesty, integrity. Every organization I’ve ever encountered has integrity somewhere in their value statement. For us, integrity is more than simply speaking the truth. It’s also about accountability for resources. Sometimes I share the story of a project we had that was funded by the U.S. government, in Nicaragua, and Zimbabwe. The partner in Nicaragua was great. We left behind a very solid financial institution, lending to the poor. The partnership in Zimbabwe was failing miserably. Finally, we said to the partner: “We can’t carry on.” We turned around and gave money back to the U.S. government. “We said: we can’t do it. Here’s the money back.” We became known as the organization who gave money back to the government. Turns out, no one had ever done that before. For me, that’s a little snippet of what I mean by deep integrity. The final thing about our Mennonite roots is: I believe it calls us to build trust in all our business relationships. Probably marriages and business relationships are some of MEDA helped Tajik farmers get apricots to market

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the toughest tests of relationships. By working honestly and building trust with our partners, I think we are also creating the building blocks for peace, for people and society. Fourteen years ago, we started working in Tajikistan, in an agricultural project which became an institution called IMON. We were given money by the Canadian government to help fruit farmers, apricot farmers to get their crop to market. Produce was just falling on the ground and rotting. We started working with the processors and the marketing people. It was clear (there was a problem with) the processors. You would put lovely apricots into the machinery, and out would come mush. It was not the kind of packaging, processing that you wanted to be doing. So, we took the processors to Turkey and different places to introduce them to better equipment. Then they found out they had no place to finance it. Nobody would invest in these farmers and

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processors. The banks didn’t want to have anything to do with that. We went out and looked for some other source of funding. We found a couple of women that had a real heart for helping women. Sanaubar and Gulbahor had come out of the Soviet period with a real desire to help women and youth. They taught women how to sew and do other businesses. They had a Junior Achievement program, they had a centre for women in abusive relationships, yet they came to the same place that we did. These women needed access to finance to grow their businesses. So, they started lending circles, a lending program. When we came to them, they said: “We don’t know anything about lending to farmers.” We said we think we can work on this together. We found from the Canadian government, $1 million to put into their capital fund to test this idea of lending to farmers and ag processors. We

went back last year with some former directors who had signed some of the original documents. We found an organization that is just blooming. It’s the largest microfinance bank in all of Tajikistan. They’ve got 27 major branches across the country, probably over 100 micro-branches, 2,000 staff, $80 million portfolio and over 100,000 clients. One of things I’m also asked is: When something gets that big, does it stay true to its mission? Average loan size is $1,100. So yeah, they are still lending to the poorest. That for me is the kind of sustainability we are looking for, the way that we can take your support, multiply it on average by seven times with support from our institutional supporters — the Canadian government, the U.S. government, the Gates Foundation, and reach 46 million clients. ◆ This is adapted from remarks MEDA president Alan Sauder made at an Inside MEDA event in June.

So What?

Summer 2017

Welcome to So What?, a periodic look at MEDA’s long-term impact around the world. What really changed as a result of our development efforts? What got better for families and communities? This issue looks at the EDGET program in Ethiopia, which ran from 2010 to 2016.

Ethiopia

New horizons in textiles and rice

rom the air, western Ethiopia is a checkerboard of agriculture, with thousands of tiny fields crowded against each other in an endless patchwork. Some 85 percent of the population is involved in subsistence farming, mostly on plots of an acre or two (or less). The land is all government-owned, but farmers have access under a tenure system. Rice is relatively new in Ethiopia, going back only a few decades. More Ethiopians have begun to consume it, often grinding it as an addition to injera, the popular spongy pancake normally made from more expensive teff.

Project outline

• Name: EDGET, which stands for Ethiopians Driving Growth through Entrepreneurship and Trade (and means “growth” in the Amharic language) • Goal: Help 8,000 rice farmers and 2,000 weavers boost income by 50 percent or more • Strategy: Improve production and find new markets through enhanced techniques, appropriate technologies, better inputs and affordable support services, including finance • Funding: $12 million over five years, primarily from the Canadian government

EDGET used strategies that have been highly effective in other countries. For example, MEDA typically works with local partners whose visibility and connections give projects a leg up in getting started and extend the vision and mission long after MEDA has left. The project employed MEDA’s “lead farmer” approach. Farmers selected for their skill and leadership ability were given special training which they then imparted to small groups of half a dozen “follower farmers” who gathered weekly to learn improved agronomy. In Ethiopia rice is harvested

