Filed under: Africa, Mother, Nike Foundation | Tags: Mother, Africa, Nike Foundation, Girl Effect, DFID
An independent report by an aid watchdog is critical of Girl Hub – the joint venture between Nike Foundation and DFID. Poor budgeting and financial monitoring, along with weak accountability mechanisms, weak risk management, and the absence of anti-corruption and anti-bribery policies – all of these are concerns, says the watchdog.
When I was doing projects for Girl Hub, it was clear that Nike and DFID are strange bedfellows. Culturally, they couldn’t be more different.
| NIKE CULTURE | DFID CULTURE |
|---|---|
| Obsession with innovation, doing things differently, trying new things, being bold, embracing failure. Impatient. | Focus on risk minimisation, accountability, governance, processes. Highly risk averse – the “do no harm” mantra rules. Slow. |
They’re both very good at what they do – world-class in fact. But they’re from different planets. The joint venture was always an act of genius or craziness.
Girl Hub is trying to unlock a whole new approach to using creativity and communications to lift girls out of poverty. You don’t do this by playing by the book. Creativity isn’t a neat process.
When I was at Mother, the agency often felt on the brink of complete dis-functionality. Yet consistently produced creative and effective work. Yet if this aid watchdog had come to audit Mother, they’d have shut it down.
Girl Hub is spending taxpayers money – of course it should be monitored. But if it’s assessed like any other DFID venture, it won’t achieve anything. If you remove the risk of failure, you probably also remove the innovation.
In the private sector, firms which innovate well accept a high failure rate – especially in the tech sector. The Gates Foundation are reported to expect only 10% of projects to be scaled up – that’s a 90% failure rate.
It’s early days for Girl Hub – only two years in, and just getting into its stride. Andrew Mitchell (International development secretary) being fully supportive – and full credit to him.
Filed under: Corporate Citizenship, Nike Foundation, Unilever | Tags: Burberry, Corporate Citizenship, Corporate Foundation, foundation, Nike, Nike Foundation, Thomson Reuters, Unilever, Virgin Unite
Last week I arranged a breakfast for a few big corporate foundations. Unilever kindly hosted it, in their plush CEO dining room – a clear bright morning, with a panoramic view of the London skyline. We were joined by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Virgin Unite, Nike Foundation and Burberry Foundation.
One thing’s clear: in the world of corporate foundations, this lot are a new breed. Here’s why.
More matter, less art.
Historically, corporate foundations were likely patrons of the arts – but now the energy moving away from theatres and galleries and towards the slums and inner cities. The magic word is “impact”. The arts institutions really need a new narrative to retain their corporate patrons.
More international.
The multi-nationals are becoming multi-locals, so the story goes – and the new wave of corporate foundations has a naturally international outlook. Increasingly, their partners are the international development agencies and NGOs.
More employee involvement.
Many foundations are still far removed from real business – just benefactors for the favourite charities of chairmans’ wives. The new wave is much smarter: the corporate foundation is a catalyst for employee engagement, a feeling of belonging and shared endeavor, a feeling of pride, and in some cases a platform for developing new talent.
More aligned to corporate brand and strategy.
This is about leveraging the core competencies of the business – legal advice or journalism, if you’re Thomson Reuters. In other cases, it’s about being emblematic of the corporate brand: entrepreneurialism if you’re Virgin, or creativity if you’re Burberry.
There’s an instinctive sense in the people running these foundations that to make a difference, the foundation has to really resonate with the heartbeat of the parent corporate.
It was an interesting session, and fun to organize. Everyone agreed we should do another one before the end of the year, and invite a few other kindred spirits.
Lovely image taken from Unilever’s roofgarden from here.
