The Uncultured Project

Do you have 96 minutes to spare this Sunday afternoon? Want to learn about global economics and development? Then watch this video about Marilyn Waring:

You see, only a handful of decades ago, money for aid and development used to skew towards men (well… skew more than it is today). There were a few reasons for this.

Most of the studies on aid and development focused on income and income generation. By this measure, in most poor countries, men were the income earners. So aid and development was focused on what could help men earn more money (more education, better tools to work with, etc).

But what Marilyn Waring started pushing was the idea that a focus on money and income generation ignored women. Women, she argued, were working just as hard (if not harder) than men. Women were being overlooked because what they were doing (child care, food preparation, etc) wasn’t deemed income generating.

She argued that, if you measure things based on time spent working instead of income generated, you’d find a more accurate picture of what was going on. And, guess what? Women were working harder and longer than men were. In fact, in many villages, women (unlike men) were working virtually every waking hour.

Ms. Waring used this to make the case that helping women save time would ultimately help families earn more and pull families out of poverty. For example, women would often spend more than half a day preparing meals. With proper cooking equipment that time could be more than halved. The extra time could be used to let women earn their own income.

I thought I’d share this today because it’s an important reminder that we can invest heavily in studies on and research into poverty, aid, and development and still overlook major factors. I’m no Marilyn Waring, but this is what I feel is the case with what the poor are telling me about 1-to-1 help and overhead.

Many of the aid bloggers who have commented on my previous post (where I talk about charity overhead) insist that aid recipients don’t care whether overhead is covered by donations or through separate and distinct funding. This couldn’t be further from my experience.

When local villagers learn of the approach I’m doing they love it. Not only do they love it but they also compare it to more traditional forms of giving outside of the NGO-system. I wish I got a dime every time some villager, off-camera and just barely in earshot, would be talking to another saying (in Bengali) “for the first time, donations have been spent wisely”.

At the same time, I don’t deny that all the studies on aid recipient satisfaction may have no data on attitudes towards overhead (and whether or not overhead should be collected and raised separately). What I can say, as a sociologist, is that studies can overlook things. This is especially true depending on who’s counting.

Yes, this is a real ad campaign by KFC for Double Down sandwiches.

Let’s say some fast food restaurant is running a slick and savvy ad campaign that’s caught my attention. When I go to buy their food, do I complain that part of the price they are charging me is meant to cover part of the cost of their ad campaign?

What if I get a heart attack after eating all that fast food? Should I complain that part of the hospital bill goes to covering the doctor’s salary so he can earn enough to repay his student loans and justify spending all those years in med school?

As consumers, we will always be paying for expenses over and above the goods and services we directly benefit from. The same is true for charity: there are expenses over and above the help that any individual or community directly benefits from.

This is a no-brainer to everyone reading this. But I feel I need to state the obvious because what I’ve been saying about trackable donations and charity overhead has been misunderstood by aid bloggers who have stumbled across this project.

I’m not saying that overhead is bad. I’m not saying that overhead isn’t required. I’m not even saying that charities need to reduce overhead. What I am saying is that there is value in charities considering a different approach to covering overhead.

They should consider this because this matters to a lot of people.

Continue reading ‘Rambling about Charity Overhead’

Lately, this project has attracted a lot of attention from NGO and charity professionals from big organizations. They’ve all been trying to drive home the point that things like tracking donations, not taking overhead from donations, and connecting you directly with those you help are not sustainable, scalable, or something they want to do.

Let’s ignore that for a moment and watch this video:

When I started this project, I was advocating that we need to change the conversation about global poverty. That means we need to move away from controlled charity messages that are about guilting us into donating and disconnecting us from those we want to help.

The fact that there is now a charity director (Scott Harrison) preaching the same thing just blows my mind. And, I can’t commend him enough for having the guts to share this failure with us. I’ve been talking a lot about transparency – it doesn’t get more transparent than publicizing your failures for the world to see.

I haven’t worked with Charity: Water (yet) but let me tell you what I think will happen based on my own experiences. First, existing donors who see this will admire Scott’s honesty and transparency. Some of them will actually even donate more. That’s actually what has happened with me whenever I’ve talked & tweeted about my mistakes & failures.

Secondly, and most importantly, people on the ground will respect Charity: Water even more. Villagers aren’t dumb – they know when a charity wants to hide failures from the public. If the people Scott encounters are anything like the villagers I’ve encountered – they will respect him more for keeping the cameras rolling during this failure.

It will be respect well earned. And something worth supporting.

P.S. As a note to big NGO professionals who remind me that Charity: Water is small scale. I’d like to point out that, Charity: Water has been growing at an astronomical rate year-after-year. This is a growth during a bad economy no less! If you don’t think Charity: Water isn’t in this to scale even larger – keep watching them.

Young Mother Stands with Her Child after Cyclone Aila Hit

Let me introduce you to this young mother I met in Galachipa, Bangladesh. This photo was taken just after Cyclone Aila – you can see that part of her house’s wall is missing. Trust me, I don’t bring this up as a downer.

After I met her, I explained to her what I was doing: that I’m not a charity official or employee – I’m just a guy. And, with my camera and camcorder, she could send a message to all my friends around the world.

I asked her: what does she want people outside of Bangladesh to know? What single message would be the most important to send? After I heard what she had to say, I knew I could never release the message.

She made a message with the names of specific individuals and groups who she felt were mishandling people’s donations. She urged people not to donate through these methods – because it would never reach her.

This is not an uncommon occurrence. And I mention this because of a blog post written by a friend and aid worker whom I have a great deal of respect for.

While I agree with much of what he said, this one passage sticks out the most:

I want to just remind folks of the risks of observer bias- that being that when you rock up to Village X with a notepad, or a camera, your very presence affects the answers that will be given. Community members may lack resources, and even education, but they’re not stupid. When a donor representative like myself or Shawn asks them a question, they will always give the answer that makes it most likely that they will receive more funds. If they turn around and complain about the quality of aid, they know there’s a risk that the donors in question may write off the village as a failed project and move on. Big smiles and thank-yous are far more likely to make a donor feel good and give more- and they know this.

I mention this because, for me, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Click the jump to find out why.

Continue reading ‘How I Use Social Media & My Ethnicity to Help the Poor’