Annie Schowalter, a graduate student at UCSD, worked at Sustainable Energy Services Afghanistan (SESA) in Kabul, Afghanistan over the summer, supporting a group of women solar engineers in their business development. She shares her unique glimpses of sanctuaries, culture, and life in Kabul that will never make the news:

“Like Alice, I have found a strange wonderland on the other side of a keyhole.

In Kabul, tenacious optimism thrives within the cloistering walls of compounds, under the suffocating constraints of the Burqa, and the oppressive threat of explosive violence.

The tightly controlled security environment of the international community is equally matched for Afghans by incredibly restrictive cultural codes. In this charming country, everyone is under somebody’s lock and key.

As a western woman working for a small Afghan company, I enjoy more freedoms than most. I fall into a “third gender” category that allows me to travel amongst strictly divided male and female societies. Further, my movement is not restricted by my employer to a list of pre-approved locations. I can visit the homes of my Afghan friends, accompany my colleagues to the Bazaar, and visit the corner shop for green tea and herbal fruit shisha with Shuja.

Yet, even with these remarkable abilities I still spend the majority of my days and nights within a series of secure compounds and cars. I don’t speak to unknown Afghans, never walk to a destination (even if it is two blocks away), and I would never venture around town unaccompanied for fear of being kidnapped. Within these bounds, I have been amazed to discover a surprisingly lovely society brimming with a richness of spirit and vitality that feels more valuable that edible nourishment. It is what will bring me back to Kabul despite the threat of violence.

Samiya and I recently accompanied two of SESA’s male engineers on a data collection mission to Turquoise Mountain. Rory Stewart, of The Places In Between fame, has channeled his aristocratic connections and literary success into the creation of this NGO dedicated to conserving parts of Kabul’s old city. His organization is also providing employment to locals by reviving Afghanistan’s traditional craft economy.

Like most locales in Kabul, the entrance to the Turquoise Mountain center is unmarked. For security reasons there is no address and defining exterior features are virtually nonexistent. The weak central government means that even in Kabul infrastructure is lacking and the richest neighborhoods still have horribly rutted streets strewn with trash, raw sewage, inhabited by herds of goats and street kids. Amidst this chaos, going anywhere new in Kabul takes an order of magnitude longer. Animated cell phone conversations between your driver and a local on the other end of the line are essential. Often these exchanges are repeated more than once before you find your destination.

On the day we visited Turquoise Mountain I was recovering from food poisoning. Already nauseous, I braced myself as our 4WD minivan bounced wildly along the horribly rutted side roads. Thick heat and a generally pervasive stench of feces hung over the city, clogging my nostrils. We pulled up in front of the unidentifiable front gate and I gagged as goats grazing the garbage rotting in the summer heat disturbed a putrid smell that drifted in our open windows. We piled out of the van and made our way to the guard shack. After the men had been frisked and Samiya and my bags’ were checked, we stepped through the interior gate of the guard shack and left the five guards and their ten guns behind.

As soon as we were through the keyhole, a sweet smelling breeze carrying apricot blossoms and the scent of blooming roses crossed our path. I was shocked by the impossibility of the contrast. Clean men and women with relaxed brows, in well fitting traditional clothes moved calmly along a pathway winding through a terraced garden full of a wide variety of flowers and fruit trees. They carried intricate woodcarvings, trays of freshly cut and polished sparkling jewels, and parchments with Persian calligraphy. Moving serenely they transferred their wares between a series of buildings that harmonized traditional and modern design. An intoxicating sense of peace and clam was palpable.

Our host invited Samiya and I to explore. We left the male engineers behind and descended into the depths of the lush garden. Samiya sighed, relaxed. She took my hand in hers and I swooned. It was the first physical gesture of friendship she’d extended to me. In a culture where men and women are incredibly physically affectionate with one another it felt like meaningful acceptance. We had been working intensely together over the past few weeks, completing the installation of solar freezers in local cafes, preparing proposals for solar electricity installations, drafting marketing brochures and materials, and working to train the women engineers in project management methodology. It was nice to be spending a bit of down time together.

