Not-for-profit sector, for-purpose sector, impact economy, social enterprise sector, social businesses, ethical enterprises, conscious capitalism, social progress sector, difference-makers, changemakers, the social economy – these are all terms used to deliberately position a particular type of organisational, economic and social activity and differentiate it from the broader political-economic context of “market-driven for-profit capitalism”.

But does this proliferation of terms, words and language for the sector, in order to define itself as not “market-driven for-profit capitalism”, matter? Does it strengthen the sector(s) and provide a clear identity, or does it confuse and disintegrate?

One clear fact is that when it comes to “market-driven for-profit capitalism” there is no confusion about what it is or isn’t.

Whether it is Friedrich August von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Abbott or any of the captains of capitalism, the language is clear. Free markets, small government, deregulation, privatisation and individual responsibility sum up the neoliberal ideology – the only responsibility of business is to increase its profits. As Milton Friedmanproclaims: “the only responsibility business has is to its shareholders… businessmen that take seriously their responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution… are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism”.

There is no confusion in the language describing the for-profit sector. Therefore it has no difficulty identifying its purpose or intended impact. It has a clear identity.

Identity in its simplest form is widely framed by the two common questions used when we’re asked to describe ourselves – what is your name and what do you do? The reply creates an instant “identity”. Language not only expresses identities but also constructs them, argues David Evans in his work Language and Identity.

“My name is David” and “I am a bus-driver” generates an almost immediate identity for David the bus-driver.

Imagine if in response to these two most commonly used questions to frame a person’s identity the answer given was: “My name is Mary, and Francis, and Mia and Zara, and I am a tractor-driver, nurse, sailor, window-cleaner and dentist”. Politeness would usually inhibit the observation that there may be a confusion of identity here.

It is hard to argue against the premise that a broad connection exists between language and identification. Language defines the group that we belong to, our status in the social stratification, and also determines the power we hold in our society. Our social identity is created by our language and also our future possibilities are framed by language. Language plays a major role in determining who we are and what we do.

Recently I was contacted by a person who wanted advice about how to set up a social enterprise as a “for-purpose, for-profit charity”. When I explained that perhaps the ACNC might have some issues with this description, the response was, “Well I’m new to this and I am very confused by the language used to describe what it is I think I want to do”.

This prompts the question: do the multitude of terms used to differentiate the not “market driven for-profit capitalism” sector strengthen the identification of that activity, or do they confuse, disintegrate and weaken its impact?

One could argue that the proliferation of terms to describe the sector allows for diversity, and each of these descriptions are pieces of a bigger picture.

One might also argue that there is no problem with the terms currently in use.

While we don’t want to argue over semantics (let’s just get on with it and do the job), language and its power of identification shouldn’t be ignored. When language divides and disintegrates, when it creates confusion of identity and purpose it is worth asking the question: what language might identify the not “market driven for-profit capitalism” sector in order to consolidate its identity, both for those embedded within it, and for those who look at it with scepticism?

Let’s consider some of the terms in use.

Take not for profit. No matter what anyone does under this identity, if they never make a profit (or more politely, a “surplus”) they don’t exist anymore. Perhaps “not-for-shareholders” might be a better but more clumsy identification?

Take for-purpose organisations. Name any for-profit company, charity, social club, farmers’ market or week-end lemonade stand that doesn’t have a purpose?

Take the impact economy. Even McDonalds has an impact – indeed a global impact.

Take conscious capitalism, championed by John Mackey, the co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, in a book published in 2014 with the sub-title Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Conscious capitalism acknowledges that while free-market capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress, people can aspire to achieve more – like community social responsibility and adding stakeholders to shareholders. The problem is that Pepsi & Co is identified as a company combining “performance with purpose” and an example of conscious capitalism because they are investing in drinks that are healthier for customers. Is that conscious capitalism, or a pivot to meet changing consumer demands in order to continue to maximise profits and shareholder value?

Take social enterprise/business. Now here is arguably a point of difference that clarifies identity. A social enterprise (or social business) in simple terms is a business that trades for a social purpose. Social enterprises are businesses that trade to intentionally tackle social problems, improve communities, provide people access to employment and training, or help the environment. Yet even within this bubble of clarity there are repetitive and ongoing attempts – led mostly by the peak social enterprise body in England – to water down the definition, generating further confusion of identity. The move by Social Traders in Australia to certify social enterprises and Social Enterprise Scotland to be clear on what a social enterprise is not, is to be welcomed both by those in the sector and those outside it.

Given all this individual language to identify the sector as “not market-driven for-profit capitalism”, is there a collective integrated option that can be applied at the macro level and include all the various descriptions at the micro level? Is there a term that reduces confusion and provides a clear frame for articulating an alternative social-political-economy?

A collective term used widely in Europe, but that appears to be used in a limited way in Australia is the social economy.

