http://www.ssireview.org/articles/ Strategies, Tools, and Ideas for Nonprofits, Foundations, and Socially Responsible Businesses en nicholas_jenna@gsb.stanford.edu Copyright 2010 2010-02-24T07:00:54+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/settling_up/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/settling_up/ In 2000, while working for a national refugee resettlement organization in New York City, Jane Leu decided that the federally funded system of matching immigrants to careers was a failure. “We didn’t have an incentive to focus on [the] quality” of the placements, she remembers of her six years of putting highly educated, English-speaking foreigners in low-skill jobs. “It was just about quantity.” So with no funding, a borrowed laptop computer, and her kitchen table as a makeshift office, Leu started the nonprofit Upwardly Global, whose goal is to help highly skilled immigrants reclaim their careers in the United States. The beginning was rocky. With no funds and no employees, Leu was limited to one-on-one sessions with job seekers, reaching out to foundations for grants, and making employers aware of a hidden talent pool: 1.3 million bilingual workers with degrees and professional experience in every possible white-collar profession. Successes trickled in. By 2002, the organization received its first grant and hired its first paid employee. In 2003, Leu’s work was recognized by the Draper Richards Foundation when she became its first fellow, earning a $300,000 grant. Today, Upwardly Global employs 29 people to serve some 600 job seekers a year.… Human Rights 2010-03-04T23:15:03+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/airborne_peace/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/airborne_peace/ On Wednesdays in Rwanda, just before sundown, the radios come to life. Farmers lay down their tools to gather under shade trees, fan clubs take their usual seats in the bars, and a hush settles over prison courtyards. Each week, an estimated 85 percent of radio listeners in Rwanda tune their radio dials to the soap opera Musekeweya (New Dawn). Using a Romeo and Juliet plot to symbolize Hutus and Tutsis, the program teaches listeners how to prevent ethnic violence, embrace reconciliation, and heal the wounds of the past. In 1994, radio-borne hate propaganda helped prompt a Hutuled genocide of 75 percent of the ethnic minority Tutsis. Within three months, the genocide wiped out 10 percent of the Rwandan population — some 750,000 victims. Now, Musekeweya is reclaiming the radio to help survivors live together again. “Musekeweya helped me calm down,” says Kennedy Munyangeyo, a 36-year-old filmmaker from Kigali who lost his two brothers, several uncles, and a sister to the genocide. “I used to think that we should react by hating the people who did the genocide, but after a year of listening to the show, I realize that if someone did a bad thing, the answer is not… Arts, Culture, and Religion, Human Rights 2010-02-24T06:00:51+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/women_hold_both_sky_and_solutions/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/women_hold_both_sky_and_solutions/ Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof’s book Half the Sky is an absorbing narrative of stories that are rarely heard: a New Jersey teenager is raising awareness about the status of girls in poor countries, an Afghan schoolteacher is leading a learning insurgency, and a former first lady of Somalia’s hospital is saving the lives of mothers in Somaliland. These and other vignettes bring to life the struggles and courage of unforgettable women who are, as the book’s subtitle suggests, turning oppression into opportunity. Half the Sky begins by outlining the most egregious ways in which human rights are violated: trafficking and slavery, prostitution, rape and honor killings, and maternal mortality. The authors do not flinch from describing experiences that are horrifying testimony to the deeply rooted gender inequality that persists around the globe. The book also explores the reasons for such discriminatory practices—including attitudes toward religion and traditional cultural beliefs—effectively stoking the reader’s growing sense of moral outrage. We learn, for example, that the world’s leaders are effectively ignoring the 500,000 women who die each year either giving birth or trying to cope with unplanned births, by relegating maternal mortality to a “women’s issue.” After convincing the reader that this… Human Rights, Book Reviews 2009-12-30T23:43:01+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/research_strong_women_strong_sector/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/research_strong_women_strong_sector/ Why do some nations, such as the United States and Sweden, have booming nonprofit sectors, whereas other economically similar countries, such as Japan and Italy, do not? A new study uncovers a surprising answer: It’s the women. The more empowered a country’s women, the more vibrant its nonprofit sector. “Other research shows that women tend to be more altruistic, more prosocial, and less corrupt [than men],” explains study author Nuno S. Themudo, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. “Yet in many parts of the world, women cannot actively participate in civil society.” In countries where women can take their talents into the public sphere, he observes, the nonprofit sector employs more people, retains more members, and attracts more volunteers. For his research, Themudo uses the United Nations Development Programme’s Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which reflects how many parliamentary, management, and professional positions the women of a country hold, as well as the percentage of income they earn. Then with data for 40 countries from the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, he finds that the higher a country’s gem score, the greater its percentage of working-age full-time employees in the nonprofit… Human Rights, Nonprofit Management 2009-11-19T06:00:06+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/microfinance_for_the_most_marginalized/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/microfinance_for_the_most_marginalized/ “Roma people just don’t want to work,” a Bulgarian man recently told a Catholic Relief Services assessment team worker. “Look at the scoundrels! They don’t want to work like us—get up early in the morning, go to bed late at night.” All over the world, marginalized groups such as the Roma (also known by the derogatory term Gypsies) face barriers not only to education and social standing, but also to making a living. In Bulgaria, for example, many people refrain from residing near or purchasing goods from Roma people. Because Roma people are rumored to be untrustworthy, Bulgarians will not do business with them. This centuries-old pattern of discrimination has resulted in ghettos, extreme poverty, and poor health for the Roma in Bulgaria, as well as throughout Europe. Exclusion, poverty, and illness in turn keep Roma people from sharing in Bulgaria’s economic growth. As a result, the Roma are trapped in a vicious cycle that reinforces the impression that they are incapable of being successful members of society. Meanwhile, mainstream media do not cover the plight of Roma people. And in the rare instances when they do cast a light on these communities, it tends to be a negative one… Economic Development, Human Rights 2009-08-18T23:00:40+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/why_they_stayed/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/why_they_stayed/ When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in late August 2005, Nicole M. Stephens didn’t think the media, government officials, or even relief workers understood the plight of the people left behind. “The question everyone asked was, ‘Why did those crazy people choose to stay?’” says Stephens. She also noticed that no one actually bothered to ask this question of the so-called stayers. As a graduate student in psychology at Stanford University, though, Stephens decided to ask the stayers herself. In her new study of the stayers, the leavers who evacuated, the aid workers who helped both groups, and the lay observers who watched from a distance, she and her coauthors reveal that the stayers did not think they had a choice, because they did not have the resources to get away. Yet the stayers did not see themselves as passive victims, either. Instead, “they viewed themselves as being strong, actively helping each other, being connected to others, and showing their faith in God,” finds Stephens. Meanwhile, however, “many observers and relief workers thought that the stayers were just being foolish and lazy, and so tended to blame them for their suffering,” she says. Stephens and her coauthors tie the… Arts, Culture, and Religion, Human Rights 2009-08-18T23:00:07+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/research_color_blindness_is_shortsighted/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/research_color_blindness_is_shortsighted/ Now that the American workforce is more diverse than ever before, what do we do with the differences? The old-school approach is to pretend that racial and ethnic distinctions either do not exist or do not matter—a worldview called color blindness. As a new psychology study shows, however, “just sweeping race under the rug can be bad for everybody in an organization,” says Victoria C. Plaut, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia and the study’s lead author. Color blindness cloaks difference like the emperor’s new clothes: Everyone can see that race and ethnicity influence people, but no one can talk about it. Rather than making minorities feel comfortable, though, this implicit gag order actually leads them to feel less loyal to their employers and less engaged with their work, find Plaut and her colleagues. In contrast, acknowledging and even celebrating diversity—a worldview called multiculturalism—inspires greater commitment, pride, and conscientiousness among minority employees. Organizations with these “psychologically engaged” workers, in turn, are more productive and profitable and have less turnover than do organizations with a more alienated workforce, previous research shows. To examine how colorblind versus multicultural worldviews affect minority workers, Plaut and her colleagues surveyed 4,915 employees across… Human Rights 2009-05-21T06:01:00+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/not_racing_to_help/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/not_racing_to_help/ From every angle, the photographs of New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina captured black people waiting for help—on overpasses and rooftops, in the Superdome and convention center, at bus terminals and airports, everywhere. One year later, evaluations of governments’ responses to Katrina confirmed that help indeed dragged its feet. Although incompetence and lack of preparation certainly stalled relief, racism was also a likely culprit, suggest the findings of three recent psychology experiments. Across these studies, “white participants were less likely and slower to help black people than white people—particularly in a severe emergency,” says E. Ashby Plant, a professor of psychology at Florida State University and one of the study’s authors. “Black participants didn’t do this,” she adds, noting that black participants responded to both black and white victims with equal frequency and speed. The studies further showed why white participants tarried in their cross-racial rescues: “White students lack experience with black people and know the negative cultural stereotypes about them,” and so they are apprehensive about interacting, says Plant. To justify their failure to act, white participants then underplayed the severity of the emergency—just as the Bush administration initially underreported the damage in post-Katrina New Orleans. For… Human Rights 2009-03-05T06:01:00+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/an_unconscionable_business/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/an_unconscionable_business/ Sex Trafficking, Siddharth Kara’s meticulously documented account of the economics of the modern trade in women’s and children’s bodies, is a huge contribution to the human rights movement. Although Kara names economic globalization and the ensuing mass impoverishment and migration as the chief contributors to the past two decades’ marked increase in sex trafficking, he also rightly places blame squarely on individual actors responsible for modern-day slavery: the slave traders themselves and complicit law enforcement. Kara builds on a solid foundation of documentation and analysis by human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch’s 1998 report on trafficking of Burmese women and girls in Thailand, “A Modern Form of Slavery,” which for 10 years has remained the industry gold standard in the thoroughness of its analysis and recommendations. Kara includes five case studies—India and Nepal, Italy and Western Europe, Moldova and the Former Soviet Union, Albania and the Balkans, and Thailand and the Mekong Subregion—and in each one he tells a story of government complicity in trafficking and the ubiquitous police violence against women and children in the commercial sex industry. He also comprehensively analyzes the economic factors that draw desperate women, minorities, and children to migrate to richer countries. Kara… Human Rights, Book Reviews 2008-12-01T14:00:00+00:00 http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/dropping_the_ball/ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/dropping_the_ball/ Sialkot, Pakistan, is the soccer ball capital of the world. Nestled in the northeast corner of Punjab province, this district of 3.5 million people has produced some 75 percent of the world’s hand-stitched soccer balls over the past decade. Each year, Sialkot manufacturers supply millions of soccer balls to multinational companies like Nike and Adidas. But in the mid-1990s, media accounts revealed that children were stitching soccer balls in Sialkot. This news tarnished the reputations and threatened the profits of the global brands sourcing Sialkot balls. In 1997, Nike and other leading sporting goods companies partnered with international organizations to launch the Project to Eliminate Child Labour in the Soccer Ball Industry in Pakistan (the Soccer Ball Project)—one of the world’s first multistakeholder efforts to stop abuses of labor rights. To participate in the Soccer Ball Project, local Pakistani manufacturers agreed to enforce a minimum working age of 14 and to eliminate home stitching (a major source of child labor). In exchange, the multinational brands agreed to source only balls made by Soccer Ball Project manufacturers. Participants invited the International Labour Organization’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILOIPEC) to monitor… Human Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility 2008-11-04T06:00:00+00:00