We still remember you Dr. Stanley Ann Dunham

[grantcart]

It is fitting that on the 23rd anniversary of the passing of President Obama's Mother that we acknowledge the tremendous contributions that she made by being not just a great mother but her significant contributions in advancing effective solutions to poverty in Third World Economies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Dunham#Professional_life

That the anniversary of her passing also coincides with the Democratic Party's historic victory in the fight to save and advance the legacy of her son's 8 year presidency is soulful.

But it also coincides with significant advances in the participation of women in the highest institutions of our Republic and comes with great news that her birth state of Kansas has elected a woman over a racist for Governor and that Sharice Davids who was raised by a single mother, worked under husband's administration and is the first openly gay native American is elected to Congress, an occasion that she would have certainly celebrated if her life wasn't cut short.

What is often overlooked is the significant contribution of her professional life. Her professional history includes multiple challenging and interesting jobs but Dr. Dunham discovered (as others were also discovering at the same time) that

found that the villagers she studied in Central Java had many of the same economic needs, beliefs and aspirations as the most capitalist of Westerners. Village craftsmen were "keenly interested in profits", she wrote, and entrepreneurship was "in plentiful supply in rural Indonesia", having been "part of the traditional culture" there for a millennium.

Based on these observations, Dr. Soetoro concluded that underdevelopment in these communities resulted from a scarcity of capital, the allocation of which was a matter of politics, not culture. Antipoverty programs that ignored this reality had the potential, perversely, of exacerbating inequality because they would only reinforce the power of elites. As she wrote in her dissertation, "many government programs inadvertently foster stratification by channeling resources through village officials", who then used the money to strengthen their own status further.

It would take too long to detail all of her contributions but the most important was in developing a standard for microbanking in Indonesia:

From January 1981 to November 1984, Dunham was the program officer for women and employment in the Ford Foundation's Southeast Asia regional office in Jakarta.[42][48] While at the Ford Foundation, she developed a model of microfinance which is now the standard in Indonesia, a country that is a world leader in micro-credit systems

On the 23rd anniversary of Dr. Dunhams' passing we can see how important contributions of dedicated individuals who are motivated by compassion can have a long lasting impact on the world in ways that could not be imagined while they still walk the earth.

On a day like this where progressive values have made a dramatic advance Dr. Dunham would have shared great joy with us. With her passing all we can do is remember her gifts and contributions and honor a life well lived.

[malaise]

1. Beautiful post

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