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Group Tips
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During the Sunday morning of our National Conference, all participants were split into groups which engaged in a number of workshops dealing with effective speaking, outreach, and E and A meetings. Below is a compilation of 20 suggestions made by volunteers from across the country during these workshops:
1) Structure your outreach so you attract a diverse group of people. This diversity will make the meetings more vibrant.
2) Invite guest speakers to meetings.
3) Collaborate with other groups that share a similar mandate.
4) Bring food.
5) Work to continually bring new members into the group.
6) Ensure that meetings are efficient, and have a set agenda beforehand.
7) Try to hold social events.
8) Have group members take on different roles for the group (i.e. MP point person, Outreach lead etc.)
9) Use humor - meetings should be fun!
10) If possible, group leaders/partners should follow up with group members both by phone and email between meetings.
11) Share and celebrate successes (one way is through printing out and bringing published letters to meetings).
12) Provide a welcome package for new members (this is something the staff will work on).
13) Periodically have group leaders/partners check in with volunteers to see if their expectations for the group are being met.
14) When a new member enters a group, meet with them beforehand to ensure that they are introduced to RESULTS and understand how meetings work - follow up with them after the meeting as well.
15) Provide a lot of notice for meetings.
16) Ensure that the group is action oriented - showing up to meetings isn't enough!
17) Refrain from using 'jargon' at meetings.
18) Provide opportunities for group members to get involved in a variety of tasks, so people can get involved in ways that their schedule allows i.e. if certain people can't make it to meetings - they can still get the actions sheets, write letters, and report back to the group!
19) Ensure that group conversations aren't exclusionary - and that new members feel comfortable and welcomed when they arrive.
20) Ensure that groups are not hierarchical, so that all members feel empowered during meetings.
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Sanitation and Water Action Network
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In January 2007, RESULTS began a campaign to improve access to sanitation in poor countries. Sanitation is the probably world's most neglected public health emergency, and the most lagging of all the Millennium Development Goals. Almost half the planet, 2.6 billion people lack access to even a simple latrine. The toll is staggering. Every day 4,500 children die because they do not have access to basic sanitation and water. While significant progress has been made globally in recent decades to provide clean water, sanitation has seen little progress. Canada is typical of most donors, spending no more than one-third of its fair share on water and sanitation, and most of that on water.
There is some good news, however. RESULTS is not alone in advocating for inc reased attention and funding. Along with the Canadian organization Watercan and other groups, RESULTS has formed a new coalition called SWAN (Sanitation and Water Action Network) to magnify and coordinate our advocacy efforts. SWAN plans to have a website up soon, and plans are under way for a public event in Ottawa in November, hopefully with a high profile patron and media attention.
A second piece of good news is that 2008 has been named "International Year of Sanitation" (IYS) by the United Nations, in recognition of the urgent need for increased attention. On Nov. 21 in New York, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the patron of the IYS, the Netherlands' Prince of Orange, will officially launch the "International Year of Sanitation" with a hand washing ceremony and media event.
RESULTS is addressing sanitation for our November action to generate momentum around the International Year of Sanitation. Our primary request for November is to have Cana da become a founding donor for the new "Global Sanitation Fund" (GSF). The GSF fund is the world's first multilateral fund to specifically address sanitation. It provides a unique opportunity for progress on the world's biggest public health issue. World Toilet Day (November 19) provides a media hook to draw attention to the new "Global Sanitation Fund".
