Hey everyone,
I just got back from a week in Pignon, Haiti. Traveling there always resets my perspective, but this trip clarified a specific word for me: Dignity.
We often treat dignity as an abstract concept. But standing in the middle of a vegetable garden in the Central Plateau, I realized dignity actually looks like something very specific.
Here is this week’s 3, 2, 1… Impact.
1 Story of Impact
This week, I stood looking at acres of fresh vegetable gardens, all being worked by mothers and recent graduates of our First 1,000 Days program. In a country often defined by scarcity, these fields were exploding with abundance. Last month alone, we purchased over 5,000 pounds of produce directly from these women.
But the story isn’t the vegetables. The story is what happened after the harvest.
I heard story upon story of how these women used the money they earned. They didn’t just buy food for the day. They purchased animals to “grow their dollar.” They bought inventory to start small side businesses. They paid for their children’s tuition.
In Haiti, failure is rarely caused by a lack of hard work. The people are incredibly industrious. The problem is that the system is usually rigged for exploitation. Margins are razor-thin. People buy on credit but don’t pay. Seeds are sold that are defective and never grow.
But in these gardens, we changed the system. We provided the right seeds, the agronomy support, and a guaranteed market to buy the produce. Because the system was trustworthy, participation grew by 372%.
We have all heard the old adage: “Give a person a fish, and they will eat for a day. Teach a person to fish, and they will eat for a lifetime.”
But I realized this week that the saying is incomplete. What if the pond they are fishing in has no fish? Or what if the river is toxic? You can be the best fisherman in the world, but if the environment is broken, you will starve.
These gardens are “the right ponds.” And when you give a hardworking person the right pond, dignity follows.
3 Points to Ponder
- Dignity is Choice: The mothers I met weren’t asking for a handout; they were leveraging an opportunity. Dignity happens when we move from being dependent on someone else’s generosity to being empowered by our own agency. Where can you restore dignity to someone this week by offering them a choice instead of a solution?
- Evaluate the “Pond”: In your own leadership or family, are you frustrated by someone’s lack of results? Sometimes we blame the person when we should be fixing the environment. Is there a relationship where you need to stop blaming the fisherman and start fixing the pond?
- The Multiplier Effect: When these women earned money, they immediately reinvested it in education and assets. When we build systems of Love in Action, we aren’t just solving a hunger problem today; we are solving an economic problem for the next generation. What investment are you making today that will create a ripple effect of impact for tomorrow?
2 Quotes to Share
“There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” — Desmond Tutu
“A bad system will beat a good person every time.” — W. Edwards Deming
We often focus on the harvest, but dignity is found in the ability to work the land. What specific barrier can you remove this week to allow someone else’s hard work to finally bear fruit?
Feel free to reply and share — I read every response.
Live with impact,
Tim
