Toasting a Very Optimistic 2009!

It actually is getting better all the time...it just sometimes does not look like it. Imagine that the U.S. is now on a true detox diet, and all the poisons are coming to the surface and need to be flushed out of the system. The bubble of fat and wastefulness has burst and we are going to become healthy and whole again.

People are staring to pay attention to those who make sense and are truly making this world a better place. The Huffington Post is highlighting those who bring Peace and true prosperity, such as Nobel Peace Prize winner and the father of microcredit, Muhammad Yunus.

In his recent book (out in paperback this January), Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism, Professor Yunus describes what is called a Social Stock market where Social Businesses can list themselves and where the goals are not simply monetary profits but social goals which improve the lives of people.

Just imagine if the Bernie Madoffs of the world and his investors had invested in Social Businesses instead of Pyramid Schemes... we would have: no more hunger, universal health coverage, declining child and mother mortality rates, improved education, green economies, wow...the world might actually look like a place to raise our children.

And it will look that way one day...this is not Utopian dream, it is an urgent necessity. We must evolve...there is no turning back. And the events of these past months are showing us what to avoid in the future and how our actions and votes can make a difference.

As the poet Rilke wrote,
"There is no place which does not see you.
You must change your life."

And by starting with changing ourselves, we will all come together to make this world a better place.

Happy New Year to All and Wishing Peace To All Humans Everywhere!

Follow Vivian Norris de Montaigu on Twitter: www.twitter.com/vivigive

Comments

[Vivian Norris de Montaigu - Huffpost Blogger]

Hello and am logging in to respond to mebble and Jeff...took my own advice and was off email and cell for a week up in the Alps with my daughter enjoying great snow and sunshine and relaxing!!!

Yes Michael remember you and I think I have your email...and Jeff I enjoy and appreciate your comments...lots going on and evolving in 2009 with Yunus, the feature film and Social Business....

Enjoy GREAT 2009!

Viv

[mebble]

Viv, I tried emailing you at your old email (tassin, etc.) but it bounced. Perhaps you still have mine, otherwise you can send me a note here on HuffPo as I'm registered. Bonne Année! (Good post! Totally agree.)

[jeff.mowatt]

Hi mebble,

As Vivian hasn't responded to past comments on this subject, may I introduce you to the concept of a business leveraging development funding to be used as investment capital. Proposed as a model in 1996 to source the Tomsk initiative in Russia in 1999 which ran from 2000-2004 and applying the Grameen loan circle principle to create 10,000 small enterprises with repayment > 97% and 95% survival of more than 1 year.

Applying the same concept, now from the UK it offers the microeconomic 'Marshall Plan' strategy which was delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Oct 2006. This strategy designed for nil overall cost scales up from Tomsk to a nation and proposes a mix of microfinance, broadband infrastructure investment and social enterprise. we suspect that the US might now find it useful too.

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

We determined in 2004 that it would be viable to foster democracy and eliminate poverty for one country at the cost of what was being spent in Iraq over a week. This is explained in the paper's summary.

The entire effort is the work of a man I found homeless in Chapel Hill NC in 2003 who remains invisible. At the time I tried a 'Meet John Doe' pastiche on ABC News, but the journalist didn't imitate art.

So please, if you get through to Vivian, let her know that readers are trying to respond.

Regards,

Jeff

[jeff.mowatt]

Peace is our business. That's what I woke up thinking this morning and this article seems very apt as the first thing I've read.

There's an article I hope others will read. It's an interview with the leader of an Islamic disapora in which the founder of a business about peace describes his 'swords to plougshares' efforts in Eastern Europe of the last decade, by sourcing and advocating for microeconomic development in contrast to funding weapons.

http://www.iccrimea.org/scholarly/economicdev.html

It began in Chapel Hill North Carolina, moving to England in 2004 with a clear objective, to demonstrate that for the cost of a week spent in Iraq, democracy could be fostered, with poverty and it's vicious cycle of despair eliminated.

As with an historical act of peacemaking which preceded it, it was delivered as a 'Marshall Plan' two years ago to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.