Haiti: Tragedy and Heroism of the MDGs under a Microscope

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One of the positive aspects of this blog is that it helps to put our (my) personal problems into perspective. Work in the "Real World/Day Job" is getting pretty rough because of the current economy and California budget situation. Compared to what is happening in Haiti or for many in other countries including the United States it is a small matter. Still it has required me to spent more time on municipal financial and development issues than on this blog. Now its the weekend and we are all dealing with a massively large challenge - the earthquake in Haiti. All means everyone from governments, to non-government aid organizations, to individuals, even slacktivsts.

The story of the challenge and the response is overwhelming so I decided to take just the last couple of days and make a list of how others are seeing and reacting to this disaster. We chose UNICEF as our means of responding.

$890 million for Haiti

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has the power to help make that happen. Please click the link below to join me and send Secretary Geithner this urgent message:

http://www.one.org/us/actnow/drophaitiandebt/o.pl?id=1398-4356611-0iBFgIx&t=2

As Haiti rebuilds from this disaster, please work to secure the immediate cancellation of Haiti’s $890 million debt and ensure that any emergency earthquake assistance is provided in the forms of grants, not debt-incurring loans.

Thank you,

Sheila Nix
U.S. Executive Director, ONE

Science & Environment Friday, January 15, 2010

In Haiti, aid workers face a dual challenge By Shari Roan The poor nation has long suffered from a lack of medical care and rampant disease. With the earthquake, aid agencies must build a healthcare system on the fly. >>

Tectonics and poor construction conspired to create devastation in Haiti By Cara Mia Dimassa and Alexandra Zavis The earthquake was a massive, shallow eruption beneath a heavily populated area that lacked stringent building standards, resulting in catastrophe. >>

We just received this message from the UN Foundation’s Dr. Daniel Carucci, who traveled to Haiti to deliver medical supplies and assess the situation on the ground in the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake. I wanted to pass it along right away to give key supporters like you a firsthand look at how relief efforts there are unfolding. His message is a grim reminder of the devastation and urgent needs on the island.

Dan will continue sending updates from the field. We encourage you to follow them at our Haiti Earthquake Response page. Thank you for your support as we assist the UN’s work and help the people of Haiti.

-Kathy Calvin, CEO, UN Foundation

Click here to support the UN Foundation’s critical work by donating to the Central Emergency Response Fund

January 15, 2010 | News covering the UN and the world

Hard-hit UN calls for $550 million in Haiti aid UN Special Envoy to Haiti and former U.S. President Bill Clinton said the earthquake might be the most devastating disaster to have befallen the UN, citing the deaths of 16 employees and disappearance of at least 56 more. UN aid agencies are launching an appeal for $550 million in emergency aid. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 17 search-and-rescue teams have been deployed in Port-au-Prince, with six more on the way to assist in searching out pockets of survivors still trapped in the rubble. Reuters (1/15) , ABC News (1/15)

The earthquake in Haiti has been catastrophic. More than three million people have been affected, and estimates are that over 50,000 have died. The human suffering is unimaginable.

That's why I'd like to pause from our usual conversation and ask for your help.

A number of organizations are already engaged in critical relief efforts, and I urge you to support as many of them as you can. One of them, Oxfam America, has an emergency response team of more than 200 people already on the ground. The need for clean water and critical public health services is massive and immediate -- and our donations can help save lives.

Make a donation to Oxfam's earthquake relief effort in Haiti:

http://acp.climateprotect.org/oxfam

Or, for a list of other organizations to donate to and ways to make a difference, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/haitiearthquake_embed.

Let's make sure the people of Haiti do not face this disaster alone. Thank you for taking action in the face of this tragedy.

Al Gore
Chairman
Alliance for Climate Protection

Words fail: up to two million children are at risk in Haiti right now.

Separated from their families. Trapped under rubble. Countless newly orphaned. Desperate.

Every moment matters: donate NOW and 100% of every dollar to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF will go directly to fund child-saving relief efforts in Haiti.

We can save these children. I say this because I've seen your generosity and I've seen UNICEF's response. Less than 48 hours ago, UNICEF delivered to Port-au-Prince:

• 10,000 tarpaulins
• 4,600 water containers
• 5.5 million water purification tablets
• 556,000 oral rehydration sachets

Caryl M. Stern
President and CEO
U.S. Fund for UNICEF

P.S. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF is absorbing all administrative fees associated with handling your donation, so that you can be confident 100% of every dollar you give will go directly to relief efforts.

Right now, the International Rescue Committee has deployed its Emergency Response team to help earthquake survivors. Our first priority is to rush medical, water, and sanitation support to local relief groups in Haiti, who are overwhelmed by the scale of this catastrophe.

Your support is urgently needed to help us rescue lives in Haiti. Please donate now. Immediate funding needs to support our response are $1.5 million.

The FP Morning Brief: Security deteriorates as desperation grows in Haiti

Top story: While the international rescue operation is beginning to swing into full gear, desperation is growing for Haiti and the security situation is beginning to deteriorate. Looters in Port-au-Prince broke into a U.N. warehouse stocked with 15,000 tons of provisions. Elsewhere, people formed roadblocks with the bodies of victims to demand faster aid. With Haiti's national police nowhere to be seen, international troops must be relied on to keep order.

