Working in 19 Latin American and Caribbean countries – too many to list here – TECHO forms partnerships between impoverished families and volunteer youths in efforts to overcome poverty and set up long-term human development. Also known as Un Techo Para Mi País – Spanish for “a roof for my country” – TECHO was founded in 1997 and today has three strategic objectives: community development in slums, social awareness and action, and political advocacy. To accomplish these, the organization utilizes what it terms a community intervention model. The model’s three parts are as follows. In the initial phase, volunteers enter slums and diagnose them, along with first engaging with community members. The second phase is marked by joint work projects like the construction of transitional housing and community meetings, in which long-term solutions to local issues are developed. Finally, these work projects are wrapped up, and volunteers organize residents. Multinational corporations such as JPMorgan Chase and DHL have partnered with TECHO in its work.
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.