To make it on this list a statistic must be from a trusted primary source with a clear “as of” date or a reputable secondary source that clearly lists its primary sources. All statistics are sourced and cited at the bottom of the page. Please add a comment if you find additional good sources.

1. Between 2000 and 2008, including supplemental war spending, U.S. military spending increased from 387 billion to 710 billion, an 83% increase. (1)
2. In 2007, world military expenditure reached $1.339 trillion (2)
3. In 2007, the USA’s military spending accounted for 45 per cent of the world total, followed by the UK, China, France and Japan. (2)
4. In 2007, the 15 countries with the highest military spending account for 83 per cent of the total (2)
5. Between 2001 and 2007 US military expenditure has increased by 59 per cent in real terms, principally because of spending on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and due to increases in the ‘base’ defense budget. (2)
6. Global Military spending increased 45% between 1998 and 2007 (2)
7. In 2007, the United Nations and all its agencies and funds spent $24.9 billion, or about $4 for each of the world’s inhabitants (2)
8. In 2007, the UN’s budget was 1.86% of the world’s military expenditure (2, 3)
9. In 2008, world military expenditure reached 1.472 trillion (4)
10. In 2008, U.S. military spending was $711 billion, 48.28% of the global total, followed by China with 8.28%, Russia with 4.75%, and the UK with 3.76% (4)
11. In 2008, the combined military spending of the second through eighth largest military spenders (China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, and Italy) was $300.2 million less than the military spending of the first largest military spender, the United States (4)
12. In 2008, US military spending was more than the next 46 highest spending countries in the world combined. (4)
13. in 2008, US military spending was 5.8 times more than China, 10.2 times more than Russia, and 98.6 times more than Iran. (4)
14. In 2008, US military spending is almost 55 times the spending on the six states of Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria whose spending amounts to around $13 billion. (4)
15. In 2008, the United States and its strongest allies (the NATO countries, Japan, South Korea and Australia) spend $1.1 trillion on their militaries combined, representing 72 percent of the world’s total. (4)
16. In 2009, the U.S. Military base budget was $515.4 billion in 2009 plus 135.8 billion in emergency and discretionary spending for a total of $651.2 billion. (5)
17. In 2006, including all military-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense, the United States spent $934 billion on its military in 2006 (6)
18. In 2007, one day of spending of the U.S. Pentagon ($1.6 billion) would equal enough funds to ensure antimalarial bed net protection for every sleeping site in Africa for five years (300 million bed nets at $5 each). (7)
19. In 2007, the United States spent $572 billion on its military, $11 billion on international security, $14 billion on development and humanitarian aid, and $11 billion for diplomatic functions. (8)
20. In 2009, the United States spent $710 billion in military spending (4), $18.8 billion in total bilateral economic assistance via USAID (9), and $5.2 billion in development aid to Africa (10)
21. Military expenditure comprised approximately 2.4 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2008. (13)
22. The combined arms sales of the Top 100 arms-producing companies reached $347 billion, an increase of 11 per cent in nominal terms and 5 per cent in real terms over 2006. (14)
23. Between 2002 and 2007 the value of the Top 100 arms sales has increased by 37 per cent in real terms. (14)
24. Forty-four US companies accounted for 61 per cent of the Top 100’s arms sales in 2007, while 32 West European companies accounted for 31 per cent of the sales. (14)
25. The estimated financial value of the international arms trade in 2007 was $51.1 billion. According to national data, the USA was the largest arms exporter in 2007, with exports worth $12.8 billion; Russia was in second place, with $7.4 billion; France was in third place, with $6.2 billion; Israel was in fourth place, with $4.4 billion; and the UK was in fifth place, with $4.1 billion. (15)

Additional Facts on Global Armed Conflicts & Arms Trade

1. In 2008, 16 major armed conflicts were active in 15 locations around the world, 2 more than in 2007 (11)
2. In 2008, as in 2007, 60 multilateral peace operations were conducted. A record 187,586 personnel were deployed, an 11 per cent increase over 2007. Of these, 166,146 were military and 21,440 civilian, including police. (12)
3. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan continued to be the largest peace operation, with 51,356 troops, an increase of around 9600 over the 2007 figure. MONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and UNAMID in Darfur, Sudan, were the second and third largest missions. (12)
4. In January 2009, eight states possessed a total of more than 23,300 nuclear weapons (16)
5. There were 27 mandatory multilateral arms embargoes in force in 2008, directed at a total of 15 targets. Twelve of the embargoes were imposed by the United Nations and 15 by the European Union. (17)

Facts in Graphs:

Source: U.S. Military Spending vs. the World, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Image source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2009 Year Book, Appendix 2A

Image source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2009 Year Book, Appendix 6A

Image source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2009 Year Book, Appendix 6A

Image source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2009 Year Book, Appendix 6B

Image source: Nuclear Warheads by Country, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2009 Year Book, Chapter 8

Image source: Nuclear Warheads by Country, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s 2009 Year Book, Appendix 12A

To make it on this list a statistic must be from a trusted primary source with a clear “as of” date. All statistics are sourced and cited at the bottom of the page.

1. As of 2008, 79.8% of humanity lives on less than $10 per day. (5.15 billon people) (1)
2. As of 2008, 48.6% of humanity lives on less than $2.50 per day. (3.14 billion people) (1)
3. As of 2008, 40.2% of humanity lives on less than $2 per day. (2.60 billion people) (1)
4. As of 2008, 21.7% of humanity lives on less than $1.25 per day (1.40 billion people) (1)
5. As of 2008, 13.6% of humanity lives on less than $1 per day. (880 million people) (1)
6. As of 2008, the world’s richest 20% consume 76.6% of private consumption (1)
7. As of 2008, the world’s richest 10% consume 59.9% of private consumption (1)
8. As of 2009, 24,956 children under 5 years old die on average each day in developing countires (2)
9. As of 2006, access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%. (3)
10. As of 2007, every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide. (4)
11. As of 2007, 1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity (5)
12. As of 2007, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined. (6, 7,
13. As of 2009, the poverty line in the USA for a single individual is drawn at $10,830 per annum or $29.67 per day. (9)
14. As of 2006, 10.6 million children die every year from causes that are easily preventable – equal to 29,000 children every day (10)
15. As of 2006, half of these deaths 29,000 daily deaths of children occur in just six countries – China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan (10)
16. As of 2006, 2 million children die every year from pneumonia and other acute respiratory infections, making it the leading cause of death of children under five years of age (11)
17. As of 2006, 1.6 million children die every year from Diarrhoeal disease, primarily from the resulting severe dehydration that can quickly result in the failure of vital organs in young children (11)
18. As of 2006, 1.1 million children die every year in Africa from malaria, making it the largest cause of death for children under five in Africa. (11)
19. As of 2006, 657,000 children under the age of 15 are infected with HIV every day, most through transmission of the virus from mother to baby during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding (11)
20. As of 2006, 500,000 children die every year from measles. (11)
21. As of 2008, on the whole, people are healthier, wealthier, and live longer today than 30 years ago. If children were still dying at 1978 rates, there would have been 16.2 million dealths of children globally in 2006. In fact there were only 9.5 million such deaths. This difference of 6.7 million deaths is equivalent to 18,329 children’s lives being saved every day. (12)
22. As of 2007, each year, more than 500,000 women die from treatable or preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. (13)
23. As of 2007, in sub-Saharan Africa, a woman’s risk of dying from complications from childbirth over the course of her lifetime is 1 in 16, compared to 1 in 3,800 in the developed world. (13)
24. As of 2005, an estimated 15.2 million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS (14)
25. In 2008, net disbursements of official development assistance (ODA) reached $119.8 billion. That is equivalent to 0.3 per cent of developed countries’ combined national income. (15)

Global Poverty Facts in Graphs

Source: UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p. 51

Source: UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p. 52

Sources:

