Buzz Schmidt, Founder & Chair, GuideStar International
By Buzz Schmidt, Founder & Chair, GuideStar International
European Foundation Week Session: Help for Haiti’s next Generation from Global Society- Organised by SOS Children’s Villages, 1st June 2010
This workshop was led by SOS Children’s Villages, a global NGO (30,000 associates) that supports kids in 109 countries through safe living and meeting spaces (villages). SOS states that it is the best established NGO operating in Haiti. Half of the 26 people in the room were representatives of SOS offices in European countries. The other attendees were primarily European representatives of other NGOs – Accion, Concern Worldwide, betterplace.org (German online giving platform for 2000 causes) Boy Scouts, Glocalist (advocacy newspaper in Berlin) and TSG. A representative of the InterAmerican Development Bank (focused on funding infrastructure) also attended.
Brief input papers on the Haiti’s status were presented by SOS staff. There was overall an sense that major issues still confront the recovery. Many people and NGOs are already leaving. The media left two months ago. People are still suffering terribly. This input was followed by a roundtable discussion about coordination, progress, long-term vision, global input versus local initiative, etc. The major questions are – how can we keep Haiti top of mind; how can one establish the kind of vision and deliverables that will keep donors engaged when legitimacy requires national Haitian control of its own future; how do you rebuild capacity of public sector to lead the rebuilding effort; how do you coordinate various recovery and building efforts?
Implications for TechSoup Global: The notion of constructing a more conducive environment and infrastructure to support indigenous CSOs did not arise and the flow of the conversation prevented me from explicitly raising and exploring it. But this infrastructure would certainly be a central feature in the development of a sustainable, self-promoting society in Haiti and countries like it. But Haiti, itself, continues to be a country that will be disproportionately visible, and a successful TSG/GSI intervention could be very useful for our reputation and organization CV. For many excellent reasons, we lack a sense of urgency about this opportunity/need. We are not alone as other organizations have difficulty being properly responsive in these types of situations. But it does underscore the need to get our various offerings synchronized and proposition better-defined so that a TSG intervention for this type of situation is possible.