The social economy is used by practitioners (and academics) to describe all the activities that collectively put people before profits. It collectively identifies those activities that invest in people, in their capacities and creativity, and empowers them, creating quality jobs and providing training as well as prioritising social objectives.

As in the free market economy where enterprises are meant to generate a profit, this is also true for the social economy. But the point of differentiation in a social economy is that profit gained goes toward meeting social objectives, not primarily toward generating individual wealth. Wealth is more evenly distributed with direct benefit for the many, not just the few. By prioritising social objectives, the social economy contributes in an innovative way to tackling social, economic and environmental needs in society that have been overlooked or inadequately addressed by the private or public sectors.

Most importantly the social economy includes all those actors and activities that work for an alternative economic reality to that of free market neoliberal capitalism, including all those activities that could be called “for purpose”, “impact sector” and “ethical enterprises”, along with social enterprises, cooperatives, owner-employed businesses with a social purpose, as well as self-employed women and men who use their entrepreneurial skills to lift themselves and others out of poverty.

Importantly it is more than a description of a single activity within an economy. It seeks to collectively combine all elements of a social economy from the supply chain through to the end customer into one complete mosaic – a social economy. This is a consumer-led movement where people intentionally embrace across their business models a joined up “movement” from supply to end product.

Engaging and participating within the social economy means purchasing with a purpose as well as selling for a purpose. A simple example is choosing to purchase from a social enterprise even though that cost might be greater than in the general market. The purchasing provides the economic stimulus to drive the social economy with its social objectives generating greater benefit for more and more people, not just the few.

More importantly the social economy provides an integrated marketplace that combines an alternative socio-economic reality with a joined up social movement and a shared language as well as rich content for all its stakeholders – creating new opportunities for dialogue, negotiation, and ideas that can improve outcomes for the social economy itself.

An integrated use of language with a single collective identity allows a range of actors across the sector to identify as one, in order to maximise the potential of their activities generating a significant impact with a purpose – a viable, collective, alternative marketplace to neoliberal capitalism and one that achieves mission and redistributes profits that benefit people and planet.

Identity is realising who we are at a personal level and also at a community level. To make such identification, language has been a salient feature of group membership and social identity.

Rather than confusing those of us embedded within the “social economy”, and even as a mechanism to generate collaboration rather than silos that compete, integrating identity will make the sector stronger. It will reduce confusion for those whose scepticism is facilitated by a disintegrated use of language. Clarity will also provide a powerful identity to describe a viable alternative to market-driven capitalism.

First featured in Pro Bono Australia

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Some food for thought to get the year started – here’s an interview with Collaborate where we talk about the messy process of collaborating for change. It’s only by aligning our passions, ideas and resources that we’ll ever achieve the scale of change needed to really tackle inequality in all its forms.

We’d love to hear about your experiences with collaboration.

Interview with Collaborate.

The post An interview with Collaborate sharing our experience with collaboration appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

I recently read a short article on why kids should learn philosophy and immediately thought the same about economics – but not for kids – but for all the grown ups currently working feverishly to do good and change the world through socially innovative entrepreneurial enterprises.

In fact it occurred to me that there was a business opportunity or gap in the market as they say, to have a whole semester or two added on economics to all MBA and equivalent courses that now exist for social entrepreneurs.

By now you’re yawning because as Richard Denis recalls in his article in The Monthly “I remember my first lesson in economics like it was yesterday. I’d never heard a bigger bunch of crap in my life. It made no sense. The assumptions were flawed. The examples were ridiculous and the conclusions worse.”

And that’s about where we leave economics – back in high school.

Not that we don’t hear a lot about ‘the economy’. But economics – no thanks!

Let’s just get on and do it! Economics has nothing to do with changing the world. The solution lies with new business models to challenge and solve social problems. Poverty and inequality – all solved with scaling up, volumes, price point, marketing, distribution points, strategic planning, supply chains, market segmentation and financial modeling, and more financial modeling.

In the meantime while we all learn about ‘good’ business (or is it ‘business for good’?) the economy runs on, adjusted from time to time by the invisible hand of the ‘market’.

And we know as much as we need to know about ‘the economy’ because everyday we are educated about ‘the economy’ by politicians and media to such an extent that we know all we need to about economics. Right?

Richard Denis calls this constant everyday education “econospeak” noting that “the primary purpose of the econospeak that fills our airwaves, most of which is complete nonsense, is to keep ordinary people out of the big debates about tax, fairness, climate change and the provision of essential services. Econospeak is a great way to limit the options on our democratic menu. Would you like a small tax cut and a small cut in services or a big tax cut and a big cut in services? What? You want to spend more money in health and education? You must be mad. Just imagine how “the markets” would react to such a suggestion.”

What’s really startling is that while we have all been learning about ‘good’ business to solve social challenges, we’ve taken our daily dose of econospeak and swallowed it hook, line and balanced budget. As Denis notes “the whole strategy has worked a treat for the past few decades”.

