Tonight’s meeting went a little less straight forward than planned, but we still accomplished a fair bit. Right off the bat, we had to start an hour late because Shane’s phone died on his drive home. When 9:30 came around, Shane’s phone still hadn’t been charged. Adrien and I kicked off covering the action items from the previous meeting (and those from the retreat, as Shane missed).

Notably from the action items this weekend, we now have an adviser’s RSS feed on our subscribe page that interested faculty members, etc. can receive updates with. In the past week and a half, both Shane and Adrien made trips to the Knight Library, Adrien to find grant databases and Shane to do research. During her trip, Adrien came across mention of a water project she is following up with at the moment. There might be peers we can learn from on campus. As another plus, Adrien heard back from her friend Laura who is an Environmental Engineer at Northwestern. Laura just completed a huge grant proposal she sent along to us to learn from.

The first significant discussion of the night revolved around our ODA Team Goals [Google Docs]. The idea behind this outline is to create a somewhat looser, more functional, and dynamic version of what is traditionally known as a component of bylaws. I’m hoping to write lengthier, more comprehensive posts on this strategy later, but the core of it is that we want to create positions within the team of cascading levels of responsibility. With Whitman Direct Action last year, we had team members drop off because they couldn’t necessarily complete all of what was expected of them.  By phrasing what we do in terms of “goals” instead of “responsibilities,” I feel that we will be able to better prioritize what is most important to be completed. We as a team, though, still have a lot of discussion to wade through in assessing what everyone’s goals might be.

This past weekend in San Francisco, I had a few stellar conversations with Alex Goodell of Students for Global Health (SGH). The coolest one, and most applicable for ODA, was in regards to how we might fundraise together.  Initially, I proposed we might combine manpower for an event and split the proceeds. Alex, in addition, mentioned that SGH could take on ODA project(s) as ones they would support directly, especially if they had a global health bent. Furthermore, ODA might be able to support non-fundraising projects SGH is interested in initiating. We look forward to including Alex in part or all of our next conference call.

The last sweet update I’ll mention at this point is my conversation with Wayne of Health Bridges International last Tuesday (i.e. over a week ago). I meant to post about our conversation earlier, but my notes ballooned to the point of never getting around to it. There were two significant developments that came of the meeting, though. First, Wayne is interested in what we are doing and in helping figure out how we might be able to incorporate medical relief to whatever we end up doing in San Pablo. This will progress as we connect further. The second really stellar connection we made is something I discovered this spring in India: organizations aren’t working together to the degree they should be, especially the local NGOs. From my notes, Wayne is helping facilitate a conference in January in Arequipa, Peru. His intent is to bring together all of the regional NGOs and have them meet each other because they aren’t connecting well enough to begin with. From this, our conversation progressed to how we can connect local NGOs with those that have similar projects. Once the connection is made, they can learn from each other. The idea I proposed, and I think Wayne took even more notes than I, was to have representatives send a couple of paragraphs each month on what progress they’ve made. These would then be consolidated into a newsletter that would be sent back out to the next group. I think this can be initiated easily, and we can scale up to a website in the future. We’re both definitely interested in seeing how this will develop, and how ODA might be able contribute.

• Agenda/Minutes - ODA - 20 August 2008 [Google Docs]

 

 ODA - 20 August 2008: Team Goals, Conversation with HBI, and Fundraising with SGH [78:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (13)

So, as I’m sure you’ve read from the previous retreat reflections, Adrien, Dan and I went to a friend’s lakeside house to build a sense of team, to learn from each other, and to further focus our vision for what we want ODA to be.  This post is not going to be a summary of what happened; rather, I’m going to talk about the events that were most meaningful to me.