From FastCompany Haiti Earthquake Disaster: Google Earth, Online-Map Makers, Texts "Absolutely Crucial"

Just before 5 p.m. on Wednesday, January 13, a magnitude-7 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, Haiti, flattening hundreds of buildings and killing as many as 100,000 people. (Related slideshow: Haiti Earthquake: A Bird's Eye View of the...

Care2

EDITOR'S NOTE: The tragedy in Haiti has captured us all; the Web is full of stories and aid resources. Of course our community is no exception. We’ve offered plenty of material and several ways to take action. We’re also continually updating the How to Help Haiti. Let us know if we’ve left something out; we’ll continue to update you.

All the best, Cindy

Cynthia Samuels
Managing Editor

The Boston Globe's Daily Headlines

Bereft in rubble, they stagger, dig | Help has yet to reach most in crushed city

From all walks of life, donations pour in

[Slashdot] Stories for 2010-01-15

| Disaster Recovery For Haiti's Cell Phone Networks |
| from the what-the-world-needs-now dept. |
| posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 14, @12:01 (Communications) |
| https://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/01/14/1538219/Disaster-Recovery-For-Haitis-Cell-Phone-Ne|


The immediate needs for survivors of the Haiti earthquake include first-aid supplies, clean water, body bags and emergency food rations — and we need your help to rush lifesaving aid to Haiti now. Even a small gift can make a big difference. For example:

• $10 can provide 1,000 people with clean water for a day
• $35 can provide a high energy meal for a family of five
  
  

Your donation of $10, $35 or more can help CARE deliver emergency aid as soon as possible.

CARE has been working in Haiti since 1954, when we helped survivors recover from Hurricane Hazel. After the earthquake struck, CARE was among the first to respond.

Remember, clean water and emergency food rations are urgently needed. Please give now to help CARE deliver emergency aid to the people of Haiti as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Helene D. Gayle, MD, MPH
President and CEO, CARE


We just got our first communication from our staff in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
This crisis is like nothing we've seen before and we desperately need your help.

Please make an emergency donation TODAY – help Plan save as many children in Haiti as possible.

Thank you so much for anything you can do to help our efforts in Haiti.

Lisa Ledoux
Internet Marketing Manager
Plan USA

----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE -----
From: Tesfamariam, Rezene
Sent: Thursday, January 14, 2010 1:43 PM
Subject: The situation in Haiti

I just got the possibility of communicating with you through the internet...

The damage of the quake of Tuesday is beyond one's imagination. Although it is very difficult to determine the exact figure, I have seen bodies all along the main street of Port-Au-Prince. I have heard the voices of children trapped in the rubble of their schools.

A major part of the city Port-Au-Prince has been destroyed. Schools, churches, hospitals, and market places are destroyed. Our office in Jacmel, Croix-des-Bouquet and a part of the Country office in Port-Au-Prince are seriously damaged. This is also true for the houses of some of our staff and the residences of our internationals. All communication systems including internet connections were down until today. The quake has left thousands of families without homes and the city has turned into a collection of makeshift camps. In my professional life I have worked with refugees running for their lives and provided support to communities swept away by flood, but not like this. The situation requires quick and well-organized response.

Yesterday morning we drove through some parts of Port-Au-Prince and Croix-des-Bouquet to assess the immediate needs of those affected by the Quake.

We will immediately start providing water, food and hygienic materials to those in the various makeshift camps here in Port-Au-Prince and Jacmel.

We have already formed teams and are addressing the emergency in an organized manner.

We are thankful that other Plan offices are sending us support. Those who are coming will join the team of their specialty.

Thank you very much indeed for your concern and support.

From the New York Times: Patience Wears Thin as Haiti’s Desperation Grows
By MARC LACEY
Aid workers struggled to deliver relief supplies on Friday to survivors increasingly desperate for food and clean water.

There are two ways that you can help with Haiti relief today:

1. Give a Haiti relief charity gift to a Facebook friend.
When you give a charity gift on Facebook, you are buying a specific item needed on the ground in Haiti. We have several new gifts in the Facebook Charity Gift Shop, including:

• Water for Haiti from Oxfam
• Light a Candle for Haiti from UNICEF
• Food for Haiti from CARE
• Shelter for Haiti from the American Red Cross
• Survival Kit from World Vision

Visit the Facebook Charity Gift Shop to see all the Haiti relief Gifts.

2. Join and donate to a cause.
Many nonprofits have started fundraising projects, with funds specifically for Haiti relief, such as:

• Doctors Without Borders
• Friends of the World Food Program
• International Rescue Committee

Thank you for donating at this important time to those who need it most.

The Causes Team

We’re approaching the critical 48 hour mark after the devastating quake struck Haiti. EVERY MINUTE COUNTS: please give now to ActionAid’s relief efforts so we can save as many lives as possible.

The latest news is gut-wrenching. An estimated 3 million people impacted. Tens of thousands likely dead. Even more still trapped under rubble, severely injured, desperately in need of water and care.

Haitian government infrastructure has been crippled, and public services are barely available. United Nations agencies, donor governments and relief organizations still face major obstacles in accessing and distributing supplies. Our ActionAid office in Port-au-Prince has been badly damaged, so our team has now gathered in a private home to coordinate their relief efforts and prioritize next steps.

