Mercy States

Cock-a-doodle-doo! It’s the sound of hospitality and gratitude. It’s the beginning of a partnership brewing.

We returned an hour out of the bush with one new passenger: a chicken in the bed of our ‘Mercy Corps’ field truck. 

The chicken was a gift from the head of a Peuhl community, who welcomed us into their remote village and into their vision for the future. Their women’s association is a new partner of the women’s empowerment capacity building project. Mercy Corps is working with 70 local women’s associations (each with 25 - 100 members) in 4 cities to help develop their mission, structure and action plan for community development. 

Every member of the village was present. We gathered together under a stick canopy to listen to the president of the association share the goals of the community. The Peuhl woman explained that they are determined to build a well (outside a city with 30,000 people and only 3 wells) and to start a co-ed school in multiple villages in their area. We communicated our commitment to support their accomplishment of these projects with capacity building trainings. 

This work is a difficult task, considering the Peuhl people face a lot of discrimination from locals and the numerous resource limitations. However, the task is within reach. 

In a country repeatedly considered “neglected”, it is refreshing to see Mercy Corps literally driving the extra miles to serve in isolated villages and support marginalized populations. 

Many may call Central African Republic “forgotten”, but Mercy Corps’ field staff has not.

I walk into a 4th grade classroom (56 kids to one teacher) in a village outside of Goma.  The school has 850 children and the latrine is full so the school needs a new one.  Mercy Corps engineers have come up with a simple latrine and water sanitation system that can be cleaned by the school administrators.  

The classroom has a chalkboard, a few pieces of chalk and small table for the teacher.  The floor is not a smooth surface; rather, it is a jumble of broken-up lava rock.  Here are some of the kids who attend this school:

On top of the table is a pile of folded pieces of paper with writing on them.  Mike, our colleague from Open Revolution and former Booz Allen wireless practice leader, gasps and exclaims: "they are all tiny cell phones!"  And he starts picking them up one by one, reading the children's writing on the pretty intricately-folded toys: "Samsung, Nokia, Zain...oh my -- this one has a dual SIM!"  Just an interesting piece of evidence that mobile technology represents such a leapfrog opportunity for people in fragile states.  Here's my blackberry pic of the phones:

Hopefully, the next time I go to Goma, I will see more kids, like the ones pictured below, in school and creating pretend phones:

Eight of the kids pictured here live in a one room home.  None of them go to school as the school fees are out of reach for their parents.  They live with one man, his wife, another woman who rents out part of the house, the man's mother and his mother-in-law.  Thirteen people in all.  When households like these are asked what they need, they don't talk about education, technology, agricultural development, market information, a cohesive government, alternative fuel stoves, social venture funds, microfinance, etc.  They ask for water.

Sitting in the Charlotte airport, waiting for the next leg of my red-eye from Portland back home to DC.  It has been a really tough week.  But, let me go back to one month ago to a better time, before I get into why I am crabby. 

In early May, I flew to Tel Aviv where I met up with our director for West Bank / Gaza and a Mercy Corps board member.  We had agreed to convene in Jerusalem to look at Mercy Corps' work with the ICT (Information Communications Technologies) sector in the Palestinian territories. 

We met with an array of VCs, local business owners and reps from multinational technology companies.  The skill levels of Palestinian IT graduates are very high, and despite being isolated from market information, the drive to innovate in software applications development, web design, hardware construction is astounding. 

Building on our work with local industry organizations over the last few years, we have launched an effort to dig deeper into the demand-driven and enduring market opportunities for these businesses.  It is important to do so -- even in Gaza through the recent fighting, the IT micro and small businesses have been more resilient than businesses in most any other sector.  Yet there is so much to do; strengthening the enabling conditions that will allow a more market-connected and market-driven Palestinian sector to grow is an initial step, but a difficult one in such a hotly politicized place.  Another is to show some tangible results for specific businesses that are able to serve a market beyond the territories.  We'll see.

I then flew to Addis and Kigali, where I picked up a colleague from Open Revolution, a great firm that is pioneering mobile banking in emerging markets.  We drove the beautiful road from Kigali to the DRC border and managed to get across to Goma, ticking off only one border chief in the process.  Long story… that ended up with my repeatedly pleading with the only French I could recall at the moment, “Je suis stupide! Je suis fatiguee!  Je suis fatiguee et tres stupide!” 

