2010 Awards Dinner Celebrates Technology, Social Innovation

On Thursday, October 7 the World Affairs Council and Global Philanthropy Forum hosted the 2010 Awards Dinner. The event celebrated technology and social innovation for the public good and honored individuals and organizations who are leaders in this field. The honorees were: John Hennessey, President of Stanford University; The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and Paul Otellini, President and Chief Executive Officer of Intel Corporation. After receiving their awards, Hennessey and Otellini, along with Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest, spoke in conversation with Jane Wales. Watch an excerpt of their conversation here:

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EU Imposes Tough New Sanctions on Iran

This week the European Union announced new sanctions against Iran. The sanctions are one part of the EU’s strategy to pressure Iran to resume negotiations on its nuclear program. The United Nations imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran last month, but the EU’s go farther, affecting the energy, transport and finance sectors. While American investment in Iran has decreased in recent years, the EU is Iran’s largest trading partner and the new sanctions could have a significant impact on many European economies.

The United States also imposed new sanctions on Iran this month, with the goals of halting financing for the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that oversees missile and nuclear programs as well as curbing even further investment in Iran’s energy sector. They also target federal contractors that do business with Iran.

Learn more about the sanctions on Monday, August 2 when the Council hosts Jillian Burns, the Acting Director of the Iran Office of the State Department. She will discuss U.S. policy towards Iran, offering insight into the effectiveness of current sanctions and exploring Iran’s role in the region.

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Greater Competition, Enhanced Support Keys to Boosting Social Innovation, Entrepreneurship

Imagine if countries competed with each other to create the best environment in which social innovation can occur. And imagine if social entrepreneurs were actively encouraged and supported in countries around the world.

Two consultative bodies affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF) – its Global Agenda Council on Philanthropy and Social Investing and the Global Agenda Council on Social Entrepreneurship – are aiming to make those ambitions a reality. These bodies are just two of 60 interdisciplinary entities part of the forum’s Global Redesign Initiative, which is seeking ways in which international institutions or arrangements should be adapted to meet contemporary challenges.

“Particularly in the wake of the global economic crisis,” according to WEF’s Klaus Schwab, “we need to rethink our values, redesign our systems, and rebuild our institutions to make them more proactive and strategic, more inclusive, more reflective of the new geo-political and geo-economic circumstances, and more reflective of inter-generational accountability and responsibility.”

Everybody’s Business: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World summarizes and reports on proposals from the WEF’s global councils, focused on specific challenges, from health to economic growth to poverty to sustainability. The Council on Philanthropy and Social Investing, chaired by The Economist’s Matthew Bishop, proposes development of a Social Competitiveness Index that would inspire countries to become more socially innovative. More broadly, the goal is to help analysts and policymakers catch up with the revolution that has been taking place in the social sector for the past decade or so – to “chart its evolution going forward and show countries how to make the most of this opportunity.”

The Council on Social Entrepreneurship, chaired by J. Gregory Dees of Duke University, proposes development of a Global Alliance of Social Entrepreneurs, guided by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. This alliance, among other things, would establish a Consultative Group for Research to Advance Social Entrepreneurship (CGRASE) similar to the World Bank-hosted Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP), which has become world-recognized for its role in advancing microfinance. CGRASE’s mission would be to conduct research on and promote policies supporting social entrepreneurship, including working to have the UN designate 2011 the “Year of the Social Entrepreneur.”

Beyond philanthropy and social entrepreneurship, other ideas proposed include: creation of a global financial risk watchdog; development of a strategy to improve the diet of the poor; establishment of a new business model for humanitarian assistance with better coordination among all sectors; and establishment of an Ocean Health Index to strengthen information available about marine life. The report authors are currently seeking public debate and refinement about the many ideas contained. And this fall they will convene meetings to further discuss and develop these proposals, culminating in the forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, next January.

The report concludes that today’s global challenges require a more integrated and proactive approach, with new or upgraded international institutions and greater international cooperation: “No network exists that is sufficiently interdisciplinary, interactive and international to overcome these barriers to collective intelligence and action.”

— Jane Wales

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Ah, To Be a For-Profit

Life ain’t fair. Foundations pay full value to the for-profit consultants who advise them, but often fail to cover the true costs of the same services when offered by non-profits. How often have nonprofit leaders been tapped to provide advisory services to a foundation’s grantees or skills training for the foundation’s program officers, without thought of compensating the leader’s host organization for his or her time?  How many grants cover direct expenses but do not cover the true costs of a program or project by including indirect expenses? The Ford Foundation will pay 10% overhead. The Knight Foundation will pay none. Thus, each borrows from the grantee’s other sources of revenue, such as membership dues, registration fees or those increasingly rare general operating grants from other foundations or donors.

