Post Aid Transformation: What Next?

If you don't have Flash, you can watch the video here.

In this inspiring story, MIT Media Lab, Ph. D. student David Sengeh, who is from Sierra Leone, shares the story of Kelvin Doe. Kelvin is a self-taught inventor also from Sierra Leone. Most of Kelvin's creations have come from discarded electrical components which he found in the garbage. He's created a low power FM radio station and a generator to power it, all from other people's "trash."

At 2:11 David discusses International Aid and what needs to come next. David says:

"For quite many years, Sierra Leone and many African countries received aid. But it does not necessarily get us anywhere. We are not looking into the future. We are not designing our own future. Unless we have a host of young people who can think (at any given point) that here's a challenge, that here's a problem, with an opportunity to solve it, there won't be stable growth in national development."

• What do you think?
• How can our aid efforts also foster the next steps of empowering people to design their own future?
• What are you working on now that activates these ideas?
• What questions does this story raise for you and your work?

How do we Treat the People we Serve: Like Refugees or Like Customers?

Auren Kaplan of triplepundit.com profiles Paul Polak who is a leading voice for ending poverty through applying basic business principles. You can read the entire post here.

Paul says:

"You may have the noblest intentions in the world, and even be selflessly dedicating your time and talent as a volunteer, but you won’t get very far by treating poor people as recipients of charity."

Auren writes:

This is a controversial stance. Indeed, there are thousands of global organizations, with tens of thousands of hard-working human beings, attempting to lift these 2.7 billion people out of poverty. But absent some notable success stories, the nonprofit sector has failed to solve the issue of poverty in a measurable, scalable way. If they had, Paul wouldn’t need to be working on ending poverty.

The reason why is that without the market mechanism of profit driving the intentions of individuals at every level of the supply chain – down to the last 500 feet -  things break down. But when people are motivated by the opportunity to earn profit, they stay in the game. The numbers speak for themselves.

For example: take a water well, subsidized by the government and installed by a nonprofit. Once that water well breaks, who fixes it? Unfortunately, the answer is usually no one. However, if that well was operated by a small local business in one of the nearly 650,000 villages in India, and it made a small profit by selling that water to the homes of villagers – a service the villagers have asked for and are willing to pay – then that well will be maintained ongoing.

• What do you think?
• How do you and your organization think about the people you serve?
• Are they charity recipients or customers?
• What effect would treating them like customers have on your operations?

The Transformative Power of Generosity

Here's a moving story that demonstrates the power of generosity. As you'll see in this video, generosity is a powerful motivator as well as a transformative agent of change. I was especially moved when the narrator says "The people realized they needed to create wealth in order to allow for tangible generosity." Here is a community that started from scratch with absolutely no money. They first asked "How can the people from the West help us?." However, Hanington inspired his people to ask a different question. "How soon can my people rise to the challenge of funding, not only their immediate needs, but their futures as well?" And so it began...

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=59AKlDNSGtY
If you don't have Flash, click the link above to view the video

• What do you think?
• Have you seen this happen in any of the places where you work?
• What lessons can we take from their experience?

The Challenge of Thoughtless Charity

(This is a ‘who-died,’ a pile of used clothing in the market in Djibouti. Who-died as in, ‘who died and sent us these clothes?’ Clothes here are often worn until they are completely worn out, the idea that people would give perfectly good clothes while they are still alive is a foreign concept.) - Rachel Pieh Jones of djiboutijones.com

 
In her post, "Don't Send Your Used Shoes to Africa, or Maybe Do Send Them",  Rachel Pieh Jones writes about the detrimental effect charity can have on developing communities and economies.
After revealing many challenges with thoughtless charity (specifically regarding shoes and other articles of clothing, she offers:

I do think there is a place for donations in the world of development and I think a generous, giving spirit is a commendable, spiritual, and beautiful character trait. We are often on the receiving end of incredibly generous donations – from money to books to shoes to school supplies to soccer balls…for which we are grateful and the things go to really good use. I would rather have our girls run in gently used shoes than get thorns in their feet, for example. I will not tell people to stop donating but I will make some recommendations on how to be smart about it.
How can you be wise and generous?

