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Incomes, needs, rights, sponsorship and cash transfers

Posted in development, disaster and emergencies, economic empowerment, random, musing or confusing, wait... what?, tagged , , , , on November 21, 2011| 8 Comments »

A recipient signs for a cash transfer (Photo: http://www.plan-international.org)

The popularity of cash transfer programs in the academic and aid blogosphere over the past few years, got me wondering what the difference is between the kind of cash hand-out programs that sponsorship organizations were doing in the early days and today’s cash transfer and conditional cash transfer programs.

What prompted the shift in thinking from ‘line up and get your cash’, to ‘cash handouts are paternalistic, ineffective, unsustainable and create dependency,’ to ‘cash transfers are innovative ways of achieving development gains’ and/or ‘cash transfers empower local people to purchase what they really need?’ How are cash transfers different today from 40+ years ago?

I happen to work for an organization that raises a good percentage of its funding through child sponsorship. From what I’ve heard, for the first few decades of our existence, cash handouts were simply how the organization worked. Along with most other development agencies, we moved away from direct handouts in the 80s. Like some other organizations, by the end of the 1990s we had adopted a rights-based approach. We are also now doing cash grants again in some cases such as this program in Vietnam. I’ve asked around a bit internally and haven’t found anyone able to point me to documentation on what in particular prompted the move from cash handouts to community-based development in the 80s. Obviously it was a change happening most everywhere, not just in the organization where I work. I assume there was a process and a lot of discussion around this like there is with any change in approach, but it’s most likely on paper and not on-line. I do wonder what has been or could be learned about cash transfers from that process of discussion and change in methods.

There is certainly a lot of debate today about cash transfers. When I’ve asked people outside my organization what the difference is between today’s cash transfers and those of 40 years ago, most pro-cash transfer folks say that today’s approach to cash transfers is different or that cash transfers are included as part of broader programs, or that cash transfer programs that succeed are done by governments and not INGOs.

The anti-cash transfer folks tend to feel that cash transfers are not sustainable development, encourage dependency, and cause community conflict, and that they do nothing to improve systems or infrastructure in the long run; eg., what good is having cash if there is no health system? no food to purchase?  no school to attend? Or they consider cash transfers to be individualistic rather than a way to support an entire community or district’s development or worry that conditioning cash transfers can cause unintended consequences. (Here’s a fun piece that talks about what the cash transfer debate says about the international humanitarian community.)

There are tons of studies (mostly by economists it seems) showing that cash transfer and conditional cash transfer programs have improved health, nutrition and education enrollment. Some caution that cash transfer programs such as Brazil’s Bolsa Familia are not a panacea and need to be complemented with other types of programs.

I liked this recent paper ‘Richer but resented: What do cash transfers do to social relations and does it matter‘ by MacAusland and Riemenschneider (HT @rovingbandit). It questions the impact of cash transfers on less visible, more contextualized local and national relationships and power dynamics and suggests a need to go beyond material analysis during design, implementation and impact evaluations of cash transfer programs.

Especially helpful for someone like me who is trying to better understand the discussion around cash transfer programs is the paper’s reference to Copestake’s (2006) aspects of well-being (material, relational and symbolic) and three views on social protection as applied to cash transfers.

I’m pasting in the paragraphs I found especially useful to tempt you into reading the whole paper. I liked the excerpt below because it provides good insight into how different development theories color the objectives set in cash transfer programs and the way that success and impact are measured.

‘…An „income-first‟ view of social protection focuses on the consequences of cash transfers for recipients’ incomes and on their costs, including fiscal costs and perverse incentives to stop working or to seek rents. Second, a „needs-first‟ view starts from a more multidimensional view of poverty and focuses on the state‟s role in guaranteeing access to basic needs, including livelihoods, assets, and public action. This would criticise the income-first view for being too narrow. Third, a „rights-first‟ view identifies injustice as a key cause of poverty, and criticises the „needs-first‟ approach for being paternalistic.

Very broadly, these views can be identified with philosophical approaches to development. The income-first view is most closely identified with a  modernisation theory and Washington Consensus approach, which is rationalist, individualist and utilitarian in nature, measuring utility primarily in terms of income. The appeal of this view in part lies in the measurability and equivalence of outcomes and costs – so that outcomes measured in dollars can be compared to costs measured in dollars. This possibility is very attractive for planners, since it enables an unambiguous (on this single metric) judgement of whether an intervention should proceed. In terms of approaches to social protection, the income-based view is reflected most clearly in the safety nets approaches of the early 1990s (World Bank 1990).

The needs-first view starts from a similarly utilitarian and individualist standpoint but broadens this by introducing other dimensions of well-being, largely adding material dimensions (such as education, health, and livelihoods) but in some cases relational aspects (such as a capacity for social action). This draws in part from Sen‟s capability perspective (Sen 1985) and is currently being operationalised through the Millennium Development Goals and now multidimensional poverty indices (see e.g. Alkire and Foster 2009). In the social protection literature, this view is closest to the transformative social protection approach (Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler 2004) that emphasises the role of social protection in overcoming not only material shortcomings but in enhancing self-esteem and social status.

The rights-first view has developed rather differently, in part from Latin American traditions of dependency theory and structuralism, which place more emphasis on relational and symbolic aspects of well-being. One application of this tradition can be found in Figueroa (2001) who argues that persistent inequality in Latin America can be explained by processes of social exclusion (based on cultural difference) leading to political exclusion from social protection programmes and education, and resulting economic exclusion. As Copestake (2006b: 4) summarises, this interpretation highlights: “the extent to which economic growth and inequality reduction are dependent upon cultural and political mobilisation, not least through advocacy of human rights. This is in stark opposition to the more common assumption of economists that improved human rights are more likely to follow economic development than to be a precondition for it.”

