Senators Seek Global Sector’s Input
Posted on September 10, 2009.
“Washington state Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray think the state’s burgeoning global health and development sector could be a good source of new ideas for improving the nation’s foreign aid and trade policies. The two Democrats have asked the association Global Washington to write policy recommendation papers on trade and aid, as well as education and private-public partnerships”
Senators Seek Global Sector’s Input
Puget Sound Business Journal | Posted by Clay Holtzman | September 10, 2009
Global Social Event: East & Southeast Asia
Posted on August 28, 2009.
Jackie Peterson reports on our August 19th event
This month’s Global Social focused on East and Southeast Asia as well as China. Ketty Loeb from Wokai was invited to present briefly on Wokai’s micro-credit work and poverty in China.
Currently the poverty rate is 8-10%, Loeb notes, and there is a growing divide between rural and urban populations. According to Loeb 75% of the people in China do not have access to credit. In China, it is not legal to loan to individuals so micro-finance organizations serve as brokers or intermediaries in that process, using a model somewhat similar to what KIVA does. The micro-finance organizations in China are the entities to which outsiders can loan money and the organization matches funding with individuals. The microfinance organizations also determine the loan rate.
The process has a number of challenges. Those who loan will not be repaid in the traditional sense of recouping their money. The loans are repaid to the micro-finance organization but the principle amount is then re-invested so the loans should be considered more as a donation rather than a traditional loan. It is also a challenge to find reputable micro-financing organizations using sound training practices, transparency in lending and solid risk analysis measures. Wokai has, to-date, found about 100 reputable organizations and continues to look for more.
There is also a general lack of a philanthropic culture directed toward those outside the family in China. Donations or giving in the way thought normal in the US is illegal in China but there appears to be some shifts beginning in cultural norms around that philosophy. There is also some hope for banking reforms and that the high demand for credit may encourage opportunities.
As is true in many areas, the greatest poverty is in the rural areas and isolation and poor infrastructure contribute to the fact that less help gets to those areas and people.
About 98% of the money Wokai loans is to women who live on less than $1.00/day and they use that money for things like agricultural pursuits and purchasing animals etc. in rural areas and sales of textiles and establishment of produce stands in more urban locations. The average loan is about $350.
Some of the other organizations represented at the Global Social who are also doing work in East and Central Asia and China include:
Lutheran Community Services, www.refugeechildren.net
Bridges to Understanding, www.bridgesweb.org
Peace Winds America, www.peacewindsamerica.org
Women’s Enterprises International, www.womententerprises.org
The China Club of Seattle, laoBao206@aol.com
Sankara Eye Foundation, www.giftofvision.org
Breakthrough Partners, www.breakthroughpartners.org
Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, www.pofsea.org
Crooked Trails, www.crookedtrails.com
Antioch University, www.antiochseattle.edu/academics/creativechange/index.html
Representing Global Washington was Bookda Gheisar, Executive Director. Gheisar encouraged attendees to access the Global Washington website, www.globalwa.org, to register their organizations and post upcoming events. Gheisar also spoke to the benefits of membership in the organization.
Gheisar solicited input from the group as to how Global Washington can help facilitate communication between various groups doing work overseas and noted that the first annual convention for Global Washington members will occur in December of 2009.
August 2009 Newsletter
Posted on August 27, 2009.
Welcome to the August 2009 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
Greetings-
I am tremendously excited to announce that we have confirmed Nicholas Kristof as our keynote speaker for the Global Washington Annual Conference to be held Monday, December 7 on the Microsoft Campus in Redmond. In their new book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn share stories of women’s struggles in the face of poverty . Half the Sky brings attention to the fact that women make up more than 60 percent of the poorest people on earth, yet hold the potential to change the world as we know it.
If you have not seen last Sunday’s New York times special section on women and development, be sure to review some of the articles.
I really look forward to seeing you at the conference. Over the next two months we will continue to send you links to Nick Kristof’s writings and thinking to help us all prepare for a very fruitful conversation with him. We will send an announcement out to let you know when registration for the conference has opened in mid-September.
Our goal for this conference is to motivate and activate the private, non-profit and philanthropic sectors jointly to build the next chapter of our common global future. Together, we will generate specific goals to advance global development in Washington through collaboration between the private, non-profit, government and academic sectors. I hope to see you all there.
In unity,
Bookda Gheisar, Executive Director
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Global Washington Mourns the Passing of a Founder
Global Washington is sad to announce the death of one of it’s founders. Lance LeLoup, who retired in June after a distinguished career in political science research, teaching and administration at WSU, died Thursday, July 23, at his home on Whidbey Island. He was 60 and had been suffering from cancer.
Lance T. LeLoup was the Vice Provost of International Programs and Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Washington State University. In 2007, he received the Aaron Wildavsky Lifetime Achievement award for Research on Public Budgeting from the Association for Budgeting and Financial management, the largest section of the American Society for Public Administration. Dr. LeLoup received a B.A. from Georgetown University with honors and M.A. and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. He was at WSU since 1996 where he previously served as Chair of the Department of Political Science and Director of the Thomas Foley Institute. He is the author of more than a dozen books and sixty articles on politics and public policy in the U.S. and Europe particularly in the areas of legislative institutions, executive-legislative relations, and public budgeting. Professor LeLoup had faculty appointments and lived in England, France, Hungary, and Slovenia, and lectured around the world.
In 2007 Dr. Leloup joined other academics in recognizing the value of collaboration and help found Global Washington and worked on the development of the Global Learning Goals. He served on the global education advisory committee and the steering committee of Global Washington in the last two years and was instrumental in the development of the organization.
We will miss Lance deeply. Please click here to read more about Dr. Leloup’s life.
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Spotlight: Global Washington Premiering New Website!
Global Washington is putting the final touches on a fantastic re-design of our website, which we’ll officially be launching next week. One of the new and exciting features on the site is an enhanced search function for our Washington state directory of global development, which allows users to drill down to the finer points of the issues and regions they care about when seeking out organizations, academic centers and businesses with a similar focus. In addition, you can explore the directory using our new interactive map function, and click in to your country of interest to see who is working there.
Later next month we’ll also be rolling out Global WA Connects, which will serve as the primary online meeting place for discussion and collaboration for the global development community. We’re excited to enhance our role as a convening place for all the great work you are doing and look forward to new ways to help you connect.
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Featured Organization: Rural Development Institute (RDI)
“Hope,” according to Roy Prosterman, Rural Development Institute’s founder, “is the catalyst from which all sustainable economic development and poverty reduction flows.” And for the rural poor, RDI sees land as hope. Secure access to land, even a tiny plot, means a poor person can help feed herself. It means she has the incentive to develop the land, to add a greenhouse, to find a way to irrigate it, if needed, to use sustainable fertilizers. It means she has a chance to take care of and educate her children. It means she has a place or an address in the world where she can be found. It means she can start a small business. It means she has status in the community. Most critically it means she sees herself as a person with options and with hope in the future.
400 million people now have access to land rights as a result of RDI’s efforts, working in partnerships with governments and many organizations. That’s one out of every 16 people on the planet touched by RDI! Of course, not all of the four hundred million have been able to take advantage of the changes. The road to successful implantation stretches far into the future. But still, what a story! This work is not dropping off a bag of rice on the edge of a village, though that work is important. Securing complicated legal changes require governments to buck vested interests and people to change hundreds of years of self perception, as well as years of patience and persistence.
For the past 40 of those years RDI has been working with governments and NGOs across the developing world advocating land reform as the key change needed to promote economic development and social justice. Essentially a law firm whose clients are developing countries and NGOs, RDI advises governments about how to reform land laws so that the poor have the means to ensure their own future and thus have a stake in the future of the country. Today, with a home office in Seattle, RDI has a staff of 11 attorneys, with a total staff of 52, and field offices in Beijing, China; Bangalore, India; Hyderabad, India; Kolkata, India and Bhubaneshwar, India. With support from donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network and consultancies for clients such as the World Bank and USAID, RDI is active in seven to ten countries at any one time.
Roy Prosterman, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, started working on land reform in South Vietnam. Between 1970 and 1973 his famous Land to the Tiller project helped over a million tenant farmers gain control over their land. Viet Cong recruiting plummeted in the area where the project was operating. Moreover, after the war, the Vietnamese government adopted Land to the Tiller principles to reform land ownership rather than collectivist principles. Rising from the ashes of the Land to the Tiller program, RDI was heavily involved in former Soviet block countries after the fall of the Soviet Union, advising new governments about what to do with the collective farms. RDI says that most of those efforts have been successfully implemented.
Usually, RDI is invited either by the government, an NGO or a government agency such as USAID to provide analysis about how to change a particular country’s land law. Usually RDI’s funding comes either from contracts with NGOs or government agencies in the developed world. At other times, RDI does research and goes into a country on its own with the help of private donors. In all instances finding a person in the government willing to sponsor securing the legal changes is the critical variable that determines whether the project can get off the ground or fail.
The 1998 land reform law passed by the Chinese government, with the advice of RDI, which gave rural families 30 year documented right to lands lead to skyrocking agricultural production and reduced China’s rural poverty index by 50%. Even though only about 40% of China’s eligible rural poor had actually received contracts by 2005, those efforts removed China from the list of major contributors to the world’s poverty index. By 2005, 46% of Africans and 30% of South Asians lived on less than a dollar a day, while in China the index decreased from 33% to less than 17%, a testament to the Chinese government’s efforts to reduce rural poverty by taking land reform and other methods of development seriously.
In Rwanda, RDI is developing regulations, writing pamphlets and putting on plays that explain citizens’ rights under the new land law rights or that demonstrate the processes and evidentiary requirements for resolving land disputes. Taking gender issues into consideration, RDI is working with the Rwandan Women’s Law and Policy Task Force, an umbrella NGO that advocates on behalf of women’s rights. In Burundi, RDI is making recommendations to the government on ways to avoid the small amount of available land from flowing into the hands of the wealthy elite. In 2007 Angola, RDI completed a major study of how a land dispute resolution mechanism and formalized land rights could assist in the reconciliation of Angola. Unfortunately, RDI has so far been unable to find the required partner in the government to conduct a pilot program there.
