International Aid - Grant Montgomery

US militarizing Afghanistan aid

2009-12-16T02:05:00.002-05:00

Al Jazeera reports that a number of aid organizations working in Afghanistan have turned down funding from the US government as the money has strings attached to military operations.

Anne Richard, of the International Rescue Committee, told Al Jazeera: "Sometimes, military leaders assume that because we are in the same place, we share the same over-arching goals. … Our goal is to help the Afghan people - ideally, help themselves. The military's goal is to fight in a war and to provide security. … They are motivated by US national interest, we are motivated by humanitarian causes, humanitarian principals."

William Frej, the mission director for USAID, said: "Militarization of aid is a gross mischaracterization of what actually happens on the ground. Without [counterinsurgency] and without the military's support, many of the humanitarian agencies - such as Oxfam - that raise such complaints would not be able to enter the areas once controlled by insurgents."

Beyond risks of being closely associated with the military, aid organizations also argue that they are simply better at delivering aid. "I just don't think the military should be telling Americans if they want to work in humanitarian fields, they should go into the military," Richard said.

Growing Arab philanthropy

2009-12-11T20:23:00.002-05:00

Between 2005 and 2008, the Arab world generated unprecedented wealth and created a new wave of rich citizens. This wealth creation is driving a new generation of Arabs to commit their resources to the development of the region. According to the 2007 World Wealth report published by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, 7 per cent of the typical portfolio of a wealthy person in the Middle East is devoted to philanthropy.

A report by the John D. Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement at the American University in Cairo says charitable giving is particularly high in Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) countries. It puts annual philanthropic spending at about 1.5 - 2 per cent of gross domestic product. This makes the GCC one of the most generous regions in the world, as most countries give between 0.5 and 1.0 per cent of GDP.

Despite these developments, there are significant challenges facing philanthropists and charitable entities in the Arab world. Among them challenges unique to the region are the dominance of traditional models of giving and the association of philanthropy with terrorism. This has brought excessive scrutiny and caused many philanthropists and companies to avoid taking part in activities via institutionalized or publicized giving.

To pave the way for continued progress, Arab countries will need to continue to revamp regulations and policies governing philanthropy and charitable organizations.

Financial Times

The Great Recession hurting charitable giving

2009-12-05T02:18:00.001-05:00

The “great recession” has crimped Americans’ giving to charitable causes. 2008 giving was already down from 2007, and will likely take a bigger hit this year. How long will this bad news continue?

If history is any guide, easy times for charities won’t return soon. Looking at individual giving after the Depression and the deep 1973-75 recession, a study by GivingUSA concluded that inflation-adjusted giving by households and individuals won’t reach their 2007 level until at least 2012, even if the recession ended in June.

If people are out of work, they are less likely to give as much.

“A lot depends on how the stock market does,” says Thomas Pollak, program director of the National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute in Washington. The wealthy, many with stock portfolios, are a big source of charity.

Further, many nonprofits rely heavily on government funding – about 35 percent, on average, says Megan Haddock, international project coordinator at the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University. So any cuts in government support for nonprofit groups, as a way of trimming federal spending, certainly won’t brighten this picture any.

Living by a higher code

2009-12-01T01:28:00.001-05:00

On the first day of her college internship in the late summer of 2007, Jenna Liao waited amid the baggage carousels of O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. Just 21 and newly assigned to an agency that helps refugees, she had been told only to expect a family of 10 from Myanmar. She and a caseworker were to drive them here to the first temporary home of their new lives.

The family trudged into Ms. Liao's view after 19 years in a refugee camp and 30 hours of trans-Pacific travel. All their belongings fit into two plaid plastic bags, and in that moment, as Ms. Liao recently recalled, she winced at the memory of starting college with four times as much luggage.

No sooner did the family squeeze into the caseworker's van than several children began crying. Soon a few others vomited with motion sickness. Seated among them, with no relevant experience and no common language, Ms. Liao wondered what she could do.

Then she remembered that someone had given her a Slinky for the Burmese children, and she began to coax its coils into undulating waves. The impromptu show stilled the tears and stomachs alike.

That night, Ms. Liao called her mother. "I know what I want to do when I grow up," she recalls telling her. "I want to work with refugees."

Two years later, Jenna Liao works full time coordinating volunteers for World Relief, the same agency for which she interned. In a given year, she has a hand in resettling upward of 400 families, with nearly half of the most recent arrivals Iraqis.

"I feel like God is in this work, and I want to be there with him," Ms. Liao says.

Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food

2009-11-27T20:44:00.001-05:00

While more and more of the world’s poor go hungry, and the same can now be said of the poor of America, U.S. residents are wasting food like never before.

A new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974. The study finds that about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States is tossed out.

Meanwhile, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking "food security," meaning their eating habits were disrupted for lack of money, rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million last year.

Last year, an international group estimated that up to 30 percent of food — worth about $48.3 billion — is wasted each year in the United States. That report concluded that despite food shortages in many countries, plenty of food is available to feed the world, it just doesn't get where it needs to go.

Worldwide, about 1 billion people worldwide don't have enough to eat, according to the World Food Program.

Stephan Schmidheiny, the Bill Gates Of Switzerland

2009-11-21T11:40:00.002-05:00

Roberto Laureano da Rocha lives on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil in the impoverished Calmon Viana neighborhood, where most residents make a living as waste pickers, scrounging for aluminum cans and cardboard.

But five years ago Da Rocha began working with the Avina Foundation, which he was introduced to through a waste cooperative. Now, at 35, he heads the co-op and has transformed his shack into a two-story home for his family of four.

Avina was founded 15 years ago by one of the world's least known and most foresighted philanthropists, Swiss billionaire Stephan Schmidheiny, 61. He was early on the sustainable-development bandwagon; in the early 1980s his forestry company GrupoNueva planted fast-growing trees on abandoned farmland in Concepción, Chile. He was also ahead of most do-gooders in aiming to help the poor by boosting their entrepreneurial efforts rather than by handing them welfare.

In 2003 Schmidheiny placed $1 billion in business assets into a charitable trust, which uses up to $30 million of profits annually to help entrepreneurs across both Central and South America. He says he considered becoming a missionary but instead studied law and worked around the globe for his family's business. Schmidheiny's Latin American focus grew from his own business and environmental interests in the region.

Sean McKaughan, who now heads a staff of 120 at Avina, says that South America is a good laboratory for the entrepreneurial approach to reducing poverty. Nearly a third of Brazil's and almost two-thirds of tiny Honduras' populations live in poverty. But Latin America still has enough prosperity to give it a GDP per capita of $4,800, six times the number for sub-Saharan Africa. Says McKaughan. "Here we generate ideas that are applicable to Africa and Asia."

[Forbes]

Giving internationally via American intermediary charities

2009-11-14T00:24:00.002-05:00

Americans have shown a growing interest in philanthropic causes overseas in recent years. But giving abroad can be complicated. Ensuring that such donations reach their intended target and are used effectively, are tax-deductible and don't violate antiterrorism laws or any other U.S. government restrictions can be a daunting task.

Those are some of the reasons many donors opt to work with U.S.-based intermediary charities created for international giving. These organizations act as a channel for donations, ensuring that the money goes to reputable recipients and has the desired effect, and that contributions meet all legal requirements. Because they are U.S.-based, donations made through them are tax-deductible.

Contributors can ask an intermediary to direct money to a cause they have chosen, or choose to support projects an intermediary recommends. Contributions can be made by individuals, groups, foundations or companies.

A list of intermediaries and nonprofits involved in international philanthropy can be found on the Web site of U.S. International Grantmaking, usig.org, a project of the Council on Foundations and the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law.

Wall Street Journal

Charitable giving lowest in half a century

2009-11-08T01:15:00.002-05:00

The recession has caused the biggest drop in charitable giving in the last 50 years, according to Charity Navigator.

That’s particularly bad news for those charities that rely on year-end donations, notes the on-line charity rating organization.

“It is especially critical this holiday season that donors give not just with their heart, but also with their head,” Charity Navigator President and CEO Ken Berger said in a news release: “Smart donors seek out charities that are financially healthy, that have a culture of accountability and transparency, and that deliver lasting benefits for the people and communities they serve.”

Bill and Melinda Gates lobby U.S. for global health funding

2009-11-02T15:15:00.000-05:00

Bill and Melinda Gates made an unusual personal appeal to Washington officials, asking them to continue funding global health initiatives despite the recession and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025.

"Government funding that's coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world," Melinda Gates said in an interview last week. Particularly over the past four to five years, she said, "it's really palpable -- it's making a huge difference saving lives."

The Gates’ presentation was meant to show that U.S. funding is saving lives and that child deaths worldwide can be cut from more than 9 million to 5 million a year in the next 15 years.

Full story

On Giving: Inherited wealth more often than not is horded

2009-10-26T00:47:00.001-04:00

Scholars of philanthropy have noticed some interesting patterns about super-philanthropists in the Bill Gates and Warren Buffet league.

