Social Enterprises take on Poverty Reduction

The below articles looks at how social entrepreneurs are modifying their approach to addressing poverty alleviation in developing countries. Although many entrepreneurs focus on one issue at a time, FXB goes beyond single service delivery to holistically lift communities out of poverty, including access to health and education facilities.

NexThought Monday: FXB, Intervening Holistically for Economic Empowerment

By Heather Esper

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Ugandan families are among the recipients of FXB assistance. (All images by Alan Wicht, courtesy of FXB).

 

Whether it’s clean water, access to finance, or sustainable energy, social enterprises and foundations alike often hone in on a specific focus with the goal of reaching a wide scale of impact in the long run. One could argue that FXB takes the opposite approach by examining the big picture causes behind poverty first and tailoring a diverse set of services to help families reach economic independence.

The donor funded FXB utilizes a three-year approach to improve the lives of children by working with their families to provide comprehensive support in a customized way. Their approach focuses on economic empowerment and includes providing families with a subsidized and integrated set of services, while gradually moving families toward financial sustainability by the end of the third year. Within each “FXB-Village” their team consists of a social worker, nurse and logistician.  By focusing on economic empowerment FXB is able to leave communities after three years.

During the first year, FXB looks to strengthen the foundation of the family by improving their access to health care, housing, education and psychological health. In the second year, FXB identifies diverse income generating activities that are a good fit for the family by engaging them in both individual and group income generating activities. For example, FXB might train a family to grow beans on their own, but also link them to a labor cooperative that is raising pigs. During the second year, FXB covers 75 percent of the cost of services, with the majority related to educating the household’s children. The third year begins with families covering 50 percent of expenses and ends with the families paying for 100 percent of costs.

I spoke with FXB CEO Sean Mayberry, who joined the organization in 2011. Previously the chief operating officer of VisionSpring, Mayberry discussed FXB’s approach and direction for the future.

Heather Esper: Besides providing families with income generating activities, FXB also helps families access a number of other services including health care and education. Do you think it would be possible for FXB to intervene in communities by only introducing income generating activities, or do families’ other needs need to be met first?

Sean Mayberry: FXB has developed its FXB-Village model over 20 years of trial and error. Over that time we have learned that poverty is complicated, and families need a strong foundation upon which to integrate economic empowerment.  FXB’s experience has been that simply introducing an IGA (income generating activity) without the rest of our comprehensive approach will not result in the same success that we have seen with the FXB-Village model. Economic empowerment without the rest is like building a house on sand, it won’t last. It has become very clear to me and our team that addressing individual needs does not solve poverty. In order to make a dent in the poverty faced by the poorest of the poor it takes a comprehensive approach.

I used to work in the DR Congo and socially marketed mosquito nets around that country.  I can still see some of our customers, in rural villages, who were so pleased to purchase such a net, but these same people also wanted much more from my team—they needed jobs, they needed more comprehensive health support.  I always left those villages feeling slightly disappointed that my team was not providing the full solution.  Today, with FXB, we are providing the full solution, and I leave after visits with our beneficiaries knowing that these families are succeeding.

Heather Esper: Why did FXB decide to focus mainly on economic empowerment?

Sean Mayberry: As you know poverty is an extraordinarily complicated issue. There is no single, silver bullet solution. You can do a lot of good in many communities by providing just mosquito nets, or solar lights, or clean water, but to get to the root of the issue, to make real progress, it takes much more than that.  FXB strengthens the foundations of families in order to permanently lift parents and children up and out of poverty.  The foundation for us includes areas like strengthening the family’s health and psychosocial stability, ensuring adequate shelter, enrolling their children in local schools and ensuring a quality education, to name just a few areas.  Once the foundation is secure, typically after our first year working with them, we shift our focus to economic empowerment.

One of our best practices is that FXB’s approach to economic empowerment is customized to each family based on their unique circumstances.  For example, a rural household with eight children requires a different economic approach than a smaller household in an urban setting.   We work collaboratively with our families to evaluate potential IGAs.  We look at the options and help families to choose the best possible IGAs to meet their needs and that have the greatest chance of success.

