“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world,” said anthropologist Margaret Mead. “Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

If one thinks for a moment about social revolutions begun by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., or even the falling of Berlin’s Wall, the wisdom of Mead’s words is immediately clear. These epochal shifts in politics came about only after people revised their thinking about what constitutes a civil society.

To recognize the efforts of today’s advocates for liberty, the John Templeton Foundation has launched the Templeton Freedom Awards in partnership with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation that seeks to bolster the efforts of independent think tanks and increase attention to how they are changing the world. Begun in September 2003 with a four-year pledge of $2 million, the first group of prizes was recently awarded to groups who advance the understanding of freedom in troubled parts of the world.

More than 140 organizations from over 50 countries competed for Freedom Awards, which were given to two recipients in each of four categories: Social Entrepreneurship, Ethics and Values, Student Outreach and Free Market Solutions to Poverty. Additionally, Grants for Institute Excellence were awarded to fifteen outstanding groups who are crafting private solutions to social problems.

The timing for these Freedom Awards could hardly be better, given that corporate scandals of late such as Enron, Worldcom and Tyco show how important ethics is to free markets. “There are bad apples,” said Dr. Alejandro Chafuen, President of Atlas, but these instances of greed and corruption were “the vices of certain businessman, not of business as a whole. We hope to draw attention to basic moral principles that are the very foundation of free enterprise.”

“Prizes can either recognize someone, or they can discover people. The Freedom Awards are in the latter mode and, so, very much in sync with Sir John’s pioneering strategies in the investment world, where he worked from the bottom up,” Chafuen continued. “We plan to discover intellectual entrepreneurs, by which we mean people who see a public policy need, and then try to find a solution.”

One award-winning example of such entrepreneurship is Barun Mitra, founding president of the Language of Liberty Summer Camp, run by the Liberty Institute in Delhi, India. Mitra’s brainstorming concluded that values of a free society could be spread most effectively if paired with the teaching of English, a service for which there is strong demand in India. During June of 2003, he began a month-long course in rural Himalayan villages in the country’s north, which incorporated the ideas of freedom and personal responsibility into grammar and language exercises.

“The response to our language camp was actually overwhelming,” said Mitra, who noted that enrollment was double what was anticipated, with many more turned away. Students not only learned English, but many experienced computers for the first time, thereby catching a glimpse of the enormous opportunities education could open up to them. “In a liberalized and globalized world, it’s our conviction that the poor have nothing to lose but their poverty.”

That society evolves one mind at a time is suggested by another award-winning program in India called the Center for Civil Society (CCS), also in Delhi. CCS targets young people for its efforts because they are more open to new ideas and they’ll play key leadership roles in future businesses, the media, and in government. Over the last five years, more than 1,000 students have attended CCS-sponsored seminars covering topics that range from the theoretical (“Why is India Poor?”) to highly practical subjects like “New Public Management.”

“Elaborate socialist interventions in India’s economy have created a destitute, disgruntled and disheartened citizenry,” said CCS founder Parth Shah. “We need to awaken the next generation, so it does not repeat the socialist mistakes of the past, but builds up the liberal foundations of a civil society.”

Such grass roots efforts have a good chance of succeeding, suggested Leonard Liggio, Atlas executive vice president, because organizations like the Centre for Civil Society can focus on the moral dimension of an issue such as property rights, a very big problem in emerging market countries where most people live and work on land to which they have no legal title.

“People are more influenced by a moral vision, than by one that is limited to economics,” he said. “An active citizenry is one that understands free enterprise is very connected to the ideal of private property, and that the rule of law means a society where legal concepts that have evolved over centuries are adhered to, and not changed capriciously overnight.”

Unfortunately, fundamental principles of free enterprise are often misunderstood by religious leaders in different parts of the world said Kris Mauren, co-founder and executive director of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan, another Templeton Freedom Award winner.

Named for Lord John Acton (1834-1902), an English historian who famously remarked that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” the Acton Institute organizes seminars for religious leaders of all denominations on possible connections between economics and virtue. According to Mauren, very few seminaries anywhere in the world teach courses on economics, so religious leaders may have an incomplete understanding of complicated issues such as globalization, minimum wages, unionism, or humanitarian aid. The result, he believes, is that religious leaders sometimes lend their moral authority to things that might actually have the opposite economic effect to what they hoped for.

“For instance, the United States government likes to talk about free trade with other nations, yet it basically prevents third world countries from trading their agricultural products. So, although you have American religious leaders promoting humanitarian aid to places like Kenya, what Kenyans really want is the opportunity to engage with the world market,” Mauren explained. “At Acton, we challenge the status quo on both Republican and Democratic sides, and especially those abuses that go on in the name of free enterprise.”

It is no coincidence that these three programs—as well as all other winners of Freedom Awards in such far-flung places as China, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, and Turkey—have a strong educational component. In fact, part of the monies each winning organization receives is held in escrow, and will only be awarded when a group does sufficiently well in publicizing its efforts.

“There is always a danger of insularity among some of this world’s brightest people. Intellectuals, especially, can have a bias that creating an idea is enough, and they’ll sometimes be satisfied with convincing quite a small group of supporters,” said Chafuen. “It’s almost like they are keeping their light under a bushel. What good does it do there?”

The Templeton Freedom Awards, of course, are designed to bringing the widest attention possible to those who’ve discovered new ways of doing things.

“Our hope is not only to enhance the work of think tanks when it comes to free enterprise and civil society, but to attract others to emulate them,” Chafuen concluded. “If these prize winners can become shining stars in their culture, perhaps they’ll also be role models to show that more changes are possible.”

Links of Interest
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Liberty Institute
Center for Civil Society
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion

Stephen Henderson is a freelance writer based in New York and a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun and Religion News Service.

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