Technology and Global Development
15-502
Instructors:
M. Bernardine Dias and Yonina Cooper
TA: Aysha Siddique
Spring 2009
Lecture 14
Historical, Legal, and
Political Context
Outline
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Logistics
Video
Reading
Historical, Legal, and
Political Context
Assignments for
next week
Logistics
• No class on Thursday
• Group assessment forms are due on
Thursday by midnight for Campaign
Assignment
• You should be starting on your final
project for this course
– We recommends setting up weekly
meetings for the group
– Keep us updated
• Questions/comments?
Video
Bill Clinton
“ Let's build a health care system in Rwanda”
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“We live in a world which is interdependent but
insufficient.” What did he mean? What three areas
were explicitly enumerated?
What does Bill see as a far bigger problem in poor
countries than corruption? Why?
What kind of health care system does he want to build
in Rwanda?
Whose model did he use in implementing health care
in Rwanda? Why?
How long does he say it will be before these systems
are sustainable without foreign aid? Why?
Reading
Jeffrey D. Sachs
“The End of Poverty”
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What is the method that Jeffrey says we need to adopt in
order to end poverty by the year 2025?
What are some of the misconceptions about the
causes of poverty?
How does Jeffrey characterize those in “extreme poverty”?
What are the five development interventions advocated
by Jeffrey?
Do you agree with the myths about poverty presented?
Why? Why not?
Do you think his steps will accomplish the end of poverty?
Why? Why not?
Political Context
NGOs – what are they?
• No single accepted definition, but…
• Generally, a private body that is independent of government
control and not seeking to challenge government for political
control as a political party
• Address issues in the interest of the “public good” (as defined
by group)
• Non-profit, non-criminal, and non-violent (according to
UN standards)
• They rely on a mix of donations and grants (both private and
public), volunteer labor, money-generating activities
• NGOs are not just liberal or leftist organizations; many
represent conservative and right-wing interests too!
NGOs – what do they do?
• Advocate particular political, social, or economic positions
• Lobby governments at the local, regional, national, and
international level
• Provide consultative services at the local, national, or
international level (e.g. the UN)
• Provide crucial social services either in cooperation with, or in
place of, the state
• Engage in economic development, education, and capacity
building at the local, regional, national, or international levels
• Provide emergency assistance at the local, regional, national,
and international level
• Engage in “self help”
NGOs and “grassroots”
• Almost all NGOs claim to be “grassroots” organizations at
some level, meaning that their direction and ideology are
determined from the bottom up rather than imposed from the
top down
• The extent to which NGOs are made up of ordinary people
varies tremendously
• Sometimes the groups that are most connected with ordinary
people are created by outsiders
• One can’t assume anything about NGOs in this respect—when
you work with them or donate to them, you have to take the
time to find out for yourself what the power structure is like…
The Value of NGOs
• Mobilization and organization of ordinary people to demand
political change
• Counterweight to the impersonal forces of govt. bureaucracy
and globalization → local ownership and interest
• Increasingly a source of ideas and claims about how the world
ought to be
• Creation of a global “human rights” culture, thanks to NGOs
at all levels, from HRW and AI to the tiny organizations that
collect information about violations on a shoestring budget
• Provide services that the govermnet cannot or will not provide
NGO-Govt Partnerships
• Some of the most innovative development work is
taking place at the intersection of NGO-government
cooperation
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NGOs supplement services provided by government
(e.g., health care or health information), stretching the
money that each spends
Governments can act as customers/consumers for
NGO initiated activities
Governments and NGOs can each tackle different
aspects of a particular problem (e.g., environmental
degradation or conservation work)
NGO Criticisms
• Performing vital services that ought to be done by government
• Lack of accountability and transparency (i.e., they are not
subject to the same kinds of checks and balances as the state)
• Some big NGOs have massive budgets and/or high
administrative costs
• Tend to focus on one issue too narrowly or suffer from
“mission creep”
• NGOs are often consulted as a substitute for true democratic
engagement, especially at the transnational level
• Big international NGOs suck resources and glory from smaller
local NGOs, creating a new kind of dependence
Importance of NGOs
• Whatever their faults, it is generally beneficial to
partner with NGOs when you’re doing development
work in communities that are not your own
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They have established ties with the local community
They (hopefully) know the culture and business practices
They sometimes have a sense of what projects have been
done in the past and what has made them failures,
successes, or something in between
Some Resources on NGOs
• Generally see the partner list at OneWorld.net for a
nice list of development-oriented NGOs:
http://us.oneworld.net/section/us/partners
• Directory of Development organizations:
http://www.devdir.org/index.html
(seems to give a fairly complete listing of major NGOs
working in a particular country or region)
• Peace Corps NGO Training Manual:
http://www.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/library/M0070_all.pdf
• INTRAC (International NGO Training and
Research Centre):
http://www.intrac.org/
International Global Development – Guest Lecture
New “Movements” to Affect Social Change
What Are They and Why Should We Care?