I'm sending the latest transmission we received from Haiti.

There is no good way to report the news. Thousands have died. Tens of thousands more – especially children – are at risk and may not survive without our immediate help.

Please give NOW – 100% of every dollar you give to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF will be sent directly to UNICEF to support emergency relief efforts.

The initial response to yesterday's appeal has already saved countless lives, but the need continues to overwhelm our available resources. The children of Haiti are relying entirely on international assistance to survive. The Haitian government has little to no means to respond to the crisis.

We are committed to doing whatever it takes to save these children. Please join us.

Thank you,

Caryl M. Stern
President & CEO
U.S. Fund for UNICEF

---

The damage is catastrophic; more than 2 million people have been affected, but the human toll is still unknown. Haiti's president has said the impact on the country is "unimaginable" and estimates that thousands have died.

Donations are urgently needed to rush aid to the area – please give now >>

The initial earthquake struck just before sundown and as many as 28 powerful aftershocks continued throughout the night – the darkness made initial recovery efforts nearly impossible.

Oxfam has four offices in Haiti and over 200 highly-experienced aid workers on the ground. They are already responding to the situation where our assistance is most needed, but we need your help immediately.

Thousands feared dead as major quake strikes Haiti
Dazed and injured Haitians sat on darkened streets pleading for help Wednesday and untold numbers were trapped in tons of rubble brought down by the strongest earthquake to hit this poor Caribbean nation in more than 200 years.
Haiti quake updates & aid effort launched New!
Quake buries 8 Chinese peacekeepers
Chinese rescue team depart for Haiti

U.S. retail chains among those aiding earthquake relief
The nonprofit arms of Publix Super Markets and Wal-Mart are among a slew of U.S. companies and foundations pledging aid to earthquake-torn Haiti this week. The Wal-Mart Foundation has pledged $500,000 in cash and is sending $100,000 worth of food, and Publix Super Markets Charities is donating $100,000. San Jose Mercury News (Calif.)/The Associated Press (1/13)

How the Haiti aid campaign overcame slacktivism
Groups raising money for disaster relief in Haiti have managed to overcome social media's reputation for "slacktivism" by using text messages to collect donations, writes Pete Cashmore. Social campaigns often struggle to convert buzz into concrete action, he writes, but the Haiti campaign's low barrier for entry has helped bring in more than $4 million in donations. "Hitting a button to blast out a message to your friends is easy, but when faced with a credit card payment form, many Web users shy away," Cashmore notes. "Text message donations coupled with the word-of-mouth buzz provided by Twitter and Facebook are proving a powerful combination." CNN (1/14)

A Coalition of Advocates (and me) Supporting the Presidential Study Directive on U.S. Global Development Policy

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ONE is joining forces with the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN)—including:

• Bread for the World
• Women Thrive Worldwide
• Mercy Corps
• Center for American Progress
• Oxfam America
• Publish What You Fund
• RESULTS
• Save the Children
• American Jewish World Service
• CARE
• Americans for Informed Democracy and
• International Women's Health Coalition

They are combining efforts across the Aid Advocacy community to help elevate the call for development and foreign assistance reform for President Obama and his key advisors through the Presidential Study Directive on U.S. Global Development Policy.

Tom Hart, Director of Government Relations at ONE.org advised in an email:

Right now, President Obama and his senior advisors, led by National Security Advisor James Jones and National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, are preparing a Presidential Study Directive that will shape the future of U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty, fight disease, and create economic opportunity for the world's poorest people.

The petition they want us to sign, with my two cents added, reads:

Please create a U.S. global development strategy giving development a strong voice in foreign policy decisions and coordinating efforts to alleviate global poverty, fight disease, and create economic opportunity.

This would be the strongest message that you could send to the rest of world supporting the vision you put forth when accepting your Nobel Peace Prize. It would also be one of the most significant actions the United States could take in supporting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals especially to end poverty.

MFAN will deliver the petition to key White House contacts on December 18. They are looking to get 25,000 signature and so far they have 23,989 with 3,999 from California. So this time I am getting this out about a week early giving anyone who reads this an opportunity to add their voice so that they reach their goal.

From Hardware to Collaborative Philosophy "Whatever it takes"

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Social Entrepreneurship blogger Nathaniel Whittemore's had a post which has been sitting in my draft box for some time. It was on a comparison of Scale vs. Diffusion. His focus was about how to "scale" social sector innovation, and whether "diffusion" might be a more useful idea.

He followed up with another post on Understanding Scale. There is a great deal of interesting insights in the comments sections of both posts. This brings this blogging effort full circle returning to concept of "Creative Destruction" in my first blog which lead me along the path to where I find myself today. Also touches upon "Disruptive Innovation" from earlier in this blog. The concept of in-bound marketing is now taking root in empowering people.

The response to the post demonstrated a nerve was hit and that many social entrepreneurs are thinking hard about how to reevaluate the notion of "scale." It has taken me some time to get my head around it and I will be coming back to these concepts. In very simplistic terms, scaling is bricks and diffusion is water. Use both and you can turn grain into bread. Here is a quick bullet list, more at the original posts.