Swallowing econospeak allows us to live with myths like, it is the lifestyle of the poor that threaten the economy, or, that tax concessions to the super rich will create more jobs, or, that the great financial crisis was caused by governments spending recklessly on public services, and that business above all else is how all our problems will be solved. Ignorance produced by econospeak is a powerful tool – after all, how can you criticize economic policy when you don’t understand economics?

Perhaps that’s where education is needed.

What if all of us who want to change the world for the better took some time to educate ourselves beyond econospeak so we had some tools to use when we critically consider the economy we are part of? What if every aspiring social entrepreneur had to complete a year of study in economics before studying business tools? What if this education allowed us all to understand why even the best intentions to change the world informed by econospeak, actually just perpetuate the very challenges we want to solve?

So where to begin? Here’s a sample of some really good economic thinking – and if you don’t want to read the whole book, look for articles that discuss the thoughts of the authors – even Wikipedia is better than gulping down headfuls of econospeak. So have a look at:

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money

Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User’s Guide

Joseph Stiglitz, The Great Divide

Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Anthony Atkinson, Inequality: What can be done?

And after some reading, consider afresh Richard Denis’ final words: “you don’t need to be an economist to call out crap when you hear it. But unless people start calling it out and stop worrying about “what the markets think”, then one of the richest countries in the world, living at the richest point in world history, might continue to believe that we “can’t afford” to invest in a better health or education system . . . Economics doesn’t tell us that we need to cut taxes for the rich or cause climate change if we really want to help the poor. And “the markets” don’t tell us that either. Those are the sentiments of some wealthy people, and some politicians who represent them. But they say it in econospeak because it sounds so ridiculous in plain English.”

The post ‘Just do it’ and forget economics! appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

An unlikely mix that has combined to collaborate on a mosaic peace tree to be installed in a public location in Edgware as a symbol promoting peace and acceptance across a diversity of faiths, worldviews and abilities. We’re sharing it as an example of what can be done on a small scale in a local community to create cohesion.

Like in so many places across the world so to locally in Edgware pockets of social isolation, disengagement and fracturing along religious and ethnic boundaries are evident. We are also aware how this fracturing occurs between people of different abilities.

Suspicion of what is ‘different’ or ‘other’ is hard-wired in some people. Whether it is different abilities, different faiths, different clothes, different languages, different food, different traditions, or something that does not fit with our own ‘tribe’, globally or locally too many fractures between people fester and turn toxic.

While we can’t take on the whole world we can do something locally.

With a grant from the Near Neighbours Fund (http://tinyurl.com/n7ed6k3) we plan to combine people of all ages and abilities from local ethnic, cultural and religious groups in a series of cooperative three hour workshops led by Mosaic artist/psychologist Naomi Selig (http://tinyurl.com/puysx7r).

The real work will be to ensure that we generate a ‘safe space’ to explore difference and otherness, with a mix of people that more often than not are to be found apart rather than together.

Working together participants will cut glass and construct a mosaic peace tree. The design of the mosaic will specifically mix colour and shape together, to identify how diversity can be combined into a cohesive whole.

Each individual leaf will be designed by individuals or groups to identify their ‘uniqueness’ – whether that be ethnic, faith based, abilities based, age, gender or a mix of several of these distinctions. The first set of workshops will both design the individual leaves and the final form of the mosaic under the guidance of the mosaic artist. This will ensure that the final mosaic is a collaborative community design. In the second set of workshops all these individual leaves will combine into the one final mosaic – a strong symbol of peace and cohesion.

The plan is then to install the mosaic in a prominent public space in Edgware. Both the launch of the project and the installation of the final mosaic will bring together members of all the major different people groups in Edgware with a street party and food and a celebration of each others uniqueness and sameness. It will be a collective accomplishment and we anticipate it will in its own unique way generate new understanding between people and heal fractures that exist simply because people don’t know or understand each other’s way of living.

It’s a local example of the power collaboration can have in face of a global challenge. Maybe you could replicate the idea in your context. Please do!

The post Fractured bits of glass = cohesion appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Measurement is certainly a big issue, and no more so than in the social economy or the social sector. The proliferation of tools, agencies and consultants affirms that data and more data demonstrating how ‘effective’ you are as a social enterprise, charity, social firm, provider of human services, or green company is now crucial for providing evidence that your activities are having some kind of impact.

Enter big data. We have the technology to create, connect, correlate, aggregate, store, process and report on sophisticated sets of analytics, logarithms, equations, indicators and data.

So is all that information useful? Well, it depends on why you’re measuring your impact, and for whose interest.

Many measurement agencies have developed intricate formulas, assessment criteria and indicators, and charge a significant amount for access to their particular measurement tool kit. These metrics are worth buying because they will prove the success of your project to funding bodies and government.

