I am troubled, deeply, by the billions of people worldwide who will go to bed tonight hungry, fearful for their safety, or sick from disease. These days, it’s not worth mentioning the statistics concerning how many people live on less than $2/day. I even hesitate to use the word “statistics,” since it cheerfully allows us to ignore the very human lives behind the numbers. We know that it’s bad.

Facts and figures like these only serve to dishearten us, to make the problem seem insurmountable. But there are other statistics. Successes against disease and poverty are on the rise, many times on the local level, and the momentum of those successes is carrying over from the international development community onto the streets of America.

In grad school, I worked with The 1010 Project, a humanitarian organization that operates a robust advocacy program in the Denver area to raise awareness about issues of global poverty. Our community-based partners live in Kenya, so we didn’t get to visit very often, but frequent Skype conversations reinforced the intimate relations with those we served.

Case in point: We were speaking to a partner who operates a fish farm. Some thieves had broken in during the night and stolen all of the fish. This was bad news, to be sure, but when asked how he felt about the theft, his response was, “I am not angry that they took the fish. They must have been very hungry.”

That level of self-sacrifice and commitment to the greater good inspires me to help the poorest of the poor. Stories like that need to be spread widely. I am committed to treat all humans as I would like myself to be treated, with dignity, understanding, and compassion. That’s why I try to help.

It’s not that poverty doesn’t move them, but more correctly it is an interpretation of poverty that radicalizes (and is itself radical).

When I started my studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, I made the mistake of joking with a German colleague. We were discussing “terrorism” as a theoretical construct and I parroted the oft-repeated line that views terrorism as an outlet to poverty. This particular interpretation (which, I must be clear, I do not believe), is that for people living in poverty, the promise of money, power, and most importantly, food, can drive people to do horrific things. My colleague’s response to my joke: “That’s bulls***. It’s a fortune-cookie truism, Tim. Too simple.”

Zing!

We now know that petty criminals and regular foot soldiers are definitely susceptible to offers of money, guns, and stability. Look at how successful the Somali pirates are. They provide something to people who don’t have much. But we also know that many high-profile evildoer types are far from poor. Osama bin Laden has some kind of advanced degree. Many of the 9/11 hijackers were no strangers to the classroom. Much of the theory that surrounds extremism in all its forms comes from the halls of academia.

So it is with the Underpants Bomber [because I can] Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who certainly did not come from a life of poverty. For me, the quotation that begins this post is the most telling and complete explanation of the lure of extremist viewpoints in the modern age. Not poverty but an interpretation of poverty is the recruiting tool. I’m reminded of Archbishop Camara of Brazil, one of the central minds of liberation theology, who famously said:

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint.
When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Yan Boechat.

1. Collecting blankets, shoes and clothing is a cost-effective way to help – When I worked with The 1010 Project, we collected things like computers and notebooks for our partners in Kenya. In the aftermath of election violence in early 2008, we were able to provide materiel that aided in reconstruction and job training.
2. If I send cash, my help won’t get there – Sure it will! Even the most incredibly effective aid organizations have to “borrow” off the top of donations to fund operations. In the case of Haiti and other emergency situations, aid dollars are earmarked for immediate use, even if the funds aren’t technically immediately on hand. EG: The Red Cross has raised many dozens of millions of essentially borrowed dollars, but since the actual donations won’t balance for a few weeks, the Red Cross will essentially be working on borrowed money.
3. Volunteers are desperately needed in emergency situations – Yeah! Volunteer, just not in a disaster zone. Many nonprofits operating on the ground in Haiti need help recording donations and processing the flow of other donations. Help them out, or offer to handle other mundane tasks. Vacuuming an office during a busy week can make a world of difference. :)
4. Unaccompanied children should be adopted as quickly as possible to get them out of dangerous conditions – Unless you are a charity that deals directly with “orphans”, maybe you could just cool it for a little while. Let proper guardians step forward, and if none are available, then activate your networks.
5. People are helpless in the face of natural disasters – Absolute nonsense.  Give a social entrepreneur a dollar, and they’ll stretch it in a dozen different directions. Small-scale aid projects can be carried out by on-the-ground partners while larger orgs debate procedure and directives.

That being said there is still a lot that has to happen in Haiti to make reconstruction work. Let’s hope that we dump the disaster-emergency language and move towards reconstruction-help dialogue.

Slum tours offer travelers an authentic, offbeat look at foreign cultures—and locals a new way to make a living.

