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  • November 30, 1999

Archives For November 30, 1999

Break The Silence:Child Sex Trafficking

Lisa Genasci —  April 22, 2010 — 2 Comments

The sex trafficking and abuse of children is a growing problem regionally fueled by the $32 billion internet porn industry. As I’ve written earlier, UNICEF estimates that every year 1.2 million children are trafficked for sex, adding to the millions more already in captivity. 

Trafficking of children is highly lucrative and while profits are high, penalties are low in most Asian countries.  Internet porn isn’t the only outlet; growing sex tourism in Asia hasn’t helped. Child victims usually come from small villages, where awareness is lowest and poverty worst. 

Southeast Asian countries are source, transit and destination countries for child-sex traffickers and pedophiles. There is clear need for better education and awareness regarding the dangers children face. 

While, there are some excellent programs for Child Protection developed by local and international groups in Asia, for budgetary reasons these usually do not include smaller villages and often even slum communities where children are most at risk. 

It is here that awareness is lowest and families are often groomed to part with their children, supposedly to good jobs in the cities.

Parents, often faced with terrible decisions around paying medical and food bills, will separate from a child thinking they will be looked after by the kindly “auntie” or “uncle” who has promised the family financial support in return.

In rural and some slum communities, families, authorities, teachers and even small NGOs are neither aware of the problem nor able to prevent it.

Stairway Foundation  recognized years ago that in the Philippines, a favorite child-sex tourism destination, the 1.5 million street children and many millions more living in urban slums were easy targets.

In response, SF has developed three purpose-made animated films on incest, pedophilia and child-trafficking that have helped hundreds of organizations warn communities there.  But the message needs to spread widely in Asia and parents need to see alternatives.

Hong Kong-based ADM Capital Foundation is helping SF develop the animation materials and accompanying training into a regional strategy under the title, Break the Silence.  We believe that not only will BTS be complimentary to child protection programs already in place, but could be used in Western countries to educate young people about internet child pornography.

Ultimately, the goal is to build an effective awareness and protection program through local organizations that are able to offer a first line of support to children at risk of trafficking and abuse.

The program is designed to grow into a sustainable initiative driven by SF in co-operation with regional partners, sharing its approach toward reaching out to and effectively protecting marginalized children across Asia.

Have you seen any particularly innovative child protection work in Asia or beyond?  We are keen to learn of others working effectively in this arena.

In asia, children at risk, Philanthropy, social enterprise , , ,
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Preserving Bangladesh’s Wooden Boat Culture

Lisa Genasci —  April 10, 2010 — 3 Comments

French sailor Yves Marre first viewed Bangladesh’s myriad waterways from a plane and the adventurer decided the intriguing country below would be the location for his next exploration.

Yves perhaps would not have guessed that his adventure would consume him or that 25 years later he would be still living in Dhaka, married to a Bangladeshi Runa Khan and desperately struggling against time and lack of resources to document the country’s dying wooden boat building tradition.

What in 1994 then began as a development project involving transporting a 38-meter river barge from France to Bangladesh for use as a hospital boat in the remote northern chars, gave birth to Friendship, an excellent social enterprise I wrote about in my previous blog post. What I didn’t talk about was Friendship’s commitment to Bangladesh’s fascinating boat culture.

Last month, Friendship opened an exhibition of Bangladesh’s remarkable wooden boats at Dhaka’s National Museum as part of its cultural preservation programme. It is extraordinary that in a country so dependent on waterways, considered the world’s most susceptible to climate change, where boats are integral to trade and transport, that the art of boat building is dying quickly and with little fanfare.

Bangladesh has one of the oldest traditions in terms of naval carpentry, and it also has the largest fleets in the world. Here you will find the largest variety of boats

anywhere in the world, Marre says. It is all this that is being lost without adequate documentation or preservation of the country’s naval history, he says.

For many centuries, wooden boats with large earth-colored sails have plied Bangladesh’s hundreds of rivers and tributaries and they have become interwoven with the country’s culture. Yet over the past few decades, these beautiful vessels, many unique to particular regions of Bangladesh, have slowly been replaced by diesel-powered steel vessels, which are less expensive and more practical in terms of maintenance and navigation.

Yves and Runa have taken it upon themselves to draw attention to the disappearance and at the same time document and preserve the techniques and knowledge.

At his boatyard in Dhaka, Yves has built the more than 50 models on display at the museum in Dhaka of traditional Bangladeshi vessels. Building these, have been master craftsmen using only traditional techniques that are often unique to the country.

