Agros Blog

We are fond of technological solutions in the developed world. After all, they seem to have gotten us developed.

The international economist Jeffrey Sachs, for instance, argues that we don’t have to live with 1.4 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day, that the poor do not have to “always be with you.” His excellent book “The End of Poverty” describes a modest proposal for ending poverty in this millennium. It calls for a restructuring of developing world debt, a new way of investment and trade between the developed and the under-developed nations, and a new system of handling aid. These excellent economic proposals were adopted in the year 2000 by the member nations of the UN as the “The Millennium Development Goals.” The goal is to end poverty by 2015.

And Jeffrey Sachs is right: It does not cost much to end poverty. In dollars, pounds, or pesos, that is. The cost is to our way of thinking and our way of living.

This is why I love Agros: We recognize that ending poverty requires nothing less than transformation, and we will not settle for anything less than that. The villagers we work with are told upfront that this will not be an easy road, and later, they report to us that the really hard work was what they had to do in their hearts. The donors we work with are told upfront that international rural development work is long-term, and not a smooth upward curve. The staff knows that we are working long term, and that the true wealth for a village lies in the dignity and hope of the villagers themselves.

Along the way, everyone is transformed. There is a palpable and observable difference between villagers in the first two years and villagers who have made their first land payment. There is a palpable and observable difference between the donor partners who began by just wanting to donate money, and end up in awe of what the villagers are able to achieve through their own planning, leadership, and hard work. And when you hear the staff talk about what motivates them to continue their work, you hear their respect for the villagers who have given themselves to transformation.

On November 7, here in Seattle, we heard from Teresa Sanchez, a woman whose family survived the brutal civil wars of Guatemala, who grew up in the Agros village of Cajixay, took herself through secondary school and university, and has returned to the Ixil region of Guatemala to work as an agricultural specialist for Agros villages. We heard a story of transformation.

Agros people know the power of planning and hard work. We also know that without real, human transformation, hard work and sound economics is just spent labor and good ideas.