“This is toot,” Samiya explained, pointing to a tree laden with mulberries. I offered the English translation and we meandered on to pause at a peach tree, then an apricot tree, and an apple tree. Each time we stopped to repeat the exercise.

Shortly we reached a Kuchi tent, the traditional yurt-like home of Afghanistan’s nomadic tribe. Neither Samiya nor I had ever seen one before and we were curious to check it out. We slipped inside where it was cool and the air smelled surprisingly like a clean wool sweater. We squatted and paused to enjoy the hidden respite.

“How do you feel being at this Center?” I asked her.

“I feel happy… I feel calm… I feel pride,” she said. “So many beautiful Afghan things …It is my hope that one day all of Afghanistan will be rebuilt like this,” she answered slowly. As usual she was deep in thought for her English, as well as her sentiment.

“I feel pride for you too,” I said. “Afghan culture is remarkable. Inshallah, one day you will see compounds and homes in Kabul with exterior walls that display this craftsmanship.”

We emerged from the tent and came face to face with the very British Rory Stewart, himself. He greeted us in cheerful Dari and glided off.

Later after a long tour of the facilities and workshops, we paused to speak with the head calligraphy teacher. He explained to me that the famous Sufi poet, Rumi, was born in Afghanistan. He told me with pride about the teachings and tradition of this ancient mystic and theologian. As we prepared to leave I shared my amazement at having found such a peaceful sanctuary in the midst of the chaos of Kabul city.

“Don’t forget,” he said chiding me playfully with winking eyes, “Rumi teaches us that the door to the sanctuary is inside you alone.”

***

A few days later, I joined Shuja in his family’s home for tea. To get to his house we drove through parts of the city I had never seen before. Less densely populated, there was more space surrounding the homes. However, it was also characterized by less reconstruction and more physical injury was apparent in the residents as well. Children with missing appendages wrestled (I hoped playfully) on the road, families emerged for dusk chores from rooms in homes that were half obliterated by bombings, men instead of donkeys pulled carts full of food and lumber, and Shuja battled his way through traffic jams of people instead of the cars that snarl the city’s center. The modern veil of Kabul had lifted to reveal poverty reminiscent of an early century.

Shuja explained that this part of the city was decimated by the Mujahedeen and the Taliban. His family had found a large home to rent that was cheap and, he claimed beautiful. We passed the bombed out carcass of the old royal palace and slipped off the paved road onto a rutted back street. Market stalls brimmed with clothing, tires, wash basins, fruit, and nan bread. Already dusk, women were noticeably absent from the streets. We pulled up in front of a nondescript compound walled by mud bricks and slipped inside the gate.

Indeed, hidden by the compound walls and locked gate was a beautiful garden full of fruits, vegetables, hollyhocks, roses, and sunflowers. It was gorgeous! Shuja proudly introduced me to his father, who he identified as the garden’s caretaker. His father greeted me with a warm smile and sincere hand over his heart. Shuja’s five brothers flowed out of the house to greet me as well. The air crackled with energy and excitement.

In typical Afghan custom, Shuja shares his home with his wife, son, elderly uncle, mother, father, 5 siblings, 3 sisters in law, and 5 nieces and nephews. Each sibling has their own room for them and their spouse and kids, and the family shares three large sitting rooms lined with the beautiful carpets Afghanistan is famous for, and colorful cushions called toshak.

I was escorted into one of the sitting rooms and served a fresh pot of green tea with butter cookies, dried fruit, and nuts. According to custom, I was clearly given the best of what they had. Nobody joined me, but everyone watched comfortably as I ate and drank. Warmly, they encouraged me to take more and more. This tea ritual ensures that nothing gets done quickly in Afghanistan. As I would later learn during a visit to Shuja’s ancestral village, tea is offered casually but it is a great dishonor to refuse lightly. I have also learned that after many, many cups green tea has a spa like effect: relaxed rejuvenation. It may just be my new not-so-secret weapon for my second year of grad school.

