You Can Build a Better Community One Entrepreneur and One Breakthrough at a Time

I believe that you can make a huge contribution to your community through what you do. Let me describe how some individuals have greatly helped others.

Can a single person make a big difference in society? Of course! Naturally, no one can do all that is required alone. Others will either decide they like what they see and follow, or the benefits will be so great that they will reach even those who never hear about the difference-maker.

Consider that initially powerless people have led some nations to achieve unexpectedly great results. In India, Gandhi pioneered nonviolent protest and gained independence from Britain while reducing discrimination among Indians. Few would argue that another leader or the usual revolutionary methods could have accomplished as much.

More recently, Nelson Mandela led the oppressed people of South Africa with such integrity and consistency that his jailers chose to release him from prison so he could lead the unexpectedly peaceful transition from racist to forgiving, democratic governance. Most observers had predicted a violent revolution in which many would die horribly. Instead, persecutors were forgiven and allowed to continue peacefully with their lives.

Inventors have also made astonishing contributions. The steam engine transformed quality of life by switching the source of most power for work from animals and humans to coal. Great leaps followed in industrial production and transportation. Edison’s development of electricity allows us to turn night into day for many activities that we greatly enjoy. Even the devices we use to search for information, read electronically, and speak at a distance depend on electricity.

More recently, social entrepreneurs have made great progress in eliminating poverty. For instance, Muhammad Yunus, a professor of economics in Bangladesh, was moved by pity to loan a few dollars to poor women for their small businesses. He was surprised by how promptly he was repaid. This act of intended charity has since been turned into the remarkable success of the Grameen Bank and microlending to entrepreneurs everywhere. Many people credit an important part of Bangladesh’s rapid rise from the most extreme poverty to this social innovation.

While many have favorably commented about such lending, the Grameen Bank puts even more emphasis on improving the ways poor people think and act. Individuals, such as Peter Drucker who founded the academic discipline of management, have also made mind-boggling contributions through teaching how to and how not to think about important tasks and responsibilities.

A new example of improving how people think has emerged through the 400 Year Project (a program that shows how everyone on Earth can accomplish 20 times more with the same or less time, money, and effort). Successful demonstrations of the principles described in the project’s 13 books have been conducted in dozens of nations. The project’s latest book explains how just one person can use the project’s principles to lead a nation into becoming at least twenty times more productive. Such an activity can eliminate poverty for most people within a few years.

Without knowing more about it, such a program might seem far-fetched to you. Let me describe how one man is taking up the program’s challenge with much confidence that great success will follow. In the process, will he become another revered pioneer in taking us past the mind-forged shackles that harm communities? Read on.

This gentleman is Donald Kamdonyo, Ph.D., a graduate of Rushmore University who resides in Malawi. He has one great advantage over everyone else in Malawi for directing this assault on poverty: He has successfully developed 2,000 percent solutions (ways of accomplishing 20 times more with the same or less time, money, and effort) and taught struggling entrepreneurs to do so for their own businesses, achieving astonishing results to increasing profits and capital without borrowing.

Encouraged by this success and with a heart to help poor people in Malawi, he has now developed a plan to provide similar training and support similar accomplishments for over 50,000 entrepreneurs there in just a few years. Assuming that many other entrepreneurs copy what these individuals do and the improved enterprises grow to hire many more people, this initiative could provide millions of new jobs, which would help Malawi to step into prosperity.

How will he start? Dr. Kamdonyo has just completed a book, Poverty by Choice, outlining what needs to be done, which will be published in 2013. He will speak to entrepreneurs, government leaders, nongovernmental organizations, and lenders to show how this improvement program can be conducted for much less cost than current anti-poverty programs spend on training and bad loans for small business operators.

With just a little money to launch the program, he will begin teaching these lessons to hundreds of eager, but struggling, entrepreneurs. The most promising learners will be invited to become part-time volunteer teachers of these same lessons. From this base in one man’s vision, these valuable improvements in how to think and act as a business person will expand exponentially, much like lilies on a pond do, until business prosperity covers all of Malawi. That’s the vision.

What’s your vision for improving your community? Would you like to be someone who leads your neighbors to breakthrough after breakthrough? If so, become familiar with Dr. Kamdonyo’s work and consider following him in building a better community, one entrepreneur and one breakthrough at a time.

What are you waiting for?