I was very fortunate to be able to spend time with Yacoobi last month at the Opportunity Collaboration, a convening on global poverty alleviation held in Mexico. She caught me up on the current situation in Afghanistan and her work at the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL). Yacoobi founded AIL in 1995 to provide teacher training to Afghan women, support education for boys and girls, and offer health education to women and children. About 200,000 students graduate every year from AIL’s programs, and Yacoobi estimates AIL has impacted 8.5 million Afghans. Yacoobi is the recipient of dozens of humanitarian, social entrepreneurship, and leadership awards for her incredible work over the last two decades.

The day Yacoobi and I met, it was a humid 90 degrees, but Yacoobi was wearing a hijab and a long, beautifully embroidered dark Afghan dress. She lit up with passion when talking about the progress being made and the hope of rebuilding Afghanistan. In every word she spoke, she was tireless and unwavering in her commitment to the people of Afghanistan. But at the same time, she seemed weary. She travels the world about 40 percent of her time, stop after stop, building support for AIL and change in Afghanistan. At home in Afghanistan, she works every day to make life better while surrounded by violence and uncertainty. Rebuilding Afghanistan is her life’s pursuit.

Yacoobi focused in on the improvements she’s seen over the last two years, her workshops for youth to engage them in civil society, and renewing her people’s connection to the earth.

“Women’s lives are changing rapidly for the good,” she said. “It’s changed 180 degrees. Women are going into professions of all kinds. But the women of Afghanistan still need the international community to back them up. It takes awhile—Afghanistan has been at war 30 years. Everything cannot be changed right away.”

“Afghanistan is doing better, the villages are cleaner, people are healthier, and people know more about hygiene and reproductive health. Now we need infrastructure support, and we need to develop our civil society.” On the other hand, she added, “security is worse this year than last year. I have to just ignore the whole thing as otherwise I couldn’t function.”

Yacoobi has been holding workshops on democracy, leadership, and peace, getting youth involved in civil society. “A highlight of my life is my emerging youth group,” Yacoobi told me. She recently took 25 students, ages 18-25, to a peace conference in India. Now the group meets once a month for discussions. Each student was asked to bring two others, and the group has swelled to over 200.

Yacoobi also spoke about wanting to work with young people to bring back the connection between the Afghan people and nature. “I feel strongly that we are living too separate from nature; we are disconnected from the soil.” Yacoobi said. “The soil has been so abused, by landmines, suicide bombers, and many things. The dirt is dead.” She cited the important teaching of 13th century poet Rumi, who wrote of this connection and the importance of “love, tolerance, wisdom, respect, and forgiveness.”

Yacoobi is tired of concentrating on the negative. “I love Afghanistan. I love the women and children of Afghanistan. I work with civil society, and I am not interested in politics. Afghanistan is still insecure; we still have war. But the best thing for me is to concentrate and continue with what I am doing.”

Contrary to the declarations of agencies that benefit from the current model and the misguided notions of theorists such as Jeffrey Sachs,‘inclusive and participatory’ and ‘stable and productive’ states are rarely the result of more foreign assistance. They are a result of smarter foreign assistance. As most veteran field workers will tell you, the majority of “official” American development investments overseas have failed to sustain themselves—they lack local ownership and an equitable investment environment, both internally and externally. More “official” foreign assistance has mostly meant dependency, corruption, and waste.

In these times, which call for national austerity, the Secretary’s entreaty to Congress to multiply the ranks of civil servants abroad—at approximately $500,000 per officer (all-inclusive cost in fragile states), and at a time when new technologies and changing civil landscapes overseas offer more effective mechanisms—is behind the times. Be reminded that these “official” Americans abroad are for the most part sequestered inside American armed perimeters. They exist as enclaves in distant lands, spending most of their days stuck in cubicles, responding to taskers from Washington D.C., and spending their evenings with imported comfort food. The perpetuation of this model is shameful when Americans have such an attractive and necessary alternative: our own civil society.

The Way Forward

Through the judicious use of less than 40 percent of the tax dollars we spend annually on US Foreign Assistance, we can marry the best American civil society has to offer with the best of emerging civil society overseas. While we may not be able to assure “open and pluralistic” states—the expression used in 2003 to justify our entry into Iraq—we can give it a fighting chance, and by doing so, we can project American interests and values at a cost that is acceptable to Americans, as well as sustainable.

The successor model to what we have before us now (which grew out of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act) is predicated on the assumption that globalization is a force that we cannot deny. America can—and should—play a leading role through the careful provision of foreign assistance. But this assistance should harness the capacity and interests of the American private sector (both for-profit and nonprofit), not America’s interests and values as represented by federal employees. In short: civil society, not civil service.

For the cost of placing one federal aid worker in a perimeter overseas, America could, for example, fund a women’s empowerment group in Flatbush, Brooklyn, or any other community, to link, advocate, and support a women’s rights group in Iraq for a decade. In the 50 years since the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act was created, emerging civil society organizations overseas have become ubiquitous and capable, and more importantly, they have become owners of their own national development. They are universally enthusiastic about connecting and uniting with their likenesses in the United States. Certain groups in Flatbush also understand that women’s rights are a universal value.