…

The consequences of these different views for assessments and planning of cash transfers are quite profound. For instance, the different views will put quite different weights on the negative consequences of excluding members of the community from controlling payments or targeting as opposed to the problems associated with additional costs of targeting. The decision whether to pay for additional community participation will look very different depending on which view is held. Similarly, the different views will imply quite different judgements on whether cash transfer programmes should be replicated, given different material, relational and symbolic outcomes.’

I still don’t really know what I think about cash transfers, (I suppose “it depends’ is always a good answer) but at least I have a bit of a better framework for thinking about them and analyzing what I read about them. Copestake’s three areas (material, relational and symbolic) also give a good framework for analyzing other types of aid and development programs, beyond cash transfers (such as Gift In Kind, as @cynan_sez points out).

I also still haven’t figured out how the old style sponsorship cash handouts were different from today’s ‘innovative’ models. Any old timers out there with insight to share on that?

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The field [formerly known as?] ICT4D is messy

Posted in development, economic empowerment, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, politics, random, musing or confusing, wait... what?, tagged , , , , on November 16, 2011| 9 Comments »

The funny thing about ICTs and Development (and mostly everything else in this world) is that just when you think things are plugging along, you get the rug pulled out from under you and have to re-think everything.

A couple of weeks ago, I was heading off to the ICT for Rural Development (ICT4RD) Conference in Johannesburg. Before I left, I got an invitation from Ken Banks to participate in an ”ICT4D Postcard” project, which I thought was a nice idea. I took a moment to find a photo and pen a few lines and went on my merry way to Joburg.

Little did I know that several of the key thinkers and writers in the ”ICT4D” space were going to deconstruct the concept over the next fortnight in a flurry of sometimes harsh and pointed, always thoughtful posts.

The day the ICT4RD conference started, Steve Song posts his Three reasons why M4D may be bad for development rant wherein he makes some pretty strong (and relevant) points, such as:

“…the future is going to be a surprise and tying the notion of development to a particular mode of technology [eg., the mobile phone] is as bad an idea now as it was in 1999” and “Mobile operators have entrenched themselves with development agencies as the saviours of access … what the mobile operators have achieved through this embrace is the effective sidetracking of debates about competition and affordability.”

Then Ken’s ICT4D Postcards post goes up, and no more do I look at it and have a think about the photos and captions, then Erik Hersman (White African) throws up his rant on The Subtle Condescension of ICT4D, which gets the whole ICT4D-slash-anti-ICT4D world in a tizzy and which has a lot of good, strong points, like:

”I was recently discussing this term with one of my Kenyan tech friends, where he stated, ’I always picture a team from the UN putting up toilets in Uganda when I hear of ICT4D’” and ”It also feels like [ICT4D] is how international NGOs are trying to stay relevant, by creating a new department and new initiatives that the big funders will buy into and support (themselves to stay relevant). Ask yourself, how many ICT4D projects in Africa are more than pilot projects? How many are just Westerner organizations parachuting in, which have no hope of staying alive beyond the time and funds put in by their organization? Sounds like the same old ’aid story’ to me.”

Erik closes with “We have to thinking less of ICT as something that’s about development, and more of it as a commercial venture. We need more focus on ICT4$ than ICT4D.”

And I am left thinking, well very much yes! …and also, sort of no…. But I can’t get straight in my mind what makes me hesitate. Maybe it’s that in my experience, not all ’development’ initiatives are the stereotypical foreigners parachuting in with new gadgets? Or maybe it’s because I am super wary of the trickle-down economic growth model and I think that the world needs something different?

I don’t have to wait long before Jonathan Donner drops some good points into the debate in his post More letters, more problems, concluding:

”I don’t think we’re going to move off ICT4D as the default compound term, at least for a while. But I like these discussions and think it is important for the community to have them from time to time…probably quite frequently since the field/ community of practice is increasingly methodologically diverse, and growing. The conversations are not easy as some might like them to be, but that is because they are about a “compound” community. Regular bouts of reflection are not just navel gazing – they should help us remain reflective, careful, and precise in the use of the terms we use to describe what we do and why we do it.”

Followed by Wayan Vota who pops in with the Challenge of Defining ICT4D or Why Erik Hersman is ICT4$, whereby he defines ICT4D and ICT4$ as two wholly different industries. Projects can be ICT4D and ICT4$, neither approach is perfect and there is plenty of failure in both, and the 2 should be symbiotic, he says.

“Let us not confuse two whole different uses of ICT. In the tech start up world, ICT is a means to make money. Software developers code products like MXit or M-PESA and hope to sell them at a profit to to venture capital funders and people that are currently under served by the market place. The focus is on $. This is ICT4$ and they should be proud of their efforts.

In the international development world, ICT is used to deliver education, healthcare, etc more efficiently. We have great products like FrontlineSMS, ChildCount+, and Ushahidi, and sell them to donor funders so we can deliver them free or subsidized to those under served by government or in market failure situations. The focus is on impact versus $. This is ICT4D, and I am proud to use the term.

Notice the different focus. In no way should a tech startup and its funders seeking to maximize profit seek to work in ICT4D, just like it would be laughable for a development organization (funder or implementer) to run a tech startup to be the next Facebook.”

