Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Love Justice Podcast, where we hear from different voices who are joining us in the fight against modern day slavery. Please welcome today's guest, John Molineux.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Well, welcome to today's episode of the Love Justice Podcast. I'm your host, Hannah Munn. And although my usual co host, Jason Dukes is out traveling today, I am so excited to be joined by John Molino, the founder and CEO of Love Justice International. We'll be diving deep into the concept of impact, what it means, why it matters, and how we at Love justice measure it. We'll also explore some challenges and lessons learned along the way. And I am so, so, so looking forward to this conversation. And you're not going to want to miss it, so let's go ahead and get started. John, we've had you on the podcast before, so our listeners, you know, if they're jumping on for the first time and they want to know who John Molino is, can you just introduce yourself?
[00:00:58] Speaker C: Yeah. So I'm John Molino. I'm the CEO of Love Justice International. I grew up in Helena, Montana, and For the last 20 years, I've lived in Kathmandu, Nepal. I have, my wife is Aksha, and I have two boys, Jude and Blaze.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Wow. John, 20 years. What is this current season looking like for you?
[00:01:20] Speaker C: Well, it's definitely been a season of transition. We. We've had our program headquarters based in Kathmandu, Nepal during the whole of our. And. And we're in the process of relocating to South Africa.
Hannah, you're there now. And, and I'm currently in the US as we're working on our visa. So, yeah, it's been a, it's been a great time also to have time here in the States to do some fundraising and connect with our great donors. So, you know, it's a season of transition, but, but a lot of exciting things happening as well.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Yeah. John, we have worked together for almost eight years now, which might not seem long to you. It seems long to me. And when I first started with the organization, we weren't really talking a lot about impact. Maybe like the very beginnings of what now is a very important, frequently talked about topic internally with Love justice for our listeners who might be hearing a lot of messaging around Love Justice's impact. Can you just simply define, like, what is impact?
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I can try. I, I would say, you know, impact is something that really makes a difference to someone. You know, love would have us care about what other people care about. And, and so whatever it is that people care about and what they need and want and accomplishing, that that's impact. And so when we think about impact, we sort of the kind of impact that we want to strive for and aim for is impact that is life altering makes a significant life altering difference in someone's life. Two, we want to aim for impact that is sure that we can really know that it's real, that it's going to happen.
Three, we want to ensure that it's impact that depends on us, that it won't happen without us. And four, it won't create dependency.
So a couple of those might be worth unpacking that this depends on us. There's this. But for test we only want to count as impact what won't happen without us. And that has really important implications for how we think about impact.
Because sometimes there's a backup option and you stepped in in front of the backup option and made the impact that doesn't count.
You have to find the situations where there's no backup for it to really be considered in our thinking. Impact, we talk about like, you know, if someone is giving someone a life saving injection, you couldn't just go knock it out of their hand, grab it and give it yourself and call that impact. You know, it really is what won't happen without us that passes this. But for test and the other one that I would unpack is it won't create dependency. There's a lot of ways that NGOs and charitable work can create dependency. There's a sort of learned disempowerment that can, that can harm people. And so impact that meets those criteria. Life altering, sure depends on us won't create dependency. That's there, that's hard to find, you know, and I didn't know that until I lived in Nepal for 20 years. Kind of being continually on the lookout and having a number of staff also continue on the lookout for those types of opportunities. They are not easy to find.
And you know, we've kind of, we have this value, treasure, impact opportunities. We've, we've, we've learned to like search for those opportunities like treasure because of how rare and hard to find they are. And the hardest thing of all is to find those kind of opportunities in a way that's scalable, you know. And you know, NGOs raise money on their past impact, telling the stories of their past impact. But that doesn't mean that it's going to lead to the same impact again unless they have, you know, unless they have reason to believe that they are able to scale and have good reason to believe that they're able to scale that impact.
And that's hard. It's hard to do.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. So again, whether or not this makes the episode, we can figure that out later. But can you describe a little bit of the evolution of how you started thinking about impact when you first started Love justice and how you think about it now?
[00:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I can try.
