Round Up Feb 2012

Startling statistics:

Troubled families

Brilliant ideas:

India's food king

The UNICEF brick

Wonderbags

Clever collaborations:

Gamers decode AIDS protein

Inspiring organisations:

Free cakes for kids

Growzones

Intriguing articles:

Making wealth history?

The prettiest handbag will not save the world

A safer humanitarian air drop

Crises of capitalism

Pick of the blogs:

Living with rats: exploring better ways to live 

Do the green thing

The fun theory

Recession: Poor Giving

So my talk was entitled “Poor Giving”. I came across a charity, through a friend, called GiveDirectly, which was set up by a load of PhD economics boffins from Harvard and MIT. The aim of the charity is to give money directly to a poor household in Kenya. What I will do is bombard you with information about this project and leave it to you to mull over and think about the questions which I will leave this on. I hope that even if it does not help us (Britain) it will most certainly help those in third world countries.

• Select regions of Kenya with high poverty rates using census data. 

• Villages are then identified with low-quality housing and access to someone who can provide mobile-phone-based payment services. 

• Finally, the poorest households in these villages are found using simple, transparent criteria: households living in homes made out of mud, wood, and grass. These criteria effectively identify relatively poor households and are generally perceived by the community as fair. Eligible households' phone numbers are recorded or, for those that do not have a phone, provide them with a SIM card. 

• The money is then moved from using M-PESA accounts (mobile payment system). The recipient gets an SMS text message reminding them of the transfer.

1. So can GiveDirectly help get not only households but whole countries out of the poverty line? Could it be applied to all households in a third world country, or just those below the poverty line?

1. What would be the negative effects if GiveDirectly worked on a national scale? Would it drive up prices in more westernised society?

1. Could GiveDirectly work for the UK (say if a billionaire gave each person/family/poor household £2000)?

During an economic crisis we are all strapped for cash, yet it is cash that helps us get out of this crisis. So because there is less cash, aid, whether financial (in the form of investments), medical, food or shelter is not as much donated to the third world. Because of this third world countries have had to cut in areas like us, this, for example has affected the treatment of HIV patients in Africa. (SOURCE) It took longer for the crisis to hit third world countries but now it has hit like the rest of us because the country was trying to westernise itself and incorporate itself into the western markets. Because exports as well, which are made in third world countries declines, the poorest of those countries have, had, and are having some of the worst times. (SOURCE) 

Each household chosen, receives $2000 over a period of two years. This is often split up into quarterly instalments.

This is the criteria in which people are chosen to receive the money:

So how efficient is this aid system, compared to more mainstream aid? The American Institute for Philanthropy rates charities that spend more than 60% of their budget on "program services" as "satisfactory" and those that spend more than 75% as "highly efficient." Note that the "program services" category includes operational costs; by that definition, the GiveDirectly charity spend 100% of donations on program services.

What about investing and saving the money given to the recipients? Recipients often save or invest a large proportion (50%-80%) of the transfers they receive, depending in part on whether the transfer was short-term or ongoing. (SOURCE)  

Health Care: Many studies find positive effects on the health of children as measured using anthropometric techniques - for example, children's height-for-age and weight-for-height.

Is there abuse of any of the cash which is given? The poor do not abuse cash as predicted by derogatory stereotypes. Across a range of studies, spending on alcohol and tobacco either decreases, stays constant, or at most increases in proportion with other spending (typically 2-3%). Similarly, most studies find no effect on the number of hours worked. Some studies show increases in working hours as household members migrate to obtain better jobs. 

Here is some interesting numbers to crunch:

What about micro-loans? While micro-loans may be helpful in lifting households out of poverty, research suggests that this is likely true only for certain households. One potential reason is the high rates of interest (up to even 100% per year) charged on micro-loans due to the costs of administering and monitoring many small loans. These high interest rates limit the benefit to the household of obtaining a sum of money to spend or invest. Also the term structure of micro loans, which requires that borrowers begin making repayments as soon as 1 week later, may induce households to invest loans in activities that generate income relatively quickly, such as a small vending enterprise, rather than long-term investments, such as in their health or the education of children. Another concern with microfinance is that the poorest households can't afford high rates of interest and lenders will not give them loans. GiveDirectly seeks to fill this gap by providing assistance to those too poor to access microfinance.

