Silver Linings to a Ridiculous Idea
**This series of blog posts comes from the Lumana blog, where I sometimes write for kicks.
Development trends are always changing. Industry experts are constantly recognizing new roadblocks and highlighting different stats so let’s chat about the new bright and shiny toolkit: the low-hanging global development fruit – transparency!
When did this word ‘transparency’ constantly start getting tossed around? Progress and impact have always been issues that stakeholders have cared about, but only recently have they required progress and impact by numbers. Donors want their own philanthropic return on investment so that they know the wisdom of their investments. I also think that transparency has grown into such a large elephant in the room because organizations are realizing the power of sharing data and information with each other.
At 145 clients, Lumana is considered fairly small by industry standards. However, we have always been particularly interested in transparency for our data collection and our program processes since the launch of our pilot project. There are a couple reasons for this. One, because we believe in microfinance as an enabler and a financial tool, not exclusively as a means to an end. This philosophy means that there are many other markets, services and products that are necessary for a lasting and sustainable impact in the communities in which we work, and we realize the potential for sharing information with other organizations who can bring these important services and markets to our clients. Second, we believe it is important for other organizations to share information and experiences, to continue to create an open discussion about what works best in global development.
Recently, an initiative has popped up in social networks called ‘1 Million Shirts’, created by a guy named Jason who wanted to collect a bunch of t-shirts to send off to the shirtless children and adults of Africa. There are a number of reasons why this idea wouldn’t work in any sort of sustainable way, and many aid workers and seasoned development workers reiterated their negative responses about this project. Regardless of how ridiculous the idea is, the concept that I wanted to convey was the roundtable conversation that revolved around this specific project.
In global development and aid work, experience is golden. However, that experience is often extremely hard to come by. Travel, expense, schooling are huge factors against someone who ‘just wants to help’. When someone like Jason comes along, there are really no transparent sorts of data or information sets to help him decide if the idea that he has is going to work in a world that he really knows nothing about. From the expertise and information crowd-sourced to Jason from other people who know more about the impact of giving t-shirts to the rural African poor (it sounds so harmless, doesn’t it!), Jason has re-directed his project to other aid work.
Learning about global development does seem difficult. But we have so many tools at our disposal! Our social networks are allowing open discussion like never before. If I want to learn how to tile my floor or master a computer game, I can find directions on the internet. Transparency is important for a number of reasons, but mostly so everyone can be connected to the complex puzzle that poverty really is and to be able participate in open discussions about the proven methods of global development that work. Lumana continues to aspire to a high level of transparency because we want our communities to remain completely sustainable after we expand to other parts of the world. All aid and development projects should be subject to a high degree of transparency and scrutiny from the appropriate audience.
