April 25, 2016 marks the 1-year anniversary of the 7.8 magnitude Nepal earthquake — the first in a series of tremors — that devastated the Kathmandu Valley.
The day after the first earthquake, Splash staff in Nepal began surveying the damage at their partner schools, realizing they were the first relief aid to arrive. “The schools were very amazed,” said Kriti Baidya, a Partner Support Coordinator at Splash Nepal. Not one of Splash’s hard-wired water filtration systems had been permanently damaged. “The Splash team was at the school giving a hygiene training to the children [when the second earthquake, a 6.7 magnitude tremor, struck on April 26, 2015]. We faced the earthquake in the school itself.” Kriti recalled. It was lucky that the first, and most powerful, earthquake had hit on a Saturday when schools were not in session.
Several thought leaders in financing for development believe impact investing is the wave of the future and one way to help fill the trillion dollar gap needed to reduce poverty. This relatively new financing approach blends financial returns with social or environmental returns. Investors in the Pacific Northwest, including nonprofits and foundations, are promoting impact investing as a smart and sustainable approach to international development. You can read more about the topic and GlobalWA members doing impact investing in the issue brief below.
Our region is home to smart leaders in impact investing as well as other amazing leaders working on a variety of solutions to global poverty. In fact, this recent New York Times article features Seattle as a growing hub for global development. This is what Global Washington is about, and we’re bringing the community together on May 12 to celebrate. It will be an evening of delicious food and drinks, fun entertainment and auction items, and great company. I hope you will join us to toast the hard work our members do every day.
Impact Investing: Bridging the Gap to Meet Global Needs
By Andie Long
Photo Credit: Upaya Social Ventures
When it comes to financing solutions that address global poverty and inequality, there remains a persistent gap. Traditional funding sources have remained static or in some cases shrunk, just as needs have exploded worldwide. It is this gap that a growing form of financing, impact investment, intends to fill.
While 18th century economist Adam Smith identified self-interest as the “invisible hand” of the market, proponents of impact investing have dubbed it the market’s “invisible heart.” First coined in 2007, the term “impact investment” refers to “investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return,” according to the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). Unlike socially responsible investing, which aims to do no harm, impact investing intentionally looks for investments that can do the most good.
Put together, all of global philanthropy and aid funding amounts to billions of dollars. At the same time, the costs of solving problems such as access to healthcare, affordable housing, education, nutritious food, clean water, and more, add up to trillions of dollars. These challenges have only accelerated due to climate change and shifting geopolitical forces, all of which have ratcheted up the pressure on vulnerable communities around the world.
The annual impact investor survey report, released last year by GIIN and J.P. Morgan, surveyed 146 investors and found that collectively they manage over $60 billion in impact investments. If impact investments made up just 1% of total investments worldwide, it would amount to $2 trillion. This is what makes impact investing such an intriguing option.
There exists a wide range of businesses that attract impact investment funding today, from small women-owned enterprises and cleaner, more cost-effective energy solutions, to integrated mobile offerings that support small-holder farmers. Such investments vary according to investors’ risk tolerance, time horizons and expected rates of return.
While financial returns are relatively easy to measure, tracking and measuring the social and environmental returns on investments takes a bit more finesse. The leading measurement systems that impact investors use are B Analytics’ Global Impact Investing Rating System and the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards, managed by GIIN.
Nobody believes that impact investing alone is the answer. Grant money is still needed to take the risk out of new ventures and to explore untapped opportunities. Often, however, there is quite a bit of overlap between philanthropic spending and impact investing. A ruling by the IRS last year reassured private foundations that they may use their endowments to make investments that generate below market-rate returns without jeopardizing their favorable tax status. As a result, more foundations may be expected to add impact investing to their giving portfolios.
Depending on their size, expertise and focus areas, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) also may be uniquely positioned to incorporate impact investing into their work. Jenny Everett, the deputy director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, has suggested that INGOs could add the most value by financing loans in the $25,000 to $500,000 range, the smaller end of the scale from what most institutional investors would normally finance, due to the perceived risk and management such loans would require. Additionally, INGO’s can help entrepreneurs develop their skills and their business models to the point where impact investors might deem them ready for larger investments.
Washington state has a number of organizations involved with impact investing in various ways. Below are descriptions of GlobalWA members that incorporate this unique approach in their work throughout the world. Learn more about these members and others on GlobalWA’s interactive map.