Is giving cash, sustainable? Usually when the word "sustainable" is applied to charity, it means that a gift "keeps on giving" and that donors need not continue to make gifts to the same recipient. Since many GiveDirectly grant recipients use some or all of the money to invest in small enterprises, many of GiveDirectly's grants are "sustainable." Indeed, one study of unconditional cash transfers in Mexico found that that household incomes increased by between 1.5 and 2.6 times the amount of the transfers due to the returns from increased investment, suggesting that cash transfers are more than sustainable. Beyond short run income changes, investments in adequate food, proper clothing, better health or more education for children may be "sustainable" in the long run; even though it will require charity until that child is done with school, he or she will grow up much better off and needing much less assistance than his or her parents. 

Should there be more controls/conditions when giving the cash? GiveDirectly intentionally provides unconditional, rather than conditional, cash transfers. We do this for three reasons. First, empowering the poor to make their own decisions advances our core value of respect. Second, it lets recipients purchase the things they need most, enhancing impact. Third, imposing conditions on the use of funds requires that costly monitoring and enforcement structures be put in place. One detailed estimate put the administrative costs of a conditional cash transfer scheme at 63% of the transfers made over the first three years of the program (rather than current 10% administrative costs for unconditional cash offers).

Department for International Development in 2011 said that: Cash transfers were one of the more thoroughly researched forms of development intervention. They conducted a 130 page review (available on the GiveDirectly website). There were many positives from this but a draw back was that: ‘There is also a need for greater understanding on the impact of cash transfers for improving access to a broader range of public services. For example, cash transfers may have an impact on water and sanitation, by helping households to afford clean water and better sanitation, although this has rarely been measured.’

Give Directly Website

Recession: A growthless economy

Here is a brief introduction to a new idea of an economy without growth, being put forward by Jeremy Williams' Beyond Growth Campaign. Much of the information below has come from Jeremy's blogs and websites. I am not writing as an expert, but I do think the idea merits thinking and discussion. 

The basic premise is that our earth cannot provide the resources needed for the whole world to continue to grow indefinitely, and that this principle should be applied to financial economies as well as physical resources that we use. There are a wide number of areas that could be included within this eg fuel, space to grow food, materials for building, job availability, social structure limits, and the big picture is very broad, but the principle of pursuing something other than growth seems to be new and counter cultural and that is why it's interesting. 

Some key differences between an economy seeking to grow and a post-growth economy seeking stability are as follows:

• A stable economy seeks to stabilise resource use to a sustainable value. A growing economy sees cycles of boom and bust (this recession is just one example of such a cycle). 

• Growing economies borrow money in order to achieve growth, and the debt accrued can only be paid off by the dividends of the growth. A stable economy would no longer be able to borrow as it would have no growth to pay the debt off - we would be stuck with our national debt indefinitely. 

• A growing economy is measured by financial properties such as GDP. Success of a post-growth economy would need to be measured in non-financial terms such as health, efficiency, environmental impact or happiness. 

• Our growing economy has not been able to reduce the poverty gap in this country over the last 20 years. A stable economy would aim to prioritise reduction of the poverty gap to fit in with the measurements that are now given value above. 

• Our current economy trades globally, whereas a stable economy would be locally focussed on a much smaller scale and would be characterised by simple living, having less and working fewer hours. 

• Growing economies are still important in LEDCs where infrastructure, life expectancy, education levels and other quality of life measures have much to benefit from it, but should developed countries now be seeking a sustainable future? 

• Is this realistic? It sounds great, but will it offer the equality of wealth and resources that is suggested?

• What will the picture look like for banks, new businesses, manufacturing?

• What does 'living simply' mean? How simple is simple enough? 

• How do we measure successful simplicity?

• How do we motivate a country to change it's behaviour and living conditions? Financial incentives? Ecological concern? Legislation? How 'communist' do you want to be?