The first was when I had the opportunity to teach Dan and Adrien a lecture from my INTL 240 class with Professor Galvan.   Now, it’s true that I was teaching someone else’s material, but still, I did it by mashing together a group of his readings and this lecture slide, and I had to make it relevant to ODA.  It was a great experience for me.  I really enjoy teaching, and we later agreed that, as the point person for research, I should be reading and learning about more stuff than the rest of the group to have the ability to teach distilled versions of what I read to everyone else.  I look forward to this added aspect of my job description.

One aspect of this lecture was the idea that institutional imposition, or forcing a way of thinking or acting on other people, is neither a humane way to treat others nor an effective way to accomplish your goals, including goals of “helping” others through development.  Rather, the most humane and effective way help others is to work with them, to determine what they want, and to assist them in making what they want a reality.  This idea highlighted a feeling that I think was already part of Adrien, Dan and my personal philosophies and we are working now on how we can integrate this into our mission statement.

The next day, we also had an interesting discussion about our feelings on faith-based organizations.  We came to the consensus that, though none of us is highly religious, we recognize the ability of religion to create a sense of community in an area, and unite people around a common cause.  However, we don’t approve of the way some religious people seek to impose their ideas on others.  Thus, faith-based organizations that allow us to have a more intimate relationship with the community in an area (such as a Catholic organization would in a Catholic village in Mexico) would make it easier for us to build a relationship with a village so that we can understand what they want and help them to achieve it.  However, organizations that would seek to evangelize are ones that go against our core philosophy of not imposing our beliefs on others.  For the future, then, the former kind of organizations are ones we should seek out and the latter are ones we should avoid.  I felt like this was a very fruitful conversation that left us with tangible ways we could apply it to ODA.

The best part of the retreat, however, was the time spent relaxing at and after dinner.  Dan, Adrien, and I had some great conversation while making dinner (as usual, I ended up standing around and talking while the other two, mainly Adrien, cooked dinner.  I swear it’s not that I’m lazy, I just get so caught up in what I’m thinking about that I don’t think to do anything else).  We then went on to have “mind sex” (in the spirit of an open source organization, I’m practicing full disclosure, and that is what we called it) and talk about topics ranging from Ayn Rand and the nature of the individual, beauty for beauties sake as opposed to beauty in function, and the singularity.  The best part of it was that we all three agreed that such mind sex is the way we like to hang out, as opposed to talking about how wasted we got the previous night.  I think that there’s a really solid group dynamic here based on a love of thinking, and then applying the fruits of that thought to action.

That is what I see ODA being: an organization of intense thought, and then of intense action.  Such an organization would only work with members who adhered to this philosophy, and I’m pleased to see that we do.

This past weekend Daniel, Shane, and I gathered for our first ODA retreat, which also was our first in-person meeting since the end of the school year. I honestly had no idea what we would talk about for the entire two days, but we managed to discuss ODA business most of that time and, in fact, could have benefited from more ODA discussion time at the end of our retreat.

I felt that we started our retreat off on a good note. We had a short meeting to get one another on the same page and review our past todos. The majority of our past todos list was completed, which allowed us to start off the retreat with a clean slate.

I think that ODA can learn a lot from the experiences that Daniel had with WDA. I very much appreciated the mini-presentation that Daniel gave about his work with WDA. He had talked to me before about his work with WDA, but I felt this time I got much more out of it, due to the fact that I am now more involved with ODA. I hope Daniel remembers both what worked and what did not work so that ODA can avoid some unnecessary blunders.

I very much enjoyed Shane’s lecture about the Theory of Change; he did a fabulous job. Before this, I had only guesses as to what knowledge Shane would bestow on us concerning the Theory of Change. The ideas discussed in the lecture should definitely stay in the front of our minds as we maneuver through our project and make goals for ourselves. Also, I thought that the podcast Daniel suggested we listen to, “Is Aid to Africa Doing More Harm Than Good?,” nicely paralleled Shane’s lecture.

