Category: International Cooperation

Vital needs don’t always attract vital support

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Excerpts of an opinion on the question “Are charities more effective than Government?”, by John Briscoe, professor of environmental engineering at Harvard University, and a former World Bank official:

The priorities of charities are appropriately set by those who finance and manage those charities. But it seldom stops there. [Apart from non-governmental organizations that focus on health and education,] governments typically and necessarily see things like jobs as overwhelming priorities and sectors like infrastructure as critical for creating jobs and reducing poverty. I know of not a single nongovernmental organization that focuses on job creation, the provision of electricity at scale, or transport.

As a senior official in the World Bank I saw this dynamic at work every day. NGOs would lobby their governments for more attention to health, education and the environment. Rich country governments would then use their position on the board of the World Bank to push for these priorities.

Over the last 20 years this has led to a profound distortion in the priorities of the bank, with the social sectors becoming dominant and, for a long time, infrastructure lending – the original mandate of the Bank – falling to less than 10 percent of total lending.

An interesting evolution over the last decade has been the rise of countries like China, India and Brazil that give high priority to things like infrastructure, and as their weight in the global system has increased, this has led to somewhat of a rebalancing of priorities at an institution like the World Bank, but, more important a rebalancing in options for developing countries.

These countries, having recently emerged from poverty, know that it is not by putting the social cart before the economic horse that development and poverty reduction happen. They have little patience for the pleas of philanthropists rich and poor to deny poor countries the option of following the only known road to poverty reduction.

The impact of women on the global economy

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Organizations today would never think of not investing in high growth markets like China and India. Yet they are still dragging their heels when it comes to investing in women, despite it being a win-win situation for the global economy, organizations and women themselves. This is not just a human rights issue — it also makes absolute business sense.

There is much compelling evidence that women can be powerful drivers of economic growth. Estimates show that if female employment rates were to match male rates, overall GDP would grow significantly in developing countries like Egypt by a massive 34%.

The World Economic Forum also published their annual Global Gender Gap report — the data suggests a strong correlation between those countries that are most successful at closing the gender gap and those that are the most economically competitive.

Over the next decade, the impact of women on the global economy — as producers, entrepreneurs, employees and consumers — will be at least as significant as that of China’s or India’s one-billion-plus populations, if not greater. If women’s economic potential can be successfully harnessed and leveraged, it would be the equivalent of having an additional one billion individuals in business and in the workforce contributing to the global economy. It’s for this reason that Ernst & Young has been involved in the Third Billion global campaign, which unites governments, NGOs, corporations, youth and others to partner toward ensuring women’s access to legal protection, education and training, finance and markets.

Gasifying waste to produce an alternative source of electricity for Africa and Asia

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Solar energy may not be a viable solution for much of Africa. Taking Ghana as an example, solar electricity costs 40 cents to 50 cents a kilowatt hour, while meanwhile Ghanaians pay just 5 cents to 10 cents for electricity from conventional sources. Wind is likewise not a viable option.

That forced Ghana to consider a more imaginative set of choices, among them, sewage. Dumping its payloads into a warm and massive vat that will skim lipids – fat – off the top to provide biodiesel.

But there are more sanitary ways to make a megawatt in Ghana. Kwame Tufor came home from Florida to liquefy Ghana’s coconut husks, cocoa pods, and palm nut shells into gas. But you’d need a lot of coconuts to turn a profit that way. Local farmers could provide their nut shells and cocoa pods for his incinerator.

But he and a business partner are eyeing an old paper farm the size of Brooklyn. Sometime between one 1970s coup and another, the owner ran out of money and political favor, abandoning acres of trees that were meant to be mulched into notepads 35 years ago. Mr. Tufor intends to saw those trees down, replant them, then burn the timber and compress the smoke into a biofuel using dated World War II technology that’s been dusted off by developing world power plants.

At least 10 plants in China now gasify coal this way, while farmers in the Philippines run irrigation pumps on generators that gasify rice husks.