1. World Development Indicators 2008, World Bank, August 2008
2. UNICEF State of the World’s Children, 2009, From p. 121, Statistical Tables, Table 1 Basic Indicators, Summary Indicators, Developing Countries “Annual Number of Under 5 Deaths (Thousands), 2007 – 9109″ We arrived at 24,956 deaths of children under 5 per day by taking the 9,109,000 total deaths per year for children under 5 in developing countries and dividing by 365.
3. 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, pp.6, 7, 35
4. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25.
5. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, p.44
6. World Bank Key Development Data & Statistics, World Bank
7. Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass, The World’s Richest People, Forbes
8. World Bank’s list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (41 countries)
9. www.hhs.gov“. The 2009 HHS Poverty Guidelines. http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/09poverty.shtml.
10. UNICEF Canada 50 Year Progress Report 2006, Overview Sheet
11. UNICEF Canada 50 Year Progress Report 2006
12. World Health Organization, World Health Report 2008, p. 14
13. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, p.16
14. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, p.20
15. UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, p. 48

Special Thanks:

Thank you to the site GlobalIssues.org for their work in collecting verifiable facts and statistics on major global issues. Their page “Poverty Facts & Stats” was of great help in compiling these statistics. Thank you also to the World Bank, UNICEF, UNICEF Cananda, and UNDP for vital reports neccessary for the compilation of these statistics. The United Nations report “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009” was also particularly helpful.

WOMEDA in Karagwe, Tanzania

I have just returned from visiting Tanzania. I was there from July 5th through July 12th. On this, my second trip to Karagwe, Tanzania, I had only one week to learn as much as I possibly could about local conflict – the reasons behind it, who was often involved, and possible solutions.

Thanks mostly to Juma Masisi, Director of WOMEDA (the Women’s Emancipation and Development Agency), I managed to talk with over thirty women, all of whom shared their amazing stories with me. The women’s experiences all demonstrated the seemingly archaic gender gap that remains not only in the town of Karagwe, but in many villages across the globe.

So I began my work to speak with these women connected to WOMEDA in this small rural village in Tanzania.

In front of a clay brick house, kneeling on mats woven by the calloused hands of the women sitting opposite me, I began with my own story of how my rights had been violated when I was 17 years old.

I had hopes that being open and candid with the women would bridge some of the cultural gaps and language barriers that I thought could prevent the comfort that fosters honesty. With repetitive “Poles” (which means sorry in Swahili) as Juma translated, the women grew more serious. After I explained my experiences and how they influenced my interest in gender inequality, I asked them if they would share their stories with me. One by one, the women elaborated on their struggles.

The Women’s Stories

Zainabu, 28, has a family of eight children, three wives and one husband. When she married her husband, she had no idea that he would eventually take two other wives, and that one of those wives would live with them in the house that she built. “I thought he would at least ask me, or even tell me, but it was very abrupt,” she said. She explained expressionlessly that she still loves him, but would have never married him had she known that this was his intention.

She finds it painful and difficult to share her husband and no longer wishes to have sex with him. But if she refuses, she faces a high risk of being beaten or kicked out of her house. And she fears leaving him because her husband will keep her children, who are a source of labor and potential income (especially female children because of the dowry system still in place). Looking down at her clasped hands, she said that she could never bear to leave her children.

What she did not know is that under Tanzanian law, children younger than seven are usually left in the mother’s custody, and children older than seven are given the right to make the decision themselves. Because of the lack of information and awareness of these laws, Zainabu thought that she had no other options. For her, it was either deal with it or leave her children. She also has the right to legally object to the second wife staying in her house and could take action to secure her property rights. She made eye contact with Juma as he explained, and inquired further of how she could do this.

Zainabu is but one example of a woman who feels badly about her relationship and the way she is treated, but who does not know that there are legal institutions that can emancipate her from these human rights violations.

The cognitive dissonance created by the feeling that what’s happening to her is wrong and believing that she has no other options creates an internal conflict with which she continuously struggles.

But herein arises another obstacle: in order to take legal action, you have to first get to the court. And you have to have enough funds to carry on with the proceedings.

Take, for instance, the case of a young woman who was raped in the village of Kjungangoma, Tanzania. It is about 30 kilometers from the nearest court.

This woman moved to Bukoba (bordering Lake Victoria) for her own safety. An elder woman in the village decided to seek justice and attempted to continue with legal proceedings. Transportation to town and back by taxi costs about 5,000 Tanzanian shillings, or about $2.00 USD. So the elderhad to walk the 30 kilometers to the court.

The Tanzanian government is supposed to pay these transportation expenses, as well as lawyer fees and court costs. Unfortunately, by the time paperwork is shuffled around, reimbursement is often pushed aside. So, unless a Tanzanian can afford the upfront costs of taking a case to court, both in time and money, he or she is still left without the proper means to seek justice.

This issue now leads me to the story of Methodia, a woman who was born at the time of World War I (she is about 90 years old now). When her only son passed away, she took in his many children. Later, her grandsons soon chased her out of her own house to take over her farm. She went to the magistrate to file a legal complaint, but her grandchildren had already bribed him. He told her there was nothing he could do.

Methodia now lives with her granddaughter, although this is culturally considered shameful. She wants to continue fighting for what is rightfully hers, but fears that if she reclaims the house, her grandsons will kill her in just a matter of months. In broken Swahili while looking down at her feet, she quietly said, “I may be old, but I still matter.”

This issue of corruption runs rampant in many developing countries, but especially in places where the legal system is not closely monitored. Marginalized women seeking their legal rights face an enormous risk of being stopped in their tracks by this very obstacle. The legal process cannot work in places wheremoney becomes more important than justice because basic human needs are not met

Abusing women’s property rights has been a major issue in many of the cases I heard. There is Gertrude, whose husband sold their profitable farm and house to be with another woman, leaving her with literally nothing. And there is Benidette, whose husband left her and took the doors, windows and tin roofing with him. Or how about Zamda, Pascazia and Zainabu who are forced to live with their husbands’ other wives in the homes that they built.

If property rights can be restored and protected, marginalized people will have a sense of ownership and space to better build their economic opportunities. The importance of property rights in terms of conflict resolution and development cannot be stressed enough.

I wanted to get to more sensitive topics with these women. I felt uneasy at first. I knew I had to just dive in and hope that they would share their very private lives with me.

One of the most powerful and insightful moments during my trip happened at the end of a discussion with 25 women. I asked them, “How many of you have sex with your husband?” As Juma translated, the women were obviously caught off guard. I asked again. This time, seven women raised their hands.

“How many of you don’t have sex?” – Only three hands raised, with a little laughter in the background.

“How many of you want and enjoy having sex?”

Silence fell upon that room, the only sound coming from the tarp that covered it. All the women were quiet, and every hand was down.

The explanations that followed told of husbands coming home drunk and abruptly climbing on top of their wives, forcing them to have sex. Another explained that she felt badly to share her husband with one, two and even three other wives–or any number of unidentified mistresses for that matter. Marital rape was obviously present. Women feared that if they tried to stop their husbands, they would be kicked out or beaten.

The Youth’s Stories

I looked to the youth next, hoping for a new informed generation that could show a ray of hope for the future of human rights. I spoke with two groups of secondary school students, ranging in age from 15-22 years. At Ruminyika Secondary, about fifty students began talking with me, and after some time of asking clichéd, obvious questions, they began to reveal their own curiosities. Their questions were inquisitive, touched with a brutal honesty that only increased my respect and appreciation for them.

