Walls or Bridges?

All of those 360,000 children, including ours, will grow up in families, communities, nations, and societies within which they will tend to see their worlds as either primarily filled with walls or bridges.

The child who came into our family will have access. All the children who have come into our family for the last century or so have had access. He will experience his world as full of bridges. The main question for him will always be about which of the many bridges to cross?

However, many of the 360,000 born into the world last Saturday will see and experience a much different reality. Children born Saturday in places like Pyongyang, or Mogadishu, or Donetsk will see walls of a certain kind, and children born into under-resourced families and communities living in some of the greatest cities of the world will see walls of another kind. Children who experience family dysfunction, or who are led into poor choices, or who maybe just lack of imagination will confront walls of another kind. While our one child can expect to experience nothing but access, many others will experience nothing but barriers.

Those aspiring entrepreneurs who sense a calling to do good in the world through business need to see bridges, and especially those whose place and/or circumstance of birth have presented them with almost nothing but walls. At the Agathe Center for Entrepreneurship, we value accessibility and we seek to do all we can to make resources and our services available to those who due to lack of financial resources or relational capital do not have access to high level consulting and coaching services. We want to present a bridge to those who often, and for any variety of reasons, typically expect to find a wall. We want to offer access.

Today, like last Saturday, another 360,000 children will join us on planet earth. How about more bridges and fewer walls?

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