The IHF just launched its $20.09 Stimulus Campaign, an effort to stimulate sustainable development by investing where it matters most: at the grassroots in developing communities around the world. As the IHF team has talked over this campaign, we’ve gotten to thinking a lot about what makes $20.09 so much more than just a catchy idea. Everyone from Domino’s to your local car dealer has played on the stimulus theme, but the IHF $20.09 Campaign does more than just riff on a popular concept - it actually does some good in the world economy. As we move ahead with the campaign - and as you consider joining our facebook group, following us on Twitter, or donating - here are a few thoughts about what takes this effort beyond gimmicky to dynamic and life-changing.
1. Economists emphasize the importance of investment for long-term growth and economic prosperity. Investment, of course, can take a lot of forms. It can be, say, the purchase of a new machine at a factory - investment in physical capital. But at least as important is investment in human capital, the skills that people have at their disposal to use for the benefit (or detriment…I’m looking at you, Bernie Madoff) of the world around them.
You can think of it like this. All economic products are made up of “stuff” and “ideas” (or particular ways of using “stuff”). A table, for example, is made of wood (its “stuff”) cut and put together in such a way that you can put a fruit bowl on top without it falling off and sit around it comfortably (the “idea” of a chair). Since there is only so much “stuff” in the universe, economic growth depends on the production of new ideas that make possible more or better uses of stuff. Investing in physical capital is using an idea to turn stuff into desireable things. Investing in human capital is creating the conditions necessary for new ideas and new uses of things. In the long-run, all economic growth depends on the growth of human capital.
The IHF invests in human capital in our partner communities by supporting early childhood education in Mexico, helping young people earn secondary school diplomas in Guatemala, training Indian craftsmen to make health-enhancing ventilated cookstoves, and more. In the short-run, these investments benefit the people who receive them directly, but in the long-run, the skills that those people gain improve the lives of their entire communities and make an impact on the world as a whole. Where once it was impossible to build a ventilated cookstove, it now becomes possible. The people who live healthier lives because of that stove can now devote themselves more fully to improving the conditions in which they and their community live. The community as a whole can contribute new skills and ideas to the broader world. And…you see how it goes.
2. This all seems well and good, right? But, I can imagine someone asking, since this is a down time in our country, shouldn’t we keep as many resources here as we can? Now, I’m inclined to make the moral argument for why that’s not the case. And I hesitate to make the case for why it’s in the best interest of Americans to contribute money to projects for people in other countries, because I think we should do it regardless of whether it’s to our advantage. But with that caveat, let me briefly suggest why, in the end, it might work out better for all of us if those of us in more prosperous countries keep giving to projects like the IHF’s even when we’re down.
First, the long-run growth of economies in the Global South is important for the health of wealthier economies like America’s because the latter produce primarily complicated products and services that are relatively high-cost. If people in, say, Nicaragua can’t afford anything that the American economy has to offer, the US loses out on export possibilities. So, when developing economies grow, so do markets for American goods and services.
Second, improving living conditions in the Global South, like the IHF’s projects do, will speed up the adoption of environmentally friendly technologies and reduce many types of environmental degradation, such as deforestation for the collection of wood for heating and cooking, which removes carbon-cleaning trees and increases the risk of natural disasters like the 2005 mudslide in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala.
So, there you have my thoughts about why the IHF $20.09 Stimulus Campaign makes sense. I’d love to hear what you think. Do you have questions? doubts? other ideas? Stick them in the comments below.
The Brown IHF members who hosted an inaugural party at the SYJAC community center January 17, 2009 were essentially different from the group of students who walked dazedly through the Mexico City airport on January 5. Not only were we a bit more tanned (or sunburned in my case), but we had each learned a great deal about ourselves, the world, and the connections across the global community. While we all had prepared ourselves for this trip as best we could by reading up on the political, social, and historical situations in Chiapas, researching the cultural roots of the local Mayan community, and browsing through travel sites, there was no way we could have readied ourselves for the full impact this trip would have on our studies, our world views, and even our own personal identities and values.
On the trip we faced challenges and gained critical knowledge about the developing world and our own capabilities and limitations in driving change. The significance of our presence at SYJAC went much further than the tangible effects of a new paint job for their daycare center; rather, our impact was in the symbolism that our trip held for the local community. Our trip demonstrated that there is a larger world community invested in the welfare of the community SYJAC serves, and this global interest legitimizes and reinforces the work of the community center. While initially this role felt uncomfortable for our group, we grew to realize that the greatest asset we can offer to SYJAC and the local San Cristóbal community is through our identities as American university students. Furthermore, the significance of our interest in their situation is that we have the networks and resources to connect them to the solutions that they as a community need.
