Anyone want to start a factory?

The other day I sat with a woman, a neighbour to the church, and talked about the survey we just begun. It's a simple survey about the needs in the community, only five questions long. Her answer to the question "what is missing in Benjamin Aceval?" was: Work. She didn't need to say more, I got it. There is very little work opportunities in the area, only some factories in the nearby town of Villa Hayes. To work you have to go to Asunción, to work in houses, or to the big cattle ranches in the Chaco wilderness.

What struck me today is what difference a factory would make to life here. A simple production factory, low tech, that would employ 50 people, and had a bit of a conscience, could transform the life of maybe 250-500 people. Follow my thought if you will.

To be able to support their family, many men leave their families for months at a time to go the the Chaco. Or alternatively get jobs with enormously long hours, like the security guards that normally have twelve hour shifts, plus travelling  time over an hour each way, often seven days a week. Or, they leave for good and start what they call here a second family. The result of this is absent fathers in the home. And mothers, that more often than not, themselves need to work long hours in the homes of other people.

The social impact of this is enormous. A colleague of mine said that 4 out 5 Paraguayan households are run by single mothers. If they are working, there might be grandmothers to pick up the care for the children. Or there might not. There is nothing from the state. In short, there are many kids without any oversight, especially since school is only 4 hrs a day. Add to that the unemployment connected to alcoholism and general insecurity in the workplace.

A new factory in Benjamin Aceval, with 50 employees from the town, which ran reasonable hours, did not exploit it's workers and paid at least minimum wage, could really change some of this. It could mean that some people didn't have to leave the families for so long, or have much shorter days, which would help family life. It could provide 50 households with a stable income.

If you would add to that any kind of benefits, remember that Paraguay does not have national health insurance, like reading classes or the chance to finish up to sixth grade, any kind of child care, stipends for further education, basic health education, etc you could really have an impact.

These days this seems to be called "Business as Mission". Basically it's business people doing what they do with the purpose of creating welfare and prosperity that help change peoples lives. We could use some of these people here.