But are these metrics actually relevant to delivering value for our customers and achieving our mission, as well as satisfying our funding bodies?

For example, let’s take all this measurement to the small impoverished Meru View School outside Arusha in Tanzania. It’s the school we support at The Dragonfly Collective. Let’s apply some of the metrics one can buy from those in the measurement industry.

The facts: $26 AUD provides two meals a day, health care and vitamins, pre-school education and introduction to English (essential for future prospects in Tanzania) for one child for one month.

The metrics (for customers):

• Did you get two meals today?
• Did you have a health check at school today?
• Did you have soap and running water to wash your hands before each meal and after you went to the toilet?
• Do you have enough clothes to wear?
• Did you count numbers today?
• Did you practice English today?
• Are you still hungry?

The metrics (for donors):

• Did you get the intended return on your investment when you contributed to this project?
• Are you happy with the outcomes for the children on the basis of your donation?
• What do you aspire for the children and have you achieved this with your donation?

The perspective you take when measuring can lead you down very different paths. Just because you’re ticking a measurement box, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one to tick. What matter to customers in the immediate future might not actually be that complicated.

So in the spirit of developing complex metrics systems, as a Christmas gift to you all we have designed a sophisticated set of tools for you to measure your achievements over 2013 available at the Christmas give away price of £1000 or $1804.13 if purchased before midnight 24 December! Orders received before midnight will receive a free sample of turkey, ham, chicken, lobster, duck with all the trimmings and a free bottle of fizzy.

So happy Christmas from the team at The Dragonfly Collective. And as you reflect on all your achievements over the past twelve months, remember that not everything that matters can be measured, not every thing that can be measured matters. Sometimes it’s actually the little things that have the most impact.

Cheers to celebrating the little things that make a difference for others.

Talk more in 2014.

The post Measuring what matters appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Havel does not suggest that living on the margins in a physical sense is a great place to be. What Havel argues out of his lived experience in a communist dictatorship, is that many people can turn adversity into creativity and ideas that generate freedom and democracy, especially when they collaborate and act in community.

His words written some decades ago are validated today when people pushed to the margins take action together and creatively overcome adversity. For example, as Spain continues to cope with its economic crisis and attempts to address their recession with punitive austerity measures that by and large hurt the poor, in Andalusia where unemployment remains at 36% (for those aged 16 to 24 the figure is above 55%) one potentially very poor village called Marinaleda has defied poverty through creatively and ‘social’ innovation (see The Observer 20/10/13 The New Review p.16). In abject poverty in the 1070s, today while the rest of Spain suffers, Marinaleda enjoys a quality and standard of life because of a collaborative commitment to the communal use of land and village resources to ensure there is both food and jobs available for all its inhabitants. The Marinaleda cooperative works the 1,200 hectare El Humoso farm providing local jobs and sharing both the produce and the benefit across the village. Pushed to the margins, this village, led by a charismatic mayor, opted for a model that is the polar opposite of current neoliberal efficient individualistic capitalism. Against this ‘empire’ that produced the financial crisis that afflicts us still, the village has won, while the rest of Spain struggles.

The ‘margins’ of society can however refer to a philosophical (thinking) location rather than physical location. From around 1965 until mid-1980s this space was called the ‘counter-culture’. It was a space for questioning the status quo, for challenging authority, for ‘free’ thinking, for creativity and new ideas as well as a little drugs, sex and rock and roll. It was a time when people decided for a variety of reasons to live outside socially accepted norms. It is hard to contest that these two decades were amongst the most creative and innovative across all sectors of life in recent history.

Reaction to this creativity and freedom however has been very efficient. Led by the restructuring crusader Margaret Thatcher and supported by a third-rate ex-actor with primitive right-wing leanings in the USA called Ronald, three decades on, globalized market forces reign supreme, generally indifferent to the human and environmental damage they cause, and in which the gap between rich and poor has widened in real terms, no matter how the trickle-down theorists attempt to portray reality.

Now in the western democracies the majority of people assume they have power and with it contentment – so long as that power is consumer power and their contentment is rooted in material accumulation. It’s a deadening space where creativity and ideas are only acceptable if they support the status quo, and it is only questioned when it does not give more materially to its adherents. As Richard Flannery in his essay ‘The Australian Disease: on the decline of love and the rise of non-freedom’ observes: “in present day Australia, it doesn’t matter what you do or what you have done, so long as you conform to power. The only true crime in an ever-more bland Australia is to not conform . . . to speak out is to be declared a rat, . . . to not speak out is to be rewarded with endorsement and promotion . . . it is the Australian disease” (Quarterly Essay Issue 44 2011).

So where are the people living on the margins in a philosophical sense? Where can we find them? Where are the people living in a marginal thinking location that questions the status quo, searches for creativity, looks for new alternatives to the dominant discourse and does not forget about justice and equity?