Inherited wealth more often stays horded. "People who make their own money, entrepreneurs, are the most generous," says Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor at Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy.

Another phenomenon that can't be missed about the super generous is the predominance of Americans. 10 of the 14 who have given $ 1 Billion or more are from the U.S., even though only 45% of the world's billionaires reside there.

Says Peter Fuchs, head of a Swiss foundation that works to better lives in South America, "One of the big advantages of the U.S. is its great philanthropists. Latin America does not have the institutions to support philanthropic giving. It is very difficult to change mindsets."

While we hear of extremely generous and wealthy individuals in China (Li Ka-shing), Mexico (Carlos Slim Helú), philanthropy has yet to really catch on amongst the wealthy in many countries.

Says Hong Kong's Li who has been outspoken on the topic: "In Asia, our traditional values encourage and even demand that wealth and means pass through lineage ... I urge and hope to persuade you that if we are in a position to do so, that we transcend this traditional belief," Li said in a 2006 speech, "Even if our government structure is not yet geared towards supporting a culture of giving, we must in our hearts see building society as a duty in line with supporting our children."

16-year-old headmaster of the poor

2009-10-21T19:49:00.002-04:00

Around the world millions of children do not get an education because their families are too poor to afford to send them to school. In India, one schoolboy is trying to change that. At 16 years old, Babar Ali must be the youngest headmaster in the world. He's a teenager who is in charge of teaching hundreds of students in his family's backyard, where he runs classes for poor children from his village.

The story of this young man from Murshidabad in West Bengal is a remarkable tale of the desire to learn amid the direst poverty. Babar Ali's day starts early. He wakes, pitches in with the household chores, then jumps on an auto-rickshaw which takes him part of the 10km (six mile) ride to the school he attends. Babar Ali is the first member of his family ever to get a proper education. His family has to find around 1,800 rupees a year ($40) to send him to school. In this part of West Bengal that is a lot of money.

The minute his lessons are over at school, Babar Ali doesn't stop to play, he heads off to share what he's learnt with other children from his village. At four o'clock every afternoon a bell summons children to his house. They flood through the gate into the yard behind his house, where Babar Ali now acts as headmaster of his own, unofficial school.

Babar Ali gives lessons just the way he has heard them from his teachers. Some children are seated in the mud, others on rickety benches under a rough, homemade shelter. The family chickens scratch around nearby. In every corner of the yard are groups of children studying hard.

His afternoon school has 800 students, all from poor families, all taught for free. Most of the girls come here after working as domestic helps in the village, and the boys after they have finished their day's work laboring in the fields.

Including Babar Ali there are now 10 teachers at the school, all, like him are students at school or college, who give their time voluntarily. Babar Ali doesn't charge for anything, even books and food are given free, funded by donations. It means even the poorest can come here.

Pro Bono Volunteer Challenges

2009-10-19T12:06:00.002-04:00

There is nothing inherently new about volunteers donating professional expertise to “strengthen the management capacity” of nonprofits. It can be enormously helpful for a nonprofit to have access to the donated time of experts in everything from the law to marketing to purchasing. On the surface, this all seems ideal and simple. In practice, however, it takes some work to assure success.

To veterans of the nonprofit world, the obvious premise of the push to facilitate pro bono volunteering is the age-old assumption that agencies are best managed when “operating like a business.” This attitude comes along with the assumption that the do-gooder types in nonprofits obviously lack business skills and so anyone from a corporation -- by definition -- can put an agency on the right track. Leaving aside the reasonable observation that the current economic woes came largely from poorly-led big business, this debate continues.

Accepting that the corporate volunteers seeking to donate their time and talent do indeed have skills valuable to a nonprofit, there remain a number of other assumptions to confront, among them:

* That business expertise can automatically be transferred to the nonprofit environment.

* That all people in business know how to consult, as opposed to do or direct.

* That businesses and nonprofits speak the same language. David Warshaw, founder of Vistas Volunteer Management Solutions has crystallized this problem as “Companies Are from Mars; Nonprofits Are from Venus.” Both have a world-view that might not be shared by the other, or even approved or wanted.

Non-Profit Times

Rich Nations Cut Food Aid Funding

2009-10-12T16:44:00.003-04:00

Tens of millions of the world's poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because rich countries have slashed aid funding.

The result, says Josette Sheeran, head of the UN's World Food Program (WFP), could be the "loss of a generation" of children to malnutrition, food riots and political destabilization. We are facing a silent tsunami."