Adina & Juma from Womeda

The discussion was intense as we talked about everything from birth control pills to female genital mutilation to relationship advice. I turned the conversation toward gender roles and asked if the boys ever hit their girlfriends. The boys all laughed and gave each other high fives. A spokesman for the boys explained that it was a common practice to “show her that you love her,” especially if she shows interest in another man. “You have to keep your girl, so you hit her,” the boy said. The girls remained silent, which made understanding their emotions difficult. I could only sit in awe of what I was hearing from such young boys. It was a reminder that children imitate their surroundings, and that many of these teenagers were preparing to lead the same life as previous generations, breeding more of the same gender inequalities. At that moment, I felt helpless–that there was nothing I could do.
Juma and I explained to the group that under Tanzanian law, it is illegal to physically harm someone. Then, a boy shared a disturbing story of rape. He told of his experience of “almost rape” – stopped only by an unexpected car horn that gave the girl time to get away. “I know it is illegal, but I wanted to do it for the sake of doing it. I wanted to accomplish my mission,” he said, almost proudly. Laughter roared from the crowd of about 100 students accompanied by my complete and utter bewilderment. Can universal human rights actually exist in a world of such cycles of violence?

The Future Potential

In the midst of these horrifying abuses of human rights that taint the youth, I found cases that reaffirmed my hope for inherent justice for the equality of all human lives. Take the example of Julianna. After her husband died in 1989 she started her own business, put all four of her children through school and now has her own house and small farm. She has no doubt faced many hardships. She is still not able to access all the opportunities she deserves, but proudly she stated, “No one can mess with my rights now.”

And then there is Godsen, who after my discussion at a secondary school, stood up in front of his classmates and sang a poem he had written about eliminating HIV and AIDS. When his classmates stood up and threw their hands in the air filling the half-finished hall with praising cheer, I remembered that these inequalities in basic human rights are not inevitable. These inequalities have been created by man and can be eliminated by man. Progress is no doubt being made, but much more change is needed.

As Juma and I drove away from the secondary schools on my last day in Karagwe, I noticed a beautiful river at the bottom of a lush valley, overshadowed only by steep hills. I commented to Juma how breathtaking the scenery was, to which he replied, “That is the river that borders Rwanda. In 1994, thousands of Rwandan bodies floated down that river.”

And so, in a new age of globalization, a society teeters between vestiges of past ideals and practices and the crest of social and economic development. Karagwe is filled with amazing people doing amazing things and the amount of opportunity to innovate in the face of crisis seems unlimited. At the same time, the information and social gender gap in this region breeds local conflicts that can, if no action is taken, quickly escalate to a national and even international scale. We must bridge that bloody river, for it is much too easy and foreseeable to resort to violence if economic development, access to information and legal resources are not invested in. We cannot afford to forget that above all, we are one human race, and when working together toward a shared goal, our capabilities are immeasurable.

What Drew Us In

We went to learn. We went to visit some of the non-profits The Humanity Campaign has worked with in the past and those we are considering supporting in the future. We came back changed permanently having seen the juxtaposition of the beautiful rising Africa against the constant suffering of unlistened to and forgotten millions of people just like you and I. In the developing world, 2.6 billion people live under $2 per day (PPP adjusted) according to the World Bank and 49,300 people die each and every day needlessly from preventable disease and starvation according to the WHO.

Some of The Stories That Sear Themselves Into Your Memory

For just a second, imagine 139 girls from your local elementary school have been kidnapped by an armed rebel group and taken to a jungle 400 miles away. One hundred and nine of them are negotiated to be returned but 30 of them stay and are raped, abused, and are forced to be sex slaves for as long as thirteen years. Six of these thirty girls are killed attempting to escape. Imagine hiding in a snake-infested ceiling drop at your high school to avoid being kidnapped by the LRA. Imagine being 17 and living in a slum in Africa with over 1 million residents. Both your parents died of AIDS, then your grandfather was killed, then your pastor who took you in abused you. Now you’re on your own, struggling everyday to survive. These are just some of the life altering stories I’ve heard over the last twelve days.

Day By Day, What We Did

Bob Phoenix, Jess Shorland, and I left the iContact parking lot at 4:30pm on Wednesday June 24. We drove over to Raleigh-Durham International Airport for our flight to London. We arrived in Heathrow Airport on Thursday morning, took the Heathrow Express to Paddington, took the Underground to Waterloo, and were on the London Eye by 10:30am in good tourist form. In our twelve hour layover in London we rode the Eye, took photos on the lions at Trafalgar Square, ate Bangers and Mash at The Clarence, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham, and visited the London office of Credit Suisse in Canary Wharf to visit some of Bob’s co-workers.

We departed from Heathrow that Thursday night and arrived the next morning in Nairobi. After filling out our Kenya arrival cards and swine flu papers, we made it through immigration in about an hour. Three $25 Kenyan Visas later, we picked up our luggage at baggage claim and excitedly met Mary Muhara from Africa Rising at international arrivals. We had checked into the Bush House and Camp in the South C district, which had a reasonable rate of 4600 Kenyan Shillings for a double room with an en suite bathroom (and hot showers). We left our bags and proceeded with Mary to begin what we we really there for–to visit the non-profits we were working with and learn as much as we could about extreme poverty, hunger, basic healthcare, and conflict resolution.

We visited Nairobi, Kampala, Lira, Gulu, and Mityana over the twelve days. We were there to visit the organizations that The Humanity Campaign has contributed to in the past and to scope out new organizations to invest in the the future. We were also there to learn–to venture another foot into the water of exploring what it will actually take to end extreme poverty and hunger in our lifetime. Jess’ focus was to learn about conflict resolution.

During the trip we visited nineteen social entrepreneurial organizations all told (some non-profit, some for-profit) in Kenya and Uganda. We visited seven schools, four community non-profits, three local businesses who had received microloans, two microlending institutions, one hospital, one clinic, and one technology incubator.

Our itinerary was as follows:

Day One – Fly from Raleigh to London
Day Two – In London, Fly from London to Nairobi
Day Three, Nairobi – Africa Rising, TULIP
Day Four, Nairobi – Carolina for Kibera, Trash Clean Up, Soccer Tournament Fun Day
Day Five, Nairobi – Fly to Entebbe Uganda, Car ride to Kampala to home of Louis Ntale
Day Six, Kampala, Lira, Gulu- Concerned Parents Association, Community Microlending to Young Mothers Program
Day Seven, Gulu – Invisible Children Uganda / St. Joseph’s High School, Gulu High School, MEND
Day Eight, Kampala – Bus from Gulu to Kampala, Appfrica meeting in Kampala
Day Nine, Mityana – Mityana Hospital, Mityana Secondary School, Affinet, Naama Millennium Primary School, Santa Maria Medical Clinic
Day Ten, Kampala – Faula Uganda / Opportunity International
Day Eleven, Entebbe – Bob and Ryan Flight from Entebbe to Nairobi, Jess gets picked up by Juma to go to WOMEDA in Karagwe, Tanzania
Day Twelve – Fly from Nairobi to London to New York to Raleigh

Where We Spent Our Time

Here is a report on each of the organizations we visited with while in Uganda and Kenya the past twelve days.

AFRICA RISING

Africa Rising is a non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina that currently supports organizations in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. The organization retains a representative in East Africa named Mary Muhara, a Kenyan residing in Nairobi. Mary’s job is to vet potential non-profit organizations for the group to contribute to and to follow-up with those currently in the Africa Rising network. Mary was very kind to take us around Nairobi on our first day to show us TULIP and a Beacon of Hope store.

TULIP GIRLS CENTRE

The first organization we visited with Mary was TULIP Girls Centre. TULIP is an organization that Africa Rising supports today. TULIP was founded by Mary Munyi. Mary started by taking in five disadvantaged girls from the community around here. Today, TULIP is a private school for sixty disadvantaged girls aged 13 to 16 (form 2, 3, and 4) located just outside of the Korogocho slum, the second largest slum in Nairobi after Kibera and the most dangerous.

We met with Nicera Muriithi the Program Manager. Nicera explained that their operating budget was $30,000 per year. We learned that their teachers were paid approximately $125 per month.

When we asked why we should support a private school in the area Nicera explained that the government had not built a primary school in the area because it was a poor area and that there was no public school nearby. Nicera explained that her biggest need was to get more land so she could expand the school. She indicated it would cost $25,000 to purchase the one acre of land. She also requested textbooks and a computer so she can train the students in typing.