It turns out that governments do the same. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) surveyed nonprofits that receive federal grants and contracts and found that 88% are not reimbursed for their full costs. Some receive nothing at all for their indirect costs. Further, many of the federal grants managed by states are inconsistent in their treatment of indirect costs.

Federal agencies permit nonprofits to retain a share of contract funds for indirect costs, but when state and local governments administer the grants, each follows its own practices. The GAO offered the example of a US Department of Health and Human Services grant program, for which Wisconsin allows a reimbursement to nonprofits of up to 14% for indirect expenses, while Maryland provides no overhead at all.

In the meantime, for-profit contractors are usually able to recover true costs, while their non-profit colleagues may get as much as 20% less as a result of a government’s policy with respect to reimbursement to nonprofits.

Something is very wrong, especially given that many non-profits are often far leaner and more cost-conscious than their for-profit counterparts. Let us hope that the GAO report inspires a rethink at a time when governments are increasingly shifting their responsibilities to the social sector without the resources required to meet them.

—Jane Wales

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Ian Bremmer on Daily Show

Ian Bremmer, author of the new book The End of the Free Market, will be at the Council on Wednesday, June 30. He will discuss the growing trend of state capitalism and the impact it may have on America’s competitive edge and the conduct of free markets everywhere. Learn about other June programs on our online calendar and watch Bremmer’s May 13 appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart below.

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Changing Lives, A Market Woman’s Dream

Last week, Time Magazine feted its 100 Most Influential people “who affect our world” at a gala that would be hard to match— with musical performances by Taylor Swift and Prince, a comic interlude by actor Neil Patrick Harris, a brief talk by Bill Clinton and toasts by Sarah Palin, scholar Elizabeth Warren and actor Ben Stiller. But what was striking about the evening were the less glitzy among the honorees: social entrepreneur Valentin Abe, who also gave a toast to Haitians struggling to restore their country; microfinance pioneer Michael Sherraden of the Global Assets Project; Avarind Eye Clinic’s Dr Naperumalsamy, and other remarkable leaders effecting change around the world.

Perhaps the powerful story is that of Chen Shu-chu, a market woman from Taiwan, who saves her meager salary so as to support orphans and to build a library in her school. Over the years, she has given the over $30,000, and now plans to establish a fund to provide education and health care for the poor.

Her first trip outside of this vegetable seller’s home village was this foray into New York’s worldly elite. Surrounded by those who had spent the equivalent of her annual earnings on their glittering attire, Chen wore a business suit selected by Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry (for which she insisted on paying). Such indulgences have no place in the life of Chen Shu-chu, who lives on three dollars a day, so that she can give the remainder to others.

How many of us with much larger earnings could be just a bit more frugal so as to put our funds to a larger purpose? I dare not count the ways I have expended my salary on unnecessary items with the full knowledge that others lack the basic necessities of life. It is one thing to know. It is another to act.

While my dinner invitation was the result of a small article I wrote, Ms Chen’s was the result of lives she had changed. That is true in her village in Taiwan. It was also true that night in New York City. For much as we all enjoyed the well-known speakers and the polished performances, Chen Shu-chu, my modest table companion, will remain the keynoter in my mind.

—Jane Wales

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Philanthropists Call for Counterweight to Anti-tax Tea Party Movement

Everyone has gripes with the ways in which government tax dollars are put to use. Especially now, knee-deep in tax season, some dream of a tax-free, libertarian society. It certainly has done that for those associated with the anti-tax Tea Party Movement.

But philanthropist Chuck Collins argues that the public debate should focus on the reasons for collecting taxes in the first place. The debate is “stuck” in anti-tax rhetoric, designed to appeal to the Tea Party Movement, Collins says. Along with Alison Goldberg, Collins is leading a campaign for progressive tax reform aimed at the post World War II goal of expanding the middle class and meeting collective needs ranging from public education to physical infrastructure. These two philanthropists are gearing up for Tax Day—April 15—by recruiting more colleagues to join their cause to provide a progressive counterweight of sorts to the Tea Party activists. Collins says the goal is to “bear witness” to the need for a tax system that produces a more equitable society. It should also produce more philanthropy.