Over the last 20 years, new technologies have taken root across the developing world. The rights group in Iraq could now, at little cost, communicate by phone, email, or webcam with the group in Flatbush, and form a lasting union around their shared concerns. The group in Flatbush might also choose to send money through a payment portal to support local needs, as defined by the members of the Iraqi group. Transparency and compliance with local and US law could be assured by other civil society organizations that have offices on the ground overseas to create such outcomes. The $500,000 I mentioned earlier could sustain a relationship for years and could create a permanent bond for right relations. Finally, as their local partners (versus a government security officer) assess risk, the Flatbush members could visit Iraq. 

This same model could work for the Chamber of Commerce in Boise, the Persons with Disability Rights Group in Jacksonville, or the Youth Civic Participation Group in Des Moines. America has a mighty asset—a well-established civil society that we can use to project American interests and values overseas effectively. It would be counterproductive to do otherwise.

Notwithstanding the advocacy for this new model of foreign assistance, the US State Department’s role remains critical—not to implement, but to change and assign strategic purpose. It can offer public funds to jump-start this paradigm, coordinate its implementation, and evaluate its progress. The current assistance structure must be put away and modernized to incorporate citizen-to-citizen assistance and rapport in a significant and meaningful way. The days of the current “official assistance” juggernaut are numbered and will be replaced—as surely as the car replaced the horse and buggy a century ago—by engaged global citizens and the new technology at their fingertips.

Gilliam was one among almost 100 presenters and 800 participants of this eighth annual confab of online activists, open government strategists, and technology pundits, including Lawrence Lessig, Andy Carvin, Jennifer 8. Lee, Craig Newmark, and Cory Doctorow. But he was one of the few who spoke about how the comingling of the personal, political, and technological had created the forces for him to remain alive.

A born-again Christian raised in Palo Alto, Calif., Gilliam told the enraptured crowd that he gave up on Jesus after his mother died of cancer and he was struck by the same disease. Yet he survived emotionally thanks to his blog, found his calling as an activist thanks to the Internet, and remains in this world due to online databases for blood marrow and lung donors. Gilliam is the founder of 3dna, a startup building Internet tools “to shake up a broken political system,” and co-founded Robert Greenwald’s Brave New Films.

“Today I breathe through someone else’s lungs. I have someone else’s blood running through my veins. I believe in God. And the Internet is my religion. … What the people in this room do is spiritual, it is profound. We are the leaders of this new religion, we have faith that people connected can create a new world,” said Gilliam.

One would think that the last statement would be met with plenty of skepticism. Facebook, Change.org, and the Sunlight Foundation’s Poligraft may be excellent tools, respectively, for organizing protests, circulating petitions, and enabling transparency in political contributions. But are they really tools for spiritual enlightenment? Is God in this cold box?

Gilliam and plenty others say that they are and that s/he is. Among the presentations given by online activists from Egypt, Tunisia, and Nigeria, was a speech dubbed “Generation Mubarak and the Power of ‘I’” by Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy who described how Facebook has given young Egyptians, particularly women, their first experience of self-expression and the courage to see that other “I”s could become a powerful “We” by leaving their homes and joining the protests on the street. “The way the Egyptian revolution will succeed is by continuing the power of I,” said Eltahawy.

Alaa Abd Al Fattah, an Egyptian blogger, software developer, and democracy activist, joked, “The technology I used the most were rocks.” Fattah underscored that the revolution in Egypt has roots in at least 10 years of activism—and more than 30 years if one counts the anti-government struggles of his parents’ generation. But he and others, like Rasha Abdullah, a journalism professor at American University Cairo, said there was no question that Web 2.0 technology enabled anti-government argument and activism and will continue to do so.

In many ways, the Personal Democracy Forum was a tale of two cities, or two factions representing how online technology is changing government from within and without. In city A—let’s call it Revolution City—Internet and communication technologies are helping activists to quickly organize constituents and topple corrupt regimes, although not without great danger. Professor Abdullah noted that just a few days ago the Syrian government blocked public Internet access, and she was among several speakers who argued that the United Nations should make Internet access a human right.

In city B—let’s call it Bipolar City—the vast majority are using their Internet freedoms to watch porn and post pics of themselves, with a very small minority coming up with highly innovative projects and tools to improve civil society and democratic governing—projects and tools one prays will find decent market share.

Among the innovations presented at Personal Democracy Forum 2011:

• The Voting Information Project, a Pew-Microsoft partnership that aims to provide timely, accurate Election Day information.
• UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s open data project, which has started the process of making all government spending projects above 500 pounds available online.
• Ediplomacy, an applied technology think tank for the United States Department of State.
• The Public Online Information Act, which NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said is designed to mandate US public government documents be made available and searchable online.
• Sunlight Foundation’s Inbox Influence, which allows Gmail users to see the political contributions of the people and organizations that are mentioned in their emails.
• FreedomBox, hardware proposed by Columbia University Law Professor Eben Mogen that empowers Internet users to engage online in a manner that suits them, not the telecom companies, Facebook, or the government.

