Welcome to the July 2010 issue of the Global Washington newsletter. If you would like to contact us directly, please email us.

IN THIS ISSUE

• Note from our Executive Director
• Featured Organization: Clear Path International
• Changemaker: Steve Crane –  Making a Difference Through Innovation
• Book Review – Up and Out of Poverty: The Social Marketing Solution
• Updates to the Global Washington Website
• Announcements
• Global Washington Events
• Other Events

Note from our Executive Director

Featured Organization: Clear Path International

For centuries, wars have been disrupting the daily lives of innocent civilians. But whileconflicts may have an official ending, the terrors of war often linger long after hostilities end. One of the most frightening remnants of war is the existence of minefields and unexploded ordnance blanketing former battlefields. Mines kill or wound an innocent civilian nearly every 30 minutes, killing or seriously injuring 15,000 to 20,000 people a year.

Landmine and unexploded ordnance accidents pose serious impacts on the survivors, their families, and their communities. Survivors of landmine and bomb explosions are often left severely injured, both physically and financially. Injuries sustained from a mine accident often prevent the victim from pursuing education or work opportunities, leaving families without a much needed income.

Given that the majority of minefields and unexploded ordnance reside in the developing world, the impacts of explosions are even more pronounced. Local communities do not usually have the resources to treat land mine victims’ physical and psychological injuries. Thus, it is the mission of Clear Path International (CPI) to serve not only the victims of landmine and bomb explosions, but their families and communities as well, to ensure victims are able to reenter their community with renewed confidence.

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Changemaker: Steve Crane – Making a Difference Through Innovation

“Paths are made by walking” has been the guiding principle for Steve Crane’s work as a changemaker.

From expanding Washington State government’s’ international program focus to building new Rotary partnerships in Zambia, Steve is an envoy for Washington’s global development efforts. He is a strong believer in building opportunities and encouraging collaboration through business, trade, and innovative public-private partnerships.

When asked about the origin of his interest in fostering development through trade, Steve recalled his frustration with the trend toward econometrics in economic theory at the time of his undergraduate studies.  That was not about refining theories to better predict real people’s behavior, which was Steve’s sense of how economics should be used.  He wanted to learn how disadvantaged people can be empowered to change their lives.  At Stanford and John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he worked with third world development practitioners whose advice was changing the economic prospects of poor countries.

Steve entered the business world believing that corporations can be agents of positive, sustainable change in the lives of the communities where they operate.  At NCR Corporation, he convinced senior management that they should have a host country relations policy in the developing countries where NCR was doing business.  That new initiative encouraged Steve’s later work on public-private partnerships and corporate social responsibility.

In the early 1970s, trade’s importance to Washington State was not widely understood. To change this, Steve had a key role in establishing the Washington Council on International Trade.  WCIT educated public officials, high school teachers and the public at large about trade’s critical role in Washington’s future.  In the late 1970s, Steve joined the senior management at AFS International, a leading high school student exchange program, to increase their funding.  He initiated corporate partnerships in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, and Southeast Asia, building on company’s interest in hiring graduates with experience living abroad. This campaign raised over $6 million to support sending African students to homes and schools in these countries and here in the United States, enriching the program’s diversity.

Steve’s innovative mindset has led to many first-of-its-kind projects leveraging Washington State’s resources to make an impact on developing countries, especially in Asia.   In the 80’s, as the head of the International Division of the Washington State Department of Commerce, Steve staged the State’s first major international conference that featured trade and investment opportunities in Southeast Asia. In 1991, he convinced business colleagues and Seattle City officials to establish the Seattle-Surabaya (Indonesia) Sister City relationship based on mutual development interests.  That led to the exchange of trade delegations that included State, City and Port officials who had never traveled to the other country. It also fostered a partnership between Seattle’s and Surabaya’s water utilities to introduce water quality control policies there.

Following his wide-range of accomplishments at a variety of private companies, non-profit organizations and state government, Steve continued his change-making efforts by founding his own consulting company, Crane International Inc.  He remains an active participant in national and local committees contributing to global development.  In 1999, Steve arranged a Seattle visit by World Bank President James Wolfensohn as a guest of the City and WCIT.  That visit led to engaging the City, UW, and business leaders in a Sister City partnership with the Haiphong (Vietnam) City government and the World Bank to improve their services and tourism prospects.  Steve chairs the trade policy committee providing advice to Global Washington on its recently published Policy Paper – “Global Development through Trade, Aid, Education, and Partnerships: Recommendations from Global Washington.”

Steve is also the co-chair of the International Service Committee (ISC) of Seattle Rotary, which manages a diverse project portfolio of Rotary partnerships abroad to empower less advantaged people to significantly improve their lives.  Seattle Rotary is the largest and fourth oldest Rotary Club in the world, which, Steve believes, offers ISC members a special opportunity and responsibility to lead project partnerships.

For example, the ISC is now steering an exciting malaria control pilot project in Zambia in partnership with Rotary Clubs there and with PATH.  This project will build individual Club partnerships with Seattle-area Clubs and support the formation of a Zambia-based steering committee to plan and oversee their malaria control activities.  Zambian Clubs will work with local government health workers and leaders to train and equip neighboring communities to prevent malaria.  Combined with other anti-malaria work in Zambia, this partnership aims to engage Rotarians in the campaign to eradicate malaria there.  It also is building a model for Rotarians to work with governments and NGOs on a national scale in other countries.