Blaise
President
RESULTS Canada
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Global Fund Advocacy
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Hi everyone, In late September, I was fortunate enough to go to Berlin and attended the Global Fund Replenishment Meeting where I engaged with advocates and donors from around the world. RESULTS Canada has been especially effective in its advocacy on the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria through our ability to work with a coalition of global health advocates here in Canada and abroad. We were not impressed by Canada's lack of solid commitment to the fund, and are pushing hard to ensure that we sep up to the plate soon. I'd like to describe some of the mechanisms by which RESULTS conducts advocacy with regards to the Global Fund: Nationally we work closely with the Global Treatment Access Group (GTAG) here in Canada. GTAG is a coalition of over 20 Canadian non-governmental organizations working to halt the spread of HIV, Malaria and TB and ensure Canada meets its fair share commitment of infectious diseases. Working with GTAG we are able to gather and verify information on the government's level of understanding on the needs of the Global Fund and the potential contribution expected from Canada. Most importantly, through our collective effort we are able to send a stronger message through direct outreach from each organization and a groundswell of letter writing from groups with volunteer constituencies including RESULTS, Oxfam, Canadian Crossroads International, and others. Internationally, we work in collaboration with the Contact Group for the Developed Country NGO Delegation on the Global Fund. Through the Contact Group we are able to dialogue directly with advocates from other donor countries, learning from each others' strategies and impacts, and also sharing intelligence on upcoming decisions at Board Meetings and other international events like G8 summits. We collectively devise methdologies for calculating each donor country's fair share contribution. Our most notable successes on the Global Fund have been through coalition led advocacy. We have advocated successfully to close funding gaps for each Round, so much so that no proposal that has been accepted by the Global Fund board was ever short of funding. Most notably however is that through collective advocacy we have been instrumental in the sharp increase in Canada's Global Fund contributions, as Canada is now ranked as the 8th largest donor to the Fund. Our sights are now set on working through coalitions to ensure a generous and multi-year contribution from Canada to the Global Fund over the next 3 years. Our representatives did not take the opportunity in Berlin to announce Canada's commitment to the Fund, and we must keep up the pressure as Parliament gets ready to resume. The Global Fund needs an average of USD $300 million annually from Canada over the next three years, and we are working hard to make that happen. Labib Project Manager ACTION Project |
Meet Ingrid Munro
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Below is an
interview with Ingrid
Munro and pullitzer-prize winning journalist Alex Rasking from May 10,
2007. Munro is the
founder of Jamii Bora Trust- the largest microcredit institution in
Kenya.  RESULTS and the Microcredit Summit Campaign flew
Ingrid into Canada in October for some advoacy work. She has also been
gracious enough to speak at our Calgary and Ottawa fundraisers. Through her work with Jamii Bora Trust, Ingrid is truly revolutionizing sustainable ground-up development. Click here for Ingrid's presentation on Jamii Bora from the Microcredit Summit Campaign
Q: Where do you trace the roots of Jamii Bora?
For me, the story began after I moved to Nairobi [Kenya] in 1986 with my husband, who works for the United Nations, and took a job as a director of the African Housing Fund [the division of Shelter Afrique that builds shelters and homes for the poor].
Still, I don't think I knew much about the city's homeless beggars until they literally started knocking on my front door. Waithaka, a small, seven year old boy, must have been the first to make an intense impression on me because we ended up adopting him in 1988. You could also say he adopted us. Waithaka was very popular in his village, and a great guide for us. In 1991 and '92, we adopted his brothers, Kweithi and Maina.
It was through those boys and their mothers that I came to really understand the depth of the problems in Nairobi's slums. I knew we had to do something to help, but I didn't know what until I retired from the Housing Fund. Back then, in the late '90s, the beggars were coming to my door saying "You can't abandon us now, Mum, you're our mother."
Their words deeply affected me because in the slums, families don't abandon their kids. Mothers and grandmothers especially, even if they're blind and deaf, still do everything they can to care for their children."
So in mid-1999 I started what I thought would be a little club of some beggar women I knew. I told each woman, "For every schilling [about 15 cents in U.S. dollars today] you save, I'll give you two schillings. And from then on, you can always borrow twice as much as you've saved." A gentleman from Norway who knew me for many years was my first donor. Typically they started selling vegetables. And after a few months my club of 50 women had grown to 1,000.
That's when I knew we had to formalize the group's operations. We decided to call it Jamii Bora-Jamii Bora means 'good families' in Swahili. And that's what we say-you can be very poor but you're still a good family, and you still have the talent to get out of poverty." Today, we serve about 140,000 members.
Q. You've told me that many of the slums were both spiritually and economically downtrodden, so I would assume it wasn't always easy to help people realize their talents.