Major reform need not involve a lot of land. In India, RDI has worked with the government in four states to pioneer distribution very small plots — as small as 1/10th of an acre, or 5000 square feet, that’s the size of a normal Seattle city lot — to the rural poor of through grants and purchase programs. What good is micro-owning? On such a plot, a former bonded laborer, who once worked on his master’s lands for only his food, a primitive hut and $16 a year in return, can grow 90% of his family’s vegetable and fruit needs. From what food the family doesn’t eat themselves, they can earn $133 a year and additional $67 a year from raising and selling chickens and eggs. They can grow 42 teak trees, which, when mature, ten years from now, will sell for around $556 each or a total sum of $23,333, an astonishing sum someone who was an indentured servant just a few years before.
Major reform does not require expropriation of private lands. In fact, RDI finds such heavy handed methods to be counterproductive. Better to enter into market solutions, buy the land and avoid the controversy. In India, the plots were purchased by the government for as little as $200 apiece.
What major reform does require are years of patient advice, focused implementation and the understanding that every country is different. What was successful in the last country RDI worked in might not work in the next one. But forty years of effort, some successful, others not, means that the organization has history in its own files. RDI is turning those files into a major new undertaking.
Scheduled to open in October, 2009, RDI will launch the Global Center for Women’s Land Rights. The Center will operate an e-library that will catalogue developing country laws that affect women’s land rights. Those materials will be available 24/7 on its website, providing an invaluable and free resource for land reform efforts across the world and bringing together the global community around the issue of secure land rights for women and girls. RDI understands that women are central to successful land reform and poverty reduction. Upwards of eighty percent of rural land is tilled by women, but less than five percent of this land is owned or controlled by the women who till it. Based in Seattle, the Center will be a source for training and advocacy, provide scholarships to bring people from poor countries to the Seattle (based in part on iLeap’s visiting scholar program which was described in the June Global Washington Newsletter) and fellowships to send scholars see how land reform really works in country.
40 years of work, in 45 countries, for 400,000,000 rewards is an astonishingly successful.
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Changemaker: Marla Smith-Nilson, Bringing the Reality of Dirty Water Back Home
A voice for community-based water projects across the developing world, Marla Smith-Nilson is the Executive Director of Seattle-based Water 1st. Water 1st directs its annual $1 million fundraising prowess to water projects that are planned and operated by the people they serve. Since 2005, Water 1st has provided funding for non-profits who have built more than 251 projects that are benefiting over 30,000 people.
Although Marla is a civil engineer, Water 1st does not perform the engineering design for the water projects, but they do provide technical oversight and help to introduce partners to new technology they may not have had an opportunity to see. And although she is a community organizer, Water 1st does not organize water projects in the communities it serves.
Instead, Water 1st’s mission is to fund local organizations’ efforts to educate their own communities in sustainable acquisition and use of safe water and to educate people in the developed world about the need to help fund these local efforts. Water 1st doesn’t swoop in, build a project and leave. For these reasons, Water 1st projects are not likely to result in a million dollar water project lying inoperable for lack of a part, or unused latrines that no one was ever taught how to use, or water that is wasted because no one is responsible to pay for it.
Stepping back to be supportive rather than directive doesn’t mean that Water 1st doesn’t require stiff standards. More on that later. First, the story that led Marla to this work.
As a child of American school teachers living in Arizona, Marla Smith-Nilson spent her summers camping and fishing just across the border in Mexico. One of her earliest memories is of questioning her mother why Mexican children her own age were carrying water to their homes from a stream. Her mother pointed to the luck of her birth and told her she should be thankful that she was not one of those children. Over the years the comment became less of an explanation than a challenge. Some things there were no solutions for, but this seemed so easy. Just simple engineering: a pipe and a water source. 
Growing up in water-parched Arizona also has a way of keeping water issues personal. In college at the University of Arizona and in graduate school at UNC at Chapel Hill, Marla turned to civil engineering expecting it to become her vocation. As a graduate student working on a civil engineering project in a village in Honduras in the early 90’s, she learned about another locally-based and staffed non-profit trying to bring clean water to the village. It only needed $5,000 to take off. It seemed like a sum she could raise. The project wasn’t likely to happen if she didn’t do it, so she agreed to try. As she prevailed upon her friends, family, fellow students and faculty to give money, she was learning her first lesson in how to effectively deal with the water and sanitation crisis in developing communities.
Local NGOs have access to civil engineers. They already have the knowledge to bring clean water everywhere they work. The local NGOs already have the trust of the community and the personal contracts to make such a project work. What they lack is not technical expertise, but a world that knows how few people in developing countries have access to that simple pipe and water resource and how simple the solutions would be if the money were there. It was a world that could be mobilized if it could be educated.
Marla became one of the original founders of Water Partners International which today has a formidable budget of 3-4 million dollars. Based in three cities reflecting the dispersion of the founding students and faculty upon graduation, in its early days it had a similar focus on using local NGOs to organize water projects in developing communities. But as that organization became bigger and started receiving money from government and large foundations, Marla felt it was starting to lose its focus on building a grassroots base of support for its cause. After trying to change the focus from within, Marla and the rest of the staff from the Seattle office left the organization and created Water 1st in 2005.
Today Water 1st’s projects in Ethiopia, India, Bangladesh and Honduras appear as models of well-run community-based water systems. In each case the community was involved in helping identify the problem and coming up solutions. Each community was also required to bear a portion of the capital and all of the operating costs of the project. All the projects were managed by a local board that coordinated with the NGO or local government.
The fruits of this organizing extend beyond the water projects to other problems the communities now realize they can solve. The communities of Ilamu Muja, Ethiopia and San Gabriel, Honduras, beneficiaries of Water 1st funding for their water projects, have now built elementary schools. People living in the slums of Dhaka, who used to buy water from expensive, illegal private water vendors, now have more money for their families. Women in India have formed local savings groups to take out small loans and start small businesses.
Water 1st’s vision states that “providing people with safe water is the first step toward breaking the cycle of poverty.” The community-based organizations are moving on to the next steps; Water 1st is learning too. It is also introducing metering into its projects in Honduras and expects to bring its NGOs from other countries together so they can learn from each other. Water 1st expects to move on to new partners as well in 2010 and 2011.
Waterworks fundraising efforts include Water 1st tours of communities that are either developing water projects or in need of doing so. It has an annual dinner in November for its majors donors with some corporate sponsorship, but 75% of its donors are individuals. Carry 5 campaigns, a variation on walkathons, are being virally organized over the internet by supporters across the country. Local press accounts of families carrying a five-gallon container a mile or two in the sun drive home the problem.
As for accountability, besides educating the developed world and raising funds, Marla’s other principal role is oversight. Water 1st audits both the local NGO and the individual water project committees at least annually inspecting their books, their physical infrastructure and the effectiveness of their local management committees.
It’s been a long way from that little girl’s wonderment at seeing children forced to carrying water. There’s still a long way to go. But thanks to Marla, the local non-profits with whom Water 1st collaborates, the communities that step up to help themselves, and the donors who learn the real value of their contributions, there is a process that works.
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Global Entertainment: Global Outlaws, Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World
Global Outlaws, Crime, Money and Power in the Contemporary World by Carolyn Nordstrom
What makes a smuggler, a smuggler? Taxes. Otherwise a smuggler is just a trader. Whether the purpose of the tax is to raise money, discourage competition or control the trafficking in dangerous products, the underlying activity is just commerce. That, at least, is the ethic among the traders. The line between the legal and the illegal, or what Nordstrom calls the il/legal is frequently hard to discern. In the face of people’s lives, arguments from morality are as likely to be shaken as confirmed. Trafficking in young children may retain its universal abhorrence, but recreational drugs? They are chosen. Counterfeit pharmaceuticals? Sometimes they are generic reproductions costing a fraction of the name brand and disparately needed in a conflict zone. Food products? Hard to oppose when people are starving.
NGOs, government entities and businesses operating in developing countries will recognize much of what Nordstrom describes. The complicity of governments and “straight” businesses in the developed world might be a little less familiar. Nordstrom travels through Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States to tell this story.
Two-thirds of all trade moves outside legal channels and ninety percent of it leaks through the shipping industry, according to both the police and import/export CEOs quoted by Nordstrom. One can argue that this massive undeclared trade deprives countries, developing and developed alike, of the funds they need to educate, feed and house their people. It also deprives them of the funds they need to wage wars and give tax breaks to the wealthy. For the most part the author doesn’t take sides, although she ultimately does admit to smuggled pharmaceuticals being better than no pharmaceuticals at all. Her book is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Nordstrom is an anthropologist and her point of view is observation and interview, not statistics. Her book consists of 20 relatively short chapters that demonstrate how il/legal trade occurs, starting with the lowliest trader in the chain illustrating how informal economies work on the ground and ending with financial officers of vast international trading giants discussing the necessity of their involvement in the il/legal trade, as well as the strange priorities of global law enforcement. She calls her approach “an expanding funnel.”
The book begins with the story of an orphan who sells cigarettes on the street. He buys them from a small shopkeeper who also sells electronic goods and name brand drugs in the front of his store and weapons in the back. The trader’s goods come across borders through free trade zones, unstaffed border crossings, or slipped in among the bags of rice sent by an aid agency or among the weapons ordered by the local military. Electronic goods enter the continent at ports in containers under shipping documents that declare the contents to be one of the metals in the finished product. The name brand drugs, real or counterfeit, and weapons are brought in through fishing vessels that meet ships outside territorial waters. At each step Nordstrom describes how the sales occur, the nature of the relationship between the seller and the buyer, how the traders see themselves as well as how and why the entities of the state either cannot, or do not, intervene.
Nordstrom explains why inspection at ports doesn’t and isn’t likely to happen in the future. The length of time it takes to remove one container from a ship, inspect it and repackage it is six hours; 24,657 containers a day are routed through the Port of Rotterdam. Delays in getting those goods to market give surrounding ports a competitive edge and result in harangues from both companies anxious for the delivery of their goods and government officials anxious to keep the anxious CEOs from becoming more anxious. Shipping agents in London casually discuss with Nordstrom the going rate for smuggled goods which they would happy to arrange for her should she wish, and ships crews explain how they routinely take a cut of the ship’s costs, unbeknownst to the owner.
Tax avoidance in developed nations gets equal time. The chapter on how easy it is for a business to buy a bank, a name change and a second citizenship in order to launder money with impunity is truly eye-opening. There are websites that offer all these activities at listed prices. (If Homeland Security is truly watching our internet usage one hopes they are focusing on these sites).