Shuja’s older brother, Zia sat next to me as I sipped my tea. He told me that he and his younger brother, Wajid work as interpreters for the US special forces in Afghanistan. They both spoke perfect English and soon engaged me in an incredibly compelling conversation. Home on holiday for Wajid’s wedding they were full of fresh stories from the battlefield.

Wajid had recently been injured by a suicide bomber in Khost, a city in eastern Afghanistan that is currently a hotbed for Taliban activity. He showed me a deep crater in his upper thigh was still healing from shrapnel wound. Fortunately, he was otherwise okay. As he told me the story of the accident he opened up his laptop to share video of the incident. He and Zia sandwiched me between them, nestled comfortably in the toshak, and urged me to eat Afghan walnuts and dried apricots as they started the video. The sense that we were settling in for entertainment was surreal and disconcerting.

I was speechless as I watched the operation unfold. Wajid’s camera followed US special forces agents, flanked by Zia and another Afghan interpreter as they engaged in a strategic SWAT maneuver focused on a municipal office building, with one wing aflame. Wajid explained that Taliban agents and suicide bombers had overtaken a local government building. As hostages were taken, the Afghan police called in the Afghan Army for backup. After suicide bombers kept the Afghan Army impotent, they called in the Afghan Special Forces for back up. When the Afghan Special Forces were engaged in a deadlocked fire fight, they called in the US Special Forces to resolve the standoff. By the time Wajid started recording strategic gains had already been made. The battle was nearly done, he said.

Bloody evacuees were being escorted out of the burning building by disciplined and efficient soldiers. Zia and others scaled broken glass and rubble as they moved in from the side. The team commander turned and ordered them to move inside to check for any remaining Talibs. Wajid’s camera lowered to his foot stepping forward and shut off. Zia began a hurried explanation of how an unconscious Talib woke up just as Wajid stepped inside and detonated a grenade, killing himself and causing the crater still healing in Wajid’s leg.

Before I could ask for more clarification on the mission or how it was even possible that they had made this video and were able to share it with me, they began a tag team narration. Eagerly, they told me about missions they completed, Talibs they killed, threats they had evaded. In one video they dropped into location from a black hawk and detonated an ammunitions cache. Another photo showed a nondescript man they detained because of a crude bomb wired to the handlebars. Kneeling next to his bike bomb he looked like disturbingly like 95% of the men I passed every day in Kabul. Another photo showed Wajid with an IED he found and detonated on an unpaved, muddy road. The US forces had paid him a spot bonus of $200 for finding it.

I was mesmerized. Raw and unfiltered, it was a compelling reminder that outside of the Kabul bubble there is a real war going on in parts of this country. Isolated from the US news media I wondered if the images I saw are reflected on the nightly news or if they too are veiled.
As Shuja drove me home later that night I asked him how he felt about his brothers fighting with the Americans; risking their lives in this war.

“I worry for them, but I am proud” he said. “They make good money, but most important — they are killing Talibs. This is good for all of us.”

Despite his tough body builder’s physic, Shuja is a very gentle man. So, I was surprised by his ferocity as he continued on to say, “Talibs stole my youth, my education …chance for success. Now at 30 I finally hope to have the opportunity to finish high school. But, I will do this with a child and wife to support and a full time job. With the Taliban my life became horrible! My brothers should fight and kill them. They should all die so they will never have Afghanistan again!”

Locked inside Shuja’s kind and generous heart I felt I had discovered kernels of anger and revenge that, in part, fuels Afghanistan’s bloody plight. I could not help but wonder: who are the Taliban and, what are the long-term ramifications for a country with such a nebulous and legitimized scapegoat? Later, I read a good op-ed in the New York Times that addressed similar issues. (http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/who-are-the-taliban/)

***

A few days later Shuja and I drove with Tim to Panjshir province. The exit road from Kabul soon gave way to wide mountainous valleys and vast tracts of grape fields enclosed behind mud walls. We passed village after village where I only saw women in the stereotypical blue burqas. Pulling my headscarf closer around my chin and donning my sunglasses to hide my blue eyes I felt oddly naked. As the hours passed without seeing a single woman’s face I was increasingly disturbed by the way that the blue of the burqas melted into the sky’s horizon line. The women were becoming invisible to me too.