Ultimately, to lift families out of poverty permanently they need the long term ability to create their own revenue streams. That is exactly what economic empowerment does. FXB participants receive grants to start micro-enterprises; they learn how to sell their goods, how to budget and plan their expenses, and how to save funds – things we in the western world take for granted. Economic empowerment is the capstone of what FXB does, because without income families would remain locked in the cycle of poverty.

Esper: FXB’s approach seems similar to Jeffery Sach’s belief that a one-time infusion of assistance can make a large difference in an individual’s life.  Or in other words that ‘poverty traps’ exist as Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo refer to them in their book Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty. In the book Banerjee and Duflo suggest that whether poverty traps exist or not takes a case by case basis, therefore I was curious how FXB decides which villages to work in?

Mayberry: FXB’s mission of lifting people up and out of poverty is accomplished through our selecting the poorest of the poor communities where we work, from Colombia to Uganda to India.  We actively work with local government officials and local leaders or elders to really identify those most in need.  This is very much a collaborative approach, where we spend much time speaking with the entire community, so that everyone in a community ultimately understands and supports those families selected to participate in our FXB-Village program.  This “buy in” from the local community ensures we target those most in need, and it also helps to avoid any feelings of rivalry between those we serve and those who are in better economic condition.  It is really quite amazing, when you look at our results and see that for a total cost of less than $500 per person over three years, these “poorest of the poor” radically improve their lives, and their economic condition.  These families take very significant steps up and out of poverty, and our research shows that this improvement continues for years after our FXB-Villages end.  We at FXB are excited to be publishing next month in April the results of a new study that tracked the progress of families we worked with in Uganda and Rwanda eight years ago, and the findings indicate very strongly that our customers continued to prosper during this interval after our FXB-Villages ended.  While we at FXB cannot and should not take complete credit for these positive findings, we are heartened to find the ongoing success of our beneficiaries, and we are excited to share this story, and our learnings, within the anti-poverty sphere.

Esper: What are some of the most important changes you see in families’ well-being, especially children, as a result of their parents becoming empowered economically?

Mayberry: Each time I meet a family participating in FXB’s programs I ask them how they see their future after the FXB program ends.   I am always struck that the huge majority of families have a positive outlook on the future, are confident that they will succeed, and feel that they can weather any adversity. The really remarkable thing here is that FXB’s beneficiaries have developed confidence – they know they have the tools and skills to live a better life, and they know that they can rely on themselves.

Esper: Do you think we need more BoP enterprises with a focus on economic empowerment as opposed to enterprises focusing mainly on social empowerment? If so, how can more enterprises do so?

Mayberry: I strongly believe you need both approaches combined in one, holistic model in order to be effective.

It is easier for organizations to focus on fewer issues, such as clean water or reproductive health.  But the results of those interventions are constrained when the bigger picture is ignored.  I think there are many opportunities for BoP enterprises to integrate economic empowerment into their work, and the first step in doing so is to be mindful of identifying the business opportunities in the communities where we all work.  For example, the India FXB program is now starting large scale production of sanitary pads for women, using our beneficiaries as employees, because we recognized the need for women to have access to this important health product.  A social empowerment approach may have resulted in giving out these products for free; but an economic empowerment approach is to produce the product locally and sell them at an affordable price for the BoP population.

Esper: How do you see FXB’s approach evolving over time?

Mayberry: We are continuously learning, refining our model and looking for new services to include. At the moment we are adding an early child development component to our FXB-Villages because we have found it successfully strengthens families. Additionally, we are searching for partners who can help us accomplish our goals more efficiently and reduce our costs. We are also focused on exploring related projects that will generate income for FXB so that we can rely less on external funding.

In the long run our goal is to convince local governments to adopt our holistic model. It is much easier to ‘sell’ programs to governments when they work and you can prove it. I think governments will be drawn to the FXB-Village program because of its proven success, which is being increasingly verified by independent research. Ultimately, governments can scale our model effectively and lift millions out of poverty.