Another current ISC project is restoring their water supply to tribal mountain villages north of Mumbai, India.  A partnership with a Mumbai Rotary Club, a local NGO and other US Clubs is empowering villagers to restore their depleted aquifer by capturing monsoon rainfall runoff.  Steve enthusiastically explained that with the contour bunds and mini-dams villagers are building, “valuable topsoil will be saved, well pumps will draw water again, wasteland will be converted to kitchen gardens and fruit orchards, jobs will be created, agricultural output will be increased, and villagers’ health and education will be improved.”    These changes will be sustained by committees of local villagers with the support and oversight of Rotarians. The longer term objective Steve foresees is to “establish corporate partnerships that extend this model program to many more depleted aquifers and poor villages in India and, perhaps, to other countries in the developing world.”

During our interview, I could really feel Steve’s enthusiasm about Global Washington.   His first response to my question of what advice he would give to organizations or people who would like to contribute to the development sector is – “Join Global Washington!”  Aligned very closely with this belief in innovation and collaboration, Steve thinks that Global Washington’s strength lies in the exciting forums it provides to encourage new relationships to be formed, and new ideas to be fashioned and pursued with partners that have complementary skills and strengths.

If you are interested in learning more about Steve Crane’s works, you may email him at Craneintl@aol.com.

*Photo courtesy to Jim Moore.

Book Review

Up and Out of Poverty: The Social Marketing Solution
by Philip Kotler and Nancy R. Lee
2009 Wharton School Publishing
$29.91 Hardcover

Up and Out of Poverty offers readers a fascinating journey into the world of social marketing, a process which applies a mix of proven marketing principles and techniques to  benefit society as well as the target audience, and which uses “ constructive approaches to support desired behavior changes “.  Since its founding in the 1970’s social marketing has been used effectively to reduce tobacco usage, increase literacy, and advance a wide variety of social causes.  Authors Kotler and Lee now present a compelling case for incorporating social marketing as an integral component of poverty reduction solutions.

Packed with helpful information, this book is a valuable resource for new and seasoned actors in global development, who plan, implement or evaluate poverty reduction programs.  Employing a series of intriguing case studies throughout, the authors deconstruct poverty reduction programs from Kampala, Uganda to the streets of New York, clearly demonstrating the application of social marketing principles.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which presents the poverty problem in broad terms, including current thinking about poverty solutions and 5 commonly accepted definitions of poverty. These range from the World Bank’s “absolute definition” of extreme poverty, as those living on less than $1.25 a day, to the Human Poverty Index, which takes into consideration the likelihood of a child not surviving to age 60, along with other key factors. The authors estimate we are looking at approximately 4 billion people living in extreme, moderate or relative poverty, with “90% living in Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, and South Asia”.

Kotler and Lee present and assess four traditional, strategic paths for reducing poverty: economic growth, redistribution, foreign aid and population control. They advocate convincingly for a more multilateral approach to poverty reduction solutions, which incorporate a social marketing mind-set, and emphasizes “a fundamental principle underlying marketing – understanding the market segments and each segment’s potential needs, wants, beliefs, problems, concerns, and related behaviors”.

Social marketing, unlike commercial marketing, focuses on behavior rather than on goods and services. The competition is the undesirable behavior rather than other businesses, and the end benefit is the wellbeing of the target audiences and society as a whole, rather than investor wealth. Social marketers want to influence audiences to accept, reject, modify or discard particular behaviors.

In Part II, “Applying Social Marketing Perspective s and Solutions” we see how five social marketing tools support poverty-reduction programs. These tools include: “segmenting the market, evaluating and choosing target market priorities, determining desired behaviors, identifying barriers, benefits and competitors, and developing a desired positioning and strategic marketing mix based on the Four Ps – product, price, place and promotion – to encourage adoption of behaviors”.

One case study looks at Sri Lanka, a country wracked by malaria epidemics which “ reached a peak of 687,599 confirmed cases in 1987 – yet in 2007 there were only 196 – and no deaths”. The product strategy used began in the 1950 with extensive indoor spraying and significant community resistance. Community acceptance increased with the advent of selective spraying based on a variety of more refined assessments. Mosquito nets helped reducing the need for spraying in high risk areas, outreach mobile clinics were brought in to speed detection and treatment, and diagnostic kits provided to medical practitioners helped identify the disease for malaria patients without access to laboratory facilities.

Part III provides a well organized framework for developing a strategic plan in 10 steps, referring to Peru’s efforts to reduce the incidence of TB, to illustrate each stage. The discussion then moves to the roles that government, the non-profit sector, and the private sector play in poverty reduction, and an introduction to key actors in the field, such as CARE, Population Services International (PSI) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Kotler and Lee demonstrate how anti-poverty programs can be improved through a multi-lateral approach which more effectively links government, NGOs, and private companies. They make a strong case that “adding a marketing mind-set, principles, and tools will help achieve a new level of effectiveness in planning and implementing poverty-reduction programs”.

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Updates to the Global Washington Website

We’ve made some changes and beautified our website! We’ve updated the look and the featured content gallery on the front page, and improved navigation. Here are some features we’ve added to to showcase the work of our members and supporters:

• A Blogroll connecting you to the work of our members and supporters.
• Links to social networking sites.
• A “Publications” page, which allows you to read about Global Washington-sponsored research and reports on current global development work underway in the Washington State.
• A “Reports from the Field” section we are currently building to showcase the work our members and supporters are engaged in around the world.
• An “In the News” section to keep our community up to date on media coverage in the sector.

Please submit your events to our calendar!

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Global Washington Events:

September 16

Mobile Technology: Revolutionizing Development from Washington to Ouagadougou

November 15 & 16

Global Washington’s Second Annual Conference—Bridges to Breakthroughs: How partnerships and innovation are changing the world

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Other Events:

July 22

Advanced Screening of Grameen America’s Documentary “To Catch a Dollar”

July 22 & 23

Americans for UNFPA’s Summer Program

July 26 – July 28

Sustainability and Education Summer Institute

July 29

Emergency Preparedness Training for Domestic Violence Programs with Elaine Enarson

September 25

Bring the Power of Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom

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