Results at a glance

• Income — up 79% • Assets — up 52% • Women’s involvement — 39%

The Marketplace September October 2017

A harvester cuts rice stalks for threshing in a field seeded by the traditional “broadcast” method. EDGET encouraged row A roadside market displays weavers’ wares. EDGET helped planting, which reduced labor for weeding and harvesting. locate additional ways to promote products.

mostly by hand, the short stalks cut with a scythe and laid out in bunches, to be threshed later. Some farmers still use oxen, if they have them — spreading the bundles of stalks on the ground to be trod underfoot by the animals working in a tight circle. EDGET encouraged hand threshing, which is less damaging. Then the kernels are scooped into bags and hauled to the village processor who, for a fee, puts it all into a dehusking machine to separate the rice from its bran. The farmers take what’s left (often as little as 70 percent of what they brought in) and consume it as food, sell it at market, or store it for future use. Staff saw quickly that local attitudes needed to be addressed. Farmers complained that processors’

outdated and poorly maintained equipment caused excess breakage, meaning more tailings for the processor and less money for farmers. “We give them 100 pounds and they give us back 65,” complained one farmer. “Sometimes they break the rice on purpose so they can take more bran.” EDGET seized the opportunity to transform predatory relationships

Impact — rice The project greatly strengthened market linkages for rice in the Amhara region. Farmers grew more rice, and processors increased capacity accordingly. Empowering growers was a key impact. Many adopted new techniques and technologies. They jumped from subsistence farming to robust livelihoods. Incomes of both rice farmers and weavers (combined total of 10,894) increased 79 percent. Interventions that provided the biggest boost to farmers were those that required minor equipment improvement, better agronomic train-

The Marketplace September October 2017

ing and adoption (improved seed, row planting, proper quantities of fertilizer). For post-harvest loss, simple poly storage bags became popular as a low-cost solution to on-farm storage, keeping rice clean and protected from insect infestation and outside moisture. Being able to store rice in newly constructed facilities and sell it when the price was high, contributed significantly to increased income. Farmers embraced row planting (87% of females, 79% of males); fertilizer application (89% female, 93% male); and airtight bags (71% female, 74% male). b

A designer EDGET enlisted to help weavers update their styles arranged an order with Ethiopian Airlines, which wanted a traditional flower woven into its flight attendants’ uniforms. EDGET artisans got to work and before long the product of their looms was traveling to 69 international destinations.

in the value chain into mutually beneficial collaborations. It arranged regular meetings with farmers and processors to help them understand each other and see the value of working more closely together. It identified processors who seemed willing to upgrade. It researched sources in nearby countries and put together a manual detailing a variety of affordable mills, husk shellers, separators, polishers and whiteners. None of that equipment was readily available before. The manual came to be seen as the best in the country. Another step was to devise buy/

protect rice from insects and swings in temperature and humidity that can cause the kernels to crack. By the end of the project, more than 70 percent of farmers used these portable cocoons to preserve quality. These efforts nearly doubled yields over the life of the project (92 percent increase).

Parboiling for profit

Asrese Lemma got up from a mud bench in her hut, a short walk from her three-quarter-acre rice field, and reached for a laminated card hanging from a peg. It described the new brand of rice she was growing, including advice on seed, fertilizer, planting and weeding. Asrese, then 52 with five children, was eager to become part of EDGET. As a first-time farmer, she lapped up the training and utilized a voucher scheme to buy 25 kilos of new seed. Her friends warned that the risk was great for a woman among mostly-male Ethiopian farmers. “I wanted to be an example to other women,” she said. And a great example she was. Asrese became a poster-farmer for EDGET. Her can-do spirit was just what MEDA wanted to encourage to boost incomes among rice farmers. Before long she was honored as one of the top 10 farmers in the area.

lease financing options.

Rice productivity

Farmers made major gains in productivity as they embraced better inputs (seed, fertilizer, pest management); agronomic efficiency (field preparation, planting and weeding); and post-production handling (harvesting, threshing and drying). An early step was to offer farmers improved seed using a voucher discount. Previously, they simply kept back a portion of each harvest to plant next year. But genetics grew tired over time and stunted productivity. New varieties resisted stresses such as moisture shortage, matured earlier, adapted better to climate change and produced stronger kernels that didn’t break as easily. Lead farmers said when they took their rice in for processing they netted out 85 percent, compared to 70 percent previously. Half of farmers used commercial fertilizers at the outset, compared to 90 percent at the end.