Filed under: Apple, Corporate Citizenship, Nike Foundation, Philanthropy, Vodafone | Tags: Apple, charity, Cisco, corporate, Corporate Citizenship, foundation, Girl Effect, LloydsTSB, Nike, Nike Foundation, Philanthropy, tesco, virgin, Virgin Unite, Vodafone
It’s not often one of the world’s biggest companies tells you they’re setting up a foundation, and asks for thoughts on strategy and positioning. I thought I’d share some of the questions we’ll need to think through, in case anyone has any ideas or experiences to throw in…
1. PURPOSE: How is the foundation linked to corporate strategy? Some foundations are set up to allow independence from corporate priorities – e.g., the LloydsTSB Foundation, which is a giving vehicle to range of charities. Others are set up to deliver complement commercial objectives – e.g., the Walmart Foundation, which directly tackles nutrition in low income groups.
2. CORE COMPETENCE: What does the foundation actually do? Most of foundations exist purely to give money, but some also draw upon the expertise of parent company. The Vodafone Foundations are a great example of this, using mobile telecoms for health, education and disaster relief. Similarly, the Cisco Foundation works to use Internet technologies for social inclusion.
3. PEOPLE: Is the foundation run by corporate management? Sometimes the foundation’s trustees will be drawn from the corporation’s senior management, other times they are completely independent. Some corporates will facilitate volunteering and/or secondments to the foundation, and an opportunity to galvanise staff fundraising. Sometimes corporates view the foundation as a positive tool for talent development – giving their rising stars a broader set of management challenges, and some valuable perspectives on the world.
4. MONEY: How does the foundation get funded? A clear endowment formula proves commitement – e.g., the Lloyds TSB Foundations gets 1% pre-tax profits (averaged over 3 years). Some foundations are set up during an IPO or M&A, and are given a chunk of equity – such as Google.org, which has 1% of Google stock. The foundation I’m closest to, the Nike Foundation, was set up with an initial $20 million, and this is topped up each year from Nike’s commitment to give 3% of pre-tax profits.
5. BRAND: What is the foundation’s public positioning? Many corporate foundations share a brand identity, but aren’t promoted directly as a brand asset. Nike Foundation is a great example of this, having created the Girl Effect campaign as the public face of the foundation. Other foundations align themselves with consumer interest: the Tesco Charity Trust, for example, is said to undertake consumer research to help decide their areas of focus. Virgin Unite is building on the Virgin brand’s reputation for entrepreneurship.
Corporate foundations are among the biggest donors of all foundations: 11 of the top 20 US-based foundations are corporate. (foundationcentre.org). All corporates are under increasing pressure justify charitable giving to shareholders, so foundations are becoming increasingly strategic about the way they give: aligning the focus of the foundation with commercial objectives, building upon core business competencies.
And for the record, the client I’m working with isn’t Apple – I just liked the cartoon (by Rob Cottingham) because their own philanthropy ambitions are either secret or absent. According to an answer on Quora, Steve Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs when he returned in 1997. It would be fun to think what you’d do with the Apple Foundation…
Filed under: BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation | Tags: Al Jazeera, Arab Spring, BBC World Service Trust, Egypt, Facebook, Girl Hub, Libya, Nike Foundation, Syria, Tunisia, Twitter
I’ve just finished two big projects, and so I’m about to take a break. One of them has involved writing a report for the Nike Foundation’s Girl Hub initiative. It will be published in full before long, but here’s a flavour:
For anyone interested in how media can enable social change, the Arab Spring of 2011 is an ultimate case study. The self-sacrifice of Mohamed Bouzizi on a street in Tunis has led to a wave of popular action in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Oman, Libya and beyond. Commentators have been quick to claim these events as a Twitter revolution or a Facebook revolution, leading to the emergence of a new term: Wikirevolution. As Don Tapscot declared, “the Internet radically drops the cost of dissent” .
The divide between ‘new media thinking’ and
‘old media thinking’ should be
a thing of the past.
