Working for Acumen

The Acumen fund is one of many organizations that seek to take a revolutionary new approach towards international aid. A prime example of another organization is Heifer International, which provides livestock and education about agriculture rather than money to help relieve global poverty. In addition, there are multiple organizations that use microlending to help people start their own businesses with small investments. These organizations all seek to stop the system of giving handouts for a quick fix to poverty and hunger and want to switch to a system where aid agencies help countries develop the means to help themselves.

Seth Godin’s presentation on behalf of Acumen Fund brought up many interesting points about how organizations like Acumen can bring about lasting change in developing countries. Acumen provides capital for entrepreneurs in developing countries so that they can help to slowly bring their entire country out of poverty. Instead of giving handouts, Acumen is trying to change the culture of developing countries to enable them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

After giving this introduction look into why Acumen fund is such a powerful agent of change, Seth Godin urges young people to go out and work to help Acumen change the world. He states that the “secret agenda” of the Acumen fund is to breed a culture of commerce in developing countries to ultimately enable countries to become successful on their own. This is possible through the work of bright young minds from developed countries going to help acumen kick start the competition and drive that will we help breed a culture of commerce.

In the end, Seth Godin’s presentation seems to encourage young people to embrace working for organizations like Acumen over entering fields like medicine. He claims that there will always be doctors, but working for Acumen could change the world. While he does present a good argument about how working for an organization like Acumen could have a greater long-term impact on the world, I feel that he is being unfair to students who chose to get an education instead of working for organizations like Acumen. While we need to do more for developing countries, we also need the best doctors, researchers, teachers and other professionals that we can find in our own country. Although working for Acumen is worthwhile, encouraging our young people to work for Acumen at the expense of training a new generation of elite doctors, scientists, and teachers is not something that I personally am fully willing to risk.