One could assume they are to be found in the not-for-profit/NGO sector – organisations originally charged with providing services to those in society living physically on the margins. If markets depend on material self-interests, governments on coercion and power, the alternative base of the not-for-profit sector originally was one of moral commitment to ensure quality of life for those physically at the margins. One could assume this alternative space to that of markets and government would be the location of thinking philosophically from the margins. But this appears more and more improbable as many in leadership and executive roles in the not-for-profit sector primarily inhabit the physical space of the centralised (not the marginalised) and their acquiescence to the status quo is a key performance indicator in order for them to retain their position, and usually the revenue from government contracts (note: as with all broad brush stroke statements there are always outstanding exceptions, John Falzon of St Vincent de Paul being one of them).

So where are the spaces and places for creative radical thinking in Australia? Where are the people who are the cure to the Australian disease of conformism within a political-economic system that increasingly promotes hardship for those already physically on the margins? Where are those who can co-create alternative solutions like the village of Marinaleda in Andelusia, that combine thinking from the margins with practice to ensure those living physically on the margins don’t remain there? How do we solve this ‘disease’?

Here is a proposed solution: co-creation and collaboration. Invite people who are on the physical, as well as the philosophic margins, to work with you to find solutions to ongoing challenges and ‘wicked’ problems. Invite front-line staff to inform central office staff about the reality of working at the ‘front-line’ and set up ‘ideas incubators’ where the least powerful can be given the opportunity to have their ideas really considered. Bring the board-rooms and the street together so that the mayor of a town can sit down with the farm workers and co-create a solution. Let those on the margins both physically and philosophically hold a mirror up to those who stifle creativity and ideas and shake them awake to new possibilities.

We know it’s possible. We’ve seen it in action, and we’ve seen the results it can generate. It’s time to re-embrace the margins, the marginal and the marginalised.

The post Embracing the margins and the marginalised appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Like Australia, Europe faces the continual challenge as boats arrive in waves, reflecting the fever pitch that is reached when people who are faced with desperate circumstances take desperate measure to try to make a better life for themselves.

And like Europe, Australia must grieve the 1,484 human lives that have been lost on their way to a better life in Australia. Whether they were labeled asylum seekers, migrants, refugees or queue jumpers – these were people – human lives lost in a way that could be avoided with moral courage and will. But as the article in the Guardian laments “there will be more days like this, more tragedies in places such as Lampedusa”.

Why?

It appears that in the western world we have a disingenuous approach to the massive challenge across the world of people seeking refuge from poverty, religious or political oppression, or simply fleeing for their lives from wars and ethnic genocide.

To quote the Guardian once more, “we confront the problem with an unedifying hotchpotch of neuroses and political spasms that ensure we never truly see it in the round, never discuss it rationally and never get to grips with it”.

This is no more so than with the current Australian government’s response to the needs of those outside Australia who live in the midst of poverty and despair.

As the rhetoric goes, we need to protect the borders from these people who want to invade our country. These people want to come and enjoy the prosperity we have. They want access to good food and medical care and education and political and religious freedom. Apparently that means we need to protect ourselves from them.

But the irony is that if situations in the countries these people fled from came anywhere close to the lifestyle that Australians enjoy, there would be no need for them to leave. And yet the Australian government, in all its wisdom, has cut the overseas aid budget – directly contributing to increased poverty and oppression overseas.

The result is that Australia has a ‘balanced’ budget, while others are denied basic needs – a denial that makes them desperate to get to Australia through desperate means. So through right wing shortsightedness, people are denied the means to create better circumstances in their home countries, the primary reason that people seek refuge in Australia.

The last decade has seen welcome growth in the developing world as poor countries, principally India and China surged, taking 620 million out of poverty compared with 1990. But the improvement has been patchy. Even in those countries where poverty has been reduced, many who have been pulled out of officially classified poverty remain vulnerable in terms of living and social conditions. They may not die of poverty, but it’s no way to live.

So that’s the quandary – we are damned by the right Conservative folks for sending aid to countries living with poverty. Damned if human beings from those poverty stricken countries come to our rich land and attack our borders, and so we must reduce our aid to them. And then we damn them – for purely self-centered reasons – and limit the extent to which they can help themselves.

So let us grieve for unnecessary loss of human life, but let us not puzzle as to why they take to the boats. And let us also speak out to the politicians that cannot summon the courage or the vision to do anything about it.

As noted in The Conversation on October 8, if the wave of sympathy over the terrible loss of lives at sea is not translated into action, it simply results in empty words and pointless effort.

The Conversation also notes that right now, with many in Europe struggling to come to terms with a terrible tragedy on their shores, Australia faces a unique opportunity to show leadership in this domain. To do this, Abbott and Scott Morrison must reconsider their preference for rhetoric, hyperbole and silencing of debate. Instead, they can offer positive solutions to help address the global phenomena of people smuggling and illegal migration, such as humanitarian intakes and legal migration channels.

