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I learned my first lesson in global development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya over a decade ago.  It was a simple enough lesson in “needs assessment”, which is essentially an activity that attempts to identify so-called “actual needs” from “perceived needs” within a given community. 

For example, a Kenyan villager once said to me that his community needs a water catchment system and water tanks on each house to capture rainwater.  But when I asked why he feels this is so vital when there is a clean water source less than a kilometer away, he said to me, “because the volunteer before you helped the next village over to get water tanks.  We want them to!”

A water tank attached to a corrogated metal roof to catch rain water

This fascinated me.  Not WHAT he saw as a need so much as WHY he saw it as a need.  The other village that got water tanks was his only exposure to any kind of development.  He didn’t realize that there were options – other projects that could be successfully undertaken and benefit his village in far greater ways than water tanks.  His choice was limited to what he knew was available, and his knowledge of what was available clearly did not extend far beyond the next village.

Since the end of World War II, Nongovernmental Organizations (or NGO’s) and multi-lateral aid agencies have been the sole assessor of what poor people need.  So they imposed their idea of development with a mentality of “if we build it, they will develop,” So what we saw was heavy investment in easily quantifiable construction projects for health clinics, boreholes, wells, toilets and schools.  At the time, the successful installation of these projects pleased the donors who had paid for them.  But what we found decades later, in Africa specifically, is that these projects were failing and poverty continued to rise.  Students couldn’t afford to attend the schools that were built. Clinics couldn’t stock up with drugs unless they were free.  Communities didn’t maintain water pumps when the parts broke….  The capacity of the populations to sustain development projects was too low due to the lack of education.  And the incentive of NGOs to sustain those projects for them was even lower.  After all, “sustainability” is the mantra by which all NGOs justify their projects.  Donors don’t like funding the same projects in perpetuity.

What we are seeing now is a shift away from project-centric development.  Instead, NGOs, especially those that have sprung up in the past 5-10 years, are focusing on developing human capacity through education.  This is significant because education allows beneficiaries to better assess their own ACTUAL needs.  And when the beneficiaries’ SUBJECTIVE assessment of what a need is, is in agreement with an NGO’s OBJECTIVE assessment of what the need is, this indicates a level of human capacity among beneficiaries in which projects have a chance of succeeding.  The idea behind a development project can only grow in fertile minds.  In my experience, a high school-level education is the bare minimum required by a community for a development project to succeed on the whole.  Whether the area of focus is on health, peace building, democracy building, boreholes or water tanks; if the capacity to understand what one’s own needs are is absent, we are likely investing in a project that is destined for failure. 

Agnes, a Maasai girl, on graduation day from college

For this reason, NGOs like mine are increasingly investing in PEOPLE rather than PROJECTS by offering workshops in entrepreneurship and leadership, as well as scholarships to higher education and other learning opportunities.

My organization, Kenya Education Fund, offers high school and university scholarships, as well as mentoring, for poor Kenyans, and was partly inspired by the man I just told you about, unaware of what his own “actual” needs were.  A recent report issued by UNESCO shows that 2 out of 3 children in Africa are left out of secondary schools, and states that, “there is no escape from poverty without the vast expansion of secondary education worldwide.”

I end with this. Improving quality of life – whether it’s alleviating poverty or curing AIDS – is the underlying mission of every international development agency.  We are also results-driven.  Even in the changing landscape of human development – this much, at least, has not changed.  But as we shift from building projects to building human capacity, there is also a need to educate our donors that results from education will take longer to materialize than the sinking of a bore hole – perhaps as long as a generation or two – but those results will have a lasting effect and an even greater return on our investment in human beings.

Six years ago Bradley Broder was in Northern Kenya and he met a woman who was on her death bed. Her dying wish was that Bradley ensure that her daughter made it through high school. He went back home and his fund raising efforts were so successful that he raised so much money that he and his team sent more Kenyan children to school.

