Lessons I Learned

NOTE: If you are going to be in San Francisco on June 11th and you are interested in discussing these topics further, join us! (Scroll to the bottom!)

INVESTING TIME IN PEOPLE is the thing I think is missing from a lot of our development/philanthropy/voluntourism and overall GIVING plans. We can always make more money. We can’t make more time. So making time FOR people is one of the most precious gifts we can give.
When I say investing time in people I mean:

• capacity building
• making connections
• expanding capabilities
• fostering skill building
• sharing ideas
• offering trainings
• coaching
• INSPIRING

THOSE are the things that make people succeed in reaching their goals. THOSE are the things that change attitudes and actions. And at the end of the day, attitudes and actions are what we are trying to change, right? When it comes to changing people’s purchasing habits to protect the earth (stopping the use of plastic water bottles) or encouraging people in a rural area to purchase mosquito nets or water filters, long-term positive behavior changes don’t come from giving things or money away. They come from investing in people’s knowledge and capabilities so that they can go out and make more informed choices on their own.

I made a short 1 minute video about my thoughts on this:

A group of us are trying to get people together in San Francisco on June 11th who want to discuss these ideas further.
Here is a slideshare about this (yes, same background slides as my last slideshare – thanks @jenrikay – I was lazy and used them again!):

Drop me a note on this blog if you want to join us on the 11th or future iterations of this group’s actions!

Pari’s first post is about trust. As trust forms (or prevents) the basis of any relationship, it seems like a great place to start.  Read to the bottom of the article to learn more about Pari and their work.

This month, I was lucky enough to join Summit at Sea, the fourth event put on by the Summit Series team who bring together business visionaries, artists, social entrepreneurs, and environmentalists with the goal of fostering collaboration and innovation through the revelry they create at their exclusive gatherings. The event was unlike any other I have attended, and I thought I would write down some of the lessons I learned about how they created such a unique environment.

#1) Well Vetted Participants – Summit Series attendees were each personally invited by a member of the now 20 person planning team. While the first event started with 17 people, this event with more than 1000 was the result of those 17 recommending friends, and then those people recommending others. Everyone was somehow connected through a web of mutual respect and therefor the participants each felt honored and welcomed into the group…

#2) Innovators Across Sectors – …and while other conferences might focus on one or two business sectors, this group of innovators across all fields meant that there was cross-sector idolization going on. It was not uncommon to see someone who had just been thronged after their presentation waiting patiently in line to meet another speaker. At conferences with one sector of participants, say the Knitters Association, there would be a natural hierarchy whereby all the newbie knitters would be idealizing the polished and practiced old-timers.  At Summit Series, it didn’t seem like there was a constant divide between a celebrity crowd and their fans but rather a group of people with mutual adoration for each others work. I smiled watching Tony Hsieh of Zappos, who had been a star presenter the previous day, wait among a crowd which formed around Chip Conley (author of PEAK and founder of Joie de Vivre) after his presentation about Emotional Equations (the topic of Chip’s next book). There was a lot of mutual respect and old friendships shining through (like when Tim Ferris, author of the 4 hour work week/4 hour body, gave a shout out to Charles Best of Donors Choose during his talk as the two had been friends in school). The Roots entertained us each night, but during the day the artists who were starts in the evening were walking around the ship just like everyone else…

#3) A Captive Audience – …and that was the key to this unique experience! Everyone, including presenters and participants, was “stuck” on the boat, just like everyone else. Apart of Richard Branson and Chris Sacca who presented at the opening session and jumped ship before we set out to sea, all of the presenters and participants were there for the duration. No leaving early, no coming late, no other meetings to sneak off to, no presenting and then heading out the back door, and no breaking up into different restaurants for dinner based on exclusivity. Everyone was there together, for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dancing, and that meant that the best conversations and chances to learn from each other could continue on all day and all night….

#4) No Internet or Phones – ….. and no one would be pulled away by a phone call!  At sea, our phones didn’t work and internet was so cost prohibitive on the boat that most people did not use it much or at all. If internet had been free or if our phones had continued to work, I bet most people would have taken a minimum of 1-3 additional hours each day to do work. Removing those electronic networking distractions allowed for a full immersion into the Summit experience, giving us all more time in our day to meet each other and engage in the experience through a real human social network…

#5) All Participants ALL Aboard – …as we had been told to do from the beginning by Summit Series founder, Elliot Bisnow. He reminded us to embrace the chance encounters and to fully engage each person we met in conversation as they all had a story to tell and value to share. I found the inclusive environment where everyone was welcomed into conversations so refreshing and motivating.