Change for asylum seekers is long overdue. It’s time to work towards a new solution.

The post Let us grieve, but not question why they take to the boats appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Let me take you to a little village called Tengeru just outside Arusha in Tanzania, where there is a pre-primary school called Meru View.

Meru View caters for 63 of the poorest children in the Tengeru village. Most of the children have lost either a mother or a father, and in some cases both parents, to HIV. Their families live in one or two room houses with dirt floors and no running water or electricity. Unemployment is high – most parents don’t work. For many of the children their school uniform is their only set of clothes. Often there is no food available at home, so they live on nothing more than sweet tea.

Access to the school is via a dirt road lined with banana trees and rubbish that’s barely passable by car. The school consists of a rectangular patch of dirt (the playground) and one set of buildings including four classrooms, an office and a storage room. There is no electricity, no play equipment, no text books for the children, only three teachers between four classes, and on some days (depending on funding) there aren’t enough pencils to go around.

Meru View is the only pre-primary school in the area. It provides the children with two meals a day, health care and pre-primary education in English. Its vision is to break the cycle of poverty by giving the poorest children in the village the best start in life through good health and education. Without Meru View, most of the kids that attend would not eat, would receive no health care and would have limited chance of moving into Primary School.

The children that attend Meru View are people like Paulina.

Paulina (pictured left) is four years old, and has been at Meru View since she was three. When she first arrived at Meru View she was significantly undernourished, lacked energy and was often unwell. After the Head Teacher arranged tests, it was confirmed that she was HIV positive. Her father passed away from disease, she has no grandparents and her mother is unemployed. Without an income, Paulina and her mother have nothing to eat. Paulina has only two sets of clothes, and only one pair of shoes.

Since attending Meru View, life has changed dramatically for Paulina and her mother. Paulina is now on the Government antiviral program for people who are HIV positive. Meru View takes care of all her other health needs, for example providing antibiotics and extra nutritional support when she recently caught a chest infection. Her mother works at Meru View sweeping the grounds, maintaining the fire pit and watering the vegetable garden. The school provides two meals a day for both Paulina and her mother – the only food that either of them will eat all day.

Paulina’s health has improved dramatically – she is now full of energy, and has a smile that would light up the whole world. She can count to 10, name colours, speak some words in English and is learning to read. When Paulina grows up she wants to be a fairy, or a teacher.

Paulina was one of the children that we had the privilege of meeting while we were in Tanzania. What really touched us and inspired us to support Meru View is that despite how little the children like Paulina have, or perhaps because of it, their graciousness and gratitude is astounding.

We were at the school one Saturday to help distribute a set of clothes to each child. The clothes were a hotch potch of second hand items, often a little bit worn or wrinkled. Every single child accepted what they were offered with absolute joy, and would look up at us with a shy smile and in a small voice would say “thank you teacher”. Compare that to the Western world where a child can throw a tantrum because they want to wear the yellow dress instead of the pink one, or because they like their sister’s shoes better than their own.

There is no spitting out your vegetables at Meru View. Every meal time, plates are licked clean, despite the fact that the two meals they receive at school are the same every day. On the Saturday we were out at the school, one of the girls said she was feeling sad that day. When we asked why, she said it was because she hadn’t had her porridge at Meru View. That’s when it dawned on us that if the school provides their only meals, on weekends the kids don’t eat at all.

All the children know that it’s an absolute privilege to receive an education. Here the kids cry when they can’t go to school, not the other way around. So many of the things we take for granted are new for them. We ran an art class with the three year olds (what they call ‘baby class’) and set out paints, textas, coloured pencils and butchers paper. When the kids just looked at us blankly, we realised that they had never seen paint before, and had never even used a coloured texta.

These are children that have barely enough to survive, let alone access to luxury items like paint, and yet they are happy, gracious and grateful.

The school runs entirely on donations and is managed by Vikki Thomas (pictured above with Paulina), a Nurse from the UK. Vikki is an inspiration herself. Following a gas bottle explosion where she suffered 67% burns to her face and body and lost a leg, she came to Africa to use her nursing skills to help others. She volunteers her time to manage the school and look after the children’s health. Vikki is The Dragonfly Collective’s latest Project Champion.

In the past few months, Meru View has lost a major donor. As a result, the school can no longer afford to provide vitamins to the children with their meals, and the budget for the meals program has been halved, meaning there is less food available for the kids. The school has also been forced to review the numbers of students they can support.

And so on behalf of the kids at Meru View we have two requests of you:

1. That you consider donating just $26, which will provide one month of food, medical care and education for a child at Meru View.
2. That you forward this request to your friends, family and colleagues.

We can guarantee that 100% of your donation will go directly towards feeding, educating and providing medical care to the children at Meru View. There are no administration fees to cover – Vikki, who manages the project, volunteers all her time, and any fees associated with international transfer of donations will be covered by The Dragonfly Collective.

