Reporter’s Notebook

Something I’ve learned as a business reporter is that money is a tool. Everyone needs money in some way. The way it’s used is what makes the difference.

In preparation for our upcoming Profiles of Giving issue, I got to know a Vancouver-based nonprofit that is using business as a tool to fight poverty in Guinea Bissau, West Africa.

Lead International has helped start 13 cashew processing plants in that country, which is one of the five poorest in the world. Students of Lead’s trade schools have the opportunity to earn 10 times the country’s typical income – which is less than 50 cents a day for many people.

In Guinea Bissau political instability, AIDS and drug trafficking are common. It’s a place where entire families could die from something like rabies – where death is so common that they see their last days as a time to cross Ts and dot Is before they go.

It’s hard to get these details out of my head. They come back to me while I’m at a cash register, paying bills or scheduling a doctor’s appointment. To be frank, they make our economic woes in the U.S. look like a case of the sniffles.

But organizations like Lead and many others are using money to make a difference in significant ways, and it’s been a privilege to write about them.
Read more about them in this Friday’s issue of the Journal.

- Charity Thompson can be contacted at cthompson@vbjusa.com