1. Don’t send your trash.
2. Don’t donate with the idea that it will save the world. That’s not your job and it won’t be accomplished with a t-shirt anyway.
3. Don’t send it in ignorance, thinking the continent is filled with naked people. Do a little research, learn about where you are sending your things, use the desire to donate as a launching  pad for educating yourself and your family and your community.
4. Don’t sent it simply so you can feel better about an addiction to consumption.
5. Find a useful way to send it. Find an appropriate way to send it. Find a relational way to send it. Rather than dumping at Goodwill, engage with a local community development project, like Girls Run 2 or a school, an organization with which you can form an ongoing relationship or an organization with a proven track-record of relationships and development.
6. Pay for the shipping yourself, don’t ask the receiving organization to pay for that or for port fees or the inevitable import taxes.
7. If you aren’t sure that used clothes or shoes will be helpful, relational, or desirable, donate money instead and trust the people on the ground to make wise decision in allocating that money.
8. Consider the amount of waste involved in constantly updating your wardrobe and shipping those goods and consider renewing your wardrobe less often, less expensively.
9. Ask yourself, really truly ask and demand an honest answer, Why do you want to send your used clothes to Africa? Why does it make you angry to hear it might not be helpful or that cash would be more useful? Does it challenge your ideas about the continent? Does it challenge your consumerism? A do-gooder-without-pain-or-real-sacrifice attitude? Does it make you feel guilty, confused, uncertain? That’s okay. I will say it again, that’s okay. Everyone I know here, in the US, myself, my family, we all face these issues. So answer the question with courageous integrity and then go about addressing that answer. We are all on a journey and instead of judging or boasting, let’s grow.
10. Research, ask questions, learn, and then act, with eyes open wide and a heart filled with humble generosity.

• What do you think? 
• Have you wrestled with similar concerns? 
• How do you help people who want to give consider how they give?

Let's Go: Innaugural post... What's in a Name?

Welcome to GloBRaD (Global Business Relief and Development). In choosing a name we've tried to represent what we'd like to discuss here.

There are a few experiences that inform this arrangement of words. In 2010, I was having coffee in Lusaka, Zambia with friends from Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya. Two of them are professors of Pharmacy, and the other is an engineer for NASA who designs life support systems for the International Space Station. As we talked, we collectively observed that in Africa, America does aid, Europe does development, and China does business. I think we need to do more business... I also believe that business is not the only solution, and to only rely on business professionals ignores years of hard earned cross-cultural insight, wisdom, and experience available in the spheres of Aid, Relief, and Development.

The concept of a BRAID is also relevant. I've made a practice of applying the wisdom found in this Hebrew proverb: 
By yourself you’re unprotected.
With a friend you can face the worst.
Can you round up a third?A three-stranded rope isn’t easily snapped. (Ecclesiastes 4:12 The Message)

My wife and I first considered this truth at the behest of the minister who provided our premarital counseling and performed our wedding. His point was about the importance of giving holistic consideration to our needs within the context of our marriage: physical, mental, spiritual.

Working in Africa since 2008, I've also tried to apply the wisdom of the African Proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

This is a place where you will find regular links to articles from around the world discussing: 

• Business (development)
• Relief
• Aid
• International Development

We'll also enjoy guest posts from professionals working in these areas. As each of these strands are woven together they (and we) become stronger than they would otherwise be.


It's my desire that the articles presented (and linked to) here will provide food for thought and a platform to engage and develop our own thoughts and practices in each of these areas. If something resonates with you, let's discuss it. If you think it's completely wrong, let's discuss it. If you have a question, let's discuss it.

Welcome, I trust we'll all be better informed and equipped as a result of time spent here. 
Let's Go!

(Side note: trolls and inflammatory rhetoric will not be indulged, hosted, or considered. There are plenty of other places to exercise those tendencies and desires: like maybe your own blog :).