Not to be left out, one of the top critics of ICT4D, the ICT4D Jester, pipes in on the stupidity of any acronym that sounds like a Prince Song [I wholeheartedly agree!]. He gets to the political heart of the discussion about ICT4D and ICT4$ in his post ICT *or* Development, Part 3: The Jester Meets the White African:

”The underlying issue is a deep one that goes straight to the heart of economic development. To compress the last century of economic history into a nutshell,* countries that attempted centralized socialism lost to capitalist countries in the contest to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible.…

In the last few decades, however, countries like the United States have been running the experiment of rampant free-market capitalism. Among other things, this led to the dramatic financial crash of 2007-2008, a population unable to wean itself off of resource consumption, and increased inequality, not only economically but also in terms of health, education, and well-being. If that’s what happens under what could be argued is the closest thing to a “pure” free-market capitalism, any reasonable person should be reconsidering the lesson of the Cold War victory.”

The Jester goes on to explain that ”progressive activity” is necessary to counterbalance capitalism and mitigate the inequality caused by capitalism and that ICT4D in practice tends to embrace this progressive side of things.

“ICT4$ is needed, but someone also needs to focus on D. (The Jester, of course, does not necessarily say that D should proceed via ICT4D!)”

He sums up with, “Yes, ICT4D is a four-letter word (with a number), but wear it proudly in your progressive technology activities, and cast it off – way,way off – for your for-profit ones. Meanwhile, don’t forget that the world needs both types of activity. Of course, the one thing you can’t do is split yourself in two.  And, that, perhaps, is another reason why it’s so difficult to make a profit and serve a poor population simultaneously.”

David Kobia continues in his post ICT4D Cont (first acknowledging that he’s ’whipping a dead horse’) that ”ICT4D and indeed then [sic] term ICT in general in this breakneck environment has come to symbolize access to technology at the lowest rung – basically a booster seat at the table with the adults. He asks, ”Is there a very remote chance that the role of technology in development has been slightly overemphasized?”

And Tony Roberts chimes in with his own Rant In Defense of ICT4D, where he joins the Jester in pointing out that the ’free’ market hasn’t done anyone [eg., the 99%] any favors in the ”developed” or the “developing” world.

”The problem with relying on commerce is that the ‘free’ market is fundamentally flawed; for 300 years it has abjectly failed to meet the needs of millions of people at the periphery. Whilst elites in capital cities enjoy relative opulence, marginalised communities are unable to secure adequate nutrition, basic healthcare or human rights. These divides continue to widen. In response people form not-for-profit organisations to have their voices heard and their community development needs addressed; sometimes employing ICT for these Developmental ends. Not-for-profits exist because of the failure of markets.

ICT4$ alone is not capable of fixing this problem….

When communities refuse to accept injustice and deprivation and form associations of solidarity with those at risk we should give them our respect. If they seek practical assistance in applying ICT for Development we should offer whatever assistance we are able. There will often be a positive role for ICT in community development.

ICT4D alone, of course, is not capable of fixing the system.”

In addition to all the blog posts that Erik’s provocative post spawned, there are some great points made in the comments section:

For example, Paul comments (and I summarize)

”Left to its own devices, ’ICT4$’ will mostly chase the same set of rich urban market users, just as the bulk of SV consumer startups chase the same demographics…. So, yeah, make these things follow commercial logic and thereby sustainable, but the answer is not to deprecate the ’D’ in favor of the ’$’. Both need to be kept in mind because a rising tide raises all Gini coefficients…. Local capacity, sure, but that isn’t always the cheapest/fastest way to do it (which is what commercial logic would dictate). Again, to care about advanced capacity building, you have to care about the ’D’.”

(@hapee) Hapee says ”To me the container ICT4D is useful as a hashtag for twitter, as a common ground for research and practitioners, social movements and ngos still play a role as do active citizens, open source is still an alternative used to prevent closed source standards and the market is still something to be very careful about because the driving force of profit is not the same as creating change.”

So. Much. To. Think. About.

It’s a really messy world out there and the field [formerly known as?] ”ICT4D” is no exception.  The issues being wrestled with are much broader than ICT and D. I’ve picked out points and angles that resonated with me from the various posts. I can’t say that any one of the authors is 100% right (nor, probably, would any of them claim to be). Or maybe they are 100% right in certain situations, but not all.

Should International NGOs stop creating dependencies and killing local initiatives? Yes.

Does the ’free’ market allow for dignity and well-being for all? No.

Maybe that is the heart of the question – how to operate in a way that does not create dependency or stifle economic growth but that also does not exclude or marginalize a large part of the population. Maybe it always comes down to that ’capitalist’ vs ’some other kind of inclusive and sustainable growth model’ discussion… And maybe a clearer divide between ICT as a growth sector and ICT-enabled development programs that aim to reach the most marginalized (where the market does not reach) is needed. Or maybe not, if you believe ethical business models can achieve both. (I’m still waiting for those models to become the widespread norm and don’t see it happening any time soon, anywhere).

And what about ICTs as tools to improve civic participation, voice, access to information, transparency, accountability and good governance so that [ideally] exclusion is reduced and resources generated by economic growth (and/or resources allocated to fill the gap where the market fails to reach, or resources designated toward improving services that are/should be provided by government) are better and more honestly allocated… And what about new technologies that support more transparent political and decision making processes? (What is the acronym for those kinds of ICT uses?) Oh, so messy….

In any case, I think the discussion is helpful in raising issues and making us all think more about the terms we use, and the processes and products we support, drive and promote.

