August 28th, 1963. A hand is raised in the air in front of 300,000 people, at the Lincoln monument, in Washington DC. Dr. Martin Luther King says one of the most important sentences in the twentieth century, “I have a dream!”
A human has endless dreams. For one, it is to be famous, for the other is to be rich, to travel the world, to make art, and there is some whose only desire is to have the option to dream. What is a person if not his dreams?!
A hundred years before “I have a dream,” Abraham Lincoln signed one of the most significant agreements, “The Declaration of Emancipation,” which was the slave liberation in the south of the US.
But did the minorities were really liberated during the last 150 years from discrimination? The answer is known, and the facts are even worse. In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested because she did not let a white man sit in her place on the bus. She did not accept the definition of being inferior to him.
We would be inclined to think that discrimination and cruelty belong to the past. It has been over 66 years since Rosa Parks dared to stand for her right to be who she is without any discrimination.
58 years have passed since the sweeping speech of Dr. Martin Luther King. But the inequity still exists.
In fact, it is very present and mainly behind the scenes of the prominent organizations which move and design the world, and the future, like the financial institutions and the insurance companies.
Actually, about 40% of the population of the USA is considered a minority (Hispanic 18.5%, Afro-Americans 13.4%, Asians 5.9%, and more).
Most of these people were born in the USA, and some of them are the third generation or more, will not receive financial services from the legacies or any help from the commercial companies.
The gaps in the population are enormous. Humankind has landed a spaceship on the moon. There is a drone flying around on Mars looking for water molecules, autonomous moving cars, a camera that you can swallow, and then it films you internally. On the other hand, some people live on less than a dollar a day, and some people cannot get any financial services to better their life and buy education, health, and food.
One could think that discrimination is unique only to the United States, but of course, this is not true. The media in the United States are much more developed. So, we are more familiar with what happens in cases in the United States, but all over the world, discrimination exists and prevents people from growing and evolving.
About ~3B people in the world today are discriminated against by companies and commercial bodies. They are discriminated against only because there are no historical financial records of them (unbanked). These people are not dangerous, unreasonable, or evil. They live in places farther from the city centers. They are just young people who have not yet had time to accumulate data so that companies and commercial entities can study their behavior and determine whether they are good customers for the companies.
Some companies seek to serve the unbanked people, but 90% of the people who apply to these companies are rejected and will not receive services.
The question that arises is what can be done to change this situation? How will our child's future be better?
Our commitment is to try to change this situation.
All of us going to make mistakes along the way. All of us can get better.
All of us can help only a small number of people at the first phase.
However, we can all act to change the future and allow an equal opportunity without any prejudices of religion, race, and sex. As Mahatma Gandhi said:
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
With the help of technology, we could all be Dr. Martin Luther King, even if it is for one second only.
We can all raise our hands in the air and say loudly.
Let’s create an equal opportunity to all the people in the world!