Alliance Online - June 2008

Looking for reasons to hope in Redwood City

David Devlin-Foltz

EVENT 7th Annual Conference of the Global Philanthropy Forum: Human Security, Human Rights and the Shared Responsibility to Protect: A Conversation between Elders and Emerging Leaders
Date 9-11 April
Venue Redwood City, California, USA
Organizer Global Philanthropy Forum

Wordy though its official name was, the Forum’s title can’t come close to capturing the range of conversations that filled the meeting rooms, hallways, poolside terrace and Euro-techno-pop-infested bar of the Sofitel in Redwood City, California. Forum founder and mistress of ceremonies Jane Wales movingly invited us all to listen for ‘something to admire, something to emulate, and a reason to hope’ from every conversation during our time together. The mixture of 540 smart and engaged philanthropists, social entrepreneurs and celebrities offered much to admire and many to emulate.

As for hope, it ebbed and flowed as speakers reminded us of human depravity and resilience, greed and generosity, tyranny and liberation, ignorance and glorious creativity. There may be no greater champion of hope than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he of the twinkling eyes and soul. His address to the opening luncheon acknowledged the horrors that he had heard as head of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but assured us that ‘goodness will have the last word’.

Bringers of many brands of hope …

Archbishop Tutu is among the founding Elders, leading public figures from around the globe who ‘no longer need to worry about their CVs’ and are free to intervene for the public good in their private (but very visible) capacities. With a roster that includes Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, Jimmy Carter, Aung San Suu Ky and Kofi Annan, the Elders and their role were a recurring theme – and a source of that elusive hope throughout the Forum.

Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and President of Crisis Group, underscored the role that the Elders played in intervening rapidly in Kenya’s post-election violence. Evans was fêted often in the course of the Forum for his role in inventing and promoting a new global norm, the international community’s ‘responsibility to protect’ citizens from mass atrocities and human rights violations, wherever they occur. Evans was instrumental in the effort to see ‘R2P’ through to formal endorsement by both the UN Security Council and General Assembly. For Evans, Archbishop Tutu and others, the uneasy peace in Kenya offers fragile hope that governments are accepting outside intervention across previously sovereign borders to prevent mass atrocities.

Emerging leaders – and especially the dynamic social entrepreneurs from four continents featured in the conference programme and in their own afternoon meet-and-greet session – brought their own brand of retail hope. Indeed, most have long since gone wholesale: the social entrepreneurs who are ready for the opportunity that the Forum offers have already begun scaling up their ideas. Some, like Vicky Colbert of the Escuela Nueva movement, have gone global in their impact and are working to incorporate broader business, government and multilateral partnerships worldwide. Others, like Victoria Kisyombe of Tanzania, have not made the jump to national scale, but have already attracted the support of blue-chip investors like the World Bank/International Finance Corporation or the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations.

… and of some solutions

In this sense, the entrepreneurs may not ‘need’ the Forum. But the Forum needs them. The entrepreneurs and panellists demonstrate, especially for the young philanthropists who came here to learn about it, the potential to work effectively outside the US. The presenters and entrepreneurs showcase the depth of talent and creativity already ‘out there’ in places too often portrayed in the US as hopeless corners inhabited by victims and objects rather than actors and innovators.

Hope and despair and hope again: Annie Lennox moved a tough crowd by recounting how she realized that her celebrity gave her an opportunity to stand in solidarity with those afflicted by a cruel virus. Proudly sporting her ‘HIV Positive’ t-shirt, she told the story of a tiny South African girl, infected at birth, ravaged by the disease, but alive today because of timely anti-retroviral treatment and loving care. Lennox remembered to highlight solutions even as she told sobering truths about the scale of the challenge. So did Peter Gabriel, holding up a cellphone and reminding us of its extraordinary power to record and transmit pictures of human rights abuses. For Gabriel, whose human rights group Witness began by handing out video cameras, the ubiquity of cellphones has given a quantum leap to the power of people to ‘see it, film it, change it’, as Witness’s slogan puts it.

Actor Julia Ormond – properly known in this context as a savvy advocate for an end to modern-day slavery and trafficking – found it more difficult to leave her audience with a sense of hope. For some of the practitioners addressing the horror of child sex slavery, like the remarkable Somaly Mam of Cambodia and Maria Cecilia Flores-Oebanda of the Philippines, the rigorously enforced time limits on panellists in the breakout groups were a problem. How to convey in seven minutes the brutality they confront – and also provide a sense that solutions are possible? This was partly a linguistic challenge: even the most articulate native English speaker would have found the time limit daunting – and many did.

Past Forums have experimented with having interpreters on hand to make it possible for people fluent in languages other than English to participate. These attempts have not gone well: unless an interpreter accompanies them constantly, these participants can’t embrace the opportunities for informal conversation and, yes, networking that make an invitation to the Forum such a coveted ticket.

Charitable giving vs market-led solutions

As at past annual conferences of the GPF, the tension between charitable giving and entrepreneurial, market-led solutions – retail or wholesale – provided a source of useful energy. The California-based founders of Virunga Artisans spoke proudly of their role as ‘demanding customers’ who pushed past government regulations to establish their business in Rwanda. But their business model incorporates training and marketing help to offer a viable economic alternative to poaching for residents of the fragile eco-system surrounding the remaining mountain gorillas. Comparable social business models featured prominently in other panels.

But the unfettered market economy, what the French called ‘savage capitalism’, produces some of the deepest and darkest abuses described at the Forum: child sex slaves in Thailand; entire villages trapped in debt bondage for generations in northern India; trafficking networks that move seamlessly from smuggling arms to drugs to little girls. Ireland’s Mary Robinson, politely called ‘the youngest Elder’, noted that the Forum highlighted in many ways ‘the dark side of globalization’.

The Forum was, however, blissfully free of both careless market-bashing and careless state-bashing. The Responsibility to Protect signals a historic break with the concept of state sovereignty, to be sure. But the Forum highlighted as well the continued need to pressure governments to do their part. This can be frustrating work: after all, slavery and trafficking are universally illegal; they continue with the connivance of corrupt officials who choose not to enforce the law. Popular pressure on officials to do their jobs – including, dare we hope, enforcing the law – can take many forms. A session on the value of funding policy advocacy encouraged the philanthropists to consider the high potential return on that investment.

Next year’s Forum will take place in Washington DC, in the spring of 2009 – as a new President’s administration is taking shape and a new Congress considers its own role. The Forum will seize the opportunity to speak to the new administration – ‘via the Washington Post, presumably; most of the administration will be too busy getting confirmed by the Senate,’ noted Wales. The themes for the Forum will likely lie at the intersection of food security, energy, water and climate change. It is of course a complex intersection. There is no denying the interconnection – the interdependence – of the global issues that confront the global philanthropoids. As Larry Brilliant of Google.org noted at this year’s meeting, ‘all the conversations we are having are part of the same conversation.’

How will we know if those conversations are worth having? Peter Gabriel noted that he and Sir Richard Branson modelled The Elders on the notion of village elders respected by the community. Elders can offer solutions to disputes within the village that will change the community in long-lasting ways. Gabriel cited Nelson Mandela’s succinct statement about the Elders’ impact evaluation: ‘If you don’t see the difference in the village, you’re doing the wrong thing.’

David Devlin-Foltz is vice president for policy programs and director of Continuous Progress Strategic Services at the Aspen Institute, Washington DC. Email david.devlin-foltz@aspeninst.org

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