The Inadequacies of Language

As a new member of the Quality Assurance Committee at my community Children’s Aid Society, I not only get a chance to learn more about the organization, meet new people and brush up on my skills, but it’s also a chance to hear stories that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

This time, we heard from one of my colleagues, who happens to be a nurse, describe a short documentary that she’d seen, ‘Just a Routine Operation,‘ narrated by a British man who had dropped his wife off at the hospital for a routine procedure and expected to pick her up later on in the day. However, the procedure did not go quite as planned and resulted in her loss of oxygen, brain damage and eventual death. The story itself is entirely heartbreaking. The irony of it was that this man has built a career on behalf of airlines to identify communication gaps, prevent human error and provide clarity where it may not be aparent in order to avoid tragedy in the air. 

Similarly, as reports out of Italy describe, human error is the cause for the capsizing of the cruise ship, ‘Costa Concordia’ and causing the death of too many. These two incidents really makes me think just how many lives could be saved by effective communication and cooperation.

In our culture, we’ve been lead to believe that experience should not be questioned and to do so is an insult and could lead to unemployment. By following this norm, though, those nurses did not question or intervene on the doctor with 30 years experience. No one did. Out of fear? Inexperience? I wonder what the co-captain of the Costa Concordia was thinking when it chartered off course; chancing fate or impressing the tourists?

Whatever the reasons for the team’s failure to intervene, both instances drive home the fact that they had the trust of their patients or passengers to lead them through to safety, be it the recovery room or the resorts. Such responsibility should be due cause for a questioning thought or an assertive action to ensure their destination and yet there was silence.  Language is one thing to master, understanding and overcoming culture, however, is more difficult.

In learning a bit more about culture and its influence on communication, I came across a corporate training organization, VitalSmarts, which seeks to help firms address the discrepencies that language sometimes highlight and particularly so in a multi-cultural environment. By making more of an effort to bring the same sort of clarity to organizations that the air industry currently employs can only lead to greater collaboration, understanding and responsibility and hopefully result in fewer human errors.

In the Meeting House

I was recently invited to attend a Meeting House discussion at the Public Library. I’ve never been to a Meeting House discussion so I’m not too sure what to expect (is a Meeting House in Canada the same as a Town Hall Meeting in the US?), but nonetheless, I’m curious.  The topic of the night will be the community – how it’s developing, concerns, fears, worries and in general, how we’d like to see it develop.  This is a particularly interesting topic as I”m all for positive change and seeing progress, yet the thought of going to the Meeting House has me strangely anxious. My family has lived in the areas for almost a hundred years; suffice it to say, I know it fairly well. But my anxiety makes me question, do I really? I know buildings, roads, landmarks and friends, but I feel it lacks the same sort of community, the type of place that makes you want to be home and strive toward making it better. This, perhaps may be one of the items on the agenda – how to make a town, a community and a home.

Bringing together different members of the community and the people who can implement change is a great idea and I’m very curious to know what sort of issues will surface. Will it be a safe and open space to express opinions or will biases and intimdation silence voices?

I’ve learned that the tremendous and rapid growth of the region has already caused major problems, especially regarding affordable housing and food security. Knowing this, I became a little alarmed (!) to learn that there really was no social plan in place to deal with the influx of people; no services, infrastructure or preparation to deal with the problems that could surface. What’s worse is there is no data and no research mechanism to provide evidence to support the creation of infrastructure or services. Basically, the strategy is to sit back and wait until problems arise, until they’ve gotten so bad that some money, time and effort need to be thrown at the problem. Really? Is this the way to run a healthy community? It really is maddening to see this type of logic applied to the community where you live.

The Meeting House is a start, but the main actors running it are already swamped with their own (contract) work that takes up much of their day. Let’s face it, this is a full time job of an entire department to create, establish and grow the social infrastructure that’s needed.  However, funding allocations tend to favor activities that will provide a return (ie economic development) without acknowledging the social sector until it’s too late; the down side of politics… Reactions to the Meeting House to come soon….

On Caribbean Time

There are no easy ways to convey just how relieved I am to have found work. And not just work, work that I think I’m actually going to enjoy AND in a new location! Really, what more could I ask for? I just landed a grant from CIDA to work with UNICEF Eastern Caribbean office in Barbados as a Monitoring & Evaluation Officer. I couldn’t be more thrilled and am slowly adjusting to my new life on the island.