No solutions are presented, nor is there an implication that a solution is needed. If there is an agenda though, it is her desire to show how much more complicated the situation is than most of us know. The book ends with the intersection of smuggling and security. If by this time the reader has begun to question whether international efforts at altering this global deception are worth it, she leaves her reader with the following caveat. Once you’ve figure out how the least dangerous goods are routinely smuggled into a country, say counterfeit Barbie dolls, you’ve figured out how the most dangerous goods can be.
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Announcements
New Staff at Global Washington: Global Washington welcomes the newest addition to the team, Danielle Ellingston, as our Global Policy Coordinator. Danielle most recently worked for Congressional Research Service in Washington, DC, where she provided research and analysis to members of Congress and their staffs. Danielle’s research focused on issues in international trade and development such as trade capacity building and the African Growth and Opportunity Act. In addition, she completed rotations at the U.S. Agency for International Development West Africa Regional Program office and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office for Trade Capacity Building. Previously, Danielle was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana working as a small business advisor with pineapple farmers. Danielle earned her MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, in Washington, DC in 2003. Danielle originally hails from Brooklyn, NY and is a newcomer to the Seattle area where she enjoys rowing and hiking with her family.
- New Addition to the Global WA Family! We are thrilled to announce the birth of Frederick Sargent Barr, born August 3rd. He arrived at 9:15 am after 3 1/2 hours labor and was 21 inches long, 8lbs 9oz. Frederick joins big bro Walter, 22 months, mom Katherine (of Global WA fame), dad Jonathan and kitty Hugo. Everyone is happy, healthy and adjusting to life together. Congratulations, Barr family!
- New Member Benefit – GrantStation Insider: Global Washington, in partnership with GrantStation, is now distributing a monthly e-newsletter to members that focuses on upcoming charitable giving programs and U.S. Federal agency grant deadlines for organizations working internationally. Current Global Washington members will see their first free GrantStation e-newsletter next week. You can read more about this fantastic benefit at the GrantStation website and check out Global WA’s other member benefits by clicking here.
PATH Receives the Conrad Hilton Humanitarian Prize: Global Washington extends hearty congratulations to member organization PATH for being the chosen recipient of the 2009 Conrad Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest humanitarian award, presented annually to a nonprofit organization judged to have made exemplary and extraordinary contributions toward alleviating human suffering. The Hilton Foundation praised PATH’s work creating effective health technologies for the developing world. Read more…
iLeap Invites Global WA Members to Participate in 2010 Fellowship Program: Due to the unique way in which the iLEAP Fellowship promotes meaningful, long-term collaboration among Global Washington members, iLeap: The Center for Critical Service is extending an exclusive invitation, in advance of their regular application period, for Global WA members to nominate and/or sponsor a Fellow on their 2010 International Fellowship program. Please click here to read the letter of invitation.
Foster School Announces 2010 Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC): The University of Washington Global Business Center at the Foster School of Business is pleased to announce the 2010 Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC). GSEC is a business plan competition in which students from around the globe—and across fields of study—find creative, commercially sustainable solutions to problems of poverty in the developing world. As a leading-edge initiative at the University of Washington, GSEC seeks to engage creative minds across disciplines to encourage bolder and less conventional business solutions to global poverty. GSEC also engages individuals as mentors, judges, and sponsors; detailed information is available on the GSEC website.
Global Partnerships Continues to Flourish: Global WA member organization Global Partnerships recently received a $180,000 capacity-building grant from the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust of Vancouver, Washington, to support their social investment fund strategy—a strategy that’s helped GP increase their impact significantly in recent years. Additionally, Global Partnerships joined other industry leaders to announce the launch of an innovative company, MFX Solutions, which addresses one of microfinance’s most pressing challenges: Currency risk. As an early leader in this effort, GP is excited about the potential of MFX to allow for more loans in local currency in developing countries, which will benefit the people most vulnerable to currency risk: microfinance borrowers. Read more…
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Global Washington Upcoming Events
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Other Upcoming Events
Click here to see a full list of international development events on the Global Washington’s calendar. Upcoming events include:
Please submit your events to our calendar!
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Global Sector, American Recovery
Posted on August 26, 2009.
“About 45 people attended a stimulus information session organized by Global Washington, a membership group representing the state’s growing global health and development sector. Participants pointed out that their work abroad limits their ability to access the federal program, which is intended to preserve and create jobs for Americans… Satran advised applying for funds in conjunction with other groups, and said that proposals would have better odds if they address multiple stimulus priorities like improving health care by also expanding broadband internet access to low-income areas.”
Global Sector, American Recovery
Puget Sound Business Journal | Posted by Clay Holtzman | August 26, 2009
Global Social Event: Convening Central & South Asia
Global Washington intern Lindsay Jackson reports on our July 15th event
This month’s Global Social event focused on Central & South Asia, confronting the issues of environment, poverty, education & health. The event consisted of a large variety of representatives from various global development organizations, which included; individual representatives, The National Council for Eurasian & East European Research, EarthCorps, “Journey with an Afghan School” Ayni Education International, Jackson School of International Studies of University of Washington, International Organization of Folk Art, University of Washington (Bothell & Seattle), Health Leadership, Wokai, Seattle International Foundation, and Global Washington.
The event opened up and began with an introduction from Bookda Ghesiar, the Executive Director of Global Washington. She introduced herself and explained what Global Washington was all about, its background and future goals. Prologues then led to the Bookda introducing Ethan Casey, the event’s primary speaker on Pakistan.
Ethan Casey is the most well known for his works & authorship of the book Alive and Well in Pakistan: A Human Journey in a Dangerous Time (2004). Ethan is also a frequent speaker on Pakistan at venues ranging from universities, The Pakistan High Commission in London, and locally around Seattle where he is from. Ethan has continued to use his position as an American traveler and author with 15 years’ exposure to Pakistan to help foster historical and geographic perspectives, human connections, and conversation between Americans and Pakistanis. Ethan gave a brief explanation of how he became so connected and interested in Pakistan through his early travels, he then brought the Pakistani situations alive by reading quotes and passages from Pakistanis that he had come across in regards to the American mistreatment and unawareness of Pakistanis. Ethan’s future plans consist of a second book to be published in 2010 that will be a follow up of Alive and Well recapping and covering the recent past five years in Pakistan since the publication of Alive and Well. For updates and further discussion Ethan regularly blogs at www.aliveandwellinpakistan.com and writes a column for the Books & Authors section of the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.
Ethan Casey’s stories quickly and successfully opened the group discussion up between attendees working in the Central and South Asian regions. Some questions that were brought up included;
· What is the best way to assist refugees, such as programs, for people who do not have a lot of experience?
Ethan’s response was to educate your self as much as possible about the situations that have occurred other than just the news, and have better communication and connections to American Pakistanis who are fully socially aware of what is going on. The main stream Americans need to start the conversation (Casey)
· How can you deal with open military?
The response was to find the right community to keep going back (Casey)
· There is great barrier in understanding the impact of the past 10-15 years in Pakistan, so where do you go from there?
The response was to make more and incorporate 1-on-1 human connections, and expose your self to travel writing for literacy expression (Casey)
Questions then began to shift from being focused on Ethan to more open group and responses.
· With the current economy that has caused enormous funding challenges, how can be help support each other?
Response was for NGO’s to partner and collaborate on events rather then individually, where this would benefit everyone and can make different missions be more congruent
· Is there a way to get a better influence over the media, giving it more balance?
Response was that local communities i.e. American Pakistanis, need to get connected to a reporter for more personal stories
Lastly, the remainder of the questions and discussion were directed towards Global Washington and their role.
· What are some recommendations for Global Washington; how do you want them to be able to help?
– Bring vast amounts of individuals working on Global Development in Washington State together to work on the smaller scale and build up
– Help the reservation of different arts and traditional culture, make sure it isn’t looked over
– Have the ability to be able to find and research more organization of massive diversity by having a more comprehensive and enhanced search that is very specific of organizations working internationally- extending international grid of access
– Difficult to connect when overseas, great value to develop an easy accessible way to communicate with others overseas in the same sector
Discussion and conversation was carried on for over an hour, and was closed for individual conversation and networking between various organizations to find out more about each other and make stronger connections for collaboration and support.
June 2009 Newsletter
Welcome to the June 2009 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
- Spotlight: Global Washington is Looking for a Policy Coordinator!
- Featured Organization: iLEAP – The Center for Critical Service
- Changemaker: Jeff Keenan, Our Day to End World Poverty
- Global Entertainment: Africa, The Politics of Suffering and Smiling
- Announcements: New Staff at Global Washington; Date Announced for Global Washington Conference; Sign the Foreign Aid Reform Petition
- Global Washington Upcoming Events
- Other Upcoming Events
NOTE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Greetings-
Global Washington recently celebrated some very exciting news. We received a letter three weeks ago from Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, congratulating us on our success in bringing together many diverse Washington organizations to work together on the complex issues of global development. The letter also asked for Global Washington’s input concerning real world examples of successful development partnerships, as well as policy recommendations regarding strengthening U.S. foreign assistance and ways to maintain the state’s leadership role in development efforts. We are honored and humbled to have received this request, and look forward to making the most of it.
Global Washington continues to push ahead with research and recommendations regarding critical policy matters. We are currently working with our Principles Committee on recommendations to improve the effectiveness of America’s foreign aid. Although numerous documents, such as the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, have recommended badly needed reforms in the foreign aid strategies of developed nations, the U.S. continues to lag behind in adopting these. Global Washington will work to help institute such changes, including making aid more transparent, untying aid from onerous procurement requirements, and targeting aid more effectively to best address recipients’ needs and avoid redundancy.
To that end, we are thrilled that the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 2139) is making its way through the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill would require the President to adopt a national strategy for foreign aid, defining America’s role in global development and setting objectives for reducing poverty and improving economic growth in developing countries. It also mandates the development of effective mechanisms for monitoring aid effectiveness, and improves transparency by requiring the publication of extensive information regarding U.S. aid flows. Although the bill does not sufficiently address the current outdated legislation governing our foreign aid, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, it takes an important first step towards realigning America’s foreign aid strategy and policies with 21st century priorities.
Global Washington also continues to work on the integration of global learning into the university curriculum during a time of budget cuts. Global Washington, in consultation with its Higher Education Committee, has developed a series of Global Learning Goals, which have been approved by 28 university presidents around the state. We are hopeful that these goals, which include improving cross-cultural understanding, increasing the proportion of students who study abroad, and ensuring all students can communicate in more than one language, will find their way into the core curricula of all 2- and 4-year institutions of higher learning in the state. Global Washington is currently developing metrics for measuring the progress of these goals, as well as cost-effective implementation strategies.