The Arab Spring has also been claimed as evidence of the Al Jazeera Effect: a decade of transnational Arab TV across the Middle East has led to an increasing sense of transnational Muslim and Arab political identity – at the expense of national political identities. Indeed, protestors in Tahrir Square on Feb. 6 were heard chanting “Long Live Al Jazeera!”, and the Egyptian government attempted to block the stations satellite transmissions, shut down its offices and detained its journalists.
The truth is likely to be a combination of all of these factors: access to social media applications and mobile phones enabled protesters to organise, whilst Al Jazeera coverage provided information about events, and a sense of legitimacy of purpose. As Foreign Policy reports:
While Al Jazeera was showing hundreds of thousands of people calling for the end of the regime, Egyptian TV showed humdrum scenes of traffic quietly passing by; when Al Jazeera reported hundreds of people queuing for bread and petrol, Egyptian TV showed happy shoppers with full fridges using footage filmed at an unknown time in the past.
As Al Jazeera journalist Danny Schechter writes on the station’s blog :
Social media and TV media can work together. They converge as much as diverge, building a cumulative impact and reinforcing each other. But it is the people who stand up to resolve their grievances that made it happen. They deserve the credit. Yes, the media-genic images and interactive energy has an appeal for a media savvy, web-focused generation that doesn’t just watch someone else’s tubes but wants to shape their own.
This combination of factors is described by James Deane from the BBC World Service Trust:
Human courage, self discipline and organisation multiplied by the communicative power of networks has equalled unprecedented and (for now and in the main) largely peaceful – political force. Networked social media (in this case principally Facebook) added to the narrative provided by independent television (in this case principally Al Jazeera and the BBC) has delivered decisively in favour of the citizenry.
In truth, social media will work best when it works with other channels. In Egypt, for example, there were an estimated 80,000 registered Twitter users, compared with 80 million mobile phone subscribers . Twitter may have played an important role amongst the protest leaders, and in engaging the outside world, but it should be placed in context. Social change isn’t a single-channel enterprise.
In truth, social media works best when it works with other channels.
This applies equally to using media as a tool for development. They may not grab the headlines, but changing attitudes and behaviours, working with communities to change long-standing social norms – these can be revolutions too, for the people involved. The divide between ‘new media thinking’ and ‘old media thinking’ should be a thing of the past – new media are likely to prove more effective when used in combination with other media .
Images from The Guardian, Hurriyet Daily News, and Hudson Horizons.
Filed under: Africa, BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation | Tags: Africa, BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation
It’s International Women’s Day today, and I wrote a piece for the BBC World Service Trust based on my trip to Ethiopia with Nike Foundation’s Girl Hub initiative.
The A-Z of sexual health in Ethiopia
An hour south of Ethiopia’s capital city, a group of teenagers huddles around a radio. They’re in a small, bright-green shack on the road to Addis Ababa, and they listen intently whilst the trucks trundle past outside. There’s a sense of conspiracy in the air. Nobody speaks until the programme finishes – and then a lively discussion breaks out.
It seems like a meeting of an underground youth movement, but it’s not. They’ve been listening to Abugida, a radio show broadcast weekly on Radio Ethiopia. Abugida means “A to Z”, and the programme covers a subject that remains taboo for many people in Ethiopia: sex.
A major issue
Sexual health is a major issue for young people in Ethiopia – despite decades of health campaigns. Rates of new HIV infections are starting to fall, but still as many as 8% of people are living with the disease in urban areas.
Teenage pregnancy is widespread: more than half of girls have had two babies by the age of 18.
“There’s so many misconceptions about sex in Ethiopia,” says Elsabet Samuel, producer of the Abugida show. “I recently met a girl who was beaten by her parents because she started menstruating. They thought it meant that she had started having sex.”
Let’s talk about it
“Conversations just don’t happen … mothers are too embarrassed to talk to their daughters, girls are shy, even friends don’t talk about it.”
The problem isn’t a lack of information – there are scores of sexual health campaigns aimed at young people in Ethiopia. The problem, according to Elsabet, is that people don’t talk about it. “Conversations just don’t happen” she says. “Mothers are too embarrassed to talk to their daughters, girls are shy, even friends don’t talk about it.”