If there is one thing the field [formerly know as?] ’ICT4D’ does do, it’s bring together good people who think deeply and who honestly care about how they are contributing to making the world a better place.

Take some time to visit the links and read the full posts if you haven’t yet, they are very much worth it!

*****

Updates:

16 Nov 2011:

RT @kiwanja: Check out the #BBCClickRadio podcast for a slightly extended debate on the merits of ”#ICT4D” terminology. http://is.gd/HUK37e

RT @hapeeg: More ICT4D Please! – My take on the ICT4D debate by @david_barnard http://tinyurl.com/c55tpg4 #ICT4d #ICT4RD #Tech4Dev #Africa.

David Barnard notes that “there is also more than one real “White African” serious about making a contribution to the future of this continent.” 

“These two issues represent different sides to the same coin – but often require very different approaches, and different roleplayers, to achieve the desirable objectives…. Whatever you prefer to call technology is irrelevant – IT / ICT / ICT4D / ICT4RD / M4D/ Tech4Dev, etc. What really matters is the intent, the objectives and the motivation for using it.

But, technology for technology’s stake is downright stupid. Too many technology for development projects and interventions fail because of the emphasis on the technology without understanding the development issue/s and/or what it would take to ensure the implementation of the technology will ultimately achieve success and impact. Too many technology competitions, awards and challenges place too much focus on the development of “more new tools” rather on what has been achieved.”

17 Nov 2011:

RT @mtotowajirani: New blog post: #OccupyTech: Take the money out of tech…and put the impact back in! http://bit.ly/tTAogC #occupy (Wherein Simeon Oriko takes on #ICT4$ with a new slogan – suggested by @noniemg – Take the SH out of IT… ” He says:

“Here’s the bottom line….Unless you are directly making an impact in someone’s life with you apps and all the hustle around them, you’re really doing nothing meaningful. …  Money is driving people in totally wrong directions!  Sober up and think about it for a second. What’s more meaningful and worth your hustle? Money or impact?”

And I missed Niall Winters‘ original thoughts, including ideas from @katypearce, on this post The 4 in ICT4D.

“The ‘4’ places an emphasis on “giving it to you”, and all the issues that brings up regarding donation. I hadn’t really thought about it in that way before, coming from the perspective nicely described by Kleine and Unwin (2009):

Our preferred terminology is ICT4D, in part because it is the most widespread term, but also especially because it places explicit attention on the ‘4’, or what kind of development is being addressed. Rather than the ‘and’ of ICTD, the ‘for’ of ICT4D forces users of the term to confront the moral and political agendas associated with ‘development’. By focusing on the ‘4’ we are forced to make explicit what we mean by ‘development’. The interplay between ‘information’, ‘communication’ and ‘technologies’ for ‘development’ is one that offers considerable intellectual and practical challenges, and it is these that this paper seeks to explore.

 Hence, the ‘4’ for me is a challenge to think about the nature of inclusivity in my work, the power relations embedded within any intervention and the appropriateness of the technologies used or being developed.”

22 Nov, 2011

kdiga’s reply on ICTDJester’s blog: says we need to ask 4 questions and agree on some principles when invoking ICT4D:

1) Are we attempting to see the reduction of poverty (in all its multiple dimensions?) from the use of ICTD?
2) Are we attempting to see the reduction of inequality?
3) Are we seeing lower numbers in child mortality, an improvement through healthier families, or more student graduating Grade 12 as a result of ICT usage, less environmental degradation – how are we measuring?
4) Are we able to see less lives lost?

23 Nov, 2011

Ian Thorpe’s post “ICT4What” says part of the issue here is that ICT4D is a huge field (and a subset of “technology” which is an even bigger field, and which has absolutely everything to do with “development” – eg, read Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs and Steel) and people are talking at cross-purposes and using all different definitions.  ‘The development, spread and use of technology is a huge field with lots of actors each playing their part, with plenty of room for different motives and philosophical or empirical approaches – even contradictory ones  – since in the end they will all contribute to the change that takes place through collaboration, competition and even contradiction. In short it’s a complex adaptive system. Past technological spread has always resulted from the actions of multiple actors often with very different motives and philosophies: Inventors, entrepreneurs, governments, consumers, academics, not for profits and others have all helped shape the way technology is currently used both consciously and unconsciously. Using technology to make money is a key component of spreading technology that improves lives, but it’s only part of the story.”

Ian concludes that “it doesn’t matter that we don’t agree, in fact it’s a good thing. A diverse approach involving multiple actors and friction between them is in the best interests of the field because it allows different models to co-exist, compete and learn from each other, and it allows then to be judged in the market and the marketplace of ideas.”


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How frequent flyer miles led me to Twitter

Posted in communications, development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, random, musing or confusing, smart aid, social media, travel, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , on October 3, 2011| 3 Comments »

I joined Twitter because of frequent flyer miles.

No really.  It’s true.

I kept trying to use my miles and failing, due to blackout dates or not having enough points to go where I needed to. The use-em-or-lose-em deadline came up on one particular airline, so I accepted an offer to sign up for some magazines. In addition to a hefty increase in junk mail, I began receiving Wired Magazine – and my synapses started firing at a million miles per hour.

This was around 2006. I’d find myself suddenly having breathless conversations with the few people around who would listen about technology and the science of networks and other similarly nerdy stuff. This really wasn’t like me, but then, I was late to the game for a couple of reasons: for one, I spent the 1990’s in El Salvador and there was not much Internet or Wired magazine available there at the time. Secondly, I’d always been much more of an alternative music/ development/ social sciences geek than a computer / video game geek.

