When I was a kid, my Mother would tell me to eat my dinner-that there were starving children in Biafra.
When she was a child, her Mother told her to eat her dinner-there were starving children in Europe.
My Dad’s parents were starving children in Eastern Europe.
Before the events in Paris on Friday night, my biggest worry this week had been bad traffic challenging my carefully over-planned life. And now – the problems are so big I want to stick my head under the covers and turn the lights off.
You probably know that there are about 60 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world today. 43% of the population of Syria falls into this group. The last time there were this many refugees was World War II with 50 million refugees in a much smaller world.
We cannot stick our heads under the covers. The stream of refugees will change our world. The devastation of war and chaos is global. The terror in Paris, now claimed by ISIS, followed attacks in Ankara, Turkey, in an airplane over the Sinai peninsula, and in Beirut – that is just this month. This is the daily life of the people of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, How to respond to the perpetrators I leave to our military and political leaders.
In our role as business leaders, I see 2 types of challenges-what will this mean for our companies? – our supply chains, IT systems, the economy in which we operate, access to capital, etc.
And, the bigger picture – what do we do to address the global uncertainty and devastation? What happens to all these refugees? We, a country of immigrants, have made success from opportunity. Can we or should we be leading the effort to create safety and valuable lives from those destroyed by the conflicts?
Is there one thing we can do this week to stand up for our culture and the rule of law? Can we help in one small way?
For further reading on ISIS, check out http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
photo courtesy of http://www.inspiredbycharlie.com