As detailed in a March 24 Chronicle of Philanthropy online discussion and in a March 25 Bolder Giving teleconference, Goldberg and Collins’ organization, Wealth for Common Good, specifically aims, among other things, to end Bush-era tax cuts for those with annual incomes over $235,000, close overseas tax havens, reinstate the estate tax and create an additional top tax bracket for high incomes. Taken together, they assert that their proposals could generate more than $500 billion per year in revenue. Their organization is also considering ways to use the tax code to encourage more charitable giving aimed at reducing inequality. During the Chronicle of Philanthropy chat, Goldberg said that foundation boards and grant decisions should also be opened up to include representatives of the communities supported by their grantmaking.

The proposals contained in Wealth for Common Good reflect and respond to a growing worry about income and wealth disparities in our society. And philanthropy has a role to play in providing thoughtful solutions. As Goldberg wrote in a Jan. 13 post to the New Voices of Philanthropy blog, “the funding community can’t afford to be absent from these debates.” For the television news would have us believe that the tea Party Movement is the dominant—perhaps even the sole—voice.

—Jane Wales

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“Trust Us” Is No Response to Those Who Doubt

If Congress were to double or triple the private foundation excise tax, asks Joel Orosz of Grand Valley State University, “does anyone truly think that there will be a groundswell of support for foundations” that resist? In a March 10 guest post to the Center for Effective Philanthropy blog headlined “Déjà vu (or 1969) All over Again?”, Orosz suggests it’s too late for foundations to react effectively to stem a possible backlash against the sector. Still, the philanthropy professor counsels foundations to take steps on their own to improve practices, including training employees to be more professional and more accountable to nonprofits.

Orosz is just one of several commentators recently suggesting that a growing populist fervor in society isn’t just anti-government, but anti-institution—and a threat to philanthropy, one that can’t be summarily dismissed and should propel changes. For example, in Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save The World, Michael Edwards wrote that foundation leaders will vociferously resist and complain about the many suggestions he makes in the book calling on Congress to require more transparency and accountability from foundations. But Edwards, a senior fellow at the think tank Demos and the leading skeptic of philanthro-capitalism, says that public and political pressure will eventually build and force changes in the sector. Similarly, in a February 25 Chronicle of Philanthropy opinion piece, the Hudson Institute’s William Schambra argued that philanthropy’s increasingly business-minded approach is at odds with the populist mood of the American public on both ends of the political spectrum. He thinks the tide is turning against foundations.

To help improve the situation, Thomas David of the Community Clinics Initiative argues that foundations should show they’re making sacrifices in this economy along with everyone else. It should not be a time of hunkering down, cutting grantmaking, trimming staff and expenses or focusing on re-growing endowments. Instead, David writes in an essay published by Grantmakers in Health (GIH) that foundations should make some big bets, ease up on control of grantees and practice mission-related investing. In other words, take risks that put them on the line in ways that might tangibly, not just symbolically, benefit nonprofits in a time of need. More specifically, David advises foundations to increase their grantmaking this year—even if they’re one of those already exceeding 6 percent payout. He complains that over the past couple of decades, foundations have evolved to become more risk averse than ever; they’re so focused on assets that growth is their priority, not giving.

David’s hard-charging essay is just one of several included in Taking Risks at a Critical Time, released in March in tandem with GIH’s 2010 annual meeting. Foundations hesitate, according to this publication, in part because of an over-reliance on proven practices, unwarranted anxiety about engaging in public policy and avoidance of failure of any kind, despite the fact that a healthy proportion of failures in a grant portfolio is a sign that a foundation is successfully venturing in new territory. The lead essay includes examples of “risk taking in action,” efforts to improve health.

Tom David is not optimistic, however. He essentially calls foundations fair-weather friends to nonprofits: “It is at times like this that nonprofits, who like to think of foundations as allies in their struggles, have learned not to count on their friends when they need them most.” I wonder. It is not the role of foundations to support nonprofits based on need, but rather based on merit, because doing so fits a larger strategy—one that produces a social benefit. I have a good deal of faith that foundations will do their best to achieve that end. But the way in which they do it must take into account the public mood, and even distrust that these observers so powerfully describe. No institution is being given a pass, particularly one that is seen as opaque while claiming to advance the public good. “Trust us” has never been an adequate response to doubters.