We had a chance to speak with the students. When we asked what they wanted to be in the future, they named lawyer, doctor, preacher, and politician. The reality was however that all these professions required a college degree and that these girls would not be able to afford to attend university.

CAROLINA FOR KIBERA

On Sunday June 28 at 8am we showed up at the office of Carolina for Kibera (CFK). CFK has a girls center, clinic, waster management program, and youth soccer program.CFK was founded in 2001 by Rye Barcott, a friend of mine and fellow Tar Heel. Rye was a U.S. Marine Officer for five years who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rye just finished a MBA at Harvard Business School and a MPA at the Kennedy School of Government.

Kibera is in Nairobi and with 1 million residents, it is the largest slum in Africa. That day in Kibera, Jess, Bob and I walked about 30 minutes to the soccer field with a couple interns from Duke and UNC and some visiting Muzungus (white people) from Vancouver. We grabbed rakes and helped remove trash from the street and sewers in Kibera as part of CFK’s ‘fun day’ in which kids did a couple hours of community service cleaning up the area and then participated in a soccer tournament.

It was an eye opening and life altering experience walking through the dirt paths of Kibera and raking clothes, water bottles, shoes, fruit, corn, and litter out of open drainage ditches filled with brown water and human excrement as part of a team of perhaps 200 that went out in the community to clean up. I had seen rural poverty in Africa before, but this urban poverty was different. The community seemed vibrant, entrepreneurial, alive, musical. Dozens of stray dogs and chickens roamed. The small one-room houses in which 6-8 slept were made of mud with a tin roof. Yet we knew we wouldn’t be safe by ourselves, especially after dark. The lack of sanitation was very visible.

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia on Kibera, “Kibera is heavily polluted by soot, dust, and other wastes. Open sewage routes, in addition to the common use of Flying toilets, also contribute to contamination of the slum with human and animal feces. The combination of poor nutrition and lack of sanitation accounts for many illnesses. Not only are death by disease and conflict common inside this slum, but it is estimated that 1/5 of the 2.2 million Kenyans living with HIV live in Kibera.”

Kibera was the center of many of the riots and killing that occurred following the contested Kenyan election in December 2007.

At 11:30 that morning we had to leave the soccer field and walk the 30 minutes back to the CFK office. We couldn’t find anyone who was willing to walk with us and were told we should not walk alone due to safety (and we didn’t remember the route). We finally found a wonderful 17 year old young lady to show us the way back. She was the 17 I spoke of earlier in this post whose parents had died of AIDS. She moved in with her grandfather but he shortly passed. She then moved in with her pastor, but he abused her. She was effectively alone struggling to survive and all she wanted was a small place of her own. Stories like this were all too commonly heard.

It was a life changing experience to spend four hours in Kibera, and I know I’ll return. I have a very high level of respect for everyone at Carolina for Kibera. I’d love to work to start a similar program in Korogocho, a slightly smaller but more dangerous slum in Nairobi.

Here’s a video of me dancing in Kibera with the children there:

CONCERNED PARENTS ASSOCIATION

After taking the Post Uganda bus to the Kamdini depot, we were picked up by Richard from Concerned Parents Association, another organization that Africa Rising currently contributes to. We met with Anthony, the Interim Executive Director of CPA. CPA started in 1996 after 139 girls aged six and seven were abducted from a local school by the LRA. Of the 139 that were taken, 109 were returned quickly in negotiations, but 30 remained. Since 1996, 24 of the 30 remaining abductee girls have returns. The other six were killed while attempting to escape. The girls today are all 19 or 20 years old. In March 2009, the last surviving girl returned. To give some perspective, in order to escape successfully each girl had to walk for one month, often alone, in the jungle of Northwest Uganda or the Garamba Forest.CPA helps these returnee abductees with counseling. Almost all of the 24 returnees girls brought with them babies. They had been made wives or sex slaves of the LRA while the bush (forest). These babies were called ‘Bush Babies’ by the local community, and often discriminated against. Today, the LRA still has over 3,000 women and child that they have abducted. July 2006 was the last abduction in Uganda. However, today the LRA is abducting children in the Congo and most recently massacred 600 over the Christmas 2008 holiday in the DRC. The people in Lira still fear the LRA returning to Acholiland (Northern Uganda) according to Anthony.

Today the Concerned Parents Association is focused on improving children’s rights and fighting/reporting rape and domestic violence in their tribe of Lango around Lira, a city of 62,000 people. They have sixty employees and work with over sixty parent groups at schools in the area. They amazingly operate on an annual budget of $350,000 per year. They currently receive funding from Save The Children Uganda, The Mennonite Central Church, the Christian Aid, UNICEF, and the European Union, –although the EU funding is likely to run out in October. They do and can give out condoms in their area as part of their reproductive health and family planning efforts even though they are funded by some Christian organizations. They have four offices including the main headquarters in Lira and branches in Gulu, Kitgum, and Oyam.

Anthony noted that while most of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps have dissipated in Lira and Gulu, there are still people in IDP camps in Kitgum, due to concern about the return of the LRA and an especially ruthless Ugandan tribe of cattle-raiders, the Karamajong.

We asked why Anthony chose to be involved in CPA. Anthony himself was almost abducted by the LRA. He told us that the LRA once attacked his school in 1995 when he was 17. In order to avoid being abducted, he hid in a snake infested ceiling drop.

Anthony indicated that CPA’s needed include additional assistance with report writing and documenting in English and funding.

LIRA GIRL MOTHERS MICROFINANCE PROGRAM

After visiting with Anthony at the Concerned Parents Association, we were taken to visit one of the programs that CPA supports, the Lira Girl Mothers Microfinance Program (LGMMP). We met with two advisers and eleven young single mothers, who seemed to range in age from about 15 to about 24. We met with them sitting in blue plastic chairs under a tree outside of a primary school about 2km away from the center of Lira.One of the things that struck me immediately was how softly these women spoke. One could literally not hear them from eight feet away. Even their advisers and our female guide from CPA spoke extremely softly. I found it challenging to decide whether to ask them to speak louder and risk offending them. Eventually I did. The women mostly spoke Luo and not English, so our guide translated for us.

The LGMMP had twenty-eight girl mothers involved in its programming and eight advisors. They sang a song for us at the beginning with the lyrics, ‘we will never forget you, please don’t forget us.’ They were involved in five different types of microbusinesses that they had been trained to start. Initially they were given $75 each to start their businesses (as a grant not a loan). They used $17 of this to purchase ‘trading licenses’ so they could start their business legally, so they were left with $58 to begin.

They had started a grinding business, a distillery, a sewing company, a charcoal company, and a bakery. They indicated their biggest challenges were:

1. Transporting of their goods to the market
2. The expense of trading licenses ($17)
3. The fluctuating price of food
4. Finding space for their businesses and paying rent
5. Inability to sell their whole product before it goes stale

As an example of their issue with transport costs, the mother running the charcoal business would pay 10,000 UGX ( ~$5) for her charcoal bushels at wholesale, then pay 4500 UGX (~$2.25) and then be able to sell her charcoal 15,000 to 20,000 UGX ($$7.50 to $10). On a bad day she would work all day to make $0.25. On a good day she might make $2.50, depending on the retail price she could negotiate.

When they had the opportunity to ask us questions, their first question was whether we would be able to help financially support them so they could expand the program to other young mothers in the area. They indicated their morale was low as they had held meetings with potential donors before but hadn’t yet received any outside support. They also requested assistance in finishing their formal education.

Their biggest business needs was capital–particularly a grinding machine ($35) and a sewing machine ($75). In the four months the program had been operational, the twenty-eight women had successfully been able to save 800,000 UGX ($200).

I found myself struggling whether to attempt to give the ladies helpful business advice based on my experience (group supplies together in one shipment to reduce transport costs, use savings to reinvest in capital now rather than later, etc.). With Bob as an investment banker from Credit Suisse and me an entrepreneur we naturally wanted to. Yet at the same time we recognized we knew so little about their businesses and environment.