The last evening, during an all night jam session where a group, chaired by Gary Vaynerchuck, engaged in discussions and debates around technology, the future, social entrepreneurship, and successful charity models, I looked around and realized that each member of the group was being challenged and inspired to engage in topics they had rarely had a chance to passionately discuss before… and each of us was better for it.

The unique combination of these five characteristics (plus a whole LOT of work by the SS Team) made Summit Series an experience of overwhelming interconnectedness, passion, energy, and collaboration. Kudos to the Summit Series team for breaking down the traditional barriers to connecting at a conference event and for creating an unforgettable experience. Let’s hope those of us who participated continue to take these new found connections, ideas, and opportunities out into the world to continue to create collaborative experiences which inspire even more people to grow. And let’s hope that the Summit Series team finds a way to match this inclusive, off-the-network conference next time…. group flotilla down the Grand Canyon, anyone?

When I first read Greg Mortenson’s book, Three Cups of Tea, I loved it. It was 2007 or 2008, I had just spent a few years beginning our work at PEPY, an organization which had started with our own school construction story in 2005. The story resonated with me. I loved that he was talking about building schools in a place where we had recently only heard about building wars. I was onboard.

Over the past few years though, I have looked back on my own actions when starting PEPY, and realized that we made a big assumption in our work: that school buildings equated to improving education. You’ve heard us say this before at PEPY, but here it is again: We learned that schools don’t teach kids. People do. (And from this recent Mortenson fallout, I’m glad to read that other people feel this way too! “Why Three Cups of Tea Are Not Enough” – TIME Magazine)

We began shifting our focus away from building structures and towards building human capacity. We realized that we’d rather see kids studying under a tree with a great teacher than sitting in a beautiful empty building. Now, if we could have BOTH, that would be fabulous, but focusing on the human aspect of education was where we realized the dearth of effort lay.

As we began to focus on people, I became more judgmental of organizations selling “things” as the educational solutions to donors. Donors, who had grown accustomed to being able to donate a set of books, a uniform, a bike, or a school with their name on it were asking us how they could do the same with PEPY, and I realized that our first few years of selling donors the perceived ability to make changes in human’s attitudes and actions through giving them things was flawed. We were fighting a losing battle by focusing on the wrong investments.

This realization made me question Greg Mortenson’s school building work: although schools were definitely better than guns, weren’t teachers better than schools? In other words, I realized that I admired many things about Greg Mortenson’s work with the organization he co-founded, Central Asia Institute (CAI), but that revering him as infallible hero would not leave room for a view that his work, like all work, could always be improved. I began to realize that some criticism, both from ourselves and from the outside, is always needed to continue to strive towards higher goals.

I was just as shocked as anyone to hear the news of the 60 Minutes report this week about unethical behavior from Greg Mortenson and the CAI team. I had a lot of reactions: I was sad that so many people’s hearts were broken, glad that I had never donated to CAI when I had considered it in the past, angry that so much money has perhaps slipped through the cracks when it too could have been used to further education, and worried about what the impact of this news might mean.

My first reaction though, like so many others, was “If you can’t trust him, who CAN you trust?” And this is when I realized I too had bought too much into the hero worshiping of an NGO rockstar. I had only read the book that he himself had written about his work, yet I somehow believed I had received the full picture of his story. If Pol Pot had written an auto-biography after the Khmer Rouge, I wouldn’t read it and assume it was the only side of the story I should read, but when a person is doing “good” work, or “aid” work, they somehow become beyond question in our mind.

Because someone is “doing good” we assume everything about them is good, and visa versa. I have met a few people over the years who said they liked Pol Pot. One woman told me stories of having lived in the area where he was from and how he was good to them, how he took care of people, and how she had respect for him. When I hear these things my mind immediately refutes them as exaggerations or untruths. How could someone I have categorized in my mind as so “evil” do anything good? “And who cares if he did do some good things, he is still EVIL,” I would think to myself.

Once we have decided if someone is “good” or “bad”, rather than just “medium” and therefore capable of both extremes, it is hard for us to change our opinions.  I have heard many people react to the news about Greg Mortenson with opinions like “but all of the good he is doing still outweighs the bad” and “it must be an exaggeration as there is no way these allegations are all true.” These defensive views were my natural instincts too. Why? Because so many of us had put him in our “hero” category. Because we had mentally stood beside him and checked his name on our ballot for the “good person” poll. And because if we find out that WE were wrong, that he is not 100% good, that he is capable of anything bad and therefore no longer infallible, we don’t want to believe we have made a wrong vote. I believe that part of this reaction is in our own self interest – not wanting to be wrong and not wanting to use the effort it takes to make a mental shift of our own perceived realities. If we had miscategorized one person…. what about the rest? “If we can’t trust him, who CAN we trust?”

