Are there any “scalable” & profitable social ventures? There is talk of “social ventures” being our saviors from the likes of the non-profit world. Do they REALLY exist? Or are they mostly hybrid models which still rely heavily on their non-profit arms in order to succeed at scale? It is VERY hard to find examples [...]
What is this “sustainability” thing all about? It is a word that gets thrown around so often by NGOs, donors, and most people working in development, yet what is means in the reality of our day to day decisions is less often understood. I wrote part one of a two part look at PEPY and [...]
I put up my thoughts on voluntourism on the World Pulse site and had received some thoughts and feedback. One of the questions came from someone struggling with how to give back with her skills when her skills lay in math and physics. I interpreted her question as saying something like “If there are people [...]
I just read this post “9 Reasons Not To Give Things Away” and I agree with it. It relates back to my earlier post discussing how a group working in the same area as us in Cambodia subsidized water filters and thereby destroyed the market for the product (and negatively effected water filter use/health). I [...]
Another post inspired from the Tales from the Hood blog, this one about honesty and NGO propaganda. A comment from Mo-ha-med (below) is something I really agree with: I’m particularly curious about a remark of yours about how the PR dept needs to communicate things in a certain way and that we shouldn’t “believe our [...]
One of the few blogs I check on a semi-regular basis is Tales from the Hood which recently had a post about dependency. I added these thoughts: This reminds me a bit of the World Food Program. Last year, during the food crisis, rather than cut back on what food was delivered, stop programs which [...]
These thoughts are in response to this blog on “Tales from the Hood”. — “If you are somehow involved in aid work and receive any form of compensation, the fact is that you benefit.” – I think we are missing the discussion about the MAIN way we benefit, and if we miss that, than maybe [...]