2 percent, and they’re trying to raise it to 10 percent,” says Harris. “When the beekeep- ers heard about the issue, they wanted to help. They’ve got trees growing in plastic bags, lined up, and then the government buys them. It’s really quite remarkable. They’re called ‘greenmakers.’”
From the greenmakers and beekeepers,
Harris and her companions visited a new poultry business in central Kenya. Harris was impressed with the resourcefulness of the poultry farmers, who had, among other things, figured out how to power lightbulbs with solar power.
“The poultry farmers had the incred-
ible desire and motivation to do better, to grow, to really get this thing off the ground,” says Harris. “Their big issue is get- ting to the marketplace. There’s a little tiny bumpy road, and the only way they can sell now is by taking their chickens on the local bus. We talked to them about transit issues and ways to think about and sell their chickens beyond just whole chickens.”
The last stop was at a fishing business
on Lake Victoria. Local women own the fishing boats, and people pay the women to use the boats both for transportation to the other side of the lake, during the day, and for fishing at night. Due to the overfishing of Lake Victoria, the govern- ment banned fishing from April to August. So Harris’s class put together a business plan to create fish ponds. Harris found the woman who owns the fishing business to be particularly memorable.
“Her husband was HIV positive and
passed away, and then she became HIV positive,” Harris says. “The custom was that she would marry her husband’s brother. The economic wherewithal provided by her business has allowed her to stand up to that custom, and not to have to marry the brother. It’s given her an amount of leverage and independence she may not otherwise have.”
“I expected to see a lack of resources
and infrastructure,” says Nikole Wagner, a graduate student in business and a mem- ber of the original entrepreneurship class. “Despite this, people are hopeful and moti- vated and interested. It becomes incredible to you when you think of the resources they’re working with. It’s inspiring.”
The Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage helps Loyolans to recognize and research Roman Catholic thought and its link to all academic disciplines.
Democracy and Catholicism across borders
L
oyola University Chicago’s Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intel-
lectual Heritage (CCIH) is exploring how Catholic life and thought can facilitate or inhibit democracy. The center has launched an innovative, three-year research project that gathers 32 scholars from Chicago, Peru, Lithuania, and Indonesia. Eleven of the participants are Loyola faculty mem- bers. The undertaking is called the Democ-
racy, Culture and Catholicism International Research Project, and it is run in collabora- tion with the Office of the Associate Pro- vost for Global Affairs and Initiatives. The researchers are from various humanities, social science, and professional school (law, social work, education) disciplines.
Some are working with texts, others are conducting interviews; some are analyzing films and photographs, and some are con- structing surveys. The project could have a significant impact for the Loyola com- munity and beyond, according to Michael Schuck, director of the CCIH and associate professor in the Department of Theology. “We hope this becomes a model for collab- orative international research that can be repeated at other Jesuit universities.” On a broader scale, the research could
“support movements for democratization internationally and encourage the positive relationship between Catholicism and democracy,” Schuck says. The relationships between the church
THE HANK CENTER FOR THE CATHOLIC INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE
and democracy vary by culture. In Indone- sia, for example, the only Catholic univer- sity and the broader Catholic community have consistently promoted democratic processes and principles. In Lithuania, when the country was under Soviet control, the church was suppressed and was also a promoter of democracy. But since the So- viet Union collapsed and Lithuania became independent, laws concerning marriage, abortion, and other hot-button issues have changed. “The church is now less interested in democracy, because there’s a feeling that it’s allowing for moral degeneration,” Schuck says. Due to the many possible applications of
research on democracy, Schuck says there has been a lot of interest in this project from psychologists, political scientists, economists, and others. The project began officially on June 9 on the Loyola campus, when the CCIH hosted a workshop that brought the 32 involved scholars together. Part of the project will involve group mem- bers hosting public colloquiums at their home institutions. In June 2012, the schol- ars will present their completed research in Rome. Ultimately, the findings will be pub- lished by a university press and available to all who hope to learn from them.
SUMMER 2010
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