The next week was hopeful, exciting and incredibly sad.  A group of us had gathered at the Mercy Corps offices in Goma to design a financially-sustainable environmental stewardship program, with the Congo River Basin as the centerpiece and focal point.  We had Jim, the head of our climate change team; Elisha, a DRC-based environmental economist; Sasha from the SI team (see her recent post on Sudan – she is a gem and a trooper), Mike from Open Revolution; Phil, our West Africa Regional Director; Laura, Africa program officer; and Luke, our DRC country director.  It was a fantastic group with no egos and just the right variety of skill sets around the table – and we were all focused for 5 days on real work and real people.   

We spent one morning reviewing our alternative energy stoves project inside a camp for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).   Families had been at this camp for about two years.  We spent another day looking at the water systems work and forest projects we are facilitating with numerous communities outside of Goma.  See http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/drcongo for more detail on our work in the camps and in host communities.  I was very proud and relieved to see that everything we are doing has been designed with environmental and community sustainability as key, i.e. with Mercy Corps’ exit in mind

I’ll be writing more about the Goma Social Innovations pilot program through the summer, since fundraising for it and solidifying our corporate and nonprofit partnerships will be a major activity.   For now, I’ll say that the Goma area is a fascinating place.  It is like everything you’ve ever read about international development -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- all rolled up into one.  Mineral extraction and demobilized soldiers; tons of entrepreneurial activity; beautiful fabrics and vibrant marketplaces with food you’ve never seen; big magenta ZAIN signs dotting the landscape like Starbucks in the suburbs; the official and unofficial IDP camps; big SUVs owned by international NGOs (like Mercy Corps) parked outside of the bars; so many young children who are not and may never be in school; and, everywhere you look, people transporting heavy loads of wood, charcoal, produce, water and more. 

But the natural backdrop for all of this human craziness…oh my!  There’s the Nyiragongo active volcano, which was spitting out glowing red lava at night.  The aftermath of past volcanic eruptions in the form of huge lava rock wherever soil would normally be (hence, the legitimate need for big SUVs.)  There are the forest elephants and mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park.  And Lake Kivu, which is huge, pretty and relatively serene, despite its status as an “exploding lake”, due to the large amount of and stagnant methane gas at the lake bottom. 

If you have a chance to go to Goma, it is one of those eco-adventure spots that explorers live for.  But time your trip well… For me, it was a little unnerving to be sipping a glass of white wine on the lake’s edge, while our country director points to the volcano that is due to erupt anytime now in order to ensure that we know the evacuation protocol.  And then, our climate change director proceeds to describe, with strange delight, the following scenario:  The seismic activity from Nyiragongo’s eruption could cause a natural and massive release of the heretofore stagnant methane, potentially leading to the affixation of a good portion of the two million people (including us) existing around Lake Kivu.  Gulp, gulp. 

Fortunately, the proactive Rwandan government has signed a deal to use the methane for energy, allowing for the gas to be extracted carefully and over time.  See:     http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS175973+02-Mar-2009+PRN20090302

So all of that was supposedly the happy part of my post, believe it or not.  I was in a bad mood, having spent a week in HQ meetings during which the frustrations and missed opportunities created by working in a large organization become so apparent.  Our HQ meeting weeks are more draining than almost any field trip, despite the latter’s four coach flights in-a-row interspersed with those twelve hour layovers in, let’s say, the Nairobi transit lounge that smells like old shoes.  But remembering my trips to the West Bank and DRC has helped.  At least at Mercy Corps, it is not as bad as fighting an immovable bureaucracy.  Instead, the only way to get out of the murky, chaotic haze of our passion-based organization is to let go of the need for clarity, ease and the ideal structure, and instead focus in on the people we are here to serve.  It is exhausting, to be sure, but it is the only way.  So, despite the title of today’s blog post, it is not time to quit.  Just time to let go and breathe.

It is easy to sit in a comfortable office in the US and plan innovative activities using the latest technology to improve the lives of the poorest populations.  Reality comes roaring back into the picture when you arrive in a place like Southern Sudan and try to implement these cool ideas.

I just spent the last two weeks in Juba, the hot dusty capital of Southern Sudan.  In two years, the population of this region will vote whether to make South Sudan the newest independent state in the world.  For now, a horde of international organizations are trying to maintain a fragile peace and spark economic development.  There is a long way to go.  Currently, only a few roads in Juba are paved.  The rest are a field of red dust in the dry season and a mud pit in the wet season.  The markets are basic and offer few frivolous items beyond cheap sunglasses, pirate music CDs, and basic cell phones.  Outside of Juba, the population disappears quickly.  This is a vast country with only 20% literacy and a large population of nomadic cattle herders.  Cell phone coverage reaches only 30% of the country, mainly the towns, and financial services are only available in the capital cities of 7 of the 10 states.

