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Africa for Norway. Amazing.
The video is humorous, but there is a serious message. The point is that images of helpless Africans are just as inaccurate as the idea of helpless freezing Norwegians. A lot of Africans cannot relate to the patronizing videos and development initiatives.
The organization says it has certain goals with the video. Among them, that fundraising “should not be based on exploiting stereotypes” and that media should have more respect in portraying suffering children.
“We want to see more nuances,” it writes on its website. “We want to know about positive developments in Africa and developing countries, not only about crises, poverty and AIDS. We need more attention on how western countries have a negative impact on developing countries.”
A+ satire.
(Source: NPR)
Here at Building Markets, we have a tendency to put all our eggs in one basket. The eggs, in this case, are our donors. Supporting entrepreneurs with high impact services requires resources, and there are only so many donors who can foot the bill. We depend on these donors, and we are extremely grateful to them. But it doesn’t mean that we couldn’t make our monotonous pie look a little bit more like this one:
Large government donors – who happen to be our biggest funders – have all sorts of stipulations regarding the money they give nonprofit organizations like Building Markets. This includes everything from which indicators to collect data on to what percent of the funds can be spent on administration and fundraising costs. Sounds like a complaint is coming, but I assure you it’s not. Stipulations are necessary and are an important way to ensure that donors and their implementers are on the same page and making an impact. Standards are always important, even if some might be misguided or have adverse consequences.
However, having donors like these often means that our projects are less flexible, less efficient and less experimental. If a donor tells us we have funding for two years, then that’s all we’ve got, no matter what happens in country during those two years. Likewise, how are we going to know the best way to improve upon our projects if we can’t experiment?
With a variety of donors, some of whom won’t have strict requirements, we’ll be able to run experiments, improve our services, adapt to each country’s special needs and better vocalize our projects and their impact.
But of course, it’s easier said then done, and we’re hungry for more – which is where Global Giving comes in.
Global Giving can be instrumental in raising unrestricted money that will act as an extra cushion to enable us to experiment and improve our projects. Simply put: Global Giving can make us a better organization.
In order to have a permanent profile on Global Giving, we first must raise $4,000 from 50 unique donors during the month of September! That’s a lot of eggs, and we’re going to need help. So if you believe in what Building Markets is about: empowerment not handouts, entrepreneurs not helpless victims, investment not aid – and more importantly, you want us to get even better at it, then please consider donating to our Global Giving page. Help us weave ourselves another basket.
And today, all of your donations - which can be as little as $10 - are being boosted by 15%!
Thirty-one months after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, many questions remain about how international aid dollars have been spent in the country. Up until now, a lack of data with which to address these questions has frustrated efforts to evaluate the impact of humanitarian and development projects on the daily lives of Haitian people and the long-term reconstruction process.
Today, we share a report about the effect these contracts have had on Haiti. The data we collected marks a serious contribution to untangling the twists and turns of the aid-money trail. Although international contracts represent only a small fraction of overall spending in Haiti (which has been reported to have been as much as $843 million in 2011) our analysis provides insight into the positive impact that business activity can have on local firms and the people they employ. Our report reveals a trail that leads to substantive growth, rather than to costly misallocation or waste.
A rare glimpse into the Haitian marketplace
This report, and the unique data it contains, demands the attention of Haiti’s political officials and G12 partners, who can take immediate action to increase economic growth in Haiti.
We look forward to the day when the “Republic of NGOs” becomes a “Republic of Entrepreneurs” in a prosperous, stable, and tourist-friendly state. Read the report and join us in supporting Haitian entrepreneurs.
I love Alanna Shaikh. Do yourself a favor, and check out her blog if you haven’t already.
You know what I would love to do? I’d love to start an effort devoted entirely to solving the easy problems in the world. Not a new NGO; you know how I feel about that, but a division within a major existing group. It would be funded by donations, not government grants, and focus on the low-hanging fruit in relief and development. Heck, we could call it Low Hanging Fruit, and live with the inevitable LHF acronym. We wouldn’t worry about sustainability, but we’d have a big focus on local involvement.
