In honor of Thanksgiving, I’d like to share a couple of very thoughtful and touching emails that I received from two exceptional young refugees, both of whom have FORGE scholarships to attend University in Zambia.  Kwase is from Sudan and Antoine is from Congo – they are both in their mid-twenties.  If you are like me, their words will help you to appreciate this special holiday in an even deeper way. 

I wish you all a wonderful one…

-Kjerstin

www.FORGEnow.org

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From Kwase:

As it says above, I'm 24 years old.  I started FORGE when I was 20.  Yes... you can call me a young Executive Director.

Also, I'm relatively tall, thin, and (gasp!) blond.  Some people say I'm pretty.

Those traits may come in handy for getting out of speeding tickets, but they are not always a blessing.  When it comes to what I care about most – doing my job effectively – being a young blond female is often to my disadvantage. 

By this point, I've gotten used to leaders of partner NGOs treating me as nothing more than a sweet little American girl until they see what FORGE can do.  When they first come aboard, young FORGE volunteers often have a habit of challenging me until they realize that this is a complicated job that requires experience, tenacity, and a high level of intelligence.  But invariably, when things go wrong, eyes immediately turn to me and fingers get pointed in my direction.

And that's all fine.  Pile it on.  These shoulders may be slender, but they can carry quite a heavy load.  I've guided this ship through some stormy waters and I've always had enough wind in my proverbial sails to take the next step.  That may sound a bit hardened, but don't look for a peg-leg or an eye-patch.  This is what I signed up for.  FORGE is too good and I'm too young to be salty.

Five years ago, when we started working in refugee camps, I had no idea what FORGE would become.  Of course we were all on cloud nine, but it would've been very unrealistic of me not to anticipate uncertainty and difficulty as we grew.  My wonderful parents encouraged me ceaselessly, but also made sure my feet were firmly planted on the ground.  Dreaming pushed FORGE forward.  Being grounded kept it from being pushed back.

It has all made me welcome the challenges.  FORGE won't expand and improve without some sleepless nights and hardship.  Broken pledges by donors?  We'll get past it.  Problems with inexperienced staff?  FORGE can handle it.  Bureaucracy on the ground in Zambia?  We're ready.

This isn't supposed to feel nice.  This isn't about dreaming.  This is about work.  And I've gotta get back to it.

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

Still working on FORGE's taxes while letting my mind run wild over the things I can’t wait to do once these are done.

Not knowing anything about government oversight of nonprofits before starting FORGE, I’ve been shocked in the past few years to find out just how few accountability mechanisms are in place for nonprofits.  Sure, the government has basic guidelines for what a nonprofit can and cannot do, but the amount of leeway in what nonprofits can get away with (and how rarely they are caught) seems to me preposterous.  From what I’ve learned in preparing tax returns (which are really the main form of accountability to the government), the IRS makes it ridiculously easy to cheat, hide, and get away with murder.

Now, I’m not trying to incriminate my organization here – FORGE is very diligent about its spending and accounting has always treated our donors’ dollars with intense care.  However, I do wish that there was some way for the government to hold us truly accountable to our donors.  Nonprofits with annual spending under $500,000 are not required to have any kind of independent audit whatsoever.   

As it stands, there are only two ways for small-to-medium nonprofits to be held accountable for responsible spending of tax-free donor funds.  The first is through the miniscule chance that the IRS decides to audit them, in which case the nonprofit is in big trouble if they turn out to be corrupt.  The second is through paying for an independent auditor, which usually costs the nonprofit tens of thousands of dollars.  Of course, no truly corrupt nonprofit is going to self-incriminate itself with an audit.  On the other hand, most nonprofits (like FORGE) simply cannot afford to hire an auditor to either prove themselves clean or to find out what they might be doing wrong. 

Now I understand that there are 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, and that it is virtually impossible for the IRS to keep tabs on all them, let alone a small portion.  But the fact is that these organizations account for billions of dollars of untaxed money that would otherwise be in government hands.  The government doesn’t tax those funds because it trusts that the nonprofits are going to do some of the government’s work for them.  But is trusting enough?  Who is checking up? 