While we are still struggling to understand our own utility for the purposes of a community center and grappling with the role we should play as outsiders to a community organization, we have come to realize that our impact went much further than the sunny walls we painted and continues to have a lasting effect through our maintained connections with the people we met and friendships we made while working at SYJAC.
Secretary General Ban Ki Moon opens the UN’s 2008 report on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals with several cautionary notes. “The economic slowdown will diminish the incomes of the poor; the food crisis will raise the number of hungry people in the world and push millions more into poverty; climate change will have a disproportionate impact on the poor.” Secretary Ban goes on to attribute some of these threats to progress on a lack of concerted effort and attention by developed nations.
Some people say that development aid has a decreasing role to play in improving livelihoods. There is no question that development – economic and social – must be led from within communities, states and regions. But can we really expect developing nations to unwind the issues facing them in an intensely interconnected world without aligned efforts from developed countries?
Secretary Ban goes on to say that “the current troubled climate poses a risk that some advances in reducing poverty may unravel. Some gains, however, cannot be undone. A child will forever benefit from the primary education he or she might not otherwise have received. Many individuals are alive today thanks to a measles vaccination or antiretroviral therapy for AIDS. These and other examples provide ample evidence of what can and has been achieved with sound strategies backed by political will and financial and technical support.”
As we all weather this uncertain time, we can’t forget how poverty, or social and political instability increase exposure to an severe economic downturn. We also can’t forget some basic human facts. The ties that bind are between people, and then between communities.
In a time when we might want to turn inwards, and when a dollar is worth more than ever, organizations like the IHF are more important than ever. By deepening ties between communities, we are able to stretch donors’ dollars to very great lengths. And by building sustainable partnerships between communities abroad and students in the US, the IHF creates a groundwork for the ongoing support that developing communities and countries need. As Secretary Ban says, some changes can never be undone. This goes as much for a child in the developing world as for a student at a top US university.
When a few other members of Brown University and I started the IHF Brown chapter, we weren’t completely sure what we were getting ourselves into. What exactly was SYJAC and how did it affect the daily lives of its community members? What difference could we, a group of American students, do in the lives of the indigenous people of Chiapas, Mexico? Our winter break trip to San Cristobal de las Casas taught us all this, as we experienced firsthand and participated in the process of community building and international activism. Our main project while in San Cristobal was to paint the SYJAC community center, which was only being marginally used for a daycare center and was essentially a giant block of cement. The painting took about 7 days of full labor, and included numerous random tasks such as attempting to communicate in our stumbling Spanish with the paint shop workers, and helping the 3- to 5-year-old daycare members to slap their handprints all over the finished painted walls. It was exhausting work, but very satisfying to see the place brighten little by little. After a lot of sweat, perseverance, and paint smears, we completed the center and inaugurated it with a community party on our last weekend in Mexico. The party was a chance for us to connect our work to the people we were working for, and realize that just this simple act of painting a center would have lasting effects.Now that the center was painted, it would be used for a number of different local projects and fundraising efforts to provide sustainability and institutionalization for the community. Now that we are back in the US, we plan to keep in touch with SYJAC and the community’s progress. We will help in any way we can with local projects, and we are in the planning stages of beginning a letter exchange program with a local Chiapas youth group, in order to foster an interchange of cultural and societal ideals about our different societies and potential for positive change. Through these plans, we hope to keep the SYJAC spirit alive on Brown’s campus and continue to be promoters of social change.
The TED lecture linked below is fabulous. It has some of the better data visualization I have seen. And the story told by the data is narrated wonderfully by the speaker, statistician Hans Rosling.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Dr. Rosling’s story centers on two truths. First, his analysis demonstrates that the so-called ‘third world’ is anything but monolithic. Indeed, it is unrealistic to think of regions, or even of countries, possessing similar development characteristics. See Rosling’s demonstration of child mortality in South Africa, Uganda and Niger at about minute 14. This display really brings home that development is a community issue. Money quote – “the improvement of the world must be highly contextualized.”
The second truth that Dr. Rosling testifies is the importance of bringing this insight to students around the world. He states how excited his students become when faced with data that allow them to grapple with the enormous complexity of development in a focused, coherent manner.
These two truths connect deeply with the insight at the heart of the IHF’s mission – that communities must take the lead in their own development; and that immersion in community-led development, supported by leadership development and education, will produce the next generation of leaders for the development sector.