Visions of mbanking, mobile-phone-based market information systems, and demand-driven business development dry up quickly under the baking sun.  But the population needs more than short-term cash-for-work activities and donations of seeds and tools.  Farmers need to be able to get their agricultural produce to market and sell it for a profit.  Demobilized soldiers need long-term jobs.  And the brand new local civil service needs revenue to provide basic services and the skills to do so effectively.  So what can we do?  First, we are getting back to basics.  What did we do before we had cell phones and internet and international banking?  Before cell phones we used radio to get market information to rural businesses.  And small-scale self-help microfinance groups have been around for decades if not centuries.  These are techniques we can still use in more remote parts of the globe to help local populations cope with the current situation. 

And if we keep future innovative programs in mind, we can build a foundation that will enable rural Sudanese leap forward once the infrastructure improves.  For example, populations that have never used a mobile phone or the internet need to build trust in the “virtual” world – from believing information that comes from a total stranger hundreds of miles away to trusting that mobile phone air time really can be used as cash.  At the same time, mainstream services need to be adapted for illiterate populations.  The challenge is to create a plan that enables us reach our long-term goals but utilizes more traditional methodologies to reach intermediate targets.  We can use the community radio stations Mercy Corps has already developed to send the right messages to rural populations.  And can we use our strong community relations to build trust between local populations and new business entrants.

Eventually cell phone companies will blanket Southern Sudan.  Banks and microfinance institutions will spread their services and develop products for the nomadic groups.  Our job right now is to make sure that when these services arrive, the local population is ready to use them and is able to leap into the brave new digital world.  

The Social Edge discussions on Money and the Social Entrepreneur have revealed the personal, financial sacrifice that many of our colleagues make in order to advance their work.  Their dedication and persistence are incredibly admirable.  And it is a trend not limited to a few exceptional leaders.  I am approached every few weeks by a formerly well-paid refugee from the private sector who is seeking to devote his or her work life to helping to solve the world’s urgent problems and who is willing to take a significant pay cut to do so.

Is it any easier inside a larger, more established organization?  How does money figure into the social innovations equation, not just from a personal, financial standpoint, but in terms of creating real and lasting change?

Well, the grass is always greener, I guess.  I look at the single-focused social enterprise organizations and think how it must be easier to have a crystal clear message, to stay focused on a set of measurable objectives without a thousand competing priorities hovering at the door, to have everyone in the same organization working towards a singular vision and purpose.  No one to answer to but one’s inner compass, a few investors, and perhaps the graduate school loan officer and that friend who’s been letting you sleep on her sofa for 9 months…right??

Sitting inside an organization with operations in 37 countries and that will probably receive and begin to program approximately $350 million in humanitarian and development assistance this year would seem to be a better perch from which to wave the innovations banner.  But money across the social innovations spectrum, right now, is very tight.  The global financial crisis has taken a huge bite out of the private giving part of the development assistance pie.  Foundations’ endowments are down, many corporations CSR wallets are now change purses, and individual giving follows the Dow and the unemployment rate.  We all know too well that the competition for longer-term initiatives is greater and the appetite for risk is lower.  Mercy Corps’ new funding is coming vastly from institutional donors representing governments.  And since it takes private money to ensure that each government grant dollar is well-spent, we are even more squeezed on how we spend the precious “unrestricted” money from our private supporters and any internally-generated revenue sources.

From a personal standpoint, I decided that it was a good time to scale back to four days a week (to spend a day focused on my son who is on the autism spectrum) and take the corresponding 20 % pay cut as one way to achieve some of the budget cuts I owed our CFO.  It was a good theory, but the Social Innovations area of Mercy Corps is essentially a start-up, and working fewer total hours isn’t really an option if I want this organizational experiment to succeed.  So I have my Monday afternoons with my son, but am also working most nights into the Letterman hour (Nathan Lane is on tonight) and asking my teammates to wear two and three hats, while not losing any of their creative, intuitive juices.

As for the second -- and much more important --part of the money issue: how does money or lack thereof affect the ability to create meaningful and lasting change?

Seed money for pilot experiments…money for ongoing evaluation and learning...seed money for pilot experiments…money for ongoing evaluation and learning…seed money for…you get the idea. 

It is essential that private and public sector investors make this type of money available.  It is so frustrating to see the emphasis on proven, scalable solutions without a proportional willingness to risk failure.  Failure is a critical part of learning what will truly work, especially in the tougher places.  And, whether we are talking about Ethiopia or East Timor, paying for failure and the lessons that emerge from it is an essential part of the solution to getting us all beyond this immediate financial shock.

