So I've been in Lusaka now for the past few days, here on a 3 week trip to visit our projects, facilitate our semi-annual Field Staff Meetings, and receive a new group of Project Managers.  Its been over 5 years now since I first came to Zambia, and having spent the better part of the first 3 years of FORGE here on-the-ground its always a bit hard to reconcile that when I come now, I'm a visitor.  Its especially difficult in the camps, as the main fact that seperates FORGE International Staff from our refugee staff and the people that we work with is the simple fact that we have the option to leave.  I think we all feel somewhat guilty about that, and thus whenever we leave the camps its always a reminder of how fortunate we really are. 

 

Interestingly, the fact that I now spend much less time in-country than I used to has given me some perspective on how fast things are really changing in Zambia.  Everytime I come back, there are new buildings, new products, and new opportunities that hadn't existed just months before.  Several Universities in Lusaka have quadrupled their enrollment in the past two years alone, and their are new cell phone networks, internet cafes, and paved roads popping up in all areas of the country.  Operating in Zambia today is vastly easier than it was in 2003, and FORGE is reaping the benefits of the increased infrastructure.  Things are far (very far!) from ideal, but the speed at which they are changing is extremely encouraging.

 

Not being an economist, I can't speak to how well each of these developments have trickled down to affect the lives of the most vulnerable, and I can't say for certain whether the right infrastructure developments are always being prioritized.  What I can say is that, for all of those naysayers who believe that Africa will never change and is destined to stay behind, come and see what is happening in each peaceful country on this continent.  What you will see in just short periods of time may really surprise you.  As comes peace, so comes development and the rapid improvement of human security and wellbeing.  That I can be sure of. 

 

This week we are so proud (and relieved!) to finally reveal the project that we have been working on for over half a year: our new website portal.  Right now, at www.FORGEnow.org, you can experience something that is extremely rare in the international development field - a direct connection with the projects on-the-ground, and the opportunity to select and support exactly what stirs your passions.  In addition to beautiful photography and videos from our International Communication Managers and refugee staff, there are blogs directly from the refugees who lead our projects and pictures of their work in action.  The site is designed to break down the distance barrier so often encountered in international giving.  It is designed to allow ordinary people the opportunity to directly connect to the project of their choice and the people that it impacts, to be able to see and learn from their hopes and needs, and to hear from and interact with the community itself.   

 
The site has literally just been launched and this is the first time I'm announcing it publicly, so none of the projects have any funding.  Which is admittedly embarassing.  But check them out - I love the fact that through this website I can now offer a direct lense for someone to understand and internalize the work that we do.  And to engage with it themselves.  www.FORGEnow.org!

 

Kjerstin

Unless you're the rare social entrepreneur who receives substantial financial backing out of the gate, it's unrealistic to expect that you'll be able to pay staff early on.  It wasn't until October of 2007, four years into FORGE's existence, that we took our first paid employee – Development Director Annelisa Pedersen, who worked for two years as an unpaid volunteer.  And it wasn't until March of 2008 that I began taking a small salary.  Nick has yet to receive any financial compensation.  Operating for 4 years with no paid staff meant not only that we had to take on debt to support ourselves, but more importantly that we had to learn to manage a large corps of volunteer labor.

 

FORGE was bootstrapped by volunteers.  For the first four years, we provided an opportunity that most American college students never thought possible: to work on the ground in an African refugee camp.  In return for facilitating this opportunity to do meaningful and sustainable work, FORGE set and maintained strict standards and expectations.  All volunteers were required to train intensively for 7 months before departing and were required to fundraise at least $5000 for their own expenses and their project expenses.

 

I realized early on that if FORGE was going to rely on volunteers to such important and responsibility-laden work, a strong incentive structure had to be put in place.  Thus, FORGE's volunteer staffing structure was carefully designed in a way that aligned the interests of FORGE, the volunteers, and refugee community itself.  In this way, we were able to build a strong semblance of accountability into a labor segment (volunteers) that are notoriously tough to make accountable.

