Mr. Gates – join us in working to eliminate poverty

Last week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates changed directions. He announced that, within two years, he will give up most of his Microsoft responsibilities to spend full time in the incredible philanthropic work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I’m very impressed. Maybe this is the right time to offer him an exciting opportunity to be personally involved in a community-based project designed to (ultimately) eliminate poverty.

It’s called the Circles Initiative.

The Circles Initiative was created by the Move the Mountain Leadership Center in Ames, Iowa. It was adopted as a primary strategy by the Community Action Partnership in Lewiston, Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint.

I am on the organizing committee of Sandpoint’s version of Circles.

Simply put, the program creates a series of small groups called circles. These circles are made up of people who “agree to befriend a family who is trying to get out of poverty,” according to Scott Miller, creator of the Circle Initiative.

The circle leader is the family. The other circle members are people in the community who want to do two basic things: 1) Be supportive of the family in poverty, and 2) help change the system that has perpetuated poverty.

So, Mr. Gates, I invite you to join one of our community circles.

I applaud how your foundation works to eliminate the systemic causes of various diseases around the world. You likely have a much better understanding of poverty than most of us.

But do you know the firsthand struggle of impoverished families in the North Idaho counties of Bonner, Kootenai or Nez Perce? There is no likely reason why you would.

So I invite you to learn more of what our communities’ impoverished families deal with every day.

The family who leads the circle you participate in undoubtedly will be in celebrity awe of you for a time. But I suspect they soon will realize you truly care about what happens to them.

I’m sure they will learn you truly want to change the reasons why they are among the 41,136 people who live below the woefully outdated federal poverty line in the 11 (primarily) rural counties of North Idaho. The poverty rate here is 13.3 percent, compared to 10.6 percent in Washington and 12 percent in all of Idaho.

Disturbing as those statistics might be, Mr. Gates, I believe that numbers merely inform and direct your strategies. I strongly suspect your passion for systemic change draws on a much deeper well within your soul.

Economic poverty is first and foremost an issue of the spirit. People who live daily in poverty must draw from their own wells of spiritual nourishment.

Some wells are drying up. Sometimes, deeper wells nourish the persons in poverty but also those whose lives they touch.

In our society, economic poverty is symptomatic of a spiritual poverty. Mr. Gates, you know how it impacts social, political, economic and health-care policies at all political levels – local, state, national and global.

I don’t know what spiritual tradition you come from. But it’s likely your parents’ community involvement was informed by some significant acquaintance with biblical calls for helping “the least of these.”

You and Mrs. Gates honor your parents’ legacy and your own spirituality by what you do throughout the world.

Jewish and Christian traditions call out for God’s justice to be shared by all people, not just by those who can afford it. I suspect you are moved in part by that call.

Naturally, we would be honored to have you in a circle of poverty. We know that’s not likely to happen.

Fortunately there will be other “gates” in our circles of poverty. They will open both in and out.

Some people – like myself – will open a gate into a circle to learn firsthand what poverty is like so we can help make it obsolete. People who live in poverty will open a gate out of poverty.

Together, we will create an ever-widening circle that could include thousands of people who will work together to eliminate poverty. That’s a circle worth joining!