• Comment Theme #1 - Finally, "Scale" Isn't Sacrosanct:
• Comment Theme #2 - Affirmation of Local Context: Diffusion necessarily gives local context a stronger hand in adapting an innovation to meet a particular and discreet set of needs.
• Comment Theme #3 - Mind Shift, Not Resource Increase: Foundations still had a potentially vital role fostering the ecosystems in which innovation could diffuse across networks, and that a mindset shift was more important than any sort of resource increase.
• Comment Theme #4 - Institutional Scale Still Matters: A final point was that the "diffusion" mindset doesn't entirely supplant our notion of scale as much as supplements it.
  

What I also found interesting was the examples provided. They demonstrate a pathway from hardware technology create to solve a specific problem to organizational adoption to collaborative strategies. Paul Farmer's work has been featured in this blog and earlier in my first blog.

• FrontlineSMS: A free, large scale text messaging solution for NGOs and non-profit organizations

  FrontlineSMS is free open source software that turns a laptop and a mobile phone into a central communications hub.
  

  • A lack of communication can be a major barrier for grassroots non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working in developing countries. FrontlineSMS is the first text messaging system created exclusively with this problem in mind.

    FrontlineSMS leverages computers and mobile phones already available to most NGOs enabling instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale.
    

• jopsa.org - Projects and perspectives on global health

  The FrontlineSMS in action

  • From the start of our projects to the finish, it’s people who determine what FrontlineSMS:Medic does, when we do it, and why. The tech tools we use exist to serve patients, community health workers, and healthcare professionals – not the other way around.
    

    We strongly believe that projects should start when clinics ‘pull’ them to a site, as opposed to having projects ‘pushed’ onto healthcare providers..

• FrontlineSMS:Medic | Text Messages Save Lives

  Implementing the Millennium Development Goals health objectives in the developing world will require new technologies arising from disruptive innovation. Finding new uses for technologies we take for granted.
  

  • How powerful is a light-weight tool in the right hands? During a six month pilot in Malawi, our partner doubled the number of people being treated for Tuberculosis.

  • Driven by local ownership and appropriate technology.

    In the developing world, lack of infrastructure prevents health workers from delivering efficient healthcare to rural areas. As health workers travel from clinics to reach isolated patients, they are often as disconnected from central clinics as the patients they are trying to serve. The mission of FrontlineSMS:Medic is to advance healthcare networks in the developing world by building and distributing innovative, appropriate mobile technologies.

• Partners In Health Vision - Whatever it takes

  The PIH model of care – partnering with poor communities to combat disease and poverty
  
  For the first time, substantial funding is available to treat infectious diseases in impoverished settings. Funding alone, though, won’t be enough. For this massive investment to make a real impact on the twin epidemics of poverty and disease, a comprehensive and community-based approach is key.

  • The PIH Vision: Whatever it takes
  • At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone.
    
  • Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill.

Diigo tags: frontlinesms, mobile, global health vision, mdgs jopsa.org, jopsa, sms, activism, development,

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Getting Americans more educated to become more globally engaged to take greater leadership

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Change.org is providing an opportunity for participation through the U.S. Center for Citizen Dipolomacy in an arena that is vital if the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved. We are pressed to take a leadership role in the Millennium Campaign because we have the greatest level of resources, we use the greatest amount of resources and we are still seen by the world as being among the primary leaders in the world, and in my view, we have the greatest capacity for leadership.

America's image abroad is improving, numerous polls and studies prove anti-American sentiment still exists around the globe. We need to dramatically increase our capacity to reach out to the rest of the world to foster mutual understanding and find common interests and values.

US. Center for Citizen Diplomacy is calling on all Americans to sign a Letter to the President urging President Obama to convene a National Summit on Citizen Diplomacy in order to bring this issue to the forefront and provide opportunities for global engagement at all levels of American society The idea is to encourage more Americans to reach out to the rest of the world and foster mutual understanding.

Tremendous opportunities exist to involve many thousands more Americans in this vital work, contributing as citizen diplomats in a variety of ways. A program that expands and utilizes their talents and expertise will greatly help the United States regain its stature as a respected, positive force throughout the world. Much of our thinking builds on the successful models of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and leaders such as J. William Fulbright.

The goal is to multiply the connections between American citizens and their counterparts overseas fourfold by 2016.

Change.org wants us to ask President Obama to expand resources for bringing Americans together with others to promote shared values and understanding >

One of the goals of the Millennium Campaign is 2. Universal Education, but the truth is that we are as much in need of education as those in developing countries. The fourfold increase by 2016 is laudable and matches fairly closely with the 2015 goal to end poverty, but it raises the question how many connections exist now. This blog provides me a platform to interact with like minded people in India, Australia, Brazil and other countries as well as in the United States through communities like Change.org, Orkut and Facebook.

The Common Ground Blog (which I will be adding to the blogs to which this blog links) has a post and a question on the subject US CENTER FOR CITIZEN DIPLOMACY: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SHOULD SUPPORT CITIZEN DIPLOMACY OVERSEAS

Question to the Blogosphere:

What can the Obama administration do to encourage Americans to engage in efforts to strengthen America’s international relationships? Should public high schools in the United States be provided with funds to send young people to different parts of the world? What types of development assistance and community-based initiatives would be most useful in promoting international understanding? What can be done to involve the older generations in the United States in citizen diplomacy?

