I don’t know about you but my spirit of servant leadership becomes challenged when I think of heading to the mall to struggle for parking spaces and the frustration that comes with shopping in the midst of a horde of other frantic shoppers. I always regret leaving this task until the dwindling days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and begin to question my purpose. Is my purpose to convey the love and appreciation I have in my heart for each of my special family and friends? And if so, is this the most authentic way to do it? When I took this hard look in the mirror, I realized that I was following the crowd without questioning the alignment of my behavior with my intent.
I’m not at all objecting to a well chosen gift that sends a special message of love and appreciation. There is something magical when you tune in to just the right gift done in just the right spirit. But I am confessing to feeling obligated to give something to everyone I love and appreciate and then doing some of the dumbest things in the name of the spirit of Christmas! Socks, underwear and pajamas that my kids felt disappointed to unwrap. And then there was the year that I thought everyone should have a mountain of packages under the tree; so our dog, two cats and parrot gave everyone a gift. Only I thought this was a wonderful idea!
And when I did begin to question my behavior versus my core values, I realized that I had much better options than I was choosing. I care deeply about being a good steward of our environment and the mountain of shiny wrapping paper, bows and glitter I used to wrap lovely packages was all headed for the land fill, and adding to pollution. And what was I modeling to those I love so dearly? Upon reflection I realized that we all have so much abundance in our lives compared to the majority of people on this planet. What we really don’t need is one more gift to crowd our lives with “stuff”. I also don’t want to further the mental model for our grandchildren that Christmas and Hanukah are about receiving gifts and a focus on what big wish one might express and have magically appear when there are so many children starving, cold and without parents or a home. Then it occurred to me. What if we took all the money we would typically spend on gifts and instead used it to fund a worthy non-profit in the name of each loved one?
The first year Larry and I chose Chiapas, which is part of the Grameen Bank. We made a small micro loan of $50.00 for each person on our list of approximately 30 people. These micro loans went to women living on less than $2.00 per day to help them start a business. Along with support from legal counsel, financial coaching, business management and other basic support, these women have a track record of 98.7% repayment of their loans, meaning that these extremely high percentages of their businesses thrive. This then means that they can feed their families and often provide jobs for several family and community members. Sons, husbands, brothers and fathers can stay home with the family instead of risking their lives crossing into the U.S. illegally and being separated from their families for the sake of earning a living. And women earn the respect of those around them because they are now trusted with relatively large sums of money and are employers managing successful businesses. These women are organized in teams of five and they work together with the agreement that all five must repay their loans before new loans can be made to any one of them. By leveraging their resources they all succeed. It’s an inspiring story of helping people help themselves and now several hundred thousand have lifted themselves permanently out of poverty. Our modest goal is to eliminate poverty on the planet (inspired by Mohammed Yunus, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006). This seemed like a powerful vision to support in the spirit of servant leadership and the meaning of celebrating the holidays whether one was a Christian, Jew or other religion.
I admit that I was very nervous about this concept seven years ago, the first year that Larry and I made this change. And I was most anxious about how our grandchildren would receive this change. Would they resent not receiving a gift that they were longing for? Would they be old enough to even care about children and families in other parts of the world? I would soon find out.
Our family tradition is to all gather at Thanksgiving and to exchange holiday gifts. So when it came time, I gathered our five grandchildren around us and told them the story of traveling in third world countries and seeing people starving, parents unable to feed and clothe their children, many, many orphans and the plight of millions living with so little resources and no hope of a better future. I told them that this year we were honoring each one of them. For each family member a woman would receive a micro loan and new hope for a successful future for her and her family. It would mean they could earn money for food, housing, clothing and an education for their children. It would give them dignity and hope for a promising future.
One of our youngest grandchildren asked how many people all together would we be able to help? And as we counted, we realized that 30 micro loans times approximately 4 to 8 people per family meant that from 120 to 240 people would be able to lift themselves out of poverty as a direct result of this act of sharing. When I asked how the children felt about having money that last year was spent on gifts for them now go to help others, were they okay with this? Each enthusiastically endorsed the gift.
That was seven years ago. I can tell you that I feel better about this decision every year. It concerns me how commercial and sucked into consumerism our culture is becoming. And then I remind myself, the choice is mine. “What am I doing or not doing that is contributing to the problem I don’t want?” Or, as Robert Greenleaf taught, the servant leader always starts inside self. And if the complex problems in our world and society are to be healed, we must have the courage to start within and not by pointing fingers of blame and criticism out on others.
Every holiday I feel liberated by this simple yet challenging decision. Our company has picked this up as a way to honor our Clients on their birthdays. By redirecting what we would spend on the various gifts and instead, simply investing this in worthy causes all around us, we can be the change we want to see in the world.
So if you are wishing you didn’t feel obligated to spend more than you should in crowded stores and shopping malls, or even with on-line shopping, I invite you to join in creating new traditions expressing our love and appreciation for friends and family; and becoming better stewards of our planet.