We ended up choosing to use questions to inquire why they were or weren’t doing certain things. They had good answers. We asked why they didn’t use these savings to invest in the capital necessary to reduce their renting costs and earn a higher profit. They responded that they had committed to saving for one year or until they got to 5,000,000 UGX ($2,500), whichever was first. Once they reached this mark they would consider whether to use their savings to allow other mothers into the program and/or invest in necessary machinery.

Overall the ninety minute meeting gave us a fairly good understanding of the business and personal challenges these women faced and left with an appreciation of the work that CPA was doing and an even greater respect for organizations like Opportunity International and FAULA who follow a slightly different model of providing small loans instead of small grants. It is truly amazing what $75 can do, whether as a loan or grant. It can give a woman her freedom.

INVISIBLE CHILDREN UGANDA

I first heard about Invisible Children in the summer of 2008 while visiting Uganda. I learned much more about IC while meeting their co-founder Bobby Bailey and CEO Ben Keesey at The Summit Series event in Aspen in April. Invisible Children began in 2003 as a documentary after three young filmmakers from Southern California visited Gulu. They rather courageously filmed and released a documentary about what was happening in Gulu in 2003 (children being abducted, attacks by the LRA, children being forced to walk miles every night to find a safe place to sleep).Today, the Gulu region and the Acholiland region of Northern Uganda is peaceful and relatively safe (and very worth visiting!). However, Joseph Kony and the LRA have moved on to the Garamba Forest in Northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and continue their abductions and raids into Sudan, East Congo, and the Central African Republic. Since 2003, Invisible Children has produced six additional short videos telling the challenging stories of individuals there around Gulu. In 2005 IC registered as a U.S. non-profit organization and in 2007 they registered as an NGO in Uganda. They work primarily in Gulu, Pader, Amulu, and a bit in Kitgum.

In the United States, Invisible Children raises money, mostly through high school and college students, to fund both their on the ground efforts in Uganda and to fund legislative lobbying events and rallies (to encourage the U.S. Congress and State Department to work with Uganda, the DRC, and the ICC to pursue and capture Kony and stop his abductions and mass killings.

In 2008, Invisible Children had an overall annual budget of $7M, of which approximately $2M went to fund projects on the ground in Northern Uganda around Gulu.

Jess, Bob, and I arrived at the Gulu office of Invisible Children Uganda at 9am on June 30th. We met first with Erika who worked in communications. Erika was extremely nice and helpful and share a lot with us about IC Uganda.

In Uganda, Invisible Children has three on the ground programs. These are

1. Economic Development Iniatives (EDIs) including:

1. Bracelet Making – IC started out their EDI programs by hiring 182 bracelet makers to produce bracelets that would be included in the Invisible Children DVD packs. They now have a surplus of bracelets, so have transitioned this individuals to a training program on income generation.
2. Savings & Investment Program – These 182 individuals are now part of a savings and investment program which provides a six to eight month curriculum on income generation
3. MEND – A new for-profit arm of Invisible Children that produces messenger bags and purses with the brand MEND from a nice factory near Gulu that we visited under the director of a talented and energetic designer named Marie. MEND started with 10 women and now has 13. Almost all of them are former abductees.
4. Cotton – A program to provide organic cotton to Bono’s wife’s organization Eden, to help assist people in moving out of the IDP camps and back to their ancestral homelands.

2. Visible Child Scholarship Program (VCSP)

1. Secondary Scholarship Program – Provides scholarships to 650 secondary school students in and around Gulu and Pader
2. University Scholarship Program – Provides scholarships to 59 university students in Uganda and 1 who earned a full-ride to Boise State University in Idaho
3. Mentorship Program – Providing 24 mentors to local students

3. Schools for Schools (S4S) –

• A program through which schools in the United States support a school in Northern Uganda. IC provides assistance to ten schools in the area.
• They work to rehabilitate structures and classrooms, install running water and water tanks, add toilets, and put in computer labs.
• We visited St. Jospeh’s College (A High School), Gulu High Schools, and another primary school which I cannot recall the name of to see the work that Schools for Schools had accomplished.

Meeting with Jolly, Country Director for Invisible Children Uganda

After meeting with Erika outside under a thatched reception area, we went inside to speak with Jolly Okot, the Country Director for Invisible Children Uganda. Jolly indicated that the LRA was abducting children as a human shield. She indicated many in the LRA had been brainwashed to believe that Kony had spiritual powers. Today, she said, the LRA was abducting many more children in the DRC, Central African Republic, and Sudan. Jolly spoke of the political discussions between the DRC and Uganda about allowing Ugandan forces into the Congo to go after Kony. She indicated that Kony was being supported by President Bashir of Sudan, who also has an ICC warrant out for his arrest.

The other major NGOs I saw represented in Gulu were World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, African Revival, UN, UNICEF, and UNHCR.

APPFRICA

Appfrica (on Twitter at @appfrica) is an technology entrepreneurship incubator and custom software development firm run by Jonathan Gosier, an American living permanently in Kampala with clients including Google and the Grammeen Bank. Jonathan currently has 8 programmers. He pays $900 per month for an internet connection of 192 kpbs, equivalent to DSL and about 1/10th the speed of cable broadband we get in the U.S. for $40/month. He spoke to us about the EACOSS, EASSY, SEACOM, and O3B (by Google) initiatives to bring faster broadband access to Africa. Jonathan was a big believer in making change through business. He felt there was a wealth of programming talent (especially with Python, Ruby, Symbian, Java, and C+) but a lack of opportunity in Kampala.

MITYANA HOSPITAL
On Thursday July 2 we had the chance to visit Mityana, a town about an hour to the West of Kampala. We visited five organizations that day, the first being the Mityana Hospital.The hospital was built in 1947 and serves the 288,000 people who live in the district and many from surrounding areas. It has 6 doctors, 100 beds and 4 wards: maternity, male, female, and children. It has an HIV/AIDS clinic that serves 4,000 regular patients with the help of Population Services Internatational. It also has an x-ray lab and a dental office.

Funding from the hospital comes from the government, with some additional funds coming from NGOs. According to their Director, their biggest needs are surgical and diagnostic equipment and an ambulance. They have an operating budget of 23,000,000 UGX per month ($11,500).

MITYANA SECONDARY SCHOOL

Mityana Secondary School is one of two high schools that iContact and The Humanity Campaign have started a scholarship program for. I visited the school for the second time on this trip and had a chance to speak to their entrepreneurship class. Their principal indicated their biggest challenges are parents paying school fees, orphan students, and transportation.They indicated building additional dorms for some of the students would be very helpful to the children without parents and those for whom the school is a many miles away. One of their biggest needs is getting internet access to their computer lab, which is currently outside of their budget.

The school has 1,350 students and 70 staff members. The government pays the teacher’s salaries and parents pay school fees, which are 468,000 UGX ($234) per year normally and 900,000 UGX ($450) per year for students who live at the school.

AFFINET

AFFINET stands for the African Friends in Need Network. It is the second school that the iContact/Humanity Campaign scholarship program will be benefiting. It is a vocational school in Mityana, Uganda. It was started in 2000. It has a strong social justice mission. It provides classes on sewing, fashion design, carpentry, and home economics. It has 111 students and focuses its efforts on girls who have been left behind. It has had 195 graduates so far since the first class graduated in 2004.Over lunch with the Bishop, we learned that AFFINET would like to start classes in bricklaying, IT, and livestock. They need computers, sewing machines, and funds to complete their bathroom and ceiling in the girls dorms.

