Our members’ stories are compelling and help us see why the state of Washington is such an important key to making the world a healthier, safer, and more equitable place. For this reason, this report is focused on highlighting key trends and illustrating them with the innovative work of our members. We hope that this will give you a snapshot of the diversity and depth of impact of Washington’s development sector. Read our annual report.

Submitted by Landesa

In honor of Mother’s Day last weekend, Landesa addressed a letter to mothers in the developing world:

On this Mother’s Day, Landesa salutes mothers in the developing world – our partners.

We advocate for your land rights not just because it is a good idea – but because it is essential for alleviating poverty.

We know that when you have secure rights to the land that you cultivate, you improve the land, which increases your yields.  We know that you use those higher yields and extra income to meet your families’ needs, boosting family nutrition and health, and ensuring that your children stay in school.

We spend our time in the field listening to you. And from China to Rwanda, and India to Uganda, we hear the same refrain:  you need secure rights to land.

So that your children will have a better future.  A future free of conflict.

And a future full of prosperity.

Mothers, we hear you.

With you and your governments as our partners, we will continue to help you obtain a powerful tool you can use to break the cycle of poverty – secure rights to land.

~ The global Landesa team

Over the next few weeks, appropriators will be engaged in the challenging task of evaluating U.S. foreign assistance funding, including how effectively Congress’ global health investments are being used.

As organizations funded in part by the U.S government to implement global health programs in the field, we agree that every effort should be made to ensure that funding is used efficiently and distributed in a timely manner. But we also see firsthand how U.S. global health programs are working, and why now is not the time to cut multilateral and bilateral funding for these efforts.

Congress’ decadelong investment in improving global health has been more successful than most of us in this field could have ever imagined. Millions of people are alive today because of signature multilateral programs such as the GAVI Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and U.S.-led bilateral initiatives including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the President’s Malaria Initiative, and assistance for tuberculosis and maternal and child health. This success has taken place in parts of the world where progress once seemed unlikely, and often within health systems once thought to be beyond repair.

In regions where little hope existed just 10 years ago, U.S. global health funding has paved the way for dramatic gains against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and maternal and child mortality — and has transformed the lives of millions in the process.

Lyons, Coye, Miles and Stearns: Preserve Congress’ Investment in Global Health
Special to Roll Call |  Charles Lyons, Molly Joel Coye, Carolyn Miles and Richard Stearns | May 9, 2012

In one of the few sunny days of Seattle’s early spring, over fifty people traveled to iLEAP’s presentation and meeting space for Global Washington’s Second Global Workers event. The second installation of this series asked speakers Andrea Ballard and Deborah Agrin to dissect a question that many current and prospective professionals struggle with: What is it that employers really want?

Andrea Ballard, Human Resources Consultant and Career Coach, and Deborah Agrin, current Director of Development and Engagement at Vittana, both brought different perspectives on the job hunt to their talks. The event began with a networking skills workshop led by Ballard. All attendees were asked to practice networking skills they would soon use with employers with each other; and began meeting fellow professionals in the process. The event culminated with a question and answer session addressed to both speakers to build on each other’s perspectives. When asked for final tips, Agrin suggested “be[ing] curious and experiment[ing]”. Ballard implored attendees to “get out of [their] houses and away from [their] computers” when applying for jobs.

But what experimentation did Agrin mean? What did Ballard suggest other than endlessly filling out job applications over the internet?

Both speakers attested to the need of certain skills in the development community, and both speakers assured the audience that those skills could be refined in a number of environments. In short, a perfect candidate for the development field may not come from the development field. Project management is one capacity that the audience was told employers find impressive. The ability to set targets, plan strategically to carry out an assignment, and follow through is a necessity in a field where funding is always at risk. Impact evaluation was also cited as an attractive ability. The speakers pointed out that specialists in statistical analysis, research, or project design could find their skill sets welcomed in this field. Finally, business management was highlighted. Knowing how to do what you say and knowing how to run projects and organizations efficiently makes candidates more competitive.

Both speakers also noted that the most effective people in this field are those with a certain faculty of flexibility. A person who has lived overseas demonstrates that they can survive and work in another culture while a person who is entrepreneurially minded demonstrates a mental agility to take advantage of opportunity where others may not.