Global Partnerships is a nonprofit impact-led investor whose mission is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. It invests in social enterprises that deliver high-impact products and services to poor families and communities in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. Its partners provide access to financial services, healthcare, education, training, clean energy and connections to markets. This access empowers people living in poverty to create better lives for themselves and for future generations. Since 1994, Global Partnerships has impacted more than 3.6 million lives by investing $183 million in 86 partners across 13 countries. www.globalpartnerships.org
Over the past decade, Grameen Foundation has helped fuel the growth of social enterprises that create income-generating opportunities for women and the poor, and deliver products or services that improve their lives. It has supported multiple social impact funds, and, as a founding sponsor of the Fairtrade Access Fund, a $25 million debt fund in developing countries, Grameen Foundation and its partners have enabled farmers’ organizations and members to affordably invest in processing facilities, farm improvements and new equipment. Grameen Foundation has also invested in social enterprises in Kenya. There, investments ranging from $250,000 to $750,000 have helped fill the start-up “pioneer gap,” where funding is most urgently needed. www.grameenfoundation.org/
In 2015, Mercy Corps launched its Social Venture Fund, a seed and early-stage impact investment fund, focused on capitalizing and accelerating for-profit social ventures in Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia and Nepal. Focus areas include agriculture, financial services, last-mile distribution, and youth and female employment. Social Venture Fund investments range from $50,000 to $300,000 (equity, debt or quasi-equity), and businesses selected for investment are those with the potential to scale nationally and regionally to sustainably impact over 1 million people. www.mercycorps.org/innovations/social-venture-fund
Unitus Seed Fund is India’s leading venture fund supporting startups “innovating for the masses.” Since 2013, the fund has made a total of 23 investments across sectors including education, healthcare, fin-tech, agriculture, retail and e-commerce, mobile and consumer. The fund’s latest impact report shows a doubling of portfolio reach, touching more than 650,000 low-income lives across 22 states in India. Founded in 2012, Unitus Seed Fund is part of the Unitus Group, a premier financial services group operating in India and other emerging markets since 2000. Unitus Seed Fund is based in Bangalore and Seattle, and is a member of the Capria Network. http://usf.vc/
Upaya creates dignified jobs for the poorest of the poor in India by investing in an ecosystem of profitable and scalable businesses in the poorest communities. Upaya runs a 24-36 month accelerator program that provides early-stage entrepreneurs with business development support and financial resources to launch and scale their businesses. The ten entrepreneurs currently in the portfolio employ over 2,500 women and men. Upaya tracks 25 social metrics, such as changes in household income, meals consumed per day, housing condition and children’s school attendance, to ensure employees are making progress out of extreme poverty. www.upayasv.org
3rd Creek Foundation (3CF) is a private family foundation dedicated to helping individuals achieve economic independence. A sister organization to 3rd Creek Investments, Inc., 3CF funds poverty alleviation programs in South Asia and East Africa through grant-making and impact investments. What makes 3CF unique is its size: 3CF makes impact investments of up to $20,000 per enterprise, reaching early stage social enterprises that often struggle to find financing. 3CF believes that employing effective, market-based solutions is key to helping individuals break out of poverty and sustainably improve livelihoods. www.3rdcreek.com/3rdcreekfoundation
Seattle-based Global Partnerships is an impact-led investor whose mission is to expand opportunity for people living in poverty. They invest in social enterprises in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa that deliver market-based products and services that empower people to earn a living, provide for the basic needs of their families, and improve their lives.
One of these social enterprises is Friendship Bridge, a nonprofit organization that empowers impoverished Guatemalan women to create a better future for themselves through microfinance and education using a village bank model. Village bank members gather on a regular basis to make deposits and to review outstanding business loans used to finance such things as restocking inventory for a grocery store, buying bulk food items for a restaurant, or expanding a business space.
All village bank members are women, and the training sessions that Friendship Bridge provides – from business and financial education to health and nutrition seminars – are geared toward meeting their needs. Health seminars, for example, might focus on dispelling misconceptions that can keep women from getting the right care. One common misconception in parts of rural Guatemala, is that if a woman is single, divorced or widowed, she doesn’t need a regular Pap smear test. This simple health screening, which can detect very early stage cancer cells on the cervix, has saved many thousands of lives around the world. In Guatemala, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women, and it certainly makes no distinctions in terms of the marital status of those it affects.
Besides microfinance and value-added services, such as those provided by Friendship Bridge, Global Partnerships also invests in social businesses. These include organizations like farming cooperatives that provide technical training, financing for high quality agricultural inputs and access to markets, so that smallholder farmers can increase their incomes. And businesses that sell solar lights in rural areas, allowing rural households, like their urban counterparts, to reap the benefits of clean, renewable, and affordable lighting. Solar lights, in fact, are one of the sustainable solutions that Global Partnerships’ research team identified early on that fueled its recent expansion into East Africa.
Global Partnerships opened its Nairobi, Kenya office in June 2015 to begin making impact investments in sub-Saharan Africa. “Africa still sees the most prevalent and persistent poverty rates in the world,” says Rick Beckett, the President and CEO of Global Partnerships. “They also have limited access to electricity, so solar lighting is highly relevant.”
