Greetings from London, which is only partially shut down today due to a public sector strike over the British government’s not-so-temporary austerity plan. The worst fears of extremely long delays at the airports and of possible violence have yet to materialize and let’s hope they never do.

Read more on Tony Blair, Actonite?…

Last summer, Acton’s PovertyCure team traveled to Ghana to meet with its economists and entrepreneurs — the men and women who are helping the country develop. It just so happens that they also met briefly with Peter Cardinal Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice and co-author of the note released yesterday that has stirred up a global controversy.

Read more on ‘Central World Bank’ Would Hurt Cardinal Turkson’s Native Ghana…

Acton has been heavily involved in developing a new initiative called PovertyCure, an international network that promotes entrepreneurial solutions to poverty rooted in the dignity of the human person.

We are excited to announce the launch of PovertyCure this week. Acton has joined together with over 100 organizations to encourage people to rethink charity and development.

Read more on VIDEO: PovertyCure Launch…

Bread for the World CEO David Beckmann once said, “We can’t food-bank our way to the end of hunger.” As I said then, if “changing the politics of hunger” means that more people are getting food assistance from the government rather than food banks and community efforts, count me out.

Read more on Fighting Hunger Together…

Returning from a conference earlier this week, I had the chance to speak with Garreth Bloor, a student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, about his engagement with politics, the role of religion and civil society, and “Mama Africa’s” story of microfinance success.

Read more on Politics, Civil Society, and Microfinance in South Africa…

International aid has come in for a lot of criticism recently and with the debate on the federal budget just beginning, U.S. funding for aid is on the chopping block.  With a rising deficit, and a struggling economy, many are asking why the United States chooses to continue funding international, or foreign, aid. People of faith are often caught in the middle of the debate on whether international aid should or shouldn’t be cut, along with the role the state should play.

Read more on International Aid and Integral Human Development…

Bill Easterly has a brief reflection on the role of religion in global societies, a role that must be taken into account by development ‘experts.’ Speaking of his experience at an Anglican worship service in Ghana:

Read more on Religious Development…

Back in 1983, economist Thomas Sowell wrote The Economics and Politics of Race, an in-depth look at how different ethnic and immigrant groups fared in different countries throughout human history. He noted that some groups, like the overseas Chinese, Japanese, and Jews, tended to thrive economically no matter where they went, bringing new skills to the countries that they arrived in and often achieving social acceptance even after facing considerable hatred and violence. Other groups, like the Irish and the Africans, tended to lag economically and found it difficult to become prosperous.

Sowell explained many of these differences by looking at the cultures both of the immigrant groups and of the dominant powers in the countries that they moved to. The Chinese, Japanese, and Jews, for example, valued work. They often arrived in countries with little more than the clothes on their backs, but they worked long and hard hours in menial labor and saved money scrupulously to make life better for their children. Even if they lacked social acceptance, they were allowed the freedom to develop their talents and contribute to the economic life of their new homes.

Irish and African cultures were never offered these opportunities. Ireland’s feuding lords had prevented hard work from being rewarded in Ireland, a situation that only got worse with British occupation. Sowell shows how Africans were similarly discouraged from working hard because slavery and the Jim Crow Era made it impossible for skills and effort to pay off in better standards of living. So long as hard work never paid off, there was no incentive for Irish or African cultures to emphasize entrepreneurship, and the members of these ethnic groups suffered from poverty rates much higher than those of other populations in the places they lived.

Fast forward to 2009. With many of the institutional barriers to the advancement of ethnic minorities gone from most countries, historically disadvantaged groups are catching up with the general population in economic terms. Pope Benedict revisited the theme of economics and culture in his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, coming to similar conclusions as Sowell does about the role that culture plays in the development of the human person. Read more on Sowell and Benedict XVI on Economics and Culture…

Kevin Schmiesing, research fellow at the Acton Institute, was interviewed by Ave Maria Radio recently on Caritas in Veritate.  Schmiesing explains how the idea of human development and progress figure as central themes of the encyclical.  It is important to remember that our ethical advancement must be ahead of material human development, and our ethics must be paired with our personal development.  Furthermore, Schmiesing explains that Caritas in Veritate warns against an all encompassing role for the state.

Read more on Caritas in Veritate: Schmiesing and Jayabalan Radio Interviews…

Kishore Jayabalan, director of Istituto Acton (the Acton Institute’s Rome office), was interviewed by Vatican Radio concerning the authentic human development concerns of the whole person, which is a topic discussed in Caritas in Veritate. Jayabalan discussed how development schemes throughout the world should look at the aspirations of each individual person.  Furthermore, in Caritas in Veritate there is a mention of a “breathing space” used a few times in the encyclical.  This breathing space aspect means developing a vibrant and diverse society and not allowing central planning to decide every aspect of a person’s life; it is also important to place the individual at the center of the development.

Read more on Caritas in Veritate: Jayabalan and Gregg Radio Interviews…