We are excited about moving ahead on these policy matters and as always, look forward to your input.
In unity,
Bookda Gheisar, Executive Director
SPOTLIGHT: Global Washington is Looking for a Policy Coordinator!
Global Washington is hiring a new Policy Coordinator to develop Global Washington’s policy activities, staff Global Washington’s state-wide policy panel and coordinate advocacy and outreach programs to increase the ability of the global development sector in the State of Washington to influence global development policy.
Click here for the full job description…
FEATURED ORGANIZATION: iLEAP – The Center for Critical Service
You know you want to do something to help end global poverty, but you don’t know what.
You have a good idea about what you want to do, but you aren’t sure whether it is really needed or how you should do it.
You know what you want to do and that it is needed, but you don’t know anyone in Seattle or overseas who could give you advice and support along the way.
Your organization has staff abroad that needs training in project development, leadership skills, evaluation and/or funding.
Learning what needs to be done, critically examining projects, and finding support, both at home and abroad, are subjects we in the community concerned about global poverty need to explore. Fortunately, iLEAP: The Center for Critical Service is here to help.
iLEAP is an unique international education and training nonprofit organization based in Seattle that brings together participants from around the world who are working in a specific area of global development to help them learn the skills and make the connections they need for their projects to be successful. Born of many years of dissatisfaction with development training programs packed with technical detail, but lacking either critical context or ongoing support, iLEAP was created to marry the academic task of analysis with the practical skills individuals and groups need to turn such learning into action.
Imagine an American who wants to work abroad on hunger, food security or sustainable agriculture, but doesn’t know how or where he might be useful. Imagine a Zambian in charge of a sustainable agriculture program who needs information about how others have organized and supported such programs, and who wants to further develop his leadership skills, learn how to market his program or speak publicly about it. Put them both together in a training program where they can learn from each other. Have both learn about sustainable agriculture programs in western Washington, as well as get to know people and organizations that are doing similar work. Put them in touch with the funding sources in the fertile Seattle valley and create structures that will foster long-term collaboration.
A romantic ideal about collaborative global partnerships? No. This is reality and it is being actively practiced in Seattle and around the world through iLEAP’s programs.
This is Paul Samba, a Zambian leader in sustainable agriculture who was a member of the 2009 iLEAP International Fellowship program and is now a part of the iLEAP faculty upon his return to Zambia. This is Michael Kraft, a participant in iLEAP’s Taking the LEAP Program who has joined Paul in Zambia, The two spent parts of several months together here in Seattle where they both studied Social Enterprise and Innovation, Collaborative Leadership, Sustainability, both ecological and social, and Reflective Practice. Paul will mentor iLEAP’s American participants such as Michael during his time in Zambia. When he returns from Zambia, Michael will spend a couple of months debriefing back in Seattle in iLEAP’s ‘Bringing it Home’ curriculum, where he will process his time in Zambia and, most importantly, explore what he will do next as the result of this experience.
iLEAP is the brainchild of Britt Yamamoto and J.B. Hoover, both of whom have had substantial experience overseas in development programs where they met. Britt is currently Core Faculty in the Antioch University Seattle Center for Creative Change, a Master’s Program which prepares students to take leadership roles in social change. He is also a clinical faculty member in the University of Washington Department of Global Health. J.B. is the President of the iLEAP Board of Directors.
iLEAP has its origins in a class Britt taught at the UW where students chose a service project to work in, but the class work consisted of a rigorous analysis of the very programs the students were volunteering in. Did the program lead to systemic change? What were the assumptions under which the organization works? Were they stated or unstated? Were they doing a job that needed to be done? How could they really know? If it was worth doing, were there better ways to do it? What were the student’s own assumptions in doing ‘good work’ and ‘serving others’? Students learned to look at the efforts of their organizations and their own efforts with a careful, critical eye. But they also married analysis to action, and training to real connection with others. Britt was awarded one of the University of Washington’s Excellence in Teaching awards as the result of creating this course.
Since 2004, iLEAP has been creating international training and education programs lasting from from 1 day to 9 
months for specific sectors. Another of its programs, Social Innovation in Seattle, brings Japanese students to the U.S. for a month long course that introduces them to the idea of social enterprise and innovation and helps them make connections with local non profit organizations and area businesses.
iLEAP now has ten International Faculty around the world. These Faculty are graduates of the iLEAP International Fellowship and have all received an extensive training in Seattle. Upon the completion of the program, iLEAP Faculty are then available to mentor Taking the LEAP participants from America, like Michael Kraft, who come to live and do volunteer service in their communities.
Three Faculty in India are working in computer literacy, education, women and children, tribal communities and social justice. In Nepal, a Faculty member works in social justice and human rights, in Sri Lanka another works in 
sustainable agriculture and social justice. In Cameroon, one works in sustainable agriculture, education and forestry. Issues involving women and children are the focus of Faculty in Togo. In Uganda, Faculty works in HIV AIDS, public health and interfaith coalitions. In Zambia, Paul Samba continues his work in sustainable agriculture. Finally, the iLEAP Faculty member in Liberia works in peace, conflict resolution and education. iLEAP Faculty continue to share their successes and challenges with each other through the iLEAP blog, accessible at www.ileap.org/blog.
Because of its emphasis on cross-sector collaboration, capacity building, and global justice, iLEAP works closely with Global Washington and its members. It already works with a great number of Global Washington member organizations; helping participants make the connections with others doing similar work is a critical part of iLEAP’s vision. In return, many of iLEAP’s International Fellows participate in Global Washington events.
Member organizations with staff in foreign countries that may need to develop leadership skills might want to think 
about entering them in the Fellows Program, or collaborating with iLEAP to serve as a site placement for one of their many programs. Members with volunteers who want some direction and guidance while in country might want to consider sending them to the Taking the LEAP Program. iLEAP is capable of working with any organization, business or agency and they are actively seeking new ways to collaborate with others to advance the learning of their global participants and to strengthen partnerships with local organizations for mutual benefit.
To learn more about iLEAP: The Center for Critical Service, click here.
CHANGEMAKER: Jeff Keenan, Our Day to End World Poverty
A highly placed software management guru writes an important guide to ending world poverty. That is how Jeff Keenan got from there to here.
Three principles guide Jeff’s life: family, faith and fairness. He believes that living his faith authentically requires giving to others, so he has long been active in local charitable activities: homebuilding, food banks and animal welfare to name just a few. The core of his life is his wife and six children. But his faith pushes him to think beyond his own family to the perspective of parents who cannot provide their children with life’s necessities. Finally, he practices basic fairness, a sensibility he believes is universally shared, and which, if tapped on a large scale, could change the world.
Jeff’s first-hand experience with living his principles in a global setting began in 2002 when Adobe sent him to Singapore to develop the supply chain for Adobe products in Asia and the Pacific. His work then took him to Indonesia and Malaysia. Between 2006 and 2008 he worked on start ups in the Czech Republic, Russia and Germany. As Strategic Initiatives Manager for Adobe, Jeff has been closely involved with the Corporate Social Responsibility movement.
This work abroad brought him face to face with global poverty and then to a question that began to demand an answer 
from him, “I know how important each of my children is to me. What would I want someone else to do if I couldn’t provide for them?” As the demand for an answer grew stronger he first thought he might have to leave business to find it. But he soon realized that the corporate world had already provided him with lessons that would be useful. The same quality principles, continuous improvement methodologies, and ways of setting up new projects he employed for Adobe could help in this new setting.
His idea was that he might engage the sense of fairness that resides in each of us if he could provide resources and information that would give us the ability to act. He was aware of the book, 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth, by The Earthworks Group, which focuses on how people can have a practical impact on environmental problems. Jeff thought a similar book with practical suggestions about how ordinary people can do something about global poverty might be an answer. He would write a resource to engage the non-activist.
He approached Joy Anderson of Criterion Ventures, who was generous with her time, and sought out many others with similar expertise. Joy then found two other team members to work with him: Shannon Daley-Harris, a free lance writer who had worked with several organizations such as the Children’s Defense Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Council of Churches, and Karen Speerstra, the President of Sophia Serve, a coaching service for writers and publishers. After two years of teleconferences working out first the book’s vision and mission and then the actual content, Our Day to End World Poverty, 24 Ways You Can Make A Difference, was published in June 2007.
The structural metaphor of the book is the 24 hour day, connecting activities we all perform in the morning, afternoon and evening chapters of our lives, such as taking our kids to school, or sending an email, to similar activities that, if applied globally, could help end poverty. Thus, ways people could be involved in global education or enhancing information technology in the underdeveloped world are detailed. Each discussion of an activity ends with several ideas through which the reader can provide several responses: Learning, Contributing, Serving, and Living. Along the way there are illustrative stories about people and organizations making a difference.
The marketing of the book has been on a person-to-person and word-of-mouth basis, but the book team knows it is being read and used. The Lutheran church, for example, created a curriculum around the book for use in their church schools, and this curriculum is available for wide use through the Internet. The book has thus far sold a modestly successful 10,000 copies. But Jeff and his co-authors measure the true success of the book by way of the anecdotal stories which show how the book has made a difference. The middle-school teacher who now does a “Global Poverty Awareness” week with his students; the Sunday School class which raised money for alleviating poverty; the social venture capital investor who received the book as a gift after speaking to a social entrepreneurship conference.
While working on the content of the book, Jeff became acquainted with and then involved in many of the organizations that are members of Global Washington, as well as a member of Global Washington’s steering committee. He is now a
volunteer, donor, or investor to several organizations such as Global Partnerships, Adoption Advocates International, Mercy Corps, Microcredit Summit Campaign, VillageReach, Fonkoze, Initiative for Global Development, and Business for Social Responsibility. In addition to multiple donations of Adobe software, Jeff has made himself available for review and input on key strategic initiatives with many of these organizations and others. Additionally, Jeff recently co-convened the first Pacific NW Microfinance Conference at Seattle Pacific University, which included representation from World Vision, Global Partnerships, Seattle Microfinance, Agros International, Unitus, Grameen Technology, and many others.
Making a difference is a motivation that most of us share. If you’re looking for a way to start, one good way would be to read Our Day to End World Poverty and then pass it on to a friend.
GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT: Africa, The Politics of Suffering and Smiling
Africa, the Politics of Suffering and Smiling By Patrick Chabal.