There are a million little ideas we all run into, that don’t fit with any expressed donor priorities, but would so obviously make a useful different in the world. LHF would work on those. We’d document everything to pieces, so it would also serve as research on what works. Every community we worked in would have a paired control community with similar demographics, and as soon as we could demonstrate an intervention was working, we’d extend it into the control group so they could benefit too.
Because the focus would be on simple solutions, I think it would be easy (well, easier) to get the kind of individual donations we’d need to keep our programs going. A hippo roller or better irrigation is an easy sell, and easy to illustrate in photographs.
I’m not arguing that these kinds of quick fixes are the answer to the world’s problems; far from it. International development needs long-term approaches to major structural problems. But sometimes a band-aid help your wound heal faster, and it’s frustrating to see someone hurting when a five cent piece of plastic and gauze could make a difference.
Here’s some of what we’d do:
We love Alanna too!
Mobile money has been trumpeted as a means to transform financial transactions in Haiti, where only about 10 percent of people use traditional banks but 85 percent of households have access to a mobile phone.
About a year after the earthquake, USAID and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced plans to fund a mobile money initiative in Haiti that would allow customers to send and receive payments via cell phone. USAID contributed $5 million toward the project while the Gates Foundation donated $10 million. Both have hyped mobile money’s effect in Haiti, USAID using its blog to imply that the service could “transform” the country. Fast Company reported that it’s “taking off and allowing commerce to flourish.” Together, the country’s two major mobile operators recently surpassed the one millionth mobile money transaction.
But as the AP reported yesterday, mobile money in Haiti may be as much about hype—or at least potential—as substance:
As yet, though, few Haitians are buying the idea, which has become one of many post-quake projects to fall short of expectations and a reminder of how hard it is to change a society that has been repeatedly set back by political upheaval and natural disasters.
While there are nearly 800,000 registered mobile money users and more than 800 agent locations—places where customers can deposit or withdraw mobile funds—the AP reports that the services have only 22,000 regular users. The main reasons for slow uptake seem to lack of familiarity or fear of the unknown.
“I’m not going to invest my money in something I don’t see,” James Alexis, a 33-year-old truck driver in Port-au-Prince, told the AP.
Literacy rates can proxy for technological literacy, and in Haiti only about half of the adult population is literate. Unsurprisingly, more than 60 percent of early mobile money adopters had at least a secondary education.
The AP quotes Marteen Boute, former CEO of Digicel-Haiti, the country’s largest cell company, talking about obstacles to uptake:
“Our main lesson learned is how difficult it is to educate customers,” said Boute, who is now a senior adviser to the Jamaica-based company. “When we launched the service we assumed it would be something like selling a mobile phone, where you stick a mobile phone into someone’s hand and almost anyone can start using it quite quickly because it’s very easy to understand. With a mobile banking service or a mobile money service it’s not quite that easy.”
One of the first and most successful mobile money services, known as M-Pesa and also funded by the Gates Foundation, started in Kenya in 2007. Seventy-three percent of Kenyans use mobile money, which has eased transferring and storing of money for millions there. Yet in stark contrast to Haiti, almost 90 percent of Kenyan adults are literate. And reporting on M-Pesa in 2010, The Economist noted a few of the disparate elements required for mobile money success: “the right technology, simple marketing, partnerships with banks, support from regulators.”
Still, there may be opportunities to foster adoption of the services in Haiti by marketing to companies, non-profits, and the government in lieu of individual mobile users. A recently announced conditional cash transfer program through which the Haitian Government will pay mothers who keep their children in school will use mobile money. World Vision and UNDP have both used the services to pay staff or to transfer funds to aid recipients.
If your employer or an aid program pays you with mobile money reliably and regularly for months, you might be more inclined to trust and adopt the service for personal transactions.
But at least for now, most Haitians have yet to be convinced to trade in their tangible cash for e-money.
Photo via flickr user Todd Huffman
A good reminder that what works in one place might not work (or might need serious adjustments) in another place.
Indeed it could! That’s an initiative from our dear friends at Engineers without Borders Canada - check out David Damberger’s TED talk on the subject.
(via affectedclapping)
In Canada or the US, it doesn’t matter.
Any of our followers have suggestions? uOttawa, McGill, and UVic have good programs in Canada, and there are many schools in the States with excellent programs. Whichever university you pick, do some investigating on the types of international exchanges that are available as well.