These investments are supported through philanthropic capital, which Global Partnerships uses to conduct rigorous and thoughtful research to identify high-impact products and services like solar lights that can significantly benefit poor and marginalized groups in the developing world. These philanthropic funds also support the resource-intensive impact measurement that ensures these investments not only generate financial returns, but also create a positive social impact.
“There are not enough philanthropic dollars in the world to reach hundreds of millions of people on an ongoing basis,” says Beckett. “So you need both philanthropic capital, which is risk tolerant, and social investment capital, which values people and the planet in financing things that work.”
”Most of our investors, about 85 percent, are also donors,” says Beckett. “They see the value in blending different types of capital to make a true impact.”
Photo Credit: Friendship Bridge
Since 1994, Global Partnerships has impacted the lives of 3.6 million people across 13 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean through more than 300 investments made to 86 partners, totaling $183 million. With the expansion to Africa, they aspire to raise that impact to a total of $500 million in impact investments, impacting 30 million lives within the next ten years.
Steve Hollingworth, Chief Executive Officer, Grameen Foundation
By Andie Long
Steve Hollingworth, the Grameen Foundation’s newly appointed CEO, draws heavily on his Midwestern values in seeking ways to alleviate global poverty. The first, and most important, he believes is empathy.
“A deep sense of empathy would help people understand the tremendous loss of human potential from having close to a billion people go hungry every day,” says Hollingworth.
Growing up in Elgin, Illinois, a mid-sized city about an hour northwest of Chicago, Hollingworth had little exposure to global poverty. All that changed in the late 1970s when, as an undergraduate at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, he enrolled in a study abroad program in Bogota, Colombia, through the Universidad de los Andes. There he studied the economies of Latin American countries.
Hollingworth recalls the first time he witnessed the extreme injustice and despair of poverty in the faces of Bogota’s abandoned children. Referred to locally as gamines, they often huddled in the city’s sewers at night, and roamed the streets by day.
For the first time, Hollingworth also met people engaged in humanitarian work, people who countered the desperation of the gamines with a passionate commitment to social inclusion and justice. Accompanying these development workers, Hollingworth met many street children of Bogota, and learned of their stories.
It was this singular study abroad experience that set the course for Hollingworth’s entire career.
Back home in Illinois after his study abroad, Hollingworth announced his intention to go into the humanitarian field. He remembers everyone – his mother, teachers, friends – trying to talk him out of it. They worried about his safety and security, extended periods away from home, and how well he would be able to provide for his own family.
They needn’t have worried. Hollingworth has spent the last 30 years working in international development, serving the needs of the world’s poorest people, and at the same time being a devoted husband and father. Hollingworth and his wife, Ann Griffith, have three children: two daughters, Gwennan (now 31) and Angharad (29), and a son, Aled (27 years old). It is his wife, Ann, whom Hollingworth says has most influenced his life.
“Ann has had a lifelong commitment to international development issues,” says Hollingworth. “She comes from a family that has a strong ecumenical Christian background, and a very broad set of caring values. She’s always been informed and involved in issues related to poverty and human rights.”
In his continued search for solutions to poverty, Hollingworth holds two other deeply ingrained, and intertwined values: community and solidarity. “Our common good is more important than the individual enrichment of very few people,” he says.
As one example of how this manifests at the Grameen Foundation, Hollingworth references MOTECH, a digital technology system that Grameen Foundation first designed to use in Ghana and then later expanded into an open-source mobile platform, offered freely to other organizations that want to provide timely health information on a broad scale.
Why make such a useful product freely available? “It’s a community good,” Hollingworth says. “It’s not for proprietary interest.” Grameen Foundation itself is partnering with the government of India, using MOTECH to deliver crucial health information to pregnant women and new mothers in areas with high maternal and infant mortality. The program has already reached one million women, and aims to reach more than ten million.
Hollingworth notes that most nonprofit organizations can spend no more than US$4-$15 per beneficiary per year. Therefore, the overriding calculation is how to do the most good with limited resources. While open-source technology can help spread viable solutions across partners and networks more affordably, Hollingworth also cites the cost-effectiveness of investing in women.
“There’s a universal conclusion that if you want to arrest poverty, the most important thing is the ability of women to control the size of their family, contribute economically, and make decisions about the health and education of their children,” says Hollingworth. “If they have that power, it greatly reduces the chances of poverty in the next generation.”
Prior to coming to the Grameen Foundation, Hollingworth spent four years as the CEO of Freedom from Hunger. Before that, he held progressively more senior roles at CARE, including four years as chief operating officer, and also serving more than two decades in the field, including as country director in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh – the largest CARE mission in the world.