Distributive Leadership Obama Style

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Last year I found this article at Harvard Business Publishing Obama and the Rise of Asymmetrical Competition, by Umair Haque, and while the idea fitted better with the election, I still like the ideas behind it. It is not an easy path to follow, but it is arguably the most scalable form of organizing and implementation of community change that we know. Umair Haque's perspective is business oriented.

Yes, startups have always challenged incumbents. So what makes asymmetrical competition different? First, rarely before new and lateral entrants been able to upset incumbents so decisively – to actually put them out of commission. Second, rarely have they been able to dominate entire industries with such speed. Third, almost never before have so many revolutionaries threatened so many incumbents across a broad sweep of industries. Fourth, in asymmetrical contests, yesterday’s sources of advantage become today’s sources of disadvantage.

More recently MITWorld provided a more indepth review of the Obama model of distributive leadership. Marshall Ganz's perspective is both political and community oriented. He makes the point that this type of leadership cannot be done from a Facebook account.

• Distributed Leadership in the Obama Campaign | MIT World

  The Obama campaign owes its victory not to a single charismatic candidate, but to the efforts of a disciplined and motivated organization whose roots go back to landmark movements of the 1960s. Marshall Ganz, who cut his teeth on civil rights work and with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers, describes how the principles and practices he learned around organizing and leadership played out in the most recent presidential election.

  Diiog tags: obama, leadership, community, collaboration

  • Ganz’s take, after years with progressive movements, is that leadership involves “taking responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
    
  
  
  • This kind of “civic capital” is precisely what the Obama campaign cultivated and invested in, says Ganz. Thousands of people acquired the skills and practiced “the arts of leadership necessary to self govern in democracy.”
    

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Social Innovation Fund: Social Activists bring the innovation Government brings the funds

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I am trying to find time to get back to this blog and updated my Facebook page to create away of keeping track of some of the resources, especially those at Change.Org. I found two interesting posts over the weekend from Social Entrepreneurship on Facebook. Nathaniel Whittemore on an interview with America Forward on the Social Innovation Fund.

I know that is usually the interviewee one pays the most attention to, but I really liked what the interviewer said about a set of principles being distinct from orthodoxy.

clipped from socialentrepreneurship.change.org

Change.org: Makes sense, and is definitely an evolving expression of progressive sentiment. It seems to me that part of the increasing political pragmatism is a sense that a set of principles can be distinct from an orthodoxy about how to achieve them. No compromising on closing the achievement gap in schools, for example, and an absolute fervor that it is government's job to lead that fight, but an openness to how to get there.

This takes out the ideology as the main point of contention and gets us focused on the problems.

Below is from another Change.org post at Social Entrepreneurship. This time Nathaniel writes about Andrew Wolk and his recent attendance at the Future Trends Forum in Madrid, Spain. This is the type of thinking that is going to be necessary to get thousands, maybe millions of different groups working for the Millennium Development Goals to come together to make a change from the bottom up. While I support the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and pushing the developed world to keep their promise I remain skeptical of their resolve. If postive change can be seen by regular people in the developed world so that they start to believe that real change is possible, then we have a far better chance of leveraging political policy.

clipped from socialentrepreneurship.change.org

I left Madrid with two takeaways I thought were worth sharing. The first was a general agreement that we have been too focused on scale by replication, and have not thought enough about scaling ideas. While this is not new for this blog, I heard a new angle on what should be an increased emphasis on collaboration. As one attendee put it, we do not need another water filtration system to solve the world’s clean water access problem; rather, we need to bring everyone working on the issue of clean water together to collaborate and work on a distribution system of the best solutions.

SAHASH INDIA NGO Society

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One of the things that I have been wanting to do with this blog, besides finding the time to write it, was to highlight some of the organizations I have run across that are working on the Millennium Development Goals. The United Nations or the Millennium Campaign don't have to worry about being promoted. It is also important to keep in mind that a vast amount of work will be done regionally by small change-agent organizations that most people in the world will never hear about. The Web can make a small change in that. One medium of connection for this blog is the Orkut group End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA. There I connected with SAHASH INDIA NGO:

Hi Sir,
We just started this NGO 3 year ago with youth and are doing well & trying to achieve the MDG's with some legal requirements to work out. As soon as our legal status is completed, we hope we can do better for our society with your suggestions.

What I found fascinating is that a fledgling non-profit can leverage its self on the global stage through Web 2.0 tools. Whether it can do so at great enough scale is the question. Is there a Asian or Indian dgCommunities, ICCO or ComPart through which they could be working for greater collaboration? There does seem to be at least two sites, though neither are Asian or Indian in origin. The first is LinkNGO. They have a demonstration site. Here is the SAHASH (About Us - Welcome)site. The other is at WiserEarth. Here is their link for WiserEarth page Organization: Society for Animal Health Agriculture Science and Humanity - WiserEarth. They both provide important information about Sahash India NGO. They are also fellow Bloggers at SAHASH INDIA NGO.

I know that such levels of collaborative web programs have been created in India through my other blog Creating Economic Opportunity At All Levels. In my view though it is the European organizations such as EUFORIC Europe's Forum On International Cooperation that have the most to teach us about Web 2.0 collaboration. This is where the web could make a substantial difference in making the world a better place.

