{w} How do we address the problem that foreign business is inevitably attracted to cheap child labour?
CK: Well, it’s a lot more than just cheap child labour. It’s the environmental implications — also looking at adult wage issues, because often kids are working when their family doesn’t earn enough, whether it be agriculture or in factories, and primarily, it’s agricultural-based. So I think we need to create alternatives. We need to differentiate products not only on price point, or style, but also on the working environmental conditions. That’s why we set up Me to We Style, ’cause I think the typical charity vastly undersells our potential for change. The average person can maybe give 5-10% of their money to charity and maybe donate 5-10% of their time. So the challenge is, how do you look at that 90-95% that most charities aren’t going after, and how can you change those consumptive patterns to influence a positive change in the world? So we try to look at all the product categories that people have to buy anyways, and how can you make those in an ethically and socially responsible way while funding a charity at the same time?
{w} Obviously, your organizations do some short-term aid, but you seem to prioritize infrastructure development and education. On the other hand, one of the inevitable offshoots of a hyper-capitalist society is that you get billionaire philanthropists that predominantly seem interested in short-term solutions, whether it’s vaccinations or food aid. So I wonder what you think of the irony that our hyper-capitalism creates these problems for some of the developing world, and then billionaires go in and address the problems.
CK: I agree with you that we live in such a capitalist system that it is easy for people to fall through the cracks. And that’s the reality for 4.2 billion of our fellow human beings, which is a stunning number. Not many journalists will take the time to have this type of conversation that we’re having right now, and further complicating it is that it’s incredibly difficult to get a message about high-impact interventions out. We’re a tiny player in the global scheme of things, but we are proud of the fact that when we work with a community, it takes about five years on average for us to put ourselves out of business. So we do community development through clean-water health alternative income and micro-credit to support each other in a way that when we exit, the community owns and operates the project themselves. So it’s building schools, but it’s also education for drought-resistant crops and HIV Aids and a full education — looking at agricultural development through those schools is critical, but also water for irrigation systems, ’cause we primarily work in rural areas; looking at sanitation systems and health — both health prevention and later-stage intervention. And then small businesses owned and operated by the community to sustain the ongoing operational costs, to allow people to own it themselves, operate it themselves, and when we exit, we have put ourselves out of business, and that’s what I think we need more of. Less of the short-term food aid, which we see so many groups doing right now in East Africa, which is necessary of course, but it has been twenty years of food droughts. As opposed to looking at agricultural development or asking questions about why the largest landowner in Africa is the Chinese government.
{w} Shifting gears slightly, what is affluenza?
CK: The person who first coined it was Marian Wright Edelman, who said “Affluenza and lack of moral purpose are more dangerous viruses than influenza for millions of America’s and the world’s children.” And I think it’s true that we live in an age where a lot of education is designed to prepare us simply for the workforce, not for the world, and not to be a compassionate global citizen, to question, and to become involved in looking at political and social change, and helping to make this world a better place. And I think the purpose of education should be an active global citizen more than anything else. And so often that’s left out of the curriculum.