First, there’s beach everywhere When hot, move closer to the ocean where winds (and the occasional shower) are sure to follow. People are genuinely lovely and although I’m exercising every precaution possible, it doesn’t seem that I’ll need to. They drive on the left, which you’d think would make crossing tough, but no, drivers politely stop traffic to let the random strangler find a way through. There is a lot of rum floating around the island, white, dark and coconut flavored are slowly making me like cocktails again. Vegetables are in short supply due to the  heavy rainy season and imports are pretty expensive, but my dismay at this has been replaced by the vast array of fruits that are sure to join my palate, paw-paw anyone?

As for work, it’s just been a few days, but getting to know the office and the work done here is going to be an uphill climb. I’ll be working with the M&E Specialist who is virtually instrumental in identifying the problems existing on each of the 10 states in the Eastern Caribbean and balancing that with the budgets we have to work with to direct programs and plan for action. I think I’ll have my hands full. The other officers work in Child Protection, dealing with child abuse, corporal punishment, juvenile justice etc and Early Childhood  Development, dealing with advancements in ECE, life skills advancement and HIV/AIDS – I’ll likely have more to say about each of these issues as time progresses and I learn the work more closely.

I’m truly excited to be working with a great group of people, along with my Canadian counterparts working in Communications, ECD and Sport for Development – who incidentally are my roommates! With the help of a German cum-Bajan lady, we were able to find reliable accommodations, in  a nice residential area of town, not too expensive and 10 min walk to the beach! Fruit trees in the back cinched  it for me and off we begin our life in the Caribbean.

Healthy Confusion

Somewhere, mixed up in the mumbo jumbo of the good, bad and ugly of healthy eating, we’ve gotten our priorities mixed up. How else could you explain the mound of literature dedicated to both revealing the sickening trends in the food industry and de-coding the ingredients that dot nearly every package in the supermarket. Michael Pollan’s books In Defense of Food and Food Rules are prime examples, as are documentaries (Food Inc. was top of the list of Oscar nominees and Super Size Me was a box office hit!) and tv sitcoms (Law & Order: SVU just released an episode featuring the gruesomeness of the meat packaging industry).

All this makes me think that we’re not healthy – we just think we are! As consumer’s, I think most of us are blinded by marketing gimmicks, like KFC’s “Bucket for the Cure” campaign which has gone pink for the month in support of Breast Cancer Awareness. The irony and shock as I read about this is astounding – do they actually think that buying fried chicken will put an end to breast cancer?

Traditional views of nutrition – the four food groups, portion control and weight loss myths – are also tough to beat and gets even more complicated when you throw in pesticides, fertilizers, GMO’s and substitutes. I’m convinced that buying local is the way to go – I’m over the moon that the weather is getting close enough to spring that the farmer’s markets will soon be opening up and I can peruse the aisles of fresh produce under the sun! My support of organic is also growing slowly – I really hate to admit it knowing that buying organic will put a dent in my wallet, but I think we just might be better off for it. Making wise decisions about our health is so important at all ages to ensure our quality of life well in to our retirement years that jeopardizing it now seems reckless.

Something to Believe In

What a crazy world we live in! It’s no wonder that we look to God for guidance and perseverance every Sunday in the hopes that our strength will  be revitalized and courage invigorated. Yet, as we all know, the Church has its criticisms, notably the sex scandals that were uncovered over the decades. It’s ironic that, especially, the Catholic Church as an institution exists to lead the congregation on the conduct of their daily lives and yet itself strays from its own preachings. This alone would make anyone cringe and start searching for something else to believe in. But the Church recovered nicely, the crowds at the Vatican on Easter will attest to it, yet it never truly reformed, as the Vatican’s condemnation this week of  Catholic bishops and their cover-up of sexual abuse proves.

Pope Benedict XVI’s recognition that the abuse still exists and that bishops are turning a blind eye, shows the Pope’s commitment to ensuring the safety of young Catholics, (although critics say he hasn’t gone far enough), but also highlights the difficulties in enforcing a universal code of conduct throughout the globe. People look to the Church for guidance, not abuse and the Church’s role as a leader in society is again questioned. Should we follow the word of God if its representatives don’t?