—Jane Wales

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WorldAffairs 2010 Livestream Now Available

On March 11 and 12 the World Affairs Council hosted WorldAffairs 2010, a day and a half of incisive analysis on four key global issues: the economy, climate change and the environment, development and poverty, and global security. Videos from our plenary and breakout sessions as well as interviews with speakers and our Take Action Reception partners are now available. Watch them now at www.livestream.com/worldaffairs2010.

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The Widow Mary Gargar Meets the Global Positioning System (GPS)

Sitting on a ramshackle assortment of wooden benches under the shade of a mango tree, we listen to the story of the widow Mary Gargar. An elderly and weathered Liberian woman with a look of determination just short of defiance, Mrs. Gargar tells us of how she purchased land from a man falsely representing himself as its rightful owner. Now that the war is over, a reverend who the government confirms is the rightful owner has returned and wants to build. While she holds a deed for the land in her name, and depends on its crops for survival, he too needs the land for his livelihood. How are they to resolve the dispute and meet their competing needs?

Land disputes are a recurring theme in the developing world and are at the root of much violent conflict. For the majority of the world’s poor, poverty is predominantly a rural issue. More than three quarters of those who live on just one or two dollars each day still live in the countryside. Living further from commercial centers, schools and health facilities and outside the range of many government and social services, the rural poor lack access to the inputs and infrastructure necessary for development. Residence in rural areas exacerbates poverty on nearly every level.

In Liberia, nearly 60 percent of the population is rural. Fourteen years of civil war devastated the physical infrastructure and destroyed what little access to systems and services that Liberia’s rural poor once enjoyed. Slowly, however, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s government is working with partners to rebuild, increasing access to the inputs critical for development.

What role can philanthropists play in creating the conditions necessary for wide-spread economic growth in rural areas? While the challenges facing the rural poor are daunting, there are three key areas where strategic giving by private philanthropists can make a difference: agriculture, legal systems and education.

In Liberia’s post-war period, agriculture has accounted for over half of GDP. To ensure that agriculture continues to grow, philanthropists must direct targeted support to rural areas. Projects that improve access to agricultural inputs, including high-yield rice and other new technologies, and those that strengthen agricultural institutions and build supply chains from rural to urban areas should be a priority. Aside from direct agricultural skills training and education, donors can design financial services targeted to small-scale farmers that will enable them to invest and plan for the future with confidence. In a place like Liberia, where the war destroyed the country’s livestock population, the introduction of something as simple as donations or loans to purchase and insure livestock would have a dramatic impact on the capacity for rural development.

But to invest in and develop agriculture on a piece of land, one must first be sure that he or she is the rightful owner, as we learned with the story of Mrs. Gargar. Land and property rights are central to poverty alleviation efforts—to stability, food security, income-generation and status within one’s community. However, legal systems for registering and protecting these property rights face a number of hurdles, particularly in poor, post-conflict settings. As part of its Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), the Liberian government commits to promoting effective land administration and management. Toward this goal, the government has established a commission and works with several key NGO partners, including the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Carter Center. The NRC works with the government to collect deeds and land records, increase the number of trained land surveyors and put a national system in place for land registration. Through outreach, the NRC spreads information about property rights and facilitates community resolution of land disputes, such as Mrs. Gargar’s. In addition, they put an essential new tool in surveyors’ (and land owners’) hands: global positioning systems. The process followed for making a determination includes the community and is viewed as fair—and the results are uncontested.

Complementing this work, organizations like the Carter Center support small programs in underserved rural areas to educate people about new laws and the legal means for resolving disputes. In a country where illiteracy rates are high, and access to information limited, the Carter Center sends traveling troops of local actors into the villages to perform entertaining and educational skits, followed by Q&A sessions with the villagers. On Saturday, I and 20 philanthropists, who are members of the Global Philanthropy Forum, took a UN helicopter to visit Liberia’s most isolated and rural region, the South East, to participate in one of these village gatherings and the robust Q&A session that followed the play.

We also viewed the re-opening of Tubman University in Harper city, the first and only institution of higher education in the region, which had been closed down during the war. It is nearly impossible to emphasize the importance of education to lifting the rural poor from poverty. Despite the government’s Free and Compulsory Primary Education Initiative, unofficial fees still prevent many children in Liberia from attending school. Over 70 percent of schools were destroyed or damaged during the war, and those that still operate do so with few supplies and poorly trained teachers with poor attendance records due to inconsistent pay. But, by efforts such as underwriting teacher salaries, providing books and supplies, funding the construction of new schools and providing the safe transportation of students to schools, philanthropists can have an enormously positive impact on rural education, and thus economic development.