But something had changed since high school and college. There was Radiohead for starters… but on top of that, it became strikingly clear to me that things were aligning in a way I hadn’t seen before. Tech could really have a social purpose.

In Wired, I started reading about the idea that the Internet was horizontal, that things could be free, that people could collaborate in self-organized nodes, that social media could bypass ‘official’ pronouncements and allow alternative voices and ‘citizen journalists’ to be heard. I started thinking about how many of the principles and philosophies behind social media networks were closely aligned with those underpinning participatory approaches to development:  self-organizing, community-led processes and self-management, accountability and transparency, ownership, learning by doing, building on local knowledge and localized expertise. I got hooked on trying to link some of the ideas that were fueling social media and online networking with the work that the organization that had been employing me for several years (Plan) was facilitating with young people and communities. I started reading blogs about technology and aid, and I began writing one too.

Over time, my initial interest broadened to how new technologies — not only social media networks, but also new tools like mobile phones and GPS units and digital maps and all kinds of other new tools and platforms — could be put at the service of community development.

In large part, the reason for the branching out and wider perspective was that in December 2008, a few development and technology leaders/ bloggers/ mentors gave me a suggestion. “Get on Twitter,” they said,” if you really want to keep up with what is happening.”  I was wary of the platform, so instead of my real name, I used the name of a kitten we used to have – @meowtree  – also a bit of a play on my last name.

Quickly I realized there was nothing to fear. Twitter opened up a whole world at the professional and personal level. I found all kinds of people from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds who were discussing, debating, trying, failing, learning, blogging, and collaborating on a variety of projects related to technology, human rights, global development, community work and other fields I am very interested in.

Joining Twitter was like signing up to get an online degree in a very specialized field, where everyone was both teacher and learner. The quantity of information and knowledge shared among practitioners and theoreticians in my field and related areas was infinite, as were the ranges of opinions.

Through Twitter I’ve had the opportunity to work on voluntary side projects and connect with experts and practitioners for research and professional or personal advice. Sometimes a number of us join together to get across a certain point that we feel strongly about, and it ends up getting to the ears of someone who’s making major decisions or it gets brought up by individuals in personal conversation, spreading the ideas offline. A group of Twitter folks who are part of the ‘Smart Aid’ collaborative recently conducted a survey to find out more about who reads aid and development blogs, for example, and what they do with the information there.

Not just a news and professional education platform, Twitter is also a friend and colleague network. Over the past 3 years, I’ve met a few hundred new people in real life that I initially connected with on Twitter.

It’s a great feeling when you are chatting with someone at a conference, and they look down at your name tag (where you’ve penned in your Twitter handle with a Sharpie) and exclaim “Wait! You’re @meowtree!? I’m @so-and-so!” You’ve only just met, but because you’ve connected on Twitter, you already feel like old friends. You can immediately jump into a conversation and continue on with a topic you’d been batting around on Twitter or make plans to partner up on a work-related initiative or simply discuss the fact that you both like the same kind of beer.

Last week a colleague alerted me (via Twitter, naturally) that I’d been named by the Guardian as one of the “20 Global Development Twitterati” to follow. It was unexpected, and I’m hugely honored.  The Guardian’s Global Development team does fantastic and highly credible work facilitating forward-thinking debates and discussions around development. Being listed alongside the 19 other “Twitterati” is indeed a privilege, as they are some of the leading voices in the aid and development debate.

So if you have an interest in development and/or new technology, you can either accumulate a ton of unusable frequent flyer miles and follow my convoluted path, or you can skip all that in-between and simply “Get on Twitter!” Once you do, be sure to follow the Guardian’s list of 20 Global Development Twitterati. But don’t stop there – the Twitterverse is full of brilliant minds and voices that you won’t want to miss if you are serious about engaging in a stimulating global development conversation.

Note: this post originally appears on PlanUSA’s blog.

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Who reads aid and development blogs?

Posted in accountability, development, random, musing or confusing, smart aid, tagged , on September 6, 2011| 1 Comment »

The number of international aid and development blogs has expanded rapidly in the past few years, and the number of people reading them has also grown. But aside from retweets, comments, and  ‘hits’ to our blog sites, those of us who blog about aid and development really haven’t got a very good idea of who reads our blogs, what interests our readers, if our posts have any kind of impact, and what our readers do with the information they find on our blogs (if anything!).

To get a sense of that, several aid and development bloggers have joined together to do a small survey of our readers to see what we could find out.

I’d be quite pleased if you, dear reader, would take 5 minutes to take the survey (click here). All responses are anonymous.

If you also have an aid or development focused blog, please share the link on your blog too.

Thanks very much!

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Kicking Ass and Saving Souls: A review

Posted in book review, disaster and emergencies, random, musing or confusing, tagged , , , on August 25, 2011| 3 Comments »

“The story of a boy from Baltimore who evolves from a safecracking, jewel-heisting, deep-sea diving, ultimate-fighting, international playboy into a globetrotting humanitarian.”

Why yes, thank you very much, I would like to review that book…. My snark glands start working in anticipation.

Book arrives in the mail and I open to the preface where I read that Stefan Templeton, the troubled and risk-loving misfit hero of the story, has an innocent bright-eyed son and a good, virtuous, hard-working wife in the kitchen. Neither his son nor his wife knows about his sordid past. He risks his family’s well-being to be “a recurring presence in the aftermath of some of the last decade’s worst man-made and natural disasters”. He’s now heading to “the genocide-ravaged Horn of Africa…. On this mission, as on all the others, he would receive no payment.” 