I’m not sure if criminal acts make you any less Christian, but it certainly doesn’t do anything for your social status. So if you can’t trust the leaders of the Church, but know your instincts, the law and the respect that each human being affords to another, then perhaps faith in a higher being can be replaced by faith in each other and that their conduct will support you, give you courage and all the love that is needed in a lifetime?

I don’t think that spiritual enlightenment will never go away and people will always continue to search for evidence or guidance from a higher being (myself included). It’s interpretation though gets a bit muffled along the way, and hence brings the need for an ‘interpreter’. I just think that some people rely on and are so devoted to those religious leaders that it teeters on the edge of calamity – in all religions, not just Christianity.  A certain cautiousness has to be demonstrated when walking through that threshold to the congregation and common sense used in trusting religious leaders, after all we all need something to believe in.

It’s all Personality to Me

My last post mentioned my passion for the environment and how much I enjoy traveling and marveling at the beauty that the earth has to offer, beyond the city-scapes and artificial-ness. So I was really excited a few months ago when BRAVO came out with a reality-show, PhotoExplorers, documenting a photographer’s journey into the wild to find the almighty ‘perfect shot!’ I was excited and knowing my own challenges in trying to do the same while travelling (the things I went through to get a photo!) made me incredibly intrigued and I promptly scheduled my recording device so I wouldn’t miss it! …. Talk about one of life’s disappointments :S It wasn’t that the cites were dull, the landscapes boring or the colours lustre – it was that the photographers were lifeless!! There were certainly interesting stories to be told, but done in such a monotone and uninteresting way a la retired librarian that made me want to hit the mute button! There was absolutely NO personality in any of these photographers! This was also a shock, thinking that their personalities would match the quality of their proofs, but no – mistakenly wrong. Come to think of it, cooking shows often do the same – loads of great info and tantalizing masterpieces, but none of the pizazz that brings a smile to your face or motivates you to watch the next episode.

Thinking of these two shows definitely shed a bit of light on the importance of PERSONALITY!!! It’s certainly not something that they teach you in school or that can even be learned, but it’s what draws you to them for conversation, for business, for interest and they inevitably become magnets to those around them – a likely asset to any firm or company! And it’s these personalities, whether on tv or in the real world, which bring a certain penache to life and keeps things interesting. Humour helps, actually it helps a lot and being able to not take yourself too seriously.  People are people no matter where you go, no one likes to scowl all day or brim with stress throughout their work breaks and, when used strategically, a  good laugh will get you a long way!

I’m always eager to meet new people, for the sheer curiosity of which personality I’ll uncover, hopefully one that doesn’t leave me snoozing and might even help to make my own more intriguing

Artistic Reflection

I’ve been thinking a lot about how art imitates life. Who could forget the music that characterized much of the 60′s? Buffalo Springfield, Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane to name a few. That was protest and self expression all at once. And it’s not just in western culture either; I read yesterday how Sufi poetry in India speaks out against the caste system in India and listened to a report on art that was destroyed in the Haitian earthquake a few weeks ago and what a great tragedy it was for the nation. How to replace historic pieces? It’s seems parallel to losing all your belongings in a fire, except instead of one lifetime’s possessions, it was many century’s worth for the entire population.

The arts are a way of telling history (who could forget the wall paintings by the ancient Egyptians?); an establishment of a nation’s identity.  Why else would Israeli’s have looted the Palestinian Research Center upon its invasion into South Lebanon in 1982?  But when we go to the world’s most established and renowned art center’s, they’re full of artworks from abroad; Greece, Rome, China, Persia, India. Relics of a colonial past? The net worth of the artifacts alone would be astounding, and I’m therefore not surprised about the growing number of lawyers involved in the art trade and recovery.

