The Uncultured Project

Sad but true – even though it’s from The Onion. Click here to see what I’m talking about.

With new funding and less restrictions, I’ve been running around lately trying to get my project complete before I finish next Wednesday.

Before my grant got rejected, I had a meeting with all of the grandmothers who would be receiving loans.  I explained the rules of the loan:

• It had to be used for income-generation
• It had to be paid back with 10% interest
• It could not deal in animal husbandry

They were perfectly fine with the first two rules, but when I explained the third, they groaned.  They were frustrated, and understandably so.  They knew how to raise animals.  They didn’t know how to run a business.  And they were quite frank — they weren’t interested in learning.  They wanted to tend to their crops and animals.  They wanted to do what they were good at.

But we continued, and I guess the meeting was an overall success.  We settled on different activities for the grandmothers to pursue and they walked away thankful.  However, I could not shake the feeling that they were not in it.  Sure, some of it was a lack of confidence, and that could be changed with training.  But there was also the fact that they weren’t able to do what they wanted to do.

Then I had my second meeting with them.

Last week, I went out to inform them that the restriction on animals had been lifted.  I thought that I’d give them the chance to reconsider their project again, this time with the possibility of practicing animal husbandry.  There were fourteen grandmothers there, and fourteen of them changed their minds.  They all wanted to raise animals.

Not only that, but the meeting itself had an entirely different feel.  In our first meeting, I was struck by how aloof they seemed.  In this meeting, they participated in the discussion.  They made jokes.  They laughed at ours.  They stayed around after it was finished to make small-talk.

They were excited!

Their excitement rubbed off on me.  It was contagious.  We all had our own reasons, but everybody wanted this project to succeed now.  We all had something at stake.

What have I learned this trip?  The capacity and the expertise can come from outside, but the ideas must come from the people.  You cannot storm a country with ideas of your own and hope to make an impact.  Someday you will have to leave, and if the people do not feel ownership in the project, they will abandon it.

All this talk about emotional toll has me wondering about what my emotional high points have been during this project. One of them has definitely been being able to make a meaningful difference in the life of one family over an extended period of time.

But, believe it or not, something actually edges that out as my emotional high point.

I actually hadn’t talked about it yet because I’m trying to leave as few spoilers on this site as possible for those who mostly follow my work through YouTube. So, if you want to be surprised when you watch my videos – don’t read the rest of this post.

It’s after the jump.

Continue reading ‘What Was My Emotional High Point?’

Today was one of the days – or perhaps the only day – where this project has brought me to tears. Nothing particularly spectacular happened, it’s just been a culmination of the emotional toll this project has had on both myself and my family.

Just the other day my uncle had made a long distance call to my mother to tell her how much I’m wasting my time here in Bangladesh. “The internet isn’t real life” he pointed out and – therefore – what I’m doing is meaningless. As much as I’d like to villianize my uncle – he’s not the only relative to be saying these kinds of things. And, admittedly, I can’t deny their logic.

Do I officially have a title other than “unemployed”? Nope. Is this project earning me a degree? Nope. Is this project earning me an income? Nope. In a culture that emphasizes titles, degrees, and paychecks (and, admittedly, such emphasis is not exclusive to Bangladesh) what I am doing is meaningless by such standards.

And it’s not like this is something I can simply ignore. In addition to chiding my parents, relatives like my uncle have been progressively leaning on my grandmother in the hopes of making her less helpful. I think my grandmother is starting to feel the strain and – as a result – has been less able to help me. Now even doing basic errands – let alone important project-related work – are now monumental tasks.

The lowest point of the day was when I had a phone call with my mother. My mom has had to make some pretty big sacrifices for me to do this project. Over the phone, she got a bit teary eyed as well as she lamented that all the room, board, and transportation she could help me with back in Toronto is meaningless because she’s powerless to help me here in Dhaka. As she points out:

“It would have been easier for you to do this in a country where you had no family connections.”

This project has taught me a lot about poverty – both the kind of poverty you find in the wallet, but also the kind of poverty you find in some people’s hearts.

So what’s involved in helping Matt in Uganda? The most important thing is making sure I do this in a way that’s both transparent and has the consent of those who have donated money to this project. In order for Matt to help these 187 grandmothers, he will need a total of $500 US Dollars - that’s the total amount needed after all the transfer fees, PayPal fees, and conversion fees are done with.

There is enough donated funds to meet this need. But this operation may not be what some of the donors signed up for. So, over the next couple of days, I am going to try and contact a few donors to see if they would be interested in letting me divert some or all of their donations to Matt’s project in Uganda. This is also the first time in this project we will be doing something called microfinance.