When the conversation turned to resumes, several points stood out. Ballard advised applicants to list job accomplishments rather than job duties on their resumes. Often an employer has a partial idea of what you do based on the title you’ve been given. Using your resume as a way to elaborate on how well you did a job or how you did your job differently than most is a good way to display competence in the small space on a resume. Displaying a fluency in different kinds of language is also a skill that many possess but few use their resume to highlight. “Good communication skills” is a common resume phrase. A phrase like “able to adjust communication to fit written, verbal, and business settings” may more accurately describe the importance of your communication abilities.

Ultimately, both speakers were at the event to illuminate the many paths a person with ambitions to enter the development field could take. Recent graduates and students were encouraged to take on all the internships and fellowships they could to accumulate direct experience and responsibility. Mid-career professionals were urged to leverage the skills they’ve already acquired to interview better and build up their resumes. Global Washington thanks the speakers, and those that were able to attend the workshop. We look forward to seeing you all at the next event in the Global Workers series.

by Bryan Gamble

What’s a smart way to empower women worldwide? Get the men involved and give them a chance to feel like they are a part of the solution. In other words, build collaboration.  This past week, Ritu Sharma, co-founder and president of Women Thrive Worldwide, wrote an op-ed, “Violence against women is no ‘women’s issue’” for Politico about the importance of men’s involvement in empowering women.  Using examples from various countries, Sharma gives proof that men need to be involved in shifting the belief systems around customs that tolerate and even promote violence against women.  One example stands out about a man who “didn’t know [he] was not supposed to beat [his] wife,” but who learned through adult education classes that this learned behavior wasn’t necessary, nor productive.  It’s a bit of a shock to read that mindset, but it is not unusual. While working in rural Kenya a couple of years ago, I heard a few men make similar claims, or explain that, according to (insert religious text here), they had the right to treat women as their subordinates and discipline them as necessary. Similarly, some women felt that their husbands had the right to hit them and that this act showed their commitment.

As the article infers, violence against women requires changing the mindset of all those involved – the men and the women of all ranks. Honoring the status bestowed upon men in many cultures promotes more lasting and successful attitudinal changes in the communities.  This has been proven from Haiti to South Africa. Seattle-based Landesa, an organization working to secure land rights in the developing world, has many success stories about men and women empowering each other by working together. For such a story, read Deborah Espinoza’s blog entry, “Land rights for women – a ripple effect.”

Sharma’s op-ed came out the same week the Senate was kicking around the expired Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and trying to cut out key pieces of the Act to purportedly save a few dollars. On Thursday, it passed (phew!), with less funding, but with all key elements still intact. That the VAWA was even considered negotiable is an embarrassing message to the world (if anyone out there can still stomach listening to our politicians).  Communities of men and women in developing countries are challenging themselves to change their mindsets and adhere to a more respectful attitude towards women and structures of dominance.  Such work could prove beneficial right here, too.

Many people who, like me, have crossed into the social sector from a for-profit background, want to see nonprofits take advantage of business principles to generate ever better outcomes. Continuous improvement is one such tool.

To oversimplify, continuous improvement involves capturing crucial performance data in ongoing feedback loops so staff can make enhancements to better serve customers. This process is best known in manufacturing, but the principle has been applied broadly. In service industries, where products are not purchased, cycles of market research and satisfaction tracking can still shape how companies iterate in delivering benefits to customers.

The process involves noticing, capturing, and sharing data on all sorts of dimensions to uncover problem patterns or discover what could be done better. Practitioners react to the information and develop new insights. They adjust what they do and then see how that changes things, starting a new cycle of data gathering. This is exactly how we hope social causes progress. In order to use continuous improvement techniques, an organization needs to watch for leading indicators (earlier than outcome metrics) so changes can be tried sooner, more frequently, and with different subgroups. Unlike traditional monitoring and evaluation, a continuous improvement process is less concerned with maintaining a stable baseline or consistent treatment for comparison at an end point, but instead fosters regular course adjustments, observing what appears to achieve the desired effect.

For-profit businesses invest millions of dollars in market research and customer satisfaction feedback to inform this process. When driven to satisfy customers and the bottom line, companies chase questions most relevant to potential improvements and find ways to embed monitoring into daily operations. They know the resulting insights enable them to create the kind of value that leads to increased purchasing.