When I first arrived in Austria, there was a case that surfaced surrounding Gustav Klimt’s work – perhaps the most famous Austrian painter – who’s works were left behind by the fleeing family during WW2. I arrived in Vienna, just in time to see the paintings before the US Supreme Court ordered them to be returned to the family, which now resides in the US. This is one of a very small number of cases, validating the return of property to its rightful owner. It’s debatable whether or not these artworks were national treasures or whether the expulsion of the artist himself invalidated that claim.

I enjoy the arts and am always eager to hear what’s new on the radio or wander the galleries. I’ve got to say though, I haven’t been too impressed with modern thoughts and ideas being reflected in music or in art. Of course, there’s been some bands, who have had personal experiences or strong sentiments toward a given issue – U2′s ‘Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” Midnight Oil’s “Beds are Burning,” Neil Young’s “Rocking in the Free World,” but in general, the type of work that is crowding the airwaves is not nearly as reflective of reality as it used to be… or is it? Do people just not have the same feelings toward Iraq and Afghanistan as the did toward Vietnam? And do visual artists feel more compelled to be abstract or modern in their paint strokes than the impressionists or renaissance painters? Are they torn between making a profit or making a statement?

It’s truly amazing what the arts can do for a pysche and a society. It can up-lift, invigorate, motivate, tell history all at once and be treasured for years to come – definitely something to be treasured!

The Educational Revolution

From as long as I can remember, education has always been highly regarded in my family. My sister is a teacher and it’s been the family business for the last half-century to promptly and safely deliver students from their door to the school’s, twice a day.  And although, I’m not directly involved in the educational system, I’ve spent more time there than anyone else I know :S and support education, in all forms.

“Do the best you can and if it’s the best you can do, then you know you’ve done all you can,” echoes in the back of my head when a math problem gets too daunting or a language is just too complicated. Some would give up, but for me, this phrase just reminds me to just take a break and come back to it.

That’s why I found it so interesting to read this morning of a school bus in Arizona that is connected to Wi-Fi! I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m exuberant that kids are able to extend the school hours by working on their laptop from the back of a bus; doing homework, communicating with teachers, which the bus driver reports as being the cause of the decreased level of noise and rowdy behaviour (I guess, that’s one up on the safety scale?)

But on the other hand, do you really want your kids to be so engaged with their laptops, that they stop being kids? Everyone always complains of the one callous-fingered suit in the room who has 3 Blackberries and can’t carry on a conversation – is this the future for those kids who are constantly connected?

It’s a technological paradox and, judging by the ambivalent tone of the article, one that is a success. One that could potentially flow to other buses, school districts and states. I’m wondering if this is the case, how it will impact the kids who don’t have their own personal computers? How it would affect the affluent vs poor neighbourhood academic performance? Or is Wi-Fi in the buses just another reason to move to an area with good educational facilities?

Granted Canada is not the US educational system. So it goes, that all educational facilities in all provinces have proportionally equal budgets and with standardized ciriculums, but often the good teachers transfer out of rural areas that are dotted with broken homes and abusive families who don’t reinforce teacher’s lessons or behavioural concerns.

The Ontario government (last of all provinces) this coming year is implementing an all-day Kindergarten in various neighbourhoods, many of them low-income areas. The motives for it, allows parents to save on day-care funds – stands to reason that these are the areas that could really use some help and  Premier Dalton McGuinty also explains his rationale to the CTV that,

“[e]xpanding junior and senior kindergarten will improve learning skills for the 250,000 four- and five-year-old students across the province…[Kids] perform better when it comes to their math and language skills, and they are also more proficient throughout their school years,” he said of early childhood education. All that starts in the earliest years, and that’s why we are so enthusiastic and excited about moving forward with full-day learning.”

It’s a phenomenal intiative that should have been implemented long ago. And, as my sister points out, the research, tests and evaluation of the kids who have the full-day programs will be compared ‘like crazy,’ to those that don’t have it.  I hope that those results will allow it to be extended to all schools.

I don’t like inequality anywhere and shudder to think that either Wi-Fi in buses or all-day daycare for some and not others may influence their opportunity at a better education, instill greater perseverance or empower a child’s will to succeed.  At this point, baby-steps are what we’ve got to work with and if it has to be baby-steps toward progress rather than nothing, then I’m satisfied.