On the final day of our trip, we visited a safe-house and rehabilitation center for vulnerable girls run by Touching Humanity In Need of Kindness (THINK). Many of the girls in the program were fighters during the war, or were trafficked to Monrovia under false promises of education in the capital city. Families willingly send their children to Monrovia, believing that they will receive an education and a chance for a better life. Too often, however, these children are forced into near slave-labor conditions as market sellers, house cleaners or prostitutes. The stories of these young women, although now on a positive path, represent an ugly nexus between rural and urban poverty. The rural poor are trafficked to the city because of the desperation of the urban poor. If affordable education in rural areas is provided and reliable means for families to make a living through agricultural development and property right protection are strengthened, women may be spared from making these dangerous decisions about how to educate their children.

This all sounds like a tall order, and many of these goals require the investments of governments, but each can be advanced substantially by small grants, especially to organizations like THINK, NRC and the Carter Center, each of which is having powerful impact on the lives of many who have suffered too much—including the strong willed Mrs. Gargar.

– Jane Wales

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Advancing Women & Girls in Liberia

“Women are part of the development agenda for the first time—and we are making use of our time. Traditional culture has made us reticent. But, no more. Our eyes are now open and there is no way they will close again.” These are the words of Liberia’s Vabah Gayflor, Minister of Gender and Development. Soft-spoken and patient, when her moment comes to speak, her voice drops to a whisper that commands the attention of all in the room. The 19 philanthropists with whom I am traveling in Liberia are focused; we have met a truly powerful person.

Gayflor, who is not a member of any political party, is an unmistakable champion of the person and policies of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Her colleagues speak of two revolutions led by Liberian women, and the one to come. The first was their struggle for peace in 2003. The second came in 2005 when they registered to vote and stood for election. Now, the third revolution is a more sustainable approach to economic development, one that provides benefits for all.

Quiet power characterizes the women of Liberia with whom we have met. They and their daughters have been the victims of extraordinary gender-based violence throughout the country’s 14-year civil war and still to this day, for the culture of impunity lingers on. However, in Minister Gayflor’s words, “women believe their time has come.” Meeting them persuades us that is so.

Throughout our day today, we met with women and girls who were being given economic opportunity, albeit modest, for the first time. Job creation has not come near to keeping up with the need, and remains an urgent necessity for President Sirleaf, who met with us over dinner last night. While some of those jobs will come from large corporations in search of coffee, rubber and cocoa, Sirleaf notes that the extractive industries are “capital intensive, and will not provide all the jobs we need.” And so the prospect of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) attracts the donors with whom I am now traveling, leaders of the Global Philanthropy Forum and The Philanthropy Workshop West.

In a large building on Monrovia’s main thoroughfare, we met with the exuberant members of the Liberian Women’s Sewing Project, a pilot enterprise of Chid Liberty’s Made In: Liberia, a promising new business to manufacture apparel that would be fair trade certified and a source of employment. Elsewhere in Monrovia, each woman who opens a stall at the Nancy B. Doe Market, funded by the Sirleaf Market Women’s Fund, is required to open a savings account at the ECO Bank branch located within the market. And she is given access to daily literacy classes within the market walls. In a country where 60 percent of agricultural output and 80 percent of trading activities are carried out by women, ensuring that they have training and access to credit is essential.

Liberian women have found ways to advance other aspects of the Sirleaf government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). Members of the West Africa Network for Peace Building (WANEP) told us of their efforts to increase women’s participation in peace-building at all levels in the country, through advocacy, capacity-building, radio outreach and rural initiatives.

And the truly extraordinary women of West Point—the largest slum within Liberia—have formed their own West Point Women for Health and Development. Forty eight percent of West Point’s population is comprised of children, 35% women (mostly single parents) and 15% men. In this area not yet reached by government services, these remarkable women concluded that “enough is enough” after seeing too many children raped and killed. They self-organized and took responsibility for their impoverished community, with each paying weekly dues of 30 Liberian Liberty Dollars (roughly 40 cents US). With this money, they fund grassroots efforts to improve health and sanitation, reduce gender-based violence, provide literacy classes, reduce prostitution— and see to it that the police do their jobs. And if the police fail them, as is so often the case, they take matters to higher authorities until perpetrators of violence are prosecuted and some form of order is achieved. Their annual budget is $10,000. With funding, they would like to expand their skills training to teaching a woman to drive a car. Newly empowered with that skill, she could be a taxi driver and make a living for her family.

