President's Blog

Episcopal Relief & Development recently led a study mission to Zambia, southern Africa. I’ve asked Diane Posnak, one of the participants, to share some of the experiences our group had while on the tour.

Nine of us were on the study mission to Zambia, including Rob Radtke, the President of Episcopal Relief & Development, and board member the Rt. Rev. Dena Harrison, Bishop Suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, along with her husband, Larry Harrison. Our Monday was full of program site visits, beginning with an 8:45 a.m. bus departure in order to be at St. Andrew’s Church in Livingstone at 9:00 a.m. With Father Katete, the rector, we toured the well-worn, small whitewashed church, built in 1910 (it has a beautiful stained glass altar window that portrays Victoria Falls with a rainbow).

We also saw a separate building that is Father Katete’s home, as well as a tiny cubbyhole of an office annexed to the house, created out of a former hallway—the office of St. Andrew’s (250 to 300 parishioners) and four other Anglican churches in the Parish. He also showed us a porch that was a separate “church area” for Africans during the colonial era—then in 1910, the Anglican Bishop refused to consecrate the church unless it served BOTH white and black parishioners. Now this rundown area is vacant.

Considering he has responsibility for all five churches (he leads services on a rotational basis every five weeks!), Father Katete has amazingly few resources, but he does have a laptop and air conditioning.

We then toured a separate small building, a “schoolroom” in the backyard, that is used to teach reading and writing to anyone not literate—especially adults (originally it was built to educate white Anglican kids). This literacy program is housed in local parishes with training and support from the Zambian Anglican Church, the Diocese of Lusaka development officer and Episcopal Relief & Development.

After visiting St. Andrew’s, we were bused outside of the middle of town on a bumpy road to a site where the Church (with Episcopal Relief & Development support) specializes in helping people prevent and cope with HIV/AIDS. There, we were greeted by the Mothers Union and entertained by musical groups singing songs about how to prevent HIV/AIDS.

The ceremony continued, informing us about and celebrating the successes in preventing the disease. We saw a play about the importance of educating kids (the future of their country) in HIV/AIDS prevention; listened to translations, prayers and comments by clergy; and heard a speech by a government official. All were recorded for TV (to be shown locally that night). Then we viewed the products and handcrafts that are made to raise money to support the program—this included a demonstration of how to make beef sausages, which are then sold locally.

Immediately, we took another bus ride with staff members to a local stone pit called Ngwenya. Here we saw children of all ages and adults working with bare hands and a chisel to break large rocks into gravel. They are paid the equivalent of $1 for a wheelbarrow of gravel—roughly 40 wheelbarrows make up a truck of gravel to be hauled away for construction by the local company.

The work is dangerous and damaging to people’s health. Many people are in a desperate situation, and in some cases children work in the mine instead of attending school. The Church and the diocesan development officer are trying to break the cycle of child labor by encouraging education and teaching more marketable job skills to adults. We walked across the street from the mine and talked with a mother who was able to free her children from the mining work and is now sending them to school, thanks to the Church and Episcopal Relief & Development.

Then another short bus ride took us to a shopping center in town for a quick lunch with Bishop David Njovu of the Zambia Anglican Council, Presiding Bishop Robert Mumbi of the Luapula diocese and Bishop Albert Chama of the Northern Diocese. They had flown in from around Zambia for our events. After lunch, we headed by bus to the Dambwa School near another church, St. Stephens. Here we were greeted by about 30 to 40 kids singing as a group and then for our benefit, several boys and girls came before us individually to recite an original poem about their lives.

These were kids who were reclaimed from the streets as orphans or vulnerable children. Dambwa is a transitional school that works to build their confidence and joy in learning, while placing them with a local family to live. Their joy was evident in happy smiles and eager participation. After six months to a year, the kids are placed in regular government-run schools to continue learning, hopefully with a new attitude towards life and its promises.

Our last site visit (Tuesday) was also in Livingstone—this time, we were going to see the NetsforLife® anti-malaria program partnership in action. Our group waited on the platform for the arrival of Bishop Albert, Bishop Robert and Bishop David, as well as the Zambia Anglican Council (ZAC) net distribution team.

The NetsforLife® program fights malaria (which is spread by mosquitoes) through distributing insecticide-treated nets and teaching communities how to prevent the disease through their use. Our purpose for the day was to replace all the used mosquito nets brought in by community members who had received them three years ago. The nets wear out after a few years, so this would ensure everyone had treated ones for the next three years. This was a typical distribution and roughly 100 ladies were in the audience—each carrying an old net in a plastic bag. Only the audience was there when our party arrived.

Everyone else arrived slowly, and while we waited, the net distribution team from ZAC sang songs about the nets to entertain us and the crowd. Also, Dr. Stephen Dzisi, the technical director of NetsforLife®, gave our group the history of the NetsforLife® partnership, which was introduced in Zambia in 2005, and answered questions as we waited.

Finally, the bishops and the TV cameraman arrived and our group was asked to join the ZAC team in dancing and singing while each of us held a blue packaged net in our hands. The distribution began with Father Katete naming each person signed up individually, calling them up to bring the old net to turn in and having them receive a handshake and new net from the ZAC lineup, including the community health volunteers, who all were dressed in colorful bright blue tops with tan and white striped long skirts that they had made. We each shook hands and handed out some nets. A pile of old nets remained as the NetsforLife® staff recorded each person who was a recipient.

The entire process took about an hour for 100 people and then we were each invited to join a two-person ZAC team as they visited nearby homes to provide new nets. Kate and I walked with Susan Kamanga and Father Emmanuel Chikoya down the road to a cluster of homes where they had names of people to visit. We said a prayer with each recipient in front of her home and then were invited inside to see the net delivered by Susan and Father Emmanuel with a demonstration and instructions as to usage.