 

It was through such volunteer labor that FORGE built its foundation.  Over 125 volunteer Project Facilitators and Project Managers drove the planning, funding, and implementation behind over 60 individual community development projects.  Our refugee staff manages these projects, but the projects would simply not exist were it not for a large volunteer work base.

 

While volunteers were invaluable to our growth, I think it is important to recognize that volunteer labor can come with significant shortcomings.  Unpaid staff are inherently less accountable.  They can only volunteer for such a role because their situation allows it (they work another job or they're students).  In FORGE, few volunteers had significant international development experience when they started.  Because of this, a large amount of guidance, direction, and management was necessary to ensure that our volunteers were intellectually and philosophically prepared, that they behaved responsibly, and that they developed and implemented projects in a manner that aligned with FORGE's philosophies and goals.  This kind of international volunteer model also required a large amount of time spent on logistics: arranging plane tickets, accommodation, transportation, managing health and safety concerns, etc.  This stretched thin our already-small managing staff and decreased the time that we could spend fundraising or promoting our work.

In late 2007, after four year-long cycles of recruiting, training, and managing large teams of Western volunteers, FORGE chose to end the college-student staffing model and move to our current, Collaborative Project Planning Model.  This new model allows our managers to focus on organizational development and to raise the funds necessary to grow.  It would not have been possible, however, without the results built by a tireless volunteer staff.

 

If you are building an organization that relies on volunteers for any of its essential functions, I highly recommend that you take the time to do so very carefully.  In the early stages of an organization, there are often a good number of people who are interested in being a part of building something new.  These people can be extremely important to the success of the endeavor, but we have seen all too many times how contradicting ideas about the direction of the organization and people's roles within it can start to get in the way of the organization's work and mission.  Before building a volunteer team, I urge you to think long and hard about the incentives and personal motives of each person involved, and how each of these can be effectively aligned with the organization's mission in an accountable manner.
 

 

This is another exciting week.  On Thursday, FORGE is holding a fundraising event in San Francisco that will feature selections from "Far From Gone" - a documentary that we were fortunate enough to capture this past summer in Meheba Refugee Settlement, Zambia.  The footage is phenomenal, and Barney Broomfield, the cinematographer and documentarian who shot and is editing the film, is a world-class talent.  The story is one that we could never have dreamed of stumbling upon. 

 

The film follows the lives of two refugees - best friends - as they prepare for their lives to take very different paths.  Stephen, a Congolese refugee in his mid-20s, is one of the top staff-members FORGE has ever had.  His passion and intelligence were driving forces behind the success of our FORGE Microfinance Institute.  After a series of interviews, Stephen was granted the incredible opportunity of being resettled to Norway.  Meanwhile, Boniface, Stephen's best friend and colleague at FMI, is the same type of leader.  As a pair, they command significant respect in Meheba's large community.  Boniface, however, has not been afforded resettlement and must watch while Stephen prepares to move to leave the camp forever for resettlement in Norway.

 

The emotions that the film captures are rich and you can see and feel every character being internally torn between joy and grief.  We're convinced it will make for an entertaining, inspiring, and enlightening final product.  We're proud to be part of a project that doesn't directly promote FORGE, but rather focuses on the capabilities and talents of some amazing refugees.  The filmaker Mr. Broomfield keeps remarking on how so many refugee films focus on pain and sorrow, while "that's only one side of the story."

 

One major cause of concern at the moment, however, is whether or not the film captures the difficulty of the circumstances into which refugees are thrown.  At it's most fundamental level, FORGE exists because refugees have such few opportunities for self-advancement.  We focus on opportunities and the future, but the fact remains that the present-day circumstances for over 10 million refugees in Africa are not pretty.  While we certainly want to focus on how far Stephen and Boniface have carried themselves and their community, we don't want to make their struggles seem simple or their successes appear commonplace, nor do we want to fail to show that it is NGOs like FORGE that are helping to make such pursuit of opportunity possible.

 

It's a tough balance to strike...