Authentic? Sure! Offbeat? How can 1/6 of the earth’s population’s lifestyle be considered “offbeat”? To her credit, the author does point out this fact. She doesn’t sound like the kind of visitor to a foreign country that makes many of us cringe, but the tour that she describes definitely gives me that feeling. Imagine the marketing that these slum tour operators must use: Come see the REAL Rio! You’ve seen the Taj Mahal, now see how millions of impoverished Indians live! Hideous capitalist mindsets run amok? I doubt it. These are regular people trying to make a living, and their product is hot.

The photo that accompanies this post is of my “impact assessment team” (me and Mark Mann) from The 1010 Project moving through the Korogocho slum of Nairobi, Kenya. Korogocho was the toughest spot I had seen in Kenya – open sewers, schoolchildren eating and learning in chicken coops, and sheet-metal homes. A few days later, my team went to Kibera. That’s the big one. Smaller in size only to Soweto in South Africa, Kibera is the slum featured in the (awesome) film “Constant Gardener”. In many ways, Kibera was a lot like Korogocho: packed to the gills with people, poor, and dangerous (like any city). But when I left Kibera, I found myself absolutely drained emotionally. That’s not an easy thing to do.

I cannot imagine poorism being a rewarding trip for anybody. Dive-bombing into an impoverished community and moving on after snapping a few interesting pictures can be spiritually dangerous. Having a sustained relationship with the slums and favelas of the world would ameliorate this, I feel, and provide the “locals a new way to make a living” that is founded on up-to-date understandings of humanitarian assistance, compassion, and friendship.

Seriously, it’s gonna be a looooooooong post.

Like 2000 words long.

In June of 2008, I walked up a stairway in the Denver Community Church and into the office of The 1010 Project. I sat with the organization’s Executive Director Adam Delp (newly minted that March) and chit-chatted about what the org. was up to, what its work in Kenya entailed, and how I might best “plug in” to that work. I was pursuing a grantwriting internship. Having already written a (albeit small) grant while at Aurora University, I figured I had an edge. Adam asked me when I could start.

On my one-year anniversary with The 1010 Project, I climbed Mt. Longonot, an extinct volcano in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya. Adam wasn’t with me (he was biking through Hell’s Gate National Park), but I was in the company of other people from The 1010 Project as well as folks from one of our partner churches. As I stood on the rim and looked out across the valley, I thought of the strange constellation of factors that had brought me to Kenya and to my future work as a Faiths Act Fellow with the Interfaith Youth Core.

When I came to The 1010 Project, our office was…unique. An executive transition in March had left things in a slightly-confused mode, but Adam and Mark Mann, the Director of Communications, were doing a great job of rebuilding and strengthening the organization. By the time I came on board, the post-election violence in Kenya had subsided, and we were designing new accountability instruments. I headed a team tasked with producing grant proposals and letters of inquiry. Up to that point, we had never received foundation funding; I was determined to change that. And so it went.

I found myself staying long, long hours at the office, writing, editing, collaborating and finding any other way that I could help the organization’s work. We embarked on an aggressive social media marketing campaign. We rebranded The 1010 Project during winter and produced training documents and continuity papers. By the time February of this year rolled around, I was managing a few interns of my own (I’ve never been comfortable calling myself an intern; I prefer “unpaid staff”). We were enjoying unparalleled success digitally. One of the grant proposals turned into $18775 in the bank. We were thriving.

And in June I headed to Kenya with The 1010 Project to meet the people for whom I had been working for for so long. It was clear to me on the ground that the work we were doing in Denver was having a lasting and positive effect on communities in Kenya. It was an amazing trip. I returned to Denver and began editing and organizing content from the trip and doing what I could to prepare the next group of committed interns to continue my work. My acceptance into the Faiths Act Fellowship was, I am sure, heavily dependent upon my work with The 1010 Project, and I needed to give back to the organization that had “made” me a future nonprofit junkie.

My last day at the office was yesterday, Friday, July 24. I leave in three days for my new job. Part of me wants to look back over the past year at all that I accomplished (usually as part of a team) that has made The 1010 Project shine. But in casting my eye backwards, I don’t see anything but the people who made my time there shine.

Adam Delp - He’s a Midwestern boy like myself. Early on (during my interview) we had an interesting discussion about the differences between a faith-based humanitarian organization (WorldVision and the like) and a faith-motivated organization (The 1010 Project).  As I came to know Adam personally and professionally, I found that his passion for helping the less fortunate was truly an outgrowth of his religious convictions. Once, after a particularly lengthy strategy meeting, he constructed a “web of reasoning,” an advocacy tool for the different ways in which to make the case for poverty alleviation, e.g. economic, political, human rights, etc. When he came to “Religion,” he explained the Christian basis for helping the poor, but blanked on how the argument could be presented to other religions. In my best “Interfaith Organizer” mode, he and I discussed how faith has often been a driver for positive social change, and how each tradition has its own ideas about why the destitute must be cared for. It was an inspiring discussion. Adam was the best kind of boss – one that trusted me to take initiative without direction and to make things happen, but who still checked in to make sure that I was alright. He didn’t think it was silly to inquire as to his employees’ “persons”. He taught me a lot about administration and international development. Good boss, greater friend.