I would say it's more like the clarification of. And it's not like just these little realizations. Like when we first started doing transit monitoring, there was other organizations also doing transit monitoring. And we found out in some cases organizations were just set up the booth right in front of the other one, you know, sort of cutting in line to get the impact. And then we were like, wait a minute, that's not. And we, you know, we didn't, we didn't quite have this, the language to say, but we knew in our heart that wasn't right, that wasn't impact, you know, and so we, when we first started doing training monitoring, we said we only want to work where there's no other organizations working and we don't want to compete with other organizations. And that would later become this. But foretest, this depends on us criteria. And you know, there's some impact where we've had situations where like this is not necessarily sure to happen. You know, like you don't know that much about it. We've had a lot of conversation about it. So each of these criteria kind of came up and then we've, we've had those situations of learned disempowerment. We've seen that, we've seen how our work and the work of NGOs can create a sort of learned disempowerment in people that can do harm. And we've had so many conversations, I've learned from so many other activists about this and all this is just kind of, kind of led to all those ideas. You know, we once years ago we tried to tell all of our stations, find us the greatest impact opportunities that are out there. And I was expecting to have all these life changing things like opportunities that are like, wow, there's so many. But it wasn't, it was, it was requests for buildings and things that were not necessarily going to have the kind of impact. And so it took time for me to really awaken to the fact of how hard it is to find true, significant impact.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So John, I always. A couple things that come to mind when I hear you talking about impact. One is I think that it's really hard to convey how scientific our teams are internally with the way that we think about how to measure impact.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean we have different impact metrics that we use for different programs. The, the, the maybe the cleanest ones are in our anti trafficking work where we measure intercepts and arrests. And intercept occurs when a person we believe is in the process of being trafficked is prevented from continuing their journey due to our intervention. And it may involve convincing them to change their plans or enlist and help the police or contact in their guardians. We are not, we're not forcibly stopping anyone. So, so that's one. And the second is an arrest which is when a person is apprehended by the police and formally charged with a crime by the legal authority.
So those are the two primary impacts that we aim for in our anti trafficking work. You know, we have other ways of defining and measuring impact in other areas but it can be hard to define and measure impact. Like the goal of our family homes is to provide loving and nourishing homes that equipment orphaned and abandoned children to live Christ connected, flourishing, impactful lives. But how do you. That's hard to measure and you know, the impact of relationships and learning, it's real and it's valuable and it's powerful but it can feel so intangible and it's difficult to measure but it's not impossible. You just have to think deeply about what are you trying to accomplish. And we've been able to see that our kids have about 20 points higher IQ than a control group and national average. Our kids do well on measures of nutrition and, but ultimately none of that really captures the, you know, that flourishing, impactful, Christ connected life lives. And it's also something that you don't get. You can't measure until they're older. You can't measure until they're out of the home, you see how they're doing. And so we're seeking to use a flourishing life assessment to show that our graduate, our graduates of our homes are flourishing, living, flourishing, impactful Christ connected lives relative to their peers.