• Will our country even be able to sacrifice its money, stuff and conveniences? Can we change what a country considers to be valuable in time?  

• How do we encourage LEDCs to embrace a post-growth future when growth is still working so well to improve quality of life?

• Jeremy Williams' Beyond Growth Campaign and Make Wealth History blog

• Happy Planet Index - a brilliant website from the NEF charting measurements other than GDP

The post-growth theory is not without opposition and challenges, and without serious government interest is still far off being in a position to provide details and specifics of how it might practically come to be. A short but good discussion digging into some of these issues between 'post-growth Jeremy' and Sam Bowman from the Adam Smith institute was on the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine show on January 25th and can be found here. 

Some questions the [Ordinary Experts] and I have been asking in response to the post-growth idea include:

So all very interesting, but possibly still in the 'idealistic' stages, and it's worth remembering I've only presented one side to the discussion here. What are your thoughts?

Related links:

Recession: Carbon Crunch?

Here is a simple introduction to what has become a complicated but potentially exciting alternative economy: carbon credits.

Claims and predictions of anthropogenic climate change are based on data such as shown in this diagram sourced from NOAA via this wikipedia page. Over the past century atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen dramatically in correlation with changes in annual global temperature. As of yet there are no signs of this trend stabilising and so we should expect further climate change in the near future.

Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and global annual
average temperatures over the years 1880 to 2009.

Climate is the term used to describe patterns in temperature and seasonality on a regional and global scale. Weather is what effects people on a local and temporal scale. Extreme weather events are predicted to be more likely under projections of climate change, although it is impossible to take a particular weather event and prove that is has been cause by climate change -there is a somewhat smaller chance, but still a chance that it could have occurred anyway.

Climate scientists predict the countries to be most effected by raised temperatures and extreme weather are those around the tropics. And already we hear news reports of unusual droughts and weather events in East Africa; Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia. These and other such countries are most likely to be negatively effected by climate change and yet are the least responsible for increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. 

The schematic below describes just this. The scale shows the average ecological footprint of citizens in each country (with dark red being the highest). This is because of the industrialisation of these mostly Northern nations using fossil fuels and other resources. In the South where ecological footprints are very small there is little industrialisation and limited resource use due to subsistence life styles.

But what these Southern countries have is large resources of biomass; rain forests, peat swamps, coastal forests, mangroves and coral reefs. These are the lungs of the earth and provide a crucial role in extracting carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in real time and storing it in biomass or laying it down in the earth. We, in the North, are benefiting from these green resources in the South but are paying nothing towards the services we are receiving, while the Southern countries are crippled in poverty and the only way out appears to be removing these green resources to enable industrialisation.

The idea of a Carbon Credit is that:

 “...someone values carbon being stored in the earth from the atmosphere for a certain amount of money...”

 This has been operating voluntarily for a number of years now, where you have the option to alleviate your carbon guilt by paying for trees to be planted when you take an air flight for example. The proposal to formalise this exchange is referred to as REDD+ . Money could be transferred from industrialised nations to developing nations in exchange for 

R - reduced  

E - emissions  from 

D - degradation  and 

D – deforestation.

Current models direct the money to grass roots organisations such as indigenous forest peoples who live on the land in return for their stewardship and sustainable use of the forest.

So what do you think? Do you think this will work? Is it a brilliant new way to transfer aid that will promote poverty alleviation and environmental action? What effect will a global recession have on these plans?

Read more about this by following these links:

Wikipedia: attribution of recent climate change

The UN REDD program

Wikipedia: REDD

REDD in the newsk

Recession: Our communities and us

The landscape of the UK is changing. Concepts like the Big Society combined with a whole raft of legislation in which devolution of power and decentralization of services will take place means that things are going to operate at a much more local level. We can argue whether this approach is good or bad, and that would be interesting, but with cross party support we can conclude that it’s here to stay.

Couple this with a deficit in funds and significant cutbacks and it seems clear that there are going to be gaps. Services that we may want the government to fund and provide, i.e. youth services, are likely to no longer operate (or even exist) in the same way. This leaves us in a situation in which if we believe that these services should be provided in our communities then we will have to do something about it.