So what is the role for private actors—philanthropists and social investors? Is the right entry point a community based organization, an NGO that provides skills training and meets basic needs? Or is it to create the conditions for small enterprises to take seed, so that the economy can expand more than its current 5% per year. With funding and technical assistance, increased access to education, skills development, credit and inputs, women will be able to lift their families from poverty.

Women did not get the vote in Liberia until 1948. Their country did not get peace until the women demanded it in 2003. Now a woman holds the presidency, powerful women are heading ministries, holding Senate seats and women with no education and no obvious reason for hope have transformed West Point from being a daily, deadly danger to their sisters and their children. Their eyes are now open to the power they wield. Will they turn back? And how can the rest of us ease their path forward?

– Jane Wales

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From Liberia—Post-Conflict Philanthropy

“Liberia is not a poor country. It is a country that has been managed poorly,” according Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberia’s president and Africa’s first female head of state.

Poverty is both a cause and a consequence of violent conflict, which decimates economies, destroys infrastructure, and undermines a state’s capacity to meet basic needs. Yet Sierra Leone and Rwanda have each demonstrated that with the right policies and the right partners, countries can emerge from conflict and achieve positive economic results for their publics. Liberia can be a third example—and wealthy countries, far-sighted investors, and strategic philanthropists alike are betting on the policies of its reform-minded leader.

Undaunted by the problems inherited from 14 years of civil war, Sirleaf’s government undertook a highly inclusive public process to develop its Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS). It encompasses policies aimed at integrating former combatants, promoting reconciliation, combating corruption, welcoming investment, and encouraging the growth of civil society. It is a blueprint that has persuaded wealthy countries to provide much-needed debt relief and both private philanthropists and investors to work in close coordination with one another—and with a government they feel they can trust.

I write from Liberia, where I am traveling with 19 philanthropists committed to Liberia’s success. The origins of this trip lie in a 2008 Clinton Global Initiative “commitment” undertaken by Pam Omidyar’s Humanity United, the Global Philanthropy Forum (GPF), the Open Society Institute, the Daphne Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, the McCall-MacBain Foundation, TrustAfrica, and the government of Liberia.

As part of the commitment, the grant-making foundations stepped forward to finance the establishment of a Philanthropy Secretariat within President Sirleaf’s offices, with the mandate to coordinate their investments so as to best support Liberia’s reform agenda. For our part, at the GPF, we agreed to expand the number of “new philanthropists” alert to Liberia’s potential and to test and refine this extraordinary model of partnership between a post-crisis government and a consortium of private donors and investors.

Ultimately, our hope is to be able to demonstrate—to our satisfaction and to other donors seeking to engage—that this model of highly disciplined and collaborative philanthropic engagement can be adapted and made portable to other post-crisis situations. Many of the GPF members who joined the trip are also leaders of The Philanthropy Workshop West or members of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows. They are strategic philanthropists, discerning, intent on impact—and deeply respectful of local voices.

They recognize that many of the prescriptions contained in Liberia’s poverty reduction strategy would apply to most post-crisis states. At the same time, they are cognizant that Liberia’s history is unique.  Founded by freed American slaves in 1847, it became the first independent republic in Africa. It established a constitution that met the needs of those settlers, but excluded indigenous peoples. The inequities inherent in that formula helped lead to political instability and ultimately a brutal civil war, during which the GDP of the country dropped 90%, poverty rates rose 64%, the physical infrastructure was decimated, the management class was dispersed, 270,000 died, and many hundreds of thousands were displaced. Its young population, 75% of whom are under age 25, has spent more time in battle than in school.

As a group, we will explore whether and how private actors can contribute to the public goals that are designed not only to reverse the damage done, but to build a new Liberia that can be a model for others emerging from crisis.

In particular, we will report to you—and gain your views—on four hurdles ahead: improving security, promoting public health, rehabilitating infrastructure, and strengthening government capacity.

As we report out to you on the status of each of these areas, we will be eager to hear your views on the role that private actors can play and how they can best work in partnership with each other and with Liberia’s government. Barack Obama has often said that government alone cannot solve all of our country’s problems. If this is true for us, it can be no less true for Liberia, where philanthropy and investment have a significant role to play.

– Jane Wales

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