 

- Kjerstin

 

(If you are going to be in San Francisco on Thursday and would like to attend, send me an email at kjerstin [at] forgenow.org)

It's been a long process, but we're almost ready to release a major change in our online public presence.  Rather than a simple, online brochure about what we do, FORGE has implemented a dynamic, participatory website that will bring the stories, sites, and even sounds of refugee communities into our homes and offices.  The site will allow users to actually engage in FORGE projects by learning about the specific area of need, the project plan, the project leaders (all refugees), the project budget, and more.  You can subscribe to running project blogs in order to stay updated on successes each project has or whatever obstacles it may face.  You can even ask questions of project leaders and project managers.  You might have to wait a few days for a response though - many answers will come straight from the field.

 

Of course, we're incredibly excited.  Not only has this taken us a lot longer than we had initially planned, but it completely changes the face of FORGE and opens the door to participation from the public.  Along with that excitement, however, there's a strong sense of anxiety... what if this doesn't work?  A long period of research into successful online ventures has made us confident that this model is best for FORGE, but there's always that risk.  At this point, we're dealing with that anxiety be extensively testing the user interface and flow of the site.  Does this button show up well?  Does this page clearly say what we want it to say?  Does the tone of this section properly represent the project?  It's a lot of work, but it's pretty fascinating.

The internet is an amazing tool that can generate a lot of success.  But, with well over 100 million websites out there, it's not an easy game to play.  More than ever, proper execution is key.  Everything has to work.  Content has to be frequently updated.  All answers must be available.  It's daunting.  I'm going back to work.

When I started FORGE, I was very skeptical of policies and strict structures.  Through time and experience, however, I've learned that policy is important to maintain consistency and to set clear expectations.  Through our policies, FORGE now creates structure.  Expectations are clear to all staff.  But we try to stay open to change and modification.  It's not an absolute world we work in and our policies could never be perfect.  In this, we strive to remain fluid and flexible at level.  We encourage our staff to recognize when our current structures may not fit a particular situation and how they might be modified for improvement.

FORGE Education Fund – University (FEF-U) runs on a tight budget.  Each selected scholar is granted tuition as well as a very basic living stipend.  From the beginning, FEF-U scholars are required to manage their stipend for food, basic health care, daily transport, extra clothes, etc.  It's not a lavish life… just enough to be happy and healthy while studying.

We often receive requests for more support on the financial level from FEF-U Scholars, but it's something we philosophically choose not to do.  The program exists to provide opportunities to education, and not to create a luxurious lifestyle.  Our budget is spread as thin as it can responsibly be spread.  We frequently and heart-breakingly must simply say 'no' when it comes to FEF-U requests.

The other day, however, we just couldn't.  Thom, one of the FEF-U scholars, had just taken a very expensive bus trip from Lusaka, the capital city, to Kala Camp.  Thom's journey was to accompany his sister back to the camp after a medical trip to the city.  Thom's sister was dying of incurable lung cancer and Thom would not let her travel alone.  The voyage wiped out Thom's reserve moneys.

Only hours after he returned to Lusaka, Thom got word from Kala that his sister had died.  Needless to say, he needed money to get back to Kala for his sister's funeral and her familial arrangements.  Ordinarily, this would be against FEF-U policy… we don't supplement the monthly living stipend.  However, how can we deny this request?  Explaining that we cannot bolster funds for the purchase of clothes is one thing, but looking at a friend and an integral part of FEF-U and telling him that we cannot support his trip to his sister's funeral is unthinkable.

It may seem simple, but I think it's important that fixation on the grease and gears of the organization isn't counterproductive to its fuel.  Some of the best advice I've either received or spread has been on remaining firm in our adherence to policy.  But some of the most important little decisions I've made have been when policy was re-worked to better serve a critical situation.

There are two types of tough times in life: those that are part of the natural ebb and flow of life, and those that represent something deeper that needs to be fixed.  In enterprise, as in life, there are inevitably good times and bad.  I've never met a leader who hasn't had his or her share of ups and downs.  Being prepared for tough times and knowing how to stay upbeat and keep them in perspective is an important trait of any entrepreneur.  But equally important is knowing when a tough time is more than just a downturn in the inevitable roller coaster, and actually is symptomatic of some greater opportunity that is being missed. 

