The African continent is often the focus of charitable organizations, and Develop Africa is no exception. Working in the countries of Cameroon, The Gambia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, this nonprofit believes that human resource development is the catalyst for what it terms “nation-building capacity.” This will result in “an African continent fully developed in terms of its human and resource capacity.” To accomplish this, Develop Africa has a four-pronged strategic mandate involving transformational education, resource development, investment training, and strategic empowerment. Prospective donors can sponsor a child, along with funding computer equipment, books and school supplies, and mosquito nets. All of these means of support contribute to individuals furthering their entrepreneurship in the professional world. For the arm of Develop Africa that promotes business, microfinance loans – usually less than $200 – are made to budding entrepreneurs to start or expand a small business. What this does, Develop Africa says, is gradually lift individuals out poverty; lives are changed forever, and so are entire communities.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
