The conference includes a range of interesting sessions including one on the impact of the global financial crisis on women.  Take a look

According to the UNICEF website – “Almost fifty per cent of the developing world’s population – 2.5 billion people – lack improved sanitation facilities, and over 884 million people still use unsafe drinking water sources. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day, and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more.”  (http://www.unicef.org/wash).

Seems like a basic problem to be solved if we are all going to move forward.

Grants ranging from US$20,000 to US$50,000 will be awarded to applicants from IFAD’s developing Member States through the Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF). Member states include, but are not limited to: Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.

You can find more information on application requirements and an application form in English at http://www.ifad.org/english/indigenous/grants/index.htm

The closing date for applications is August 31, 2011.

Some may argue that in African societies where the emphasis is on the family and not the individual, this approach might not get much traction.  Well, I guess the time has come.  The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa will host a symposium organized by Africa Unbound Inc that emphasis change beginning with the individual.  I guess this is what is meant by the term “empowering people”  but this seems like a different, more “homegrown” approach.

The press release describes it as “… a launch pad for a movement of peaceful activism towards enlightenment and social transformation. It will set the stage for a wide range of activities and programs that will seek to enable individuals to be powerful change agents on the continent.”

It takes places on April 28 and 29, 2011 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. For more information check out the Africa Unbound website.   i look forward to hearing what happens.

What about you?  Do you think we need to include personal transformation as a part of the development approach in helping to improve the living conditions on the planet?

Like many of us, I have devoted years of joyful work with partners in the US and Africa to solve some of our toughest social problems. We’ve all tried many promising approaches, and at times had good results. All of these efforts have been worthwhile, but all along I have been nagged by doubts that they were really getting at the Big Things that are behind poverty, disease, oppression, you name it.

How do societies change? How can you make it happen? I read recently something from Robert Chambers, the Wizard of development thinkers, that got me thinking:

“‘Procedures like the logframe and results-based management originate in the simple and complicated domains where cause and effect are in principle knowable. They are then applied in the complex domain of unpredictability which prevails in most development…This forces fabrication of the future as if it were controllable, manageable and measurable, as though development initiatives were immunisation programmes manqués. The misfit has high costs: in misdirected effort which does not respond well to changed conditions; in demotivating those who live and work with those changes….

These frames and procedures, and the mindsets and practices that go with them do not correspond with the complex, emergent realities of the lives and livelihoods of poor people. In policy, project and programme planning, strenuous efforts are made to treat the complex as simple or complicated and the diverse as uniform. Poor people, who are adaptive agents, and their conditions, which are complex or chaotic, are then treated as if these were controllably simple or complicated.”

This is from his latest article, Paradigms, Poverty and Adaptive Pluralism

He uses the distinction between simple/complicated vs. complex, which describes the difference between programs where you know what inputs will produce what outputs vs. programs where the outcome can never be predicted from the beginning because of all the other factors that affect it and are beyond the control of the program.

I think if we really want to solve the problems that need solving, we need to think in terms of the complex processes that govern our lives, and the complex relationships of organizations, networks, media, government and private sector that bounce off each other to write the future.

Chris Allan is Program Consultant with the Global Greengrants Fund, and consults with a variety of other organizations on international environmental and development programming and fundraising. He has twenty-five years experience in community development and environmental protection with a variety of civil society organizations.  He is organizing a session at the upcoming Africa Grantmakers’ Affinity Group Annual Retreat on “Strengthening Networks and Alliances to Solve Complex Social Problems.”

When I am reminded that a child dies every 45 seconds in Africa from malaria, I get a knot in my stomach.  Health is a major area of investment for Africa grantmakers. And focusing on child health is a major program focus of the United Nations Foundation.  Partnerships seem to be a central aspect of their approach and I am always fascinated by the diversity of partners they bring together on issues.

If you check out their Children’s Health Partners you will find the American Red Cross, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary, NBA Cares and AOL Black Voices among a longer list of diverse groups including faith-based organizations.  I am sure managing these partnerships even with a common vision to help children is no easy task.  But when I think about the statistics, I realize it is only in working together that we can have a chance to turn it around.

I think a lot of people were skeptical when Ted Turner raised the call to support a big global complex entity like the United Nations.  All institutions have their share of bureaucracy and the UN is no exception.  But big problems call for everybody to care. It seems the UN Foundation has found ways of broadening the circle. And that is a very good thing.