Appropriate technology also helped. A low-cost rotary weeder halved labor costs. The biggest improvement was switching to row planting from broadcasting. This used less seed and cut weeding and harvesting costs by 80 percent. MEDA’s agronomist said “row planting was perhaps the most significant intervention during the project,” increasing yields by 25 percent. Another improvement was to introduce airtight storage bags to

An EDGET intervention with dramatic impact was providing access and matching grants to acquire simple parboilers that boosted income for both rice farmers and processors. Parboiled (or precooked) rice retains more bran (and nutrition), cooks faster and produces a harder kernel less prone to breakage. Rice sold in North America is typically parboiled. The process lent itself well to family producers, as it could be managed by women whose household duties made them less mobile. Farmers who ventured into parboiling gained astonishing results. A return on investment (ROI) of more than 200 percent was not uncommon. Family income increased considerably as parboiled rice commanded a premium in the market. An extensive evaluation concluded that “parboiling is an effective innovation that adds value to the rice produced by MEDA clients, even if it is only at the early stages of its potential.” * b * The project funder, Global Affairs Canada, was so satisfied with EDGET results in this and other areas that it invited MEDA to run a follow-on project with doubled budget. This project continues to strengthen the rice sector and is expanding into women’s garden vegetables and semi-precious gemstones.

Impact — textiles Beyond increasing incomes of weavers, EDGET: • Strengthened linkages to lucrative markets by connecting textile designers with high-end buyers who procured and outsourced their purchase orders (including exports) to weavers. • Improved the work environ-

ment of weavers and bolstered their skills and output. • Helped create a national code for ethically produced woven textiles (labor standards, child labor), an industry-wide effort in collaboration with Ethiopia’s social services ministry responsible for labor practices. b

The Marketplace September October 2017

What we did with weavers

outhwestern Ethiopia reveals an entire value chain at work. First, there’s the cotton plants along the road, their bolls bursting like popcorn. Village women spin the fibres into yarn. In the next town people bleach the yarn pure white so it will better accept dye. High in the hills, in places like Dorze and Chencha, weavers (mostly male) are busy at their looms, their output a feast of tribal color. But the next roadside market charges a scant $3 for a stunning scarf that took days to produce, suggesting something is out of whack. Many weavers, despite hard work, lose money. From raw cotton in the fields to finely woven garments in trendy stores, MEDA saw the hand-woven textile value chain as ripe for improvement. EDGET was designed to improve the income of 2,000 weavers by 50 percent or more. It sought to create a bigger market by linking weavers with high-end markets, and to improve the supply of inputs and cut out trade inefficiencies.

“I never thought weaving would change our lives like this,” said weaver Werkinesh Wade, who doubled her income, built a house and enrolled her daughter in a better school.

Lead weavers were sent to classes on modern design, work discipline and market-oriented production. They devised better pricing mechanisms

Impact — finance EDGET established Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) that worked with women and men in both the textile and rice value chains. The regular savings that these associations facilitated nurtured a sense of financial discipline among producers. Savings became a tool to develop peer trust and social cohesion — critical for communities to address their social and economic needs. When linked to formal financial institutions, regular savings helped VSLA members build a history which helped them access other services. Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates

The Marketplace September October 2017

A business loan guarantee fund established with Ethiopia’s BUNNA International Bank encouraged the bank to extend financing to eligible small and medium entrprises. EDGET put up a 50 percent portfolio guarantee so that if the bank lost money on the portfolio they would get up to half of that back. This ran for four years, lending to an assortment of agro businesses. One result of this positive experience was that the bank opened two new full-service regional branches (with managers and loan officers) to specifically serve this segment. b Canada: 155 Frobisher Dr., Ste. I-106, Waterloo, ON N2V 2E1 U.S.A.: 1891 Santa Barbara Dr., Ste. 201, Lancaster, PA 17601-4106 Europe: Heinrich‑Schütz‑Str. 12a, 56566 Neuwied, Germany 14

and more professional promotion. The Besa Hyzo Cooperative in Dorze, which comprises 48 weavers, expanded its looms when designers said the market wanted a wider product. For generations weavers had produced fabrics that were 80 centimetres wide (about 32 inches) but that wasn’t big enough to make a dress. Consequently weavers enlarged their looms to produce fabric a metre wide (39 inches). “Cluster leaders” (like lead farmers for rice) learned to keep in touch with the market and interpret the latest trends to the weavers in their group. When new orders came from the designers, weavers upgraded accordingly. Connecting with designers also led to a growing “green” orientation. The high-end market had a lot of interest in natural, organic dyes, and moving in that direction was seen as a competitive advantage. b Visit our website: www.meda.org E-mail us at: meda@meda.org or call our toll-free number: 1-800-665-7026

Peace by Chocolate Business shows “everybody wins” when a country embraces newcomers.