So much of our work has to do with creating a vision for a positive future, building hope and belief that things can get better, and engaging local communities to cooperate to bring those visions to reality.  I had come to the Skoll Forum directly from Israel and Jordan, and quite frankly depressed about a further hardening of idealogies and physical borders and a concurrent decrease in dialogue.

I leave Oxford and the Skoll Forum, however, with hope, and a deep respect for EcoPeace, Friends of the Earth Middle East.  EcoPeace brings together Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians to cooperate around environment issues that impact the region.  Against an extremely challenging background, they are cooperating on water issues - a potential flashpoint - and building relationships that just may help create the dialogue needed for peace.

My hat is off to you EcoPeace!! 

The Forum this year has been a non-stop stream of fascinating conversations.  Thanks to my colleague, David Lehr, we had the right number of meetings pre-set and still have had enough time for spontaneous sharing and brainstorming sessions with new people.  Every conversation begs for follow-up.  It is dizzying. 

It is also interesting being here and representing a mid-to-large, multi-sector development organization.  Wherever possible, we want to use a social innovations lens to amplify our global impact; the Skoll Forum enables us to bring new ideas to our local community partners, helping them to imagine the possible.  Here, we skim the surface of numerous and varied topics - those on specific countries where we have operations, those on innovations in the sectors where we drive programming (financial services, renewable energies, ICT for Dev, youth employment, health) and those ongoing threads about how to use philanthropic and commercial capital more creatively, efficiently and effectively in creating social and economic value.  Where and how to dive deep post-Forum will be the real challenge. 

Another consistent challenge for us is to perform the rapid mental exercise of translating the innovative, sophisticated enterprise and investment models -- happening in India, for example, of which there is a plethora -- into applications for people in fragile states.

Next year, I want to hear more from investors and entrepreneurs who have successfully proven an idea in a vibrant market context where financial, physical and communications infrastructure is adequate and who, then, are adapting those models for places where the hunger for innovation is enormous, but where the risks are daunting.  We can’t leave a billion people at the bottom of the world economic ladder behind.  We’ll need increased coordination between social investors, socially-minded venture capitalists, and traditional philanthropy and public sector donors.    

But for this year, we’ve gotten more than we came for.  A few of the things I've heard and am excited about:  shared mobile hardware that can be customized by an individual for his / her use in a instant; local asset mapping information technologies; hybrid biomass - diesel energy solutions; the way Soccer for Peace demonstrates progressive gender relations; credit bureau models linked to mobile banking; and using mobiles to not only deliver health education, but to track individuals' follow-up at a network of clinics.

Next stop is Bangkok, where Mercy Corps’ South / East Asia regional leadership is gathering.

I am in London on my way to the 2009 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.  It’s the perfect occasion for launching our blog on social innovations in fragile states.  This year’s Forum will center on shifting power dynamics, and leads off with the observation that:  Social entrepreneurs tend to operate where markets and governments – structures for allocating economic and political power – have failed. How applicable this is to my work with Mercy Corps, an international development organization headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland and Portland, Oregon.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind for our front-line teams.  Our work with 200,000 people in Darfur suddenly came to a halt when the Government of Sudan revoked our registration.  A cholera epidemic ramps up in Zimbabwe, a country where inflation has unofficially been measured in the billions percent.  And a rare window of opportunity opens in DR Congo, where we are scrambling to leverage rapid response programming to enable communities to secure long-term access to carbon credit markets.

Mercy Corps operates in an extraordinarily challenging combination of failed and fragile states:  North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, DR Congo, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Ethiopia -- to name a few.   In these places, we are confronted with the stark realities about the nature of power.  There’s the power of force, the power of ideology, the power of money, the power of fear.  Less visible from a distance -- but just as formidable -- is the power of persuasion, the power of understanding, the power of information, the power of wisdom.  After 30 years of direct experience in over 100 countries, we are banking on the latter.

The Mercy States blog will detail our efforts and thinking about how to innovate in fragile states, particularly with an eye towards scale.  (In stable states, we use a threshold for determining whether scale has been achieved, i.e. a proven concept is rolled out sufficiently to reach at least one million people within five years.  In fragile states, we believe that more experimentation and evaluation is needed to determine appropriate timeframes and thresholds for scale and financial sustainability.)  The blog will also feature intriguing examples from other implementers and investors; to this end, we hope that Social Edge readers will share their knowledge and discoveries as much as possible.

More soon from Oxford…