Thank you Daniel and Shane for the technology lesson. I think I learned a decent amount for the time that we had. I have been reading through my Google Reader multiple times a day! It is so much more efficient to have the news come to you… hopefully now I will be more up to date on current events. I am still a little bit unclear about the wiki, but I am sure once I have to do something with it, I will be fine. I am excited to say that this blog is my first ever self-published blog! (and I am sure that it will not be the last)

My favorite part of this retreat was getting to know Daniel and Shane better. I enjoyed listening to their philosophizing. The Fountainhead was mentioned so often that I now feel the need to read it and see what all of the hype was about. In all, I thought the retreat was quite productive. For our future retreat, I hope that we can also have the time to include more outdoor activities, like hiking or Frisbee.

The retreat last weekend went far better than I had expected.  I’d like to first thank Shane and Adrien for helping make it happen, especially because I thought it was a partially absurd idea to begin with.  It’s not often student organizations formally converge to talk about for a length of time beyond a normal meeting.  Within an hour of starting, and more importantly now that I look back upon it, this retreat was a super important step in our development.  I’m sad Hannah couldn’t make it, but we’ll hopefully have another one in the fall.

One of the most valuable components for me was Shane’s presentation on different theories of development.  I, probably unsurprisingly, have no formal education in this area.  His repurposed presentation from Professor Galvan taught me the basics on the different schools of thought.  I feel that I now have a better understanding of the neo-liberalist and post-modernist ways of looking at development, which will ultimately lend us more knowledge in how we define ODA.

Of the things we could improve next time, I think it would be super neat to record our conversations.  While also in alignment of the attempt to become an open source organization, creating MP3’s of our discussions would be a simple way of keeping Hannah, and any future team members, in the loop with what we talked about.  I’m not certain we’ll be able to do this in the fall, as hardware is the limiting factor at the moment, but it’s going to continue to be in my mind.  Additionally, I feel our conversation at the end became rushed, largely because I had to get to work as close to noon as possible.  This is largely my fault, I seemed to have crammed too much to cover in too short of time, but I think a solution for the next retreat would be to run the entire agenda past another pair of eyes.

We began our retreat with a quick meeting to allow everyone to fill the others in on what they’d been doing.  Everyone had completed the action items from the previous meeting. Adrien contacted Kristen and Allen Hall Advertising.  Dan and Adrien worked on the Clinton Grant Proposal and Dan powered through the last of it to get it in on time (go Dan!).  Dan also finished outlining responses to additional grant proposals.  Finally, we continued in our quest for additional grant sources, with Adrien finding out about the Knight Library grant database from Kirsten.

Next, Adrien told us about her meetings with Kirsten, head of the Environmental Leadership Program and an ENVS adviser, and Allen Hall Advertising, a group which does pro bono advertising work for groups on campus.  Allen Hall Advertising told us that they’d already decided on their projects for the upcoming year, but that they would tell their members about us and see if anyone would want to take on additional work for us.  Adrien said that Kirsten seemed very enthusiastic about our group, its vision, and the progress we’ve made so far.  In addition to telling us about the Knight Library grant database, she told us that she’d pass any other grant information on to us.  Having worked for an NGO in India, she has many contacts there and told us that she would put us in touch with them if we ever decide to refocus on India.  Finally, she put us in contact with Andrew Hyde, a board member of Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG), an NGO currently working extensively in Peru.

Next, I talked about the email contacts I’d made with Solucciones Prácticas, asking for details about projects, planning reports, surveys, after-action reports on what worked and what didn’t, etc.  At the time of this meeting, I’d just sent a letter to a person I’d been told would have the information I was looking for.  The next day, a man, Javier, told me that they could send me information, but that it was in Spanish.  My ability to speak Spanish is currently quite rusty, but given that I plan to go to Peru, I’ve decided that it’s time to get practicing.  I told Javier that I would appreciate whatever he could send me, in English or Spanish.

Also, during these emails, I’d been sending a standard template letter asking for information, and we decided that this would be a template letter we would continue to use in all requests for information.