Here, Yves also has built or restored several full-size wooden boats, among them a beautiful 30-meter Malar vessel, one of the country’s largest hulls and now used to carry tourists along Bangladesh’s waterways. Some profits from the Friendship tourism company, Contic, built around the wooden boats, goes to support the social enterprise’s work.

Looking forward, Runa and Yves hope to establish a living museum that would preserve all types of traditional Bangladeshi boats in Dhaka and allow people to experience the craftsmanship involved.  To achieve this, they are searching for funding. Any suggestions of similar efforts elsewhere or possible sources of funding?

In cultural preservation, Philanthropy, social enterprise , , ,
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Supporting Life in Bangladesh’s Chars: When microfinance doesn’t work

Lisa Genasci —  April 5, 2010 — 1 Comment

I recently spent some days in Bangladesh with Friendship and the excellent social enterprise’s executive director, Runa Khan. Friendship works with tens of thousands of the world’s most-vulnerable people who live in the northern Chars, remote and shifting sandbar islands that flood in winter and suffer drought in the summer.

Located about seven hours from Dhaka, these must be some of the most inhospitable habitats anywhere and consequently life expectancy for the forgotten people is only late 40s. In the rains, the islands shrink to slips of land with a few banana trees, with inhabitants and their livestock often forced to rooftops to survive the floods. In the heat of summer, the walks to the villages are often as long as three kilometers from the river through unforgiving sand.

An estimated 4 million nomadic people inhabit the 200 islands woven through the Brahmaputra river where land flattens toward the Bay of Bengal. The sand dwellers migrate from one island to another as much as 50 times in a lifetime, carrying with them their tin houses in the floods.

Climate change is clearly felt in Bangladesh’s distant northern and equally distant southern regions, where Friendship is almost alone among NGOs in working. Government reach here is also limited, Khan says. The people used to at least have certainty about the weather patterns but now the rains and droughts are harder to predict and more extreme, she says.

Friendship started its work more than ten years ago providing health care to the communities on a specially outfitted hospital barge, brought from France by Khan’s now husband, French sailor Yves Marre.  Now two hospital ships and an ambulance boat ply the Brahmauptra spending a month or two in each location, offering primary care at about US 10 cents for men, 5-7 cents for women and children as well as affordable basic surgery to the region’s weather-beaten inhabitants.

From medical care, Friendship has extended into education, (both for children and adults), livelihood and vocational support, working closely with communities to help them meet all their needs. With a staff of around 350, a complex schedule of foreign doctors and other medical professionals who fly in for specialized care, Friendship works with an estimated 40-50,000 people previously served mostly by microfinance providers, who often prayed on the extreme poverty.

Khan points out that although microfinance can work for people with at least some education and means of support, it is often not appropriate for the poorest, who will use any available funds simply to buy food for their families.    Many lenders, she says, show up on the islands with offers of cash, promising interest rates of only 10 percent annually. Without knowledge of basic arithmetic, the people take the money, spend it and then must meet the payments that often add up to rates closer to 50 percent, she says. And these are some of the better microcredit institutions. Money lenders charge as much as 120 percent.

“When we first start working with a char one of the first things we must do is unwind the microfinance loans,” Khan says. “People at that level of poverty need grants and other forms of support not loans.”

Khan says that the char people more than anything need, “hope for tomorrow” and Friendship offers education where there were no schools, healthcare where there were no doctors, livelihoods where people had none, community organization where people were disperse and disaster preparedness where there wasn’t any. A focus is on discussion, trading information, and building savings to prepare for years where the floods or droughts are life-threatening or force a relocation.

Friendship is also working to create a harmonious environment in the stark landscapes, building appropriate and local farming techniques for sand, bringing in solar where they can – with an emphasis on keeping people in their places of birth. Without Friendship, many people from these regions have swelled the slums of Dhaka in search of work.

Schools can be disassembled in three hours and moved to higher ground, girls are taught weaving and dying – skills that help them contribute to the family income and avoid an early marriage (12-14 was the norm before Friendship arrived). Community health workers are trained and sent to the villages, where they teach local people about nutrition, sanitation, about warning signs in a pregnancy and basic child health techniques. They also can dispense basic medicines.

“We listen to the communities, hear their needs and respond in ways that are appropriate,” says Khan of Friendship, which is surely one of the more innovative organizations I have seen.