OK, so this will be a story about one of those self-made, selfless martyr, I-have-seen-the-light types who wakes up one day and feels compelled to give up everything to save the world. And there will be fighting too!

We learn that the author David Matthews and Stefan, the hero, grew up together off and on in a hard-knock area of Baltimore, MD. That they are both ‘mixed’ race and that Stefan loves fighting and telling elaborate, hard-to-believe stories. Matthews’ re-encounter with Stefan starts off something like this:

****

“You taking all this stuff? I yelled to him in the bedroom…

…What’s this? I pointed at the black square.

I removed the device. A block of plastic the size of a primordial cell phone.

He shook his head. It’s a Taser, knucklehead.

Jesus, I said, Get pretty rough out there saving babies?

Stormy clambered into the room, midway through his drawing. What’s a Taser, Poppa?

A Taser makes bad people jump, Stormy-bear. Stormy held up his drawing. I could make out some red and black stick people with what looked like blue arrows raining down on them.

That’s amaaazing, Stefan said.

It’s the African children when you put water on them, Poppa.”

****

Jesus. I thought. Get pretty rough out there writing good dialog?

Regardless, I continue. The book starts to flow a little better as the story takes off.

I read that Stefan’s parents are from very different cultures — his father: a rigid African-American martial artist from a well-educated family in a rough Baltimore neighborhood, permanently affected by a stint in Vietnam; his mother: a Danish flower child from a wealthy family that runs a new-age spiritual healing school where people do primal screaming and other types of psycho-spiritual curing.

Early in the book, the author sets Stefan up as a pure-hearted good guy with bad luck, a poor hero who gets screwed time and time again by the system. His father’s hard-fighting rigidity combined with his mother’s heal-the-poor hippie sensibilities are lived out through Stefan who gets himself into one tricky situation after another, but only because he is compelled to perpetually defend the defenseless, to be a man.

His weakness for women is made clear early on, as is the idea that women are weak. (Almost all the women we run into in this book are extremely hot, in need of Stefan’s protection, and willing to drop anything to get with our hero.)

It’s Chapter 3 where Stefan has his “incredible hulk” breaking point transformation. A trained fighter who continually turns the other cheek, he is pushed to fight back when a couple of local thugs try to steal his house keys. He pulverizes them both and the defining moment emerges: “This was neither good, nor bad. Right, nor wrong. It was just.” 

Yep, and you won’t like him when he’s angry. Superhero moment complete.

Soon after, Stefan has his first sexual experience while living in a castle in Europe belonging to his mother’s side of the family. Unsurprisingly, it’s with a sexy older woman and Stefan is quite well-endowed: “Ach… zu gross… (oh so big)….” the woman exclaims. “Your mother would kill me.”

Throughout the rest of the book, the system continues making things difficult for Stefan. He tries and tries to make something of himself and his innate superior intellect, physical perfection and sexual prowess but time and time again he’s let down or has to fall back on his unstoppable fighting techniques and knack for straightforward, ethical crime, or he’s simply forced to put himself at risk to save someone at the wrong time or place. Poor guy, he’s just trying to help and it just never works out.

So what better place for him to end up than helping poor people in Africa, Asia or Latin America? By the end of the book, he has blundered his way into humanitarian aid work, yet again, the system has no place for him and he must go at it in selfless, renegade, superhero style, saving the poor because the locals need him and the humanitarians can’t get it right.

Matthew’s writing was entertaining enough to keep me reading throughout, but the marketers’ promise was more than what the book could live up to. But I expected that. “The story of a boy from Baltimore who evolves from a safe-cracking, jewel-heisting, deep-sea diving, ultimate-fighting, international playboy into a globetrotting humanitarian” is a bit much to swallow without a grain of salt.

Kicking Ass and Saving Souls is very much a man’s book. I felt throughout that the author was imagining the story embellished a bit further and on the big screen, and judging by the public’s hunger for violent, misfit heroes and feel-good stories about helpless poor people, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it there one day.

As for me though, I’ve had quite too much of the Sean Penn style of humanitarian work to be excited. I’m wary of erratic amateur do-gooders. Not to mention I have some pretty major concerns about  Sam “the Machine Gun Preacher” Childers‘ and Peter “Advisor to Michelle Bachman (and hero of this hilariously scary film)” Waldron style forays into South Sudan and Uganda and such. So I’m the wrong audience for this kind of book.

I’m sure Stefan means well, and certainly Matthews is impressed with him. But I think Stefan is more the kind of guy you would enjoy running into at a bar overseas and trading crazy stories with and leaving it at that. You’d probably go home wondering how much of his shtick was bullshit (while he went home with one of the new volunteers or the local female bartender). And you’d probably have some real concerns about his modus operandi if any of his stories were true.

But the book didn’t really grab me. I’m tired of shoot-em-up-punch-em-up humanitarian aid heroes.  They take energy away from the real issues and the real people, local and non-local, who are doing the work that has long-term impact. And they can actually cause real problems, no matter how good their stories seem and how helpful they think they are being.

Thanks to the author and TLC Book Tours for sending me a copy of the book to review.

About David Matthews

David Matthews is the author of the 2007 memoir Ace of Spades, which was selected as an Editor’s Choice pick by The New York Times.  Matthews’s work has also appeared in Salon, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Autobiographer’s Handbook: The 826 National Guide to Writing Your Memoir.  He lives in Manhattan, but can’t wait to move back to Brooklyn.