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
Restless Development
Restless Development USA works to establish strategic partnerships with international development agencies, the U.S. government, United Nations agencies, the private sector and NGOs to advance youth-led development policies and practice and to raise interest and investment for Restless Development’s global work. restlessdevelopment.org/usa
What could be more fun that playing with a Muppet! I’m in Zambia to see our latest work with Sesame Street and enjoying my time playing with the kids and a new Muppet named Raya. Continue Reading
“Good Meevening, everyone.” Jack Knellinger, co-founder and principal of the Capria Accelerator, addressed the audience at Seattle’s Impact Hub last Thursday for the first Capria Fund Managers Forum. Knellinger often begins his international calls this way, so that his greeting covers all the bases: morning, afternoon, and evening. In addition to the 25 attendees, there were more than 40 people who dialed into the event from over 10 countries, including investors based in India, UK, Netherlands, France and Canada. Continue Reading
When the United Nations asked the world to contribute priorities for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—the most ambitious international development agenda of our time—8.5 million people made their voices heard.
Click here to read the full story on The Rockefeller Foundation blog.
This month, 600 women gathered under a huge blue-and-yellow-striped tent in Baripada, a small city in Odisha, a state in India’s east. They were among India’s most neglected people. Widowed, abandoned or divorced, many had ended up living like servants in the households of their fathers, brothers or in-laws.
Click here to read the full story in The New York Times.
There are 748 million people worldwide who do not have access to safe drinking water, and 2.5 billion who lack access to improved sanitation. Several non-profits and for-profits in Washington state are partnering to increase access to clean water and therefore improve lives globally. These NGOs and companies have contributed to over 2 billion people gaining access to improved drinking water since 1990, and they will continue efforts to help the world reach Sustainable Development Goal 6 by 2030 — ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Global Washington member FSG understands the power of NGO/Business partnerships. Below is an excerpt from a blog titled Untapped Potential written by Arani Kajenthira Grindle, Senior Consultant at FSG, that touches on opportunities around shared value and water.
Shared Value and Water
In conducting our work, we have come to recognize that companies have ample opportunity to influence water access and availability in their relative operational spheres, addressing a clear social challenge in a manner that allows for business returns across all three levels of shared value creation. Continue Reading
Water is the lifeblood of thriving communities, essential to health and well-being, and critical to economic development, gender equity and access to education. Without clean water and sanitation, individuals and communities lack resilience against natural and man-made threats. For example, Ethiopia is currently facing one of the worst droughts in decades with nearly 6 million people needing water and sanitation services. Some experts even predict that future wars will be waged due to a lack of access to clean water.
The good news is that Washington state is leading the way to increase access to clean water globally. Companies such as Global Good, MSR and PotaVida are providing cutting edge technologies and non-profits such as Water1st, Splash, World Concern and World Vision are getting clean water to the people who need it most. We’ll be shining a spotlight on non-profit and business partnerships at our Clean Water Allies event on March 29. I hope you can join us.
Photo Credit: Gavin Gough/Splash
We also want to celebrate all of the Global Washington members working on solutions to our world’s most pressing challenges. We hope you will join us in Seattle on May 12 for a Spring Member Celebration. We look forward to honoring the dedication and success of our region’s global development leaders, and I encourage you to come party with us and be a part of this dedicated community that is impacting lives around the world.
Access to Clean Water Flows through All Facets of Global Development
By Amanda Pain
Photo Credit: Adara Development
Imagine waking up in the morning and having no water. No water to drink, to brush your teeth, to make breakfast, or even to wash. Instead, the nearest water source is three to four miles away and, if you’re a woman, your family is counting on you to fetch the day’s water. It takes six hours round trip daily to carry water as heavy as 70 pounds, and this keeps you in a perpetual cycle of poverty since you are unable to attend school or gain employment. And your reward for this hard work is water that is filthy, and often makes your family sick.
Water is at the core of sustainable development, touching on social, economic and environmental issues. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 focuses on the entire water cycle including management of water, wastewater and ecosystem resources, and expands upon Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7 which, prior to 2015, promoted safe drinking water and sanitation. While over 2 billion people gained access to improved drinking water through piped supplies and protected wells since 1990, there are still approximately 748 million people who do not have access to safe drinking water, and some 2.5 billion people who lack access to improved sanitation.
As the global economy continues growing, so does the demand for water as well as the amount of pollutants entering potable water sources. Demand for water is projected to rise 55 percent globally, primarily due to manufacturing, thermal electricity and domestic use. More water will also be needed to meet the growing demands for food, as agriculture will need to produce 60 percent more food globally (100 percent more in developing countries) to feed the population.
Contamination is an issue that runs parallel to scarcity. The bacteria and parasites in water can lead to communicable diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and guinea worm infection. Nearly 2.5 billion people practice open defecation near water sources. Even in urban areas, over 2 billion people use toilets that drain raw sewage into open drains or surface waters. Unsafe water and sanitation accounts for 94 percent of deaths due to diarrhea, and kills approximately 180,000 children under the age of five each year. Another 160 million children suffer from chronic malnutrition and stunting, often linked to unsafe water. And illness from dirty water can cause absence from school and work, in turn slowing economic growth.