In asia, children at risk, Environment, Philanthropy, Uncategorized, water , , , ,
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Measuring Social Impact in Philanthropy

Lisa Genasci —  March 7, 2010 — 2 Comments

Choosing how to give philanthropic dollars is usually a personal, often private, and hopefully rewarding enterprise many people like to keep close to home.

Those who spend much of their lives juggling returns on their financial investments and building wealth, often prefer to let other factors determine how to give to charity; emotion, for example, and perhaps friendship since frequently giving is something done in the comfort of circles or with friends.

The ever-bigger M'Lop Tapang centre for street children in Sihanoukville, Cambodia

But what is the significance of the donor community? Giving USA reports that every year, 40 million individual donors in the U.S. contribute $250 billion which represents more than 75% of total giving. That is a significant wad of cash that could be put to good use cleaning our environment and making our world a better place for marginalized communities. And that’s just in the U.S.

Obviously, there is no right approach to philanthropy and no absolute way to judge how effective a donation has been, despite that over the past two decades a whole industry has grown up around measuring social impact. But I think that once again we know more about what we don’t know rather than what we do.

Why do we need to think about how we give anyway? Isn’t that the point of giving – not to expect any return? I would say yes, true on one level, but not really. Why? Much has been written recently about the pitfalls of aid more generally. Two of the more vocal critics are New York University’s Bill Easterly and Dambisa Moyo whose book Dead Aid caused wide controversy.

The trouble is, without a concerted strategy or effective tools to guide us, many individual donors, grant-making bodies and foundations alike fall into the trap of providing aid that in the longer-term CAN be more damaging than helpful, despite our best intentions.

Because of issues around governance, particularly in a region like Asia where corruption is rampant, donors bypass governments, choosing instead to invest in a network of NGOs, which keeps these same NGOs flush with cash and lots of people employed.

If the NGO isn’t particularly thoughtful and doesn’t engage local government, this giving strategy also deprives the state of any stake in change and almost relieves them from the responsibility of improving the lives of marginalized citizens without a voice.

Another issue is that donors frequently prefer to contribute to contained NGO projects rather than to strengthening the organization simply because programmatic support fits with a particular donor funding agenda.

Although building new programs or expanding existing ones is important in terms of an NGO widening its impact, these often come at the expense of organizational support. It’s hard to see how an NGO can create a program, monitor it and measure its impact without sufficient organizational resources to do so.

Occasionally, or more than occasionally, an NGO has bent its needs to receive the targeted funding so there is little incentive or lack of adequate skills to really build.

And often that programmatic support is short term, given in periods of two to three years, after which the project is expected to be magically self-sustaining. Usually that is unrealistic and once funds are gone so is the program, leading to a real waste of resources.

So how do we make sure, as donors, that we are working as effectively as we can be with our own resources and not operating counterproductively, particularly in the developing world where issues are deep and broad?

This brings us right back to much talked about measuring impact. An excellent Wall Street Journal Article on Friday, Measuring the Bang of Every Donated Buck by Alice Hohler is a good discussion of the issues around this topic. http://bit.ly/d3Afil.

She points out that while many companies and NGOs have developed formulas for measuring the effectiveness of a donation, there still is no real magic box. She points to the tricky question of the unique qualities of nonprofits that are each fulfilling a social need in their own way.

There is little standardization in this field and little reason why one set of measures would fit all. Naturally, each organization then requires its own evaluation to assess its effectiveness and that is prohibitively expensive. It certainly isn’t scalable, which is another obsession among the donor community.

At the same time, any analysis of impact on the part of an NGO is only as good as the information gathered and few organizations have the resources, skill set or manpower to gather relevant data and then assess the real benefit.

An organization that  works to get children back into school will have a much easier time determining impact than for example a conservation group that works with communities to educate them about biodiversity and the value of preserving their forests.

But even in the first instance, we see there are many, many ways to count!

And then, how to compare organizations working in different spaces to determine which would use additional resources more effectively, providing the greatest benefit to a particular community?

We find that the best way around this question is to work in a holistic way with organizations, to help them set their own measurements with their particular children, to constantly work with them on developing initiatives and monitoring their effectiveness.

In that way, we can help them refine impact, reach more children or work more effectively in a particular conservation space. We shy away from the obvious numbers that are so often meaningless, preferring instead to let the work tell the story.

Any thoughts on interesting innovation in impact measurement seen working well?