Dan then talked about a meeting he was going to be having with Wayne Centrone of Health Bridges International, another group working in Peru, about the possibility of adding a medical relief component to our project in Peru.  The meeting will be tomorrow and Dan and I both plan to attend.

Finally, we talked about Hannah, who is currently in New Zealand working on a project and mostly out of contact.  We figured that we should be flexible and not worry too much if other group members need to take time to take care of other things.  We figured that all we would ask of Hannah is that she write a blog post or two, if she gets the chance, about what she’s done and learned while in New Zealand.

With that, we wrapped up our meeting after 33 minutes, and Dan allowed me to deviate from our tight schedule to take a 45 minute (strictly enforced) nap, to recover from my 24 mile bike ride in Portland that morning.  Sure enough, after 45 minutes, there was Dan.

Agenda/Minutes - ODA - 10 August 2008 [Google Docs]

Sharad’s experience rings true to much of what I faced while trying to get water data this spring:

But it is clear that Indian bureaucracy sucks bigtime. Government staff harass you for no reason. Agreed that Silje made a mistake by not registering earlier. But asking somebody to postpone/cancel an international air-ticket is not a joke. Many travellers to India are students. Those people may not have enough money to book another ticket. It is sad that S, V and ACP were not compassionate about foreign travellers.

As we plan our project, consideration to how responsive government institutions will be to what we want to do will be critical.  Along these same lines, cultural considerations will be paramount.  Some cultures don’t try to live as fast-paced as we Americans do, and some do more.  Flexibility, and not frustration, is the personality characteristic which will grant us most success, I think.

On Wednesday, I had a meeting with Kirsten, the Environmental Studies advisor. At this meeting, I told her about ODA, our current project, and what we have done so far. She was very enthusiastic and really liked the fact that we will be basing our project off of a needs assessment of the area. In our discussion, I mentioned how we had originally been looking into doing a project in India or Peru. With my mention of India, she informed me that she had actually worked in India for a nonprofit, consequently, she had a number of contacts there. She said that whenever we are ready to focus on India again she will pass along the contact information. 

Also, concerning finance, she suggested that we check out the Knight Library’s grant database. Apparently it is great and free for U of O students. Kirsten will send along to us any funding information/opportunities that comes her way from now on. She will also pass along to us any information that she thinks might be of interest to us. Kirsten also mentioned that she has some friends in California that have a business that does basically what we are trying to do (need assessment of an area, come up with an appropriate project, get funding, implement project). She will be e-mailing me their contact information shortly. 

After the meeting, I e-mailed Kirsten a link to our website and a link to our responses to the Clinton Global Initiative so she can get a more in depth look at ODA. She wants us to keep her updated with our progress. I thought the meeting went well and Kirsten seemed willing to help.

I took a class last fall from Professor Dennis Galvan called INTL 204: Perspectives on International Development, and I believe that it was the most eye-opening course I’ve taken in college.  Classes like that are why I go to college.

Luckily for us, Professor Galvan posted the syllabus, readings, and lecture notes for the class online and so I have been able to compile a mini lesson and a large set of readings based on what I learned in his class and what he’s posted online.

One warning: this is not all theory of change per se, but I would say that it is all very relevant to the future of ODA.

