Stanford Social Innovation Review

Technology’s Positive Impact on Human Rights

In a world where we post our trivia on twitter, incriminating photos on Facebook, and embarrassing videos on YouTube, can truly horrible stories of human rights violations still grab our attention? Our horror? And the shame necessary to drive change?

And when the perpetrator of the crime smiles and waves at the camera during the act, does their “You know that I know that you are watching while I get my 15 seconds of fame” attitude make a video game of the whole episode?

Trevor Paglen, author, artist, journalist and experimental geographer, opened the Conference on Human Rights, Technology, and New Media at Berkeley on May 4th with these powerful questions.

Trevor’s controversial and thought-provoking pessimism about the continued success of the mobilization of shame to change policy and practice was offset by the good news throughout the rest of the conference–examples abounded of technology’s positive impact on human rights.

Some of these examples are:

• Trevor’s now famous photo of a CIA black site provided evidence of a secret government detention architecture. Using public records, mapping visualization, GPS systems, interviews, and dogged determination, Trevor tracked down the location of this site and took the controversial photograph.
• Yvette Alberdingk Thijm of WITNESS described how their program empowering locals to document human rights violations in film has actually reduced voluntary recruitment of child soldiers in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and has contributed to the prioritization of this issue at the international level. With today’s video and internet technologies, anyone can be a witness and documenter.
• David Sasaki of Global Voices described the many internet tools he uses to build an online blogging community of over 150 voices from the developing world covering issues that mainstream media often ignore. Internet applications such as Google groups, Google reader, Google docs, delicious, wikis, basecamp, Doppler, freshbooks and mind42.com makes it easy to build and maintain their virtual community.
• Judith Dueck of Huridocs detailed the database and search capabilities they provide to allow massive amounts of victim, perpetrator, and event data to be mined. Standardizing the structure and vocabulary of human rights turns the tons of boxes of data into actionable information for stopping the violations.
• Peggy Weil of the USC School of Cinematic Arts gave a fascinating example of raising awareness of torture through an immersive experience in Second Life. Working with Nonny de la Pena, her team created GoneGitmo, a Second Life experience that takes a viewer’s avatar through the experience of Guantanamo. Depending on how closely you identify with your avatar, the experience of being bound, head-covered, and interrogated can be quite terrifying.

Rather than feeling technology and media weary after seeing gadgets worthy of James Bond (the BUG4GOOD mobile device was especially cool), rather than seeing games and social networks as corrupting influences on our youth, these technologies and media made me feel optimistic.

For collection of information, we have modern technologies such as satellite images, GPS, GIS, and ubiquitous phones, cameras and SMS. For simplifying analysis, we have data visualization, DNA analysis, collaborative online conversations, and data mining, for example. And for promoting awareness we have fun technologies such as games, films, and multi-media campaigns.

So we can use social networks not to expose personal embarrassments but to expose crises. We can create communities for sharing stories of trauma not gossip. And we can create learning and immersive experiences for deeply feeling and walking in someone else’s shoes rather than avoiding reality. And perhaps then we can drive the change that is needed.

This sounds like a Web 2.0 to embrace.

Gina Klein Jorasch Gina Klein Jorasch is currently Senior Advisor to the Center for Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Gina was a founder or early-stage executive at five for-profit tech start-ups, all of which had successful IPOs or acquisitions, and a founding board member for two nonprofit startups.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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How to Help Haiti

Key Points

• It is important to figure out why you want to donate to Haiti and what you hope your donation will accomplish.
• Donors should consider supporting long term development in Haiti or disaster preparedness as a worthy alternative to short term disaster relief.
• Donors who want to support disaster relief efforts should consider donating to Partners in Health.

I’ve been asked by many people how they can best provide support in the wake of the Haitian earthquake. However, picking nonprofits on behalf of our clients is really not what we get hired to do. As our website says, “It is not our job to tell you where to give. Instead, we work to empower our clients with the knowledge and expertise they need to make the best decisions about their philanthropy.”

While which nonprofit you fund has important implications, figuring out what you’re trying to accomplish in the first place is critical. So let’s look at how a donor might think about the role they want to play.

First off, we need to understand that while the Haitian earthquake has its own unique issues, it is a disaster relief scenario which means we can learn from other similar situations. Tim Ogden had this advice in the Harvard Business Review:

Take a look back at the responses to other recent disasters. There is a discernable pattern, and not a good one:
1. Donations spike in the immediate aftermath.
2. A huge portion of the funds donated are spent on setting up disaster-relief operations that are no longer the primary need.
3. A flood of cash and materials cause a logistics nightmare leading to waste and ineffectiveness, if not corruption.
4. Six months later, reconstruction stalls because the world’s attention has moved elsewhere.
5. And, finally, a series of reports bemoan the fact that too many funds are devoted to disaster relief and not enough to disaster preparedness and reconstruction.

I don’t mean to suggest that donors should not send cash now to help in the relief effort. But it is important for donors to realize that doing so is not the only option. The fact is, the Haitian earthquake is just as much a poverty issue as it is a natural disaster as David Brooks pointed out in the New York Times:

On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died (Note:Estimated deaths now at 200,000)
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services.

What this suggests is that donors should consider whether providing support for long term rebuilding in Haiti (or other areas) makes sense for them or whether they might look at disaster preparedness as a cause they want to support. The point here is that the Haitian earthquake is not a simple story. There are many underlying issues and donors should give some thought to what it is about the event that moves them to give.

The charity evaluation group GiveWell wrote a post over a year ago title The Case Against Disaster Relief  in which they looked at how disaster relief is not a particularly cost-effective use of a donor’s gift and why disaster preparedness might be better. But even if this is true, the world needs high performing disaster relief organizations. So donors who want to support the urgent relief efforts would be well served to make an unrestricted gift to an organization that can use the funds now in Haiti and also use them to grow and improve their organization so they are ready to help when the next disaster strikes.