This complex issue certainly allows for much opportunity. So what can be done? SDG 6 sets six targets to be met by 2030, including making safe drinking water for all, creating adequate sanitation (especially for women), minimizing water pollution, increasing water-use efficiency, implementing more effective water resource management and protecting and restoring water-related ecosystems (i.e. rivers, wetlands and aquifers). Accomplishing these goals require the coordination and cooperation of governments, as well as for-profits and non-profits worldwide.
Washington state has a number of organizations working on this critical global development issue. Below are descriptions of GlobalWA members who are currently leading water programs and projects throughout the world. Learn more about these members and others on GlobalWA’s interactive map.
Adara Development: In the Himalayan District of Humla, Nepal where access to clean water is scarce, Adara helps villagers build clean drinking water systems. These systems pipe spring water into the villages, eliminating the need for villagers to travel long distances to get water and ensuring access to safe water sources. In Uganda, Adara supports a community-based healthcare program that teaches 800,000 in the Nakaseke district about the SODIS (or solar disinfectant) method. Using this method, water can be disinfected and made drinkable in six hours using the rays of the sun and clear PET bottles filled with water. This helps prevent diarrhea which is one of the most common causes of death among people in developing countries. www.adaragroup.org
Bainbridge Ometepe Sister Island Association – For 30 years, BOSIA has partnered with Ometepe Island in Nicaragua to build water systems and improve schools, libraries, coffee production, health care and cultural exchange. Through community driven projects, the Association focuses on building relationships and friendships to help maintain sustainable development in Ometepe. http://bainbridgeometepe.org/
Esperanza International Foundation – Working in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Esperanza International Foundation serves women, the material poor and the socially marginalized. The Foundation’s water projects allow local churches to purchase professional-grade water filtration systems with Esperanza loan capital, which allows churches to then sell clean drinking water at affordable prices to local community members. These churches then use the profits of their water project to repay their loan, as well as invest in strengthening their communities. New access to clean water has played a major role in reducing the number of water borne illnesses and gastrointestinal problems these communities face, providing them with better overall health. http://www.esperanza.org/
Etta Projects – Etta Projects collaborates with communities, creating sustainable solutions to improve health, sanitation and clean water. The organization’s safe water and sanitation projects include building water distribution systems in rural communities, building water purification systems in per-urban communities using filtration, as well as building dry composting latrines and grey water filtration systems. Etta Projects also offers hygiene, sanitation and disease prevention training and education, working with locally appointed villagers to become health, sanitation and rights promoters. http://ettaprojects.org/
MSR Global Health – For 45+ years, Mountain Safety Research (MSR) has been committed to the precision engineering and manufacturing of outdoor gear for some of the most remote settings on earth. MSR Global Health was born out of the realization that their expertise in developing technologies and products that keep backcountry enthusiasts safe in the outdoors can be adapted to meet the most basic human needs of water, food and shelter for people living in low resource communities. Utilizing their world class water research lab, the MSR Global Health team has developed the SE200 Community Chlorine Maker that converts water and salt to chlorine using electricity, enabling the user to treat up to 200 L of drinking water in about 5 minutes. Like most of MSR’s products, the chlorine maker is manufactured in Seattle, WA. http://msrglobalhealth.com
Orphans to Ambassadors – Orphans to Ambassadors enhances infrastructure of orphanages by using sustainable technologies that improve their self-sufficiency. Working in over 10 countries, one of organization’s programs addresses the critical issue of water collection by installing high-capacity rain water catchment systems to collect and store rainwater during the rainy seasons. http://www.orphanstoambassadors.org/
PotaVida – PotaVida enables aid organizations to make better decisions by collecting accurate data from the field in real time and distilling it into actionable insights. To realize this, PotaVida creates technical solutions that work, are simple to use, and result in dramatic benefit to people in need. The company’s first product, the Smart Solar Purifier, disinfects water using just sunlight for household use in disaster relief and refugee contexts. In addition to providing safe drinking water at a dramatically lower cost, every Smart Solar Purifier records its own usage data. This data is downloaded to mobile devices to provide instantaneous feedback in the field, and is also synced in the cloud, analyzed at the program level, and sent to decision makers. http://potavida.com/
Splash – Splash is a nonprofit organization that cleans water for kids living in urban poverty. Splash implements water, sanitation and hygiene programs in child-serving institutions (like schools) to keep vulnerable kids healthy. Splash does this by installing high-quality water filtration systems and durable drinking and handwashing stations, renovating toilets to make them safe and clean, and establishing hygiene clubs that teach kids about personal hygiene. By leveraging local institutions, infrastructure and intelligence, Splash reduces costs and builds local partnerships to produce solutions that last. http://splash.org/