If 63 people donate just $26, we will have funded the school for one full month, ensuring the kids receive vitamins and a full serve of food at meal times.

This is an incredibly worthy cause – we wouldn’t be asking for your support otherwise.

How to donate

The Dragonfly Collective will collect donations on behalf of Meru View. You can make a direct deposit into the below account. Please include your name in the payment details.

The Dragonfly Collective
Westpac Banking Corporation
BSB: 033039
Account number: 654029

The post Would you consider a $26 donation? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

If it wasn’t for the old stone ruins sitting on the hillsides, and the ever present images of Machu Picchu in the shop fronts of bookstores and tour companies, it would be hard to imagine that this world was previously governed by the once proud and powerful Inca nation.

Like so many countries around the world, hundreds of years ago Peru was ‘conquered’ by people from another land. In the case of Peru, it was the Spanish that marched into the high peaks of the Andes in the 1530s and spent the next 30 years wiping out the native Inca empire that stretched almost the entire Western coast of South America and numbered 10 million people at the time.

The Spanish considered the Incas barbarians, despite the observations of the Spanish Conqusitors that the buildings in the Inca empire were as grand and well constructed as those in Spain at the time, with massive stones locked together with such precision that a knife couldn’t fit between them. They observed that the Inca cities were well ordered, and the Inca leaders intelligent, fiercely brave and quick to learn.

These Inca ‘barbarians’ had developed a kingdom of stunning cities, including irrigation systems, agriculture, taxation systems and paved roads through the previously impassable Andes. Their society was flourishing and growing. In fact the Spanish discovered that there was an oversupply of production, where items from crockery to fabric to food were stored in large warehouses, and when the warehouses overflowed, the items were given away by the Inca leaders as gifts to the peasants.

As Kim Macquarrie notes in the book The Last Days of the Incas, the Incas succeeded in not only creating a massive empire, but more importantly guaranteeing all the empire’s millions of inhabitants the basic necessities of life – adequate food, water and shelter. This is an achievement that no subsequent Government – Spanish or Peruvian – has achieved since.

The Incas by no means had all the answers to developing a productive society (and displayed some cut-throat behaviour of their own in establishing their empire), but they weren’t doing too badly, even by European standards at the time.

As we walked through the peaks and valleys of the Andes, on the same roads the Incas had built hundreds of years earlier, the question running through our minds was – what is it about human nature that leads humans to the kind of destructive behaviour displayed by the Spanish? What is it that leads us to make the determination that our ideas, abilities, ways of life, are somehow ‘better’ than others?

It is clear that the Spanish sought to conquer the Incas primarily out of greed – for more wealth, more land, more prestige. The Inca empire was fabulously wealthy – rich in gold and silver. Each of the initial 180 Spanish Conquisitors walked away from their first plunder of the capital city of the Inca Empire (Cuzco) with 80 years worth of their salaries in gold and silver (literally ripped from the walls of the Palace of the Sun God – the European equivalent of the Vatican – to the horror of Cuzco’s inhabitants).

But embedded within the act of genocide and plunder must have been the assumption that there was nothing of value to retain in the Inca culture, and nothing the Spanish could learn.

This assumption is not unique to the Spaniards of the 1500s.

In a modern day setting, this type of arrogance occurs in not-for-profit organisational settings often – to the detriment of the local communities that these organisations seek to assist.

We met with a women in Washington DC who has spent years working with the justice system in America. She relayed the story of a meeting she attended, where four large not-for-profit groups were offered a multi-million dollar grant from the Government to develop a project to support people exiting prison. Everyone around the table felt it was a great opportunity and agreed they would be part of it. But within one hour of the meeting, every single group had called to say that they would only participate in the project if they were leading it. The end result? No deal.

Similarly, a panel at a conference for Baptist not-for-profit leaders we attended a few years back (that had just announced that they had decided to investigate opportunities for partnerships with other Christian denominations) was asked whether they had considered working with groups of others faiths, for example Jewish or Buddhist not-for-profit agencies. The response? Silence. Blank looks. Some looks of incredulity (who would even think of such a thing?). The answer was a resounding ‘no’.

What wasted opportunities. And for whose benefit?

So what is it about human nature that leads us to assume that we know best, are they only ones that can do best, and that we should have exclusive rights to whatever it is we think we’re best at?

What if, instead of being threatened by the knowledge or power of others, we sought to learn from it, in the process strengthening both our own ability to deliver positive community impact, as well as that of our partners?

What if the Spanish had sought to learn from the Incas, to replicate the best parts of the Inca culture back in Spain, and to share their knowledge with the Inca people? The native Peruvians actually greeted the first Spanish ship with gifts, and questions. Perhaps that’s the first lesson the Spanish could have learnt from the local people.