New data seen show that food aid is now at its lowest in 20 years. If nothing more is given, 2009 will be its lowest contribution since 2001.

World food supplies are under increased strain this year following a succession of droughts, typhoons, floods and earthquakes that have destroyed crops in Africa and south-east Asia. But human needs are also greater because the financial crisis has led to widespread unemployment. In addition, the r emittances from foreign nationals living in rich countries to their families at home are 20% lower than last year.

Says Sheeran. "Many of our funders do not feel that they need to give on the level of last year. They think the world food crisis is over, but in 80% of countries food prices are actually higher than one year ago."

Says Fred Mousseau, Oxfam's humanitarian policy adviser: "This will translate into more child deaths, with more than 16,000 children already dying from hunger-related causes every day."

The Guardian

A Heart for Refugees

2009-10-09T02:07:00.001-04:00

Juliet Stevenson, Michael Palin and the Archbishop of Canterbury were among the first of thousands across Britain to put time aside for refugees as part of a campaign to acknowledge their contribution to the country.

A group of charities – including Refugee Action and the Red Cross – encouraged the public to carry out one of 20 "simple acts". From inviting a refugee for tea, to cooking a foreign dish or learning another language, authors, comedians and actors have helped to complete more than 2,000 acts already, with thousands more expected.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who undertook one of the simple acts by spreading the word about the concept of refuge, said: "Receiving refugees is not a matter of somebody signing papers in some remote office. It's a matter of making friends with new neighbors; it's a matter of turning strangers into a part of the community, and that's done most just by treating them normally, as part of a fabric of the life of this country, this community."

According to the most recent figures, there are just under 300,000 refugees living in the UK. Sandy Buchan, chief executive of Refugee Action, said: "The Simple Acts campaign is all about people taking one or two small, easy actions that will make a world of difference to the lives of refugees in the UK."

A Daring Dreamer in Malawi

2009-10-05T10:19:00.002-04:00

William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him, wind. His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income.

"I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try, too.'"

Kamkwamba was kicked out of school when he couldn't pay $80 in school fees, and he spent his days at the library, where a book with photographs of windmills caught his eye. Armed with the book, the then-14-year-old taught himself to build windmills. He scoured through junkyards for items, including bicycle parts, plastic pipes, tractor fans and car batteries. For the tower, he collected wood from blue-gum trees.

That was 2002. Now, he has five windmills, the tallest at 37 feet. He built one at an area school that he used to teach classes on windmill-building. The windmills generate electricity and pump water in his hometown. Neighbors regularly trek across the dusty footpaths to his house to charge their cellphones. Others stop by to listen to Malwian reggae music blaring from a radio.

[Full story]

A week of devastating events in the Pacific

2009-10-03T16:19:00.002-04:00

Over the weekend a deadly tropical storm slammed into the Philippines, causing severe flooding in urban areas and affecting tens of thousands.

Tuesday, a powerful underwater earthquake triggered a tsunami with waves 15 to 20 feet high that crashed into the Samoa islands, destroying homes and taking lives.

More recently, two successive and devastating earthquakes struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leaving thousands buried in rubble and in desperate need of aid.

And now the Philippines is being plummeted by yet another major typhoon.

Let’s all say a word of prayer for all those directly affected, as well as those deployed in these emergencies to provide vital services.

Teen motivated to help children with disabilities

2009-09-27T11:34:00.001-04:00

When the Multiple Sclerosis Society offered Krissy Dull a trip to Australia for her fundraising efforts for the 2004 MS Tour, the 15-year-old declined the award. Instead, she donated the value of the trip to the society's 2010 research campaign.

Teachers and friends know Dull as passionate, persistent and highly personable. Her persistence and dedication are spurred, she says, by her desire to help children with disabilities.

Dull worked to recruit friends and family members to be part of her team and engaged in fundraisers as diverse as cookbook sales and selling custom-made flip-flops and light-up wine bottles.

"She has an incredible passion," says Bland. "You can't tell her 'No.'" That passion is evident when Dull talks about her fundraising and her commitment to helping find a cure.

"It makes me sad to see people suffer," she says. "I've seen the advances we've made and it makes me happy to see us raise money and get closer to a cure."