 

FORGE's new People-Powered Development Model is a good example of a tough time leading us to spawn a new development.  Over the summer of 2007, it became clear that FORGE was outgrowing its old staffing model.  Both Nick (Nicholas Talarico, FORGE Operations Director) and I were frustrated by the time and energy that we put into managing our 45 American volunteers, especially in comparison to the minimal management needed by our 150 refugee staff members.  It was becoming more and more clear to both Nick and I that FORGE needed to rely less on Western volunteers. 

 
Watching our 25 established projects blossom under refugee direction, we knew that it was time to fully turn over project implementation to the refugee communities.  There was a clear gap in funding, however.  Whereas Western Project Facilitators raised the funds necessary to implement projects, refugees had no such opportunity.  The question remained: how could we fund multiple refugee-led projects moving forward?
 
Realizing that without the burden of managing dozens of non-refugee staff, we could more properly fundraise for and promote FORGE, we saw an opportunity.  We decided to sharply scale down the size of our Western staff.  We hired an experienced grant writer in Ms. Annelisa Pedersen.  We played on some experience building web-based businesses, as well as ideas from other, similar fundraising models.  When the brainstorming was done, we had a plan to bring the stories, sights, and sounds of refugee life to the global public.  We would promote refugee-conceived projects on a state-of-the-art website and raise funds in small increments from many donors.  We would drive traffic to the website through grassroots promotion.
 
This process is far from done, but it all began with a time of realtive struggle - a time when it felt that our energies were not producing the most efficient results.  Hardships and downturns are an unavoidable part of nonprofit life, and a key function of a leader is to keep the team focused through the tough times.  But sometimes those tough times are signs of opportunity.  I'm happy that I've started to develop an intuition to discrimate between the inevitable ups and downs and the times when there is an opportunity for us to do things a better way. 

 

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org 

It's a running joke within FORGE that the Executive Director (myself) is the least-educated of all of our staff.  It's funny, but sometimes it becomes pretty clear that I need to finish my education.  I was a junior at Stanford when I started FORGE, and by the end of my junior year I had decided to stop out of college and dedicate the entirety of my energies to growing and improving the organization.

I spent a full 2 and a half years out of school before finishing a few more units of credit in the first half of 2007.  I am now only 13 credits away from finally obtaining my bachelor's degree…and I'm about to do it.  Needless to say, developing FORGE has returned a savvy unlike any I could learned elsewhere.  But… formally completing the education I started is an important milestone.

Spring quarter starts tomorrow, and then graduation day is just 10 weeks away.  I live and work in Oakland and Palo Alto is a good 45 minutes away with no traffic – it's a weird thing to be commuting to school.  Worst of all, I hate spending meaningful time away from FORGE.  While I will continue to put in my full-time work weeks, I will of course have to spend less time than I otherwise would.

I've always loved academics and thrive on conceptual thinking.  However, I only care about philosophies to the extent that they can be actualized and pursued.  Thinking to me has always been a tool to inform intelligent action.  In university, all too often, thinking is often treated as an end unto its own.

My Public Policy degree has actually been very good at preparing me for an action-oriented approach to life and society: how to recognize problems, analyze them, and create best-fit solutions.  I've appreciated the rigorous analytical framework that it it has given me, and the extensive economic and mathematical emphasis that it has incorporated.  At the same time, I can't escape the feeling that I am learning more (and accomplishing more) by doing work rather than problem sets and papers.

But yet I am reminded that it is just 10 weeks, a mere 13 units, and that Oprah will be the graduation speaker.  Wish me luck !

 

  

When I was 7 years old, my mother told me that my family was enemies with my uncle’s wife and that they have not greeted each other for the last ten years though the distant between our home and their home was less than three miles.  