Of the four homes we visited, the first and second were welcoming and waiting for our arrival. We squeezed inside with the owners, and the myriad little kids that curiously followed us around stayed outside.

The third house had a courtyard and two rooms. We were greeted with suspicion as to our purpose, but Susan and Father Emmanuel talked the owner into letting us visit her courtyard and leave a net with instructions.

In the fourth home was an ill man who had just been released from the hospital with TB. His wife and kids were elsewhere while he was sick—I think his wife also had been diagnosed with TB. He was very grateful for our net.

It was so eye-opening to see how the local dioceses and Episcopal Relief & Development are making a real difference in people’s lives through their programs. The people I met—both our program partners and the people they serve—will stay in my mind and heart for a long time to come. Those of us on the tour were very grateful to have the chance to see this work for ourselves.

As many of you know, Episcopal Relief & Development prides itself on assuring its donors that we have one of the lowest indirect (fundraising and administrative) costs rates in the industry.  We work hard to keep our ratios in line.

However, an article in the Fall 2009 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, entitled “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle”, calls this strategy into question.  It cites a Bridgespan Group study, asks some probing questions, and concludes that “A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let along serve their beneficiaries.”  The author calls on funders to take the lead in breaking this cycle.  To read the entire article, click here.

One funder has done just that.  The Boston Foundation recently announced that “More of its grantmaking dollars will be shifted over the next two years to provide organizations with general operating support. As a result, fewer purely programmatic grants will be made in the future.”  You can read about it here.  (In the interest of full disclosure my sister is on the staff of The Boston Foundation.  I assure you I had nothing to do with the change in their policy.)

Maybe we shouldn’t be focused so much on indirect costs rates.  We’d be a stronger, more effective organization if we didn’t.  Making that case to donors is tough, though.  What do you think?

Lately, a number of folks have contacted me for advice about micro-finance organizations that offer sponsorship opportunities.  There are a number of organizations that have websites where you, the donor, can make loans to a specific person whose story and photograph are prominently displayed.

Among the questions people have are: Should I donate to these organizations?  Why doesn’t Episcopal Relief & Development offer similar opportunities?  Are they reputable?

I have a firm policy of not commenting on other organizations and how they conduct their work.  That’s not my place as president of Episcopal Relief & Development.

However, I do have a series of questions that people should think through when considering supporting these organizations.  Among those questions are:

• Is the organization doing micro-finance programming itself, or is it marketing other organizations’ micro-finance programs, or passing your money along?
• Is the organization a not-for-profit or a for-profit enterprise?
• Is there a reason that some potential micro-finance beneficiaries are chosen and not others?  What are the criteria?
• Is the micro-finance initiative part of a long-term integrated development strategy for the communities where the loans are being made? 

Depending on how you feel about the answers to these questions, you should make a decision that works for you.

For our part, Episcopal Relief & Development is not a micro-finance agency as such.  We are committed to an integrated development approach, which means using micro-finance as a tool in our programs focused on health, food and disaster mitigation.

For example, after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, our partners in Sri Lanka used micro-finance strategies to get boat building operations up and running to supply boats to the fishermen who lost their equipment.  This had the advantage of getting people back to work quickly and restoring dignity and livelihoods.

The appeal of sites that offer the donor an apparently direct relationship with the beneficiary is very understandable.  However, my personal reaction to those sites is similar to my reaction to child sponsorships

 http://www.er-d.org/blog/index.php/2009/05/29/reflecting-on-child-sponsorships/

I think there’s a very high risk of commoditizing poverty and poor people so that we, the donors, feel good.  That’s the main reason that we don’t offer direct sponsorship of microfinance beneficiaries.

The most recent issues of National Geographic (June 2009) and Foreign Affairs (May/June 2009) have excellent articles on the global food crisis and hunger.

The National Geographic article does an excellent job laying out the challenges of feeding a world where “For most of the past decade, the world has been consuming more food than it has been producing.” The author goes on to remark that in 2007 there were only 61 days of food available in stockpiles at the current rate of food consumption.

The Foreign Affairs article contains some excellent recommendations for the Obama Administration on how to restructure U.S. food aid policy, including recommendations on trade policy and aid. The article concludes with the extremely persuasive argument starvation and food crises can lead to political instability, as was the case in Haiti last year.

No pun intended, but there’s a lot of food for thought in these articles. What do you think about the points the authors are making?

Child sponsorships are a very popular and effective fundraising strategy for agencies working in the developing world. When I am suffering from insomnia, I find myself riveted by some of the infomercials hawking child sponsorships.

At Episcopal Relief & Development we don’t do direct sponsorships, although it could be a lucrative marketing tool for us. We’ve made this decision for a couple of reasons, even though we are probably leaving money on the table.

First, and most important, we feel that we should be focused on communities, not individuals. There are some communities where some children are sponsored and some are not and this can create all kinds of unintended consequences—for example having sponsored and non-sponsored children being treated differently by teachers and parents in the same home or classroom. Sometimes those who are being sponsored are judged to be more “worthy.” Our view is that it is better to work with local community leaders to determine the needs for all the children and then work to meet as many of those needs as equitably as possible.

Second, there is a troubling ethical question raised through sponsorships. It can lead to the commoditization of poor children and therefore potentially de-humanizes them. Faith-based poverty alleviation needs to avoid this.

Third, sponsorships are not sustainable and set up relationships of dependence. What happens when the individual sponsoring a child loses interest?

Fourth, who benefits from sponsorships? If we’re really honest, what is our prime motivation? Do we want to do good or do we want to feel good? Can we do both? Which do we want more?

These are tough questions. Nick Kristof of the New York Times has written thoughtfully about child sponsorship programs. Click here to read his article:

What do you think about this issue?