Code, Camera, Action

But the Katine project is more than just a fundraising push. On our dedicated Katine website you will get the chance to find out how the money is spent, how development works (the successes and the failures) and how the lives of the sub-county's 25,000 inhabitants have changed.

There's about six months left of the Guardian's three-year, £2.5m project to help development work in Katine, a rural sub-county of north-east Uganda. The project includes extensive reporting on progress in education, health, water, governance and livelihoods.

It's also pioneering the use of the internet in a development project.

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Clay Shirky gives voice to what big media seems to be thinking:

“Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use, or else we will have to stop making content in the costly and complex way we have grown accustomed to making it. And we don’t know how to do that.”

This doesn't work so well, though, if supply explodes and demand does not.

When complex systems collapse, the moment shifts to those who can work lightly and cheaply. A great read, as usual.

Great discussion going on now about Beth Kanter's post on vote-for-me nonprofit fundraising. Beth turns up some disturbing facts about the Pepsi Refresh competition, and questions this sort of philanthropy in general. There's lots of criticism from the sector over the way that marketing data is used by Pepsi.

In the discussion on Facebook, I shared an idea about one way that nonprofits could turn these sorts of competitions to the greater good -- 

Judi Sohn thinks beyond nonprofit "vote for me" fundraising competitions.

Here’s a community challenge I want to see: Reward nonprofits for projects that require collaboration and networking. 

An example straight off the top of my head: A cancer support organization working with a meals-on-wheels organization and one that helps people with job skills designing and implementing a program to make sure that patients are eating right after treatment and can get back into the workforce after a long health-related absence. 

I think the possibilities are endless if we can get out of our silos long enough to consider them.

Extra points to the projects that require the most diverse organizations to actually work together towards a common goal. The general public can view and comment on the proposed programs, maybe even make suggestions of partners. Community insight and transparency is wonderful. Yet ultimately the funding decision is by a team that will evaluate based solely on the viability of the project and what will have the most benefit for the population it will serve. Not necessarily which will serve the largest population. Not necessarily which has the largest mailing list or Facebook fan page.

Nice dream. 

In the meantime, all I can do is beg corporations to think it through before the next challenge. If you sprinkle food at the top of the crowded pond, the fish aren’t going to say, “you know, I’ve thought about it and I’m not really that hungry to fight for it.” They’re going to eat each other up like it’s their very last meal. It’s the fish’s nature. It’s ours. It’s up to you to design your giving programs to make sure we’re helping each other to the next meal and we’re all being fairly judged on our own value, not purely in competition.

via judisohn.posterous.com

David Brooks' column pulls no punches about the failure of development efforts in Haiti and the unpredictability of international development generally. His recommendation --

It’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.

These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.

via nytimes.com