• Communitarian Theory: This theory describes a political system in which small, intimate communities are the most important part of society rather as opposed to individuals (liberalism/democracy) or the entire state (fascism), to name a few familiar examples. 
  • Etzioni, “Communitarianism,” in Encyclopedia of Community, 2003. [PDF]
  • Etzioni, “Religious Civil Society is Antidote to Anarchy in Iraq & Afghanistan” 4/1/04.
• Modernization Theory: Modernization theory was the first major theory of development.  It was born out of Truman’s Four Points which first set development as a goal for the current governments.  It involved massive infrastructure projects in other countries.  The Marshall Plan, where the U.S. financed the massive rebuilding of factories, roads, farms etc. in Western Europe can be considered in some ways a fantastic success of this theory, and its core model.  However, such projects proved far less successful in other regions of the world.
  • Inglehart and Wenzel, Modernization, Cultural Change & Democracy, 2005, ch1. [PDF]
• Marxian Theory: Marxian Theory is developmental theory in the tradition of Marx’s thought.  I tried my best to pick articles that represent this theory, but it is very diverse.  What it basically addresses is the Marxian idea that increasing the productive capacity of a region does little for the good of the society unless wealth is evenly distributed.  It also contains the idea that uneven distributions of wealth are self-perpetuating and will lead to injustice.  One of the ways this theory was practiced was the basic-needs plan, which declared that all people in the world deserved certain basic items.  For awhile, the result was something akin to global socialism, where countries attempted to provide basic needs for all (like the way, in Sweden, the government taxes the rich in order to provide for the basic needs of its poor).  This program was quickly abandoned as too-expensive and too inefficient. 
  • Kapur, “Poor but Prosperous (Kerala, India),” 1998, pp. 40-45. [PDF] This article describes a region that, though less productive, is happier because of wealth equality.
  • Ken Silverstein, “Millions for Viagra, Pennies for The Poor,” The Nation, August 13, 1999 This article shows the injustice that develops when wealth is unevenly distributed, and the way advances in technology accrue to the needs of the rich rather than those of the poor. 
  • Streeten, “Basic Needs: Some Unsettled Questions,” 1984, pp. 973-978. [PDF]
• Neo-Liberal Theory: Neo-Liberal Theory is one we are more familiar with.  It states that the way for nations to become developed is to lower barriers to trade, decrease taxes and regulation, and privatize all industries and then let the free market go to work.  It is very similar to what we consider globalization today.
  • Wiarda, “Developmental Success Stories: The Rise of the NICs,” 2004. [PDF]

• Post-Modernist Theory: Post-Modernist Theory is basically a catch-all phrase for those who question the core beliefs of development.  Some of it questions the notion of development as progress (ie. they would question that a group of people would be better off with outside intervention) or even the very idea of progress (that it’s possible to improve) or at least western ideas of progress (that there is one linear path to progress, and that it involves increasing industrialization, liberalism, and democracy).  Others question the means previously used to achieve progress (ie. the modernist idea that development is something one nation should do to another;for instance, that the U.S. should try to aid development in Uganda).  The general consensus of post-modernist theory on progress is that it means wildly different things to different groups, and that the needs of people should be addressed on as small a scale as possible to allow for the different desires and ideas of progress of different groups.  On the issue of means, they believe that development should be a collaboration between small groups (NGOs) and communities (villages, neighborhoods etc.), as this is more efficient and more responsive to the specific challenges and needs of people.  The current development theory of the time seems to be mostly of the Post-Modernist school; certainly ODA and the community work ODA is trying to achieve would tend to fall under the blanket of Post-Modernist Development.
  • Escobar, Encountering Development, 1995, pp. 3-17, 212-226. [PDF]
  • Fukuyama, “Social Capital,” April 5, 1997.
  • Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1998, pp. 11-52. [PDF]
  • IIId-2. Practice: Local Empowerment, Social Capital, Creative Adaptation [PDF] (Lecture Slide)
• Other: 
  • Fung & Wright, Deepening Democracy, 2003, ch 1. [PDF] This reading especially contains ideas on how alternative democratic institutions can be created, and how our current system in the U.S. is far removed from an ideal democracy in which the people have a strong say in their political system. 
  • Rotella, “In Brazil, a Threat to Fusion of Religions,” August 8, 1998, p. A18. This article describes ways in which local cultures don’t have to be destroyed by new institutions, but can fuse with them to create new cultures that better suit the needs of the people.
  • Shively, Power and Choice, 1995, pp. 155-168. [PDF] This article describes the nature of authority and legitimacy.

