27 Sep Ward Brehm // Recovering Type-A controlling businessman

It was in 2008 when Ward Brehm made a speech in Washington DC. It was in a grand room, in the presence of the  President of the United States and other prestigious government leaders, ambassadors, businessmen and influentials from all over the world…Moral Wings was there and witnessed, in its mission to spread stories like this!!

Ward Brehm is the Chairman of the United States Africa Development Fund, whose mission is to bring to Africa a system of micro investments to help the population in the development of a network of enterprises, supporting them later in their industrial and commercial activities.

His work is founded on the wisdom gained from his personal life experience: once you help others to change their conditions, your life changes as well.

Thanks to the courtesy of dear friends of ours in the States, we were able to have access to the transcript of that speech which, we are sure, will be contagious with its charge of life and hope.

We are glad to share hereunder some of the most significant excerpts of his speech that, better than any other comment, illustrate his character and his rare personality. And the challenges we all face together.

(We are following soon with our exclusive interview to Ward Brehm)

The Washington speech:

“The best way to help the poor is to help them not be poor anymore. The only way I know how to do that is through job creation, and the very best form of sustainable development is a steady paycheck. It has been said that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. But that is not the full story. If you want to eat for a lifetime, you need to own the pond….

…I am a recovering Type-A controlling businessman. I have been described even by people who like me as someone who is often wrong but seldom in doubt.I was a bit of a problem child growing up…

…In 1994, Africa was not on my personal radar screen. In fact, the only significant thing on that radar screen was ME…

…In the Los Angeles airport I bought a copy of Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits for Highly Effective People. I didn’t buy it to learn anything, but just wanted to make sure that he got them all right…

…Paradigms usually change because of shock or trauma, but I wondered if it might be possible for someone to change their paradigm on purpose. I supposed that if I were to see people starving, it would change that paradigm and perhaps much more. The thought left me as quickly as it came…

…But…two months later, I found myself in the Minneapolis airport with a ticket to Ethiopia in my hand…

…And then we flew twelve thousand miles to Africa, and a million miles from my comfort zone. I had the high privilege of having my heart broken. I saw poverty on an obscene level. Children with flies on their eyes and for the lack of a 50-cent medicine doomed to blindness, the emaciated faces of famine, families shattered by civil war. In Masaka, Uganda I held the hand of a 22-year-old mother as she died of AIDS and then turned to look directly into the faces of four brand new orphans. I was an eyewitness. It put a face on the statistics. I always believed that those statistics were true, but now they become real. It got personal…

…I fasted for five days on this walk to experience real hunger, but had brought along protein bars in case of an ‘‘emergency’’. At the end of this walk, I collapsed in a borrowed sleeping hut. When I awoke 13 hours later, I saw a little boy peeking through the door. While he was initially terrified, curiosity eventually got the best of him, and I noticed he was concentrating more on my stash of power bars than he was on me. He succeeded in snatching a bar, and immediately ran away. ‘‘Kids are the same everywhere,’’ I thought, until I stepped outside the hut, and I found that little boy kneeling over his two-year old sister with a terribly distended stomach, feeding her tiny pieces of protein. Three months later, I was to learn that she died… another paradigm shift…

…Most of us along the affluent have too many things: too much food, multiple cars, great health care, retirement, insurance. It is only when things fall apart completely, and we are totally out of control that we feel totally dependent, and thus closest to God. Death, cancer, business failure, addiction, divorce, crises; these are the things that truly drop us to our knees. All across the world, including America, things are continuously falling apart for the truly poor… They are always out of control, constantly living in crises mode, and thus dependent and faithful to God’s own commandment that we love Him with all of our hearts. God is often all the poor have. The leaders that God anoints are their only hope. And despite the often-horrific conditions that they live in, the poor are thankful for their very existence…

…Solzhenitsyn said that disaster is defined by two things: magnitude and distance. So a small disaster close to home or a huge disaster faraway, results in what he describesas ‘bearable disasters of bearable proportion.’’ We have become too good at ‘‘bearing.’’ In 1994, in Rwanda, a country the size of Maryland, the political genocide claimed over 800,000 lives: 9,000 lives per day for 90 days. That is two World Trade Center disasters per day for three months…

…In our quest to be helpful, we can rob the poor of their dignity. In order to be of any help to the poor, we need to understand them, we need to know them, and we need to love them. They are not a group. The poor is not a species. They are identical to us in their hopes and dreams. They love their families and long for a better life. The only difference is that they are poor. And people don’t suffer and die in groups. It is one at a time. And each one of those deaths leaves an identical wake of agony to what you and I and our families would experience…

…I will forever be indebted to Africa. Africa awakened me when I didn’t even know I was asleep. I pray that everyone who seeks one will find a similar path. I pray that each of you will find your own Africa…

…The mother in Ethiopia who sees her baby die of malnutrition, why would she think God is good? And what is God’s strategy for allowing her to know that He loves her?

The answer is astounding. The answer is… US!
Even more astonishing… He has no plan B.

NPB 2008 – Washington DC