Best solar engineers are grandmothers.....

http://www.barefootcollege.org/

Who make the best solar engineers? Men, women or grandmothers?

According to Bunker Roy, the founder of the Barefoot College in India, it's the grandmothers. "One lesson we learned," he told the TED audience on Thursday, "is that men are untrainable. Men are restless, they're ambitious, they're compulsively mobile and they want a certificate."

Roy's great belief is that the poor have all the skills they need to help themselves, and his organisation has had huge success in bringing education and services to the rural poor around the world. The problem with training men, he says, is that they tend to want to leave the villages, and take their skills with them.

His solution has been to train the grandmothers. In Sierra Leone right now, 150 grandmothers are being trained as solar engineers, who will be able to go and electrify theirs and others' villages. In a few months, he says, "they will know more about solar engineering than a graduate after five years."

Can aid work?

Can aid work?

Owen abroad

Primary school close to our house in Addis Ababa

Living in Ethiopia for the last three years, I saw aid working every day. I saw children going to school, health workers in rural villages, and food or cash preventing hunger for the poorest people.  The academic debates about aid effectiveness seem surreal when you are surrounded by tangible, visible evidence of the huge difference aid makes to people's lives.

But on the whole the sceptics are not disputing that kids are going to school because of aid. They are asking what effect that has on the country as a whole. Does it lead to economic growth? Does it drive up the exchange rate and so damage competitiveness? Do governments become dependent on donors and so less accountable to their own citizens?  Does aid keep the bad guys in power?

It is possible that aid is effective in terms providing people with basic services, and at the same time that it is not effective at increasing economic growth.  It is even possible that aid simultaneously does short-run good (better services) and long-run harm (worse institutions).

It was this difference between perspectives which made me want to respond to the call for evidence in an investigation into aid by the Economic Affairs Select Committee of the British House of Lords. This committee, which includes some well-known economists and other public figures, is examining the 'Economic Impact and Effectiveness of Development Aid'.

My written submission is here.  It is just six pages long. ( I'm very grateful to Stephanie Majerowicz for her help putting this together.)

The submission begins by trying to address the question of what aid is for, which seems to be the source of much of the confusion about whether aid works. Aid is often regarded as having two purposes: humanitarian aid to alleviate suffering usually in an emergency, and development aid to promote economic growth and sustained prosperity. But this is a false dichotomy: most aid falls into neither category. About two thirds of British bilateral aid is spent on improving services such as education, health, water and sanitation. This aid is not a temporary humanitarian response to an emergency, but a long-term contribution to the provision of key services and an investment in the institutions needed to provide them in the future.  The success of this aid is not best measured by whether it leads to growth in the short or medium term, but by the improvements it brings about in the quality of people's lives.

The submission then reviews the evidence about whether aid leads to economic growth (answer: we don't know) and whether aid improves people's lives (answer: yes it often does).  The more interesting question is not whether aid works, but which aid works.

But there are also possible adverse effects of aid, and these are potentially serious. The submission suggests that these may be mainly a consequence of how aid is given and that they can largely be eliminated if donors give better aid. But that requires donors to overcome domestic political obstacles to reform of aid.

The evidence finishes with ten suggestions for how to make aid work better.  They are:

1. Spend more through the multilateral system
2. Make aid more predictable
3. Make aid transparent, accountable and traceable
4. Build the accountability of governments to their parliaments and citizens
5. Focus on results and use this to simplify aid
6. Invest more in global public goods, especially new technologies
7. Focus aid on people in chronic poverty, and on women and girls
8. Leverage the private sector
9. Use innovative finance to increase the productivity of aid
10. Learn more and fail safely

It is a good discipline to be concise, but it is not possible to do full justice in six pages to the nuances of these issues. I have tried address the big questions with what I hope are balanced and dispassionate judgments.  I hope you will let me know in the comments if you think I've got these right.

Read the full submission here.

This blog post was also published on CGD Views from the Center.

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Naive or professional?

Naive or professional?

Seth's Blog

The naive farmer farms as his parents, grandparents and great grandparents did. She plants, hopes and harvests. Anything that goes well or poorly is the work of the gods.

The professional farmer measures. She tests. She understands how systems work and is constantly tweaking to improve them. When failure happens, she doesn't rest until she understands why.

I didn''t use the word amateur, because money isn't the point. The naive farmer is failing to take responsibility and failing to learn. The naive marathon runner straps on sneakers and runs (but doesn't finish). The professional marathoner trains. The naive office worker empties his inbox. The professional works to understand how the office functions.

Mostly, the professional asks questions... What's next? How to improve? What's this worth? Why is this happening?

[By the way, it's possible to be naive and happy. It's difficult to be naive and productive, though.]