HALIFAX — A Syrian refugee says his family’s thriving chocolate business should serve as an example of the value of Canadian “openness” in a world that has increasingly closed off its borders to refugees. Tareq Hadhad spoke about his family’s journey from war-torn Syria to Nova Scotia, at a TEDx conference at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The Hadhads say Peace by Chocolate has been struggling to keep up with orders since earning a shout out from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at an address to the United Nations last year. Trudeau even had a chance to sample some maple leaf-shaped treats upon meeting the chocolate makers during a trip to Sydney, N.S. last November. “It’s not a chocolate business, as you all think. It’s all about a message from newcomers to their new community,” Hadhad told the crowd. “Peace is the most noble value that human beings should fight for ... Chocolate is the magic product of happiness.” Hadhad says his father ran a chocolate factory in Damascus with around 30 employees that shipped specialty treats all over the Middle East. An aspiring physician, Hadhad says he abandoned his studies and fled to Lebanon with several family members after a 2012 bombing destroyed the business his father had built over the course of more than two decades. After three years at a refugee

CP Photo by Andrew Vaughan

Peace by Chocolate co-founder Tareq Hadhad (son of Assam Hadhad, pictured) will be a panelist at MEDA’s November convention in Vancouver. The article below ran in a number of Canadian newspapers earlier this year, and is licensed from The Canadian Press.

by how eager locals were to help him and his relatives fit into Canadian society. Hadhad says Peace by Chocolate was founded in part as a way of “giving back” to the country that welcomed them so readily by creating jobs in their small community, donating profits to relief efforts in

“Peace is the most noble value that human beings should fight for … Chocolate is the magic product of happiness.”

Assam Hadhad, a former Syrian refugee, runs Peace by Chocolate with his son Tareq

camp, Hadhad says he got his first taste of Canadian hospitality before even setting foot in his new home. “This is Canada. The nation that received immigrants from all over the world to be one nation,” said Hadhad. “A Syrian newcomer would become Canadian the first time you are on the airplane.” The family settled in Antigonish, N.S., or as Hadhad calls it, “the middle of nowhere” a little more than a year ago. After the initial “culture shock,” he says he was taken aback 15

Fort McMurray, Alta, and of course, sharing their decadent chocolate treats with Canadians. Hadhad told the Associated Press in January that he was denied entry to the United States where he had planned to meet with the governor of Vermont. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Hadhad says he hopes word of Peace by Chocolate’s success reaches the Donald Trump White House as a symbol of how “everybody wins” when a country embraces newcomers. “Maybe we started from zero, but we brought our skills with us,” he says. “If we close our minds and close our borders ... these countries will lose a lot of the experiences immigration can bring.” ◆ —Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press

The Marketplace September October 2017

A wicked seesaw of conflict and poverty Dr. Samantha Nutt, the founder of War Child Canada, is one of the keynote speakers at MEDA’s upcoming convention: Building Bridges to Enduring Livelihoods — Business as a Calling 2017, to be held November 2-5 in Vancouver, B.C. The excerpt below is from her book: Damned Nations: Greed, Guns Armies & Aid.

Photo by DustinRabin.com

Armed conflicts reinforced by social instability

THE BURDEN OF POVERTY AND UNEMPLOYMENT

ne of the most significant and ongoing threats to peace globally is the demographic swell of unemployed, unskilled, and uneducated young men in unstable environments. Among the twenty-five countries experiencing armed conflict within their borders, 60 percent of the population is under the age of thirty.* Many of the young men born into fractured societies struggle to overcome years of missed schooling and are chronically poor. In the shadow of conflict, their collective discontent and social disengagement, combined with the easy availability of small arms, virtually guarantee catastrophe. It is a pattern playing itself out in countless conflict and post-conflict countries worldwide, locking civilians in a recurring cycle of poverty, human misery, and instability. Perhaps the best evidence of this social unravelling is the correlation between human development and *In fact, over the past thirty years, virtually all countries (86 percent) that experienced a new civil conflict had populations in which 60 percent were younger than thirty years old.