So I’d like you firstly, to draw a picture of yourself.

Now around it, I’d like to you to write what your skills and talents are; what can you offer?

Now put that to one side.

Take another piece of paper. This time, I’d like you to map out your community in whatever way you want to; be creative. I’d like you to label what the strengths and needs of the community are.

Now find the image of yourself. Look at it and now match up the needs of your community with your skills. What can you offer?

Wait, we haven’t finished there. What are your needs? What is it that your life is lacking right now; the things that make you happy? How can your community fulfil your needs?

Our communities need us. They need us to participate, to engage, to bring whatever skills we have. There are going to be gaps and it’s going to need us (all of us, not just the people sat here) to fill them.

However, sometimes we get so fixated on being useful and ‘fixing’ things that we forget that we also have needs. It seems to me that it’s not about taking over or trying to lead or assuming that we have all the answers. But instead believing that we may be part of the solution, rather than the whole; recognising that other people may hold the pieces we lack.

In believing this, we may find that the pieces held by others may be answers to our own needs as well as our communities.

Recession: The Social Enterprise

My name is Hannah and I work for a social enterprise.


I am the Manager of a venue in the centre of Oxford called the Oxford Hub which comprises of a cafe/bar/restaurant, the Turl Street Kitchen, events space and managed office space for student and youth facing charities.  I work for the sister Community Interest Company to the charity Student Hubs (mothership to Oxford Hub).  


Over the last 16 months through planning and launching this venue I have learned a few things I thought I would never need to know - how to count crockery on your hands and knees at 1am, how to plaster a wall so the plaster is smooth and how to never think that carrying furniture is a chore.  But I've also come to understand and believe pretty strongly that social enterprises might show a few glimmers of a new way of doing business, or at least a middle way of sorts.


Social enterprise has been a bit of a buzz phrase over the past year in Britain.  David Cameron was quick to align himself with the idea that social enterprise could and should play a vital role in re-stabilising the economy and bringing about his vision of a big society.  He's not the only one who is interested in the new face and way of business.  In fact, positive vibes on all kinds of social businesses just keep coming - 2012 is also officially the UN year of the co-operative.  Social entrepreneurs and their work are becoming more and more visible, from the frankly gorgeous founder of TOMS shoes, Blake Makowski gaining enough airtime to rival Kim Kardashian to the success of the movement Teach for America and its British counterpart Teach First, now the third highest graduate recruiter in the country.


So, first question, 'what is a social enterprise?' - I put it to the ordinary experts.


The answers were varied in their emphases - but most centred around three key concepts:



1. A social enterprise is something which provides a product or service
2. A social enterprise is something which invests its profits either in 'social good' or reinvests them to grow the business
3. A social enterprise has a clear community of benefit and problem which it is trying to solve


These fit quite neatly into the definition from the very helpful Social Enterprise UK website

A social enterprise is a business that trades for a social and/or environmental purpose. It will have a clear sense of its ‘social mission’:  which means it will know what difference it is trying to make, who it aims to help, and how it plans to do it.  It will bring in most or all of its income through selling goods or services.  And it will also have clear rules about what it does with its profits, reinvesting these to further the ‘social mission’

We then chatted through some of the well-known social enterprises and how they were hitting these three key targes.  I've liberally gone through their websites to see what these organisations say about themselves so best to have a google for a more balanced description.

1. The Big Issue

Product/Service? A newspaper, The Big Issue, sold to Joe public.


Profits?  Part given to the seller, part reinvested in the business, part put towards the Big Issue Foundation


Community of benefit/social good? Rough sleepers and homeless people are given the opportunity to earn a legitimate income, thereby ‘helping them to help themselves’. 


Created as a business solution to a social problem The Big Issue has gone on to become one of the most instantly recognisable brands in the UK and a powerful blueprint for social change.

2. Divine Chocolate

Product/Service?  Fantastic chocolate and cocoa products.


Profits? To the farmers or into the company.


Community of benefit/social good? Divine is the only Fairtrade chocolate company which is 45% owned by the farmers. While Fairtrade ensures farmers receive a better deal for their cocoa and additional income to invest in their community, company ownership gives farmers a share of Divine’s profits and a stronger voice in the cocoa industry. 

