Many of you know that one of the most significant causes God has put on our hearts here at the LIGHT! is to fight for “compassionate capitalism” and against “inequality” (where our socio-economic-political ecosystem systemically favors a small elite.) What you may not know is that we also support many other causes which are also quite worthy.
How is worthiness determined? Well, in the past, this was much more difficult. These days, thanks to the Internet, we have tools to assess causes all over the world. One of them is a site called CopenhagenConsensus.com.
What is unique about Copenhagen Consensus is their methodology. They enlisted a team of economists to look at the leading problems facing the world and approached solving them from the perspective of, “if we had $100 billion dollars to spend, how would we allocate those funds to obtain the highest possible return on investment (ROI)?” In other words where should their investment dollars go to make the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
You can check out their site for more but we’ve taken their research and ran with it. Thus, in addition to fighting for the “compassionate capitalism” we also support the following causes:
- Women’s rights (universal access to contraception, right to own/inherit, political representation, etc.)
- World health (expanded immunizations, malaria, TB, etc.)
- Food security and nutrition (child malnutrition, research to increase nutritious food yields, etc.)
- Education (particularly in sub-Saharan Africa where it is is totally under-developed today)
- Biodiversity (protecting our planet’s coral reef systems)
all in addition to the numerous missionaries we have supported over the years in spreading the wonderful message of hope in Jesus.
So, there you have it – a high-level look at our approach to giving. For more information go ahead and check out Copenhagen Consensus. Specifically, the following two documents were quite helpful to guide our giving as we believe God wishes us to be “good stewards” of the resources He has entrusted to us!