The Marketplace September October 2017

war. The lower a country’s ranking on the Human Development Index, the greater the likelihood it is experiencing armed conflict within its borders. Over the past twenty-three years, only 5 percent of the countries rated “very high” on the Human Development Index experienced war within their borders, compared to more than half (54 percent) of those ranked “low.” The vast majority (80 percent) were in Africa and Asia, split equally between these two continents. Certainly, we can debate chickens and eggs here: are low levels of social, political, and economic development risk factors for armed conflict, or is the reverse more likely? 16

In the most obvious sense, both are true. Countries wracked by violence struggle to provide their citizens with the basic necessities of life, and so are plagued by low human development. After all, parents do not take their children to school or to medical clinics when they risk be-

Countries wracked

and subvert international law, courtesy of lucrative foreign arms deals, and the question must be asked: Whose interests are best served by the status quo? Certainly not the children forced to shoot their siblings, or the illiterate teenagers trafficking drugs and precious metals on behalf of rebel commanders, or the local human rights advocates buried without fingernails. And it is a ghastly instability that spreads both literally and ideologically, offering up the kind of fodder that religious zealots and half-witted demagogues rely on to deliver a primed audience. ◆

with violence can’t provide their citizens with the basic necessities of life ing raped or killed along the way. And citizens with few educational and employment opportunities, who watch their children die needlessly and whose lives are, in that Hobbesian way, “poor, nasty, brutish, and short” have many more reasons to wage war than not. Add to this the preponderance of autocratic rulers, military regimes, and corrupted governments operating in unstable regions who are able to liberally crush democratic movements

Excerpted from Damned Nations: Greed, Guns Armies & Aid. Copyright © 2011 by Samantha Nutt. Cloth edition published in 2011. Paperback edition published in 2012. Published by Signal an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

The Marketplace September October 2017

Challenges amidst business boom

apidly increasing wealth and inequality in North American high-tech hubs is forcing charities to reach out to technology entrepreneurs for solutions to societal problems as well as donations. That new, uncomfortable reality means that both sides need to understand each other’s challenges, a forum on technology and inequality in Kitchener, Ont. heard recently. The event was held at the offices of Vidyard, a fast-growing firm which provides a platform that helps companies analyze the performance of their online sales videos. It was organized by FaithTech, a nascent movement operating in three tech clusters across Canada (KitchenerWaterloo, Toronto and Vancouver). FaithTech provides a place for Christians working in the technology sector to share their stories and think about ways to apply their talents to press-

House of Friendship photo by Gail Martin

Tech innovators, charities need to understand each other to tackle social problems

John Neufeld holds a 3D-printed car in his office. His agency partnered with tech employees to provide 3D-printing camps for low-income youth.

The Marketplace September October 2017

“We can’t do coding camps, but we can do 3D-printing with you.”

ing social issues. Speakers at the event came from both the social service and technology sectors. They included: •John Neufeld, executive director of Kitchener-based House of Friendship, which serves over 42,000 low-income men, women and children throughout Waterloo Region. •Christian Snyder, head of community relations at Smile.io, a Kitchener firm that manages corporate rewards programs. •Stephanie Rozek, executive director for Hive Waterloo Region, which works to teach digital literacy skills and to build diversity and greater inclusion within the tech sector. •Fizsum Areguy, who works with the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute researching the use of tech with health care. FaithTech founder James Kelly, who moderated the event, recalls being told that in California’s Silicon Valley, home to many of the world’s largest tech firms, “you can taste the difference between the rich and the poor when you are there.” Waterloo Region, home to one of the fastest-growing tech clusters in the world, could become the Silicon Valley of the North, he said. “The question is, will we like it (if the inequality accompanies the economic

growth)?” Under-representation of women and minorities in tech jobs, sexism and housing affordability as sections of the city undergo gentrification were the most frequently-named issues by an audience of 120 people, most of them young and employed in the tech sector. Inviting the tech community to be part of community conversations around inequality requires adjustments by both parties, said Neufeld (who is a past president of MEDA’s Waterloo, Ont. chapter). “We don’t know what we are doing. We don’t have a template, we don’t have a formula for this.” One of the disconnects that must be overcome is the inability of social services organizations to move quickly enough, and the need for tech firms to slow down, Snyder said. He experienced that first-hand in a previous job working at an organization that serves refugees. A large Kitchener tech firm volunteered to help his employer solve a problem, but could only devote resources for a limited time. The refugee organization couldn’t react quickly enough, and “eventually, it came to naught.” Other conversations have borne fruit. Neufeld was invited last Christmas to the Accelerator Centre, a University of Waterloo-based incuba19

tor for tech firms, to thank them for donating to his agency. He challenged tech entrepreneurs to consider running computer coding camps for bright youth in low-income neighborhoods. After his talk, some people came up to him with a counter-proposal. “We can’t do coding camps, but we can do 3D-printing with you,” employees of a 3D-printing firm told him. Last summer, the company did a pilot 3D-printing campaign at a community centre in one of the region’s poorest neighborhoods. Neufeld is optimistic the idea will spread. “I think we’ve got something good here that we can co-create,” he said, while acknowledging that success will require difficult conversations, “hearing things that we don’t want to hear.” Systemic solutions take time, “which is counter-intuitive to how tech works,” Areguy noted. Snyder agreed. Community development in the tech sector is difficult work with data-driven engineers, he said. Those professionals typically work in two-month sprints, and are oriented toward objectives and key results (OKRs). But relationships aren’t OKRs. “If you do work in tech, don’t think about relationships as OKRs,” he said. ◆ The Marketplace September October 2017