[Excerpted from an article by Bart Ganzert in Philanthropy Journal]

Dare to Dream of a Better World

2009-09-13T03:13:00.002-04:00

When you have worked in the non-profit world for some time, like life in general you are faced with ups and downs. It's during the down times you need inspiration to press on. Such as these thoughts from George Bernard Shaw:

"I am a dreamer. Some men see things as they are, and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

Pro Bono Work Helps Firms Fight Economic Slump

2009-09-03T00:49:00.002-04:00

The Wall Street Journal reports that many small-business owners and their employees are doing more pro bono services or volunteer work as a marketing and customer-relations strategy.

An architect firm, after a 2008 revenue drop of 30%, began providing 15 to 20 hours a week in pro bono services to keep employees occupied and potentially attract future contracts. The projects later received full funding and the firm obtained several contracts, which ranged in value from $16,000 to $100,000. Bottom line: "Offering the pro bono services has given us a chance to maintain our design vigor [and] resulted in people hiring us."

A steakhouse shifted $20,000 of the company's advertising budget to pro bono work. This year, not a week goes by that the company doesn't offer its services for charity events, or give away gift cards. Bottom line: "It's worth more to do charity work than to advertise in a local magazine. It's more like guerrilla marketing. People see that we're involved in the community."

One of the beneficiaries of a tech firm was a local church, which had trouble setting up an outdoor wireless digital sign board. The company worked on the four-month project free of charge, saving the church some $7,000 to $12,000. In exchange, the company received an endorsement unlike any other. At a Mass, the pastor thanked the company in front of the congregation. "My wife says, 'It's almost like a referral from God.' "

For a small business that has lost clients or seen revenue-generating projects dry up, performing free work is a way to keep employees engaged while cultivating new relationships. Donating services to charity groups, churches, schools and other nonprofits can "increase local visibility, deepen local business ties and create opportunity for new business," says Christine Banning, vice president of marketing and communications at SCORE, a Washington-based group that provides free counseling to small businesses.

"When there are fewer opportunities, there are more choices of whom people are going to do business with," Audrey Murrell, professor of business administration at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh says, adding that people are going to "be more influenced by the relationship that you've cultivated."

The Visionary Richest Woman in the Middle East

2009-09-01T00:06:00.003-04:00

Shari Arison, billionaire ($2.7 by Forbes's most recent estimate), is controlling stockholder in Israel's largest bank and its largest construction company, heiress to the Carnival Cruise Lines fortune and head of a long list of other undertakings. Arison, perhaps the richest woman in the Middle East, and a major force in Israeli philanthropy, claims that she can see the future.

In her new book published this summer in Israel, the 51-year-old Miami native says she felt the Indonesian tsunami sweeping over the land two months before it happened and sensed Hurricane Katrina pummeling New Orleans. In an interview, Arison says she also "saw the writing on the wall" before the global economic crash.

Arison writes in Birth: When the Material and Spiritual Come Together, “Over the years I suffered much from the visions, the feelings and these messages . . . I prayed they would go away. They brought much pain to my life. This was the preparation for the current phase, the phase in which I am ready to declare what I know with courage and without fear."

Arison says she plans to mobilize her wealth, her companies and, most important, the energy of her accumulated lives to save the human race. As a philanthropist and erstwhile spiritual role model, she had already been taking action -- like encouraging good works and promoting the kind of inner harmony she believes will do as much as summit meetings to keep people, and particularly Arabs and Jews, from hurting each other.

"Here I am -- a woman, a businesswoman -- coming out with ideas that it is okay for a rabbi to have, or it is okay for a spiritual leader to have or an astrologist to have or whoever," Arison says, acknowledging that, for many people, the idea of a banker with a spiritual gift "is scary."

"And it is a shame because it should be quite the opposite. They were not scared with all the mortgage investments . . . and those were very rational business people, who all they cared about was profit, and look what happened. And here comes someone who says they want things to be vision-based, with values, with caring, with a sense of humanity, and people are scared."

For "true world peace, among all people, each one of us has to reach their own individual peace," Arison says in a video introduction to Essence of Life, which sponsors workshops and a Web site aimed at "bringing about a major shift in collective consciousness." She hopes that her Good Deeds Day initiative, which is up to 20,000 participants after its first few years, can go global with its message of setting aside one day a year to volunteer at a charity, paint a school or even just carry the groceries for a neighbor.

Arison recently invested $100 million to set up a water company, whose mission goes to one of Arison's chief worries, that water and other resource shortages will increase conflict around the world.

And she has not run willy-nilly into what would seem like a peacemaking Israeli capitalist's sweet spot -- investments in the Palestinian territories or joint ventures with Israeli Arabs with an emphasis on improving the Palestinian economy.

[The Washington Post]