November 2, 2006
Professor Tim Zak
Co-Director, Institute for Social Innovation
Carnegie-Mellon University
Heinz School of Public Policy and Management
New Movements
Session Objectives
1•
Understand what social entrepreneurship is and provide some
examples of how it is changing society
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Provide some thoughts on the future of social entrepreneurship
What is an Entrepreneur?
“The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower
and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”
— Jean Bapiste Say, early 19th century French economist
“Entrepreneurs … reform or revolutionize patterns of production.”
— Joseph Schumpeter, early 20th century economist
“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and
exploits it as an opportunity.”
— Peter Drucker, 20th century business management guru
“Entrepreneurial management [is] the pursuit of opportunity without
regard to resources currently controlled.”
— Howard Stevenson, Harvard B-School
Source: Enterprising Nonprofits (Chapter 1)
What is a Social Entrepreneur?
1. Adopting a mission to create and sustain social (not just
private) value
2. Recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to
serve that mission
3. Engaging in a process of continuous innovation, adaptation,
and learning
4. Acting boldly without being limited to resources currently
in hand
5. Exhibiting a heightened sense of accountability to the
constituencies served and for the outcomes created
Source: Greg Dees (Harvard Business Review)
What is a Social Enterprise?
“An organization or venture that advances its
social mission through entrepreneurial,
earned income strategies.”
— Social Enterprise Alliance (draft definition)
Need for Social Sector
Something For Everybody
Nonprofits deliver many of the fundamental services provided in the
U.S. including …
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1/2 nation’s hospitals, 1/3 of the health clinics, 1/4 of the nursing homes
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80% of individual and family service agencies and 30% of daycare centers
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70% of vocational rehabilitation facilities
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90% of orchestras and operas
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Delivery vehicles for 70% of foreign disaster assistance
Source: The State of Nonprofit America (Salamon)
Need for Social Sector
A Few Facts to Consider
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Conservative estimates put the total number of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations at
1.3 million, including 700K public charities and 400K religious organizations
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As of 1998, these organizations employed close to 11 million paid workers, or over
7% of the U.S. workforce, and enlisted the equivalent of another 5.7 million full-time
employees as volunteers
Paid employment alone in nonprofit organizations is three times that in
agriculture, nearly 50% greater than that in both construction and finance,
insurance, and real estate
With volunteer labor included, employment in the nonprofit sector, at 16.6
million, approaches that in all branches of manufacturing combined (20.5 million)
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Between 1977 and 1997, revenues of America’s nonprofit organizations increased
144% after adjusting for inflation, nearly 2x the 81% growth rate of the economy
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During that same period, the number of nonprofits registered with the IRS increased
115%; by comparison, the number of businesses increased only 76%.
Source: The State of Nonprofit America (Salamon)
Need for Social Sector
Big Sector, Tiny Institutions
Few nonprofits have the time to hone their strategy or improve their
effectiveness, nor do they have the incentive or the ability to grow, …
Of the nearly 670,000 501(c)(3)
organizations in 1998, only about 1/3 filed
the IRS form required by all organizations
with expenditures of $25,000 or more
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Even among filers, the top 4%
accounted for nearly 70% of the
reported expenditures while …
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The bottom 40%, with expenditures of
less than $100,000 each, accounted
for less than 1% of the total
… which results in a sector dominated by tiny institutions.
Source: Not-For-Profit Management (McKinsey Quarterly), The State of Nonprofit America (Salamon)
Social Change Movements
On the Brink of an “Epidemic”?
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The Law of the Few (“critical factor in epidemics is nature of messenger”)
Connectors: have an extraordinary knack of making friends and
acquaintances
Mavens: information brokers, sharing and trading what they know, motivated
to educate and help
Salesmen: persuade when others are unconvinced of what they are hearing
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The Stickiness Factor
“In epidemics, the messenger matters:
messengers are what make
something spread. But the content of the message matters too.”
“In order to be capable of sparking epidemics, ideas have to be memorable
and move us to action.”
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The Power of Context
“Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times
and places in which they occur.”
Source: The Tipping Point (Gladwell)
www.siconversations.org/
series/globeshakers.html
www.heinz.cmu.edu/
socialinnovation
Other References
• 15502 lecture slides from 2006 and 2007 –
jointly prepared by Rahul Tongia, Joe
Mertz, Jay Aronson, and Bernardine Dias
• Most images are from TechBridgeWorld
(www.techbridgeworld.org)
What Next?
• No class on Thursday
• Next Tuesday – Historical and Legal Context plus Case Study
Analysis I
• Next Thursday – Case Study Analysis II
• Final HW assignment will be handed out on Tuesday
• Assignments:
– Due Thursday
• Campaign Assignment (including group assessment form)
– Due Next Tuesday
• Read
http://tier.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/ict4d06/speech_recognition_illiteratemp.pdf
– Due Next Thursday
• Read
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~parikh/papers/chi1104-bderenzi.pdf
– Please read these articles carefully and come to class prepared to critically
analyze each case study