NAAMA MILLENNIUM PRIMARY SCHOOL
Namma Millennium Primary School was founded in 2000 by Dr. Christopher Kigongo, a Ugandan who now works at Duke University. I’ve worked with Christopher over the past year to set up a scholarship program for students at the school that is providing funds for students who attend Naama Millennium Primary School in Mityana, Uganda to continue on to secondary school at either AFFINET or Mityana Secondary School.I first visited Naama in 2008 and fell in love with the children. Last year, they danced and drummed. This year, students from Duke had developed a play on nutrition and hygiene that the students performed for us, followed by the amazing popping and locking hip hop dancing of a five year old boy (followed by Bob, Jess, and I doing a dance for them).

In 2008, a number of students from Nourish International worked at the school to put in cement floors, windows, doors, and a rainwater harvesting system. The improvements were very visible this year.

SANTA MARIA MEDICAL CLINIC

Our final stop in Mityana was the Santa Maria Medical Clinic. The Clinic is a for-profit private business, started and run by Dr. Paul Mugambe. The clinic today sees 60 patients per day. They provide more available and better care than Mityana Hospital according to Dr. Mugambe. They most commonly treat malaria, respiratory issues, diarrheah, and HIV/AIDS. They have 30 beds today.The clinic’s biggest challenges are people who need care but cannot afford it and thus do not pay their bills, high taxes, and a lack of surgical room. The clinic charges 60,000 UGX ($30) for a normal baby delivery and 300,000 UGX ($150) for a c-section delivery. Dr. Mugambe would like to expand the clinic but is currently renting so cannot make additions to the property. He is looking to get a loan of 75,000,000 UGX ($37,500) to purchase the property, but loan interest rates are currently too high at 20%.

FAULA / OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL

On our final day in Kampala on July 3 we visited with FAULA and Opportunity International in Kampala. Both are microfinance organizations that are working together in Uganda. Jess, Bob, and I had the chance to meet with the CEO of Opportunity International Uganda.They have 200 staff members in the country, nine branches, and a $6 million microloan portfolio. Their average client takes out a loan of $150 and makes repayments weekly. They have a 2.4% default rate. They work through a group system in which a group of at least ten takes out a loan together (the peer pressure and accountability provides higher repayment rates). Once an individual pays back their group loan they can obtain a larger individual loan.

Opportunity prices their loans at 3% per month interest (compounding to be equivalent to 43.5% per year). While this is high, they indicated that the return from the use of their capital that is otherwise unavailable is much higher. They’ve developed an impressive, sustainable model.

We visited three of Opportunity International’s clients in Kampala, the owners of a banana stand, a metalworking shop, and a small conveyance store.

Opportunity International also has a partnership with Compassion International in Uganda.

WOMEDA
After Bob and I left to go back home, Jess was picked up by Juma Masisi who runs WOMEDA in Karagwe, Tanzania. Jess has been at WOMEDA for a few days now. She is studying conflict resolution and women’s rights there.WOMEDA stands for WOMen Emancipation and Development Agency. According to their web site, WOMEDA “promotes the status of marginalized groups by creating and strengthening equal opportunities for women, men, and children through the provision of socioeconomic, legal, and human rights activities in order to attain sustainable development.”

We are hoping that Mary Muhara from Africa Rising will have a chance to visit WOMEDA in the coming days and consider supporting the organization.

Overall we very much enjoyed our time in Kenya and Uganda. I wanted to especially thank Louis Ntale and Rebbecca Ntale who allowed us to stay at their house for three nights and their son Kenneth Ntale for driving us in Uganda. Thanks to all for reading. Comments are very welcome!

Here are additional photos from the trip (I’ll have many more as soon as I get the camera I left in Kampala back in the mail. Thanks Kenneth!)

1. Visit the non-profits that The Humanity Campaign and iContact have provided funds to in order to see and document how they are using the funds and to learn about their operations and needs;
2. Find additional qualified non-profits for The Humanity Campaign to invest in;
3. Find companies with unique innovative technologies that address local social needs and for-profit companies with a social mission to invest in;
4. Learn as much as we can about conflict resolution, IDP camps, food and water distribution, rural health care provision, and rural primary and secondary education; and
5. Dance, dance, and dance some more like Matt from Where The Hell is Matt!

On our first day in Nairobi we’ll be meeting with Amon Anderson from the Acumen Fund and Mary Muhara from Africa Rising. Amon is a friend of mine from back when we went to UNC together and from when he was in charge of the entrepreneurship minor at UNC. Mary is the in-country local representative for Africa Rising who vets the non-profits that Africa Rising contributes to. Mary will be taking us to visit TULIP Nairobi a program supported by AR. TULIP “strives to deliver hope for girls subjected to poverty and its vices: teenage pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, drugs, crime, and prostitution.”

On day two in Nairobi we’ll be visiting with Carolina for Kibera. CFK works in Kibera, a slum in North Nairobi to “promote youth leadership and ethnic and gender cooperation in Kibera through sports, young women’s empowerment, and community development.” CFK was started in 2001 by a UNC students Kim Chapman and Rye Barcott. Rye has since completed five years of service as an officer in the Marines and completed a MBA/MPA joint degree from HBS and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which is what I’d love to be doing in a few years. They operate a soccer league, medical clinic (Tabitha Clinic), and a reproductive health and women’s rights center (Binti Pamoja). I’m so excited to be seeing their operation first hand.

On day three, we’ll be flying from Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport to Entebbe, Uganda. We’ll stay the night in Kampala with our friend Louis Ntale, the brother-in-law of Duke’s Christopher Kigongo, and then wake up early to catch the five or six hour Posta Uganda bus from Kampala to Gulu and traverse once again the adventurous roads of rural Uganda.

Upon arriving in Gulu we’ll be meeting up with Andrew Morgan of Invisible Children. Over the past year I have been studying the conflict between the LRA, led by Joseph Kony, and the Ugandan army known as the Ugandan People’s Defence Force and formerly known as the National Resistance Army.

Invisible Children (IC) is working to put an end to the conflict, which has died down considerably in Northern Uganda but spread to the Central African Republic and the Northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, near the Garamba Forest. IC also working to re-integrate and educate former LRA child soldiers in the surrounding region’s Internally Displaced Person’s camps and to lobby the U.S. government to put State Department resources into ending the conflict. I had the chance to spend a couple days with their CEO Ben Keesey and co-founder Bobby Bailey while at The Summit Series trip in Aspen in April. They’ve put out a series of very well done DVD documentaries explaining the conflict and highlighting the stories of particular child soldiers. I’m very excited to see the IC operation while in Gulu.

After a day with IC, we’ll be visiting the Concerned Parents Association, another organization supported by Africa Rising, which mobilises parents of abducted children toward the objectives of:

1. Immediate and unconditional release of all abducted children
2. Peaceful resolution of the conflicts
3. Creation of an awareness of the plight of children in conflict

After three days in Gulu, we’ll head back down to Kampala on July 1st, visit with Joseph of Appfrica, and stay the night again with Louis. On Thursday, July 2nd we’ll have one free day and either head to the Kampala Hospital, do a follow-up visit with the Kyetume health clinic an hour away in Nkokonjeru, or head over to Jinja to see the source of the Nile.

On Friday we’ll head over to Mityana, Uganda to visit the Naama Millennium School and get an update on the scholarship program that iContact and The Humanity Campaign have funded that will be helping students at Naama attend secondary school. We’ll also be visiting a team from Duke and Nourish International. Naama serves 321 students, 113 of which have lost one or both parents. It was a true joy last year visiting Naama and seeing the school children dance!

After visiting Naama we’ll visit the Mityana Secondary School. One of my favorite memories from the visit last June was sitting in on an entrepreneurship class and seeing first hand the drive in the students to excel.

On our final day, Bob and I will head back to Kampala to fly to Nairobi and then back to RDU through Heathrow and JFK to be back in time for work on Monday morning July 6. Jess will continue on and head down to Karegwe, Tanzania to work with Juma Masisi at WOMEDA, a women’s rights organization.

I look forward to blogging about our experiences! Stay tuned.

This is something really cool.

I had coffee this evening at the HW55 Starbucks in Durham with Sam Serio from Opportunity International. Opportunity International is a Christian microfinance organization that’s been around since 1971.