Mark Mann – Mark runs the communications and marketing side of things, and has been with The 1010 Project for almost as long as Adam. I remember the first time Mark asked me to help write something for the website. He knew I came from a writing and research background – I was a grantwriter – and he thought I might be of use. Thus began my work with content creation and editing. We were a good team: Mark would create a newsletter in the blink of an eye and then let me fine-tune it. At the same time, he was teaching me some small part of his encyclopedic knowledge of PHP, CSS, HTML, and all other web-tools. Mark’s one of those guys that can build a beautiful website in 15 minutes – from scratch. I’m one of those guys who can fill a whole website with stories in 15 minutes. We complemented each other well. I knew that if I needed some crazy banner or some other design-piece, Mark would have it in my inbox before I even finished describing what I wanted. He’s that good. And he didn’t just help me in the office. This blog is a testament to his patience with me. Whenever I’m missing a <head> tag or can’t find a widget, he’s there with the answer. And Mark, too, became something far more than a boss. He’s a great friend and ally. We have inside jokes, some of them about Adam.

Katie Sewell – Katie came on board as our Advocacy and Outreach Coordinator a little while after I joined The 1010 Project. Katie recently completed her Master of Social Work degree at the University of Denver. At the same time, she received her Master of Divinity. Katie is a preacher. I mean that in every possible way. We’ve had a cheerfully antagonistic relationship from the get-go. She thinks I’m a madman, I think she’s too curious. But for all our banter, she’s never been too busy to have “moments” with me outside the regular flow of work to figure out what’s happening in my personal life. And although she has refused, by choice or by chance, to understand Twitter, I know that she understands far more of our work than she lets on. This became clear to me in Kenya. I had never thought Katie was much for the international development side of the work – her focus had always been on networking and advocacy. But on the ground, meeting with out partners, Katie grew wings. She was efficient, thoughtful, and thorough in gathering impact assessments. She understands the power of stories, and never missed a chance to delve a little deeper into some of our friends’ lives. Her questions were always well-appreciated, and the data that she gathered will be immensely helpful for our advocacy work. She lives to empower others. Katie’s a tough kid, and even though I doubt that she’ll read this, I hope she understands how much I’ve valued her time with us.

Ryan Linstrom – Ryan is our video guy. I recall his title as being something like “Design Coordinator”. Although he hasn’t been around lately (he’s currently studying in Jerusalem), he certainly produced some beautiful things for us. Ryan was a student at the Korbel School like me, and his wife works for a local charity. He dresses like a hipster, which we made fun of to no end (note: I secretly wish I could dress like a hipster). For the longest time, I only thought that Ryan produced still images – he made really interesting flyers and had a way with texture-work that I’ve rarely seen repeated. One day, I came into the office and Adam asked me if I wanted to see the new video Ryan had made. I did not expect him to have created something that soon! The video is 1:43 long and features some beautiful music and a bunch of great pictures and video of our Kenyan partners. The message of the video is that it only takes on person [YOU] to break the cycle of poverty. I remember crying at the end of the video and trying to shake a strong body buzz. He had created something powerful that has stuck with me for many, many months. I still get misty when I watch it. Ryan’s also big on stories, and whether he’s telling them in print or in moving pictures, they are amazing. Oh, did I mention he’s also an amazing photographer?

Emily Ruppel – So one day an intern showed up in the office. Her name was Emily, and she had only recently returned to the United States from the Peace Corps…in Kenya. What an asset! She lived for over a year in the very place where we did our poverty-eradication work! Emily seemed to have near perfect knowledge of East Africa. She, too, was a student at the Korbel School. She’s a hard worker, to say the least. When she came in, she decided to reform and renovate our entire data-collection and impact assessment system, as well as streamline our Kenya-to-Denver communication systems. BAM! Just like that. While working on the grant that we ended up winning, she proved invaluable, providing me with lots of data and thoughts from our partners’ proposals. Without her, it wouldn’t have happened. And she became a celebrity during our visit to Kenya, often taking the lead with monetary negotiations, teaching Kiswahili, and helping us to figure out the local culture. Her guidance was invaluable. She stayed in Kenya this summer to work on a massive health project. Someday, when she’s the Director of USAID, I hope she’ll remember the guy at The 1010 Project who had a million questions about foreign aid instruments, Kenyan cuisine, and life.

