Front Porch Discussions

Trying to build a global health movement

I'm writing from Global Health Corps (www.ghcorps.org), a fellowship program in global health that works in Malawi, Tanzania, Rawanda, Burundi, and the US. GHC places fellows in year long positions at on the ground global health organizations (like PIH, Clinton, etc).

The idea is to building a movement of multi-lateral service, that is, we put fellows in international teams of two (one local fellow and one international fellow)to help forge deep, international relationships.

Our applications for 2010 just opened, and we want to recruit for these fellowships in the best ways possible. Unfortunately, we are disproportionately recruiting Americans because most of the team members are American, and that's where most of our contact are.

Does anybody have recommendations on how we can get the word our to promising young professionals (in all disciplines) or recent grads globally?

Many thanks, Kacey

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Bill Gates 1010 Annual Letter

Mark published a tweet with a link to Bill Gates's 2010 Letter and I found it very much worth reading. If your as rich as Crocus, or Bill Gates, I suppose thinking very globally about the world seems sensible. Few of us can afford to think thusly, and that's too bad. Sure we have to choose within what our limitations allow, but choosing once having glimpsed a more global perspective seems worthwhile.

Last comment added: Mon, 25 Jan 2010 10:59:46 PST

Earthquake rocks Haiti - what can we do?

As you will probably know by now, a catastrophic earthquake (magnitude 7.0) has devastated Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world. A massive humanitarian crisis is looming.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Port al:Haiti

After the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, I spent time thinking about how to respond, on a personal level, and how to collaborate with others in helping out. In the end, I put my time into helping organise local fund-raising efforts, towards material aid and funds for NGOs working on the ground in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. However, I felt like I wasn't doing the best I could have done.

This time, I'd like to see if I can spark a conversation here, to share information, ideas, and maybe even develop some sort of plan to collaborate.

I realise this is a difficult question -- but I feel compelled to try to do *something*, somehow.

I've witnessed amazing dialogues here on ned, that focused on rapidly-developing humanitarian crises in vulnerable places (e.g. Darfur and CRISIS in Sudan/Chad).

I have one or two partly-baked ideas of my own (I *excel* at these), and will attempt to overcome my timidity, to put them forward. I'm hoping others might do the same, or perhaps will assist me in further baking mine.

Last comment added: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:34:45 PST

How Will You Make The World A Better Place in 2010?

Many of us hold this following belief...

We believe every individual has the power to make a difference.
We exist for one single purpose:
So that more and more people discover their own
power to make good things happen.

What will you do, what actions will you take, for a better world?

The little things, the big things.

Better for you.

Better for your family.

Better for your community.

Better for the world as a whole.

So...

How will you make the world a better place in 2010?

Last comment added: Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:23:55 PST

Butterflies Christmas Party Fund Raising

The Butterflies are planning a couple of Christmas parties for 2 groups of children in Kampala. There are 32 children aged 6-9 and 32 children aged 10-12. They would like to give each child a school bag and a mathematical set. This is the budget for gifts (Budget by Debrah):

64 bags and math sets @ 10,000	640,000
Buying/transport	20,000
Wrapping paper	50,000
SUB TOTAL	710,000 UGS
.	385.28 USD
Money transfer	25.00
Contingencies	14.72
Grand Total	425.00 USD

EDITED to add widget

Last comment added: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:35:28 PST

Which social entrepreneurs need more awareness?

I am staring an organization (greenpantsprojects.org) that helps raise awareness of the good work social entrepreneurs are doing all over the world. My goal is to post weekly video-blogs about the most inspiring people and organizations I can find. I am currently based in Oregon, and would like to begin my tour in the Northwest. Can anyone recommend who I should profile? Feel free to tell me about your own organizations/efforts.

Thanks! Aubrie

Last comment added: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:53:52 PST

Community Sufficiency Technologies

I want to ask your assistance in developing the narrative that goes with the presentation I am working on called Designing the Future.

It is a specific application of the concept that we will develop local capacity to produce quality results for people by sharing techniques between communities. I originally bundled that concept as Local Organizing and the Planetary Mind but here is the most recent articulation:

The goal is that every locality will develop the capacity to produce the food, clothing, shelter, education and health care that every resident of a locality needs to thrive. For shorthand:

1 – we will call food, clothing, shelter, education and health care “necessities”.

2 - By capacity to produce we mean that the residents of a locality will organize themselves to provide necessities for themselves.

3 - By thrive we mean that each resident has the opportunity for the physical and mental development necessary to exercise choice in their life.

The goal is to develop the local capacity to produce those necessities the residents need to thrive. The set of skills that we want to develop to reach the goal, the know how to do that, we will call the technology of community sufficiency. We view this technology as an overlay that is added on top of the existing set of structures in a locality. Therefore, we are not asking any resident to stop doing what they are doing to provide for themselves, we are only asking all residents to consider what else we might do to achieve the goal.

In order to facilitate a community effort to move toward the goal we propose some preliminary rules:

1 – everyone gets to make their own decisions.

2 – whatever we do is available for all residents

3 – we measure progress by the diversity of people, plants and creatures participating

There is no preconceived definition of locality, and there is no preconceived set of steps that any locality might take to work toward the goal. We only ask, in the interest of developing the technology as quickly as possible that the community members working toward the goal in any given locality regularly discuss their successes and frustrations with community members of other localities working toward that goal.

We do not wish to set up a new organization to pursue this goal either for an effort in any particular locality – or to facilitate the inter-locality communication. There are already organizations working on various parts of this effort in every locality. Any organization interested in working toward the goal is welcome to participate and the way that different types of organizations can contribute to reaching the goal will become part of the technology. We are looking for existing organizations to sponsor specific projects – including the inter-locality communication – and we anticipate certain benefits will accrue to those organizations who do participate in locally successful developments approaching the goal.

I will put the narrative in the Designing the Future Narrative workspace and look forward to your comments.

Last comment added: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:12:49 PST

Excellent Language Learning Sites

As some of you know I've a fascination with Language and Linguistics and often practice my limited and largely self-taught skills on Facebook. Really good language learning sites are very thin on the ground, here are the two I use most often for Kiswahili :

http://mwanasimba.online.fr/E_Ch ap00.htm (for grammar)

http://africanlanguages.com/swah ili/index.php?l=en (for vocabulary)

(Hoping others will add links to learning sites for other languages which they have found useful)

Last comment added: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:59:07 PST

Financial services of the non-credit kind

Why do banks in Africa charge so much for the kinds of services I get for free here in the UK? I've had many a chat with friends in Kampala lately who are struggling to get small businesses established in the IT field, they don't ask for credit, what they need is a means of paying for web hosting services, domain registration, and small but vital pieces of equipment. They have the funds, they just can't get the debit and credit cards they need to make online payments. And the banks charge ridiculous amounts just for the privilege of opening a straightforward deposit account. Any ideas, comments or suggestions, anyone?

Last comment added: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:22:49 PST

Asking NED - what've you learned?

Inspired by a post that Linda N made here, and wanting to learn from what you all have learned, I decided to post here and ask:

What's something that you've learned while participating here on NED.com?

Any one thing will do, but by all means, don't feel limited to one. Onet counts, but please explain a little so we have some context.

Last comment added: Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:17:54 PST