Opportunity International has launched a site called OptInNow.org. OptinNow allows you to make small loans directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Comparison to Kiva

OptInNow is similar to Kiva, with the exception that the loans made are contributions to Opportunity International and are re-loaned over and over again to entrepreneurs with microenterprises in developing countries instead of paid back directly to the lender. Another difference is that Opportunity International has a Christian affiliation whereas Kiva does not.

OptInNow.org is in the early stages, so the site does not yet have as extensive inventory of loans and projects as Kiva, but does allow loans to be made to entrepreneurs in Kenya, Ghana, the Philippines, and Mexico with many more to come soon.

Props to the folks at Opportunity International for creating a well-designed usable interactive site that will get a lot more visibility and unique donors for their organization.

Aid 2.0

As opposed to the old-school ‘top-down’ Easterly-criticized bi-lateral government-to-government aid model where funds were given to oft-unelected semi-corrupt dictators for cold-war geopolitical reasons that indebted the populace without providing much benefit to them while sometimes forcing the funds to be used to pay Western contractors (okay I’m being a bit harsh here but do read Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Stiglitz’ Globalization and Its Discontents), OptInNow’s model is from the grassroots–from the bottom-up. It gives small amounts of funds that can make a world of good directly to the local entrepreneurs who know how to best use them. It’s market-based aid versus the top-down centrally controlled aid of the past.

Who Is It Run By?

Opportunity International is currently run by CEO Christopher Crane, an entrepreneur, YPO member, and Harvard MBA who took commercial real estate information provider COMPS InfoSystems to 450 employees and took it public in May 1999 before being acquired by CoStar (NASDAQ:CSGP) in February 2000. I haven’t met Christopher yet but look forward to meeting him soon.

Here’s a video about OptInNow. Spread the word!

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About Opportunity International

Opportunity International, the largest not-for-profit microfinance organization in the world. OI began in 1971 and specializes in working with the poorest of the working poor, those who make less than $2 a day. OI has 1.2 million active loan clients in 28 countries and 85% of their clients are women. Here are some key facts.
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About OptInNow

Our mission is simple. We’re working to end global poverty. Faster. How? By providing those who live in chronic poverty with one vital thing they need to transform their lives: Opportunity. Along the way we hope to transform additional lives, like yours. That’s why we’ve made it so simple for good people everywhere to come together, to fund small loans, to witness big and lasting impact, and to truly change the world. That’s what we’re really about. We’re about every land becoming a land of opportunity. And with your help we’ll get there.

The Birth of Project Polaroid

Nine months ago, in early January, I was hanging out in Charlotte with a friend of mine named Carly. Carly is just 20 and a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur who runs a photography business, Carly Brantmeyer Photography. We were brainstorming. She wanted to be more than a student and photographer. She wanted to use her talents and abilities to give back.

Carly had just returned from a Christmas family trip to Costa Rica. There, she took lots of beautiful digital photos. The children were eager to see the picture she just took of them on the back LCD display. She wanted to be able to give the children a copy of their photo, but couldn’t. There was no easy way.

She thought, “If I had a Polaroid camera with me I could give them a copy of the picture right now.”

She returned and while brainstorming at her house in January she came up with Project Polaroid. She would bring hundreds of Polaroid instant film with her to developing countries and give children a picture of themselves–something most of them would never seen before, yet alone owned.

Project Polaroid in Colombia

Carly had the opportunity to visit Colombia over the summer to try out Project Polaroid for the first time. She borrowed my Polaroid camera that was given to me as a gift in 2007 and bought some film. Here are some of the inspiring pictures she took. Take a look especially of the one of the mother, holding a picture of her beautiful young daughter for likely the first time:

Project Polaroid in Uganda

In July, I went to Uganda for a week. Carly had returned from Colombia so I got my camera back the night before. Here are some of the pictures I took.

I was able to take about 60 pictures there while in Uganda while in 4 different locations. Each time I noticed an interesting phenomenon. In one of the locations, I found myself in a small village near the Mirembe Kawomera Peace Coffee Cooperative. This place was about 30 minutes down a dirt road from Mbale, Uganda. I took my first photo of a child and gave it to her. She was very confused as to what it was. I told her to shake the picture. She then ran away, nervous it seemed.

Exactly, on the dot, 3 minutes later, a group of at least eight kids came running around the corner jumping up and down with excitement. The picture had developed! Each time I began taking photos with just one or two children. They would go away, wondering what I had gave them (most Ugandan children in villages speak little English), then come back with their whole crew just 2-3 minutes later when they realized what had been given to them. This run away, see the photo develop, and bring back more children would happen every time. Sometimes, as Carly has experienced, you get surrounded by as many as 40 or 50 children within minutes.

In the village outside of Mbale I also gave away some of the soccer jerseys and shorts that had been donated by Sports Endeavors of Hillsborough, NC, the owners of Soccer.com and Eurosport, through the U.S. Soccer Foundation Passback Program. The children created such a commotion that the villages lone police office came over hurriedly, thinking the children were stealing from the van.

Project Polaroid in Ghana

This fall semester, Carly is living and studying in Legon, Ghana at the University of Ghana, with a study abroad program from UNC. She has received a number of donations to help expand the program and has brought dozens of packs of film. Here are some of the photos she’s taken so far in Ghana:

Polaroid Will Stop Selling Polaroids in Early 2009

For background information, back in 2001, Polaroid Corporation, the makers of the famous Polaroid Cameras and instant film filed for bankruptcy. It’s assets ended up being purchased by a private investment firm, Petters Group Worldwide, in 2005.

Very unfortunately for Project Polaroid, Polaroid announced back on February 8 that it will be phasing out production of its instant film and that it will be completely off the shelves by early 2009. We were of course a bit saddened by this announcement. Polaroid will no longer sell Polaroids. It’s a travesty of sorts and will certainly make the project difficult to scale. Polaroid has said that it will be willing to license its instant film technology to another firm should another firm be interested. Here’s hoping Polaroid somehow comes across this story and they realize the immense value that Polaroid film has to their brand.

Scaling the Project

Carly writes on her detailed travel blog.

“The idea is simple. $1=1 Polaroid photo, for 1 kid, that will last a lifetime. So many children around the world have never even owned a single photo of themselves. What could be more precious of a memory than a photo of you/your family?”

How You Can Help

When she left, Carly raised money from her family and community. She was able to take a few dozen packs of film with her. A month into the trip, Carly is now running out of film. If you would like to contribute, the best way would be to mail her a pack of two of Polaroid 600 film. She would very much appreciate any help. She will be at the following address until December:

Carly Brantmeyer
University of Ghana
c/o International Programs Office
International Student Housing II
Room #127
Legon, Accra, Ghana

Overall, I am excited to see Project Polaroid in Ghana and look forward to her getting back in January and brainstorming how to scale the project to many more developing countries. Being in Uganda myself in July and seeing the impact owning a simple picture can have in the life of a child and the parents of that child has made a lasting impact on me. One of the children was 3 and didn’t have pants–just a long shirt. He lived in a thatch hut near a school Roey and I were speaking at with his brother, sister, and mother. He didn’t have pants but he was overjoyed with happiness to have the picture. Hopefully we can convince Polaroid to sponsor the project in the future and keep producing instant film.

Recently, a non-profit organization by the name of Endeavor was profiled in the July issue of The Economist, in an article which gave rave reviews of the group’s commitment to providing not just access to opportunity, but access to the mentoring and investment which turns opportunity into actuality.

When it comes to promoting entrepreneurialism in developing nations, Endeavor believes that a significant part of the problem is not just a lack of access to entrepreneurial possibilities, but a lack of access to the modeling and mentorship which are available in places like the United States. Endeavor seeks to address this need by using successful high-impact entrepreneurs in developing nations to select and mentor budding entrepreneurs in developing nations.