Most people in the slums lack not only food and shelter, but also hope and dreams. But at the same time, and I think this fact is always underappreciated, the most destitute often do the biggest miracles. Look at how the whole of the United States was built by the poorest of the poor. Had there been an International Monetary Fund or World Bank, these people wouldn't have had a chance of building a better life for their kids, but the poor built that country. And so many of the people in Jamii Bora have turned out to be so composed, self-confident and driven that you would never dream they came from such humble beginnings.
Q: You've described the route out of poverty as "a long climb on a very steep ladder." Can you tell us about some of your early climbers?
One of the fastest in the early days was Joyce Wairimu. She came to us after losing her farm and ending up as a beggar. Today she has four businesses and 45 employees. I also talk about Wilson Maina, who was a thief. He told us that he felt so hungry all the time that he had decided it would be better to die from a police bullet than from starvation.
Q: How does today's Jamii Bora differ from the little club you started seven years ago?
Having reached 25% of the poor in Nairobi's two worst slums, we are now ready to grow really fast and reach about 25% of the whole country's poor. I want to go from 140,000 to at least 500,000 by 2009. We have the breadth to do that, with 61 branches across the country. With the MIS System [known as the "Starbucks of Microfinance"], we also have the right technology in place to expand safely and transparently. The system links the small hand-held computers that our workers-even while bicycling between remote villages--can use to exchange loan data with our central server in Nairobi.
Q: Still, your plans to build a new town have faced challenges.
We finally have the go-ahead to build, though, after years of court challenges from Nairobi homeowners. It was the classic thing--rich people not wanting to have poor people around. But the need for housing is obvious.
Right now the typical member does business at home, but 'home' is often a six square meter space that serves as the bedroom, the toilet, the kitchen and the store. The town [on a 293 acre parcel of land near Nairobi] will include housing, a shopping center and a hospital.
Q: What hasn't changed despite the modernizations?
We've remained faithful to the original idea, "that you can borrow twice as much as you've saved." That gives us a very strong foundation, because we have a lot of savings, and our members take very small risks." Jamii Bora has received some grants, but it largely pays for itself. And perhaps most important, nearly all our staff members are former borrowers or their relatives.
Q: Why is that so crucial?
Jamii Bora was born out of friendship and trust between poor people themselves.
That creates a uniquely strong kind of faith and partnership that outside aid workers cannot share. For instance, many groups in Kenya are scared of working with people in the worst slums. But my staff is not afraid, because they were born in the very same slum, and the thugs and thieves were their classmates in primary school.
Q: You must have faced criticism at some point from economists who said that financial institutions can't simply grow organically, without supervision by trained leaders.
Organic growth is definitely the right word for Jamii Bora. And sure, there were plenty of academics who said "This is very noble of you, but it will never work."
But our members have advanced degrees from a very tough institution, the University of Life.
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RECOMMENDED READING
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Are you looking for an provocative read?
A book that will challenge the way you view humanitarian aid and international development?
If so, William Easterly's book "The White Man's Burden" is the right book for you. Easterly, who spent 16 years as a research economist at the World Bank, delivers a devastating critique of international aid spending in this controversial book.
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National Conference Follow Up |
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 From October 26-29, RESULTS Canada held a truly groundbreaking national conference. Over 70 RESULTS volunteers, staff, and board members from across the country converged upon Parliament Hill to dig deeper on the issues, sharpen their advocacy skills, develop new tools for group sustainability, and engage in roundtable discussions with journalists and parliamentarians.
During the conference, groups were given a chance to develop 12 month plans, and to engage in interactive workshops, which yielded some interesting ideas for how the staff can further support the grassr oots.
We will try to implement everybody's suggestions. In the short term, some things to look out for are a photo essay from the conference, and a new downloadable information package for newcomers when they attend their first E and A meeting.
If there are any additional ideas that you have, or ideas for how the staff can better support the grassroots, please email them to ben@results-resultats.ca. We see the National Conference as a real breakthrough for the organization, and we want to keep the forward momentum going. Connecting the staff with the grassroots and providing as much support as possible is the key element in this process.
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