In asia, children at risk, Environment, Philanthropy , , , , ,
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Paying for Forest Conservation

Lisa Genasci —  February 23, 2010 — 1 Comment

Most of us agree that deforestation on the scale we have seen in recent decades is undesirable and unsustainable.

Our tropical forests are in dramatic decline, pumping tons of carbon into our atmosphere and causing changes in temperature and rainfall worldwide with potentially devastating consequences for our planet.

The problem remains, how to tackle this critical problem in developing regions, where corruption is endemic, how to pay the enormous costs of protecting forests and engaging the local communities that depend on them for their livelihoods.

Reversing global deforestation will require industrialized countries to invest billions annually in forest protection. It is worth remembering, however, that last year U.S. government put aside $700 billion for banks, insurers and automakers during the financial crisis as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

By now, we know the story: Rainforests soak up huge amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide. Deforestation releases retained CO2 released into the atmosphere.  Forest destruction contributes about 20 percent of mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to the U.N. climate panel. Indeed, tropical deforestation is more damaging to our planet than the transport sector or factories, with one day of logging equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York.

And why do we care? Our rainforests form a vital cooling band around the earth’s equator, generating a large part of our rainfall and acting as a thermostat.  We perhaps also aren’t aware that 50 per cent of life on earth exists in these humid forests, which cover less than 7 per cent of the planet’s surface. We are far from understanding the real consequences of losing the biodiversity we seem to take for granted.

Yet our governments, and indeed most of us, continue to act as though our tropical forests are expendable, that there is no impending climate crisis, biodiversity is a given, perhaps unimportant, and anticipate little, if any alteration in our lives of consumption and energy use.

Clearly, December’s global climate powwow in Copenhagen was the best reflection of this, with no real sense of urgency conveyed by governments gathered there.  Country delegations arrived by private jet, were ferried around town in gas-guzzling limos – not exactly the right tone for a crisis meeting on climate.

There had been hope to gain a legally binding international treaty committing nations to mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases but none was forthcoming, lost once more in the all too familiar regional bickering. And chances are slim of any agreement from the next round of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, particularly following the resignation last week of Yvo de Boer, who has led the process for four years.

The pledges that de Boer did manage to eke out of Copenhagen will merely stabilize emissions by 2020. By most accounts, we need to achieve reductions  of at least 50 percent by midcentury – something that can’t be achieved without big cuts from the major emitters, which are the U.S., China, India and Brazil.

Part of the problem lies in ascertaining, at the international level, who should pay to conserve our forests. Developing nations want the right to develop unimpeded, while the United States wants to see significant emissions cuts from China and India that would be on par with its own and doesn’t want to be held accountable for cost.   Fundamentally, the U.S. has no effective national strategy of its own and thus is really not in a position to take the lead.

The assumption is that at some point, nations will get it together to achieve meaningful emissions reduction and carbon will become a real part of the solution. In the meantime, regional initiatives such as the U.S. Climate Change legislation currently stalled in the U.S. senate are evolving and could bring some movement in the carbon picture, generating resources for forestry conservation.

But will this be too little too late for our forests and what is the solution for them while we wait?

The bottom line is that in an attempt to protect what is left of our precious stores of tropical timber and the estimated 1.6 billion people who live amongst them, environmental groups have poured tens of millions of dollars into conservation over the last two decades without any real gains.

Global Witness co-founder Patrick Alley, said in a worth-quoting speech last year :

Virtually every intervention by the international donor community into the forests sector over the past few decades costing hundreds of millions of dollars has essentially been to patch up the holes in enforcement to stop the haemorrhaging of illegal timber and corruptly looted revenues. And these interventions have ranged from certification, chain of custody systems, governance, capacity building, law enforcement and there has been precious little success in that litany. And on top of this, we have the increasing threats of conversion to plantations and agricultural encroachment http://bit.ly/fiCvz

The U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization says about 13 million hectares, or an area the size of England, are still destroyed annually. In all, half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are now gone.

Author and environmental advocate, Gus Speth, ( http://bit.ly/bSBjOR) pointed out in a recent speech that species are disappearing at rates about 1,000 times faster than normal in a spasm of extinction not seen in 65 million years, since the dinosaurs disappeared.

Changes in our rainfall patterns have meant that over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration and desertification.

A key concern, if we are to reverse this trend, is either how to pay for conservation or, alternatively, how to make conservation pay; at a national level, how to justify the loss of revenue for developing countries that need the income.