The work of Sahash India NGO will be at a regional level, but if it is not supported at a national level and we do not support groups like it at a global level, then the viability of reaching the 2015 Millennium Development Goals is highly questionable. It certainly can't be done by only outsiders to the region where the problems exist. It is not simply a matter of getting the G20 to agree, commit and live up to that commitment. A tremendous amount of management and resource organization must occur from the halls of the United Nations and other global organizations to the on-the-ground providers.

Web 2.0 and Social Impact from the Ground Up and from the Server Out

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The focus of Development Gateway Foundation's dgCommunities (previous post) is providing web-based tools to make aid and development efforts more effective by increasing access to critical information, building local capacity and bringing partners together for positive change. Somewhat like computer geeks looking for some do-gooders to help. They are in the field, having just opened as opened a new office in Dakar, Senegal, but work more it seems on upgrading aid management systems or improving user interface.

The ICCO Alliance and its many partners or sponsors, including EUFORIC, seem to focus their efforts more towards on the ground efforts in aid relief than dgCommunities. They are also though seeking to extent their reach and effectiveness by using Web 2.0. tools, so do-gooders looking for help from the computer geeks. From the Web 2.0 perspective this would be the Integration of Collaborative Information Systems in Web 2.0 (pdf), but from the field operatives perspective looking to communicate and collaborate with other aid organizations it is ComPart.

Their system is impressive and should be a model for other collaborative progressive efforts on the Internet. While dgCommunities is out of Washington D.C., I have thought for a while that the Europeans were better at using the Internet for social action at the grassroots level than we are in the States. While we may have more people on Facebook signing up for the latest cause, Europe including Great Britain seem better at using Web 2.0 for socially beneficial impact.

The ICCO is now using these tools to create better connections with aid efforts going on in the southern hemisphere of our planet ComPart Learning Blog: ComPart South 2009 workshop

In 2007, ICCO started a project (with support from Euforic) working with Knowledge and Learning Networks. The project aims to contribute to ICCO Alliance capacity building, learning networks, and knowledge.

The basis for the ComPart system is ComPart Flowers. This 30 minute presentation found on blip.tv provides a more extensive look at what makes up the ComPart Flowers system:

Some of the tools used are blogs, social tagging and wikis. One outcome of these efforts is the web2share wiki.

This wiki introduces some 'building blocks' - tools and applications - for open information, knowledge sharing and communication in development. It builds on the efforts of ICCO, Euforic and their partners. It supports further investments in these tools and approaches.

The ICCO Alliance/ComPart folks are not having any trouble finding the computer geek types to help them including the founder of PBWiki, David Weekly.

David Weekly in the ComPart Learning Blog Post: Wiki, wiki, wiki, meet David Weekly.., explains his interest to listen to experiences of wiki users from Nepal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chile and Costa Rica during his participation in the ComPart support workshop in the Netherlands. He also explains how PBwiki continues to try to make wikis easier to use and how valuable it has been to meet some major daily users of the PBwiki platform.

Other tools include social-tagging on sites like Delicious of favorites like Everyone's bookmarks for "Happy Capacity Building".

How to promote a learning culture in an organization with huge workloads and pressure for the young staff? Start from scratch, from their needs and wishes, and help them crystallize their own ideas.

Most of what is featured here came from the ComPart toolbar, which I downloaded but can't now find a live link. I should disclose that I am not part of any of these organizations. I am just impressed and believe that even looking from the outside in that there is a great deal to learn.

diigo tags: compart, pbwiki, collaboration, web2share, wiki, web2.0, euforic, delicious, capacity, ICCO, euforic

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Updating Resources dgCommunities

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This blog became aware of dgCommunities last year and started to link back then. What was not fully appreciate back then was the tremendous amount of information that was available. The dgCommunities website is still part of the Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals found at the right hand column. The latest addition is giving dgCommunities its own section featuring links to specific areas of interest - Information and Communication Technologies, Capacity Development and Knowledge Economy.

The folks at dgCommunities obviously recognize the issue of information overload because near the top of each e-mail is the question "Too much e-mail?" The information content of this blog is exponentially going beyond the capabilities of one individual to absorb so I will be picking what is of interest and trying new strategies for organization.

Related posts:
Insights From dgCommunities
Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals
Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective

Collaboration Tools for the Millennium Development Goals.

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This blog takes two approaches. One, learning more about the UN Millennium Development Goals and related programs. Two, learning more about using Web 2.0 tools to learn more about and to promote the UN Millennium Development Goals. These basically include so far blogging and social-tagging. This has been the subject of discussion at the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forum Leveraging Social Media. Last month I found some great resources that were featured in the post Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective. Afterward, I received some kind appreciation from Elizabeth Corley of the Development Gateway Foundation.

Dear Brian,

We appreciate the links on your blog to dgCommunities and Development Gateway.

Elizabeth Corley
Director of Communications
Development Gateway Foundation
1889 F Street NW, Second Floor
Washington, DC 20006 USA

Information Tools. Global Partnerships. Effective Aid.

Those resources have already been described as extensive and expansive, but they go even further than that. They begin to meet the challenge of making the web a collaborative platform for these efforts, and does so in a way that is of educational use for the learner and of practical knowledge for the practitioner. It fulfills one of the wishes from the forum discussion, finding better means of collaboration.