Jackie - She started out as our Special Events Coordinator. She’s enormously intelligent and gets all the silly jokes that I make about international politics. Oh, she as well is a student at Korbel. Jackie is in Kenya this summer interning for an NGO that works with community-based groups, organizing a massive women’s conference and helping out at a local orphanage. Working alongside her has been an enriching and hilarious experience. Also, she’s my girlfriend. :)

So many more people for whom I cannot continue writing paragraphs! I apologize. Keith, who has done more strategizing than any other human I’ve met. Matt, who co-lead the grantwriting team until his departure to study abroad. Jenny, who balances our books. Fred, who manages our work in-country, and whose house is always open to those in need. Jessie, Betsy, Micah, Jennifer, Erica, the guys at Elias Fund, James, other Mark, Yvonne, Rachel, Megan and everyone else who put up with my outbursts and still sought my advice at the end of the day – thank you.

Oh, here I am, waxing on at just shy of 2000 words about the people who have changed my world for the better. I am reminded of the story behind The 1010 Project’s name. It comes from the Bible, in the Book of John, where Jesus states that people should have life, and have it to the fullest. The work of the organization is guided by the belief that we can help our friends in Kenya, community by community, family by family, and person by person, to live life to the fullest.

My friends and coworkers at The 1010 Project have done that for me – they have helped me to live my life to the fullest extent. You won’t find a more professional or committed team. I cannot thank them enough.

I was presented with the argument that “fixing” the problems in the developing world is best left to the “experts” in the West. It is assumed, or “proved” through analysis that the West knows best. While I was presented with evidence both for and against this theory in school, I found my real answer in the work that I was doing with The 1010 Project. The founder of the organization, Andrew Syed, was fond of saying (paraphrased) the following:

People in America have this picture of people in Africa standing there with their hands open, waiting for someone to come and help them, to rescue them. That picture couldn’t be farther from the truth. Africans, as well as the rest of the developing world’s people, are already hard at work in their communities affecting change from the bottom-up.

He’s right. We often say at the office that we don’t provide handouts or a hand-up, but that we extend a helping hand. That means “listening to, learning from, and humbly serving alongside the true experts in the development field – the poor.” On our last visit to Kenya, during one of our various meetings with community-based organizations, I realized (suddenly) that I wasn’t teaching them anything. Our Kenyan partners were explaining everything to us!

Whether it was previously-unknown microfinance instruments, or how to cook building bricks out of mud and rock, or how to provide healthcare and antiretroviral drugs to those with HIV/AIDS, our team was truly learning alongside experts. In fact, they laughed at us when we didn’t understand concepts that to a resident of Kenya might seem laughably simple. And we laughed right along with them, not just because they were right, but because we were friends.

Towards the end of our stay in Kenya, I was reading an op-ed in Business Daily Africa called “Time to attack myth of Western superiority.” It was written by Eveline Herfkens, the founder of the UN Millennium Campaign and former Dutch Minister for Development Co-operation. She said that in recent years, it was inspiring to see “… Africans stand up against the insulting paternalism of some parts of the international aid community.”

It was a great article, and it reaffirmed my belief in one of her exhortations:

It is high time to attack the underlying myth of Western superiority: we lecture —you listen; we give —you receive; we know—you learn; we take care of things— because you can’t.

If my short time in Kenya taught me anything, it’s that the myth of Western superiority is on the way out. Humanitarian organizations in the West and beyond have learned (most of them), that partnering with social entrepreneurs in the developing world and developing friendships with them can be a powerful way to affect change. I couldn’t agree more.

“Call. Response?

I received an email from Robert, a Ugandan friend, last evening asking for support for some projects he is working on, specifically for his mother and some orphans from the community. If anyone has any suggestions, comments, or contacts that may be able to address his need, please let me know. I have been friends with him since 2005 and he has never once asked for my financial support. While I could not help him alone, I believe the wonders of social media could bring together some possible solutions. Let me know. A portion of his email follows:

“For the last 2years, I have been thinking of ways of getting mum off the Island and have her settle on the mainland. and take care of the family, for the years God will giving her, before she rests. From the little savings I make from the SHIM (Shepherd’s Heart International Ministries) allowances, and the gifts we get from friends. I was able to purchase I small piece of land and set up a three roomed house, Which has been raised up to the wall plant and now the challenge I have is of roofing it and putting in doors. When I was speaking to the man that is helping me do this work, He told me it would cost me about 2.5m UGX Equivalent to $1200. After my mum settles I am planning to rent a piece land where we can do some gardening. This will help us get food for home use and some for sale as way of generating money to keep supporting the other kids, and also we can rear some animals to help in raising finances to support the family. also at the same time, during harvest season mum with the children around who are now growing, would buy crops cheaply from the other farmers and sell them to the other buyers for a little profit. These are all my future plans to help the family stand without depending on me or anyone. Because I am not able. Yet I am also looking forward to getting my own family. I also have some children who are homeless and once mum settle I like her to stay with them they are about four 3 girls and one boy.