The sad reality is that logging in the tropics generates enormous profit, but not for local communities and mostly not for governments in the form of taxes. Instead, much of the profit finds its way into corporate coffers and the offshore accounts of connected local individuals through corruption and illegal practices. The profit pressures on forests are huge from these interests. Biodiesel and palm oil have now also entered the equation, adding to the strains.

One initiative that tries to address the question of  how to generate profit for conservation and formalized at the Copenhagen talks was a U.N.-backed forest protection scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation or REDD.

This would include forests in the global carbon markets,  allowing polluters to earn tradable carbon credits by paying developing nations billions not to chop down their trees.  Local communities are supposed to earn a share of REDD credit sales to pay for better health, education and alternative livelihoods that persuade them to protect rather than cut down their forests.

But the revenue-sharing arrangements will differ for each country. Some NGOs worry that once again little support will filter down to the communities, with central and provincial governments demanding control of the money.

Another problem is that carbon measurement and accounting as part of any REDD design is complex and time-consuming, requiring laws to be enacted, officials to be trained and investors to be assured that the scheme won’t be undermined by corruption.

And finally, ensuring the forests aren’t simply cut down later, or that deforestation is displaced to another region or country, is another concern. REDD’s final technical design will have to address these issues.

Still, the well-regarded Eliasch Review (http://bit.ly/d99kM3) suggests that including REDD in a well-designed carbon trading system could provide the finance and incentives to reduce deforestation rates by up to 75 per cent in 2030

Still, in Indonesia, where the REDD discussion is quite advanced, there have been warnings that billions of dollars clearly are at risk from graft unless the country puts strong oversight mechanisms in place, according to a recent report released by CIFOR. (http://bit.ly/cfld28)

“Investors should be looking very carefully at the financial governance conditions in the countries where they will be investing their funds. Like Indonesia, many tropical forest countries have long track records of mismanaging public financial resources, particularly in the forestry sector,” said the report’s co-author, Christopher Barr.

Indonesia, which is one country in which ADMCF works on forestry issues, is the world’s third-largest area of tropical forest and the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon after the United States and China because of the massive destruction there of rainforest and peatlands.

Last year, Indonesia set up a legal framework for REDD. Several pilot projects are under way and the governments of Norway, Australia, Germany and the U.S. have promised millions of dollars in funding.

What we have seen everywhere forests are protected however, are the sad unintended consequences of the scramble for carbon: environmental groups that have been conserving forests are backing away from protecting them, fearing that as protected forest they won’t qualify under the REDD additionality clause.

It is uncertain whether already protected forests would qualify for REDD credits. This means that while we wait for REDD, for any sort of global or regional framework that will push forward the mechanisms that will allow large-scale protection, our forests are potentially more vulnerable than ever.

In asia, carbon, Environment, forests, Philanthropy, redd , , , , , , ,
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Hong Kong Gov’s Inaction on Air Pollution

Lisa Genasci —  February 10, 2010 — Leave a comment

Hong Kong’s air quality is among the world’s worst for a city of comparable income levels. Here, the pollution we breathe negatively affects everyone. Not surprisingly, the poor are disproportionately impacted because they are unable to move out of some of the city’s most congested, polluted areas.

Since 1987, the World Health Organization has issued Air Quality Guidelines (”AQG”) to help governments protect public health. These AQGs are periodically revised to take into account the latest scientific research on the health impact of bad air. Currently, however, Hong Kong’s Air Quality Objectives (“AQO”) permit emissions that exceed the WHO’s latest AQGs by two to four times.  The AQOs, which are non-binding, were last updated in 1987. This year, the Government is reviewing the AQOs for the first time in more than 20 years.

Over the past two decades there has been insufficient action to mitigate air pollution in Hong Kong. We have often heard from government officials that there is little that can be done to change the quality of our air because much of the pollution drifts across the border from Guangdong.

Yet, research by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has shown that 53% of the time (192 days per year in 2006), most pollution affecting Hong Kong is from LOCAL SOURCES.

Some alarming facts about Hong Kong air pollution:

  • By WHO standards, Hong Kong’s air is only safely breathable 41 days a year.
  • Hong Kong air pollution causes three (avoidable) deaths a day, or more than 1,100 per year.
  • Hong Kong’s air is three times more polluted than New York’s and more than twice as polluted as London.
  • Although overall emissions tonnage has fallen in the past 15 years, roadside pollution has not improved. Because of its high concentration in close physical proximity to us, roadside pollution poses the biggest threat to human health.
  • 40% of roadside emissions come from buses.

