the end of poverty

okay, okay, it took me a year and two days to be exact to finish jeffrey sachs' riveting work about ending poverty in our lifetime. i'll chalk it up to the good ole reason that it wasn't the season for me to finish it when i bought it.hahaha

but seriously, swimming through the alphabet soup (as singer bono calls it) of acronyms, multilateral organizations, donor orgs and financial institutions, i told my brother-in-law that sachs' book could be summed up in two words: righteousness and justice plus one new word i just realized now: LOVE.

scholars would probably say that this "review" is simplistic and not entirely academic. yep, it sure isn't one. reading sachs gives us a glimpse on how the world and policymaking would look like if policymakers and think tanks had the heart and the passion to really, and i repeat really, help improve the lives of the people they are serving. not just improve their lives but really help them come out from the depths of despair, hopelessness, hunger, poverty and disease.

i remember jaja telling me that it's not true that the philippines is poor. it's just that there's too much money inside too few pockets (or shall i say bank accounts). unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities as the cliche goes.

while some of his critics would say that the book is filled with sachs' mentioning his advice there and advice here and his highly technical solutions i still say that his book is noteworthy for the fact that it is filled with hope for the hopeless and the disenfranchised. it is filled with compassion for those who cannot even help themselves. and it is full of practical ideas though i would dare say that he is simply a technocrat who has a strong faith in science, medicine and clinical economics. haha

but the one thing that kept running through my mind is this: what would it be like if a policymaker who has been in the courts and throne of heaven would write about God's strategies for ending hunger and poverty in our time? i can only imagine. i believe the answers are already in His Word plus a whole lot more in the Glory realm. what would it be like if we had leaders who were servants first and foremost, people who run for office because they know they have been called to serve?

the new york times called sachs "the most important economist of our time" and i see why. he calls for the rich world to care for the less developed and developing nations in the world. he calls for you and me to care for the people in africa, india and in other less developed parts. sachs puts faces to the cold statistics of poverty and hunger in our time. he sounds like a john the baptist in the world of economics and policymaking calling for the G8 countries, the UN, IMF-WB to redo the way they help, give aid and rethink their development policies and poverty alleviation. his is a radical and passionate call not only to change society but a paradigm shift with a big dream: to end poverty.

bono writes in his introduction of the book that...

"we can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies - but will we be that generation?"

that got me thinking of a paraphrase of that statement that i asked myself: "we can be the generation who will declare that these (hunger, corruption in the philippines, injustice, etc) will not happen during our watch - but will we be that generation?" it is an answer that probes us deeper and examines our hearts, me first.

i believe we can be the generation for such a time as this. there is a cause...and it's not just to end poverty but for His Kingdom to come.

This is our moment, this is our time, this is our chance to stand up for what is right. Bono from the Be A Hero website