Alright…back to work…

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

PS - While we're on the subject, anyone know a pro-bono auditor?

There comes a time in every endeavor when something changes, momentum is built, and people launch.

People often ask me about my long-term vision for FORGE.  To tell you the truth, I’ve never had one pre-determined vision for what the organization should look like.  Founding FORGE as a 20-year-old college student, it would have been incredibly presumptuous for me to have ‘known’ how to do what I was trying to do.  The only thing I knew for sure was how I wanted the world to look.  I had an idea of how to get there, but that idea has been ever evolving and improving.

One of my favorite things about FORGE is our true commitment to excellence from our staff.  Because no one is a part of FORGE for the money, and because we expect such high standards of commitment from all of our staff, the people who work for FORGE are people who are deeply committed to its success and growth.  They will tell you that they eat, sleep, and breathe FORGE, and I will tell you that the wheels never stop turning in their minds. 

As an organization, I believe that our greatest strength is that we are continually re-evaluating our performance and our strategies, and we are constantly implementing changes and improvements to our operations.  

This past weekend, we may have outdone ourselves.  I just returned from 3 intense days of meetings with 11 members of our domestic senior staff, immediately following a meeting of 10 international senior staff.  We’ve developed a plan for FORGE that is so paradigm-shifting, so high-impact, and so in-line with all our deepest values and beliefs, we get jumpy just thinking about it. 

I’ll be telling you more in the coming weeks.  For now, it’s nose to the grindstone.  We’ve got our work cut out for us.  I said it once, and now’s a good time to say it again: STAY TUNED.

-Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

I've said it a few times over the course of this blog, and I'm going to say it again here: FORGE’s refugee staff is overwhelmingly good at what they do.  Their immense capability has to be FORGE's greatest asset.

In Mwange Refugee Settlement, FORGE built LISa (Laboratoire Informatique Safari) during the summer of 2006.  It's the largest computer lab in a refugee camp anywhere in the world.  We were fortunate enough to have Frances, a very talented young teacher from Congo, leading classes out the gate.  LISa has run so smoothly, that I have to admit, I haven't stayed closely involved.  But when I read our Project Managers' most recent report of the project, I was astounded.

Frances has not only increased the number of open classes due to community demand, but he stepped beyond the original classes of Word, Excel, and Paint classes and has moved into PowerPoint, Java, and basic coding.  He has been producing CDs and DVDs for the various FORGE-led performance groups.  He has created a FORGE photo scrapbook that employees and other community members alike regularly enjoy.  And most amazing of all – Frances has conceived of and written his own "LISa mail" email program that allows users in the middle of a Zambian refugee camp to wirelessly email back and forth between various stations within the camp.

Please keep in mind that all of this has occurred in a refugee camp with no electricity, no running water, and no real urban or financial infrastructure for hundreds of miles.  What Frances has done is nothing short of amazing.  He has taken on the needs of his students and the needs of his community and applied his own skills to better the community.  He isn't producing food, clean water, or ARVs, but he has given real job training to many of his fellow community members and has provided countless more with enjoyment, entertainment, and a sense of hope.

If you went to Mwange and met Frances, you can count on him not begging you for food or money…but you'd better be prepared for him to ask you to help him get his hands on some more advanced JAVA programming books.

It's when refugees like Frances take over FORGE's community-development projects that we see them grow their wings.  In collaboration with our camp-based Project Managers, our refugee staff consistently pushes ideas beyond what we ever thought possible.

-Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

On my second-ever blog post, I discussed FORGE’s use of the internet in communication.  Coordinating well over 100 people in 4 different time zones is made much simpler with email.  But… email has never been ideal for some things, and FORGE has recently made some important moves to centralize our US-based management while maintaining a decentralized (and wide-stretching) outreach.

Previously the centralized FORGE management team has been our Board of Directors, my fiancée, Nick Talarico, and myself.  With the two of us overseeing daily operations, we accomplished a lot, but often at the expense of our own health and wellbeing.  There was an inevitable lag in response time with our also-overworked staff, and the majority of the responsibilities fell onto our shoulders.