Later I would realize that women are able to move more freely closer to their homes, on the lanes and streets surrounding their compounds, and in the sanctuary of the wide network of extended family homes that compose the majority of Afghan villages. From the highway we drove that day we only saw the public markets where women still preserve the most traditional customs. I thought about Samiya and the Talib she was forced to marry after he followed her home from such a market. In a world where a woman’s life can change so dramatically just for being noticed, I can understand the desire to cover. To maintain anonymity. It struck me that legal rights and a new cultural ethos will be required before many will choose to give up that protective shield. Still, it was such a contrast from comparatively cosmopolitan Kabul where women move freely with token headscarves.

Eventually the villages gave way to remote homesteads. Agricultural fields were littered with the twisted bodies of abandoned Russian tanks. Bridges were made from tank treads, snow proof huts had been built from repurposed tank cabs. Grape trellises were buttressed by the patina-ed undercarriages of the tanks. Reconstruction had clearly been underway for quite some time in this picturesque corner of the country.

We came to a military checkpoint and signed a log explaining in broken Dari that we were with a renewable energy company. Finally, the Afghan solider swung the mechanical gate open and we passed through nature’s keyhole into the Panjshir Valley. A torrent of glacier fed rapids rushed nearly level to the road through a steep gorge flanked by high peaks. We snaked our way along the narrow highway as the gorge slowly opened up to reveal a lush, green mountain paradise.

Ahead we connected with the engineers who had been fixing a solar system at a health clinic. We rendezvoused at the Pansjir Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base. In 2001, the US government introduced PRT units into Afghanistan. They have pioneered the model for international development in conflict/post-conflict zones. Made up of military officers, diplomats, and development experts the PRTs often combine International Security Forces (ISAF), USAID, and NGOs on a single base. Their mission is to extend the reach of the central government and empower local officials to govern their constituents more effectively. Sustainable Energy Services Afghanistan (SESA) is currently executing a number of rural electrification projects for various PRTs throughout the country. In Panjshir we provided solar electricity and water purification systems for 18 health clinics. Elsewhere we have focused on deployable energy systems.

Responding to the need for rural electrification in Afghanistan, SESA has developed a hybrid community development/technology solution that enables quick and efficient mobilization to the highest risk areas. 20’ shipping container house the necessary components (inverters, control boxes and battery storage) for a system of up to 20 kW of solar and 15 kW of wind or a wind/solar hybrid system. The containers can be outfitted in days as opposed to weeks as they are constructed at the compound in Kabul, allowing multiple containers to be outfitted at once at a much greater speed. The team works in a safe environment with immediate access to the tools and components needed. Village representatives can be trained as experts without exposing themselves to risk. When the installation is complete, the containers are trucked to location and installed in record time. Village reps and SESA employees work with the Shura (tribal council) to assume responsibility for collecting revenue from pre-paid meters. This provides incentive to protect the system and provides necessary funds for ongoing maintenance. Remote access cards allow SESA engineers to monitor the system and support village representatives in situ. (For a more vivid explanation, check out this short video that explains the system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvLdkZvw7QM)

Unlike the parts of the country where deployable energy systems are gaining popularity, the Panjshir’s eminently defensible topography ensured that it never fell to the Russians or the Taliban. Locked behind a fearsome pass in one of the world’s most impressive gorges is a region of Afghanistan that has been untainted by extremist ideology. In fact, the region gave quarter to a number of Kabuli refugees during the Taliban era. The ruins of the refugee camps are still evident along the banks of the valley’s powerful river. Presidential Candidate Doctor Abdullah Abdullah was a mujahedeen fighter in the region during the civil war. He still retains great favor among his mother’s people in the region. A fact that may ensure he keeps Karzi from getting 50% of the vote.

***

“Anna come see the kites,” Shuja called gleefully from the roof of our compound the other morning.

