In a recent article published by McKinsey and Company, "Global Forces: An Introduction," five trends were identified as the new directions for business.  These same five trends can be applied to global charity and philanthropy.  read more »

This is an open letter from Brad Krusky who just returned from Guatemala.  An update on Dentistry for All - Dr. Shane Fisher will be staying in Comi for the next six months to establish a perminent local presence working with Guatemalan dentists and health care practitioners as well as local social service agencies addressing larger issues.  If you would like more information on what is happening on the ground you can email Shane.  read more »

The past few posts have been on animal welfare.  Social Justice Mommy - Heather Setka, shared a story about her daughter's latest "social justice learning (and teaching) moment" and picking on someone smaller than she (in this case a dog at the park).  Today we are looking at animal welfare in the United Republic of Tanzania, and the Zanzibar Islands.  read more »

I have another blog post to share now that I am back in Canada, but wanted to get these photos posted (now that I am on a high-speed connection).

It was a wonderful trip!  Guatemala is a beautiful country and I look forward to going back again sometime.

Enjoy the images!

 read more »

 

I sit on several boards for a variety of charities and non-profit organizations. One of the groups that I am involved with is ChristmasFuture. What I like about them is how they collaborate with others and support the activities of organizations who are addressing some of the systemic social problems around poverty in the developing world.

The slideshow at the bottom of this post is about ChristmasFuture and Jay Baydala, their Executive Director. I share it with you for a couple of reasons, the most obvious is because I am personal engaged in the work that they do. The other reason is that this slide show is a great use of technology bridging the gap between the donor and the organization. For sure, without question this is a marketing tool. But, it is also an educational piece and an interactive storyboard. Viewers can comment, vote, share and connect with others who agree and disagree with the content and the process.

Societal fabric is created through storytelling. This is one story of many.

Enjoy the show!

Let's Talk Poverty

The 12 for 12K Challenge is using social media to change the world.  Unlike other giving circle models - this one is global and is part of a societal change that is fast-paced with huge potential.  I am not sure of the process for selecting the charities (criteria and who is reviewing selections).  They will be updating the site every month with the new charities they have selected.

Another social media phenom is Charity:Water and Twestival.  Today, Charity:Water drilled their first water-well in Ethiopia.  This fundraiser brought together thousands of people from Twitter to different events around the world with proceeds going to this one charity.  During the course of the evening they raised over $240,000 as people twittered about their various events. 

Generating social capital is not just about raising the funds for societal projects.  It's also about bringing people together to generate greater impact with those funds.  The Twestival experience is just one of those opportunities.

Here is the video of the well being drilled in Northern Ethiopia:

Twestival Well Drilling - Day 1 from Ethiopia - charity: water from charity: water on Vimeo.

One of the questions that I posed to them on Twitter, was to find out how they are teaching the community about water sanitation so as to avoid contamination of the new water source.

Today has been an interesting day...  I went from a discussion on duplication of services and the pitfalls of international development reporting, to mission drift and chasing after the almighty dollar, to donor education and the business of philanthropy, back to international development all in a matter of 6 hours.  My head is spinning, but oh the ideas! 

My morning started off with Mocha at Caffe Rosso (while this is not a site to promote coffee shops, I would like to give a shout out to Dave for starting my day off right today - thank you!) and conversation with founder and CEO of the Fig Tree Foundation, Paul Gomes.  One of the many things that we discussed was donor education, and the role that his foundation, other NGO's and consultancies can play in providing this education.  We talked about organizations like the Global Philanthropy Forum and how so few resources there are for Canadians philanthropists, either as networking opportunities or informational tools. 

Our conversation transitioned over to the Round Tables that Fig Tree Foundation hosts. This is a concept that brings together like-minded NGO's to hear what each other is doing, provide a space for collaboration and information sharing and an opportunity to avoid duplication of services by hearing what else is going on in Calgary's international development community. 

As we progressed through this conversation I referred back to one that I had had with CAWST and ChristmasFuture and the Symposium idea for bringing together, not just NGO's but businesses who do work in developing countries, people who fund projects and government bodies who are pulling funding.  In an effort not to duplicate services in envision a model that builds upon this round-table concept and perhaps opening up the floor so that unlikely partners can find a safe-space to collaborate and innovate. 

This conversation went full-circle back to transparency and accountabilities and the important, and somewhat daunting task NGO's are faced with, especially in the developing world, with reporting back to donors their impact and effectiveness.  Needless-to-say, we came up with some great ideas.  For more about this symposium concept please join the LinkedIn Group - Generating Social Capital.

It's all about relationships...  I know, we hear that time and again.  People give money to people and not to organizations.  I sat down with Mary Tidlund, founder and CEO of the Tidlund Foundation yesterday to learn from her the process she undertook for setting up her foundation.  I will be posting excerpts from the interview in coming weeks (once I figure out how to put the audio on my website...).  Something really stood out in our conversation that I had to write about immediately.