Once these ideas were in mind, similar resources began popping up. Some from the European Forum on International Co-operation or EUFORIC. EUFORIC introduced me to ComPart, who introduced me to ICCO.

ComPart provides the Web 2.0 tools, and the site itself is a PBwiki site, providing directions on Working with this site and ComPart, providing information on how to Get trained on ComPart, Linking & Learning Wiki and the ComPart Learning Blog. I also downloaded their toolbar, which features ICCO Alliance feeds.

The ComPart system is being developed within the ICCO-Alliance as to sustain the COMmunication with PARTners. It is a combination of (mostly) free Internet based applications that are all user friendly and stimulate participation and collaboration.

The ICCO applies those tools through a variety of different partnerships in fulfilling its mission which is:

The ICCO Alliance’s mission is to strive for a world in which people can live in dignity and well-being. The Alliance focuses on three main themes:

• Fair Economic Development
• Democratisation and Peacebuilding
  
• Access to Basic Services

The ICCO Alliance works on these themes in over 50 countries through the ICCO Alliance Operation Plan 2007-2010 (pdf)

With ICCO, I took advantage by downloading their search tool, which features not only Google searches, but icco alliance, euforic, focuss and Wikipedia searches as well.

Maarten Boers, the administrator of ICCO-Alliance Learning Network, explains below how Compart is suppose to work as a collaborative tool. I received a response from Mr. Boers regarding joining the ICCO-Alliance, but have not been granted access just yet.

Finally, both introduced me to Dgroups.

Welcome to Dgroups, the starting point for fostering groups and communities in international development. We are a partnership which caters to both individuals and organisations by offering tools and services that bring people together. Whether you are trying to support a team, a group, a network, a partnership or a community, we hope to provide you with the capacity to do this in an environment which is simple, non-commercial, respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users in the South. Learn more here.

Again, this is collaborative effort with numerous current partners including Bellanet, DFID, Hivos, ICA, ICCO, IICD, OneWorld, UNAIDS and WorldBank. Member organizations include CGIAR, CIDA, CTA, Danida, FAO, IDRC, INASP, KIT, SNV, Sida, SDC, and UNECA.

So now my list of what I can learn about the Millennium Development Goals and related organizations, program, projects, and Web 2.0 tools has grown expontentially. My latest endeavor is signing up for a PBwiki account. Finally, I decided that all this rates having its own section on this blog - Collaborative Tools for the Millennium Development Goals.

Implications for Aid Practice - From the Citizen Perspective and The Global Perspective

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I have been having an ongoing discussion on leveraging social media on behalf of the Millennium Development Goals in one of the End POVERTY / Fim POBREZA forums. I am not claiming to be an expert in this area, just an interested participant. This blog is basically my ongoing personal attempt to marry Web 2.0 to global activism. Below are other online resources found in my web-trekking. They are very extensive and expansive resources so rather then trying to post fully about them here I am including then under Learning More About the Issues and Supporting Millenium Development Goals "In the Trenches".

Development Gateway Foundation and dgCommunities are sites created with professionals in mind, but they are also great educational resources, including the article Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we Stand and Where do we Need to go?

The Development Gateway Foundation is an international nonprofit organization that provides Web-based platforms to make aid and development efforts more effective around the world.

It envisions a world in which the digital revolution serves people everywhere – creating greater opportunity through increased access to critical information; greater reliance on local capabilities; and more effective, better coordinated international aid.

dgCommunities is both a place to find knowledge resources focused on development issues and an interactive space where you can share your own work, participate in discussions, find people with similar interests and more. We have more than 36,000 members worldwide - and over half are in developing countries.

Web-Based Platforms for Effective Aid and Development

The foundation provides Web-based platforms for more effective aid and development efforts around the world focusing on three areas where even small investments in information and communications technology can make a major difference:

• Effective government – enabling better aid management and coordination, and more efficient and transparent government procurement.
• Knowledge sharing and collaboration – leveraging the Internet for online communications among development practitioners worldwide.
• Local partner programs in nearly 50 countries – connecting developing country organizations into a global network to empower them to use information and communications technologies to bolster local development efforts.

Areas of interest are the focus on Aid Effectiveness and Best Practices, which included the article that first brought me to this online resource, Implications for Aid Practice: Taking a citizen’s perspective (pdf).

World Wide AIDS Day Business Struggles Business Answers

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This blog holds the belief that it will be impossible for governments or with entities substantially dependent upon governments to succeed alone in meeting any of the Millennium Development Goals. It also holds the belief that implementing global health care systems to address challenges such as HIV/AIDS will require sound business practices. Those business practices in turn require global reach into some of the poorest countries and that can be provided through United Nation resources, many of which are highlight within these posts. It is going to require a partnership, it is going to required thousands of partnerships.

One of the resources of this website is the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, found under Global News Sources, which reports on both the good and bad acts of businesses around the world. The articles below are a sampling taken from their site.

They reported on 11/28/08 that Levi Strauss & Co. Commemorates World AIDS Day 2008 by making a grant to the HIV Collaborative Fund to support people living with HIV/AIDS around the globe in their fight for treatment, care and support.