I scaled the ladder made from two slender tree trunks to the top of the two story flat. A hot summer wind blew steadily from the East. The sky was cloudless and intensely blue. Kabul’s million-plus cars had not yet kicked up enough dust to blanket the city in brown. In the clarity I saw colorful kites dancing from thirty compounds surrounding us. Peering down from my rooftop perch I could make out individuals in neighboring courtyards expertly guiding their ethereal emissaries into dizzying battle.

“This is nothing” Shuja said. “In Winter there are too many kites – the whole sky is full!” In Dari, “too” is the same word as “a lot”; Shuja’s anglicization of this synonym endears me every time.

We gazed upward to watch an intensifying battle between a pale yellow kite and a bright red and blue kite twice its size. As we watch the drama unfold, a shadow engulfed us. A convoy of 4 blackhawk helicopters moved across the skyline, heading to trouble zones in the southeast. In the distance we spotted a white surveillance blimp. Flying low, it looked huge against Kabul’s mountainous skyline.

“The spy plane is back,” Shuja noted. “You can see?! …They are doing this for the elections. Now they can see anything they want to in Kabul. Even the drops of sweat on my head! …Now nothing in Kabul is hidden anymore!”

I smiled. For all my introspection, it is high-tech spies in the sky who will ultimately succeed in removing Kabul’s veil.

***

There is a primal drama to living in this environment that I will miss. It has nothing to do with the humvee convoys and overabundance of loaded weapons. Like seasons of the year, the keyholes place focus on core elements of life and illuminate contrasts. They make life’s color more vibrant.

Personally, the abundance and denial of each counterpoint has enlivened my awareness of my moment to moment experience. Very Zen. The oscillation between extremes has encouraged me to focus attention toward that sanctuary door inside me. Perhaps if the Taliban hadn’t blown up the legendary Buddha statues outside of Band-e-Mir I’d have to make a pilgrimage, especially since they are included in an area that was just recently named Afghanistan’s first national park. (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/06/23/afghanistan.national.park/index.html)

Hanoi, Vietnam: I recently met Trang Nguyen, a 22 year old, born around the time economic reform began here in 1986. After telling her that I had visited and worked with the orphanage where she was brought up, she shared her story and her hopes for the future with me:

Trang was born into a poor rural family in Central Vietnam. At the age of six, she was placed in an orphanage in nearby Danang. The orphanage put her through school, and when her time came to enter the workforce, a partnering international NGO, spearheaded by an Australian, sponsored her to undertake hospitality training in Ha Noi. Now at 22, she has been working at one of Ha Noi’s newest five star hotels for the past year and a half. She makes enough money to send some home to her family who were too poor to raise her. Her mentors over the years have been humanitarian businessmen and she hopes to step in their footsteps. One day, she hopes to have enough money to be able not only to support herself and her family, but give back to the orphanage that raised her and that continues to provide hope for children in central Vietnam.

Subtly woven into her life story are the opportunities that a globalized development network can create, from the orphanage and the hospitality training school, to her career in the hospitality industry in one of the world’s top hotel chains, in Hanoi, catering to an increasing number of foreign businessmen and tourists entering Vietnam. These opportunities would have been unthinkable in the early ‘80s in Vietnam, and I believe they speak to the value of partnerships/cross-sector partnerships, where development is working.

In the video below, Charlie Rose interviews Dambisa Moyo, Jacqueline Novogratz, and Peter Singer on the “idea of aid” and their opinions on what works in aid.

Focusing on the second interview with Jacqueline Novogratz, she is the founder of Acumen Fund and author of the new book “The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World”. The book is a refreshing perspective on international development and an inspiring read. As Jacqueline chronicles the last 25 years of her experiences in development, she lends a unique business-minded perspective and level of accountability to the development work she does. Jacqueline’s story, compassion and dedication are inspiring. Just as inspiring are the stories she tells so well about the incredible people she has met along the way in India, Pakistan, and throughout Africa, as well as her experience working in Rwanda before the genocide and coming back to meet some of her friends who survived.To read more about the book and buy it online, click here to go to Amazon.com.

Please note our name change to Tall Orders! We are in the process of moving to a new location and will provide an update on this soon.