I was drawn to this book by its title. It seemed to speak to the antipodal forces of misery and attraction so evident in much of Africa today. Turns out the title was written in 1978 as the title to a song by the Nigerian songwriter, Fela Ransom Kuti. Had I run across the song first, I probably wouldn’t have read the book, which would have been my loss.
Lacking training in political science or at least the social sciences will be a liability for any reader attempting to strike through this territory. On the other hand, such a reader probably isn’t offended by the author’s decision to renounce current theories of political science in favor of looking at how sub-Saharan Africans experience politics in their everyday lives. Those who manage to hang on to the end, albeit skimming atop the waves of academic linguistic excesses, may receive insights that reward their effort.
Chabal, a professor at King’s College London, and a political scientist who has written broadly about Africa and more specifically about Lusophonic Africa, eschews imposing Western political theories of structuralism, post-modernism, etc. on sub-Saharan African political life. Instead he focuses on a more anthropological pursuit: describing how people live their lives, deal with others, or interact with politics.
Right out of the box he addresses the criticism that sub-Saharan Africa is too large and diverse an area to draw generalizations from it. He points out that studies of European or South American politics are not similarly disparaged. The more appropriate question is whether the generalizations he draws provide insight or not, not whether they can be shown to be valid everywhere.
Divided into seven chapters, the book’s first three chapters examine the ideas of being, belonging and believing, what people find important about themselves and believe about themselves and their relationship to others. The next two address partaking and striving, how people manage their political and economic relationships and the constraints which confront their efforts. The last two chapters address surviving and suffering, addressing the enormous difficulties Africans face and the resources they deploy to address them.
Chabal’s basic theme is that African political systems cannot be successfully analyzed without regard to the social identity of their inhabitants. Chabal denies that he is taking the essentialist part of the argument against the structuralists. He simply posits that you cannot understand how Africans are organized politically unless you understand the continued vitality of origin, ancestors and locality which results in a system of reciprocal obligations that are markers of community. Africans, for the most part, are born into communities where origin is important. Chabal is not suggesting that Africans follow a “cult” of ancestors. He observes that where Africans’ ancestors are buried continues to have relevance to who they believe themselves to be today. Where origin and ancestors remain important, politicians themselves must pay attention to origin and ancestors. Thus locality remains central in African politics even when a politician is operating on a national stage.
Identity on the other hand, Chabal maintains, is frequently mutable. Thus the obsession with studying ethnicity or religion as markers of identity misses the point. Pre-colonial ethnicity was much more fluid than is commonly suggested, with people moving in an out of ethnic groups and geographical boundaries. Colonial rule ossified that practice by organizing society along ethnic lines, but did not entomb it completely. People continued to move. Although Independence exacerbated the use of ethnicity as a method of political control and the patrimonial society grew up using its channels, Chabal denies that ethnicity has the significance that many Western observers insist. Chabal contends that the wave of religious conversions to Islam and Christianity and currently to Pentacostalism do not create a new essential identity that no longer has to bargain with other forms of African identity. Historically, religion has been an intermittent or added identify factor not a displacer.
That the primacy of community and locality prevails over the individual is frequently discussed in social science studies of Africa, but mostly as a staging post in a “universal process of human development that results in converging forms of individualization.” Chabal instead believes its study is essential to understanding African politics today. The place of women, elders and the importance of authority as opposed to power may be more important markers of African society than ethnicity. All are affected by the place from which these actors arise. Programs that assume that women or seniors or even politicians are individual actors free or even willing to chose their own course of action will founder in the absence of this understanding.
Chabal’s point is not that this is good or bad, but simply that it is and thus must be considered by anyone seriously interested in African politics and economics. The notion that every individual is equal, upon which democratic politics and especially multi-party politics are based, is difficult to integrate with the existing system of reciprocal obligations. In political terms the politician’s obligations to his place of origin may be antithetical to his duties to the nation. From the point of view of the community, it is often less important how a politician obtained power, than whether he or she follows the existing rules of reciprocal obligations. Further, despite a long historical tradition of migration within Africa, the conflict between who is a native and thus bound by the same obligations, and who is not, has become increasingly severe in conflicts affecting land ownership and other resources competitions. Urbanization creates conflicts between migrants and the traditional local inhabitants that democratic concepts of one person-one vote can’t mitigate. Multi-party politics exacerbates these conflicts when rewarding kinship networks becomes the method of retaining or attaining power.
To the extent that current development theories are based on the self interest of the individual, it is hard to see how they can be applied in communal societies based on reciprocity. The researcher’s task, Chabal says, is to decode what makes sense to people on the local level without imposing on them a theoretical or ideological agenda. Readers involved in development work in Africa should read the whole book to see how Chabal works this theme through a variety of modern contexts and to consider whether his conclusions might affect their own work.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
New Staff at Global Washington: Global Washington welcomes the newest addition to the team, Angela Dollar, as our Communications & Administrative Coordinator. Angela comes to us from member organization Crooked Trails, a non-profit community-based travel organization. She looks forward to meeting many of you at upcoming events; feel free to contact her at angela@globalwa.org and 206-652-8725.- Save the Date! Global Washington Conference: A Blueprint for Action is scheduled for December 7th at the Microsoft campus. Join us as we explore leading trends and opportunities in global development, share best practices, develop cross-sector strategies, inspire and share innovations. Get connected and help us build a shared strategy for Washington to enhance global development leadership.
- Sign A Petition to Make US Foriegn Aid More Effective: Show you support for reforming US foreign assistance by endorsing a letter that calls on our representatives to co-sponsor an important new bill. This bill requires the President to develop a clear global development strategy and develop a monitoring system to evaluate the progress of US programs. You can endorse the letter by clicking here; please contact max@globalwa.org with any questions.
GLOBAL WASHINGTON UPCOMING EVENTS
- July 15th: GLOBAL SOCIAL: Convening Central and South Asia
- August 19th: GLOBAL SOCIAL: East and South East Asia
- December 7th: GLOBAL WASHINGTON CONFERENCE: A Blueprint for Action
OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS
Click here to see a full list of international development events on the Global Washington’s calendar. Upcoming events include:
- June 19: Lecture by Professor Dilys Walker, MD
- June 22: Perspectives on East Asia for Teachers: Contemporary Japan
- June 23: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC SUMMIT (IES)
- June 25: Fundraising in Changing Times
- June 25: Microfinance and Microbrews
- June 29: YPIN: The Cell Phone Revolution in the Developing World
- July 1: “Camp Spanglish”
- July 2: Teacher Workshop: Delivering Global Education Through Internet Games & Virtual Worlds
- July 8: A Special Evening with General David Petraeus
Please submit your events to our calendar!
May 2009 Newsletter
Welcome to the May 2009 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
Greetings-
I am so glad that I have seen so many of you at all the Global Washington events recently. Our staff is extremely busy with designing and offering events that are important to you and finding ways to of value to our members. We are already planning the first statewide conference on global development. If you would like to be involved with planning this conference please be sure to contact me.
Here is what is going on this month:
Networking and Convening: Global Washington is convening global development organizations by country, region, and issue area that they are working in. These events increase communication and collaboration between organizations working in the same country or on the same issue, as well as provide a venue for informal best practice sharing of new and innovative models. Last month we convened groups working in Nepal. This month we convened groups working in Central America, And we are working on setting up ways that people attending these events can continue to talk and stay in touch and to share future plans for their work with one another.
Capacity Building: Global Washington offers capacity building programs that increase the visibility and impact of organizations and global development issues in Washington, and increase financial resources for our member organizations. Next month we are offering three sessions on strategic planning and capacity building that help all of us focus on our priorities during these economically difficult times.
Special Initiatives: We are continuing to work on developing a set of guiding principles and values for delivery of foreign aid. We sent a survey to all of you about your thoughts on what principles should guide foreign aid and 130 of you responded to that survey! Thank you so much for taking the time and giving us your thoughts. Our goal is to build a broad base of knowledge and support for this work in Washington state and to get out entire congressional delegation to sign these principles. Global Washington staff and members have already started meetings with our state policymakers to keep them engaged in this process.
For more information on any of our upcoming events, please check out our calendar.
Thank you all for coming to us with all of your great ideas. I hope to see you at these or other upcoming programs.
In unity,
Bookda Gheisar, Executive Director
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SPOTLIGHT: Seattle International Foundation Announces Round 2 of Small Grants Program
The Seattle International Foundation is now accepting applications for its Small Grants Program. The goal of the Program is to support and foster organizations working internationally. The Foundation is interested in development projects in all regions of the world, although it has a special interest in Central America. Preference will be given to organizations based in the greater Puget Sound region and organizations based outside of Washington are not eligible.
The program is open to 501(c) 3 organizations, or those with fiscal sponsorship, with an annual organizational or project budget of less than $2 million. The program seeks to support organizations launching new projects, or working to establish or expand an international project or program. Emphasis will be placed on sustainability and/or replicability. Organizations may request general operating support or project support, and the maximum grant award is $15,000.
If you were awarded a grant in round 1in February you are not eligible to apply for round 2. If you applied in round 1 and did not receive a grant, you can reapply. See the list of round 1 recipients here.
Organizations should use the Common Grant Application developed by Philanthropy Northwest. Application deadline for round 2 is June 15, 2009 and recipients will be announced by early fall 2009.
Completed applications should be postmarked by the deadline date, and sent to:
Small Grants Program
Seattle International Foundation
909 NE Boat Street, Suite 300
Seattle, WA 98105
For more information, contact programs@seaif.org or 206-547-9336.
The Seattle International Foundation is a supporting organization of the Seattle Foundation and exists to promote global giving in Seattle and to invest in initiatives for global development.
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FEATURED ORGANIZATION: Global Business Center at the Foster School of Business, UW
Even before the collapse of the global financial markets last fall, the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington was learning that many of its students wanted to do more with their MBAs: they wanted to use their MBAs to do well and do good. The Foster School’s response has been to provide opportunities for students to engage in global development activities and use their MBAs for a global social good. Situated in Seattle with its numerous and influential non-profits and businesses supporting global development, the UW seems like a prime candidate for such a focus.
The Foster School’s Global Business Center supports practical global business experiences that supplement the classic business education. And it also models social entrepreneurship, emphasizing the double bottom line: supporting the development of business models that are sustainable but where the profits are used to alleviate poverty or disease. The Center is home to UW’s federally-funded Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), working in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education to contribute to the international competitiveness of American business by developing and supporting international business programs for students, faculty, and the business community. The Center is one of 31 CIBERs in the U.S. and is the only CIBER in the Pacific Northwest.