But for us ultimately, as you know, impact on the dollar is the main thing. We've realized that how important it is for us to try to maximize the impact on $. That's what we're called to and that's.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: One of our global values, is be scientific. And so we're not just throwing things at the wall of how can we generate impact for people to get excited about. There's kind of a method to the madness, so to speak that I've really appreciated and come to come to learn to really. Yeah. Love about this organization. One thing. Second thing is when I hear you talk about family homes in particular, and just the assessments and comparing with their peers and measuring it over time, we've had some really recent compelling stories of that. Especially, you know, you just saying you've been in the field for 20 years, talk about the kids that you first started interacting with 20 years ago and where you're finding them now, especially as it connects to that impact that you're describing for family homes.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, first, in regards to the scientific part of what you. Of what you shared there, like I'd say something we strive for, we have. It's something I think we see the need for more and we really want to try to strive to be as scientific as we can in how we measure impact. But in regarding our homes, you know, it is. It's hard to be. To take all that goes into a flourishing, impactful life and measure that scientifically, you know, and there's things that you see, you know, you know, a person, you know, a group of people. And, you know, when I've. What I've seen over the years is I've watched, you know, many of our kids coming into our homes at a very young age, and they have just a. Almost like a blank, a blank stare behind their eyes. There's a light missing. You know, there's. They're hurt, they're scared, they're. They're traumatized, you know, and, and they're just not. They're not flourishing, you know, and to see them, to see the effects of love on their lives and to see them start to come out and open up and then to just see them be just carefree children and live in a safe, loving environment for many years and just become these young men and women. Recently, before we left Nepal, we had a series of talks with several of our graduates where we shared with them some of the most important things that I wanted to say to them. And a lot of it was about some of the very things we're talking about here. Challenging them to live impactful lives, to have a legacy of impact, and, and things like that. And just I have. You see that the. You see them as young men and women and you just are so blessed and impressed to know them. You know, some of our kids, almost all of them have gone to college. They're really, they're going to church. They're just. And they're eager to lead. I told them, you know, just telling our kids like one of our goals is to. Something I've often said, one of our goals is to help you guys live flourishing, impactful lives. And he's seeing them take ownership of that. Like, we want to do that and say we trust, love justice, we want to give back to love justice, and we want to make a difference with our lives in this world. And then some of them getting a vision for how they want to do it. Like there's one, one particular girl I can think of that she wants to work with children, you know, and I, when I reflect back on her story and it's just, it's a beautiful thing that's really hard to measure. It's really hard to. But it's important because. Because, you know, we spend, I think, some $47,000 to raise a child in our homes compared to 100 and less than $150 to intercept a person to prevent them from being trafficked. So only if they're actually going on to lead those impactful, flourishing lives, that makes a difference for generations. And that's where the impact actually would occur. That's the only way it's really worth doing. And I think with children homes in particular, it's easy to just see how cute the kids are and delightful they are. And to mistake that for impact, you know, that's not impact. Impact is when they're actually flourishing. And that's, that's what we feel radically called to ensure we are doing.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We haven't spent a ton of time on the podcast yet talking about family programs and we, we intend to because, you know, we, we talk about anti trafficking a lot. It's really compelling, but I think that family homes is just as compelling. And there's so many incredible stories. The one you just shared, you know.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: We don't talk about our family homes as much because we're not actively scaling it right now. We're still sort of watching and learning and trying to assess is this something that we want to scale? But what we're seeking and what we almost have with the family homes and the dream school and those, you know, the processes behind those that make them excellent is something the world completely lacks and desperately needs. And that is a viable strategy for the world's orphan crisis. Something needs to be done. And it's to our knowledge there's no alternative to putting children in the care of the right adults and put them in making sure that environment is the right environment which they can actually flourish. And we're quite, we're close to being able to demonstrate that we have done that with our model and so but we're not there yet. And that's part of why we don't give quite as much emphasis to it.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think there's so much wisdom behind that decision, as well as the be scientific principle behind it too. You're not just going to scale something that you don't actually know or has proven itself. And I think that's something that internally, I think a lot of staff really respect about the way that you guys are navigating and pursuing the family homes model is we want to make sure that there's indication that there's true genuine impact before we get the green light to just start expanding it elsewhere.
Yeah, John. So why is impact and the way that we think about impact so important, not just in general, but also specifically in the NGO space?
[00:16:15] Speaker C: Well, in my thinking it is and, or should be. The whole point and the importance of impact, it's both so obvious that it almost doesn't need stating, but also desperately needs stating because it's radically underemphasized, you know, that impact is the main thing for charity. And there's all kinds of other considerations that can cloud out the focus on impact, whether that's proximity, personal connection, social influence, emotionally compelling marketing, good intentions. But what if it were yours or my loved ones suffering under injustice, you know, which of those things would you care about against the question of actually helping as benefiting someone as much as possible, actually meeting the needs and making a difference in someone's life, that's clearly what should matter for charities. So, and you know, to take it a little further, given a choice between a lesser and greater impact, why would you ever choose the lesser, you know, like. And so it follows from that that we should maxim, we should strive to maximize the impact that we're able to make with the resources we've been entrusted with. And this, these ideas are really needed in the NGO space because it's actually quite rare or Fairly rare for NGOs to define their impact and to measure it and really striving for the best impact on the dollar that they can.