A Company Prospers by Saving Poor People’s Lives

Its products are in use in refugee camps and disaster areas all over the third world: PermaNet, a mosquito net impregnated with insecticide; ZeroFly, a tent tarp that kills flies; and the LifeStraw, a filter worn around the neck that makes filthy water safe to drink. Some are not only life-saving but even beautiful. The turquoise and navy blue LifeStraw is in museum design collections.

“Vestergaard is just different from other companies we work with,” said Kevin Starace, malaria adviser for the United Nations Foundation. “They think of the end user as a consumer rather than as a patient or a victim.” For example, he said, they have added a cellphone pocket to their bed nets, and make window curtains that kill bugs.

——————–

Read more about this company and the work they are doing to help the world’s poor in the NYT’s article here

Net Effect: Neighborhood Watch
By Elizabeth Dickinson
Published in: Foreign Policy, January/February 2009

“For years, creating an effective means of alerting the world to brewing conflicts has been the dream of humanitarians.
When a rush of violence broke out last January after Kenya’s presidential election, many wondered why it was so unexpected. Electoral rigging set off the attacks, but surely tensions simmered before. Could Kenya have seen the outburst coming and perhaps done something to prevent it?

Prediction, at least, was possible—and Web-based nonprofit Ushahidi (Swahili for “testimony”) did just that. Funded by grants and individual donations, Ushahidi had already developed software that allowed any mobile-phone user in Kenya to report incidents of community tension. “[T]here were a lot of rumors going around way before the violence,” says Ushahidi’s founder, Ory Okolloh.

Okolloh’s group operates one of a growing number of conflict early warning systems that are springing up online. They work because they are simple and fast. An Ushahidi user, for example, sends details of turmoil by text or posts directly to ushahidi.com. Once a local NGO verifies the account, the incident gets entered into the Ushahidi database and plotted on a map, tagged with a description of the event and with space for pictures and video. In Kenya, reports of violence were texted back to local leaders, who could mediate community conflict. International observers could monitor the reports, too.

For years, creating an effective means of alerting the world to brewing conflicts has been the dream of humanitarians. The African Union has been intent on creating its own system since the early 1990s. But none of the ideas was Internet-based. As the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies put it, Web-based approaches “would have been patently inappropriate for an organization that only recently achieved a moderate level of external e-mail connectivity.”

With Ushahidi, information is available within minutes, and Okolloh says censorship isn’t a problem because governments “are more interested in what’s in newspapers than what’s online.” Kenya was the first testing ground, and now Ushahidi is jumping into other conflict countries as well. As of November, the group was already receiving an average of four reports a day from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This growing breadth could make Ushahidi something like the Wikipedia of conflicts, wrote Harvard researchers Joshua Goldstein and Juliana Rotich in a recent paper. “They are tools that allow cooperation on a massive scale.” Ushahidi hopes to become a history worth contributing to. “

The World Health Organization believes that 25% of the medicines sold around the developing world are inauthentic copies containing little or no active ingredients. Medication like this increases the resistance of pathogens to first-line medication and in many cases causes fatality.

But what if a mother caring for her sick child who needs a prescription drug in rural Ghana, could determine by a quick SMS/text-message via her cellphone that the prescription drug she intends to purchase is safe for her child and not a fake?

mPedigree, a Ghanaian start-up, is working to make this a reality throughout Africa. I recently met one of the founders, Bright Simons, a dynamic, young social entrepreneur from Ghana, who is on a mission to find partners and investors and spread the word about mPedigree. If mPedigree is able to forge the public-private partnerships necessary between governments, the pharmaceutical industries, and telecom giants, this technology may well become a revolutionary force in bringing access to safe drugs to people across the developing world.

Read about mPedigree’s approach and Bright’s efforts in this interview with him in June 2008:
MPedigree: Combating Counterfeit Drugs

One of the main purposes of this blog is to introduce inspirational social entrepreneurs and innovative organizations to a wider audience outside of their home countries.

