JUAN dela Cruz and 20 of his neighbors in a remote village in southern Mindanao are rejoicing. They sell their mangoes every year to an ethical enterprise and receive high prices from them; they also receive additional payments and other benefits.
Before, traders rejected their mangoes because these were too small. Then, the enterprise bought almost all of their mangoes at fair prices and turned them into dried mangoes. The farmers then invested their bonus earnings in small enterprises like piggeries, chicken farms and sari-sari stores, helping them overcome their poverty.
What is urgently needed in countries like the Philippines — where inequality is great — is practicing fair trade principles. Implementing these principles helps people organize themselves into farmers’ associations and secure fair prices for their products. Together, they protect the environment, help educate people, ban child labor, go organic, and promote a healthy lifestyle and human rights.
To end social injustice, government officials must follow fair trade principles and serve the people, not exploit them. To help people overcome poverty and hunger, we need to help them empower themselves; overcome their fears, lack of self-confidence and feelings of inferiority; and stand for social injustice and against exploitation.
The poor must stop their dependence on politicians for favors and financial assistance, since, in fact, the services of these officials are paid for by taxes. If development for the poor and an end to inequality are to be real and meaningful, there has to be a strong and well-organized national movement for social and economic justice that challenges the rich to control their greed for unlimited personal and corporate growth and profits, and redirects themselves to working for meaningful human development and espousing social responsibility.
Government officials must be persuaded to serve the people, not the interests of powerful corporations. Together with the people, the government and rich, socially responsible corporations can work together and build a more just society. Their goal must be to uplift more than 17.5 million Filipinos out of humiliating and crushing poverty and hopelessness.
There are good rich people who work for social transformation and to end poverty and hunger. But they are not enough. For some, national transformation and an end to poverty are considered an unreachable ideal or hopeless dream, because it calls on the rich to share their wealth with the poor in a sustainable way.
But will they have the necessary change of mind and heart for this?
In the New Testament, when a rich young man was challenged by Jesus of Nazareth to share his riches with the poor, but cannot, Jesus said: “It is easier for a camel (or rope) to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
Many rich people worship money, and they don’t believe in a God that is unselfish love, compassion, justice and truth personified.
Blessed are the rich and all who have feelings of concern, understanding and solidarity with the poor and dedicate their wealth and even their lives to do good and end human suffering. (To be continued)/PN