I asked her what was the cause of all those conflicts.  She told me one time my elder brother was playing with my uncle’s son who later cut my brother on the head using a knife and my uncle’s wife supported her son wrongly.  She said that my father and my uncle tried to solve the problem but she was not happy at all.  She told me not to visit my uncle’s family and she said that my uncle’s wife can easily kill me.  I told my mom that I didn’t know all that had happen between them and I was sorry because I have been eating and playing together with my uncle’s children as their home was closer to school than ours.  

I asked my mom if my uncle’s children were enemies to our family as some of them were not yet born when they fought with my uncle’s wife and if she can allow me to play with them because our teacher told us that all children are brothers and sisters, they can sometimes fight but live and play together all the time.  Mom told me to listen and follow what she has told me and to not ask any questions.  I kept quiet and didn’t not bother to ask my father about what happened, because my mom was more friendly to me than my dad  and I used to trust her very much.  But after experiencing war for myself and thinking back on that experience I have learned the following lessons:

-          The fact that families and communities all over the world still keep on telling the young about their old enemies and they want them to continue living in enmity makes it very difficult for the peace makers to do their job.

 

-          For peace to cover the whole world, we need a great change in our mindset . I know it is not easy but we have to face it, if we are interested in peace, because I always ask myself before I ask others, does it mean that if my grandfather failed to bring peace than all the coming generation will fail to break through?  The answer is a BIG “NO” and how long are we going to keep on inheriting enmity from our ancestors?

 

-           Another lesson I learned is that time and environment keep on changing and it is a big task to the current generation that we try our best at our time to bring peace to the world through interactions, forgiveness, understanding of human values, and fair judgment.  Of course, all these may not be possible without patience and sacrifice, both moral and material.

 

-          Finally I also learnt that it would be a grave mistake for us to go in solving problems  without consulting the elders who one time tried their best in bring peace and failed, because it is from their weaknesses and strengths that we the new generation can come up with a powerful modern tool to solve problems.

By Kwase Mohamed

 
There’s a lot of advice out there telling you to "build on your strengths" and "focus on the positive".  As an ED, I find this quite tempting: who doesn't want to think about what they do well all day long?  Who doesn't want to make something that is already good even better?

Strangely, though, as the person responsible for the bottom line, I find that my main job is just the opposite: to focus on our weaknesses.  Where are we failing?  Who needs to improve?  Revamp it or cut it altogether?

In a nonprofit world that is often full of warm-fuzzies and back-pats, talking about failures can be quite counter-cultural, Especially if it could ever get back to a potential donor or, gasp!, the public at large.  But just as I've yet to meet a perfect person, I have yet to come across an organization that is anywhere near perfect.  Given the heavy constraints under which nonprofits operate - lack of clear data and indicators on long-term goals, little proportionality between funding and quality of services, and difficulty attracting talent from the better-paid private sector - this should come of little surprise.

 
But then why are failures so hard to talk about publicly?  From my experience, I suspect that the reasons all fall back on the competitive environment within which nonprofits operate.  Competition is a natural driving force of humanity, and in my opinion is as essential in the nonprofit sector as it is in the private sector.  However, in the private sector, there is only so much that you can do to mask your failures: ultimately you have to publish your quarterly profits and losses and declare your future earnings projections.  The market will judge you accordingly. 

 
In the nonprofit environment, things are very different.  We submit our taxes but do nothing else to objectively showcase our success or failure at meeting our social bottom line. Therefore, everything we chose to reveal or publicize is voluntary.  And guess what we all publicize?  The great stuff… the tears of joy stuff… the oh-my-god-I-need-to-sell-my-car-to-give-to-this-organization stuff. 

 
Where do the failures and the shortcomings go?  Some organizations have strong internal review, evaluation, and program improvement systems (generally kept private).  Most do not.  While "best practices" are shared widely across the industry, "worst practices" are stored in the closet.  So how do we learn from each other? 

 
My commitment through FORGE is to do my small part to change this culture of closeted weaknesses.  When we have "lessons learned", I want to share them – not just within my organization, but with others.  I hope that others will, too.  Eventually, together, we can dispel the fear that revealed weaknesses lead to exploitation and defeat.  Our weaknesses will make us stronger.

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org