Many for-social-profit organizations and institutions are beginning to use the enormous potential of the arts and partnering with artists for their international development related projects.

Hillary Wallis is one of many socially responsible artists that have been actively involved with such projects. She is an American artist that works with painting to bring attention to development related issues, as well as to educate and empower deprived or marginalized communities.

During the past few years, Wallis worked with organizations such as Care International, InterAction and Global Campaign for Education.

In 2006, Wallis was appointed by Plan USA to serve as an Art Ambassador to Uganda. For the project called “Empowerment Through Arts”, Wallis taught painting to Ugandan kids and adults with HIV/AIDS. The exhibition of the works by the Ugandans and the artist herself toured around the world and reached a wide, global audience

Wallis recently gave art therapy sessions to refugee youth in Phoenix, Arizona for the International Rescue Committee.

Dani Rodrik, a professor of international political economy at Harvard, has won the first Albert O. Hirschman Prize. This newly instituted prize is meant to honor “outstanding contributions to international, interdisciplinary social science research, theory, and public communication.”

Hirshman was famous for his offbeat, non-traditional, interdisciplinary ways. Trained in the rigid field of economics, his books (such as “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty“) nonetheless involve ideas from political science, philosophy, and organizational management.

In short, Hirshman pioneered an interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences. And now there’s a prize to celebrate and encourage that kind of work.

Failed Media & Gender Development Project in Afghanistan - A lesson in Management on the Ground

Situation: The project by the Vancouver-based NGO, the Institute for Media Policy and Civil Society (IMPACS), was designed to train Afghani women in journalism and law. Specific targets of the project included establishing six or more radio stations in rural areas to be run by women, to create a monthly media law bulletin, provide training for media coverage of elections, and to facilitate exchanges between media resources in South Asia and Afghani women. The project began in 2003 and has since used approximately $3million.

Flawed Approach: While the initial idea and intentions of IMPACS sound great, the implementation of the media project suffered from some very basic weaknesses. It seems the project’s managerial staff were shipped to Afghanistan from Canada with little previous international experience and an inadequate understanding of the realities on the ground.

Failed Outcome: Some important factors were overlooked in the project, resulting in little results and wasted funds. In 2004 the project launched a publication (now defunct) written and published by and targeting Afghani women. The publication was launched without questioning the sustainability of such a project when the UN estimates that 80% of Afghani women and girls are illiterate.

A Better Approach: It is clear that this project lacked key elements in its design and implementation. Because of the low literacy rates among women in Afghanistan, the project would have benefited from integrating an educational element. This would have made the publication a more relevant initiative. In terms of implementation, project officers working on the ground should have some experience and background information before arriving. A successful project/organization is flexible and able to adapt to various contexts and still maintain its basic functions (financial records, monitoring and evaluations). Monitoring and evaluation of project progress through indicators was necessary in a context where national institutions cannot be relied on. Similarly, alternative methods of keeping track of finances must be developed in the context of a cash-only local economy.

Source: Bailey, Sue. “Flawed Aid Program Funded Newspaper that most Afghans couldn’t read: Audit,” Canadian Press: Ottowa, March 6, 2007.

Fish Factory Project in Pastoral Kenya - A Lesson on Disregarding Context

Situation:Turkana, a very poor remote province in northwestern Kenya, is very underdeveloped and vulnerable to drought. The Turkana people are semi-nomadic cattle herders who lose their livelihoods when herds die during dry spells. However, there is a lake, Lake Turkana, teeming with fish in the region that is hardly used as a source of food or income by the population.

Flawed Approach: The development agency of Norway decided that exploiting the resources of Lake Turkana would be a good development initiative for the region, increasing incomes, employment, and stability in the face of weather patterns and climate change. A fish-processing factory was constructed and the herders were trained and hired in the factory. The nomadic culture of the population was overlooked and the project was largely implemented without first consulting the community.