3. The Eden Project 

Product/Service? The Eden Project is an eco visitor attraction comprising of a rainforest, gardens and an educational charity in the heart of Cornwall.


Profits? Put into employing more staff and expanding their projects.  


Community of benefit/social good? This attraction has revived the local community with its incredible design, creation of jobs and programme of events.  They also run environmental and social projects, focus on creating unforgettable learning experiences for students, commission and support research into plants and conservation and run their operations as greenly as they can.

4. Fifteen

Product/Service?  A professional Italian restaurant chain


Profits? Again, put into the business to expand and thereby create more apprenticeships


Community of benefit/social good? Fifteen was founded by Jamie Oliver in 2002. His vision was to create a professionally run kitchen alongside an Apprentice Programme. At the heart of the business is a pastoral programme, designed to enable young people to gain confidence in their chosen career. Every year, each restaurant recruits unemployed and under-qualified young people, aged between 18 and 24, from the local area and trains them to become qualified chefs through a unique Apprentice Programme.

Great - so now we know WHAT a social enterprise is, it might help to think about WHY they are important and HOW they are currently impacting the British economy.

The best resource for answering some of these questions is to be found in a fantastic report done by Social Enterprise called 'Fightback Britain: a report on the State of Social Enterprise Survey 2011', available online.  It looks at numerous small to medium enterprises in comparison to social enterprises and considers both how they have impacted the recession and how it has impacted them.  





I can't give you a fully detailed analysis of the report here but some of the key factors to pull out from the survey can be found in the bullets below, quoted from the document:

'Overall, our survey has revealed that social enterprises:

• Are most likely to start-up and work in Britain’s most deprived communities

• Reinvest in the communities where they are based

• Are run by younger people than traditional SMEs, with a high proportion of Black and Minority Ethnic directors, as well as female directors

• Are accountable to their customers and communities, involving them in business decisions

• Are increasingly trading with consumers and with private companies

• Are turning away from public sector markets, in favour of consumers and private companies

In short, a generation of businesses starting up in Britain’s most deprived communities is fighting deprivation and social problems, and they expect to become increasingly independent of government.'

This report and our discussions led me to think of some questions to pose to everyone.

1. Is now the time for us to radically re-think the way we do business?  

2. Is now the time to value process in a similar way that we have come to product?

3. Is now the time to start seriously considering the possibility that our local and global economies can and should not only be in good health but also in good heart?

According to Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, the answer to these questions is quite resoundingly 'yes'.

“Businesses acting as businesses, not as charitable donors, are the most powerful force for addressing the pressing issues we face. The purpose of the corporation must be redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se. This will drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the global economy. It will also reshape capitalism and its relationship to society.”

And to Tim Smit, founder of the Eden project, the call to action is even more stark.

‘Don’t be a schmuck and become a banker, be a social entrepreneur and change the world’.

Like I said, I'm no expert - but for an expert and inspiration overload check out the series of videos with the world leading social entrepreneurs from the Skoll World Forum in Oxford 2011.  

I'll leave you with my favourite, a classic from Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College.

http://www.takepart.com/video/poverty’s-worst-enemy-bunker-roy-and-barefoot-college

Recession: Where do Jobs come from?

Where do jobs come from?

Having taught Maths for a few years, I have a sense that getting 5 GCSEs including English and Maths is crucial to a child's future in getting a job.  However the more I experience of work, the more I wonder: what sort of Jobs are available if you can’t get a C at GCSE ?  And: Where will the Millions of jobs come from that are needed to reduce the UK unemployment.  Simplistic thinking took me down the following avenue:

• Jobs exist if they add value to a good or providing a service
• To get a job, you either need a rare skill (Engineer), or be willing to work for very low wages (clothing industry), or you need to located in the right place (cleaner), or some combination of all 3.
• Other countries are willing to work for lower wages than the UK.
• Therefore the only jobs that are likely to continue to exist are ones that are skilled or can’t be outsourced, or some combination of the 2.
• Is a C in GCSE Maths going to help with any of the above?