While continuous improvement principles can be applied by any nonprofit or social enterprise, microfinance institutions (MFIs) are especially well-placed to employ them. MFIs already operate as a business, are data-driven, and have used similar processes to achieve high repayment rates or to control costs. That’s how they can affordably provide masses of hard to reach people with loans as little as $50.

With the research of Portfolios of the Poor, microfinance is at an inflection point, more aware of the hardships resulting from erratic incomes for people in poverty and the importance of diverse financial tools like insurance to protect against inevitable shocks or savings to provide stability and asset growth. Continuous improvement could be used to assist MFIs in moving from this recognition of client needs to creating effective products and services that fulfill those needs.

It’s a balancing act to diversify services that both address clients’ needs and operate profitably enough to keep expanding into unreached markets. MFIs could apply a continuous improvement approach in these three areas: a) product designs and delivery, b) customer satisfaction feedback systems, and c) social performance management. If MFI’s can build client satisfaction feedback loops they can pay closer attention to and adjust how different products help lives improve. R&D responsive to real-time client input could more rapidly prototype products that meet client-focused needs in new ways. Social performance management can add greater value if designed to glean insights that fuel ongoing improvements vs. react to external questions of impact. Fortunately, with the spread of mobile phones, rough but real-time customer satisfaction tracking, market research, and social performance management surveys could feasibly become automated, and the resulting improvements in operations and product designs could make it worth paying for customer texts (if not covered by a corporate partner).

Thought leaders in the social sector are beginning to outline the elements of such an approach. Former American Evaluation Association President, Michael Quinn Patton “assume[s] a world of multiple causes, diversity of outcomes, inconsistency of interventions, [and] interactive effects at every level”.  To address this, he says in “Evaluation for the Way We Work”, we need embedded evaluators partnering and shaping the “long-term, ongoing process of continuous improvement, adaptation, and intentional change” with more of a “probe-sense-respond” outlook. See Patton’s table in the paper that outlines the qualities different from traditional methods and case studies put in action by FSG’s Strategic Learning & Evaluation Center. Dean Spitzer, another corporate authority, applies his “Performance Measurement Cycle” to turn data into wisdom, action, and continuous learning for social objectives (“Dean Spitzer on Interactivity: The Key to Improving Performance Mea…”). Behavioral economics is incorporating psychology to tweak poverty interventions, such as through Princeton’s Eldar Shafir’s study on the role of marketing in supporting U.S. financial inclusion.

What’s necessary for continuous improvement success? It will take cost-effective feedback mechanisms, expertise, and understanding funders. The social sector needs to build expertise and incentives if it is to benefit from continuous improvement disciplines. MFIs and NGOs will see greater success by owning this problem and building capacity so they can drive the process of learning to make swift adjustments for better outcomes rather than reacting to external scrutiny. Funders need to support this process with tolerance of instructive risks and failures, flexible reporting and budget designations, and resources for social organizations to develop new expertise.

Let’s set a benchmark for an ideal percentage of budget that NGOs spend on continuous improvement (not merely tracking and reporting), similar to what companies spend on market research. And let’s not punish that as “inefficient overhead,” but rather as “sharpening the saw” for better results as Stephen Covey observes in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Let’s learn to publicly celebrate and reward whenever an organization discovers a mistake and makes a change to fix it or takes advantage of a new experiment. Even if trials fail, and those lessons inform other attempts, let’s learn to rejoice with Thomas Edison who found 999 ways not to make a light bulb.

We can’t wait for perfect solutions to such urgent problems, but better outcomes should evolve faster from the “speed-of-business” operations of microfinance or emerging social enterprises as they develop mechanisms for rapid response to client needs. Investing in this approach is one way the corporate world thrives at creating value, wealth, and products/services that people want, so let’s apply it in the social sector to meet human needs.

Further Reading:

1. Development Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use by Michael Quinn Patton
2. Transforming Performance Measurement: Rethinking the Way We Measure and Drive Organizational Success by Dean Spitzer
3. Research by Princeton University’s Eldar Shafir
4. Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity by Mario Molino
5. McKinsey & Company Social Sector Office

 Editor’s Note:

This blog was first published on the Center for Financial Inclusion Blog, and is reproduced with the permission of the author.