I spent the last week working with Western Seed and Juhudi Kilimo, two vibrant companies that are helping small-plot farmers in Kenya (and beyond) dramatically increase their yields, their income and their well-being. It became clear early on that the real challenge is to help the naive become professional. Once you open that door (whether it's about how you build a website, swim laps or teach school), so many other things fall into place.

Before you can sell a service, a product or an insight to the naive, you need to sell them on being professional.

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The Luxury of Wealth and Responsibility of Poverty

The Luxury of Wealth and Responsibility of Poverty

A View From The Cave

This is a fantastic thought from Esther Duflo.

We tend to be patronizing about the poor in a very specific sense, which is that we tend to think, 'Why don't they take more responsibility for their lives?' And what we are forgetting is that the richer you are the less responsibility you need to take for your own life because everything is taken care for you. And the poorer you are the more you have to be responsible for everything about your life….Stop berating people for not being responsible and start to think of ways instead of providing the poor with the luxury that we all have, which is that a lot of decisions are taken for us. If we do nothing, we are on the right track. For most of the poor, if they do nothing, they are on the wrong track.

She said it at the Center For Effective Philanthropy and I ripped this quote right off the blog of Brigid Slipka. It was too good not to re-post. I will try to make it up to Brigid by pointing out that she writes an excellent blog on philanthropy that everyone should read.

This is a quote that I would love for every American to read (better yet, everyone should read it period).  The context is applicable to domestic and international poverty.  Oftentimes it is easy to characterize the poor as lazy and not working hard enough.  The debate over entitlements is partially resting upon the idea that the US poor are not working hard enough to make their lives better.  As Duflo points out, this is just not true.

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HIV/AIDS, the silent war in Africa

HIV/AIDS, the silent war in Africa

Africa Can... - End Poverty

Damien de Walque

Deon Filmer

Under-5 mortality is often used—perhaps implicitly—as a measure of "population health".  But what is happening to adult mortality in Africa? 

In a recent working paperⁱ , we combine data from 84 Demographic and Health Surveys from 46 countries, and calculate mortality based on the sibling mortality reports collected from female respondents aged 15-49. The working paper is available here and the database we used for the analysis can be found here.

We find that adult mortality is quite different from child mortality (under-5 mortality)¹.   This is perhaps obvious to most readers, but is clearly illustrated in figure 1. While in general both under-5 and adult mortality decline with per-capita income, and over time, the latter effect is much smaller for adult mortality, which has barely shifted in countries outside Africa between 1975-79 and 2000-04.

But in sub-Saharan Africa, contrary to under-5 mortality everywhere and to adult mortality outside of Africa, adult mortality increased between 1975-79 and 2000-04 and the relationship between adult mortality and income became positive in Africa as indicated by the upward sloping line in 2000-04.

This diverging and dramatic trend for sub-Saharan Africa is mainly driven by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. 

read more

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East Africa drought - in pictures

East Africa drought - in pictures

Global development news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk

East Africa is experiencing the worst drought for 60 years, which has led to the devastation of farmland, failed harvests and livestock deaths. At least 10 million people are expected to need humanitarian assistance

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Tap the Crowd with iStart

Tap the Crowd with iStart

SSIR Opinion & Analysis

Have you thought about running a contest or crowdsourcing ideas for your organization or community group? If you have, you certainly aren't alone. In a previous job, I had the opportunity to help run crowdsourcing contests for new and innovative technologies that help nonprofits and the world. One of the biggest lessons from my experience running contests and watching the crowdsourcing phenomenon expand online is that if you don't have access to a tipping point of people, you won't get the responses or participation you're after. There's a new platform hoping to help you do just that: iStart.

The Value of Crowdsourcing
There are many ways to approach crowdsourcing, but the value usually focuses on three components:
• Exposing your organization, campaign, program, etc. to people in the crowd (as in, expand beyond your community)
• Recruiting new volunteers, donors, or activists that are excited to continue working with you
• Collecting ideas, products, services, or support for free/cheap (keeping in mind that your time is still a cost)

Whether you're holding a logo competition or looking for a mobile application that supports rural medical workers, crowdsourcing can play a valuable role by accomplishing that goal and expanding your organization's reach in the process.

iStart and Options for Nonprofits
I've been poking around on the newly relaunched iStart platform lately—here are some of my observations.

The Ins and Outs
After a start as a business plan competition tool, iStart is now open for many kinds of crowdsourcing contests that organizations want to run. Much like the NetSquared Challenges platform, it offers users the option of entering contests and searching through submissions across contests to find ideas. It also gives you options for saving searches and getting alerts when there are new proposals that match your criteria. Most exciting for organizations is the option to administer your own contest on the platform.

The platform requires that participants in your contest submit an abstract, but what is included in that submission is up to you. It also supports a range of files, so your contest could be a logo redesign, social media policy, video clip, or conference session proposal.