In Cape Town at the end of November last year, I met Nontwenhle Mchunu, a formidable, yet cautious young woman from a small town in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. She is on a mission to create Africa’s first prestigous, world-class chocolate brand, using only ingredients from African soil that have been sustainably produced.

She is well on her way already: in 2008 she won the South African Businesswomen’s Association Regional Business Achiever Awards in the social entrepreneur category for her newly established company, Ezulwini Chocolat; she has trained at one of Europe’s top culinary institutes, Leatherhead International, and in Switzerland where she learned from the world’s leading fine-chocolate makers.

Her ambition is to build a successful chocolate business in the townships of South Africa to create jobs (where unemployment runs as high as 40%), expand access to vocational education for many youth through her business, and use only cocoa and ingredients from sustainable African sources.

Mchunu, or “Chocolate Lady”, has a passion for both sustainable change and chocolate, and South African supermarket chains and hotels, like Pick-n-Pay and Protea Hotels, have already begun to retail her products. With her lofty expectations, entrepreneurial drive, and plans to become South Africa’s leading Chocolatier, I expect we will see her chocolate around the world in the not too distant future.

I met Mchunu at the Evian Group at IMD’s capacity building workshop in Cape Town that was focused on inclusive growth in Africa. Read more about Mchunu and the workshop here:

Evian Group at IMD workshop focuses on inclusive growth

Net Impact: The New Appeal of Metrics and Evaluation
By Kelly McCarthy
Published: www.nextbillion.net, November 18, 2008 

“There was a lot of buzz about “impact” last weekend at the  Net Impact Conference. However, this year it wasn’t just talk about creating impact, but most importantly how we consider, measure and prove it.  Perhaps the word was being used too liberally lately thus loosing a bit of its meaning.  

However, as I listened to many organizations whose work intends to generate positive environmental and social impact, it became apparent that a shift is occurring.  Rather than talking simply about impact in anecdotes and what was better than before, foundations, funds, design-for-impact, not-for-profit (and not-for-loss) organizations alike were talking about a “social capital market,as. Jason Saul, CEO of Mission Measurement, summed it up during one of the panels. 

Following are some of the thoughts that came to mind from the perspective of metrics and evaluation while attending some of the sessions at the conference.

In a session titled Hype vs. Reality, panelists dug into the nitty-gritty of how we measure, monitor, and evaluate our work.  “Everyone does knowledge management and monitoring and evaluation poorly,” said Elizabeth Nitze, VP of Ashoka.  “After so much time we in the enterprise development sector are looking around wondering, what the heck happened?  What are the best-practices?  There are none.” There was a unanimous nod of heads from fellow panelists and audience members around the room.  However, in a sector that believes in the positive potential impacts of social entrepreneurs, there is light at the end of the tunnel.  

Indeed, the conversation turned optimistic as panelists Brian Milder (from Root Captial) and Elizabeth Wallace Elders (from globalislocal) joined Nitze in a discussion about the mash-up of innovative minds at Google.org, Salesforce, and Acumen Fund leading the effort to develop what is currently being called the Portfolio Data Management System (PDMS).  Officially announced at theClinton Global Initiative, the PDMS is a web-based tool designed to track, share, and compare portfolio performance data with the ultimate intention of helping the enterprise development community better manage, communicate, and maximize our collective impact.

This is all well and good, but does it pass the “so what” test?  And will other efforts similar to the PDMS actually help improve how we talk about and demonstrate impact?” Read more here.

Today’s IHT has a fascinating article about an organization called NetHope that is working on the utilization of technology to improve the implementation of humanitarian aid around the world.

NetHope bringing technology to humanitarian efforts
By Julie Bick
Published in: International Herald Tribune, November 11, 2008

“Rui Lopes’s first impression of Banda Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami was chaos. Bone-jarringly rough roads led to a hastily assembled field office, where Lopes, the senior technical director of Save the Children, learned that the communications infrastructure, along with just about everything else, had been destroyed.

Aside from a few satellite phones and even fewer working mobile phones, the area was isolated as relief workers scrambled to assess the security situation and address the vast humanitarian needs.” Read the full article here…