The effect of a large collection of people having to make this mental shift can have some far-reaching results. Being disappointed by someone makes it harder to feel as confident in our hero worshiping of others we might have viewed as thoroughly altruistic. I am of two minds about this news: The majority of my initial reaction is worry about the fallout the news about Greg’s fallibility will have on the NGO sector as a whole. Another part of me is glad that we are having to receive this type of news about an NGO “hero” and that we are all forced to go through the arduous task of mental resifting which inevitably leaves us feeling more vulnerable in the future. My fear is that the majority of that vulnerability will translate into inaction: people wanting to “help” when they come across an injustice they see, a goal they have for our world, or a problem they want to see fixed but feeling stuck and unable to take action for fear of being “tricked” again by someone selling a solution they might later find out is flawed. My hope though is that some of this vulnerability will translate into action for self-improvement on the part of donors.

Some people get mugged and then go out into the world with more fear. Others sign up for a self-defense class and perhaps emerge more confident than before. Let’s hope there’s more of the later.

By donor action, my hopes are that this news will result in:

• people taking the time to educate themselves more about the issues they are looking to effect change in and the best practices in those areas
• people becoming less likely to donate simply based on the hero story with less money going into projects whose impacts were overlooked due to more focus on the novel than on the reality of the NGO work
• donors asking more of the NGOs they support, not in terms of more heartbreaking books or more GPS coordinates of the things they give away, but rather more transparency and follow up on the impact of their donations
• board members asking more questions, pushing for audits, and requiring financial transparency from their teams
• and most importantly, more people realizing that NO ONE is a hero all the time (except maybe Mother Theresa…. Oh wait! Woops, hero-worshipping again – she is human!)  and therefore, that each of us are also capable of creating (perhaps obliged to create?) extreme good.

Perhaps it is good to continually remind ourselves that we are all human. By remembering that even Pol Pot was capable of good acts and that a man who helped build schools was capable of using donated funds for chartered flights to book signings for personal gain reminds us that we too are capable of both extremes. Perhaps this is the most difficult part of swallowing this reality. If Greg Mortenson isn’t some kind of “natural born altruist”, if he isn’t innately “good” at his core, if he is flawed like the rest of us and just as capable of self-interested pursuits, then it means he is human, just like us. And it therefore means that he was capable of that selfishness the whole time, yet he choose good very often (and it seems he choose poorly often as well). And if he is capable of that and not a “hero”, therefore, so are we.

He’s just a guy – and he could, and SHOULD, strive to be better. We too should strive to be better. We should strive to ask better questions and not hero worship someone so much that we allow them to go 14 years with only 1 audit. We should give our money to places we research and then follow up on our impact. We should strive to close the feedback loop and know where our money goes. And most of all, most shocking, and most hard to imagine: we should realize that there aren’t “good” and “bad” people. We are ALL capable of choosing heroic, challenging, phenomenal, life-affirming acts EVERY day. Those who choose to act heroically, those who were in our hero vault, were not wired differently than us after all – they are human too. So, you too can be, and are, a Greg Mortenson – capable of all aspects of the work he has done, both the good and the bad.

Choose to do with that what you like. I hope we all choose to dig deeper, aim higher, and strive for our most altruistic self from this news. I hope that each of us, including Greg, continues to strive daily for self-improvement to create our own TRUE hero story and then live out the results with integrity, transparency, and the constant quest for the good we are capable of ourselves.

I have purposely stayed out of the “TOMS Shoes = Bad Aid” campaign that has been going on for the past few weeks and haven’t tweeted about it. It was not because I am not strongly opposed to aid which is about “giving things away”, as I clearly have learned from experience that that is an ineffective model but because I’ve learned through this blog that I need to be better at not just complaining about things and stamping out good intentions, but instead trying to find ways to harness them.

I have come to the realization that, although giving shoes away might be “bad aid” – Blake (the founder of TOMS Shoes) and the TOMS Shoes brand are in a unique position to generate PHENOMENALLY positive impacts now and through the efforts of the next generation. TOMS has opened a door and thousands of young Americans are lining up to walk through it (bare feet and all).

I wasn’t planning on discussing this yet, but then these two things happened:

a) Saundra and the Good Intentions are Not Enough team made this video as an anti-campaign to TOMS Shoes “A Day Without Shoes” called “A Day Without Dignity”

b) I shared the video with some people I know who also care about the issue of fostering responsible development models among the next generation of development workers, and I was quoted in this blog.

