But the question remains, is there any gain for clicking on a link about orphans and reading an article that will not necessarily help you out in your day-to-day life?
Much ado has been made about our living in a 24 hour news cycle. We follow wars, natural disasters, financial downturns and political decisions with great gusto. The moment a juicier story enters the cycle, we all but forget about the war, flood, depression or vote.
Stories about children are really the stories about what happens next.
When 10,000 die, 40,000 orphans can be created in a day. When a civil war breaks out and we gloss over the number of civilians killed, we don’t think of the repercussions for the children they loved and cared for. The world is always ready to help during a disaster, but 3 months later, it has moved on to a different part of the world. Americans don’t need to look beyond our own Civil War to see a nation stripped of young fathers.
Admittedly, the numbers are staggering. Even if we were to think about it, our initial reaction would be that nothing we can do could possibly help. So we, thankfully, start focusing on something else.
But not everyone forgets. Some people, like Derreck Kayongo, don’t forget where they came from, and they don’t remember the problems that, literally, plague their hometowns. Other people, like Natalie Pinkham, don’t forget the volunteer work they did during their summer break over a decade ago.
There are couples, like Delphine and Guillaume Gauvain, who see an under-served market, recognize a method that worked elsewhere and attempt to synthesize the new market and the old method. All these individuals became entrepreneurs, in their own respective way, for social good.
None of them set out to change the world. Instead they set out to change the lives of a small number of children, who in turn, may change the world.
Of course, not every link is a writeup about a niche entrepreneur who cashed in his 401k to buy a machine to recycle soap so orphans in Africa could reduce the transmission of disease by over 40%.
Some links may elucidate problems that you are fortunate enough to know how to solve. Others may just inform you about the world we live in, the world that’s not necessarily covered on the news every day.