Reviews

Stories worth noting This I Know: Marketing Lessons From Under the Influence. By Terry O’Reilly (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2017, 320 pp. $34 CDN.)

erry O’Reilly is a master storyteller. Even people who are uninterested in the worlds of radio advertising, marketing and branding are drawn to his tales about corporate successes and failures. In This I Know, O’Reilly has drawn on more than three decades of award-winning advertising production, and 12 years of radio shows to put together a book brimming with fascinating insights about successful positioning, messaging, branding and customer service. Carried coast to coast by CBC Radio in Canada, as well as on SIRIUS XM and WBEZ Chicago in the U.S., his Under the Influence radio program boasts over a million listeners per week in Canada alone, with a podcast that has been downloaded over 17 million times. The show also claims a following in Britain, Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, Japan, China, Philippines and Mexico. While many people find advertising to be a nuisance, O’Reilly argues that it is a fascinating business that studies human nature, offering “a granular look at what makes us tick.” To succeed, companies must understand what business they are in, and have the sense to know that they need to sell a solution rather than a product, he writes. Great brands understand this. Coke succeeds not because of its formula for sugar water, but rather its ability to link its product to happiness. Häagen-Dazs sells not ice cream, but “sensual pleasure.” Apple is in the personal empowerment business. Nike is in the motivation business. Marketers can only succeed if they The Marketplace September October 2017

can describe what business they are in and do so in a fashion that appeals to a client’s emotions, he says. Given that decisions are made using the heart 80 per cent of the time and with the head

“In a clutter world of distracted attention, complication is kryptonite.” only 20 per cent of the time, he can’t understand why so many pitches are aimed solely at the intellect. O’Reilly argues that the estimate of people being exposed to more than 3.000 advertising messages a day is “laughably low.” Of that flood of information clamoring for attention, people notice six messages and retain only two. His assessment of the value of simple elevator pitches — “In a clutter world of distracted attention, complication is kryptonite” is an important reminder for anyone who has to make an argument for something — whether they are in sales or not. Eric Schmidt, a former Google CEO, once noted that more information is generated every day now than all of civilization created before 2003. O’Reilly uses this story to buttress 20

his case for the value of emotional content. Companies that rely on trust should never ask customers to trust them, or they risk sowing doubt about their trustworthiness. Instead, “tell stories about trust,” he writes. “…Trust is meant to be felt but never stated. Like excellence, quality and reliability, those compliments shouldn’t be self-referential.” The book contains useful advice for job seekers and people who are established in their careers. For the former, there is good thinking on resume preparation. For the latter, practical tips for anyone who must present to colleagues, clients or larger audiences. Each presentation needs to be viewed as “a piece of performance art,” with attention paid to creating an “atmosphere of approval,” proper structure, and as much attention paid to preparing the ending as the set-up. O’Reilly values playing the “What If” game, where no idea is too crazy to be complicated, and banking on intuition. For him, successful marketing requires understanding that timing is persuasion, so knowing when to present a message can be as important as the message itself. Likewise, he thinks it is crucial to understand the difference between a nudge and a push, how prospects can be drawn in by the former and repelled by the latter. He views obsessive commitment to customer service as being the best way to retain and grow a customer base, as well as causing competitors to find you “really, completely irritating.” ◆

Soundbites

Work-life imbalance takes health toll Working long hours is not only bad for your social life, but can be bad for your heart as well, says a study reported in The Guardian. Clocking up more than 55 hours a week means a 40% higher chance of developing an irregular heartbeat, when compared to those with a better

work-life balance. The 10-year study of 85,494 mainly middle-aged men and women from the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Finland found that those working the longest hours were more overweight, had higher blood pressure, smoked more and consumed more alcohol. ◆

