Making a Difference

Donald M. Bishop

‘Young Altruists’ Need a Broader View of Doing Good

In November 2007 the Washington Post ran an article describing the difficulty that “young altruists” in their late twenties encounter as they try to leverage into careers their desire to make the world a better place. Despite advanced degrees, languages, internships, short-term work with NGOs, and Peace Corps service, they are finding that steady work with good pay and benefits is elusive, the article reported.

The Post had to close its readers’ blog on the article within four days after more than a hundred posts flooded in. Most were biting, even savage, in their criticism of the young altruists profiled by staff writer Ian Shapira.

According to the bloggers: The aspiring young altruists studied soft subjects like international relations or sociology rather than medicine. Their parents’ money allowed them to indulge altruistic dreams while less well-off and therefore more hardheaded contemporaries got into career fields that pay. They are ignorant of basic facts like supply and demand in the job market. And this comment must have stung: “The story usually ends with the Masters in IR meeting a sincere MBA and settling down in a 3BR with minivan, dog, and children.”

Over the years, in Washington and overseas, I have met many “young altruists” aiming for public service careers.

In many cases, I found, their view of “doing good,” “making an impact,” and “helping others” is cramped. Their narrow view narrows their career searches. They preemptively cross off too many possibilities.

Many young people, for instance, seem not to understand how profoundly business and enterprise change societies. I fear they watched too many movies with evil corporate executives as the villains, or picked up from their professors that “business” means “money-grubbing” or “greedy.” In my conversations with young altruists I tell them stories from Bangladesh and China.

Every morning in Dhaka, I watched hundreds of women walking to garment factories run by local businessmen, sometimes with partners from Taiwan or Korea. Some of the workplaces were indeed sweatshops, and Ambassador David Merrill’s finest moment was to hammer out an agreement that moved the garment industry away from child labor.

Even so, these factories, paying low two-figure monthly salaries in the mid-1990s, were working profound—though often unseen—changes in local society. In many homes, husbands moderated their authoritarian behavior when the wife was providing a steady income. Many of the garment workers ensured that their meager pay went to educating their daughters.

Other Bangladeshi men and women made their livelihoods carrying a sewing machine from place to place. They sewed for customers at the cloth market (“you buy the cloth, we’ll sew up the shirt!”), or they walked through neighborhoods to offer their skills for a few hours at a home. Their capital equipment was a sewing machine with a foot treadle. Long before micro-loans became fashionable, Singer offered a program of small monthly installment payments that made their better life possible.

China’s economic development has had profound effects on many Chinese families. One change—again operating below the radar—is life insurance. It gives Chinese families the same kind of security that American families take for granted. There are, literally, widows and orphans in China whose lives are better because of insurance. The insurance industry in China has improved as American insurance firms introduce better products.

I could give other examples—book jobbing in Nigeria, call centers in India, Avon ladies in Taiwan.

All over the world, moreover, new job seekers want to work for American firms. They pay on time, don’t shave overtime payments, care about workplace safety, set the standard on the environment, and give opportunity for women as well as men.

My point is this: If a young American wants to help others, improve the status of women, diminish hunger and want, improve health, and so on, why not work for a garment company, or Singer, or an insurance company? Business and enterprise, by providing jobs and stability, work tremendous, wholesome changes in developing countries. “Young altruists” might do more good in a business career than going from job to job with the NGOs. They need to read more Michael Novak.

How does one define a “public service” career, anyway? I urge the young people I meet to think “outside the dots.”

Do you want to use your education for the good of America and the world? Teach others every day? Diminish conflict and save lives? Bring more of the freedoms we know to others? Ensure that men and women are equal on the job? Work in a field acknowledged to have our country’s best record on “diversity,” with workplaces where Americans of every background join together on common goals?

The true “outside the dots” option for a public service career—don’t doubt that I’m serious when I say so—is serving in the armed forces. Young altruists with degrees (and foreign languages) should think about serving as officers. With the Army and Marine Corps undergoing an expansion, now’s a good time. Uncle Sam is looking for more than a few good lieutenants with large ideals.

As I write this, Marines are in Bangladesh helping with flood recovery and relief. And the Marines in Iraq’s Anbar province spend more time on economic development and strengthening local government now that the province is more secure.

There’s a world of good to do, then, in business and the armed forces. There’s one other career perspective that young altruists need to hear.

The overseas Americans I admire most are those who have chosen to spend their lives among another people. Many, though not all, are missionaries.

Young altruists should watch that fine film of intercultural encounter, Black Robe, set in French Canada in the time of Champlain. Before agreeing to be baptized, a Huron elder asks Father Laforge, “Do you love us?” He means, do you love us enough to give us your whole life?

One can express one’s love for another people in a six-month fellowship or a three-day seminar on gender equity, I am sure. But to my mind the organization of short-term projects and development interventions pales before the true commitment of the missionary who has learned the local language and culture. Life-long ties of friendship allow that person to become a trusted channel of transmission for new ideas in a way that few NGOs can do.

I think of two Holy Cross fathers, Richard Timm and Joseph Peixotto, in Bangladesh. From their base at Notre Dame College in Dhaka they taught two generations of Bangladeshis more than the three Rs. To their mostly Muslim students, they also exemplified and advanced Christian concepts of morality and human rights.

In Nigeria, Rev. Danny McCain, while teaching religious studies as a regular faculty member at the University of Jos, is known and admired by Yorubas, Igbos, and Hausas, by Muslims as well as Christians. He organized a faith-based AIDS program that touched tens of thousands of students. It’s hard for the development statisticians to count cases of AIDS not contracted, or children not orphaned, but the Lord knows how much this one American has accomplished. He could only do it because he has chosen to give his whole life to Nigerians.

To many Americans who spend their lives overseas, regular electricity, hot water, paved roads, and four seasons are distant memories. They live hours away from an adequate clinic or hospital. A six-figure salary is a dreamy mirage. They are seriously out of date on music and chain stores. But they lead lives that are rich beyond imagining.

I fear that too many young altruists have been disserved by their counselors and professors. The NGOs they hope to work for will play a role in changing the world, but they are the minor leagues. Business and the armed forces will do far more. And new ideas heard from an individual who has given his life for others—in the tangible way of living among them—will make far more headway than those explained by a visitor at a symposium or workshop.

To diminish the world’s want and suffering, one must understand economics as well as gender studies, business as well as sociology. It requires a hardheaded look at poverty in all its dimensions, and a willingness to question the conventional wisdom on development. It needs a deeper understanding of culture, for the gains and losses in social change, and for the faiths (ours, and theirs) that give meaning to ordinary people’s lives.

Most of all, however, it needs a sense of vocation or calling.

Young altruists already sense the world’s needs. But do they hear a call?  

A Foreign Service officer, Donald Bishop is now the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commandant of the Marine Corps. The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. Government.

6 Responses (comments are closed) • Features, Business, Leadership, Meaning and Calling, Philanthropy, Fri 21 Dec 2007