It Isn't Free—and That's OK
Running a contest on iStart isn't free, even for nonprofits, but I think that's okay. Crowdsourcing is still something that many organizations think is easy, and when we think something is easy, we tend not to put many resources into it. That's a major reason why, many times, organizations don't feel like their crowdsourcing efforts really work—they didn't plan for all the effort it takes to recruit and to facilitate a contest.

The fact that nonprofits do have to pay to use the platform means they will save themselves the headache of moderating submissions on their own website (through emails or comments, or however else). It also encourages strategic planning ahead of launching a contest, which helps organizations identify whether it's really the best tactic to deploy.

Making It Work for You
You can jump right to iStart's FAQ for information about pricing and getting started, but if you think you want to dive in to the crowdsourcing world, here are a few things to keep in mind:
• Have a plan. Know why crowdsourcing is right for what you're doing and how you will engage participants after the contest is over.
• Communicate. Be sure your email list, your Facebook page, your Twitter followers, and all of your partners know that you're running a contest before you launch it so that they can get ready to participate and to spread the word for you.
• Establish rules. Make your rules for participation clear and public.
• Give it time. Don't hold a contest for a day; people need a couple of weeks at least to see the contest has launched, think about or work on their idea, and submit.
• Stick to your word. If you say you're going to pick a winner, then you should. If you say there will be three finalists, then there should be three (or more if there's a tie). In case you don't get the kind of submissions you're after, either plan to pick a winner and work with them to develop their submission further, or include in the rules that winning doesn't necessarily mean the winning submission will be used.

Have you run a crowdsourcing contest before? How did it go and what did you learn? Are you thinking of diving in—what questions do you have about the process or strategy?

---

Amy Sample Ward's passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.

 

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‘Doing the Right Thing:’ A Brief Guide to the Jargon

'Doing the Right Thing:' A Brief Guide to the Jargon

The Business Ethics Blog

Everyone agrees that business should "do what's right," even if they disagree over what the right thing is. One significant barrier to even talking about doing the right thing is vocabulary. The vocabulary applied to "doing the right thing" is messy and varied. Here's a brief critical guide to the most common terminology:

• Business Ethics. This is the most general term, and the one that can be defined more or less uncontroversially. As a field of study, business ethics can be defined as the critical, structured examination of how people & institutions should behave in the world of commerce. There are two problems with the term. One is that the word is too often associated with scandal. I once had a business group ask me to come speak to its members, but could I please not use the word "ethics." The second problem is that people sometimes (wrongly) associate the word "ethics" with a narrow range of questions about personal integrity, or about professional standards.
• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This is an incredibly popular term, but generally poorly defined. Most definitions you'll find don't actually look like definitions. If you look around online, you'll find that CSR is generally thought to have something to do with giving back to the community, and making a social contribution. But it's too narrow a term to cover the full range of issues involved in doing the right thing in business. Not all businesses are corporations. Not all business obligations are social ones. And we're interested not just in the responsibilities of business, but also permissions, duties, rights, entitlements, and so on.
• Sustainability. The word "sustainability" has roots in environmentalism, where it nicely picks out the issue of how we as a society can continue to make use of resources in a way that makes sure there continues to be enough, especially for enjoyment by future generations. But the term is badly abused in the world of business. Sometimes it just refers to the ability to sustain profits, which is pretty far from its original meaning. Other people try to pack too much into the word. I recently had a sustainability consultant tell me that the word "sustainability" no longer means, you know, sustainability…it just means "all the good stuff." But lots of "good stuff" in business has nothing to do with sustaining anything. It takes tortured logic and wishful thinking to say that all matters of doing the right thing in business can simply be boiled down to sustainability.
• Corporate Citizenship. Citizenship is essentially a political notion, having to do with the relationship between the individual and the state. The term "corporate citizenship" is evocative. It reminds us that businesses aren't free-floating; they exist in a social and political context, and that context brings obligations. But just as all of your obligations are not citizenship obligations, not all of a corporation's obligations are obligations of corporate citizenship.
• Triple Bottom Line. Luckily, this one seems to be dying out. The Triple Bottom Line (3BL) is rooted in the very sane idea that business managers should manage not just the financial performance of their companies, but also their social and environmental performance. Unfortunately, the term implies something much bolder, namely that each of those areas of performance can be boiled down to a "bottom line." And that's simply not true. (Just try asking a company what their social "bottom line" was last year.) The result is that the term sounds tough-minded, but usually ends up being just the opposite. For more about the problems with 3BL, see here.

So choose your words wisely. We shouldn't be scared off by the varied terminology. But we ought to recognize that each of these terms has its problems. Different constituencies will find different vocabularies attractive, and perhaps congenial to their interests. And also keep in mind that each of these terminologies is promoted by a different set of consultants and gurus, all eager to tell you that thinking in terms of their favourite vocabulary is the key.

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