Now, however, we have added two more important people to our Bay Area management team.  Annelisa Pederson is in her third year with FORGE.  She has spent the past two summers in Meheba Refugee Settlement and is now bringing her grant-writing experience to FORGE’s Development Director position.  Peter D’Aleo has also spent the last two summers in Zambia and has been promoted to Program Director of the FORGE Microfinance Institute (FMI), the program he co-founded in 2006.

Having a centralized US-based management team is an important step for FORGE on so many levels.  We convene daily for expedited question-and-answer sessions.  We write, review, improve, and produce materials in record time.  We conceive of new ideas in true brainstorming sessions, and can bring those ideas to fruition with much greater efficiency. 

I’ve never felt as blessed as I do right now, surrounded by such a strong and talented group of people to work with day-in and day-out.  I believe there is nothing more important to an organization than having people that are willing to make the big sacrifices and who understand that "caring a lot" and "making it happen" are two very different things: caring takes a heart, but making it happen takes guts.  It requires travelling the tougher path, putting yourself on the line, training yourself to prioritize the long-term and the bottom-line, taking risks, and picking yourself up quickly when you fall.

I can't wait to get deep into 'making it happen' with this new, centralized team. 

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

After we get through our inboxes, that is…

- Kjerstin

www.FORGEnow.org

I just got this blog entry from my fiancé, Nick Talarico, who has been performing management duties in one of our camps for the past three weeks (Yes, my fiancé and I work together, he as Operations Director and me as Executive Director - I’ll have to write about that someday).   

Anyway, I think it’s a pretty powerful entry.  He talks about what has been the toughest lesson for both of us to accept: that in order to run a complex international NGO effectively, you constantly have to make difficult decisions, hold people to high standards, and, often, tell people what they don’t want to hear.  Someday, I'll write a blog about about my personal struggles with these challenges.  But for now, Nick says it best:   

_______________________________________

It had been a crazy couple of weeks in Meheba Refugee Settlement.  Sleeping minimally, I had been working ceaselessly with a documentarian, meeting with camp officials trying to explain that FORGE doesn't have the funds (or the mission) to fix roads, formally terminating our relationship with a staff member due to a conduct violation, beginning the final phase of each FORGE project's handover to refugee staff and the community, having individual meetings with each of our nearly 50 refugee staff members… the list goes on considerably.

But at 5:30 on Friday morning, I crawled into our vehicle and departed Meheba with the moon still glowing.   The bumpy road held my concentration for about two hours until I reached the town of Solwezi.  Leaving Solwezi, though, I found my chest tightening and my brow furrowing.   I was sad and I didn't know why.  Without warning, I broke into tears.

I think my emotions were the result of 18 days spent on high-alert, followed by a few hours sleep and a lonely car ride.   The sudden solitude and the separation from work caused a heavy letdown and there was little left to do but cry.

The main question I kept asking myself (other than "Why are you crying?") was why is it so necessary to be hard-lined and unwavering in policy, structure, and mission in order to create sustainable, positive social change?   With a domestic and refugee staff that genuinely cares about their work, why do I always have to be the one reminding them that the path of least resistance isn't always the best path in the long run?  In a word, why can't it feel good to do good?

FORGE is complicated.  We balance the needs and the relationships associated with UNHCR, African governments, domestic volunteers, donors, and of course, refugees.   Everyone has desires and ideas and invariably, someone will be let down.  For Kjerstin and me and many of our longer-tenured staff, this becomes a constant balancing act of moving money, shifting resources, explaining policies, and changing minds.  While all of this moves toward FORGE's higher mission, it involves a lot of saying no, disappointing people, and insisting that things be done in a less-comfortable but more-sustainable way.

While these are all cliché thoughts and ideas arrived upon with tears in my eyes, I've become accustomed to the fact that disappointing people is an inherent part of serving people.  And sometimes, it's sad.

- Nick Talarico, Operations Director, FORGE

www.FORGEnow.org

“I think we’re blurring the line between being a strong organization that’s creating long-term impact and acting like a bunch of bleeding heart altruists.”

The conversation around the campfire in FORGE’s compound at Meheba Refugee Settlement,