So – now it looks like I should write about this, and I want to be clear about two things:

1) TOMS Shoes isn’t an aid organization, they are a shoe company, so I believe we can’t judge them as if they were an NGO. They are opening up a HUGE discussion about doing business better, they are getting kids across America to think about their purchasing differently, and they seem to be very motivated by good intentions.

2) TOMS Shoes is only relevant as a discussion point in this space of charity models based on “giving things away” because they have been SOOOOO successful in other ways: in their marketing and in their building of a movement. If they were a local shoe store giving away a thousand shoes a year then they would a) not have a big chance of destroying markets through their giving nor would they be a viable source of funding for more large-scale solutions such as building local shoe factories and b) they would not be responsible for indoctrinating such a large populations of American youth with a “giving” model of development work.

Because of TOMS overwhelming success as a brand, Blake is in a very unique position. He, along with other NGO marketing heroes, like Scott from charity:water, have a whole generation of budding young do-gooders drooling over their every word. This is a fabulous platform from which they are now uniquely able to spread education and learning. If they take this generation with them on a development learning journey, if they bring everyone along from the “giving things away” charity model to a model which a) takes in local needs/opinions/input b) requires local buy-in both in terms of strategy as well as funding c) develops and supports local markets rather than giving away products and d) talks about the complexity, flexibility, long-term commitment and investment in human capital (rather than just investment in goods) which it takes to create high impact development programs to even begin to reach some of the goals we see for our world, then they are going to be great heroes.

Failed models of unsustainable charity have been tried over and over again with little large-scale impact, but people don’t know much about it unless they are living it. Why? Because it’s not a closed feedback loop.

Have you ever bought a car? Or a house? When doing so, did you read what Toyota wrote about Toyotas and then go out and buy a Toyota? No! You read that, plus you asked a lot of other people, people who owned them and could tell you if they were good or not, or you read reviews from people who had done the same. If you made a mistake and bought the wrong car, then you knew it a few weeks later when you were already bringing it into the shop to get fixed. You would have been mad at yourself for doing poor research and investing in the wrong thing and then when it came time for your next purchase, you would have done much more research and follow up to prevent making the same mistake.

It is VERY rare that we get a closed feedback loop in our donating. We might talk to other DONORS who have given, but if you have given to a charity researching cancer solutions, have you had a chance to talk to scientists working on the project to see how they think they are progressing? Have you talked to other scientists from a third party who are educated enough on the work to be able to share their findings? If you have written a check to Greg Mortenson’s project, which is getting destroyed on “60 Minutes” tonight for corruption it seems, were you able to speak with people in Pakistan to know a) if the school was wanted b) if it was built well c) if the money was used properly, etc? No…. and so if you DID invest in the wrong thing, it is very likely that you don’t know it. If you did, of course you would change. But since you don’t know, and it’s nicer to feel good about our donations than bad about them, it is rare that we try to really dig deep and find out how the aid work we support could be improved.

We know that we can’t keep giving things away – and that the people who need those things would be better off if they were able to bring in income to have excess funding to purchase those things themselves and decide how best to allocate their resources to support their families rather than waiting for us to give them the things we think they should prioritize.

I came to this stance having giving a lot of things away myself: t-shirts and toothbrushes to kids in the Philippines, volunteer trips throughout Asia, and most recently schools in Cambodia through an organization I started called PEPY. But, we realized we were making a mistake by giving things (schools, books, uniforms, supplies, etc) away. We realized two important things: 1) that schools don’t teach kids – people do and 2) that we would one day be leaving, and if we were, than our inputs needed to create impacts which would continue to bear fruit long after we left.

I had the closed feedback loop most people don’t get to have as I saw the impact of the work we were doing day to day, yet this learning curve still took me the last 5.5 years of living in Cambodia to achieve. I could have done things MUCH more effectively if I had known about failed development efforts and more responsible solutions which had been tried before me.

There is a whole generation of young people out there primed and ready to go out into the world and “help” and we can help THEM be more effective by pointing them in the right direction. Ideally, they could all have a conversation with someone like Ivan Illich, but since that might not be possible, they can learn from those people they are already idealizing and following.