It is therefore incorrect to believe that Hong Kong-based pollution abatement measures would make no or little difference in improving the local air quality.

We believe the Government could and should act immediately to improve the quality of air we breathe. Many cities worldwide have successfully taken action to clean their air and we believe that with tight AQOs and an appropriate plan of action could similarly clean up our air and improve the lives and health of residents

The Clean Air Network (www.hongkongcan.org) was formed to educate the public about the health impacts of air pollution and mobilize support for clean air in Hong Kong.

CAN is a NETWORK, bringing together and amplifying the voices of individuals, groups and organizations.

CAN’s overarching goal is to work with the Government to implement a stricter and more proactive air quality management regime.

Watch the CAN video here: http://bit.ly/86Md2r

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In asia, carbon, Environment, health, Hong Kong, Philanthropy, pollution , , , ,
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The Great Disconnect

Lisa Genasci —  January 24, 2010 — Leave a comment

Good salon conversation yesterday with Bill Barron, economist and author of The Great Disconnect, Martin Lees, secretary-general of the Club of Rome, Christine Loh of Hong Kong’s Civic Exchange and Adrian Nelson, who writes and consults on sustainability issues from Manila.

Organized by Civic Exchange, about 30 people packed a China Club room to hear Bill talk about his new book: http://bit.ly/5YwjRG. Martin and Adrian provide invaluable insight. The book essentially covers the disconnect between the reality scientists urgently are trying to convey about the state of our world, about how close we are to depleting our natural resources, to changing our climate and planet irreparably, yet the ever-growing levels of consumption and lack of action from most governments.

No governments are really looking to change our economic models, built around consumption-led growth and with 1 billion people in China and 1 billion people in India looking to consume as we have, that is simply unsustainable, given our severely depleted oceans, water resources, forests and fossil fuels.

Talked about was the U.S.’s missed opportunity to sign the Kyoto agreement and lead the world  in development of green technology, that China is seizing this moment to do just that. Is the seismic shift that will be needed to adequately address the enormous challenges we face an impossibility in a democracy was a question asked? While China seems to understand the danger of inaction and the opportunity around leading all things green, the U.S. struggles even to pass a watered-down climate change bill now stalled in the senate.

Also considered was just why the public is not getting the message that we need to radically change our way of thinking about our lives and the resources we consume, and that our governments need to respond with appropriate regulatory frameworks – both international and national – stimulate innovation and change.

The question was asked why, when given the opportunity to really lead the way, is the Hong Kong government unable to respond in any effective way to the challenges it faces, starting with the public health crisis caused by the deteriorating quality of our air. Research has shown that 53 percent of the time the pollution that affects us most is locally grown – and not from across the border as the government had claimed. Pollution in Hong Kong, which is three times that of New York and causes 1,100 avoidable deaths a year, is caused mostly by transportation: buses, dirty trucks and shipping. The two power plants, of course, also play a role.

Christine’s Civic Exchange (www.civic-exchange.org)  and more recently the Clean Air Network (www.hongkongcan.org) are both working hard to educate government about the public health effects of air pollution, its causes and solutions that would bring better quality of lives for us all. Hong Kong exists at an interesting intersection between China and the West and could easily play an essential role in stimulating change. Our government needs to seize this opportunity and lead.

In Philanthropy
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Haiti’s Tragedy

Lisa Genasci —  January 24, 2010 — Leave a comment

There is with good reason an outpouring of sympathy and aid from the world to Haiti fueled by some of the most tragic images in years. Perhaps since the South East Asian tsunami on December 26 2004 that killed 230,000 people there hasn’t been such a rush to help others in need.

The  earthquake directly affected about a third of the nation’s population of 9 million, according to the Economist. Perhaps 2% of the population has been killed, and a larger share injured. Much, and maybe most, of the capital city was destroyed. Millions may be without homes. There is certainly need.

In response, US private donors have so far sent US$1.8 billion in cash and in-kind aid, according to the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, with an AP poll showing that 30 percent of American households donated within two weeks of the disaster. There have been  parties in most communities to raise funds for Haiti. Schools have rallied in support of victims of the tragedy, organizing fundraisers and other events. Company employees have rallied to donate.

Much of the initial rush of funding has gone to support some of the aid organizations actively organizing relief operations in Haiti, including the Red Cross, Oxfam America, Partners in Health (which has been working in Haiti for two decades), Doctors without Borders and Unicef.