As a result, an enormous amount of confusion and misinformation surrounds the subject. “People sometimes think that condoms are only for people who have HIV and AIDS,” says Elsabet, “or that taking the contraceptive pill makes you skinny.”
…and to be clear, skinny is a bad look in Ethiopia. To read the rest click here.
Filed under: Google, Nike Foundation | Tags: Data, Google, Nike Foundation
Part One of this post described Google as a sinister megacorp, creeping into our lives. Part Two looks at the counter: Google as a force for good – or at least, not a malignancy.
We all know Google’s famous Don’t Be Evil maxim, and the commitment to give 1% of Google’s equity and profit to its foundation, Google.org. Here’s the big ambition:
We hope someday this institution may eclipse Google itself in terms of overall world impact by ambitiously applying innovation and significant resources to the largest of the world’s problems.
So what is Google.org doing exactly? That was four years ago, is it about to eclipse Google? Here are some highlights:
-
Atlantic Wind Connection is the largest US offshore windfarm to date, with Google using its cash to kickstart the business. The string of turbines will stretch 350 miles off the Atlantic coast from Virginia to New Jersey, serving nearly 2 million homes. In terms of it’s core operations, Google already claims to have the world’s greenest data centres.
Google Earth Engine is a set of mapping tools and a massive warehouse of data – trillions of scientific measurements dating back 25 years – to help scientists map trends and quantify differences on the earth’s surface. The engine will help track deforestation and land use trends.
Google Powermeter connects into smart electricity meters and lets you monitor the energy use of a home or business in real time – from any computer, anywhere.
Google Flu Trends is an interesting – predicting flu outbreaks through monitoring search. Published in the journal Nature, this gives us an early hint of the power of Google’s data.
Google Crisis Response makes critical information available during a disaster, such as maps, satelitte imagery, and people/resource location.
All great initiatives – but there’s a sense of disappointment around Google.org, summed up in this article from today’s New York Times. Still, I think it’s early days – and fair play on Google for the level of ambition.
Much of these initiatives seem to flow directly from Google’s core mission statement: to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful. The power of data. Google has done a lot to push data out there – at breathtaking scale, such as such as Google nGram and Google Trends.
It would be interesting to see Google pro-actively working with pro-social organizations, helping them to figure out how to squeeze value out of data. When I was working with Nike Foundation, I met with Maplecroft – an interesting company who crunch through huge datasets and map risks and insights. They have some great tools that allow you to play with the data – such as Girls Discovered below, developed in partnership with Nike Foundation:
Developing more tools like this would be really useful. As data geek James Standen says on his blog Datamartist: “Good decisions are made based on good data. Good data does good”.
So, Google, good or evil? Well, obviously that’s a stupid question. For a start, who seriously talks about evil these days? What does it mean, exactly? I found an interesting First Monday essay on Google, which concludes “in the modern era, saying is that one is not evil is meaningless. It suggests an unexamined morality; one that finds virtue in good intentions, rather than in good social practice”. Can’t argue with that.
The real question is, can such a huge public company be a public good? Obviously, the answer is yes – but be vigilant. As Don Tapscot said in a recend LSE lecture, “Google says do no evil, but there’s a lot of evil to be done here, when you have that much power”.
Filed under: Africa, Nike Foundation | Tags: Africa, Nike Foundation, TED
Next weekend it’s TEDx Addis. I’d love to be there. It’s extraordinary to see the effect that the TED brand is having in developing countries – none more remarkable than TEDx Kibera, held in a shanty church building in the middle of Africa’s biggest slum. Far from being an elite talking shop, TED has becoming a way of focusing disparate creative energies on tangible problems.
Ethiopia certainly has a vibrant and growing creative community to draw upon, as I found on my Nike Foundation visit:
- A fast-growing film industry, led by the Ethiopian Film Initiative.