Letters

Social entrepreneurs as prophets? Re: “Are we social entrepreneurs?” sidebar in May June 2017 issue of The Marketplace. I was heartened to see The Marketplace prompt its readers to consider whether they are social entrepreneurs. While some may see this as new language for an old concept—i.e., the understanding that entrepreneurs should be driven by the desire to achieve a larger social purpose—in my view, this expression has the potential to engage new audiences, including people who otherwise would never chose to identify themselves as entrepreneurs. I think part of this appeal is because the concept of social entrepreneurship has been stretched in recent years. For example, a recent report from the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship acknowledges the limits of traditional measures of success that have emphasized growth in the size of projects and organizations. They now recognize that the needs being tackled by social entrepreneurs are simply too large and urgent to be solved by incrementally expanding social enterprises in order to reach more people. Meaningful change requires entrepreneurs to intervene at

a higher level, tackling the complicated and often messy role that governments play, as well as navigating the diverse beliefs and values that shape communities. Thus, social entrepreneurs are properly understood to be systems entrepreneurs. This is a message echoed by many others. Social entrepreneurs who have been recognized as Ashoka Fellows are singled out not only because of their success in pursuing sustainable solutions to social problems, but because they seek to make changes at a societal level. Prominent Canadian organizations such as the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and the Tamarack Institute have urged social entrepreneurs to recognize that “scaling for impact” should mean more than spreading their products or services to more people— they have an important role to play in changing laws and even cultures. Of course, this understanding of social entrepreneurs as changemakers seeking to transform systems as well as individuals does raise questions. How, for example, are people equipped or empowered to do this? Is there more to it than creating business solutions to poverty? Sincerely, Paul Heidebrecht

Director, Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement Conrad Grebel University College (Editor’s note: Watch for a profile on the Centre for Peace Advancement in the November issue of The Marketplace.)

Reader enriched On the occasion of his retirement I would like to commend Wally Kroeker for the long time and inspired leadership he has given to The Marketplace. By providing a continuing perspective of how business can be done redemptively, Wally has enriched his readership and provided many examples of Walter Wink’s observation that “The Powers are created, the Powers are fallen, and the Powers will be redeemed.” The Marketplace and MEDA have been demonstrating how business can be redeemed and how business can serve human beings instead of human beings serving business. The Marketplace is the only publication I receive that is read cover to cover as soon as it arrives in my mailbox. Thank you, Wally. Dave Hubert

The Marketplace September October 2017

News

Giving back

aterloo Region’s Schlegel family has donated $1 million to MEDA to help the organization hire a volunteer coordinator and more fully engage the skills of its supporters. The Schlegels — Ron, his wife Barbara, sons Rob, Brad and Jamie, made the gift to develop and support the RBJ Schlegel Business Leadership for Enhancing Livelihoods initiative. This includes recruiting expert volunteers and mentors from among MEDA’s supporting constituency, as well as other intern programs at MEDA. RBJ Schlegel Holdings Inc. is a private holding company owned and operated by the Ron Schlegel family. RBJ Schlegel and their subsidiary companies are actively involved in the health care, urban development and agri-business industries. Ron Schlegel, the company’s founder and chairman of the board, told a Waterloo audience he hoped the gift would enable MEDA to draw on the specialized skills and knowledge of its supporters. “What we’d like to do is have a position, a leadership position at MEDA which would identify people in our MEDA constituency who are prepared to give, not only treasure, but also time and talent, to go to the countries that they are supporting, and to mentor the people who they are supporting. “When MEDA started, back in 1953, there was some differences then versus today in how it was run. You heard how the founding members went down to Paraguay, and personally put their own shoulders to the wheel, to work alongside and with the aboriginals in the Chaco. That’s one thing that we’ve lost maybe a little bit over the years, as we’ve gone to professional staffing.” Important as professionalization

The Marketplace September October 2017

photo by Steve Sugrim

RBJ Schlegel founder Ron Schlegel urges MEDA supporters to donate their time and talents, as well as treasure, while company CFO Rob Schlegel (left) and MEDA president Allan Sauder look on.

has been in attracting significant matching funds from institutions to multiply the impact of MEDA’s efforts to create business solutions to poverty, Schegel “think(s) we lost a bit in terms of personal identification and affiliation with the work that’s being done.” “We need to revert to some things that were good back then and