That is ultimately what we feel they should do. And it's not done very much. Ultimately, impact on the dollar for us, we believe is and should be the main thing. But if you, if you Google, even if you just type right now, most impactful charities in the world, the top article, I mean, it changed all the time. But one of the top articles is from GiveWell, and that's one of the few organizations that actually Measures or tries to measure impact on the dollar. And it talks about the top charities in the world are four charities that can save a life in the developing world for between $5,000 $5,500. And that's exemplary. That is the gold standard. You know, that is a significant impact to save a life for 5,000 to $5,500. But as you know, Hannah, we are, we've had our goal for the last two years to hit $120 fully loaded per intercept per person that we intercept to prevent them from being trafficked. And we hit 124 in October, 25 in November. We just missed it. And that's a.
And then in April of this year we hit $117 to intercept someone to prevent them from being trafficked. Now we're riding this streak of 32 months running where our 12 month impact on the dollar has improved and it's now $140. And the last three months we've like three months ago we hit a record high 1880 intercepts in a month. Two months ago we broke that record again with 2301. And then just this last month we hit 23, 40, 48, our record high intercepts, that's someone every 18 minutes. And our this month our fully loaded dollar partnership was $102. Oh wow.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: I actually didn't know that. $102. I mean, can you imagine? I like just thinking about the give well and that $5,000 and then you divide that by a hundred and like that investment in love justices work and how many lives that can impact, like you said, is I kind of don't even have words for it, to be honest. It's a little bit speechless and just an amazing opportunity. And that I think is what we really want our listeners and our audience and our people who are engaging with us to know when you invest in the work of Love justice, this is what you're investing in. And your money is going so far in terms of impacting someone's life.
[00:20:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's hard to.
It's far away, it's invisible. It's hard to really feel that it's real.
But you know, Hannah, you and I see the stories, we see the photographs and we've been in the field and seen those intercepts happen. And when you, you get to experience that and when you see it, you know, every time I'm reminded of the first, the first email I had, I got saying that we've intercepted one person to prevent them from being trafficked and just having this clear sense, that was the most important thing I've ever been a part of. Yeah, you know, I don't have. And you don't have the capacity to feel what 2300 intercepts means was a one every 18 minutes. But, but we, we believe in our hearts that it's, it's so important and it's so valuable.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, like, similar to your kind of first email idea, the stories that really maybe grit my heart are the ones where we have monitors who they themselves have been trafficked or exploited and they have been rescued and are now working for love, justice. Those types of conversations are like, man, if they believe so strongly in this after all that they've endured like that. Yeah, it's similar. Like, that's what keeps, you know, everyone has their own.
What keeps them going. And that is. Yeah, that's one for me that not a lot of people have the privilege of getting to talk to those monitors. And it's difficult to convey.
John, you talked about how, you know, on one hand, impact shouldn't go without having to be like, I forget what the words that you use. But essentially, like, it should be obvious, but it's not. It needs to be the most important thing. Can you talk a little bit about how you came to that realization?
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, in the way I learned was I would just go and visit other organizations and try and just learn from them. And there's so many great people running so many great organizations all over the world. And.
But it's really. Sometimes it's hard to get a sense, okay, what are we talking about here? What exactly do you guys do? And there's a lot of. Sometimes there'll just be a lot of, you know, training and, but, but at the end of the day, what is it? And then it took me, it took us time to even find a language to say, what's the impact, you know, that we have here? And.
And then later, impact on the dollar. And just what I was finding was it was really common that you would meet organizations who would sort of obfuscate about what their impact was. And it went from, oh, that was weird to that's the norm. That's what almost.
And it's rare to find an organization that doesn't do that. It exists. And again, there's great organizations in the world, but.