The list could be much longer, which shows that 2011 is a watershed moment for work at the intersection of politics, government, and technology. One has to hope that people’s interest in social consumerism sites like Groupon can pave the way for engagement in social activism sites like Change.org. But as Erica George tweeted during the conference, Groupon actually grew out of The Point, a website that applies a “tipping point” concept to group action, particularly political campaigns. The Point is not well known; but Groupon has 70 million users and a supposed valuation of $25 billion.

It is chilling to read through Seif’s 429-page thesis, exploring “the problem of how to create more just and democratic global governing institutions,” as citizens are being killed in Libya’s streets. “The thesis defends the argument that inclusion of elected representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in tripartite decision-making structures could potentially create a more democratic global governing system,” writes Seif in the abstract. He continues:  “Drawing on the works of David Hume, John Rawls and Ned McClennen, it elaborates significant self-interested and moral motives that prompt individuals to seek cooperation on fair terms if they expect others to do so. Secondly, it supports a theory of global justice, rejecting the limits of Rawls’s view of international justice based on what he calls ‘peoples’ rather than persons. Thirdly, the thesis adopts and applies David Held’s eight cosmopolitan principles to support the concept and specific structures of ‘Collective Management’. “

If that were not enough, Kansas State University History Professor David R. Stone has unearthed evidence that Seif may have plagiarized parts of his dissertation. Writes Stone: “I spent an hour on Google and found big chunks of plagiarized material, evidently not caught by the academics whom Saif thanks in his dissertation: Nancy Cartwright, David Held, Alex Voorhoeve, and Joseph Nye. Compared to turning combat aircraft on crowds of civilians, cutting corners on your dissertation is small beer. But it does raise important questions about what happens to scholarly standards when big piles of money are involved.” (LSE reportedly received a million dollar donation from the Qaddafis.)

To read his dissertation: Dissertation.pdf

UPDATE: On March 3, Howard Davies, the head of the London School of Economics resigned over the Qaddafi scandal.

The Gardener creates an ecosystem open to change, available to new groups, and full of fresh opportunities to emerge naturally.  The approach is focused on organic collaboration and growth for the entire community.  The gardener is simply there to help, cultivate, and clear the weeds if/when they poke up.

The Landscaper creates an ecosystem that matches a preconceived design or pattern.  The approach is focused on executing a preconceived environment, regardless of how natural or organic it may be for the larger area.  The landscaper is there to ensure that everything stays just as planned.

Lately, I have had the opportunity to chat with various colleagues like Bonnie Koenig, Debra Askanase and others about the topic of cross-platform community building. The way I look at it, the issues and best practices are just as clearly linked to the idea of gardening as other community building approaches are in my previous post. Here’s what I mean:

Cross-Platform Community Building :: Tending to Multiple Flowerbeds

The internet is huge, there are literally countless platforms where people are forming community. Your organization, whether it has an organizational presence there or not, has people interested in your services, programs, mission or cause talking about it and everything else all over the social web - from mainstream networks like Facebook and Twitter to niche communities on Ning or even forums (some branded, some not).  As much as the temptation may be to want to call out to everyone interested to join you in your place, the best thing you can do is recognize that not everyone flourishes and thrives in the same place, with the same treatment, and even the same amount of visibility. We should approach our community building work with the intention to create thrivable community on and offline, and in order to do that successfully we need to take time to recognize which elements contribute to various groups and segments of our community thriving.

Let’s look at the way a gardener can tend to multiple flowerbeds in one big backyard and the way that translates to our work of building community across the web:

Analysis and evaluation: the garden is visiting all of the flowerbeds or cultivated areas of the yard (and all the ground in between!) so has the best view to continually evaluate and analyze what’s working and what it isn’t, where things are dry or over-watered, where the weeds are cropping up and where the birds and bugs are hanging out. The garden can make decisions based on all this data to keep the whole yard in a thrivable place, but also recognizes the need to give part of that evaluation opportunity to the plants themselves by giving them a chance without assuming one can only grow in certain conditions or prefers being near only certain others.

Cross-pollinating: just like a bee, as the gardener goes from each bed to the other, she is helping cross-pollinate the plants; in our case, this means sharing conversations, ideas, and insights across the greater network. Highlighting opportunities, events, or conversations of interest across various platforms to prevent groups operating in silos when they may be interested in discussing the same/similar issues - the difference is the preference for where online to talk, not necessarily what to talk about.

Transplanting: as part of the analysis and cross-pollination, the gardener is also taking steps to ensure that if a plant is really not thriving in it’s current location, that it can have the chance to try out another place in the garden - maybe one with more or less sunshine, fewer or maybe even more plants nearby, anything to give it a new opportunity to grow. In our use of community building, this can be seen simply in sharing the links between platforms when sharing content or stories from one to another, or by highlighting the needs of users or groups to the larger network.

What do you think? What would you add about cross-platform community building? What issues is your organization facing or examples can you share?

Want to keep talking about community building across platforms? Join me for a monthly online chat!

Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.