The role of businesses in addressing AIDS is not limited to large American companies. While we may think of AIDS in Africa being an affliction of the absolutely destitute, business enterprises in Ethiopia are also exploring means of addressing the challenge by translating intent into action in Ethiopia 11/27/08.

The Ethiopian Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS(EBCA) [a subsidiary of , GTZ Engineering Capacity Building Program, the World Bank Institute and the Rapid Results Institute implemented a pilot programme to achieve rapid HIV results within businesses in Ethiopia in 100 days Tadesse Tekallign of Crown Cork and Can Share Company [said],The pilot project is creating new best practices on HIV in Ethiopia's private sector. The companies are finding their own solutions and tackling challenges quickly.

This article is from Tanzania. 18 media houses launch HIV/Aids policies [Tanzania] 16 Nov 2008.

A landmark step in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Tanzania's media industry is to be marked today when 18 media houses launch their workplace policies on HIV/AIDS…The policies…[will address] prevention, treatment, care, support and reduction of stigma and discrimination within the media houses.

This report from two days earlier on 11/26/08 is on the views of a United Nations Development Programme expert on HIV/Aids in the Arab region who urged a private sector role in Aids awareness [Qatar]. UNDP Regional HIV/Aids and UNAIDS Joint United Nations Program on AIDS are two of many programs of the United Nations addressing global health and HIV/AIDS.

Speaking at a Qatar Petroleum HIV/Aids workshop, HARPAS UNDP Regional HIV/Aids [of the UNAIDS Joint United Nations Program on AIDS] programme co-ordinator for Arab states Dr Khadija Moalla said it is high time for the private sector to get 'smart' and make interventions on HIV in order to halt the spread of the disease among young adults social and health planning adviser at Dr Laila Ishrair the General Secretariat for Development Planning hinted that a draft law on human rights of people living with HIV will be sent[to] the Minister of Health, the law include[s] rights to work, to housing, to treatment as well as protection against discrimination.

Again, these are only some of the examples that can be found on the web. Other avenues of inquiry could include what is the economic impact of fighting against AIDS in a developing country. Jeffrey Sachs chaired a World Health Organization commission looking at the links between epidemic disease and economic stagnation, and to play a part in the setting up of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Here are other HIV/AIDS articles from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre.

Related posts
World Wide AIDS the Tragedy
World Wide HIV/AIDS Looking For Solutions

Despite current economic climate Science moves forward Will USA provide leadership for a better world?

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One reason for maintaining my support for the free enterprise system despite the current economic crisis, which I blame on what I am calling uber-capitalism, is that I still see free enterprise as the best means of fueling innovation, including scientific innovation. That may be in part why SciDev.Net calls for the United States to take a lead role in advancing science as a means of addressing the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals.

SciDev.Net says that according to an editorial in Nature,science is on the rise. "Science and innovation continue to grow in developing countries, despite the current economic climate."

Quotes: Science on the rise, despite current economic climate - SciDev.Net

• According to a report published by TWAS, The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, even smaller countries such as Chile, Malaysia, Rwanda and Vietnam are prioritising investment in higher education and technology.
• Whereas countries borrowing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were previously told to cut back on government spending, now there is talk of rebuilding and strengthening public institutions. And this is likely to be the case for both richer and poorer nations. Read more »

The same SciDev.Net makes the case that the world's poor deserve better US leadership. Not just more funding, but the vision of leadership. "The US election has implications for science and foreign aid policy, and so for the poorest people across the developing world."

Quotes: The world's poor deserve better US leadership - SciDev.Net

• Enhancing efforts to tackle global poverty will be particularly important; not just by providing direct assistance like food aid, but also by helping poor countries improve their science and technology capacities.
• The more that the United States becomes identified with such efforts, the less it will be accused of merely pursuing its own commercial and military interests. And the more that such countries generate sustainable economic growth, feed their people and create new jobs, the less they will become breeding grounds for fundamentalist-driven protest. Read more »

To do this the US science office must promote global collaboration according to SciDev.Net."The White House science office must boost science and technology for international cooperation on many fronts, says Rodney W. Nichols."

Quotes: US science office must promote global collaboration - SciDev.Net

• In November 2008, a report from the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC (OSTP 2.0) outlined best practices for global responsibilities in the OSTP. These include: leading international S&T policy and activities in organisations such as the G8, World Bank, and all major bilateral and multilateral S&T initiatives; and working with the State Department and USAID, as well as other parts of the US government, to put S&T at the heart of development strategies.

• In the United States, as in most developed countries, tight science budgets are subject to increasingly stringent tests to justify their contribution to national wealth or productivity — leading to international cooperation being seen as either "giving away knowledge" or a "humanitarian luxury". Such scepticism is unwarranted. A rising tide of international research collaboration — for example to develop safe and reliable nuclear power — will help lift all the national boats of economic development. Protectionism and hyper-nationalism are the enemies of the world's scientific progress. Almost all private companies — from General Electric to Microsoft, from Intel to Pfizer — realise that cross-national collaboration in research, development, manufacturing, marketing and distribution is essential. It is time the government does too.

• Modern research and development (R&D) toward socio-economic goals absolutely demand global links, and this need intensifies every day.
• The government's next big hurdle is reforming the entire ensemble of US foreign aid, which totals almost US$25 billion, to infuse S&T into all goals aimed at improving the lives of people in the developing world. Read more »