The Living Earth Institute – The Living Health Institute (LEI) works to empower communities to protect their health and environment through sustainable water use, with the primary goals of ensuring clean water supply and improved sanitation. LEI adapts water projects to the needs of the community with projects ranging from building family composting toilets and community water wells in Nepal, to pursuing earthquake rebuild partnerships. LEI has also created drinking water, rainwater catchment and hand washing stations in developing communities in other parts of the world. http://living-earth.org/
Water1st International – Water1st prides itself on funding sustainable water projects that involve local communities, local women, as well as a consistent funding stream. Since it’s founding in 2005, Water1st has provided clean water to over 140,000 people. While its projects focus on providing easy access to clean water, the organization also ensures that projects integrate toilets and hygiene education. Water 1st’s success centers on robust program evaluation of each of its funded projects to ensure that deliverables are effective and community needs are met. http://water1st.org/
World Concern – World Concern is a Christian global relief and development organization. With a 60-year history, World Concern reaches communities in challenging and hard-to-reach places with sustainable, long-term development programs. In addition to other areas of expertise, World Concern provides access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation and hygiene training to improve health and save lives in the communities they serve. http://worldconcern.org/
World Vision: World Vision is the leading NGO provider of clean drinking water, reaching one new person every 30 seconds. Focusing on the rural, ultra-poor, combining access to clean water with sanitation and hygiene interventions and engaging communities in sustainability efforts, World Vision and their partners are committed to expanding their reach to one new person every 10 seconds with clean water and sanitation by 2020. With the use of right-sized equipment, appropriate water sources, manual drilling, mechanized wells with solar pumps and over 500 WASH professionals who live and work in the communities where they lead efforts, nearly 80 percent of World Vision wells continue to function at a high level after 20 years. http://www.worldvision.org/our-impact/clean-water
Photo Credit: Taylor Jashinsky/World Concern. Although there is water available in places like Myanmar, it’s often unsafe to drink. World Concern provides ways for families to have clean, safe drinking water.
Successful global development rarely includes one-size-fits-all solutions, and working in clean water and sanitation is no exception. People rebuilding their communities after a disaster strikes may find themselves surrounded by water, with none of it being safe to drink. Even those who have access to purifiers or chlorine tablets may not understand how to use them properly, finding themselves constantly ill. Additionally, in some communities, improved hygiene practices may go against cultural norms and people may not see value in changing their behavior.
World Concern, a Christian global relief and development agency with over 60 years of experience assisting the most impoverished communities in the world, understands that community-led and community need-based interventions are at the core of sustainable development. Chris Sheach, Deputy Director of Disaster Response for World Concern, believes his organization’s number one strength is that its projects are directly based on needs identified by each community.
“World Concern has an integrated development approach,” said Sheach. “We don’t choose a community for a water project, but rather choose water with the communities we are working in.”
Photo Credit: Edwin Kuria/World Concern. In drought-prone places like northern Somalia, World Concern equips communities to capture rainwater for household use.
Successful clean water and sanitation projects must begin with understanding the local community members and what they value. “Program outcomes are tied to value within a community,” said Sheach. For example, in some communities, once a mother understands that clean water and sanitation can help her children live longer, or if a family understands that clean and water and sanitation means less missed work and school days, they are willing to change their behavior.
World Concern currently leads clean water and sanitation projects in Kenya, Somalia, Chad, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Laos and Haiti, and water projects are designed with input and investment from local community members. In Somalia for example, World Concern helped build rainwater catchment systems, and in Haiti helped put a cap on a natural spring to ensure water runoff was free of contaminants and drinkable. World Concern also builds wells and latrines and provides education on how to maintain latrines and practice proper hygiene.
World Concern recently announced a collaboration with PotaVida, a Seattle-based company, and the two will be distributing and testing PotaVida’s Smart Solar Purifier in Haiti. Sheach said the purifier is designed for people living in transit, and Haiti was chosen as a pilot for the $150K grant awarded by the Washington Global Health Alliance (WGHA) because many Haitians have been displaced after being deported from the bordering Dominican Republic.
Photo Credit: Martha Snowbarger/World Concern. In Haiti, World Concern helps communities access permanent water points. The Smart Solar Purifier will help ensure displaced families in Haiti also have safe drinking water.
PotaVida’s Smart Solar Purifier is a 10-liter hydration reservoir with an integrated UV dose sensor, enabling it to disinfect water using sunlight. The Smart Solar Purifier is easy to use, starting at the press of a button and indicating completion with a green light. It is reusable for up to a year, and does not rely upon replacement chemicals, freeing World Concern from supply chain management. What is truly innovative, and one of the reasons World Concern is using the Smart Solar Purifier, is that every unit records usage data. The usage data can then be easily collected using an Android phone, tagged with a GPS location, synced to a database in the cloud, and then accessed from anywhere. Providing these purifiers to people in a transitory situation will alleviate one burden as they work to rebuild their lives, said Sheach.
