With an overall goal of supporting the popular democratic movement in its country, the Lambi Fund of Haiti sees civil society as the foundation for development. The word lambi is the Haitian-Creole term for a conch shell; at the turn of the 19th century, the call of the conch shell organized Haitian slaves against the colonizing French. Today, the fund uses the conch shell as a symbol for coming together as a community. This is certainly true of its 1994 founding, as Haitians, Haitian-Americans, and Americans collaborated to better the lives of those living in the west half of Hispaniola. With the social and economic empowerment of the Haitian people in mind, the Lambi Fund finances the activities of local organizations, along with providing them with resources. In order to qualify for this backing, these groups need to be nonviolent and nonpartisan, and work in the following areas: advancement of women, educational and training empowerment, and overall promotion of democracy. Reforestation efforts are also part of the Lambi Fund’s pursuits.
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.
