Deshpande Center Junior Fellowship now Open!

For anyone interested, please contact the lady below:

Are you looking for an opportunity to experience and contribute to the development sector in India?

Are you passionate, enthusiastic and flexible??

The Global Exchange Program Junior Fellowship may be the right opportunity for you!

The Deshpande Foundation has short term opportunities for individuals interested in gaining experience in exciting and growing organizations: The Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship (DCSE) and other nonprofits based in the Sandbox of Innovation (in Hubli, Karnataka). Opportunities available in cost/benefit analysis, teaching, documentation, monitoring and evaluation, curriculum design and more. Time frame between 5-6 months. These opportunities are unpaid, but a very modest stipend is provided in addition to housing. If this is something that interests you, please send an email with your resume and cover letter to gep@deshpandefoundation.org, outlining your skills and areas of interest along with the time period. Junior fellowships are available year round.

Allegra Harris

Associate, Deshpande Foundation

92 Montvale Ave, Suite 2500
Stoneham, MA 02180
Phone: (781)-481-9055 ext.36

Update

I'm sorry I've been so quiet the past several months. I was in the process of jobhunting, interviewing and finally moving to a new country. I just moved to Singapore to take up a job at a startup water policy think tank. I'm planning on launching a blog for the organization. Lots of good water stuff will be coming up there. Look out!

My blogging here will suffer (no less than it already has!), but I will do my best to be more regular. Thanks for still sticking around...

Change.org is looking for bloggers

photo source: http://www.bpdesign.ca/images/logo_change_1.gif

I'm an avid reader of Change.org; they have an interesting working model and blog on a variety of topics. Most of their bloggers are extremely knowledgeable about their fields of work (I tend to read the Global Health ones). So if you want to blog, get paid, and reach a huge audience, APPLY...

Details below...

Change.org Launches Blog Action Day 2009; Expanding Team of Bloggers Hey Changemakers, We have two exciting announcements to make this week. First, Change.org has been asked to take the reins of Blog Action Day, the annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. A few weeks ago we asked bloggers everywhere to suggest topics for this year's event, and the overwhelming response was in support of focusing on the gravest threat to world today:climate change. Blog Action Day itself is on October 15th, and we launched the new site this week at www.blogactionday.org to start accepting sign-ups. We've already received a flood of interest from bloggers around the world, with more than 1,800 blogs with seven million readers across 98 countries registered. If you have a blog - either personal or professional - click here to find out more information and register your blog now to be part of the largest social change event on the web. The second exciting piece of news we have to share?Change.org is expanding its team of bloggers! That's right, we're looking for writers extraordinaire who want to join our team and cover one or more of our 20 causes - from Health Care to Education to Global Poverty. If you're interested in blogging on an issue you're passionate about for an audience of more than a million activists and nonprofit leaders - and getting paid to boot - let us know. Contracts range from 1-6 posts a week and details are atwww.change.org/bloggers.

Get some $$$ for your jingle!!

Got this in my email this morning. Write in...you never know if you might win!
(wait that's a great jingle already!!) :-)

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Global handwashing day contest

As a contribution to Global Handwashing Day on October 15, 2009, the IRC/USAID Sanitation Updates news feed is having a Handwashing Slogan Contest.

• Participants may enter as many slogans as he or she wishes
• Each slogan must be 8 words or less
• October 13 is the contest deadline
• Contest winners will be announced on October 15th and 1st, 2nd and 3rd place slogans and authors will be featured on Sanitation Updates

Please post slogan submisisons in the Comments section of Sanitation Updates, http://sanitationupdates.wordpress.com, or email them to: dcampbell@usaid.gov

Examples of slogans include:

• Be aware, wash with care!
• Filthy fingers forecast sickness and sadness.
• Drown a germ and wash your hands!

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"Enhancing U.S. Leadership on Drinking Water and Sanitation"

You may be interested in a report that was recently released by the CSIS Global Health Policy Center : “Enhancing U.S. Leadership on Drinking Water and Sanitation - Opportunities within Global Health Programs” by Katherine Bliss, a CSIS Senior Fellow.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction:

“With the Obama administration's announcement of a new Global Health Initiative, the time is right for U.S. agencies to assert political leadership in addressing the persistent and significant global health challenges related to water and sanitation. This report focuses on the links among water, sanitation, and the health sector and identifies opportunities for greater U.S. engagement on water and sanitation as global health challenges.”