“For us, what will be a success (of this pilot) is if we are able to more accurately determine people’s water usage,” explained Sheach. With the data collected from the purifiers, World Concern will gain knowledge about the communities it works in, allowing the organization to target water interventions to individuals who need them most.
Sheach stressed the value of the tight-knit global development community in Washington state, saying the collaboration with PotaVida would not have happened if both World Concern and PotaVida were not located in Seattle. “The community is very connected here,” said Sheach. He believes that organizations like Global Washington and WGHA support, promote, and strengthen partnerships between NGOs, companies and academia within the state, and he’s grateful for that.
“The lesson I’ve learned is when you get together and chat with good people, with smart people, things happen,” said Sheach. “You can’t pre-bake the outcome. (This grant) is a large financial win, and it came out of patience and collaboration.”
Marla Smith-Nilson, Founder and Executive Director, Water1st International
By Amanda Pain
If there was a recipe of life experiences that would make a respected leader in the clean water and sanitation field, it might look something like this: being raised in Southern Arizona, vacationing in Mexico as a young girl and watching girls your age collect and carry water, receiving degrees in civil and environmental engineering, and founding two non-profits that fund water projects worldwide. These life experiences belong to Marla Smith-Nilson, Founder and Executive Director of Water1st International, and recipient of the 2015 World Citizen Award.
Smith-Nilson believes you can’t grow up in a desert without understanding the importance of water. But it wasn’t until she watched women and girls carry water in Mexico, and then traveled through Egypt and Turkey as a University of Arizona Flinn Scholar, that she truly discovered her passion. “I saw people carrying water and I just said ‘this is it, I have to figure this out,’” Smith-Nilson explained.
Smith-Nilson enjoyed studying civil engineering as an undergraduate and environmental engineering as a graduate student and thinks this education has been helpful in providing both her and her organizations with credibility. She believes her engineering training taught her how to solve problems most effectively, as well as how to recognize the limits of her expertise.
“I discovered early on in my path to this career that if I wanted to help poor people have permanent sustainable access to water, it had to be through support of local organizations,” Smith-Nilson said.
In 1990, while attending graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Smith Nilson co-founded WaterPartners International (today called Water.org). Her initial goal was to fund one organization in Honduras — COCEPRADIL (Central Committee for Water and Comprehensive Development Projects in Lempira). COCEPRADIL was implementing well-constructed pipe water systems and toilets in rural communities, and was doing everything right in Smith-Nilson’s view. Water1st continues to fund COCEPRADIL today.
“I guess, in the beginning, I did not think of it as starting a non-profit,” said Smith-Nilson. “I just wanted to support this group that was doing really good work.” She said, however, she discovered early on that incorporating her organization as a non-profit would help raise more money.
In 2005, Smith-Nilson decided to leave WaterPartners and start Water1st International, based in Seattle. She made the decision to leave WaterPartners because the organization had moved away from grassroots funding. Large funders, such as USAID and the World Bank, had restrictions that dictated where the organization could work, and whom it could work with, explained Smith-Nilson.
“I was feeling pretty uncomfortable with the funds we were raising and the direction it was taking us,” Smith-Nilson said. “I wanted to tell donors that money was going to projects that would last a lifetime, and I was not feeling confident that was the case.” With Water1st, she could set project standards to align with best practice. Smith-Nilson enjoyed working with grassroots funders, not only because of fewer funding restrictions, but also because she could directly connect individual donors with people doing good work.
“The beauty of starting Water1st was to say ‘these are our standards, and we won’t let go of them ever,’” explained Smith-Nilson. “I feel really good that 11 years later we have maintained the same ideals and standards.” Water1st operates primarily on individual donations, and it partners long-term with local organizations abroad. Smith-Nilson believes when an organization constantly worries about their next funding source, it often makes project success difficult. She explained that, in the water and sanitation sector, 35 to 50 percent of all projects fail in the first two to five years, and this failure rate is unchanged since the late 1980s.
Smith-Nilson said sustainable funding from unrestrictive sources has allowed Water1st to work with the same local organizations over the past 11 years. These relationships help organizations make long-term plans, incorporate evaluation into its projects, and retain valuable staff. Smith-Nilson believes, through building sustainable relationships with donors, local organizations vastly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their projects. Since 2005, Water1st has completed 1,562 water projects – and not one has failed.