The Purpose of Endeavor

Endeavor is a non-profit organization whose vision is to change communities and countries by promoting entrepreneurship where it is needed most. Using their internal Search and Selection teams as well as panels of successful entrepreneurs from across the globe, candidates for the Endeavor program undergo a rigorous selection process which can take up to 18 months. Endeavor uses six main criteria to evaluate candidates:

• Entrepreneurial Initiative
• Business innovation
• Value and Ethics
• Role Model Potential
• Development Impact
• Fit with Endeavor

Additionally, through the course of this process, each entrepreneur is given valuable feedback and advice, whether or not they are selected. Once entrepreneurs are selected according to the criteria, they are set up with mentors and access to support and advice. Endeavor matches the entrepreneur with selected mentors who can help him or her with specific challenges faced. Some Endeavor Entrepreneurs can have over a dozen mentors.

Interview with Elmira Bayrasli

I had a chance to interview Elmira Bayrasli of Endeavor’s Outreach Team via email. She described the Endeavor process this way:

“Generally Endeavor looks for high-impact entrepreneurs who are leading companies that are generating between 500K to 20 million in revenues; and entrepreneurs who have role model potential – who will give back to their emerging market communities and not only inspire, but lead, mentor and support aspiring entrepreneurs. Endeavor Entrepreneurs generally are those who have a business that has great high-impact potential to go to scale – to create jobs, generate revenues and investment opportunities.”

The Process

Here is an image showing their selection process from their 2007 annual report:

Many selected entrepreneurs go on to become mentors themselves. Some serve as panelists or as members of local boards of directors.

Before this process even begins, Bayrasli says, Endeavor does its homework:

“Before Endeavor starts to identify and support high-impact entrepreneurs, we spend quite a bit of time building local operations. Endeavor will only launch its ‘mentor capitalist’ model for high-impact entrepreneurship in countries where there is actively backing and engagement from leading business talent and recognized leaders. These individuals form the basis for Endeavor’s local board of directors.”

Here is a graphic that shows the Endeavor “idea to impact” process:

Examples of Success

This year Wences Casares became the first Endeavor Entrepreneur to join Endeavor’s Global Board of Directors. An Argentinean entrepreneur, Casares founded Patagon, an Argentinean online brokerage; Wanako Games, a developer of video games fueled by Latin American creativity; and Lemon Bank, a Brazillian bank designed to help the poor.

Of the roughly ten Endeavor Entrepreneurs profiled on the Entrepreneur website, one in particular stood out to me. Natallie Killasy began a company called Stitch Wise which sews mine safety gear in the Gauteng Province of South Africa. After realizing how many miners were seriously and permanently injured in mining accidents, she customized sewing machines to provide work for disabled miners. The products started as protective rainwear and eventually moved into safety equipment to prevent underground collapses. According to the Endeavor website, “these products are now industry standard and are critical to the industry.”

Some Reader Criticisms

Five out of the eight responses to the article posted on The Economist expressed concern. One concern is that Endeavor is addressing the wrong issues when it comes to entrepreneurialism in developing nations. It is stated main challenges faced are not a lack of well thought out ideas or good business strategy but rather the bureaucracy, corruption, unreliable infrastructure and poor access to loans which plague most emerging economies. Another concern is the Endeavor selection process and its rigorous search for entrepreneurs already brimming with potential. The term “picking winners” appeared twice in reader feedback, seeming to imply that Endeavor has an ulterior selfish motive. If Endeavor strives to “picks winners”, one wonders, are they truly developing an entrepreneurial spirit or just helping an elite few gain their feet?

From my perspective, Endeavor appears to be effectively carrying out its mission and creating lasting positive change in developing nations. Certainly the concerns Economist readers raise regarding the “real” challenges facing entrepreneurs in developing nations are undeniable. I spent 13 years in one of the poorest, most corrupt countries in the world and witnessed the bureaucracy, unreliable infrastructure, and corruption firsthand. However, it takes one look at the Endeavor site to see the statistics supporting their success in countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico. Endeavor currently works in 11 countries and hopes to expand its reach to include even more.

Picking Winners

Although it may seem that Endeavor only helps an elite few, “picking winners” could be a necessary part of smart strategy. With all the possible Endeavor Entrepreneurs and limited Endeavor resources, Endeavor has to pick entrepreneurs showing the most likelihood of success. It’s about investing precious time and resources wisely it seems.

At a relatively young 11 years old, Endeavor is a welcome addition to the scene of international sustainable development.This noted, it has so far focused its work in middle-income countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Turkey and not in the most impoverished “developing countries” where arguably they could create more social value. Though certainly not the only organization addressing entrepreneurial needs in developing countries (Technoserve, for example, has a very similar purpose) Endeavor is energetic and effective in fulfilling its purpose.

Philosophy

The organization has a philosophy that all humans have equal worth and that equality of opportunity should be encouraged. It believes that economic development does not always lead to greater happiness or prosperity if it causes environmental destruction, dependency, or materialism. It tends to favor development work that is done through local stakeholders and is sustainable. It tends to favor transparency.

The organization chooses to focus partly on North Carolina as one can often make the largest impact locally. It chooses to focus partly on the developing world as there the need is often greatest. While it is interested in writing about any country or group in the developing world, it’s area of greatest focus is Africa.

The organization believes that we have the ability to end extreme poverty in our lifetimes while ensuring we leave a world that is environmentally sound and ecologically rich.

Through the writing, the organization wishes to explore the overarching question of “what are the factors that contribute to a happier, more prosperous society” and start to build a global network of individuals who are working toward creating better and stronger communities and societies.

The eight core beliefs of the organization are:

1. All humans are created equal and have equal value
2. We should strive to create a society in which there is equal access to opportunity for all humans
3. We should strive to live in a sustainable world
4. We should respect each other and treat others as we would treat ourselves
5. There is value in education
6. We should love, not kill each other
7. We should work to eliminate extreme poverty
8. There is great power in entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship to address the critical challenges of our time

Responsibilities

The individual hired for this position is responsible for:

Researching, writing, editing, fact-checking, and publishing content to the web site.

Working to build a network of sources in developing countries who can provide quality story ideas, photo and video content, and primary research data. We wish for the site to be a source of primary news and reporting whenever possible and over time be cited by others as a trusted source.

Working to build a network of writers in developing countries who are willing to contribute topically-relevant quality content that can be posted to the site.

Style Guidelines

Content should be written in a conversational style that engages the reader.

All facts and data should be fact checked and footnoted.

Sources should be listed unless information was provided on the condition on anonymity.

Biases or conflicts should be disclosed. Ownership of stock in any publicly traded company that is discussed should be disclosed.

All articles should have at least one picture within them.

Use of videos within posts is encouraged when possible.

Individual posts should be between 200 and 750 words.

Draft posts for story ideas can be written as drafts and saved until completed

The author of each post should be disclosed

The language that the posts should be in is English

We would like for a number of the posts to highlight people, programs, or companies that are doing exceptionally positive work in developing countries, especially those in the start-up, technology, or entrepreneurial sectors.

Examples of posts that generally fit the topical, style, and guidelines to be used on the site include:

http://www.ryanallis.com/the-opportunity-of-our-lifetimes/

http://www.ryanallis.com/1m-prize-for-best-developing-country-technology-innovation/

http://www.ryanallis.com/sustainable-capitalism/

http://www.ryanallis.com/the-superficial-luxurious-degeneration-of-america/

Requirements include

• B.S or B.A. degree from a four year accredited university
• Experience living in a developing country
• General alignment with the beliefs of the organization
• Excellent writing skills
• A high level of character and personal integrity
• A passion for helping others and making a difference in the world

Remuneration

Work can be paid hourly or by approved post. Compensation is market-based, negotiable, and based on experience. Hours and work is negotiable. Schedule is flexible.

For More Information

If you are interested and/or would like more information, please send resume, cover letter, writing sample, and work history to ryan[at]icontact.com. Additional information on The Humanity Campaign, Inc. can be found at www.humanitycampaign.org.