- Addis recently hosted the first Hub of Africa International Fashion Week – textiles is a big export for Ethiopia.
- A proud and diverse music industry, from “Ethiojazz” to Ethiopian Idol (yes, really).
- A growing commercial creative industry, led by the smart folks at Astar Advertising.
Interesting to see Hillary Clinton taking a break from chasing down Julian Assange in order to address last week’s TEDWomen conference. She talked a lot about the Girl Effect – it’s increasingly becoming a core agenda item. As Clinton told the conference, “the rights and the roles of women and girls will be a central tenet of american foreign policy, because where girls and women flourish our values are also reflected”. She went on to say,
Send a girl to school even just for one year and her income dramatically increases for life, and her children are more likely to survive and her family more likely to be healthier for years to come. Give women equal rights and entire nations are more stable and secure. Deny women equal rights and the instability of nations is almost certain.
So the Girl Effect isn’t just about beating global poverty, it’s also about world peace. Who would have thought. Anyway, it’s a great talk (aside from the slightly daft cow anecdote at the end):
Filed under: Africa, Nike Foundation | Tags: Africa, Girl Effect, Nike Foundation
On Friday I paid a visit to the Girl Effect folks at the Department of International Development. My project for the Nike Foundation is pretty much done and delivered, and I wanted to see how they’re doing.
One thing is clear: to make a difference for girls in countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, we need to shift our mindsets. Talking about “girl empowerment” and individual ambition doesn’t connect in such a communitarian culture.
But this will be a struggle. Our Western impulse is to tell girls “you can do it” and “stand up for your rights”. But to a girl in rural Ethiopia, this sounds very foreign, and jars with their emotional connections to family and community.
Our cultures are massively different. The Hofstede scale measures various cultural dimensions, including individualism. Some example individualism scores are given below.
Even compared to communitarian cultures like India and Japan, Ethiopia has a highly collectivist society. This effects the way girls think about the world, the way they learn and communicate, the values they hold. Life isn’t so much about “I”, it’s about “We”.
When I was working in Asia, I watched this clash of cultures play out in the battle between Nike and Adidas. Nike were struggling to keep up with the growth of Adidas across the region, Nike’s communications emphasized individual performance, character, flare and inspiration. Adidas’ communications was rooted in practice, perseverance, teamwork, craft – and this had a more natural cultural resonance.
These two outdoor ads are from Adidas’ Beijing 2008 campaign. They use imagery that appeals to a highly social mindset – it’s about collective effort, not individual achievement:
It’s something we need to dwell upon. Here’s some advice I received when I was in Africa:
“It’s a very Western approach to think you can “target” a girl in isolation from her family, based on an individualistic view of society which doesn’t apply here. Singling out a girl in a family can have distorting affects on the family”.
“Certain levels of empowerment can be perceived as disrespectful to existing traditional communities. We may put girls at risk by doing this too fast”.
“Singling out girls can arose the suspicion of families and communities, and even hostility. Girls themselves may find it confusing, being targeted directly”
There were plenty of findings, ideas and insights coming out of our trip to Africa, but if there’s one over-riding message, this would be it.
We need to shift our mindsets. The Girl Effect message should move from “self empowerment” to “community empowerment” – cultivating leadership within girls, in the contexts of their communities.
PS: a footnote on Rwanda
Rwanda is a lush and beautiful country. The north – equatorial forests and active volcanoes – is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. But it’s hard to visit Rwanda without sensing the country’s recent history.
Before I visited, I deliberately avoided taking in much information about the genocide. Since, I’ve read an extraordinary book on the subject, which I’d recommend to anyone interested: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch.
On Friday there was a demonstration outside the department, Rwandan exiles against the UK’s support for President Kagame’s government, which stands accused of genocide in Congo. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of this, but it’s a chill reminder of broader context.