Failed Outcome: The factory proved to be an unsustainable business due to its geographical remoteness, the nomadic culture of the workers needed to keep it up and running, and the cultural perspective on fishing in general in a society where owning cattle is a sign of wealth. The factory is now largely unused and has not contributed to the growth or development of the region as intended.

A Better Approach:Based on the demands and leadership of the community. Must work in harmony, not against, the everyday flow and rhythm of life in that community.

Source: Cocks, Tim. “Kenya’s Turkana learn from Failed Fish Project,” International Business Times, April 4, 2006.

The importance of the arts in International Development is becoming ever more increasingly recognized. Many organizations have already been emphasizing the need to develop projects that utilize the arts and to improve arts education for sustainable development and poverty eradication.

How do you think art is used in development? There are a few important ways in which the arts get integrated into development projects:

• To communicate a message to the target communities,
• To empower communities through art projects and art education,
• To draw attention to poverty and development related issues,
• To enrich the lives of the deprived populations and communities.

In Glob(a)log, we will try to share with you what some organizations and individuals are doing to make a difference in the lives of millions through the use of the arts. Until the next posting, see what three students from India had to say about women’s empowerment with a short animation. The project was carried out by Adobe, AnimAction, Listen Up! and iEARN.

Girl Power

The writer Kurt Vonnegut passed away last week at the age of 84. In honor of his memory, I’d like to present a meditation on war and peace from his famed novel Slaughterhouse-Five:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

Mohammed Yunus, famed creator of the Grameen Bank and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has a new project underway. He’s going to save the world with yogurt.

Specifically, Yunus has convinced the yogurt manufacturer Danone to create a high-nutrition, low-cost product. The yogurt will be made by rural women in Bangladesh (the same ones who borrow from Grameen), and it will also be sold to them. The cycle from producer to consumer will not run from poor countries to rich ones, or from poor people to rich people, but will be a completed circle.

The idea is a marriage between business and philanthrophy. Traditionally, businesses focused on making money and philanthropists on giving it away. But thanks to the new concept of “social profit,” innovators in the development field are finding ways for people to help themselves while helping others.

Read the entire article here.

Critique of World Bank’s Gender Strategy

Links between Gender and Macroeconomics

1. Strategy: While the Bank verbally recognizes the fundamental fact that gender equality is a cross-cutting issue, its strategy in 2002 to promote gender equality in Bangladesh focused primarily in areas that are traditionally viewed to be relevant to women such as health and education. Meanwhile the macroeconomic policies of the Bank promoted privatization of public enterprises and the closure of many social utilities. These economic policies have led to large scale unemployment of both men and women.

2. Weakness: The result of such an inconsistent gender strategy is that any progress made in the areas of focus (health and education) is undermined by the the negative effects of the Bank’s general economic policies. One clear example of this is the fact that violence against women actually increased as a result of unemployment because of the increased importance of dowries as capital and the inability of many women and households to provide a dowry.

Source: Khundker, Nasreen. “A Gentle Touch? - Gender and the World Bank - A Critical Assessment,” January 13, 2004 www.genderaction.org

Broken Water Pumps in Mozambique - The Hardware/Software Disconnect

Situation: No access to safe drinking water.

Flawed Approach:

Often projects to address water scarcity try to solve the problem by installing cheap hardware, such as water pumps, without investing in training the local population to maintain the equipment.

Failed Outcome:

Though the pumps are said to last up to 14 years, in some cases they stop working after only a few days. The communities are then left ill-equipped and unprepared to buy new parts and perform technical repairs to use the technology and make it last.

A Better Approach:

The technological aspects of solving water scarcity have to come with the more social aspects, such as hygiene education, management training, and an understanding of the social context in order to make the technology beneficial to everyone. It is also important for the community to be actively involved in decision-making from the very beginning of the project.

Source: Caroll, Rory. “Broken Pumps, Dashed Dreams,” WaterAid Mozambique: Kwilazia, www.wateraid.org