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Using Data to Tell Your Story with Impact: July’s Executive Director Roundtable Wrap-Up

By Hannah Atlas

Kevin Klingbeil knows data. As managing director of Big Water Consulting, a Global Washington member, he works with a range of clients, from small non-profits to government agencies to tribal groups, to assist them with incorporating meaningful data and visual data mapping into their daily operations.

“Big Water Consulting seeks to provide long-term, capacity-building solutions, rather than one-off projects and quick fixes to systematic problems,” said Klingbeil. “We make concerted efforts to respect and embrace each of our clients’ organizational and cultural values to ensure the most advantageous and sustainable outcome.”

Klingbeil presented about data collection, utilization and presentation at Global Washington’s July Executive Director Roundtable. He started the conversation by asking, “How do you measure impact and define success in your organization?” Klingbeil asked this question so that he could get to the “how,” because he knows that it’s the “how” where many organizations fall short. He cautioned that relying on words or vague phrases like “dramatic improvement” or “meaningful” and “significant” as a means of conveying the reach of an organization could do more harm than good. That is why Klingbeil and his firm advocate for the use of data in an organization’s narrative to create an image that is honest and transparent. Continue Reading

Oxfam to Launch Global Initiative on Inequality This Fall

By Dean Forbes

Most people know the big international anti-poverty organization Oxfam for its work on global food security and finding ways to feed the estimated 1 billion undernourished people on our planet. It brings its work on social justice, disaster relief and foreign aid reform to bear on this problem and others.

This November, Oxfam will add the broad topic of “inequality” to its global portfolio of initiatives that now includes agriculture; climate change; conflicts and disaster; health and education; and trade.  Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America, gave a Seattle audience a brief, sneak preview of the new initiative at a reception for him and several Oxfam officials on July 7 while they were in town for Gates Foundation meetings. The reception was organized by Seattle-based Jonathan Scanlon, Senior Advocacy Advisor, Oxfam America, and cosponsored by Global Washington.

Offenheiser said much of the initiative on inequality will focus “on how do we ensure that future populations will have the same opportunities that many of us have for education, access to health, access to environmental services. There will be ample investments being made in many of these countries to enable them to have the chance to work their way out of poverty and to have the kind of social mobility that we have enjoyed in this country.”

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Dreams for Orphans: Love, Safety and Security

By Julia Knitter

How often should a seven-year old have to worry about their health or education? While these factors are often taken for granted, they can radically change the course of a child’s life. Dreams for Orphans, a new GlobalWA member, is a Seattle-based NGO that focuses on providing safe environments and educational opportunities for orphans in Accra, Ghana. Through improved education and stable living conditions, Dreams for Orphans aims to inspire hope in orphans in developing countries.

“We live in a global society, one in which education will bring positive change in so many ways,” says Dreams for Orphans co-founder Libby Rain, illustrating the importance that the organization places on childhood education.

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