Schlegel gift will help MEDA tap volunteer and mentoring expertise incorporate them into the things that we do today.” Schlegel also urged other businesspeople in the audience to come forward and publicly share the example of their support for MEDA, to encourage similar donations. “As Mennonites, we have been too humble to allow our names to be attached to donations, or philanthropic 22

work of whatever sort.” Ron Schlegel was convinced by David Johnston, then president of the University of Waterloo and more recently Canada’s Governor General, to allow the Schlegel name to be attached to The UW Schlegel Research Institute for Aging. Johnston has taken a personal strong interest in MEDA, and always asks how the organization is doing whenever he meets the Schlegels, Ron said. In 2012, Ron Schlegel was admitted to the Order of Canada, an award given to people considered to have made an outstanding contribution to Canadian society. MEDA president Allan Sauder said the Schlegel gift will allow the organization to fully develop a key part of its strategic direction going forward. The volunteering initiative aims “to benefit both the mentor and the mentee and to build strong relationships across MEDA’s global work so we not only create jobs and economic benefit today, but so that we also have an even greater transfer of business knowledge and leadership skill in the developing world for multiplied community and economic benefit for years to come.” ◆

Convention focuses on enduring livelihoods

uilding Bridges to Enduring Livelihoods is the theme of MEDA’s annual Business as a Calling convention, to be held Nov. 2-5 at the Weston Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver, B.C. Wally Kroeker, MEDA’s former Director of Publications, author, and editor of The Marketplace magazine, will address the opening plenary Thursday evening on “Girders of Faith: Hope that Lasts.” Kroeker recently retired after editing The Marketplace for 32 years. He is the author of God’s Week Has Seven Days: Monday Musings for Marketplace Christians; An Introduction to Russian Mennonites: A Story of Flights and Resettlements — to homelands in the Ukraine, the Chaco, the North American Midwest, Germany and beyond; and the co-author of Faith Dilemmas for Marketplace Christians. Friday’s midday plenary will be a panel discussion entitled “Building Bridges to New Lives for Refugees,” featuring Tareq Hadhad of Peace by Chocolate (see story, pg. 15), Cornelia Horsch of Horsch Machines, and Jennifer Mpungu, migration, resettlement and newcomers program co-ordinator at Mennonite Central Committee British Columbia. Hadhad, founder of Peace by Chocolate and a medical researcher,

moved to Canada in December 2015. He studied medicine at Damascus University and joined medical relief efforts for Syrian refugees with the United National High Commission for Refugees and the World Health Organization when he arrived in Lebanon in 2013 as a refugee himself. Horsch is a member of the management team of Horsch Maschinen GmbH based in Schwandorf, Germany. A mother of four, she is responsible for sales, service and marketing departments at this family-owned company. Mpungu first experienced asylum seekers in Sweden who had fled South Africa’s apartheid regime. Years later, she took on an assignment with CARE International in Kenya, working in the Dadaab refugee camp, the largest such camp in the world. Saturday’s keynote speaker is Dr. Samantha Nutt, founder of War Child Canada and War Child USA, and author of Damned Nations: Greed, Guns Armies & Aid (see excerpt, pp. 16-17). Dr. Nutt is a physician with more than 16 years of experience working in war zones, from Iraq to Afghanistan, Somalia to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sierra Leone to Darfur, Sudan. Her talk is entitled “Justice, not charity.

Solidarity, not pity. Opportunity, not handouts.” David Eagle, lead pastor of Eagle Ridge Bible Fellowship, Coquitlam, BC will present the Sunday morning message on the theme “Biblical Mentors for Marketplace Ministry.” Esau grew up on a mixed-farm in Manitoba. He worked his way through university and college as a carpenter, discovering marketplace mentors on the job, in the church, and in college who taught and modelled business as a calling. There will be almost a score of seminars for attendees to choose from. The sessions will explore a wide range of topics relating to MEDA projects, business and faith and generosity. Among them: • Women at the Centre: Empowering rural women in Ethiopia and Ghana • Cars, Cows and Cell Phones: What do they have in common? • Using Christian Business as a Force for Good: Building local bridges for enduring livelihoods • Spiritual practice for busy people • Supporting MEDA in creative ways • Building Bridges in Multicultural Settings • The Peace by Chocolate Story ◆

The Marketplace September October 2017

photo by Steve Sugrim

MiCredito was founded in 2004 as a not-for-profit provider of financial services to underserved rural and urban communities in Nicaragua. MEDA has a long history of providing investment capital and technical assistance to MiCredito, which has grown to 12 branches serving 8,000 clients across the country, with over 8500 loans. MiCredito converted into a corporation in late 2012 and is now owned by over 20 shareholders, including MEDA. Ricky Nelson Lopez’s shave ice business in Managua, Nicaragua, was funded by a loan from MiCredito. Lopez thanks God for MiCredito’s assistance in establishing his business. “I’m thinking of growing more, to have more employees, to have more locations at schools,” he said. “I want to have more locations and be like a microenterprise.”

The Marketplace September October 2017