As ACCION International’s Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships and Adjunct Professor of Northwest University’s master’s course on sustainable organizations, Chris Wolff applies his business background to companies seeking to achieve business plus social objectives through “shared value” or corporate social responsibility.  For more information, visit www.accion.org/corporate.

You can follow Chris on Twitter (@ChrisAWolff)

The mix of knowledge, insight, and experience made for compelling conversations at Wednesday’s wine reception before the screening of  Bonsai People. With financial managers mingling with social entrepreneurs, it seemed the perfect venue to ask people what they thought about the new president of the World Bank. Some attendees weren’t aware of the selection, or if they were, had few opinions about it. This ambivalence is telling. At a cocktail party for people engaged in improving the financial health of the world’s poorest, in a hub of global health and development, the response is “Kim who?” This isn’t to say that folks don’t care or aren’t paying attention, but that the World Bank, its leaders, and what they do, is so far removed from those on the ground, that this kind of news just isn’t on the top of people’s news feeds.

A few facts: On Monday, Dr. Jim Yong Kim became the latest president of the World Bank. An anthropologist and physician, he is co-founder of Partners in Health, is a former director of the HIV/AIDS at WHO, and has served at the president of Dartmouth College since 2009. The other two nominees were Nigerian finance minister and former World Bank managing director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and former U.N. official and Colombian central banker, José Antonio Campo.

Some people said that Dr. Kim “sounds good on paper,” while others, such as Alan Leong, Director of Research at Biotech Stock Research, noted the controversy of the developed world (namely the U.S.) once again having the control, despite the goal to have more leadership from the developing world, like from Nigeria, or Colombia, for instance. Others expressed frustration with the institution, likening it to big banks and their culture of taking care of their own (executives) rather than the people they are meant to serve.

One attendee framed it this way: “What does the World Bank do that actually reaches real people?”  Others, like Eric Youngren, of Solar Nexus International, hoped that Dr. Kim could start making investments that truly lead to sustainability. Michael Kaemingk, project manager at Lumana, considers the selection a nice surprise that will provide the World Bank a more relevant perspective: “He’s less removed from the concerns of the developing world.”

Zbigniew Bochniarz, a visiting professor at UW Evans School of Public Affairs, acknowledged that Kim is “a good man” and that his record in health care should provide some needed perspective to an organization that has been heavily criticized for neglecting the social aspects of development. “Here’s a guy who knows the issues and is sensitive to them,” he noted, while also congratulating President Obama taking the risk and nominating someone with a development background.

If you decide to dig in and learn more about Dr. Jim Yong Kim, be sure to include this video from last year’s Dartmouth Idol Finals. Wait through a few minutes of that sappy Dirty Dancing theme song, and you’ll witness Dr. Kim doing the robot and rapping in white leather, neon bracelets, and spacey sunglasses. Dr. Kim certainly has the personality, playfulness, and skills of collaboration to bring new leadership and  ideas to the stiff-limbed World Bank.

Economic Development & Poverty Alleviation

Executive Summary

Full Report

More resources on Economic Development and Poverty Alleviation

Global Health

Executive Summary

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Global Learning

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Humans & the Environment

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Global Washington, in partnership with Berk & Associates, has developed a Global Development Sector Profile for the state of Washington. This profile, published in 2009, describes the impact of Washington’s global development sector both at home in Washington and around the world, and highlights the unique strengths and accomplishments of our region.

Please view the pdf, or email us to receive a copy by mail.

Global Development through Aid, Partnerships, Trade and Education:
Recommendations from Global Washington

• Executive summary
• Full report

In 2009, U.S. Senators Cantwell and Murray reached out to Global Washington seeking input on strengthening U.S. foreign assistance and examples of successful development partnerships within Washington State. The Senators looked to Global Washington, a regional convening organization, to offer a fresh perspective on global development issues. The attached paper, “Global Development through Aid, Partnerships, Trade and Education: Recommendations from Global Washington” is the result of the collaboration of more than 45 local experts representing the non-profit, business, government, and academic sectors that proposes specific policy recommendation on four topics: Aid; Trade and Development; Public-Private Partnerships; and Global Education.

Principles of Foreign Aid Effectiveness: Global Washington White Paper

• Executive Summary (PDF, 391 KB)
• Full Report (PDF, 1.7 MB)
• Overview of Foreign Aid Principles Project (PDF, 466 KB)