What would the Inca empire look like today, if it had been left in peace to flourish and develop alongside the rest of Europe? What might we be able to learn from the Incas, if their empire still existed?

Kim Macquarie ponders this question in his book, suggesting that had the Spanish allowed an Inca Emperor to govern the last remaining Inca province in Peru (Vilcabamba) alongside the Spanish, then perhaps today the kingdom of Vilcabamba might be represented at the United Nations with a Quechua speaking ambassador. The same tourists who visit Machu Picchu every day might have the chance to visit a functioning Inca capital, perhaps learning about ancient Inca techniques such as stone cutting.

The question ultimately comes back to the idea of a ‘common good’. Working together for shared benefit. There are many great examples where this is occurring, on both a micro and macro level. And we want to encourage more of it.

Let’s not continue to display the same arrogance as the Spanish Conquisitors, who in their short-sighted greed, destroyed an enormous amount of valuable Inca intellectual capital. Perhaps a little humility and a cooperative spirit could be our first lesson.

The post To conquer or collaborate? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Singe points out that as many as 27,000 children die every day from poverty that could be easily and cheaply helped by existing charities. He notes the psychological barriers to charitable giving in the western world, including cognitive dissonance where a public belief can be held – for example ‘we are all very generous donors in Australia’ – that is contradicted in practice.

Singer says that many of his readers enjoy at least one luxury that is less valuable than a child’s life. He says his readers ought to sacrifice such a luxury and send proceeds to charity, if they can find a reliable one. He clarifies that people have a right to spend money any way they want, but says that fact does not change the way one ought to spend it.

This once again raised for us the issue of how comfortable middle-class affluent Australians might understand their role in alleviating poverty, both within Australia and globally. It also raised the issue of the amount of effort and time that is put into fundraising and marketing campaigns by numerous not-for-profits, often about the same cause, without any interest in collaboration to maximize effect, or indeed to educate Australians long-term about their role as global citizens.

It seems that little has changed over many years in the Australian ‘charities’ sector. Australians, compared to many Europeans, know very little about the real statistics and the devastating human impact of global poverty. The size of Australia’s GDP allocated to overseas development assistance is hardly an issue that will surface at the next elections. The pitiful amount provided through social security benefits for single mothers and long-term unemployed in Australia, or the third world conditions of many Indigenous communities will not be issues that are crucial for any party to be elected or lose government.

Unlike Sweden, there are no coordinated ‘development education’ programs in Australia where education about suffering and poverty in the two-thirds world is on the primary school curriculum, and remains a part of the education process through to the tertiary level. Most not-for-profits have little resources to provide ‘education’ with the sole purpose of teaching people about the causes and effects of poverty, separate to fundraising and marketing. It seems that ‘education’ is not seen as an end in itself but always tied to seeking a dollar.

So the challenge for the Australian charity sector appears to be unchanged for the last three decades at least.  How do you effectively educate people to think mindfully about both domestic and global poverty, and how do you take disparate resources in the Australian charities sector and combine them to produce effective education initiatives?

Maybe that is where we can go backwards and learn from history in order to move forward. It was way back in 1964 that ‘development education’ was added to the Swedish curriculum by Olof Palmer (the then Swedish Minister for Education and future Prime Minister who was assassinated in 1986). And yet there is still nothing similar on offer in Australia.

Maybe if all the different not-for-profits in the charity sector in Australia combined resources they could effectively lobby and produce resources to ‘teach for change’, commencing with the primary school curriculum and then targeting specific adult market segments.

This means a lot more than 30 second TV adverts featuring a smiling African child. It means a concerted and collaborative venture where individual not-for-profits combine their energies to educate people of all ages in Australia about the real effects of poverty and suffering. This would be a long-term project, but then domestic and global poverty appears to be an equally long-term blight on the human condition.

Such a concerted education campaign might at least offer a counter-point to the Hollywood ethos of materialistic, mindless consumerism that dominates and fuels media coffers and provides a frame of reference for the lifestyles of so many Australians.

So who or what could coordinate such a project? How could individualism and competition within the not-for-profit sector be mediated for the common good – both domestically and globally?

Is this a possible role for the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC)? Can the ACNC envisage a role for itself beyond compliance to include coordination and collaboration of long-term and impactful education strategies for the common good? Perhaps individual not-for-profit organisations could take a moment to stop and consider what role long-term education of the Australian public may have on the issues they are seeking to address. Or perhaps there is another body already working on this? Is there any energy out there to collaborate and educate for change and a more just world? We would love to know if there is and join forces!

We were impressed to hear about the Teaching for Change project in Washington, that provides educational resources to schools to enhance students’ understanding of issues relating to social justice. There is enormous opportunity to establish a similar project in Australia.

Surely it is hard to refute that a more ethically engaged and literate society will tend to make for a better quality of life, both for educated donors and those who benefit from their engagement to end poverty.

The post Teaching for change appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.