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Coming and going

Posted in ICTs, mobile and technology, random, musing or confusing, tagged on July 4, 2011| 6 Comments »

In May 2008, I started a ‘secondment.’ I was loaned out from Plan’s US office to Plan’s West Africa Office for a year to work on the Youth Empowerment through Technology, Arts and Media (YETAM) project, which at that point was funded by Nokia via Plan Finland.

My ‘social media guru’ friend DK and my colleague Lisa suggested I start blogging. So in June 2008, I wrote my first post on Wait… What? Reading it is a good reminder of how much you can learn over 3 years, even when you think you already know something. That first year of posts is kind of embarrassing, but in a way I’m glad they are there as they make for a good baseline when assessing my own personal and professional growth since then.

In December, 2008, my colleague Mika Valitalo (from Plan Finland) and I organized a week-long ‘Social Media for Social Change’ workshop in Kenya. I had been reading White African’s blog and doing a lot of internet research alongside more direct work on YETAM in Senegal and Rwanda. Mika and I had been discussing Ushahidi,  FrontlineSMS and Global Voices. So we decided to invite them to our workshop. I honestly assumed they wouldn’t bother responding as we were not doing much with ICT at that point. To our surprise, Erik Hersman, Ken Banks and Juliana Rotich all agreed to come. In addition, we invited Tonee Ndungu from Wazimba and Daudi Were from MentalAcrobatics. The meeting was a real eye opener and set the groundwork for much of what happened since with social media and ICTs at Plan.

After I went home from the meeting in Kenya, at the suggestion of Erik and Ken, I started a Twitter account. (I was so skeptical that I used a pseudonym). But from there things pretty much started happening. A whole world of learning, discussion, writing, commenting, partnerships, face-to-face meetings and new friendships with those working in development and in ICTs opened up. I got involved with the @smart_aid group and different m4D and ICT4D networks like ICT_Works, Mobile Active and most recently Africa Gathering and they have taught me so much.

A year turned into 2 and then 3. The focus of the secondment expanded to look at the use of social media and new technology in different aspects of our programs in Africa and I had the opportunity to be involved in some really interesting projects. It turned into ‘information and communication technology for development’ or ‘ICT4D’ in general, and to helping develop a strategy at the global level for strengthening our work both internally and with youth, communities, and local partners in these areas; mostly all documented here on this blog.

I was lucky to report directly to a boss (Stefanie Conrad) who was creative, flexible and supportive of new ideas and initiatives and who always asked ‘what obstacles are you facing? how can I help move them out of your way? what support do you need? how can I improve my support to you?’ I was also lucky to work closely with Mika, the point person from the donor side. Mika really knows his stuff, but he also knows that no matter how much he knows, he needs to learn from people on the ground, and he takes the time to visit, to stop, to listen and to be sure he understands. He’s aware that process is critical and that things take time. Not to mention he is just a cool guy all around.

I had the pleasure of working with some fantastic people from our different offices across Africa and the opportunity to meet many of the people who are moving and shaking the world of development and ICTs on the continent and beyond. There were challenges (there are always challenges) and I’ve been plagued with doubt about development and where it’s headed at times (as I think I will always be) but looking back, it’s been a life-changing 3 years and I’m sad to say that as of June 30, my secondment ended.

When I went on secondment for the first year, I knew that I was taking a risk and that Plan US would not hold a job for me to return to. I also knew that I probably wouldn’t want to return to my old job anyway because I really needed a change. As the secondment comes to a close, I know that taking the risk was worth it in every way.

Not only was it worth it, but Plan’s USA has welcomed me back into a new position as their Senior Advisor for ICT4D where I’ll have the chance to put the experiences and networks that I’ve been accumulating over the past 3 years to work in a new context. Plan US has probably changed as much as I have over the past 3 years so it’s an exciting time to be returning.

As for the job itself, the plan is that I’ll be building on the work I’ve been involved in over the past 3 years and will continue to support to some of the initiatives I’m currently involved in, but from the Plan US side rather than from the Plan West Africa side. I’ll spend about half of my time with the program and grant writing teams; a third of it supporting program-related communications and efforts to bring stories and voices directly from the youth we are working with to the US public through new media; and the remaining portion supporting research around youth and ICTs and helping put Plan’s global ICT4D strategy and capacity building plan into practice.

It will be fun to re-read this post in another three years and see how much I’ve learned by then, compare what the job description is now and what it may have morphed into, and whether my thinking today sounds horribly naive and out of date.

Thanks go out to everyone I’ve met (live or virtually) and had the opportunity to work with over the past 3 years; it’s been life altering.

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Quantitative and qualitative

Posted in random, musing or confusing, tagged , , on January 4, 2011| 2 Comments »

Every January as I’m signing up for the gym, I feel the need to tell the person at the desk that I’m not one of those people who sign up as a short-lived New Year’s resolution. I get the urge to explain that I play capoeira year-round and that I normally run outside and am only coming to the gym now because it’s cold and icy. I want to let that guy at the desk know that if I do happen to stop showing up, it will likely be because I am traveling somewhere or because the weather got warm, not because I bailed on a New Year’s fitness resolution.

‘Oh man, we been full on,’ the guy at the counter says to the other guy coming on shift today as I stand there filling out my registration forms. ‘New Year’s rush. We signed up 88 people since yesterday.’

I resist the urge to launch into an explanation about how that isn’t my situation. I stop myself from casually informing him that if he’s assuming I’m one of the New Year’s resolution people, he is wrong.

I doubt he really cares. And really, what does it matter to anyone other than me?