Promoting equity for all peoples of the world

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Brief of an article by Jeff Raike, chief executive officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:

One of the questions I’m often asked as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is what issues we invest in and why. To answer, it helps to understand a little about the foundation’s history.

More than a decade ago, Bill and Melinda read a newspaper article about the millions of children dying in poor countries from diseases that most people in the United States don’t have to worry about. One disease in particular—rotavirus—caught their attention, and it was killing half a million children a year. They’d never even heard of rotavirus. They thought it might be a typo.

Rotavirus, they learned, is one of the main causes of diarrhea. When kids in the United States get diarrhea, their doctors give them electrolytes. When kids in the developing world get it, they often die.

Reading this helped Bill and Melinda make two decisions: That they would start a foundation right away and that their giving would focus on solving some of the world’s greatest inequities.

The Gates Foundation is guided by the belief that all lives—no matter where they are being led—have equal value.  Whether a child is born in New York or New Delhi shouldn’t pre-determine their access to health, education, and opportunity. Of course, this belief is simple to say, and much harder to achieve. But our ultimate goal is to reduce the world’s greatest inequities, so every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life.

Read full article

 

Two sides of philanthropy in Africa

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The phrase ‘philanthropy in Africa’ has often tended to conjure up two quite diverse images. On the one hand, there are the well‑intentioned multi‑million dollar budgets of large (often international) foundations. On the other, the well‑established cultures and practice of small grassroots‑contributions and systems of social solidarity at the community level – the significance of which has never really been tapped by the formal development sector.

Across the continent, however, a new generation of local philanthropic institutions is emerging, some seeded with money from outside the continent, others entirely home‑grown – and all seeking to draw on local resources and tap into different forms of wealth, which include cash but also include other, less tangible, forms of social capital such as trust and credibility. These organizations seek to occupy the spaces between large, formal philanthropy and more local level mobilization of communities and their assets, and to build bridges between the two. At the same time they also promote a form of development which is community‑led and community‑owned.

Although the first self‑described ‘community foundations’ may only have been established in Africa in the late 1990s, the idea was not falling on fallow turf but rather offered a more formalized framework for naturally occurring traditions of giving and sharing. Those traditions are well encapsulated in the African philosophy of Ubuntu, defined by Liberian peace activist, Leymah Gbowee, as ‘I am what I am because of who we all are.’ The idea of Ubuntu means that you are known for your generosity. Instead of thinking of ourselves as individuals, separated from one another, we are connected and what anyone does affects the whole world. Generosity spreads outwards in a ripple that benefits the whole of humanity.

Africa is a continent rich with traditions of solidarity and reciprocity. In Kenya, for example, the practice of harambee as a form of local fundraising to cover the costs of funerals, weddings and school fees, was well‑established and drew heavily on a local culture of giving which had a social as well as a financial aspect.6 And in Southern Africa, ilima (coming together to help those without) was a mechanism for the sharing of communal labor for harvesting and house‑building.

A recent report by Jenny Hodgson and Barry Knight, “Mapping a Baseline of African Community Foundations” focuses on this group of institutions. They include community foundations, other types of community philanthropy institutions and local foundations – all operating throughout the African continent.

 

Polio has not yet been eradicated

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Polio is more than 99% eliminated worldwide, and there are fewer cases than ever before. However,  polio remains endemic in three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In 1988, 125 countries were fighting polio, and more than 350,000 children contracted the disease each year. Today, we have fewer than 200 cases.

This progress did not happen by accident. It happened because the global community launched an unprecedented effort called the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a partnership that includes the World Health Organization, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But the last percent is always the toughest, and if we don’t finish the job, polio could return with a vengeance. According to WHO, if we don’t end polio now, more than 10 million children under the age of 5 could be paralyzed by the disease in the next 40 years.

That’s why world leaders came together last month at the United Nations to reaffirm their commitment to ending polio and to issue an urgent call to fill a funding gap that threatens to undo the progress that has been made.

Samsung undertaking solar-powered Internet schools in Africa

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Old shipping containers repurposed into solar-powered classrooms are giving students in the most remote parts of Africa access to education and innovation.