Among the innovative programs at the Center is The Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC). This program invites students from around the world—and across fields of study—to find innovative solutions to problems of poverty in the developing world. As a leading-edge initiative at the University of Washington, GSEC seeks to engage creative minds around the world and across disciplines to encourage bolder and less conventional business solutions to global poverty.
The proposals are judged on impact on quality of life, financial sustainability and the feasibility of implementation. The
GSEC grand prize, sponsored by Microsoft, was awarded to a group of students from Mumbai who developed a business plan to sell meals, created from leftovers from hotels, to slum dwellers for 10 cents. Each meal will provide 800 calories and will be prepared by women in the area who will receive higher wages than are currently available. A business plan for solar oven-powered cooking and water purification systems in Tanzania reived the GSEC global health grand prize, sponsored by the UW Department of Global Health. Previous GSEC ideas include a rapid diagnostic test for malaria in Burkina-Faso, biofuel production in rural India, mobile wind-turbines for nomadic tribes in Kazakhstan, sustainable timber harvesting in Panama, and UV-LED water purification for Bangaledesh and Ghanaian communities. Some of the projects are actually in production. The Mumbai students are now in their last year of school and are planning to initiate the program when they graduate; the 2007 finalist team Planting Empowerment has established 50 acres of timber plantations in Panama on formerly defortested land that are managed by local residents
Twelve to fourteen teams are selected each year to come to Seattle and participate in the competition. This year there were over 80 entries from around the world. Over 300 students from 26 countries have participated in the competition. Microsoft provides the $10,000 grand prize for the competition and the School of Global Health provides two prizes for entries focused on health related enterprises. People from the community judge the proposals and applicants are given the opportunity to present their plans to local NGOs and businesses during the week they are here. The GSEC works with other departments in the University to encourage interdisciplinary entries from units such as health sciences, engineering, law, and public affairs.
The idea for the Global Social Entreprenuership Competition had a humble beginning, but now after five years and increasing interest from applicants and supporters worldwide, GSEC has garnered such strong recognition that it has established itself within the University and the Foster School of Business community. More project descriptions are available at http://foster.washington.edu/sgec.
Just this Spring, students have started a Social Entrepreneurship Club (SECUW). The club hopes to empower students to become social entrepreneurs by instilling the basics of business strategy and the process for starting and maintaining an organization. Its members tackle specific social problems through their own projects, or through collaboration with existing businesses and organizations. The SECUW has already begun several projects, including a market analysis for the Planting Empowerment GSEC team and implementation of the microfinance project in Ghana that one of the founding members proposed for GSEC this year.
In addition to GSEC, the Global Business Center supports other educational initiatives that develop global business expertise, such as short and long-term study abroad opportunities, international case competitions, faculty research and curriculum development, and various events.
All MBA students at the Foster School of Business have a global business requirement which they must fulfill to graduate. One of the methods is to participate in a global forum course, the Global Business Forum (GBF). This year the GBF has focused one Russia, Africa,the Middle East. Speakers from these countries or individuals with country expertise are invited to speak to the students and participate in question and answer sessions. Last year the focus was on BRICs –Russia, China, India and Brazil.
The Center has supported over 350 students in studying abroad for a quarter or longer, as well as short term tours designed to provide a quick survey a series of development programs, government initiatives in a specific field, or specific countr
y programs. Students consistently relate that these programs were life changing for them.
The Center also sponsors the annual Global Biz Week featuring career panels, film series, lessons from Washington legislators about the importance of global business to Washington state.
Kirsten Aoyama directs the Global Business Center. Wren McNally is the Assistant Director for Faculty and Community Programs and she coordinates the GSEC. The Global Business Center has been active in Global Washington since its inception.
Click Here for more information about the Global Business Center.
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CHANGEMAKER: Peter Gishuru, African Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Northwest
Peter Gishuru is a Kenyan who came to the United States in the 1960’s post-African independence wave of students that brought Barack Obama’s father here. Today he is the President and CEO of the African Chamber of Commerce Pacific NW.
Peter attended O’Dea High School and then Seattle University where he studied Pre-Med. Family issues took him back to Kenya in 1970 interrupting and permanently diverting his plan to become a medical doctor. But when he returned he used his pre-med training to help implement the Model Cities program in Seattle becoming one of the founders of the Pioneer Square Health Clinic which remains in operation today. There he was a drug addiction counselor, but traveled frequently back and forth to Kenya during this time.
Seeing interest in Kenyan arts and crafts, jewelry and other items from Kenya, he took advantage of his trips to Kenya to open African Imports at Pike Place Market and later at Pier 57, importing African cloth, masks and other items made
in Kenya which he owned for fourteen years. This experience made him aware of the problems of trading with Africa and the need to educate Americans about the continent’s richness in natural resources and culture. It also caused him to start thinking about how to play an active role in addressing the negative image of Africa that many Americans held and still hold.
In the mid-nineties, with some similarly interested friends he started the African Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Northwest (ACCPN) using the African Chamber of Commerce in Dallas as a model. The Chamber principally was a place for business people interested in trading with Africa to meet and to learn about business and investment opportunities in different African countries. The Chamber got its first big break when WTO came to town in 1999. The WTO host organizations 
had by then been divided into an area focus and the WTO needed a Seattle connection to coordinate and plan events for the African ministers and specialists who would be attending. The ACCPN was a perfect choice. “Give us an office, a computer and a phone, and we’ll do it for free,” Peter said, little suspecting how difficult it would be to make all those connections function during the Battle of Seattle. Co-located with CTED in downtown Seattle, the Chamber has emerged as an important facilitator of Washington’s exports to Africa.
Peter’s vision has been that the Chamber should serve as a resource center for both business and cultural issues relating to the continent of Africa. The Chamber has become a bridge between the countries that have resources and those in Africa who need them. Over the years he saw aid pour into Africa, but Africa reaping little benefit from it. Peter thought a better way was to look at Africa as a business partner rather than an aid recipient. Peter and the other members of the Chamber were instrumental in working with Representative McDermott to pass the African Growth and Opportunity Act that enhanced market access for 39 Sub-Saharan Countries.
An example of a success story is All Ocean Services, a company located in Fremont. The company contacted the Chamber for information about a Nigerian company that had contacted All Ocean Services about some vessels. All Ocean Services needed help in understanding the African market and making sure the company was legitimate. The 
Chamber worked with the US Department of Commerce and the Washington State Export Assistance Center to research the company’s bona fides. Today All Ocean Services is a $10 million business which recently won the US Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year, and is currently in a deal for the sale of eight vessels. Another success story has been the facilitation of the sale of passenger ferries by Thai Boat works to Uganda. The boats are built here, cut in half, and reassembled in Uganda.
The Nigerian experience led to the Chamber creating a working relationship with government officials from the Delta State in Nigeria who were here last month. Like much of coastal Africa, the Delta state is rich is ports, four of them. The difficulties of transportation and the distance required to move products to the United States remains a principle stumbling block to increasing trade and products from Africa. The Chamber hopes to develop a project where the Port of Seattle will assist the Delta State and other ports in Africa develop and improve their operations.
Peter is a board member of African Society of the National Summit on Africa and was in Washington DC with a delegation from Washington. They attended the African Summit that attracted over 7,500 attendees in 2000. That huge delegation came out with a document entitled US African Policy for 21st century. Peter has spoken to many groups about why Africa should matter to Americans.
The other face of the Chamber is the assistance it gives to African immigrants in the northwest. It puts on business workshops for immigrants who are interested in improving or starting their own businesses. Three half day seminars, Exporting 101, Importing 101 and Financing 101 were recently completed with 20 – 30 people in attendance. These business workshops give attendees knowledge of requirements to import and export products from Africa and they learn how a successful business has the potential of creating employment both here and in their native country. Other activities are Business Luncheons, morning roundtables and the Yearly African Business Forum that attracts over 200 participants. The 11th Forum will be held this year on November 14th in the Red Lion in downtown Seattle.
In July 2008, the Chamber led a delegation that attended the Zambia International Trade Show in Ndola. In August, the Chamber will be leading a business delegation from Washington to Nairobi, Kenya to attend the AGOA conference. The Chamber is reaching out to both the business community and public to take advantage of this opportunity and be part of the Chamber’s delegation. Besides attending the AGOA conference, the delegation business members will be matched with companies from Africa, Tour Kenyan trade zones, coffee farms and, of course, go on a Safari.
Anyone needing assistance in developing import, export or investment opportunities with Africa have an indispensable partner in Peter and the African Chamber of Commerce. Peter wants you to know: “Africa is definitely open for business.”
Learn more about the African Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Northwest.
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GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT: This Was Not Our War, Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace
This Was Not Our War Bosnian Women Reclaiming the Peace. By Swanee Hunt.
This book consists of edited quotations from seven years of interviews with 26 Bosnian women representing all three parts of the conflict: Muslims, who prefer the term Bosniaks, the Croatians, and the Serbs. The book retells the experiences of these women during the war and their subsequent efforts to heal the wounds caused by the conflict. The author, Swanee Hunt, was the US Ambassador to Austria during the Bosnian war. This gave her not only a close view of the conflict but access to a large number of Bosnian refugees during and after it.
The women do not share the view, widely popularized here, that war was inevitable because of centuries of ethnic hatred. In fact, most felt that they had little knowledge of people’s ethnicity before the war. The women describe the devastation they felt as their multicultural society disintegrated into atrocities, rape, and genocide as well as the many organizations they created after the war that provide aid to people from all parts of the conflict.
The book tentatively raises a theory that the war would not have happened had the country been led by women. Although several of the women declare this to be true and Swanee Hunt evidently wants to believe it, little evidence for the proposition is presented and certainly not even all the book’s voices share it. The book lacks an organizing principle or central theme. It does not sufficiently summarize the background or chronology of the conflict to give the reader enough information to follow the events as they take place. Essentially the book reads like 26 different opinions batted back and forth over a series of disconnected issues like the role of the media in exacerbating the conflict, the right of return, or raising children in a conflict zone.
The women described are either all professionals, or at least married to one. This is understandable since these are the women that an ambassador would be likely to meet. But her class perspective leads Ms Hunt to some remarkable conclusions. Commenting on the difficulty of becoming a refugee, Ms. Hunt says: “The educated person may be better equipped to handle loss, but the loss is much greater.” Frankly I could never get over that sentence which unfortunately appears early in the book at page 42.
