The path forward depends on including everyone, empowering people to use their gifts, and inspiring all of us to find our own way to contribute. After a year of crisis, America seems no closer to finding a path forward. Millions are thinking there has to be a better way. There is. It starts in the places and with people you may least expect, and all of us have a role to play.
Take Scott Strode. He spent years struggling with substance abuse, then beat it through physical fitness and a supportive community. Now he's helping tens of thousands of others do the same. His group, The Phoenix, is more than twice as effective as most traditional treatment methods. With addiction rates skyrocketing in the pandemic, Scott is showing a better way to help people stay sober.
Take Jesus Gerena. He grew up in grinding poverty, escaping with the help of family and friends. Now he's using the power of community to empower others. His group, the Family Independence Initiative, helps people in poverty raise their incomes by 27% and double their savings in two years. The organization has helped more than 200,000 families in the pandemic, and counting. With poverty rising, Jesus is showing a better way to help people rise faster.
Take Alice Marie Johnson. Sentenced to life in prison for passing messages for a group of drug dealers, she devoted herself to helping others find a better path. After her sentence was commuted, she's focused on bringing police and communities together for tough but necessary conversations about what needs to change. Amid a national crisis of conscience over race, Alice is showing a better way to promote justice and peace.
Take Tyler Cowen. An economics professor who leads the Mercatus Center, he saw this spring that medical research wasn't keeping up with COVID-19. He set up Fast Grants, which makes funding decisions on biomedical research proposals in just days, compared to an average 18-months review at federal funding agencies.
Fast Grants has provided more than $40 million to over 200 projects, including the rapid coronavirus saliva test that helped the NBA keep basketball going this summer. With the virus crisis worsening, Tyler is showing a better way to unearth the innovations needed to cure it.
What do these social entrepreneurs have in common? They're using their experience and gifts to empower others to tackle society's biggest problems, making progress from the bottom-up.
But society tends to overlook people like them, and worse, many institutions are designed to exclude them from society. Instead of bottom-up empowerment, the typical approach is top-down and it stifles such entrepreneurs.
Top-down can be summed up as the view that people are problems to be solved, rather than the source of the solution. It's a widespread assumption.
As a result, large, one-size-fits-all approaches have become the preferred path in government policy, philanthropy, business and education. But most big problems don't have a single big solution. They have many solutions, of all shapes and sizes, that spring from everyday people using their gifts to help those around them.
Excluding anyone — recovering addicts, the poor, people with criminal records or without college degrees, or others whose expertise stems from their experience as opposed to a more formal credential — keeps those solutions from being created.
Exclusion is accelerating. As a result, the past year has worsened America's slide toward a two-tiered society where fewer get ahead and more fall behind. So long as this continues, the problems we face will continue to get worse.
Inspire people to contribute
The path forward depends on including everyone, empowering people to use their gifts, and inspiring all of us to find our own way to contribute — a path that has been proven throughout history to work. Taking that path depends on recognizing three key truths.
First, solutions to America's problems all start with a deep belief in people — all people, starting with a belief in one's self. This includes people who society otherwise ignores, like Alice because of her criminal record. This requires a paradigm shift within communities, education, business and public policy, so that every institution empowers every person to unlock their potential.
Second, the people closest to a problem are often best suited to solve it. Scott's struggles with addiction are the reason he knows how to help others get sober. Experience is the best expertise, and while a PhD comes in handy, knowledge is more than just book smarts.
Instead of assuming theory tells us what will work, we need to find those who have personally discovered the answers. Each of us has an opportunity to help solve the problems for which we have personal knowledge.
Leverage diverse abilities, experiences
Finally, when we unite with anybody to do right, we accomplish much more much faster. Scott, Jesus, Alice and Tyler are making a bigger difference because they work with people with different backgrounds and capabilities, including us.
We don't need to agree on everything to tackle the issues at hand. In our experience, those who look for common ground tend to find it. Especially in this divisive year, we could all stand to search for ways to collaborate to help each other.
Albert Einstein said, "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them," and sure enough, the top-down approach is hurting America at the worst possible time.
It doesn't have to be this way. Our toughest challenges can spur our greatest achievements, but only if we include and empower every person to contribute from the bottom-up.
What America needs most in this unprecedented year of hardship is to believe in people — all people — and empower everyone to contribute in their own way.
Charles Koch is chairman and CEO of Koch Industries and the founder of Stand Together, where Brian Hooks is CEO. They are the authors of "Believe In People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World," published Nov. 17.