But it is important to remember that relief is only a small portion of what’s needed in Haiti – there will of course be a massive rebuilding effort once this initial phase is over. History shows that donations spike right after a disaster and then trail off as attentions are focused elsewhere.  At the same time, we must remember lessons from the Tsunami, which also stirred an outpouring of support for victims. Estimates are that despite the billions in well-meaning contributions, 30-40 percent of donations were tainted by graft or went astray.

Before the disaster, Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and among the poorest nations on earth, with barely functioning infrastructure nd already enormous challenges for the government.  Now it is outsiders who will have to direct and support much of that effort and it will be enormous.

So it is  important to consider longer-term support for Haiti once this first rush is over. the Besides the excellent Partners in health (http://www.pih.org), Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz recommends donating to Architecture  for Humanity (http://www.architectureforhumanity.org/).

In an excellent blog in the Harvard Business Review targeting corporations gearing up to donate, Timothy Ogden (http://bit.ly/8N7EWh) turns to the adage: “don’t just do something, stand there.” He too points to patterns following other disasters:  donations spike in the immediate aftermath; A huge portion of the funds donated are spent on setting up disaster-relief operations that are no longer the primary need; A flood of cash and materials cause a logistics nightmare leading to waste and ineffectiveness, if not corruption; Six months later, reconstruction stalls because the world’s attention has moved elsewhere.

What can we do? Obviously there is need for short-term funds but Ogden and others suggest that when you donate, not earmarking funds for relief only as well as giving to organizations with solid local connections and long experience in-country such as Partners in Health. They are in Haiti for the long-run. Give cash rather than in-kind donations. In the aftermath of the tsunami, products and supplies that could have been sourced locally were flown into affected countries at great expense leading to waste and losing the opportunity to fuel local economies. Ogden also suggests considering giving in six to eight months when it is clear where rebuilding funds are needed.

In Philanthropy
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A Beginning…..

Lisa Genasci —  January 10, 2010 — 1 Comment

It seems a moment, one of those zeitgeist moments when people start to question the status quo, they look around for what is wrong, what might work better and they seek change. What better time to start blogging about a field that desperately needs innovation, needs one of those zeitgeist moments, needs transformation: philanthropy.

Still, in this blog, just because I believe we are in a moment of transformation, I decided against using the tag philanthropy, but instead to focus on social business, which seems more fluid. I thought also that it would be worthwhile to start with a recurring and vital topic, why so little risk tolerance in the social sector at a moment when need is so great?

I recently completed an excellent week-long social entrepreneurship course at Insead in Singapore. The participants were fantastically interesting, the discussion great and the professors, from Insead’s Singapore and Fontainebleu campuses, top notch. The theme of risk aversion emerged as the bottleneck for all of us. We all identified a lack of patient risk capital in the social business sector.

Today, I found an excellent blog entry and discussion on the topic here:  http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org/blog/view/ philanthropic_capital_needs_to_take_more_risks. Nathaniel Whittemore also asks the question why the risk aversion?

I believe that in recent years many have fallen into the trap of trying to over-assess our impact, which of course can be measured in so many ways.  Many organizations feel compelled to bend programs to meet targets rather than respond to real need in new ways. As Whittemore points out, perhaps the overriding form of measurement is overhead costs, which may or may not mean anything depending on how a non-profit organization addresses a particular social problem. Inevitably, some forms of interaction with a community will be more costly than others – particularly those that involve needed and lengthy due diligence, consultation or interaction with the people the organization is hoping to serve. Presumably its exactly this constituency that can best inform or generate innovation?

The other factor limiting risk tolerance in the sector might be the potential reputational risk involved with funding a start-up initiative. This certainly springs from the real concern that a foundation must be careful with donor funds since presumably those have been hard-earned and shouldn’t be “wasted.” Part of the problem, here, though is the emphasis on maintaining the donor stream and the belief that publicized errors might scare away future support. The easy route then is to fund the tried and tested, the organizations that everyone knows – safety in numbers. If something goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone “invested.” No one’s reputation is really at stake.

I am constantly surprised by the lack of risk and innovation in the wide field of philanthropy and indeed in the act of giving itself for most people. Even entrepreneurs or those who in their for-profit lives spend real time thinking about securing a financial return, often do not consider this when investing philanthropically. They prefer to give safely regardless of how those funds are used or to what end.

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