Dealing with other people’s money has brought out the control-freak in me. I admit – I really gave Matt a hard time on this one. Here’s some of the details/requirements I got Matt to agree to as part of this Uncultured Project funded microfinance operation:

• The microfinance operation will be managed, operated, and supervised by a government-registered NGO (in this case OGLM).
• The recipients will – under no circumstances – be pressured, forced, or coerced to repay these loans. They repay them as they are able and at a pace they set.
• The first time this money is used, it will be given to the recipients as an interest-free loan.
• Upon repayment, this money will subsequently be loaned at an interest rate that is based on the rate of inflation.

While the first two points were always part of Matt’s plan, the later two were things I insisted upon. It actually took a bit of creative account on Matt’s part to agree to these conditions. But, at the end of the day, the 187 grandmothers will receive $500 worth of assistance through microfinance. In turn, these grandmothers will have to repay $500 – and not a cent more.

So between now and when Matt distributes these $500 worth of farming equipment and livestock, I’m going to have to get in contact with enough donors to pull together $500. If you are someone who has donated and think this is something you’d like to help with – let me know. You can email me at project@uncultured.com.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying this as an appeal for more donations. There is already enough funds to do this – I am just not sure which donors would be comfortable (or uncomfortable) with such an operation.

A while back, I wrote about my project’s turning point.  I wrote about how FSD had decided that because my project is young, they didn’t want to put any more money in it until it proved itself to be sustainable.  There were certain FSD stipulations attached that made my project “unsustainable.”  For instance, I had to find a way to guarantee that the loans would be repaid.  I had to complete 75% of the project by the time I left Uganda.  Also, I wasn’t allowed to use it for anything that “exploits the earth.”

My project didn’t guarantee that loans are repaid.  If something terrible happened to the loan recipient, OGLM wasn’t going to be there kicking down the door for repayment.

My project would have gone on much longer than I was here in Uganda.  It was long-lasting.  Granted, I wouldn’t have been here to oversee it, but isn’t long-lasting the goal?

And admittedly, my project exploited the earth.  It was going to supply small subsistence farmers and animal breeders with the capital necessary to grow from subsistence to business.

In summary, a project that was going to fund local solutions to local problems, repay itself, benefit others on down the road, and last for a long time was ruled unsustainable.  To paraphrase the oft-used phrase from Zoolander, I felt like I was taking crazy pills.

Even though I had flown all the way to Uganda, I was stuck inside writing Excel spreadsheets.  I was doing something important, sure, but it didn’t take long before I was finished and just waiting for the end of my internship.  What is worse, of the 187 grandmothers who are registered for our loan program, only 24 of them had anything to show for it.

Then, along came the Uncultured Project.  Along came the power of YouTube and the internet, connecting people who care about poverty.  Who want to change the conversation about poverty by seeking real-world solutions.

Thanks to the Uncultured Project and its donors and its awesome community, I won’t have to confront those three groups of grandmothers and deny them their loans.  Instead, I will be able to give them seeds and tools and animals and training.

It will be tough, since I only have 10 days left before my internship is over.  But now, my project can go past my ending date. I can do “tough.”

What I can’t do is “impossible.”

And thanks to the Uncultured Community, I don’t have to worry about “impossible” any more.

Changing the Conversation is more than a slogan or rhetoric.

I know poverty alleviation will never take center stage on the internet. I know that on YouTube watching dramatic chipmunks, listening to chocolate rain (which I love), or hearing a (guy? girl?) cry about Britney Spears will always be more popular than watching videos about global poverty.

Heck, there are videos about Paris Hilton that are more viewed than every single poverty-related video on YouTube combined. That imbalance may never change – but that’s not the point.

I started this project because I believe people would be willing to be more involved, more concerned, and more interested in ending global poverty if we change how we talk about global poverty. For too long this message has been (mostly) dominated by those that make us feel pity for the poor, guilty about ourselves, and hopeless about solving this problem.

This project is my way of changing that.

In the coming months, the total number of video views of this project will cross one million. That will put this small project (run on a shoe-string budget, helped only by the kindness and generosity of others, and assisted along only by a meager handful of family members with big hearts) in the same league as some of the biggest and most powerful global advocacy organizations.

In fact, if this project crosses 1.5 million views, it will – as far as I can tell – be the most viewed global poverty related channel on all of YouTube – and possibly all of the internet.

Let’s change the conversation – the count to one million begins.