Filed under: Africa, BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation | Tags: Africa, BBC World Service Trust, Nike Foundation
Above is the view from the offices of the BBC World Service Trust in Addis Ababa. I’m on the board of advisors for the Trust, helping with their communications – so it was great to meet the team here in Ethiopia. They’re an example of how to get it right in Africa (more on this soon).
But where do we get it wrong? Everyone is always keen to shout about success, but getting-it-wrong is usually less visible. Here are some themes that have emerged from my conversations over the last ten days, here in Ethiopia:
- Campaigns look foreign
“They want to produce slick creative work”, people have told me. NGOs want communications that look good on their show-reel so they can attract continued funding and win awards. However, often NGO work looks foriegn to Ethiopians, especially in rural areas.
Campaigns are short-termist
“They want fast results for their own good, not for the good of the people”, said one person I spoke to. There’s a perception that NGOs are often only interested in fast results – thus there’s no long-term strategy. NGOs are driven by the need to report success, more than the need to create lasting change.
Communications are perjorative
Unintentionally, of course, but “they come across as saying ‘you’re wrong, your culture is bad’”. Most work is “based on foreign values” and therefore doesn’t connect with people, or even undermines them.
NGOs are patronizing
“They go in with the attitude that they know what’s best for you, and they’re going to tell you”. This an intrinsic problem: all behaviour change campaigns are de facto paternalistic – we need to acknowledge this to ourselves and find a way of dealing with it.
…and there’s one especially important theme, when it comes to making the Nike Foundation’s Girl Effect happen in Ethiopia:
- Campaigns for girls ignore context
There isn’t enough attention paid to the effect that girl-focused work can have on the rest of the family and the community. These stakeholders also need to change their attitudes and behaviours.
Communications people love collecting examples of things that work – but we don’t often spend so much time thinking about getting it wrong. When creating our own programs for Ethiopia, Rwanda and Nigeria, these are some of the things we should think about.
Filed under: Africa, Nike Foundation, Social Enterprise | Tags: Africa, Nike Foundation, Social Enterprise
The end of my first week in Ethiopia. Strange how the words “I’m with the Nike Foundation” does wonders for your popularity in one of the world’s most poverty-stricken countries. But not with everyone: yesterday I was introduced to a local entrepreneur who was less than impressed.
I googled Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu before the meeting – turns out she’s got a lot going on: just back from addressing the Clinton Global Initiative, and enthusiastic profiles in The Guardian, CNN, and Huffington Post.
Bethlehem founded the brand soleRebels – a proper social enterprise. They make shoes out of old tires, and sell them through retailers like Urban Outfitters and Amazon. It’s about creating jobs, training, and paying school fees in the local community. A real Africa success story: “We want to be the Timberland of Africa,” she tells me.
So why were Bethlehem and her brother Brook so circumspect about talking to the Nike Foundation? In her own words:
So many foundations. Gates, Clinton, Nike, so many. I don’t see any change. The same problems, the same diseases. We don’t support this. What we support is business – working to change our own lives, creating jobs. That will change the picture. We have ideas, we have materials, we have our hands. We can penetrate markets, sell our own brands, support families in Ethiopia, through our own work. That’s the way.
Her brother Brook picks this up:
The foundations, the aid agencies, they all make big assumptions. They assume they know what’s best. But people know how to solve their own problems. They know what they need. Give people the opportunity to work!
And they’re right of course: already I’ve met dozens of aid programs – all run by hard-working, well-meaning individuals, and all making (slow) progress. But I can’t help feeling that it’s people like Bethlehem and Brook that will really make the difference.
So I asked them, what would they do? Here I am, working on the Girl Effect initiative, trying to figure out how to empower girls living in poverty. What would they do?
“Invest in Sole Rebels!”, says Bethlehem, with a broad smile. Brook adds, “We need work, not charity. We’ll grow our business, we’ll train girls, we’ll send them to school, then give them jobs”. So, I’m meeting them next week, and we’re going to write a proposal together. Global footwear brand, anyone…?
Image from Dawn.