Above all, the eyes of all my relatives are looking on me, because I am the big man in the whole clan and the only one who has attained education and for them they look at me as a solution to all of their needs.”

I hope this letter finds you healthy and happy. I’ve eaten a great deal of celery in the past week, a fact for which I have no explanation.

I am back from Africa! In my work with The 1010 Project, I’ve spent a lot of time telling the stories of social entrepreneurs and community-based organizations in Kenya, and it was a real treat to finally meet the people for whom I’ve been advocating; I was connecting names with faces and voices in real life. I’d like to pretend that I wrote most of this Dispatch while I was on the ground, but the truth is that I was too busy with our work there to handle a simple email missive like this.

Our first week was spent across the various slums of Nairobi, meeting with our friends. We headed to western Kenya (a bit like rural Illinois, but with tea fields instead of corn) for a bit to meet with rural partners. We spent a few days at Lake Naivasha in order to act like real tourists – I saw hippos – and to climb a volcano in the Great Rift Valley. We then returned to the Nairobi area to conduct further impact assessments and finish up our visit.

Folks, I came face to face with crushing poverty in the slums of Korogocho and Kibera. Having spent nearly a year preparing myself, much of what I saw still came as a complete shock; rivers of sewage, sheet metal houses, and children crammed into schoolrooms the size of my apartment’s kitchen. Those things alone were enough to convince me of the need for the work that I’ve been doing. However, I also saw community groups and schools and churches making real strides to break the cycle of poverty and change their communities and society for the better. I met people who were dedicating their entire existence to improving the standard of life in Kenya and I was inspired by their strength.

As with any excursion overseas, there are far too many stories to tell. I’m still trying to sort out all the audio, video, pictures, and stories that I collected. I’m blogging now at http://timbrauhn.com, and I hope to provide more interesting insights and information for all of you. Has my cynicism regarding the developing world increased? Sure! I’ve seen some pretty depressing stuff. Has my hope for changing the situation increased? You bet your life! Progress can be made, and the work of humanitarian organizations like The 1010 Project is very important for empowering people in the developing world.

I leave for my new job with the Interfaith Youth Core and Tony Blair Faith Foundation in about two weeks. I’ll be training in London, Chicago, and Tanzania. The task at hand is eradicating malaria, a goal that can most assuredly be reached if we all work together. Rotary International reduced polio to a shadow; a grand interfaith coalition can do the same for malaria.

As always, I reiterate my thanks to all of you for your support and friendship as I do my best to make a difference. Stay tuned – I plan on making some waves in this world.

And of course, remember to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. Regular exercise is also good.

The icons after my name in these emails link to my my blog, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. accounts. You can use them to follow along.

All the best,

–
Tim Brauhn
Fundraising Coordinator
The 1010 Project
720.381.1096

OK. So I take off on Monday morning for Kenya. That’s in 3 days. Got a few things to do.

I’m traveling with a team from The 1010 Project, a humanitarian organization here in Denver. We partner with creative and innovative social entrepreneurs in the developing world to break the cycle of poverty. As the Fundraising Coordinator, a big part of my job is writing the grants that help keep us trucking along. But to write good grants and to keep our international development work running smoothly, we need DATA.

We’re going to Kenya to meet with partners and friends in our community-based organizations. They’re mostly in Nairobi, scattered across the various slums and estates, but we do have a few rural partners as well. We’ll be going all the way out to Kisumu near Lake Victoria. We’re collecting boatloads of photos, lots of video and audio, and most importantly, stories. We view ourselves as storytellers – our tagline is “Join the Story” – and we’re going to talk with the people that our income-generation activities benefit. We’ll be visiting schools, orphanges, microfinance institutions, women’s empowerment groups, and HIV/AIDS support groups.

I’ve never been to Africa, but I hear good things. Our team is super-talented and super-cool, so I don’t expect any problems. I’ll be tweeting along with our Director of Communications, Mark Mann. With luck, we’ll be tweeting like mad by next Wednesday morning, or for those of you in Denver, late Tuesday night (there is a 10-hour time difference). So stay sharp, keep up with us, and we’ll see you when we get back!

poverty, the 1010 project, africa, kenya, mark mann, twitter