The Kashf Foundation at the Acumen Fund

At 1:30 this fine a.m., I was rummaging through my plans for the week when I remembered that in just a few hours, there was a breakfast talk over at the Acumen Fund's HQ across from Chelsea Market.  At eight o'clock in the morning. In Manhattan.  These folks really are committed to social enterprise! 

The speaker:  Sadaffe Abid, CEO of Pakistan's Kashf Foundation.  Ms. Abid knows her stuff & represents the organization well, not just praising its work--a requisite part of making the rounds--but offering a refreshingly forthright analysis of the challenges ahead.  That's a strategy that is far more effective in building trust among potential supporters than empty spin, especially when you're working in an environment widely known to be unstable. 

For more about Kashf's noteworthy accomplishments, check out its website.  Here, since they are issues that arise more globally, are a few of the challenges discussed in the meeting.  Note that this is me, Jeff, writing what's below, not Ms. Abid; please blame me for anything you might not like about what follows, especially since much of it is going to be my personal assessment.

• Intractable systemic poverty.  In a short but significant aside, Sadaffe noted that while Kashf was able to help a number of women develop their own ventures, the microfinance model was not a panacea; some families are so poor that giving them financial assistance as a gift, not an investment, was more appropriate.  This is something that some true believers won't ever concede, but acknowledging it actually strengthens trust in the speaker's assertions about social enterprise.
  

• The turmoil in banking worldwide, which apparently is leading some banks to dampen their support for microfinance. As I've noted here before, charity is a luxury good--as the economy collapses, we can expect the contours of support to shift, not to mention the contours of organizational rhetoric.
  
  
• The political turmoil in Pakistan.  Here Sadaffe went into detail concerning the effect of the Karachi riots on Kashf's work, providing concrete evidence of the network's capacity to adapt to violent disruption.  Of particular interest to me was the Foundation's decision to suspend repayments in the region for ten days to help loan recipients rebuild.  Once again, the Foundation was flexible, not rigorous in applying the entrepreneurial model--a good strategy for maintaining a strong reputation as a truly charitable endeavor.
  
  
• Secular legal issues.  The Kashf Foundation is organized as an NGO, not a commercial business, which in Pakistan as in the U.S. places some practical limits on what it can do.  Kashf looks to be developing a hybrid organizational network, and fortunately it has an established relationship with experienced lawyers.
  
  
• Religious law.  The prohibition against usury; an imam opining that the organization's support to women violated the principles of Imam--Sadiffe described the issues and how Kashf responds.  As anyone who has worked in Islamic regions knows, these are complex issues well worth a breakfast talk of their own.
  
  
• And last but not least, men.  Women earning more than their husbands is a sensitive issue in the U.S.; it is equally if not more so a potential issue in Pakistan. 
  

In regard to the last two points as pertains to women, a Western-influenced organization is always going to face some tough decisions.  Kashf's English-language literature & Sadiffe at the meeting used language that's familiar and accepted here--"gender and empowerment," "challenge social norms"--but for many in conservative religious communities, even fundamentalist Christian communities, them's fightin' words. 

Such religious communities typically have a rich metaphorical infrastructure that one can engage to reinforce social enterprise, but it's not a  language in which most secular groups are fluent.  Difficult ethical quandaries can also arise; one could argue that practices a group like Kashf would not accept--the dowry system, arranged marriage of young girls--are cultural practices to be leveraged in an evolutionary strategy for stable long-term reform, but there's undeniably something about such an approach that punches us square in the gut.

As tends to be the case on this site, there are more challenges here than easy solutions, but judging from Sadaffe's presentation Kashf has been doing an admirable job in providing help to those it serves.