Yeah. And then eventually it got to the point where we started actively. I started on my own actively searching for it. You know, you can just Google this, you can ask ChatGPT now. But, but what are the most credible Impact on the dollar claims that exist in the world and you can go out and find them and it'll, it'll lead you to that article from GiveWell that I, that I referenced earlier. But yeah, I just started finding that I'm not finding any and we started emailing organizations and eventually I challenged, at one time I challenged everyone in our office in Nepal and I challenged everyone on our leadership team to go out and find a credible claim to a better impact on the dollar than we have. And if you do, Love justice will give that organization. I think I don't remember the exact number but I think I said $10,000 and I will give you $1,000. And we people search and we. You can find there are some really great impact organizations that exist but you quickly get a pretty clear sense that it is rare, it is not the norm.
[00:24:36] Speaker B: As I'm hearing you talk, I'm just thinking about, you know, people whose response might be well what about quality? What about quality? When you think about impact and you know you're kind of like quantity and like maximizing and how much like basically stewarding finances really well to get the most maximum impact as possible. What would you say to someone who might be thinking about that or questioning the quality versus quantity when you think about impact?
[00:25:05] Speaker C: Well, I would say the quality is the impact. You know, like if you're, if you're you know, touching a thousand people on the arm but not actually doing anything or a million, it doesn't, it's, it's actually making that life altering impact that you're aiming for. So the light, the something that doesn't matter to someone, that's a low quality and having a lot of, that doesn't do anything. It's having a lot of life altering impacts that. But I mean the difference is sort of between our family homes and anti trafficking work where we spend a lot more money and it is, it's higher quality in the sense that we're potentially helping them become difference makers that live flourishing, impactful lives that can pass down for generations. That's really hard to measure and that is quality. It's potential potentially justified. It's worth it if it, if that's really happening. Yeah, so, so it's not, it's not at all that that like maximize impact means go for really high numbers of really low quality impact. No, go for really high numbers of really high quality in a life altering difference in someone's life. If you were able to prevent someone from being trafficked, that is a, that is a really high Quality impact because the difference in their lives of being a trafficking victim and not is John.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: What important lessons have you learned and or pitfalls that you've experienced along the way in your journey to measure impact and impact on the dollar?
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Well, one thing I would say is, and Hannah, you've been a part of these conversations that it's hard to be appropriately skeptical of the thing you're also trying to maximize and celebrate and but it's really important, it's really important to be skeptical of your own impact. And we're really blessed because we have a lot of voices who are in those rooms who are really fair minded and we have people and have had for many years asking is this real? And as you know we have a verification process where we don't count intercepts unless it has been independently verified by two train staff. You know, and you've been in those rooms over the years as it's been debated. But you know, science and the scientific method is really based on the elimination of bias. The whole method is about getting the bias out. You know, you wouldn't trust a drug company to tell you or trust us that our drug is effective.
But you know, not in a non profit space. That's essentially you have nonprofits on it saying and, and you have us here telling, saying trust us, our impact is impactful. But you know, so this is a problem that we've really tried to wrestle with and we really want to bring that the scientific rigor to our impact. And so as you know Hannah, last year in Uganda we hired an independent human rights lawyer and research consultant to review a random sample of our intercepts. She ended up coming back soon at all 153 cases in the sample that she reviewed where she considered them to be valid interceptions which potential victims were at high risk of trafficking. And that's the kind of thing that we want to try to. But this is not well worn ground to our knowledge. I'm sure there are people we can learn from and we hope to but we're really having to try to figure out how to bring some of these things ourselves.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny that you say that because even with that I remember debriefing those results or reports from Uganda. We just finished one with Malawi just last week. And I think I came back and said like I'm almost skeptical of this person's review of our impact.
And I myself have been like probably one of the more louder skeptics internally. But I think what is amazing about just the team at Love justice and you Particularly is that you allow for that and you welcome it and you want it because you know that this is a potential blind spot. It is uncharted territory. I think, you know, we've been in conversations with other organizations where we're asking, you know, what do you do and how do you look at this and kind of it not like they're not being a clear answer. And so I think we've both come away thinking how we might be more rigorous about our impact than anybody else and have taken a lot of like, restraints just out of our own internal skepticism. And I think that that's really healthy.
