Great points from Sasha Dichter:
The core work of Acumen, where I work, is to support companies that provide basic goods and services – healthcare, water, housing, sanitation, education, and, yes, energy – to the half of the world’s population that hasn’t yet benefited from the global wealth creation and economic transformation that started in the 1850s.
The crazy thing to me is the idea that this work would be anything but mainstream. As a society and a world we have the capacity and the wealth and the know-how to build the underlying infrastructure that unleashes limitless human potential, energy, creativity. Think of all the people out there not blogging, not sharing, not contributing as they could to the world because every last ounce of energy must go into just getting by.
For just a week, New York and the whole eastern seaboard got to experience how every aspect of our lives are enabled by this infrastructure. We got to ask ourselves how resilient we would be if we lost this cushion. A spotlight was shone on all of the invisible things that make our lives possible.
Maybe, just maybe, this experience will help us to understand a bit more all the gifts that we have been given. Maybe it will help us recognize the mad lottery that we have won that allows us to take these things for granted. Maybe, once the dust has settled, once we’re warm and safe and dry but before we have fully gotten back into the rhythm of our days, it will push us to create more space for service in our lives.
Hila Mehr 