Samsung’s Solar-Powered Internet Schools Initiative brings mobile classrooms filled with gadgets to rural towns. By outfitting a mobile shipping container with desks, a 50-inch electronic board, Internet-enabled solar-powered notebooks, Samsung Galaxy tablet computers and Wi-Fi cameras, children can receive a technology-rich education without traveling far.

“I have this motivation in me. It’s this need to just grow up and become something better in life and help others to become a success so that in South Africa, or in the whole continent of Africa, we can have a better life,” a Secondary School student named Lefa told us in a video by the Samsung Corporate Social Responsibility team.

For her, the computer lab presents an opportunity to “learn all the things” she’s ever wanted to learn.

Each 12-meter portable classroom has space for up to 21 students to learn how to use computers and how to surf the Internet, many for the first time. The pilot program will bring mobile classrooms to K-12 graders in five African countries including South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. The project will expand in upcoming years. The technology giant hopes to reach 2.5 million students in Africa by 2015.

 

Spreading corporate social responsibility globally

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It is now essential for U.S. companies that expand overseas to manage their global workforces, and respect other cultures and other workforce environments, and start forming a global profile and consciousness. Part of this connects to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The rapidly expanding global workplace is driving the implementation of sound corporate human resources practices that should focus on three key areas for CSR to help create a cohesive map for the present and the future. The three main ways to bridge the gap between corporations and their employees are:
• Proactive community relations
• Strong training and development
• A cohesive global HR platform

Ensuring that an organization maximizes the impact of its CSR efforts begins with encouraging community relations. This can be done through your HR department by implementing reward programs and charitable contributions, and encouraging community involvement and practices. What you can do as part of your corporate responsibility plan:

1. Recognize, via corporate email, websites, and newsletters, the social-type work done by employees.
2. Institute a rewards program to promote other employees to join these activities.
3. Recycle paper and bottles in offices and recognize departmental efforts to do so.
4. Collect food and donations for victims of floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters around the globe.
5. Encourage reduced energy consumption – subsidize transit passes, make it easy for employees to carpool, encourage staggered staffing to allow for after rush-hour transit, and permit telecommuting to some degree.
6. Encourage shutting off lights, computers, and printers after hours.
7. Work with the information technology team to switch to laptops over desktop computers. Laptops consume up to 90 percent less power.

8. Increase the use of teleconferencing in addition to on-site meetings and trips.

9. Promote “brown bagging” lunch in the office to help employees stay healthy.

–Shafiq Lokhandwala

Gates Foundation, USAID Award African Women Scientists $19 Million

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African Women in Agricultural Research and Development has announced $19 million in joint funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), in support of a fellowship program for women scientists.

Grants of $14 million from the Gates Foundation and up to $5 million from USAID will support the second five-year phase of AWARD’s efforts to bolster the research and leadership skills of female agricultural scientists in eleven sub-Saharan African countries. Since 2008, more than two thousand women have applied for two hundred and fifty fellowships, and more than a thousand are competing for seventy places in the next round, which will be announced in December.

According to a 2008 benchmarking study by AWARD, while the majority of those who produce, process, and market food in Africa are women, only one in four agricultural researchers is a woman and only one in seven holds a leadership position in African agricultural research institutions.

“Cultivating a new generation of African leaders in food and agriculture is strategically important,” said AWARD director Vicki Wilde. “That leadership will be all the more effective when women are highly represented, especially by those technically competent and strategically positioned to generate and promote the innovations needed by rural women and other smallholder farmers.”

Microsoft has given $1 billion to 31,000 non-profits

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Microsoft is celebrating 30 years of giving, a huge milestone for the Redmond-based software company. And at a press conference, the company also announced that it has given $1 billion in donations to more than 31,000 non-profit groups during that time.

“We stood up in times of crisis and helped the people in Japan, in Pakistan, in Haiti,” said CEO Steve Ballmer.

Needless to say, Microsoft has given time and money that has had a huge impact around the world.

It’s a culture of generosity that was started by co-founder Bill Gates, who credits his parents for setting an example of philanthropy and encouraged him to start a giving program.