Smith-Nilson thinks restrictive funding is a major issue facing the clean water and sanitation sector, and thinks there needs to be more standards for organizations working on water projects. She believes organizations should be rated, and donors should only fund organizations with successful ratings. “Donors should stop funding organizations with a history of failed projects, and non-profits need to start saying no to funding restrictions that hinder a project’s success.”
Smith-Nilson has found her calling in life, and is truly happy with her work and the success of Water1st. “I can’t do anything else. I cannot get this excited about anything else. This is it.”
Please welcome our newest Global Washington members. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with their work and consider opportunities for support and collaboration!
All As One
All As One saves the lives of orphaned and abandoned children in Freetown, Sierra Leone. In a nation where thousands of children are left to survive on their own, All As One is a vibrant Children’s Center that feeds, educates and cares for over 100 children every day. allasone.org
Global Leadership Forum (GLF)
GLF is a leadership and development program for executive directors and senior staff of U.S.-based global non-profit (NGO), philanthropic and other organizations. The program consists of three retreats over three seasons, with monthly meetings in between. glfglobal.com/
OutRight Action International
OutRight Action International is a leading international human rights organization dedicated to improving the lives of people who experience discrimination or abuse on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. OutRight Action International strengthens the capacity of the LGBT human rights movement worldwide to effectively conduct documentation of LGBT human rights violations and engages in human rights advocacy with partners around the globe. outrightinternational.org/
PotaVida
PotaVida enables aid organizations to make better decisions by collecting accurate data from the field in real time and distilling it into actionable insights. Creating technical solutions that work, are simple to use, and result in dramatic benefit to people in need, the company’s first product, the Smart Solar Purifier, disinfects water using just sunlight for household use in disaster relief and refugee contexts. In addition to providing safe drinking water at a dramatically lower cost, every Smart Solar Purifier records its own usage data. This data is downloaded to mobile devices to provide instantaneous feedback in the field, and is also synced in the cloud, analyzed at the program level, and sent to decision makers. potavida.com
The Tai Initiative
The Tai Initiative builds communication capacity at the sub-national level of the U.S.-China relationship by nurturing a network of solid personal relationships among professionals and institutions upon which the national relationship can build for achieving understanding and trust. taiinitiative.org
As another International Women’s Day approaches, we at Awamaki asked ourselves: What makes International Women’s Day worth celebrating? As a non-profit working for rural women’s empowerment in Peru with a staff made up of Peruvian and international women, sometimes it feels like every day is International Women’s Day. Continue Reading
“Three thousand five hundred more girls are in school in a wonderful building because of dedicated people in Seattle,” says the executive director of Sahar.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ginna Brelsford
What do you do? I’m the executive director of Sahar, an international nonprofit [based in Seattle] that provides access to education for girls and women in Afghanistan.
Click here to read the full story in The Seattle Times.
Several thought leaders in financing for development believe impact investing is the wave of the future and one way to help fill the trillion dollar gap needed to reduce poverty. This relatively new financing approach blends financial returns with social or environmental returns. Investors in the Pacific Northwest, including nonprofits and foundations, are promoting impact investing as a smart and sustainable approach to international development. You can read more about the topic and GlobalWA members doing impact investing in the issue brief below.
Does your organization have anything planned for World Malaria Day next week? If so, tell us about it!
Seattle-based 
All village bank members are women, and the training sessions that Friendship Bridge provides – from business and financial education to health and nutrition seminars – are geared toward meeting their needs. Health seminars, for example, might focus on dispelling misconceptions that can keep women from getting the right care. One common misconception in parts of rural Guatemala, is that if a woman is single, divorced or widowed, she doesn’t need a regular Pap smear test. This simple health screening, which can detect very early stage cancer cells on the cervix, has saved many thousands of lives around the world. In Guatemala, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among women, and it certainly makes no distinctions in terms of the marital status of those it affects.
Steve Hollingworth, the 
If there was a recipe of life experiences that would make a respected leader in the clean water and sanitation field, it might look something like this: being raised in Southern Arizona, vacationing in Mexico as a young girl and watching girls your age collect and carry water, receiving degrees in civil and environmental engineering, and founding two non-profits that fund water projects worldwide. These life experiences belong to Marla Smith-Nilson, Founder and Executive Director of 
In 2005, Smith-Nilson decided to leave WaterPartners and start Water1st International, based in Seattle. She made the decision to leave WaterPartners because the organization had moved away from grassroots funding. Large funders, such as USAID and the World Bank, had restrictions that dictated where the organization could work, and whom it could work with, explained Smith-Nilson.
Smith-Nilson said sustainable funding from unrestrictive sources has allowed Water1st to work with the same local organizations over the past 11 years. These relationships help organizations make long-term plans, incorporate evaluation into its projects, and retain valuable staff. Smith-Nilson believes, through building sustainable relationships with donors, local organizations vastly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their projects. Since 2005, Water1st has completed 1,562 water projects – and not one has failed.