In my opinion Micro-lending is the new face of philanthropy. Micro lending allows middle class people to participate in philanthropy, which is often times reserved for the upper class who have enough expendable money to donate large amounts of money or create their own foundations. One organization that has really interesting lending model is Kiva, which allows people to donate to small businesses in Africa and Latin America through an online, facebook paypall like profile. Most loans go to women and range from 100-10,000 dollars with no collateral. It has been very successful so far. Kiva has expanded to 11 countries and given thousands of dollars in loans to small businesses. What is so unique about Kiva is that the lender can go online and view the profile of the business it wants to donate to. Below is a frontline video that shows a man from San Francisco who donates to Graces Peanut Butter in Uganda. It is a really inspiring story and I think it is possible for social entrepreneurship organizations like Kiva and Grameen Bank to replace the need for foreign aid and alleviate poverty through small loans. I think it is a way to take the selfish aspect out of free market attempts to correct global poverty. I also thought that this topic connected to the aid vs. trade video on blackboard.
When I think of the World Bank, I immediately think of this documentary I saw called, “Yes Men.” It is a movie about two guys who made a website that look like organizations that they don’t like and show up to conferences as fake representatives for these organizations they call it, “identity correction.” They try to tell the truth and expose the lies of entities they dislike while impersonating them. It is hard to explain, but here is a video of them impersonating the World Trade Organization. In this case they go to a university to discuss the “WTO’S” new plan to partner with McDonalds and serve people in third world countries burgers made of poop. The video is really funny and I think it gives a good example of why the WTO and organizations like it, (World Bank), maybe are not so effective at foreign aid.
The Yes Men’s satire of foreign trade to me had a real connection to what William Easterly had to say about the World Bank. It seems like people just go in and imposes capitalistic ideals on little villages in unindustrialized countries and expects the money to change the world. To effect change you have to dig deeper than economic principle and the incentive to make money and this is why it doesn’t make much sense for these economically driven massive organizations to be helping the poor, when they have no real idea of what it means to be poor. I think that organizations like Kiva are much more effective abroad. Many Kiva lenders keep close contact with the business, in the video we see the lender emailing graces peanut butter to ask how things are going. This provides a sense of accountability that goes beyond collateral and perhaps this is what is necessary to effect change in a small village where money is less culturally central. This also means that if business owners are having issues that they can communicate it to the lender who may be able to offer them help, it is a community like lending model which in my opinion is much more successful in small villages where people have a much better understanding of community than they do economic principles. I think that if we are going to reach the “Millennium Goals” we are going to have to rely much more on social entrepreneurs than large foreign aid organizations, because these organizations lack the personal connection that effects long term economic change.
I think that Mercy Corps is a very interesting organization, until looking at their website I thought that they only worked in the United States. Both of my boyfriend’s parents were in the Peace Corps and they both had amazing experiences and made life long connections with the people in the villages where they worked. I like that organizations like Mercy Corps, send people abroad for years and not just a few weeks, I think that having people commit to staying somewhere and helping for two years makes the person really connected to the cause and really want to see it succeed. These kinds of personal connections are so important to global aid and are what large lending organizations lack. The Chapter on Philanthropy was interesting; it made me realize what mass amounts of money go towards the non-profit sector each year and I am surprised that with so much money we have not figured out a way to fix the world. But reading everyones blog this term has made me much more hopeful for the future, everyone had some really wonderful ideas and I look forward to watching them develop into change.
Great blog this week. I really enjoyed the "Yes Men" video you posted. Although, I did have a hard time sitting through the whole "piping" process. I think its funny sometimes companies come up with these crazy plan that completely undermine the populations they are trying to "help". I'm sure none of which are to the extent of the video you posted without actually trying to hurt someone, but I think ignorance if a big part of the failures of these plans. You make some great points on how a lack of community involvement makes it nearly impossible to make lasting change in a community. I am helping with a community project in the Whiteaker right now and every step of the process we remind ourselves to think of the wishes of the community and how they would feel about whatever action we take before going forth with it. I think community involvement is central to seeing life long change that goes deeper than economic change, like you stayed as well.
ReplyDeleteGreat videos! The "Yes Men" video was very entertaining. It's a good thing that you mentioned people going into countries and imposing their ideas there and then calling it help. I know that when I think about international aid this idea is not the first one to come to mind. But the more I think about it I feel that organizations need to be very careful about where they go and what they hope to achieve while still respecting the culture and ways of the local people. Matt talked about this yesterday in class. In South Africa sex is very taboo but it is leading to many problems plaguing the area such as H.I.V. so they need to really think about how they are going to address it while still being respectful. I think if the people are treated with respect and really listened to an organization can be so much more successful as opposed to people forcing their ideas on others.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you brought up micro-lending, we talk a lot about it in my intl classes as a new form to promote economical growth in the periphery. The Grameen Bank is another example of an actual bank in Bangladesh that gives out small loans to local people, usually women. I think this is a great idea to promote not only women within these communities but it also makes these families able to support themselves and not be so dependent. Compared to the aid given out by big groups like the World Bank where a in one of the videos it said a lot of the aid is lost along the way to the recipients, micro-loans give the money directly to the recipients.
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