Kansas City Star: Use commerce to empower the poor. This article is about about a workshop conducted by Bob Lupton yesterday in Kansas City.
He [Bob Lupton] highlighted the Tummy and Soul restaurant to illustrate the heart of the message he delivered to roughly 120 people gathered at the church: Traditional forms of giving can demean the recipients and only provide short-term relief to the poor.
Or, as he put it during his half-day community development workshop: “One way charity communicates very subtly: ‘You have nothing of value I desire in return. Accept my pity and be grateful.’ ”
The Tummy and Soul is a self-sustaining enterprise started by people who at one time relied on food handouts. Lupton said the idea for the restaurant emerged when his church stopped offering free food, creating instead a food cooperative in which members pooled money to purchase groceries.
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Overall, he said, commerce is a terrific way to empower the poor and restore their dignity.
For instance, his organization runs a clothes store that is an outgrowth of a thrift shop it started years ago. It offers low-price, donated clothes, but they are not sold at token prices. The proceeds are used to keep the store running.
“Instead of dispensers of charity,” he said, “we became a merchant. They come through the doors as customers; we need them. We need their dimes and dollars — and they sense that.”
AMEN!
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