Blogswap: Alternative Christmas Message

Monday December 25, 2006

Sometimes people come up with ideas so good that you just wish you’d thought of them yourself. The Christmas Blogswap is the brainwave of Jack Pickard, where bloggers can have a little fun and exchange posts.

This is a Christmas guest post by Dan Champion. Dan can usually be found at Blether, and sometime in the new year you’ll also find him at the new book-related Revish.

When I first reflected on 2006 for this piece, I must admit it was with something of a heavy heart. Despite it having been a good year for me personally, I often despaired when watching the news on television (or what passes for news on BBC Breakfast between advertorials for Celebrity Come Dancing) and reading the newspapers. I certainly don’t have the impression that we’re in profit this year, in human terms. These were the sorts of stories at the front of my mind from the past 12 months:

Not to mention avian flu, the inexorable rise in obesity, Steve Irwin’s death, Lebanon, England losing the Ashes at the earliest opportunity, and so on.

Then I remembered the story of Muhammad Yunus.

A long time ago I had a work colleague, now sadly departed, who was a committed Christian, and with whom I became very good friends. The nature of our work gave us plenty of time to discuss everything from the weather (of course) to religion – my godlessness contrasting with his devoutness to provide plenty of scope for debate. I remember one particular discussion about faith. In times of despair, when the world seemed to be too much to bear, he found solace in his faith, and he asked me what I could turn to in such troubled times.

At the time I answered “my faith in humanity”, and I find that faith reinforced and renewed by people like Muhammad Yunus. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, an event that was deemed worthy of little attention by the mainstream media, at least here in the UK, but which touched me deeply.

In 1974 Yunus lent 27 US dollars to a group of villagers in Bangladesh, to make and sell bamboo furniture, to secure a better, sustainable future for themselves and their community. With the villagers unable to secure loans from traditional banks, or to meet the demands of money-lenders, Yunus realised that tiny loans to the poorest communities in Bangladesh could have a disproportionate effect on their ability to become profitable and ultimately self-sufficient.

In 1976 Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, and in the 30 years since has loaned more than 5 billion US dollars to more than 6 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women.

So, on reflection, I’m going to make my abiding memory of 2006 this quote from Yunus’s acceptance speech:

Poverty is a threat to peace. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society in the world. We must address the root causes of terrorism to end it for all time. I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy than spending it on guns.

Have a happy Christmas, and a prosperous 2007. And if you’ve got a favourite inspirational story from 2006, please feel free to share it with us.

There are three other alternative Christmas messages:

Happy holidays to you and your family, Stephen!

Brandon    25 December, 03:01 AM   

Nice, Dan!

Mike Cherim    27 December, 06:34 AM   

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