Obviously that is a cynical view of UK Education and the Jobs market, and not one that I believe in.  However this thought process get me pondering about the jobs market in a more abstract way and then inspired me to create something for “OrdinaryExperts”  28/1/2012.

Creation of jobs is such a political topic, subsequently unemployment and GDP are 2 of the key measure that any opposition will use to highlight a government’s failings.  The 2 main political ideas are: “The Government should do more” and “The Government should do less”.

The More sayers want the Government to spend more money on the public sector to create jobs directly, as well as spend more money on infrastructure to give a boost to the private sector.  Also this camp would probably want incentives for small businesses and specific industries.  In the extreme example of this (Communism) this government would own all industry and would dictate the amount of stuff produced.

The Less sayers want the Government to get out of the way of the free market and want to reduce the amount of regulation and barriers to entrepreneurship.  In the extreme example of this, they would expect to abolish all the public sector including the NHS and free schools.

In practice almost all countries and Governments have a bit of both, and probably lean different ways depending on the industry or other wider circumstances.

This divide brings us to 2 case-studies that I shared at ThinkToChange.  I have been involved with 2 organisations since their inception which was around Jan 2009 and they are interesting in their similarities, as well as their differences.  One is a Charity that provides a service for the government, the other is a startup technology company that gets money by selling equity to investors in the hope that one day the company will be worth loads of money. 

However both organisation have a similar model, as do almost all other organisations out there when it comes to funding and jobs: They get money from Initial investors, demonstrate they can do something great, then start paying people to make stuff.  The lines are fairly clear between producer, consumer and investor/owner.  I challenged the group to work out what happens when we blur some of these lines.  There must be other models of employment out there, and perhaps a new way of doing business in this high tech social networked world, what does a 2.0 job look like? 

Recession: Trajectory= [Situation]+[Aspiration]

Hello and welcome to "the Recession",

Over the next few weeks you should be seeing a series of blogs presenting the fruits of the ordinary experts mini think-a-thon about "the Recession". Here is the first segment.

Before getting stuck into the topic I would like to start by making two observations from experience.

The first is that where you are going has some bearing on what happens in the present.

One example of this might be if you are heading to the dentist (or an exam) you are likely to act very differently to how you might act when you are preparing to go to the cinema or for a coffee with a friend. If it was me in the first scenario I would be tetchy, grumpy and generally unpleasant to be around, while in the other I would be more relaxed (although I don't like coffee). I think this is important for the recession because where we as a society think we are going will impact how we act now. We will be much more pleasant if we are going for coffee than if we are going to an exam. I think we saw the result of just this sort of thing in the Tottenham riots in August of last year.

My second think is that: Trajectory= [Situation]+[Aspiration]

What do I mean by this? well simply put I am saying that where you end up is often the product of where you are now and where you would like to go. If your aspiration is to go to the cinema and your situation is that you have enough time and money your trajectory will be to go to the cinema and you will end up at the cinema.

Now obviously if your aspiration is to go to the cinema but your situation is that you don't have enough time or money, then that will effect your trajectory. You probably wont go to the cinema straight away but you might set aside time and save up money and eventually you would go to the cinema. Your end point would be the same but your trajectory would be slightly different.

It is my opinion that issues begin to arise when we change the formula from Trajectory=[Situation] + [Aspiration] to [Situation]=[Aspiration]=Trajectory. You see, in any given event there are things we have no control over, there are things we have indirect control over, and there are things we have control over. When we allow the situation to define our aspirations and therefore our actions that is when we give up control and that is when people lose control.

Such a road is one of self fulfilling prophecies where the end point is not so different from the current situation. We may have wanted to go to the cinema originally but we do not end up there.

Recession: It's happening

We are setting up right now for our first "thinking" day.

The new schedule is online, we've created a new twitter feed (#ordinary experts @thinktochange), and we're a little bit overexcited for a simultaneously over and under planned event!

We will be asking all of the 'ordinary experts' to prepare blog posts from their chats and we will share them on here over the coming weeks for ongoing discussion.