Results tagged “development” from Uncivil Society
Cell phones, China's commodities purchases or misleading new metrics? An interesting question raised by Paul Kedrosky using data from Wolfram Alpha. One commenter suggests Kiva, but no one really seems to buy that explanation.
Check out Alwyn Young's 2009 study, The African Growth Miracle for more data suggesting that we may need to move past the stock images of Western charitable colonialism.
I have exams to grade & meetings to attend, so off I go. In the meantime, check out this Rachel Strohm's guide to African cliches, via Change.org.
Over the past few weeks several folks, including students, have expressed an interest in my opinion on FORGE, the Africa charity that became a social enterprise cause celebre when its founder, Kjerstin Erickson, decided to blog about its financial problems on Social Edge.
I've been puzzling over what to say here for a while, because, well, I have the pleasure of meeting & working with a lot of young leaders of charitable start-ups, and as folks who know me in the real world can tell you that when I'm dealing with 'em one-on-one, I'm a real up-with-people person.
No, really. I even have a Russian badge that certifies me as a member of the "Happy People Club"!
Anyway, my preference is to encourage the good and, where there are missed opportunities or areas of potential improvement, to make my suggestions with a suitable amount of moral support. You don't get to see that on the web, where even the broadest smile gets reduced to cold digitized letters--one reason, by the way, I like to illustrate my posts with pictures.
Since the stakes are so high with FORGE--literally, the organization's survival could be at stake if it does not hit its long-term fundraising goals--I was reluctant to join in with my own SWOT analysis lest it be misconstrued as a takedown. And that's not an idle concern--though social enterprise talks a lot about being more businesslike, there's an unfortunate tendency to see departures from "yay you for being the most revolutionary amazing successful innovator ever" as a personal attack.
Still, folks are not just fundraising for FORGE but holding it up as a model for other charities to follow, and FORGE has been gracious enough to welcome public scrutiny of its actions. So I tell ya what--here's the EULA for the rest of this post:
By reading the rest of this post, I agree that Jeff, as a certified member of the Happy People Club, is aware that Forge is providing social benefit and deserves my support if I want to provide it. I also agree that Jeff is never, ever wrong except when he is, which he's not, generally, except sometimes, when, hooooo boy, is he ever!
Below: a classic poster from 1937 that brings together plumbing and electricity, two industries often associated with social enterprise in disadvantaged regions and private enterprise in more developed areas.