Click below to read more:

http://www.the-star.co.ke/society/society/60944-kenya-education-funds-tribe-soiree

The motivating idea behind the KEF is that education improves lives.  The success of just one educated person makes life better for those around them.  Anderson is a shining example of this.  His salary pays school fees for 5 of his nieces and nephews.  To me this epitomizes the power education has to end poverty and to break Africa’s dependency on donor aid.

Barbara at Barak Oontoyie High School

Other KEF Scholars I meet with have expressed to me similar plans they have to use their education to benefit their families or communities.  Three girl scholars I caught up with this past week said they wish to become doctors so they can “treat people.”  Two of these girls are Maasai.  As there are not many Maasai doctors in Kenya, it is easy to imagine how a female doctor returning to her birthplace can change things in rural areas where good health care is virtually non-existent.

Jennifer at Moi Girls in Isinya Kenya

I love visiting these students.  I listen carefully to their experience as KEF scholars and as Kenyan students.  Their stories are the stuff that keeps me going.  The education that KEF helps these kids access is creating citizens of substance who take seriously the responsibility of making their country a better place for everyone.

Like Anderson, who sacrifices his car in a gesture of gratitude for the help KEF has extended him, other KEF scholars are waiting for the day that they can give something back too.  And they will do so not because they are forced to, but because their education has taught them that it is the right thing to do.

But the boundary between city and rural areas (aka “bush”) is stark, both economically and mentally.  There is no “suburbia” to serve as buffer between concrete jungle and farms from which the majority of Kenyans hail.   According to Kenya’s 2010 National Census, 68% of the population still lives in rural areas.  So for all too many enterprising young Kenyans seeking the storied opportunities of urban centers, the transition from village to city is an intimidating journey often depositing them in informal settlements known as urban slums.

Kenya’s continued progress hinges on its ability to evolve from its “bush mentality” to one of urban aplomb.  The country must forgo, in large measure, its long history of small-plot farming and begin embracing cosmopolitanism if its people are to realize the higher standard of living promised by modernism.  In many ways this trend has already begun.  But as Kenyan cities begin to swell with the hopes, dreams and bodies of rural folk, the cost of living rises, and with it, the abject conditions of the slums in which the most affordable housing can be found.

I think we can all agree that slums are bad. I would like to see a Kenya where KEF scholars (and the rest of Kenyan society) don’t have to choose between bush and slum, and where low-income housing need not be synonymous with “squalor”.

So I pose the question: Do aid organizations that offer free slum services like health clinics and schools, make matters worse by attracting more people to the slums and encouraging current residents to stay?  Or do these free services succeed in alleviating squalid conditions in informal settlements, helping transform them into something resembling more “formal” settlements?

Discuss.

Kenya Education Fund Supporters Turn to Innovative Fundraising Sites and change the world! 

Each time someone searches the web or shops online, a donation is made to Kenya Education Fund through GoodSeach.com!

(New York, NY), November 2011 – Kenya Education Fund (KEF) supporters are revolutionizing charitable giving – turning their every day actions into ways of providing educational resources to nearly 500 Kenyan boys and girls.

How?  By using GoodSearch.com and GoodShop.com.

GoodShop.com works with more than 3,000 top online retailers including Toys “R” Us, Target, Best Buy, Apple, Sephora, Macy’s, 1-800-Flowers, PetSmart, and Expedia among others.  The shopping experience and prices are the same as going to the retailer directly, but each time you shop at one of these stores via GoodShop, a percentage of what you spend goes back to your favorite charity or school.  And, equally as exciting, GoodShop.com offers over 100,000 money saving coupons and free shipping offers.  So, not only are you helping your cause, but you are also saving money while doing so.

Similarly, with every search conducted on Yahoo!-powered GoodSearch.com, approximately one penny is donated to your favorite charity.  It’s used exactly like any other search engine and the pennies add up quickly.

Search engine advertisers and online shopping generate billions of dollars each year.  Now, some of that money is going towards helping us provide tuition and boarding for our students, as well as pay for books, tutoring and mentoring workshops.