And so now it's, you know, like we're just continuing, okay, where's the next gap? How can we address that? How can we learn from it in terms of, you know, verifying impact? And I, hopefully we have an episode. I mean, I, I anticipate that we will have an episode about verifying impact. I'm maybe avoiding it just because I feel the weight of that so much being the lead on just impact verification for anti trafficking. But I think there's a lot there that we've learned over the years. It's really, really, really good.
[00:30:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely been, I mean, it's a 15 year conversation. It's taken a long time to see how important that was. And you know, my initial reaction, you know, when we started doing transit monitoring and we're getting all these intercepts and you see this stories and there was definitely skepticism. And I went and visited all the stations and I was like. And then I asked what about this? What? I, I sort of interrogated them and I, I found like their answers were very compelling. They had. And I kind of got the sense like, they're more concerned about this than I am because, because they're actually seeing the real people. And so I developed a lot, a lot of faith in our monitors. But then there was still voices just pushing for skepticism, you know, and, and I realized probably more than 10 years ago I needed to give those voices a megaphone, you know. And so, you know, I've made it my practice. Whoever is the lead on the intercept verification process is historically the most intercept skeptical person in the organization. And I think that's a, that's a really healthy way to do that. But, but you want to have, you just want to have a lot of dialogues about that. And Hannah, you and I have been in conversations about hundreds, if not potentially thousands of particular intercepts. And is this a valid intercept or not? And why? And really going into it and then calling, you know, having somebody call the monitors, get more information.
It's complex and difficult.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: But I was just gonna say, I think that what we're trying to do and how we're trying to measure impact is actually very complex because, you know, you're, you're trying to collect data in countries where that is not the norm. Two, you're doing it cross culturally across languages. And a data collection form is not going to be, you know, reflective of the entire experience. And that would be really, really difficult to develop a tool that would one, do that. And two, having our monitors who might have a high school equivalent to a high school degree, writing out these complex narratives to explain all the cultural nuances. It's just, it's complicated. And I think that we've realized is that there has to be a balance between, yes, ensuring quality data collection and being able to look at the data, but also holding that data loosely, knowing that every, most every time that we dig into a case and you talk to either the station manager, the national field staff or the monitor themselves, it's like, oh, of course, okay, now that you've answered these questions, like, it just builds that confidence. But that's always a gap that we're trying, trying to fill.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: There's multiple people within Love justice who are doing that and then they're also talking to each other and they're, and we're learning from those experiences. It's a. And, and we're sort of making the verification process more robust all the time and, you know, seeking new and creative ways. You know, this year we, all of our core processes in the verification process is one of those, they're undergoing like annual audits with stakeholders. We're trying to ensure that they're becoming better and better. And, you know, we're bringing in, you know, external experts to try to speak into each of those and getting review from end users and feedback from end users and focus groups. And so we haven't, we haven't, it's not perfect. We have a lot. I'm confident there's ways that it can be a lot better, but I can say that there's value, there's a lot of value in what we've, what we're doing currently. And I, and I, even as we recognize that it can be even better.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I can say, I think I can say confidently that like, we will find those ways to make it better over time because we're committed to finding them and we want to find them. And we want, just as much as anybody Else we want to know that what we're doing matters.
John, pivoting a little bit.
We have been talking a lot about impact, impact on the dollar, why it's important, and making the case for that, thinking about our listeners and people who are advocates for Love justice, people who are donors to Love justice, why should they care about impact on the dollar?
[00:34:25] Speaker C: Well, not only is it the main thing for charity, which it's clear to us that it should be, but it's the main thing that love itself cares about, because it's what we would want for ourselves and for our loved ones if we were in need.
And, you know, the main thing in our lives is the impact we make in the lives of others ultimately.
And a lot of the impact we can have is through relationships. And that impact is intangible, but it's real and it's significant, and it's very important. And all of us have close relationships, family, close friends. We have a special calling to invest in those, in those people's lives, and we can make an impact through those relationships. And that's one part of how we make impact. But, but when it comes to the neediest people, Jesus said, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. So we also have a special calling to the least of these.
