Kiva.org, playwrights, child-sponsorship and criticism
Matt Flannery and David Roodman have, for me, just become icons of all that is presently going right in international development today. They have engaged, online for everyone to see, in an intelligent and nuanced conversation about development practice and communication to the public.
Moreover, Matt did this as the co-founder of Kiva.org, not blindly defending the organization in the face of criticism, but actually explaining in full view the tensions they face and the process of learning that they are engaged with. An poignant excerpt from him:
In particular, we need to avoid playing the role of “playwrights”, as the article describes. In my experience, there is no greater play than reality. Any attempt to fictionalize falls short, and never does reality the service that it deserves. With the help of technology, I don’t think Kiva needs to repeat the failures of child sponsorship. We don’t need to be playwrights on the Internet. We are going to do our best to avoid that trap, but certainly value the ongoing help of a critical and engaged user base along the way.
But this wasn’t just a proponent being gracious and open to criticism: David Roodman, Research Fellow at the Center for Global Development (and principle architect of their excellent Commitment to Development Index) offered his critical thoughts with equal parts nuance and caution:
My wife Mai heard someone say that the world needs both playwrights and critics—if more playwrights. I treasure this observation because, as this blog must make obvious, I’m a critic. I can testify that being a critic can be bruising, especially when the playwrights you critique are alive. It’s solace to think that the world needs me.
But the observation also helps me appreciate playwrights. They are the people who create things that weren’t there, the people who are a tad insane in the sense that they confuse fantasy and reality. They see something in their mind’s eye and believe they can make it real. Precisely because I am not like them, I hold playwrights—visionaries—in some awe. The most skillful, passionate, and lucky of them “put a dent in the universe” as Steve Jobs said. (An early employee described Jobs’s uncanny ability to create a reality distortion field that altered bystanders’ perceptions of the technologically possible.) Without playwrights, we might be still living in caves. At least, we wouldn’t have iPhones.
We also probably wouldn’t have the Grameen Bank, BRAC, and dozens of other successful microfinance institutions (MFIs) founded by driven visionaries. And we wouldn’t have Kiva, the person-to-person microcredit web site founded by Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley.
On the other hand, without critics—analysts driven to understand the world rather than change it—we might not have mastered electricity. So we needed them too to get to iPhones. Critics and playwrights are yin and yang. Of course the two essences exist within all of us.
These two remarkable individuals have demonstrated for all of us what is both necessary and possible to “get development right.” You can read their complete exchanges here:
http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/kiva-is-not-quite-what-it-seems.php
http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/matt-flannery-kiva-ceo-and-co-founder-replies.php
http://blogs.cgdev.org/open_book/2009/10/reflections-on-the-kiva-story.php
Development is a complex endeavour, and we will only be successful together if we impale ourselves on the challenges and wicked questions, with equal parts playwright and critic.
I strongly believe that it’s not enough for some people to play the critic, and some to play the playwright as other exchanges have demonstrated (http://aidwatchers.com/2009/10/do-millennium-villages-work-we-may-never-know/ and http://aidwatchers.com/2009/10/millennium-villages-comments-we-respond/).
Instead, any of us who are dedicated to human development — and who are explaining to Canadians and other Westerners what they can do to help increase opportunities for those living in extreme poverty — need to fully grapple with the tensions and ongoing learning that this work requires.
As a final note, I sincerely hope that when EWB Canada is criticized publicly that we have the wisdom to respond with such candour and thoughtfulness.