Here is a wonderful video on a spring break trip Haverford College students took as part of a class taught by Political Science Professor Anita Isaacs. Many of the trip’s participants are now part of the IHF Haverford chapter. Four years ago, I participated in a similar trip and months later founded the IHF Haverford chapter as a response. This video does an incredible job of explaining the complexities of Guatemalan society, its history, and how this class trip inspires young people to live in solidarity and work for change. Some images in the video might be disturbing.
Check it out: http://www.haverford.edu/multimedia/video/2008June/digging/
Check out this video on the IHF Dartmouth chapter’s work in Yambiro, Ecuador. Our partner, the Ali Shungu Foundation, was so pleased with the work the chapter did, the community showed up in impressive numbers for the projects, and the IHF couldn’t be more proud of their work!
http://www.alishungufoundation.com/New/dartmouth/index.html
We maintained our friendship with Natalia and Chonita over the years - always checking on how they were doing and making small talk whenever we made a site visit, but when we came back to Santiago in August of 2007 for a full year, we began to see much more of Natalia, Chonita, and Chonita’s little brother, Domingo. Each time, Natalia told me more about her situation, including the seriousness of her husband’s condition and the lack of support from her family and in-laws. She had heard about a rehab program which had been successful for some other notorious Santiago alcoholics, and she wanted to send her husband, Max to this program. I sat quietly, thinking about her roundabout request for a loan of Q1200 ($160) for the three months of rehab while I watched little Chonita and Domingo, clearly underfed, devour six bananas in one sitting. I then agreed to the request and told her that she didn’t have to pay me back; but of course, Natalia continued offering to do a variety of things on my behalf.
Three months later, Max returned to his family and I finally met him. He had noticeable symptoms of liver damage and lots of unexplained pain, but he was extremely grateful to everyone. He began attending Alcoholics Anonymous or his family’s church on a nightly basis and has since been actively working or searching for work and providing for his family. He is now almost eight months sober.
Through Natalia’s “volunteer” work, I realized that she had a special skill with a measuring tape and a good eye for textile quality. Apparently, Natalia had spent a few years working in a sweatshop in Guatemala City. So, when the IHF’s Just Apparel project was in need of a quality control manager, she was a perfect fit (and of course the project pays her a living wage and ensure a relaxed working environment!). She has been working as a leader with Just Apparel since April and her family is now making a consistent living wage. Chonita has started school, the family moved into a new house in the government funded Post Hurricane Stan reconstruction site (yes, they were victims of the 2005 mudslide as well), and Max is contributing to the family instead of taking from it.
While this is a story of one family, it is representative of the kinds of long-term relationships that stem from the long-term partnership model of the IHF. These relationships are not only valuable in and of themselves (for all parties involved); they also allow us to move beyond generalities and demographics into unique stories and respond to the specific needs of specific people. These small steps and individual stories each contribute to a larger process of empowerment and grassroots change.
We met Natalia in 2005 when the IHF was working primarily with children in Santiago Atitlan. Natalia was the mother of one of the youngest children we received in the after school program and one of the biggest pains in my neck. Chonita, then 2.5 years old, was always crying, screaming, and hitting the other children. Despite the fact that her older cousins were always there to help her, she was never pleased. Finally, I got the chance to speak with her mother, Natalia, one of the best female Spanish speakers in this predominantly Tzutujil speaking community (most women in the community don’t understand the national language of Spanish). Natalia told me that Chonita didn’t talk much yet, but when she did, she was always complaining about how much her tummy hurt. “Ok, why don’t we just take her over to the hospitalito and have her stool tested?” I said with a knowing tone. I myself had just tested positive for giardia, a common parasite in the area. “No,” Natalia said, “We just don’t have enough money.” I proceeded to convince her not to worry about it that the Hospitalito was sponsored by other foreigners and they would give her a significant discount. She was only persuaded when I promised to accompany her and Chonita to the hospital. While we were in the waiting room, Natalia explained why it was that didn’t have enough money — her husband was one of the town drunks and drug addicts and he stole from her every time she had a few quetzales — he even stole her clothes and sold them for money!
After the positive parasite diagnosis came back, the final cost of the test, consultation and medicine was Q12 (about $1.60). Natalia only had Q2 to her name (about $0.27), so I told her not to worry about it and paid the tab without thinking twice. I then made sure I explained thoroughly to Natalia how to avoid contracting parasites yet again.
The next day she brought me two frog keychains made out of beads. She told me that she had made them for me since she couldn’t pay me back in cash. Maybe, she argued, I could sell them in the United States for more and make some money. Over the next few weeks, Chonita quickly became my favorite among the kids. She was always laughing, playing, and giving out hugs.
The IHF has just released its Summer 2008 newsletter. Check it out.
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