And we often kind of get the question from a lot of our donors, and I think a lot of people, and maybe some of our listeners just feel like, well, why should I help people who are far away?
We have plenty of needs in my town. But what Jesus said, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. And so we, it's true that we do have a special calling to those around us. You know, the love your neighbor as yourself is one of the ten Commandments. And, but there's a parable, there's this parable where Jesus explains that command, that commandment. And it's called the Good Samaritan. And in that story, that the expert in the law wanted to justify himself. And so he asks Jesus, who is my neighbor? And Jesus turns around and he tells the story of the Good Samaritan, where a man attacked by Ralph was lying half dead on the road, and he was passed up by a Levite and a priest, two of the two in groups, and then a Samaritan that's an outsider, it says he happened to be going down the same road, and he helps him. And so Jesus's response here, it deliberately transcends tribal lines in proximity. It's about the opportunities that you encounter. It's about when you actually have a chance to make an impact in someone's lives, especially in the lives of the least of these who Jesus says, whatever you do for them, you do for me. But those opportunities, as I've, as I've said, they're rare. But the legacy of your life will turn on what you do when you find them. Paul says of the. In first Thessalonians, he says of the. Of the Thessalonians, those people whose lives he impacted. He says, you yourselves are the crown in which you will glory in the presence of the Lord Jesus when he comes. And that's, that's a startling picture. We can't, and I can't quite imagine what it entails, but surely in such a moment, every other thing that we cared about in life will fall away against the impact that we were able to make in. In our few lighted moments.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so good.
And I know that we want to amplify the stories of the least of these on this podcast too, because I think, you know, when, when you're in your own culture, you're in your own rhythm, your own routine, it's so difficult to fully convey or understand how people find themselves in these potential trafficking situations or orphan situations. And it's not until oftentimes people actually go and physically see it themselves that they. It starts to maybe click a little bit, A little bit.
And so I think that that's something, you know, we want to continue just to amplify is to amplify the stories of the least of these, to mobilize the church to care for the least of these in the ways that you're talking about. And then, you know, and then making the case for why we think we're worth the investment and why, you know, we're. We're really good stewards of the money that's being entrusted with us because of the way that we measure impact and our impact on the dollar. John, any. Any final encouragements, thoughts that you want to share?
[00:38:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I think, like, I would just challenge, challenge everyone just to think about what kind of impact are you called to, what gifts you've been given? But when you think about that question, think about the question, and how can I have the greatest impact with me, who I am, where I am in life, what I've been entrusted with, all that I've inherited and been blessed with, how can I strive to use it to make the greatest impact that I can? And that answer will be different for everyone.
But I think the question should. That's the right. That should be the right question for everyone.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Yeah, and I love that because you're not saying, like, it has to be Love justice. It's like, this should just matter in general and, like, go and find it and reconcile it for yourself and then be diligent about whatever it is you feel called to, whatever organizations or work you're exploring or feel called to support, do the due diligence of making sure that it's impactful, I think is what you've always said. It's something that I really respect about you. And also maybe a tantalizing preview of the justice curriculum that you guys have been developing for church partnerships. Maybe put a little bit of a plug there of just how to dig into what you're saying, like this calling and how it's so connected with our relationships with Jesus and an overflow of his love for us that we're able to do this. So excited to. When we get to the point where we get to release that, I know that that's coming soon, would encourage everyone who's listening to go check out some stories on the blog and. Yeah, just really appreciate your time, John. So admire. Yeah. I mean, I could go on and on about all the things that I admire about you as a CEO. And I know that we haven't, you know, we've definitely butted heads in the past, but I've come out of those conversations with you just really respecting the way that you are leading Love justice, respecting the way that you're engaging in the fight against injustice, and just really thankful, just thankful that you've been here for so long, because I think that's what's made you really invaluable in this conversation and in this fight. So thanks, John, for your time.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: Thank you. And I've been blessed to be able to be a part of a community that's striving to make such impact. It's. I can't imagine.
I can't imagine a more meaningful life than that.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: We are grateful for the generous support of the Love justice community. Please consider joining our family of donors. Learn more at lovejustice ngo.
