What is Working?

So today, I, Erin, had the privileged of hearing a man named Dan Heath speak about his new book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.

Instead of talking about finding what is not working and trying to change that, he talks about finding what is working and going with that idea and trying to emulate that to make the things that aren't working work. That's clear as mud right?

I know I don't do justice to explaining how it he did, but he did give us a story that I will share with you to hopefully help it make sense.

He told us about a man named Jerry Sternin, an American, who was given the responsibility of making a change in the malnutrition of Vietnam children in 6 months. So rather than find things that aren't working and trying to change that he instead interviewed moms to find children that are healthy and to find out why those children who live in the same country with the same resources seem to be surviving (and sometimes thiriving) when others are dying. You can read a more detailed and eloquent version of this story here.

But the point I took away from this was; in the world of human trafficking where can we find systems or cities when things are working, where children are not being stolen or sold? Where people value the life of another as equal to themselves. Where women and children are loved and cared for and respected and protected by the men in their lives and the men around them.

Where is it already working, where is human trafficking already NOT happening and why is that? What makes one mom willing to sell her child and another mom willing to anything, including die, for her child? What makes one man willing to have sex with a girl 5 years of age and what makes one man willing to protect that young girl to the point of killing for her?

I think there is something to be said for this model from Jerry. Find whats working and emulate that, share it with the commnity and maybe just maybe it would have the same results that Jeffy had, from one small community to now influencing tens of thousands of children in 20 countries!