Young man’s hope

When you work for an organization called HOPE International, you hope that when you ask someone about our impact, they say that we bring hope.

I'll be bringing lots of stories from the field over the next few weeks because we are traveling and speaking with group members. Many of the group members we meet will be women, but recently we met a young man who stood up and wanted to share.

He is young; he is energetic and handsome. He is also sitting around with mamas with babies, some widows, and others. He can make money because he is a young man. But he is still quite poor, relatively, and lives in a remote, poor area, so the question is: what is the point of making money? He will not go to the University of Florida, won't become an entrepreneur. He won't open a franchise coffee shop.

The young man stands up and says that his savings group has taught him hope. You don't save if you don't have hope for the future. You don't have hope for the future if someone doesn't believe in you, support you, and share stories of transformation.

In my thinking, it was not possible for me to have a cow. In future, I hope to buy [another] free range cow.
(He now already has one cow.)

The truth is, that village won't see a new Starbucks franchise in my lifetime (maybe I'm wrong), but the young man can become an entrepreneur. He has time, and now he has hope.