The question for Blair: what is it that keeps on killing hope in Africa?
-Matthew Parris in Ethiopia
Can a ruler ever be in touch with the everyday lives of ordinary people? The age-old question, with the numberless tales it has spawned of princes moving disguised among their people or messiahs passing unnoticed through the crowd, pressed itself on me as I made my way through the fortified gates of the Addis Ababa Sheraton in Ethiopia eight days ago. We drove through into another world: of landscaped gardens dotted with plastic palm trees in primary colours.
Here Tony Blair stayed when he arrived last year for a summit to promote the launch of his Commission for Africa. I was calling at the Sheraton to e-mail last week’s column. Briefly I entered Mr Blair’s planet. Music tinkled, glasses of iced drinks clinked, Westerners – tourists, plutocrats and men and women of affairs – in bright casual clothes drifted between swimming pool and souvenir shops as uniformed porters hovered ready to help with the smallest bag. Outside there was an illuminated fountain in a pool built from Ethiopian marble. At the entrance the air-conditioned Mercedes-Benzes of the wabenzi – the African elite – awaited their masters.
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It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by sheets of paper covered in scribbled sentences:
“We know caring is not enough, and thoughtfulness is not enough (though both are necessary), therefore we take decisions and move to action.”
“We recognize the intrinsic worth of others and invest in them.”
“We are intense! The time together we have is too valuable to use on sleep!”
“We are persistent and relentless with the work that we do. This often involves a lot of sacrifice.”
“We are mindful of our depiction of Africans and of our role as Westerners”
“We know we can’t do everything all by ourselves, all at once.”
“We enjoy the process of coming up with new ways of looking at things, of new solutions and new activities. ”
These are some of the fifty or sixty inspirational sentences that have emerged from ewb’s discussion on our values. Robin lead a process that involved a few hundred people from across ewb, from experienced overseas volunteers who have been around for years to brand new members. She and a team of volunteers have drawn together the ideas that were expressed in discussion and posted to vision.ewb.ca into themes and poignant sentences. And I volunteered to narrow this down to and attempt to draw them together where possible into a smaller set of values that are core to who we are and the change we want to created.
And I’m feeling both elated and challenged. It’s pretty inspirational to read the expressions of what matters to so many ewbers – but also pretty hard to imagine how we can identify the overlaps, pick out the level of specificity vs. generalness that allows for a thoughtful statement, and boil it town to a few key values – because with too many, we’d lose the essence, the core. An EWBer, Mike Spendlove, related to me a quote from an artist that is, roughly paraphrased, “what you leave out is as important as what you leave in.” It rings true. A laundry list isn’t memorable.
At our board meeting a few weeks ago, we were rightly pushed on having metrics to determine our performance. Metrics are necessary, and necessarily imperfect. They allow for a common language on progress, though should always be recognised as only a proxy – not of progress itself. I came across a great passage in Jim Collins “good to great for the social sector” which is paraphrased below.
“A great organisation delivers superior performance. For a social sector organisation, performance is difficult to define and assess. What if your outputs are inherently un-measurable? The basic idea remains: separate inputs from outputs, and hold yourself accountable for progress in outputs, even if those outputs defy measurement. It doesn’t matter whether you can quantify your results. What matters is that you rigorously assemble evidence – whether quantitative or qualitative – to track your progress. If the evidence is quantitative, think scientist. If the evidence is qualitative, think trial lawyer assembling a case. And remember, even in business, all indicators are somewhat flawed. Profits can be flawed, test scores are flawed, customer retention rates are flawed. What matters is not the perfect indicator, but settling upon a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results, and tracking your progress with rigour.”
“Apathy can only only be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: an ideal which takes the imagination by storm, and an intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice”
“NGOs need to combine technical efficiency with attitudes of service; a new generation of reflective practitioners schooled in the skills of thinking as well as doing; and a better all-round balance between expertise and the humility to use it properly”
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Lindsay Mitchell and I had a really interesting call this morning with the strategic communications folks at Blue State Digital, the folks who built and ran MyBarackObama.com. One of the concepts we talked about was something I would term as “paths to engagement” — that is, what are the likely modes or steps that people are likely to take when getting involved in a social cause or organization.
A very summarized version of BSD’s experience goes something like:
Sign up with e-mail address → Take a basic action (like sending an e-mail to a MP) → Tell a friend → Give $
This caused me to reflect on my experience with social causes and organizations, and what my likely path of engagement is. Three quick descriptions from my past:
- Engineering Society at the University of Waterloo – I orginally got involved in student government as a participant in events; typical for engineers at Waterloo, this generally involved lots of drinking, little sleep, and sometimes a lot of running around. Not my finest moments! Then I was asked by a good friend to be a sports director, then I was encouraged by another friend to run for election on the executive in a newly created position of VP Education; responsible for being the condiut between engineering students and faculty. Now graduated and, in theory at least, making some money, I’m a donor to the University of Waterloo and direct my funds to the Engineering Society.
- Volunteer Canada – In this case, I was asked to attend a national think-tank called Volunteer Zone Bénévoles that was being hosted by Volunteer Canada. It was an interesting weekend, and I was sufficiently vocal about change that I ended up being asked to become a member of the National Board of Directors where I served for the past 4 years. While a Board member I also participated in events, learned more about volunteerism and the policy surrounding it at a national scale, and became a donor to Volunteer Canada.
- The Canadian Merit Scholarship Foundation – It being Canada’s premier undergraduate scholarship, I had met many exceptional people who were recipients of Loran Awards or who were in some way involved in the organization; many of these great people have been involved as leaders in EWB. Then I was asked by the executive director of CMSF to become a mentor to one of the recipients, which resulted in a great relationship with a now Rhodes Scholar Wojciech Gryc. Once again, I was asked and became a donor to CMSF.
For myself, I take a few lessons from my own “paths to engagement”.
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The rain began soon after we crawled under our mosquito nets. It had been brooding for most of the late afternoon, and felt like a tiger had suddenly pounced. I read somewhere that roughly 40% of rainfall in Africa is classified as “erosion causing” because of it’s severity – and I was guessing this rain fell into that category.
I was staying in a village with Graham, one of our volunteers in Malawi, in a thatch roof hut. I smiled to myself, happy that I was inside and more importantly, happy for the farmers who were anxious to plant.
But then it began, a slow drip on my leg. No problem, I moved my leg. Then another drip, on my back. Then my face. No matter which way I turned, a slow drip greeted me. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep all that well that night.
But that’s the price we need to pay if we want to create change. It’s the price graham and other volunteers pay on a regular basis. We want to understand farmers to better understand how projects can be designed and implemented to support them – and there is no substitute for living alongside them. And if that means spending a damp night in a hut, so be it!
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Below are some thoughts of mine on collaboration and competition, particular to a discussion within EWB in July 2008. http://my.ewb.ca/home/ShowPost/44782
There’s been a lot of great questions and discussions about both Competition and Collaboration as they relate to EWB, our work internally, and our work with other groups. This is relevant at so many different levels – on campuses, between chapters, in the workplace, overseas, and at a National level – and relates closely to the impact that we seek to have organizationally.
In this vein, I wanted to take the chance to offer a bit of a framework for thinking about Competition and Collaboration. It’s a big post, but I hope that it provides a basis for discussion and thought.
Competition
Overall, I would like to pose this hypothesis: Competition drives innovation and performance.
But there are different forms of competition, and it’s important to clarify what we mean when we talk about wanting or not wanting competition in EWB. I will outline three types of competition: Winner Takes All; Rising Tide; and Friendly Rivalry.
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