Crazy idea. Don’t know if it would work.
I have this sister, Mary. She’s a missionary in a third-world country.
Mary told me once that there seemed to be a particular need in that country for businessmen who could come help teach people how to start and run businesses, or for them to start and run their businesses there themselves. Many of the country’s intellectuals and leaders were killed in mass slaughters some time ago, and the country is still recovering.
Her mission organization, the largest of its kind in that country, has a unique need. Before the end of 2008, it needs a way to hire a higher percentage of the country’s natives compared to the number of staff missionaries to meet a quota, so that they can keep bringing in more of their own workers.
I did some research on importing and exporting a few years ago. It’s a no-brainer that trade can make a difference in an economy. Even an average person can do trade internationally now, especially through the internet. I discovered selling on eBay is a wonderful place to begin getting international experience, and could be a stepping stone to importing and exporting through retail websites. If you need a way to facilitate the process, UPS even offers to help with importing/exporting.
It probably would take a little bit of time to bring about a balance in trade in such a country, but it occurred to me one day that mission organizations such as the one my sister works through could make awesome connections for trade… Particularly if the country they are in stipulates that missions need to hire more natives as part of the agreement for letting them be there!
Not every country a missionary goes to is a third-world country, either, so there might be significant opportunities for us to do exporting to them. And people in our country who wished to might make trade connections through their business staff, as well.
The mission organizations might hire business missionaries who could train natives in business, trade, and manufacturing, and then hire some of the trainees as liaisons for shipping, importing or exporting, manufacturing, or for staffing whatever businesses they started there.
Mary’s letters to me have indicated that there is not much quality control in her country. It would certainly be a benefit to them all to have more consistency in their products as well as better ways for them to make a living. And other countries like ours might be more interested in their products if they did a better job making them, too!
I know there’s a certain kind of puzzle I wouldn’t mind importing if my website took off, someday. Perhaps among other things, they could start a puzzle-making company and export puzzles.
And once they got on their own feet, maybe they would want to import goods from us, too.
I realize this particular idea may not be a help to our own economy immediately. But if as many of us as were capable of it had a little retail website with products in it set up specifically for selling goods to other countries (maybe in addition to our regular jobs), we might even be able to make a big difference in bringing down our federal deficit.
And who knows, maybe some of us would like our little retail online businesses enough that they could become our real jobs, and the jobs we had could become provision for others to have jobs in our country.