Mary built her foundation, not out of a set of systems, but based on a set of values.  She knew that she wanted to impact the lives of people through medical and educational support in the developing world.  As she started exploring what this would look like, people from around the world began galvanizing towards her model of international development.  In the 10 years that the foundation has been operating it draws on a pool of over 175 people to implement programs in several countries ranging from Haiti to India.  With a paid staff of two, the foundation's overhead is spent on improving the local economies by employing people in the project region who have the skill-set to deliver on what the community has articulated its needs are.

I asked Mary how she goes about raising funds for her foundation.  She said that when she started she had put together a strategy, but it was a lot of work and not a lot of return.  What she noticed was how the Foundation's volunteers became the story.  The more people in the various countries that participated in her programs either as a recipient organization or as a volunteer or as a donor, the stronger the Foundation's story became. 

As the Tidlund Foundation became more sophisticated and grew, so too did the volunteer model.  These past two months have seen some new additions to the volunteer training model.  In the past volunteers were provided with cultural training before going overseas and debriefing upon returning.  Now volunteers are part of a larger circle that includes in-country support sessions, educational opportunities and what I found most interesting draws upon several different cultures from the Traditional Wisdom of Eastern religions to the Talk Sticks of North American Indians.  This opportunity to share with each other as people are immersed in the volunteer experience has provided the Foundation with even more stories of strength and success.

Everyone has a different approach to how they see their foundation operating.  Not only is going to be private or public.  Questions around how to engaged donors and volunteers or other family members are asked.  There is no right or wrong answer, it all depends on the values that you bring to the table and the type of systems that work best for you. 

No matter how you choose to invest in community, whether it is by starting your own foundation, donating directly to a charity or investing in a social enterprise/venture; it is the people behind the project that you are putting your money into.  The organization and its recipients are who you are investing in.  As long as they align with what you believe in and they can show you that they are accountable to you as well as to each other then considering that investment should be an easy decision.

The G8 met in Japan this past week and there was a recommitment to continue supporting foreign aid to developing countries.  When I was in Ethiopia in 2006 the Economist ran an article that was flitting around the hotel I was staying in about how foreign aid is creating an African society of un-empowered, unmotivated, and sense of entitlement from foreigners to ensure that the lives of Africans improved.

At the time I thought it made sense.  As someone who has traveled to many developing countries, I saw first-hand how North American aid was being used.  From the fancy UN land rovers to the extravagant parties held by dignitaries to honour each other for jobs well done in attacking polio, malaria and AIDS.  Money that you, the average donor, who worked hard to earn and then to invest back in community was being squandered by many of the largest NGO's.  The most shocking part of it was that I was part of the problem.  I was feeding into a system that had very lax accountabilities.

Fast-forward to 2008 for my second trip to Ethiopia (third trip to Africa).  It is amazing the difference in how, not only I view foreign investment, but how organizations are using those funds.  While there was definitely evidence of the African expectation that as a Canadian, I will automatically give money or sponsor immigration (from the airport employee in the Nairobi, Kenya airport terminal who guided me through a maze of mis-connections and then asked me to help get him to Canada or at least pay for the service that was his job, to the student whom I met in Addis who has repeatedly emailed me asking for ways to move to Canada or the least I could do would be to pay for his education), the grassroots movement is growing quickly.

The rapid growth of grassroots development in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa is cause for celebration (these are the countries that I have traveled to - if you check out ChristmasFuture you will find other grassroots initiatives from other parts of the world).  The need for foreign investment is ever present, however, instead of the North Americans coming in and saying this is how you should fix your problem, it is the villages and the communities that are saying this is what we need to fix our problems, will you help us achieve our goals and objectives. 

The disconnect that I see is not between NGO's and implementing organizations (though there are some other major issues facing funding organizations and implementing partnerships).  Rather, I see this disconnect being between what the G8 governments are funding and how they are making those investments.  From Bush's ABC protocol on AIDS funding (which has since been modified slightly), to the UN's project management to CIDA's crazy maze of application funding and accountabilities it is no wonder that our tax dollars that are being invested in foreign aid do not seem to be having an impact. 

I recently hosted a lunch with Dr. Richard Northcott, founder of Canadian Humanitarian and few people who have invested significantly in overseas projects.  One of the things that I gained from this meeting was how poorly our government bodies and large-scale NGO's take into consideration the cultural mores of the country in which they are investing.  Let's take AIDS eradication - there are some tribes in Africa where multiple partners is a sign of wealth and power.  In one tribe in Ethiopia, for example, when a man gets married it is expected that his previous lovers will bring gifts for the new couple.  So it benefits him and his wife for him to have had several partners before marriage to increase his material wealth upon marriage.  How then can one expect abstenance to be part of AIDS education when that will directly impact the wealth of the family down the line? It is all well and good that our governments are investing in foreign aid.  The thing is that it has to be invested wisely and as Stephanie Nolen has pointed out on several occaisions, because the governments in developed countries are not investing wisely they are creating cycles of entitlement and rather than solving the various problems afflicting developing countries.

Of course this does not stop at government bodies and carries through to the NGO's that are doing projects with implementing partners in the developing world... But that is for another blog post.