USAID joins Social Business movement

Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and USAID Administrator Dr Rajiv Shah shook hands after signing an MOU at USAID Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on 22 July 2013 (Monday) affirming their common interest in fostering market-based solutions to the critical social and economic challenges facing the world’s poor.

It's more than 5 years since P-CED founder Terry Hallman called on USAID with a social business proposal with the primary objective of placing children from institutions and on the streets into loving family homes.

When I wrote recently of the new bottom line, I was illustrating the congruence between our work and what Muhammand Yunus advocates in social business when he said of Grameen Danone that the 'bottom line' is the number of children removed from malnutrition.

For USAID however removing children from institutions was something that just couldn't be done. They'd responded to say that there was no budget for this group of 'retarded children'. 

The letter to USAID several months earlier drew attention to the involvement of organised crime, including the trafficking of stem stells from abored foetuses.  It was also a response to former director Henrietta Fore's pledge earlier in February 2008  :

“We will devote more of our management, technical expertise and financing resources to coordinating international development to avert duplication of effort, break down silos, and build partnerships that accelerate the pace of progress.

We are creating, and becoming part of, a Global Development Commons: A community of continuous and real time information exchange, coordination, partnership and action between public and private donors, agencies, NGOs, host governments and civil society all in constant collaboration. A Global Development Commons gives people in the developing world the tools they need to lead their own development."

To which we responded:

"I need grants sufficient to provide the beginning of foundation funding. With that, and with the publicity and communications machinery we have in place via P-CED, Maidan, KHPG, ForUa, and U-CAN among others, we can get this done. Immediately, I/we need $25,000 to go ahead and fully activate PN rescue and recovery operations, which is in turn part of a larger network ready-to-go as soon as funding is available. No one person knows all network nodes, but nodes and persons understand each other is around, focused on the same objectives and ready to move forward. I find myself in default position of lead organizer due to two main factors. One is the catalyst effect of the Death Camps series in 2006, which put me at epicenter. Two is my US citizenship. Whacking me would make a much more difficult mess than whacking a Ukrainian citizen, not least due to the nature of the work I’m doing in childcare reform and poverty relief according to and protected by Ukraine’s own laws – most especially the human rights section (section two) of Ukraine’s own Constitution. If I get whacked, there is only one organization in Ukraine with motive and hutzpa to take that chance: “UkrCosaNostra.” That would be the folks who stand to lose lucrative black cash flows. To counter publicly, it has been suggested that their activities are sufficiently grand and reprehensible as to bypass Ukrainian machinations altogether in favor of international law via European Court of Human Rights, and possibly even the Hague for crimes against humanity. Much of the opposition noise in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada at the moment is mafia hired hands scrambling to protect various organized crime rackets and income. Transparency, free media, and anti-corruption efforts of any kind are their worst enemies. We are merely emblematic of their worst fears."

"I and others shall continue to think positive and look for aid budgets and funding spigots to be opened much more for people and NGOs in silos, foxholes and trenches, insisting on better than ordnance, and who understand things and how to fix them. We can do that. We can even do it cost-effectively and with far better efficiency than the ordnance route. Welcome to our brave new world. Except it’s not so new: learn to love and respect each other first, especially the weakest, most defenseless, most voiceless among us, then figure out the rest. There aren’t other more important things to do first. This message has been around for at least two thousand years. How difficult is it for us to understand?"

According to my now deceased colleague, USAID was one of the most corrupt organisations in the United States.He'd pointed out to me that the Eurasia Foundation who I contacted in 2006 had something like a 70% project failure rate. My USAID  contact Eric Boyle was interested enough to suggest forwarding our proposal.

It's a similar experience when I make contact with Erste Bank and Grameen Creative Labs. Erste were running a social business ideas competition in 2010 and the proposal for microeconomic development and social enterprise in Ukraine was my submission..

The following year Erste Bank would join USAID in a social enterprise initiative which was a long way from the social business strategy we shared with both of the, It would strip out the primary objective and create a partnership of corporations from which we were excluded. As I would later discover from the British Council, we were disregarded in our partner application on the basis of not being able to make a financial contribution.

We had of course made a considerable financial contribution in developing the social enterprise proposal - an investment iin creative  property which if used by others we ought to be paid for. Had it been the other way around, us using the creative property of one of these corporate partners, we would no doubt have been expected to pay a penalty. In the case of an overseas corporation, perhaps face extradtion, as has been established as a precedent.

For those less affluent, there is of course no such protection, just as there was no protection for the children left to die, as Terry describes in an interview with Axiom News where he argues the case for non distribution of dividends.:

"Hallman is currently investigating the setup of a multi-million dollar fund offering split financial ROI if needed, that is, a portion to investor(s) and the remainder to P-CED.

The funds will be directed to concluding a project in the Ukraine which involves funding the training of residents to develop social businesses. Included in this work is supporting children who have disabilities, many of whom have been left to die in secretive locations".

As one might deduce, the reluctance of USAID to participate has a lot to do with the way in which oligarchs dictate policy and as it was illustrated by a meeting in Davos, several years ago, known as the Ukrainian lunch, the great and good come to pay tribute .

"A philanthropic meeting point organised by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Davos during Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Davos Philanthropic Roundtable is aimed at developing philanthropy in Ukraine and increasing effectiveness of social projects. Main theme of the Second Davos Philanthropic Roundtable, entitled "From Philanthrocapitalism to Philanthrocrisis", was the impact of the economic crisis on philanthropy and perspectives of philanthropy development.

The key speakers at the event were the dignitaries who have significantly contributed to the development of a new model of philanthropy: 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton; former
Prime-Minister Of Great Britain Tony Blair; businessman and philanthropist Richard Branson; Laureate of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Muhammad Yunus; actor and founder of the One Foundation Jet Li, founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Bill Gates and also Victor Pinchuk, the Roundtable organiser, public leader and businessman. Matthew Bishop, Chief Business Editor of The Economist and co-author of the book "Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World" acted as a moderator of the discussion."

As yet, the rich haven't saved the world, but Michael Green co-author of Philanthrocapitalism now comes full circle asking "what really is social enterprise?"

It's a question asked at the same time as the letter to USAID , to which we offered an answer:

'The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not.'