There are a very large number of ideas here, and there’s no way to do them all justice in the time we have before the retreat, so I’ve selected five readings that are somewhat related and pertain to the post-structuralist theory.  I also plan to go over Galvan’s lecture slides on that subject and teach them as best as I can.

Here are the five readings, with notes where appropriate:

• Scott, Seeing Like a State, 1998, pp. 11-52. [PDF] This reading talks about how a state will, by necessity, view the territory and the people which it rules in an oversimplified manner in order to make sense of the huge variety of cultures, institutions, relationships etc. that exist, and in doing so will often make decisions that don’t reflect the true needs of its people.  Furthermore, many states will seek to simplify these cultures, institutions, and relationships in order to make its people easier to rule, often going to great lengths and causing much suffering to the people.
• Fukuyama, “Social Capital,” April 5, 1997. This article says that there are more types of capital (ie, things which increase productivity) than our typical western ideas of capital, which are generally limited to things like factories, and tractors, or sometimes skills and experience.
• Rotella, “In Brazil, a Threat to Fusion of Religions,” August 8, 1998, p. A18. This article describes ways in which local cultures don’t have to be destroyed by new institutions, but can fuse with them to create new cultures that better suit the needs of the people.
• Etzioni, “Religious Civil Society is Antidote to Anarchy in Iraq & Afghanistan” 4/1/04. This article talks about how we shouldn’t take it for granted that increasing people’s freedom (by freedom, in this case, I mean removing obstacles to what people can do) will increase their standard of living.  The example it gives is that, in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasing, rather than decreasing, the influence of Islam in people’s lives would be a good way to make people happier, even though Islamic rules might limit the freedom of the people (especially women).
• Fung & Wright, Deepening Democracy, 2003, ch 1. [PDF] This reading especially contains ideas on how alternative democratic institutions can be created, and how our current system in the U.S. is far removed from an ideal democracy in which the people have a strong say in their political system.

These readings are all meant to contain ideas about how ODA can improve the standard of living in places by respecting local culture, and how, hopefully, we can empower the people to create democratic institutions that reflect the will of the local people.

Last evening, I went to a brainstorming meeting for environmental activists (representatives of ASUO and student groups) on the University of Oregon campus. The original goal of this meeting was to discuss what projects we would like to see implemented on campus next year on both the ASUO and university administration level. However, due to the time of year and other various reasons, only two other people attended this meeting: Emmalyn (the new ASUO Environmental Advocate) and Price (a new and interested graduate student to the U of O). Because of this low attendance, we did not do much brainstorming about next year’s Environmental Action Plan. 

The majority of the meeting was directed toward answering Price’s question about how ASUO functioned, its role in the university, and what projects have been proposed for next year (bike loan program). We diverged from the original purpose of this meeting to tell each other of personal anecdotes and our various experiences concerning education, sustainability, bikes, composting, etc. It was enjoyable talking with Price and Emmalyn even though the meeting did not go as intended. We concluded our conversation by deciding that this brainstorming meeting would be rescheduled closer to the fall term when more people would be able to attend. 

As of Friday night at around 6 PM PST, our very first grant application has been submitted.  ”An Open Source of Water for Peru” was the title Isaac at Squarepeg helped propose.  Many thanks to him, Jason at Green Empowerment, and the rest of the ODA team for helping to pull this together so quickly.  Without everyone’s creativity, critical thinking, and wiliness to GTD, the application wouldn’t have been written on such short notice.  Here’s to the possibility of $10,000 coming our way!

Even if we don’t win the money, though, taking the time to answer the questions for both components of the Clinton Global Initiative commitment and grant process proved to be a valuable experience.  The prompts forced us to think deeply about who we are and what we’re trying to do, as well as provide specifics on how we hope to accomplish it.  The format in which we synthesized this, too, makes the grant application a valuable read for anyone that wants to come on board with the team and our projects.

If you’re a member of the Clinton Foundation’s MyCommitments website, please do vote our project up.  I would imagine the voting system does indeed count for something.