Post 8: International Non-Profits

Mercy Corps
Well, I started out being a little confused about Mercy Corps. The first thing I read about them said that they “help people turn the crises they confront into the opportunities they deserve.” As if that’s not a broad generalization at all. Then I went onto their “WHAT we do” page and noticed they have 33 different work categories! I’m really impressed with their work, but then I looked closer to the actual category names and realized that there’s some definite overlap. For example, there’s a category for both Children & Youth, Food/Nutrition & Hunger, Citizen Involvement & Global Engagement, etc. I’m not saying they don’t accomplish a lot, and I’m sure they have an incredibly positive impact on the world, but I think they need to do some work on packaging their mission a little better. I’m curious to know how they choose their projects considering they have such a broad range of locations.

William Easterly, Why Foreign Aid Fails?
I think this is my favorite article we’ve been assigned throughout the entire quarter. At the same time it’s probably the most depressing clip we’ve come across as well. I’ve been a large critic of governmental aid through the quarter, and I think my blog group has noticed that I have a problem when we thinking throwing money at a problem - be it a problem in the environment, education, health care, etc – and expect it to work. As Easterly stated the money get’s lost along the way. There are leaks in the funding pipeline, and the real tragedy is that we don’t seem to care. “No one cares that this money is not actually reaching the most desperate people in the world for whom it is intended, people who live on less than a dollar a day.”

I also like Easterly’s point about foreign aid failing because of the lack of feedback from the recipients of aid. The poor, i.e., the intended customer of foreign aid, “have no right to complain and no right to turn down the product if they don’t like it. The poor just get foreign aid foisted on them by these ill-informed “experts”, and there’s no feedback from the poor – whether they’re satisfied or not, whether their money even reached them or not.”

Ngozi Okono-Iweala, Aid vs. Trade
One of the first things Ngozi asks in her speech is “How are we [African countries] using what is being given back [aid from foreign countries/entities].? Are we using it well?” What I think they should be asking is ‘are we prepared to use the aid we’re being given?’ She speaks about Spain that received $3 Billion in aid from the EU and Ireland that received $1 Billion in aid from the EU to build roads, cities and information super highways, and they she asks why no money or aid being given to build those same infrastructure improvements in African countries. My initial answer is that African countries might not be ready to build that kind of infrastructure. That infrastructure requires an educated population and politically sound government to create and maintain it, and the EU or the World Bank needs to make sure that the countries that are receiving aid are prepared to receive that aid. Not being prepared for the aid is the other half of the problem with throwing money at an issue.

Ngozi expressed later in the speech that she wants to make sure this aid goes toward a good cause. As she puts it she wants to “help them, help us.” She wants to leverage all this good will?” And in order to leverage good will, you need “infrastructure and discipline.”

Millennium Goals
It’s a nice outline of goals. I’m not really sure if asking whether or not they are ‘culturally appropriate’ is a good question because we’re trying to solve problems of human development across the entire global and as far as I know we don’t have a global culture. My one question is rather about the formation of these goals and the intended actions to implement them.
I’m still thinking about Ngozi Okono-Iweala’s speech and how she asked if international aid organizations are coordinating with the recipients of that aid to ensure that they are being helped as much as possible. In that sense I would like to know how the U.N. created these goals. Was there any process of asking those in need of aid what they would like to see? Or are these based on econometric calculations? Just a thought.

The Modern Story
The Modern Story is a non-profit that some of my sister’s friends started. Their mission is to bridge the technological divide by introducing digital skills and storytelling practices to you and educators around the world. They’re still a young organization so to my knowledge they’ve worked primarily in India thus far, and they have been collaborating with Google to develop their programs. Check out the video from this link for more info:

http://themodernstory.wordpress.com/about/

Non-Profit Nation: Chapter 9
Interesting stuff. I didn’t know that the international non-profit sector was one of the newer sectors in nonprofit work. It makes sense though consider that the world has only becoming more globalized each and every day. I guess nations haven’t always been wealthy enough or concerned enough about other countries to offer foreign aid. One of the things I’m surprised I didn’t mention while reading these articles is that I’m not sure why America and American organizations are so concerned with developing other countries. There are a lot of problems in our own country and they’re not necessarily easier problems to fix, but they are at least a lot closer to us and possibly more relevant to our personal lives.