Key officials discuss the role of technology on global development

While it’s important not to equate new technology advances with innovation writ large, we need to be even more cautious of being afraid of technology, Chris Elias of PATH told a Seattle crowd of about 400 global health leaders, ag experts and journalists last week.

The event, hosted by Global Washington, focused on technology’s impact on global development. USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah opened the event by underscoring the Obama administration’s commitment to addressing extreme poverty worldwide. In addition to a “moral imperative,” he rooted this effort as an “enlightened self-interest” of U.S. national security. He also reiterated the need to shift to an evidence-based and results-oriented approach.

With a powerhouse of speakers — including Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Adam Smith (D-Wash), and leaders from the Gates Foundation (a client), PATH, Microsoft  and Washington State University — the conversation ran the gamut from food security and global health to entrepreneurship and foreign aid.

As a collector of liberal arts degrees, I applaud this big tent approach — we need to harness all the talent and creativity on hand to deal with today’s global issues. The event itself, with its rock star roster of public, private and academic leaders, illustrated the dynamic potential of cross-sector engagement.

 

Trusting the Next Generation of Leaders

Earlier this week, I had the privilege to present to incoming members of the National College Advising Corps. They are recent graduates dispatched as college counselors in low-income middle and high schools near their alma maters. And they are some of the brightest, most enthusiastic young people I have encountered.

I shared with them the resources available through the KnowHow2GO campaign, a college access effort co-led by our client, the American Council on Education, with Lumina Foundation for Education and the Ad Council. In particular, I presented the ambassadors program we launched last fall with five of their peers.

The program evolved out of conversations with teens across the country who are served by KnowHow2GO’s college access partners. They told us over and over again that their peers have the biggest influence over their decisions – more so than caring adults or celebrities. So we elevated five college advisers as the faces and voices of KnowHow2GO. They communicate directly with students through a multi-author blog  and dedicated Facebook and Twitter pages.

Allowing the ambassadors to communicate candidly with students required KnowHow2GO’s co-leaders to relinquish some control. But they did so willingly, in exchange for fresh and compelling content.

Within 45 minutes of my presentation, I received three e-mails from new advisers interested in becoming the next generation of ambassadors. The desire of young people to help is there – we need only provide them the opportunity and trust them to take it seriously.

 

Getting nonprofits started with Foursquare

Last week I had the privilege of attending the annual conference for the Military Child Education Coalition (a Weber Shandwick client) and was surprised at the enthusiasm of some attendees over Foursquare, the location-based social networking service.
 
If you don’t know much about Foursquare, here’s a good rundown on the service.
 
While I was talking about Foursquare at the conference, many attendees pulled out their smartphones to download the free mobile app and sign up on the spot.
 
Although not every nonprofit needs to use Foursquare, it could be a useful engagement tool for those that have physical locations for people to visit – such as a museum – or for special events.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• The History Channel created a profile that you can follow to receive history-related tips when you check in at various venues. Depending on your nonprofit’s mission, this can be a good method of educating people about your cause when they’re on-site and more likely to form an emotional connection.
• If you have a public venue, make sure to claim it. You’ll get access to a wealth of data about your visitors.
• Once you’ve claimed your venue, you can offer a special that rewards freuent visitors. Perhaps a museum could offer a free scoop of ice cream to visitors every fifth check-in, or free entry to special exhibitions for the “mayor,” which is the person who has visited the most times using Foursquare.

As geolocation apps become more widespread, Foursquare seems poised to take advantage of the next big trend in digital living.
 
Particularly if your nonprofit has a physical location open to the public, it makes sense to investigate how Foursquare can take your visitor interaction to the next level.
 

The Power of a Simple Idea

Thanks to Osocio's always informative blog, I was recently reminded of a campaign I came across two years ago while out to dinner at Brasserie Beck in Washington, D.C.: UNICEF’s  tap project. 

The idea behind this campaign was simple: ask restaurant patrons to donate one dollar for the tap water they usually drink for free. 

As seen on Osocio, the project has also found an innovative way to collect dollars with vending machines.  You can select from your choice of water flavors including cholera, dengue, dysentery, hepatitis, malaria, salmonella and yellow fever. 

Now entering its third year, this successful campaign is a solid example of how a smart —yet simple —idea with a strong and immediate call to action can keep reinventing itself.  

In addition, it reminded me that we all should start thinking of plans for World Water Week 2011.
 

Be Specific when Talking about Global Health

In a recent blog post, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wrote, “I generally have the view that humanitarians are really bad at framing issues and marketing causes, because they believe so deeply in them.”

The comment was part of a dialogue he had with readers who were taking him to task for over-focusing on Westerners and Americans development workers when reporting on global health and development issues.  Kristof argued that stories that had a relatable character, often a Westerner or American working in the region, resonated better with an American audience.

I wonder if the stories work not just because the ethnicity or nationality of the protagonist, but also the specificity in which the global issue was framed.  A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll on the U.S. role in global health found that while American generally don’t support foreign aid, they are more supportive of increased spending abroad for specific global health purposes.  It matters if you ask are we “spending too much on foreign aid” or are we spending too much on “efforts to improve the health for people in developing countries.” People responded even more positively to U.S. spending for specific health outcomes, like preventing malaria, treating HIV or improving access to clean water.

Another recent poll found that 9 out of 10 American aren’t familiar with the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight time-bound development goals, that if achieved together will end extreme poverty by 2015.  But after hearing more specific information about each goal, 87% believe the U.S. should be involved in accomplishing the MDGs.

Specificity matters.  We can be better at marketing causes if we are mindful that people may not know a lot about an issue, particularly global issues that they haven’t experienced firsthand.  But that doesn’t mean they won’t care.  It’s our job as storytellers to explain the issue and make it relevant for all of our audiences.