Need for a Social Justice Scoreboard

I was watching t.v. the other day when a news station came on to do a little appeal for the Idaho Food Bank which frustrated me to no end. The lady on the station was talking about a food drive that was going on, and she ended the spot by saying as a final appeal and the Idaho Food Bank’s slogan “Because so many are hungry”.

This is a chronic problem with people in the nonprofit, humanitarian, and social society type of sectors. They have good intentions, but they are so vague that these good intentions will never result in any long-term successes or realistic differences. Let me explain. What in the world does it mean that “so many are hungry”? How many are hungry? Who are they? Where are they? How much food do we need in order to ensure that everyone is fed? If we really want these problems to end, it is ridiculous for us to simply say “Because so many are hungry”. And yet we do that all the time – with a ton of different things.

Think about it. “There are people starving in Africa.” “We need to help out because there are so many people dying of Aids in Africa.” “There are tons of people who don’t have clean water.” And on and on and on. But these statements do not do anything! They are simply vague generalities that do not get to the heart of the issue much less give us any direction in ending it. We have to narrow these things down. We have to find out how many, who, where, when, and what. We have to get specific. We have to get detailed. We have to get some type of a scoreboard.

A social justice scoreboard.

So we can meet our end goal of ending these problems.