The end of the book contains pictures of the women and short biographies of each. The reader would be well served to read these pages first and then return to them as the woman’s opinion is presented throughout the book. Without doing that it is impossible to remember anything about the person currently being quoted and therefore difficult to draw any conclusions about the perspective she is presenting.
By far the most compelling parts of the book are the crises these women and their families endured. These descriptions are worthy enough for us to read and remember.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
- June 20th is World Refugee Day. On June 20, 2009, the world will honor the courage, resilience, and determination of refugees. On this special day thousands of organizations in hundreds of countries will focus global attention not only on the plight of refugees and the causes of their exile, but also on their will to survive and on the contributions they have made in their host communities. The United States is the only country in the world that accepts “unaccompanied refugee minors,” refugee youth without family. And only 18 cities in the nation – including Seattle – have established child welfare programs that resettle and support these children, the most vulnerable human beings on earth, who have witnessed and endured the unthinkable. Please join us on June 20 in commemorating the 6th anniversary of World Refugee Day. Consider opening your heart and your home to a deserving refugee youth. Become a foster parent. If you aren’t in a position to provide long-term care, consider providing respite care. To learn more about how you can rekindle a refugee child’s hope, please contact Erika Berg at eberg@lcsnw.org or (206) 694-5780 with the Refugee & Immigrant Children’s Program at Lutheran Community Services. Foster families receive a monthly stipend to cover the expenses of the refugee youth and a coupon provides the youth with full medical and dental coverage.
- Facing the Future is pleased to announce the release of Real World Math: Engaging Students through Global Issues. This two-part math resource engages students in learning foundational algebra and geometry through real-world data on global issues. The teacher’s guide and corresponding student workbook contain 15 lessons on topics such as climate change, population, and financial literacy. Each lesson in the teacher’s guide includes a complete lesson plan including an activity based ‘hook’ to engage students, masters for student lesson handouts, and masters for practice worksheets.Learn more about this resource and download sample lessons.
- KPLU Radio Spot Update: As part of Global Washington’s effort to promote the impact our members are making around the globe, we are launching a number of media awareness programs in 2009. The most recent example is the subsidized KPLU radio spot packages that we recently offered to increase awareness of global development issues and organizations among NPR listeners. There are a few of these radio opportunities remaining for Global Washington members, so please email bookda@globalwa.org if you are interested.
- Member Press Releases: In the coming months, we will be reaching out to local, national and international media sources in a variety of ways. We are currently working on a profile study of the global development sector and plan to use the findings of this study as a major outreach and story lead for the media. We will be putting together case studies to use for press events and would like to stay as up-to-date as possible on the work of Global Washington members. Our goal is to bring greater visibility to the stories you are working to tell as well as raise awareness of the global development activity in Washington state. Please email your press releases, links to media coverage and anything newsworthy to media@globalwa.org
- Looking for Business Associates: Global Washington is establishing a business associate category of membership. This category is available for individual consultants, firms, and other groups who provide technical assistance to organizations, academic centers, and businesses working in the global development industry in Washington State. Business associates have the opportunity to be featured business associates of Global Washington by offering their skills and/or services to Global Washington members at a discounted rate. As part of building this membership category, Global Washington will be following up with potential associates. Please forward this message to any individual consultants, firms and other groups who are currently undertaking work for you or to those who you believe may be interested in joining Global Washington as a business associate. Contact us for more information about this program.
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GLOBAL WASHINGTON UPCOMING EVENTS
- May 26th: GLOBAL WA EVENT: Environment in the Developing World
- May 28th: POLICY SERIES: Beyond Good Intentions Director’s Screening
- Thursdays, June 4, 11 & 18TH: Program Evaluation in the the Developing World Workshop
- June 17th: GLOBAL SOCIAL: Sijambo Sub-Saharan Africa
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OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS
Click here to see a full list of international development events on the Global Washington’s calendar. Upcoming events include:
- May 20th: How Internet Games and Virtual Worlds Can Help You Deliver a More Global Education
- May 21st: Law and the Environmental Movement in China
- May 21st: International Relief, Development, and Conservation in “the Cloud”
- May 23rd: Get Global 2009
- May 23rd: ACE 35th Anniversary International Symposium
- May 26th: Coffee: From the Grounds Up
- May 27th: Bridges to Understanding Invites You to Picture This!
- May 27th: The Challenge of Piracy near the Horn of Africa
- May 28-29th: The Law of Climate Change and Human Rights Conference
- May 29th: Bahia Street Summer Beat Music and Dance Festival
- May 29th: 25 Years After the Bhopal Tragedy Film Festival
- May 30th: 25 Years After the Bhopal Tragedy Speaking Event
Please submit your events to our calendar!
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April 2009 Newsletter
Posted on April 15, 2009.
Welcome to the April 2009 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
- Spotlight: Global Washington is Hiring
- Featured Organization: OneWorld Now!
- Changemaker: Washington Teacher of the Year Susan Johnson
- Global Entertainment: The Blue Sweater
- Announcements: Send Global WA Your Press Releases! Become a Business Associate!
- Upcoming April Global Washington Events
- Other April Global Development Events
NOTE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Greetings-
I hope that all of you are enjoying the beautiful spring days. I am happy to report that we continue to be extremely busy with many great programs and ideas for future programming.
Networking and Convening: Global Washington is convening global development organizations by country, region, and issue area that they are working in. These events increase communication and collaboration between organizations working in the same country or on the same issue, as well as provide a venue for informal best practice sharing of new and innovative models. On April 21 we will be convening groups working in Nepal, and on May 26th we will be bringing together groups working on environmental issues in the developing world.
Capacity Building: Global Washington offers capacity building programs that increase the visibility and impact of organizations and global development issues in Washington, and increase financial resources for our member organizations. On April 28th we are facilitating a media roundtable for communications directors of our member organizations.
Special Initiatives: We are continuing to work on developing a set of guiding principles and values for delivery of foreign aid. On April 27th, we will host the second event in our policy series, Redesigning Foreign Aid from the Group Up, which will contribute to this effort. Once these principles have been finalized through community participation, we will work to get endorsements from across the global development industry and propose them to our policy makers as principles to guide the delivery of foreign aid in the developing world. Global Washington staff and members have already started meetings with our state policymakers to keep them engaged in this process.
For more information on any of our upcoming events, please check out our calendar.
Thank you all for coming to us with all of your great ideas. I hope to see you at these or other upcoming programs.
In unity,
Bookda Gheisar, Executive Director
SPOTLIGHT: GLOBAL WASHINGTON IS HIRING!
Global Washington announces a position opening for Communications and Administrative Coordinator.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE:Global Washington promotes and supports the global development industry in the state of Washington. A broad-based, statewide organization linking the private, public and civil society sectors, members include businesses, government agencies, associations, individuals, foundations, organizations, and educational institutions.
Global Washington focuses on four areas of global development enterprise: Economic empowerment and development; Global Health; Education and Global Engagement; and Food, Agriculture and the Environment.
The vision of Global Washington is to promote Washington as a recognized center of innovative, productive and collaborative global engagement.
FUNCTION SUMMARY:The staff includes: Executive Director, Research and Learning Coordinator, Media Relations Advisor and Policy Coordinator. The Communications and Administrative Coordinator works closely with the Executive Director and other staff to increase the visibility of Global Washington through the website. This is a part-time (32 hours per week),administrative position.
Please email resumes to bookda@globalwa.org
FEATURED ORGANIZATION: OneWorld Now!
It sounds familiar, but hold your judgment a minute. Like many organizations, OneWorld Now! encourages high school students to spend time in foreign countries doing a summer internship. The difference is that these students are not privileged kids, but are primarily underserved youth. And when they go abroad, they communicate in strategically critical languages, like Arabic or Chinese.
OneWorld Now! is the brainchild of Ashoka Fellow, Kristin Hayden. As a high school student, Kristin studied abroad in apartheid-era South Africa on a Rotary scholarship. In college, she earned a degree in international relations and Russian; and studied abroad in the Soviet Union. She later learned that her language skills in Russian, a critical language during the cold-war era, as well as her experience abroad opened up opportunities unavailable to her many of her peers and allowed her to
launch an international career that would take her from Moscow and Tblisi to London and Paris right out of college. She returned to the United States in 2001. To Kristin, the devastating events of September 11 created an atmosphere of fear that mirrored the attitudes many Americans held toward the Soviets during the cold war. Her own life experience served as testament to the power of studying abroad to break down stereotypes, advance understanding and goodwill, as well as open the doors of opportunity to those willing to take the leap…The aftermath of September 11th provided the spark- and these ideas evolved into the program that is today OneWorld Now!
The US government identifies Arabic and Chinese as strategically critical languages for in the 21st century. Yet few American high schools offer Chinese or Arabic language. Students enrolled in OneWorld Now! study Arabic or Chinese language after school three days a week and receive academic credit. Each Friday, the students meet in groups with adult facilitators to explore leadership in five important areas: personal development, intercultural communication, social justice, global citizenship and social entrepreneurship–the skills these students will need to maximize their time abroad and become leaders in their communities when they return.
Students learn to suspend judgment; to listen in a way that emphasizes understanding, empathy, and compassion. They uncover the stereotypes they themselves hold about other parts of the world, as well as how their own community connects to the world at large. They begin to identify their own passions, the kind of people they want to become, and the kind of world they want to create.
By the end of the first year, the students are ready to spend the summer abroad in the Middle East, Central Asia, or China/Southeast Asia. Living with host families, the students continue to work on their language proficiency. They also work on team service projects such as planting trees, cleaning beaches or tutoring. The transformation is reciprocal. Almost invariably the stereotypes their hosts hold of American youth are challenged. These are young Americans from many different races and economic backgrounds who actually speak the language of the host nation and perform useful work.
When the students return to the United States they are encouraged to conduct a project in their own community that shares what they learned abroad. These projects might range from conducting a forum on the importance of water rights in global development or leading a global campaign around a topic such as food sustainability.
OneWorld Now! is currently working with state colleges and universities to institutionalize a concept, prominent in 
Australia, Canada and the UK, but not as well-established here–the Gap Year. Gap Year encourages students to take the year between high school and college to travel abroad to work or perform community service. OneWorld Now!’s primary objective is to ensure that the Gap Year will be accessible to all youth in America.
In just seven years OneWorld Now! has grown from one Seattle-Area high school, to eight, with satellite programs in New York and Los Angeles. It sponsors summer language immersion camps at Seattle University and other schools, and also sponsors “Get Global”, a student-led global leadership conference at the University of Washington each year.
