Why won't you buy this?

My eight year old daughter loves to make things. And now she wants to sell them. Her motives are great. She wants to give money to the Rehoboth Children's Home in India (which is supported by the gifts of our church). But she's baffled that people aren't leaping at the chance to pay for her pieces of art.

She is stumbling onto something really important that she'll need to wrestle with for the rest of her life. In order to participate in value exchanges, you have to provide something that people value. At this stage, her work doesn't yet meet their criteria of fine art.

The critical question for her is not Why won't you buy this? but What can I offer that solves a problem for you? At this stage in life, she is a fantastic "mother's helper," who can take competently care of younger children (while an adult is present in the home) so that the parent can get other things done - like read a book! At $3/hour, that feels like a tremendous amount of money for my daughter, and a bargain for our friends who need a breather.

With that experience under her belt (and the referrals that flow from doing a good job) she'll be ready to take on "real" babysitting jobs when she's old enough to do that. In the process she will have learned that she doesn't have to twist people's arm into buying something they don't want. She simply has to ask what she can do or provide that others will gladly pay for. After all, that's what most artists do while they refine their craft such that people gladly want to pay for their art.

Why spotlight this nonprofit?

In response to my recent Cardus essay on Value, Values and Valuation, one reader challenged one of my examples:

Perhaps Charlottesville Investment Collaborative is not the example you are looking for. I find the website indicates the cooperative concentrates on training, and is willing to lend money.  How effective the cooperative actually is will depend on the successes of the values created by the participants. Nothing on the website is dedicated to explaining and expounding the new found values, [but rather to] providing 'free advertising' for the participants.

Why did I choose CIC as an example if it has these apparent shortcomings?

1. Value Creation: CIC is creating value by doing something that no-one else in our community is doing by enabling the marginalized to start new businesses. Training and lending IS the value provided. The participants have no other access to such opportunity or resources, and therefore could not otherwise start new enterprises.
2. Participant Success: The reader is right that success hinges on the entrepreneurs/participants' value creation and values. The proof will be in their flourishing.
3. Free advertising? Providing 'free advertising' for participants is also value creation. The poor - by definition - don't have the social networks we do. Getting the word out about the value that they're creating is mission critical for their success and the flourishing of our city.
4. What values? The reader is also right that "nothing on the website is dedicated to explaining and expounding the new found values." CIC is not a Christian organization. I have the privilege of collaborating with my non-Christian neighbors who, by common grace, are doing good and creating value for their neighbors. Into that good work I speak these words. Indeed, I think that is precisely the value that we as Christians need to bring to the table - the embodied and spoken values of the Kingdom. That, I truly hope, is public theology for the common good.