So, Blake and Scott and now Adam (from the speedily growing Pencils of Promise) and the inspired and inspiring Sean from (Falling Whistles) – you hold the keys today. You have the keys to the hearts, brains, and future actions of a whole generation of American youth looking to do good with their money, their time, and their futures. Let’s take them on a path where they are inspired to invest in people – invest TIME in people – and by that I mean give people the skills, connections, capabilities, ideas, and opportunities to solve their OWN problems, set their own goals, and fulfill their own needs. By showing America’s youth a way to positively impact the world through investing in the skill development of others, by taking them with you on your learning curve, and by continuing to rock your marketing so that you can reach more and more people with these messages, you will help prevent some of them from making the same mistakes so many of us made before them. YOU have the ability to speak to this generation and help them to use their power, influence, dollars, and votes to empower, rather than hinder, the communities and markets of the world. We’re all cheering for you to use your exceptional influence to make this generation get the learning curve faster. Close the feedback loop for them.

…and let us know how we can help! The development bloggers (myself included) need to throw out a hand and collaborate. We should all be reaching for the same goal. Let’s find a way to get there together – using your marketing genius and engaged following and the lessons learned from development successes and failures to empower today’s youth to make the changes our generations before them have failed to do!

This week I offered a class with my friends Kit & Matt through the new group/learning platform SkillShare. It’s a phenomenal concept: anyone can be a teacher and offer up a skill they have and any of us can be student and pay for a class on topics as varied as Knitting for Beginners and How to Bootstrap your Startup.

Kit, Matt, and I offered a class on traveling around the world responsibly. Kit and Matt presented about the 6 month round-the-world trips they both took and answered questions on how to book your travels, reintegration on return, the most important things they wish they had brought (and what they wished they had left behind), etc.  I followed up with this presentation below about how to have a positive impact when you travel.

I edited the slide deck a bit to make it stand alone without a presenter, but it is the bulk of what I spoke about.  I have realized through 5+ years of living in Cambodia that even though not everyone is looking to “give back” when they travel during the planning stages of their trip, many times once they land in a place, they get interested in trying to “help”. In other words, it’s not just important to share the lessons of responsible traveler’s philanthropy and volunteering (and the dangers of orphanage tourism) with those people looking to engage in those things, but also to share these concepts with your average traveler and it is often times not until they get to their guesthouse and see a flier about volunteering that they decide to try it out. We had a great group out at the beautiful Studiomates office for this class (and many thanks to Wanderfly for their support, for their awesome trip planning platform, and for joining in the event as well!) Take a look at the slides if you are interested.

The best part about the class was that it was a chance for like-minded people to get together to talk about a common interest. It’s a way to meet interesting people and have an instant connection with them – so I would highly recommend a Skillshare class to anyone!  While learning the basics of photoshop or learning how to be better at reading people, you also get the added benefit of meeting other interested and interesting people in your city.  Check it out!

I recently put up a post about a speech Ivan Illich gave to a group of young American volunteers about to head to Mexico to “help”.  It’s one of those speeches that makes you re-question all of your good intentions and perhaps reflect on your past actions with a new light.

And then it can make you stuck, and confused.  If I shouldn’t “go to help”, but I want to HELP, how can I?  I’ve read this speech many times over the last 5 years and continue to struggle with what is right, what is ethical, what ethnocentric, and what is more harmful in the long term even if it makes ME, or others, feel good now.

I read a post a woman named Jody put up using some quotes from my blog.  She called her post “Wrestling” – and I appreciate that.  I hope that, if anything, my blog makes us to continue to wrestle with this stuff until we feel our actions are better inline with our intended impacts…. it’s tricky – so much grey area!

I am re-posting my comments to her blog below.

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Thanks!  I don’t know that I have ever been quoted like that before – but I’m glad to see that my words are resonating with you.

Wrestling is a good word to use for the thinking that needs to go into successful traveler’s philanthropy work. I wrestle with this daily – and I know that my attitudes and actions more than five years ago when I first moved to Cambodia were very different than how I feel now and that they are based on a very different perception of reality.  Both, though, were based on good intentions and a desire to “help”, I just didn’t realize before that I had such limited knowledge of how to effectively do so.

I also realize, a) we’re all still learning b) there is no “right” answer c) every situation is different d) short term and long term impacts can sometimes be dichotomous e) creating value for travelers IS valuable as their actions and funding can be strong forces for good or for harm in the future so inspiring people to improve the way they give, travel, and live has value f) aligning that value for travelers with long-term positive impact on the communities/causes being “supported” is really hard.

Wrestling!

But the best I think we can do is to think about these things and be willing to change our actions based on what we learn, even if it means admitting past mistakes, and then talking about those changes so that we can inspire others to do the same.

Great to “meet” you.  Please come visit us in Cambodia some day!

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Read the original post  here.