Helping people help themselves

When I was working with an NGO, it was our mission to help people help themselves.  We would scour communities and look for willing individuals who wanted to improve their lives.  We started with the marginal fisherfolk, and farmers and our organization groomed them so that they could have better access to high yielding farming techniques and methods of fishing. We tried to enable peoples’ organizations to gain better incomes through livelihood activities. Empowerment was key.

This could possibly be among the reasons why our economic growth scored well in the indexes last year. We have a growing, thriving population as our economists claim. This exemplifies the cliché that “the youth are the hope of our nation.”

Knowing that we owe a lot of our economic growth to our large population has brought me to ask the question, how can we sustain our economic growth with the trend in our population’s behavior? I have seen a noticeable decline in the number of people who want to raise a family. Our young prefer to enjoy singlehood until they miss out on their biological clock.  Only a few want to get married. And for those who do, they cannot find or are not found by a suitable partner.

So how can we sustain our population?  Now most young families have a maximum of two children for economic reasons. How many children should one have in order to maintain our growth? Should one have at least three children to replace the older generation?

In my research, there seemed to be no absolute answer. A one-on-one replacement, like having only two children is no guarantee to a sustained population size. We cannot predict if a child will always outlive its parents. Having a third child, like a buffer is no assurance as well and no one would just want a third child only as population buffer. It sounds gross!

There is also the fact that not all couples are productive. Lifestyles have changed in today’s world as we have become more inclusive in our acceptance of gender options. The fact remains that same-sex marriages were not designed to naturally have children. This reduces further the number of naturally born children to families. Although it gives couples the alternative to adopt.

And there is this other fact that not all children are capacitated to be positively contributing to progress. When we see children hoisted on the hip of a teenage female as they beg, one gets to wonder what kind of future the country will have if they will proliferate more than those who are enabled by education, inherited wealth and that intrinsic drive to prosper.

In countries where the population is small, they encourage more births to inhabit the expanse of land, and perform the tasks that need to be done. They are no longer conscious of preserving their race and are more practical in their acceptance of families who they think will grow their country. Moreso, take care of their aging population.

We have Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, Germany and France among others, who invite people to migrate because of their small population.

As our country struggles with the upkeep and demands of our population, there are countries with too much space and money but with too few people who can sustain the growth of their economy in the long term. Thus we find our skilled countrymen likewise availing of the opportunities abroad, and our only link to siphoning some of the earned dollars is that tie of family that binds the migrant worker to our country.

Should our country not provide enough opportunities for development, we will lose our good professionals and skilled workers to other countries that can pay them more, so much so that they are willing to miss their families for a chance to a better life.

We need more committed leaders who can provide enabling mechanisms so that we can create enterprises that can sustain programs that will educate, train and nurture confidence among our willing but opportunity-deprived individuals. Why deprived? Because they do not even know that they have a chance. No one has bothered to help them, or point them to facilitating institutions.

Let me return to the vagrants on the streets. They are able-bodied. We sometimes find ourselves even complaining about them begging while we are breaking our backs working. But has anyone really bothered to gather them and provide them with a chance to work? I don’t think so. We are all scared and we do not trust them. So who can help them?

I recall an NGO who used to gather the Badjaos and teach them how to read so that they would be equipped to understand better and possibly influence their tribe to seek education.  SERVE Foundation which is based in Ireland brought in volunteers and resources to help educate the Badjaos located in Alaska, Mambaling.

We need local corporate foundations who have committed workers, willing to work with street dwellers so that they can be taught how to do basic household chores like laundry and the like so they can be part of communal laundromats or handymen stations or even compose a pool of house cleaners.

Should we have this burden to help at least one, then maybe we can sustain an enabled country and harness available skills. If your corporate foundation is in need of an advocacy, maybe you can take this up. Help people help themselves.