‘Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you will feed him for life.’ (Chinese Proverb)

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Sounds nice right? Unfortunately it’s just not that simple! On one level the proverb quoted above holds some truth and forms the basis as to why we are so committed to empowerment and sustainability. However, it would be foolish to believe that the process of teaching someone to metaphorically ‘fish’, will suddenly answer all their problems. First of all if they do not have the resources to fish with, then we have simply created a more frustrated fisherman, who now knows ‘what’ to do, yet has no ‘way’ to do it. Similarly, to further the metaphor, let’s say we provide them the tools, through micro enterprise development or creative income generating projects and yet someone has built a wall around the proverbial lake or polluted the river, we are back to square one! No fish!
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Whilst it is true that genuine transformation in the developing world is coming from solutions that are grassroots up, rather than top down, if we do not confront the corrupt systems that cause poverty to exist in the first place, all we will ever be doing is offering short term solutions. We must be the generation that takes our stands and says no more to corruption, no more to injustice, no more to slavery, no more to people being trafficked because of mankind’s selfishness and greed. Links training aims to do just this!
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By confronting poverty we remove the underlying causes of so many of these evil plagues on our societies, but there is much more work to be done. It is time for us to speak loud and clear to the places of authority and demand change, whether on a micro level; challenging corruption and poor leadership within communities, to the highest level of national and international government.
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Will you join your voice with ours? Will you pick a fight? Will you confront poverty and with your life words and actions join with us to declare “No more!”