While there are a number of organizations that are viable options for a donor who wants to support disaster relief, we would recommend that donors consider Partners in Health (PIH). PIH is a community-based health care provider that works with poor people in developing countries. Their flagship project is located in Haiti and is one of the largest nongovernmental health care providers in the country. Partners in Health has received large grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and is recommended by GiveWell and The Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania (as well as many other reputable sources). PIH was co-founded by Paul Farmer, a bit of a rock star in the development world, was widely expected to be nominated to run USAID and many people thought was the best pick for the job.

One of the advantages of supporting PIH is that they are on the ground in Haiti now and can deploy your donation towards near tern relief work and for the long term support of health care needs in Haiti and other poverty stricken, developing nations. While donor’s hearts may go out to Haiti today, when an earthquake next strikes an impoverished nation it is critical that groups like Partners for Health are in top operating condition and ready to help.

We believe that good philanthropy is a product of having a good plan in place and fully understanding what you are trying to achieve. Which nonprofits you support is of course important, but that question can only be answered once you realize what you are trying to accomplish.

Sean Stannard-Stockton is CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, a philanthropy advisory firm that serves individual and family philanthropists. Sean is the author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog and writes a monthly column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Philanthropy & Social Investing and has been quoted or referenced in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times and many other media outlets.

Posted by Samantha Penabad

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Hurricane relief not coming from large nonprofits

“In the midst of the devastation, larger relief organizations like the Red Cross and Salvation Army have been scaling down their efforts. They still have warehouses of supplies but no efficient way to distribute them to people in the poor communities of the Gulf Coast, ” writes former SSIR managing editor, David Weir in Salon.  “The Red Cross has already closed all of its shelters and the Salvation Army plans to stop its meal service before Christmas.”

In contrast, David writes, “Hands On USA volunteers are helping East Biloxi residents manage such day-to-day chores as clearing debris from their houses, finding temporary shelter and seeking counseling.”

Hurricane relief and the media that it attracts provides a golden opportunity for nonprofits - particularly large nonprofits who are under scrutiny from their donors and congress - to show that they can effectively and efficiently aid the needy.  Why aren’t the Red Cross and Salvation Army then making a better showing?

Posted by Perla Ni

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Where’s the money?

Two weeks ago, I visited the northern coast of Aceh, Indonesia, curious to see not only how people are faring one year after the tsunami, but also how NGOs are spending the largest pool of humanitarian funds ever raised. On both counts, my report is the same: Not well.

After one day in Banda Aceh, I spent four more driving through the districts of Pidie and Bireun. Even the view from the highway bore witness to the ongoing suffering of the Acehnese. Where thriving marketplaces and traditional houses once stood, tent cities and government-built barracks spread. The skeletons of washed-up boats and cars still sit on the roads’ shoulders as far as two miles inland. Schools are boarded up. Fishing ponds bleed into each other and into the sea. Even in Banda Aceh, the province’s proud capital, 50% of the surviving population is still homeless. In rural villages, that number climbs to 70%.

When is more help coming? I didn’t know what to tell the village chiefs or the boat builders or my generous hosts in Pente Rheng, Kiran Baroh, Beurembang, and Pasi Lhok. Their stories resembled each other: A flurry of NGOs hurried through their villages soon after the tsunami, asking questions, staking claims, making promises. And then the NGOs never returned. Or the NGOs did return, but only to replace demolished houses, not to repair the badly damaged ones. I heard about one NGO that refused to rebuild any schools in one village unless it could rebuild the most prominent ones, near the highway. The village agreed, retracting its agreement with a smaller organization that made simpler promises. The NGO nailed its logo to the schools, and hasn’t been seen since. I heard about another NGO that decided not to build until it has the materials and expertise to meet the highest European standards of earthquake readiness.

The day I returned to Jakarta, an article the New York Times confirmed that many NGOs are indeed taking their time. In her article, “After Tsunami, a Rarity: Donated Dollars Remain,” Stephanie Strom reports that NGOs are resisting pressures to spend-down their windfall, and instead are contemplating how to “build back better” with long-term investments in education, health care, and economic recovery. She also writes that NGOs are spending unprecedented amounts of time and money documenting and justifying their spending to donors. Oxfam, for example, has already spent $1.5 million of its $278 million on monitoring and evaluating its own performance. Many other organizations are likewise providing detailed breakdowns of how and where their money is spent.

Meanwhile, it seemed to me that the Acehnese are stranded in a trough between the first wave of emergency aid and a second, promised wave of reconstruction funding. The tents in which many live were never intended to weather two monsoons, as their mold and holes attest. The camps are filthy with litter and the stink of raw sewage. Scabies is rampant. Without boats for fishing, yards for raising poultry, or ponds for farming seafood, the villagers must rely on the World Food Programme’s rations of rice and vegetable oil and sardines. But the rations are never quite enough. The children are skinnier, and not growing to be as tall as their older siblings. Health care is lacking for everyone because most of the medical teams left a few months after the tsunami.

There are no squeaky wheels here. People mourn their dead in the Acehnese way, bearing their hardships quietly. A man who lost his wife, parents, and three children smiled and said, “I’m just trying to forget the past on move on.” 

But NGOs have the grease, and plenty. Are they withholding immediate aid so that they can optimize their long-term planning and donor relationships? Whose needs are being addressed by this strategy? Whose standards are being met? Which sufferings are being forestalled, and which are being exacerbated? Could NGOs do a better job of addressing both immediate needs and long-term goals?

Alana Conner
Senior Editor
Stanford Social Innovation Review

Posted by Perla Ni

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