More than 100,000 nonprofits have partnered with GoodShop and GoodSearch and millions of people are using these sites to help their causes. GoodSearch and GoodShop have raised nearly $8 million — helping make a real difference for the organizations they work with!

To understand the potential of GoodSearch, here are some other examples:

• UNICEF has used the money earned from GoodSearch and GoodShop to provide clean drinking water to more than 200,000 children!

• Supporters of the ASPCA have raised more than $40,000 to help animals in need!

• The National Inclusion Project, which helps children with disabilities, has used the $16,000+ its supporters have raised to send nearly 250 children to summer camp!

GoodSearch and GoodShop have grown into a massive online grassroots movement attracting the attention of leaders in the nonprofit industry, students, bloggers, writers, and even celebrities such as Jessica Biel, Montel Williams, Thomas Ian Nicholas, and Rob Thomas who have all created videos on behalf of their favorite charities.

The GoodSearch and GoodShop team is revolutionizing online philanthropy so that no one is denied the opportunity to support the causes most important to them.  “We have taken simple everyday actions, like searching and shopping, and turned them into ways people can do good with just the click of a mouse,” says Scott Garell, CEO of GoodSearch (and former President of Ask.com). “Around the holidays when everyone is thinking ‘how can I give back,’ GoodSearch provides an easy and meaningful way to fund causes most important to them.”

For more information contact:

Brad Broder, Executive Director

Kenya Education Fund

broder@kenyaeducationfund.org

Or

JJ Ramberg, GoodSearch.com – 877 466 3004 x 702, jj.ramberg@goodsearch.com

Decision to Add Kenya Education Fund to 2011–12 Catalogue Based on In-Depth Review

WASHINGTON, D.C.—This year’s Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington (www.catalogueforphilanthropy-dc.org) will contain a new, worthy non-profit organization— Kenya Education Fund (KEF), whose mission is to provide disadvantaged students in Kenya, and their schools, with support and educational resources so that they may improve their communities and break the cycle of poverty in the country.

After a rigorous review process. CFP selected the KEF to join its network, which brings together donors, volunteers, employers, and worthy local non-profits to strengthen our communities.

Since its inaugural edition nine years ago, the Catalogue has raised more than $15 million from caring individuals for featured non-profits with annual budgets of $3 million or less. The KEF is one of 70 non-profits making an appearance in this year’s Catalogue.

The KEF’s partnership with The Catalogue for Philanthropy has helped us to educate hundreds of nomadic and pastoralist Africans who are unable to attend high school or university due to extreme poverty. Funds received through the Catalogue go directly towards school fees and supplies for KEF Scholars. Together we continue to save countless girls from the horror of female circumcision and forced marriage by providing them with educational opportunities within Kenya that allow them to control their own destinies, ” notes Bradley Broder, KEF Executive Director.

“At the Catalogue, we like to say that each non-profit we include is ‘one of the best,’ and that applies to KEF. We make this statement based on a rigorous financial evaluation for effectiveness and transparency, at least one site visit, and input from more than 100 independent community reviewers. Donors know they can trust the Catalogue to help them make smart decisions about local non-profits where their contributions can really make a difference,” says Barbara Harman, CFP president and editor.

The Catalogue’s web site at www.catalogueforphilanthropy-dc.org allows donors to search by field, view all nonprofits in a list, or search using key words. The How to Give section includes a Gift Registry, Gift Cards, a section Especially for Kids, and more.

“Throughout the years ahead, even the most worthwhile nonprofits will be starved for resources,” says Harman, “and will be left to scramble for limited public and private funds — particularly the small, local nonprofits that are so essential to the health of our communities. That’s why this year’s featured Catalogue charities and our entire network of over 300 vetted nonprofits, is so important.”

This year’s Catalogue is dedicated to the memory of businessman and philanthropist Sidney Harman, who was a founder and enthusiastic supporter of the Catalogue.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

About Kenya Education Fund
info@kenyaeducationfund.org

(212) 792-6300, x6433

www.kenyaeducationfund.org

About the Catalogue
Adam Shapiro
202-427-3603
ashapiro@lipmanhearne.com