I do my time on the treadmill and watch other people doing their gym thing. I start wondering how many of the statistics that we collect in our jobs in aid or development or public health or education aren’t really what we think they are. But I also start thinking about how we all believe that somehow our own little stories and motivations matter in the larger scheme of things.

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Snails

Posted in Costa Rica, random, musing or confusing, social media, tagged , , , on January 1, 2011| 2 Comments »

I’m on my way home from 10 days in Costa Rica with my extended family. We stayed at my mother’s house, and biked over to a big stretch of solitary beach every day.We cooked together, read books, saw monkeys and crocodiles, walked the beach, watched movies, talked and sometimes just sat in silence listening to the birds and the waves. It was nice to take a break and get offline for a while. I finally stopped dreaming in email and twitter.

One of the coolest things on the beach in Costa Rica was the snail trails.

If you walked on the beach after the tide went out, you could see extensive areas full of twisty, winding, seemingly directionless patterns in the sand that crisscrossed into a beautiful curvy pattern along the shoreline. Snails just doing their thing.

2010 was a full year. One of the most satisfying things for me was being part of a diverse and brilliant global network of people, each following our own trails but learning, discussing, disagreeing, and building on ideas and initiatives together when we cross paths along the way. A huge thanks to you all for enriching the world with your thoughts, your actions and your work. I look forward to more in 2011!

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Growing up with Harry

Posted in random, musing or confusing, tagged , , on December 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

My Twitter pal Bonnie Koenig and I were chatting about how we have both enjoyed watching our kids grow up with Harry Potter. We thought we’d share our stories, imagining that they are not so far from the stories of others who have children of similar ages. Read Bonnie’s post Harry Who? We’d love to hear other stories too….

This past November was the first time that my kids and I have spent Thanksgiving on our own at our place. We’ve always either been in a country that doesn’t celebrate it, or with my family. (And there was one year I missed it altogether because I was at a work meeting in Bangkok….)

This year the 3 of us made Thanksgiving dinner together. We each cooked our specialty and broke out the fancy china. It was a nice, cozy time. During dinner, my son Daniel said ‘We should go see Harry Potter. It’s tradition.’

We saw the first Harry Potter movie with our entire extended family in Oregon on our first Thanksgiving in the US after moving up from El Salvador. My kids always remember because there was a huge snowstorm, and they had never seen snow before. Subsequent Thanksgivings and Christmases, if there was a Harry Potter out, we’d make a point of all going together. I associate the movies with warmth and holiday, even though the themes of the movies are often dark.

Harry Potter for us didn’t start with the movies though. When Daniel was 7 and we lived in El Salvador, I picked up the first Harry Potter book on a work trip to the UK, having no idea what it was or what it was about. (I did the same thing with Radiohead’s Kid A now that I think about it. That was an influential trip!)

I started reading Harry Potter to Daniel, a chapter a night. He was in first grade, and reading short story books in Spanish. He read English at a slower pace. After we got through the first few chapters, he couldn’t wait for me. He would take the book to school in his backpack and read on his own at my mother-in-law’s house after school. He quickly finished the book without me.

We got hold of the second book while still in El Salvador. Then we moved to the US in the summer of 2001 when he was 9 and he spent a good deal of his waking hours devouring and re-devouring the 3rd and 4th books.

The Nimbus...

By that time he was a fast reader. We had to buy the hard copy versions of the books because he couldn’t wait for the paperbacks to come out. Since we were in the US, he had access to the Harry Potter paraphernalia too. We had the Nimbus Quiddich broom (which you may remember due to it’s funky reputation), and the Harry Potter Lego set. Daniel’s best friend at the time was a shoe-in for Harry, glasses and all.

As we left the theater after seeing the latest Harry Potter movie this Thanksgiving, Daniel commented on the new layer of connections he’d made between the film and life. Now that he was older, he could see themes of racism, government control, censorship and genocide and relate them to the real world. ‘I need to go back and read the books again,’ he said, ‘to understand what they are really about.’ Later that night while I was washing up the dishes, we got to talking. ‘Mom, I’ve been thinking how important reading is,’ he said. ‘People who don’t read, they’re just missing so many things. I’m glad I like reading. I’m glad you got me to like reading. Remember? Harry Potter was the first book I ever read. And in English!”

I am thinking maybe it’s time for me to get off the Internet and start reading books again too….

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DREAMs

Posted in El Salvador, random, musing or confusing, social justice, tagged , on December 18, 2010| 2 Comments »

My children were not born in the United States. They were born in El Salvador. We moved to the US when they were 9 and 4 years old. Their father is not and never has been a US citizen or legal resident. They’ve likely lived in the US a lower percentage of their lives than many of the young people who just had their dreams dashed when US Senate blocked the DREAM act, legislation that would have provided legal residency to young people who came to the US illegally before age 16 and who graduated from high school, completed 2 years of college or military service and had no criminal record.

My son is applying for college. He’s just been accepted at one of his top choice schools. He is eligible for scholarships, grants and loans that will cover almost the entire cost of his education. He worked his ass off to get where he is. But what if we’d ended up staying in El Salvador? If he’d worked just as hard there in El Salvador, would he be planning to go to one of the world’s top schools in the Fall? Would his education have prepared him to go? Or what if instead of having me for a mother, he’d had another woman as a mother? A woman exactly like me who wasn’t a US citizen when we moved to the US. What then?

How are my children any more worthy than other young people their same age who came to the US as young children, but whose parents were not able to obtain legal status? Why do my children have more privileges?

Ah, right. Because I happen to be their mother and I happen to have been born in the US. That’s the only reason. It just seems so unfair.

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