For more information, including event dates and schedules, please visit www.oneworldnow.org.
OneWorld Now! is a project of the Tides Center.
Founder Kristin Hayden also writes blog about social justice in international
education: http://blog.kristinhayden.com/
CHANGEMAKER: Washington Teacher of the Year Susan Johnson
When Susan Johnson, a teacher at Cle Elum/Roslyn High School, was recognized as Washington State’s Teacher of the Year in 2008, Global Washington presented her with a $500 Global Education scholarship. Over the years, Susan’s main message to students and other teachers alike has been about the need to prepare students to be literate, analytical and compassionate members of a democracy. Her American literature course begins with early Native American legends, the Iroquois Constitution, which requires its members to consider the impact of their actions seven generations hence, the Middle Passage and Transcendentalism. All weave the theme of what it means to be an American, how we are connected to Nature and each other, how we need to take responsibility for how our actions impact others. This thesis carries over equally to the responsibilities we share as global citizens.
Susan’s first global experience as an educator was in 1996 when a Ghanaian teacher (professor) at Central Washington University hosted members of the Central Washington Writing Project in Ghana. Susan is part of the National Writing Project and Co-Director to the Central Washington Writing Project (CWWP). The educators were immersed in Ghanaian culture, visited slave sites, where the interconnections of Ghanaian culture with America became vivid. In fact, the headmistress of a high school in Accra visited Susan’s classroom and also participated in the CWWP Summer Institute. One of Susan’s current students is scheduled to work in a Ghanaian orphanage this summer.
Last year, as the faculty advisor for the Amnesty International, Susan took the students to the Seeds of Compassion conference which featured the Dahli Lama and Desmond Tutu. Students were surprised to learn that world religions have much in common in that they recognize the divine essence in every person, teach looking at enemies as human beings and assume respect one for the other. This year the group is trying to increase awareness of the genocide going on in Darfur, speaking at Basketball games and raising funds for Amnesty International.
At first Susan didn’t really know how the funds that Global Washington gave her should be used. But the Honor Society, another group she advises at the school, presented a plan. The brother of the President of the Honor Society, Cori Sutton, had lived with a family in Paraguay a year in 2007 as an American Field Student. Cori decided to follow her 
brother there and live with the same family. That family happened to be involved in Sonidos de la Tierra, a program of social and community integration through music. The movement seeks to prevent young violence through the useful employment of the free time of the youths, increasing their self-esteem, motivating their creativity, the work in team and the democratic attitudes. The organization is in 62 countries around the world.
In Paraguay, Cori saw young students walking miles on a Sunday afternoon to meet for two hours with a volunteer teacher even though there may have been only six violins for sixty students to practice on. Cori was fascinated by their work ethic, the almost universal appreciation of music she saw there. So when she came home, the Honor Society decided to raise money to fund the purchase of violins for students in Paraguay who are studying violin but don’t have an instrument. They expect it will cost around $5,000 to raise a full orchestra of strings. They are putting on a series of events including bakes sales and a Spotlight Assembly and fundraiser that includes local musicians. The Global Washington gift gets them 10% of their way.
Helping American youth learn that they are part of a larger community with attendant benefits and responsibilities been Susan’s overriding objective as a teacher. Extending this message to global citizenship has been the latest phase of her already illustrious teaching career.
GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT: Readings and Reels
The Blue Sweater, Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, by Jacqueline Novogratz.
Ms. Novogratz tells the story of receiving from her uncle a sweater woven with two zebras in front of a snow-capped mountain. She wore the sweater constantly until, as a developing adolescent, a young man commented on Mt. Novogratz. Humiliated, she insisted that her mother get rid of the sweater that afternoon and went with her to take it the Goodwill. About ten years later while jogging in Africa, she saw a young boy coming toward her with the same sweater. She abruptly stopped the presumably terrified boy, pulled back his collar and saw her name still visible on the label.
The story tells dual messages. Clearly we live in an interconnected world, but the charitable impulse that made the sweater end up at the Goodwill has ramifications far beyond that intended. The vast used clothing market coming from the developed world has devastated local cloth manufacturing facilities in the under developed world.
The Blue Sweater tells of Ms. Novogratz as a young finance major who leaves her first job out of college at the Chase Manhattan Bank to work in Africa in the mid 80’s. Her first post is in the Ivory Coast where she was sent to work with women. She quickly learns that her “expertise” is neither respected nor wanted by local women assigned to work with women’s programs in the local ministry. She ends up in Kigali, Rwanda, where she finds herself working with women to set up a microfinance program and later a bakery where local women, many of them considered prostitutes, make bread and treats for sale to customers on the streets and in local ministries. The salesmanship lessons she tries to give to young women selling treats on the streets of Kigali are hilarious. She insists that they walk up to customers, smile, look them in the eye and explain why they should want to buy a product, oblivious to social customs that would make such interactions unthinkable.
Ultimately the book traces what happened to five of the women involved in the microfinance program through and after the genocide in Rwanda. These women represent all the forces that shook Rwanda, from innocents slaughtered to those urging the slaughter.
Ms Novogratz’s writing brings alive the colors, shapes and smells of Africa in detail sufficient make any reader who had ever been there long to return and anyone who has never gone want to go. The book is replete with the recognition of feeling fully alive and contrasting rueful lessons of good intentions thwarted.
Ms Novogratz maintains that traditional aid programs don’t work because they represent want the donor wants to do not what people want or even need. An agency or donor starts a program it thinks is needed, it lasts a year or two, and then fades into obscurity, all because no one bothered to ask people if it was something they wanted. Expatriate communities are full of cynicism about the people with whom they live, but have to live with none of the consequences of their actions there. If there is one overriding mantra in the book, it is the lesson that John Gardner, her mentor and instructor at Stanford School of Business, and former Secretary of HHW under the Johnson Administration and founder of Common Cause taught about organizing: the importance of learning to listen.
Ultimately, three lessons follow from Ms. Novogratz’s experience: the market provides a valuable method of escape from poverty, low income people can be trusted to know what they want, and persistence is the quality only second most in demand to create social change in the developing world. But the first is the ability to listen.
Ms. Novogratz completed graduate school at Stanford, created philanthropy workshops for the Rockefeller Foundation and ultimately set up the Acumen Fund, a non profit that started out providing financing and management skills to social entrepreneurs who set up programs in health technologies in India and East Africa, from eye sight programs to water purification. Quickly Acumen learns that investing in technology is not as important as understanding how distribution, pricing and marketing systems impact health strategies. She calls her development strategy “Patient Capital,” tying development to capitalism with low profit margins and long return periods, not unlike Muhammad Yunus’ idea of social businesses.
Ultimately the author asserts that neither aid nor markets will solve the problems of global poverty. The lessons of Rwanda are writ large in this book. Only by looking at all human beings as part of a single global community that values human dignity can poverty be ended.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- KPLU Radio Spot Update: As part of Global Washington’s effort to promote the impact our members are making around the globe, we are launching a number of media awareness programs in 2009. The most recent example is the subsidized KPLU radio spot packages that we recently offered to increase awareness of global development issues and organizations among NPR listeners. There are a few of these radio opportunities remaining for Global Washington members, so please let us know if you are interested.
- Member Press Releases: In the coming months, we will be reaching out to local, national and international media sources in a variety of ways. We are currently working on a profile study of the global development sector and plan to use the findings of this study as a major outreach and story lead for the media. We will be putting together case studies to use for press events and would like to stay as up-to-date as possible on the work of Global Washington members. Our goal is to bring greater visibility to the stories you are working to tell as well as raise awareness of the global development activity in Washington state. Please email your press releases, links to media coverage and anything newsworthy to media@globalwa.org
- Looking for Business Associates: Global Washington is establishing a business associate category of membership. This category is available for individual consultants, firms, and other groups who provide technical assistance to organizations, academic centers, and businesses working in the global development industry in Washington State. Business associates have the opportunity to be featured business associates of Global Washington by offering their skills and/or services to Global Washington members at a discounted rate. As part of building this membership category, Global Washington will be following up with potential associates. Please forward this message to any individual consultants, firms and other groups who are currently undertaking work for you or to those who you believe may be interested in joining Global Washington as a business associate. Contact us for more information about this program.
GLOBAL WASHINGTON APRIL EVENTS
Global Washington presents the following events this month:
- Networking Series: Namaste Nepal! A gathering of groups working in Nepal on April 21st
- Policy Series: Redesigning Foreign Aid from the Ground Up on April 27th
- Capacity Building Series: Member Exclusive: A conversation between Communications Directors on April 28th. Email melissa@globalwa.org for more information
OTHER APRIL GLOBAL EVENTS
Click here to see a full list of international development events on the Global Washington calendar. April’s events include:
- 12th Annual Continuums of Service Conference, April 16-18th
- Wangari Maathai: The Challenge for Africa, April 19th
- Microfinance and Microbrews, April 20th
- The End of Food – With Best-selling Author Paul Roberts, April 21st
- A Conversation Between Unitus Partners, April 21st
- Coffee, From the Grounds Up Series, April 21st
- What the New Balance of Power Means for the United States, April 23rd
- Coffee, From the Grounds Up Series, April 28th
- Passport to the World Breakfast, April 29th
- The Future of Grassroots Development in the Majority World, April 29th
- Cross Border Terrorism in the Shadow of Jihad: The India-Pakistan-Afghanistan Triangle, April 30th
Please submit your events to our calendar!
Global Washington Debates How To Redefine Development
Posted on February 10, 2009.
“Dozens of local organizations involved in global affairs have a stake in defining the U.S. role in the world, and they’re calling for an overhaul of some basic principles. They’re hoping to influence policy in the other Washington to focus on more equitable, efficient and sustainable development .… One area that needs changing most is foreign aid, participants at a Global Washington forum on Monday agreed…The campaign…is advocating for a strong international affairs budget.”
Global Washington Debates How To Redefine Development
The Seattle Times | Kristi Heim | February 10, 2009
Local Money, Global Food Fight
Posted on January 21, 2009.
“Can the global food crisis be solved by growing more local organic food or introducing scientific solutions such as re-engineered rice that resists drought? … In Seattle next month, two experts with very different views will debate how to improve global agricultural systems … The Feb. 26 program is being put on by Pangea … with Global Washington, the Seattle Foundation and the World Affairs Council.”
Local Money, Global Food Fight
The Seattle Times | Kristi Heim | January 21, 2009