A digital version is available : http://csis.org/files/publication/090924_Bliss_WaterHealth_Web.pdf . A hard-copy of the publication is forth coming.


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LGT Fellows Program: Deadline is 26 OCT 09!!

Got the following in my email and it looks like a GREAT opportunity!

_______________________________________

Building on the success of last years LGT Venture Philanthropy fellowship program we are proud to announce the launch of the iCats Program! The iCats Program is an answer to the need for professional know-how and resources in many social enterprises. We created a web-based platform to match experienced professionals with specific positions in selected philanthropic organizations.

The fellow positions for 2010 are now online on www.icatsprogram.com ! Application deadline is 26^th October 2009.
A fellow works 11 months on-site with a portfolio organization from February to December 2010 and receives regular mentoring from the LGT Venture Philanthropy team. In addition, a 4-day induction workshop brings all fellows together in the Swiss mountains. Go to www.icatsprogram.com to find out more and to apply.

We appreciate if you could circulate this call for applications to potentially interested people. If you have the opportunity to post an article on your website or in your newsletter, please use the text below or from the attached article. Please let us know when and where you posted it.

Thank you for helping us to spread the word!

Wolfgang Hafenmayer
Oliver Karius
LGT Venture Philanthropy

www.icatsprogram.com

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Update on LGT Venture Philanthropy

The LGT Venture Philanthropy Foundation was founded in 2007 by initiative and funds of the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. Its mission is to raise the sustainable quality of life for the less advantaged people especially in the developing world. Applying a venture philanthropy approach, LGT Venture Philanthropy supports both organizations with financial, social and intellectual capital. LGT Venture Philanthropy makes use of grants, loans and equity investments. Any generated profit is channeled back into the fund and will be used for additional investments.

LGT Venture Philanthropy is pleased to share some results of its philanthropic activities with you: The portfolio has grown to seven organizations with USD 3 Mio invested, the global team now counts 12 people in seven countries, negotiations with several clients interested in LGT Venture Philanthropy's due diligence and investment services are ongoing, and last but not least, the feedback about the 1^st generation of fellows in LGT Venture Philanthropy's fellowship program has been overwhelmingly positive!

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Summary iCats Program

LGT Venture Philanthropy is proud to announce the launch of the iCats Program: The iCats Program is an answer to the need for professional know-how and resources in many philanthropic organizations and social enterprises. LGT Venture Philanthropy created a web-based platform to match experienced professionals with specific positions in selected philanthropic organizations.

The fellow positions for 2010 are now online on www.icatsprogram.com ! Application deadline is 26^th October 2009.
A fellow works 11 months on-site with a portfolio organization from February to December 2010 and receives regular mentoring from the LGT Venture Philanthropy team. In addition, a 4-day induction workshop brings all fellows together in the Swiss mountains. Go to www.icatsprogram.com to find out more and to apply.

Cool job studying water footprints

I don't usually post jobs here, but I thought this one was super cool. If I didn't have a contract already, I probably would have jumped on this. The idea of a "water footprint" is fascinating to me. Its essentially studying the overall water consumption of a process from cradle to cradle (or to grave, depending on your system of thinking); and then figuring out how and where you can cut down on water consumption.

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The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is seeking a senior water specialist/hydrologist to support IFC in the design and supervision of water footprinting pilots. The IFC (www.ifc.org) is the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group. In 2008, IFC became a founding partner of the Water Footprint Network
( www.waterfootprint.org).

IFC now wishes to undertake Water Footprint pilots with selected IFC corporate agribusiness and mining clients in developing countries, initially focusing on India and Africa. The expert would be offered a part-time consultancy assignment with IFC, initially for up to 50 days, spread over 12 months. There is a strong likelihood of additional consulting work becoming available through the Water Footprint Network.

The announcement is posted at
http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/vacancies/Expert-for-IFC-water-footprinting.pdf

Deadline for applications: April 27.

Continuing on with work advice...this time from Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is an amazing human being. Inspite of being one of the richest men in the world, he still drives the car he did for years, lives in a modest house with modest means, and gave the bulk of his wealth to the Gates Foundation. And he always makes time to answer the questions of students eager to learn from him. Here are some fun tidbits from his latest interview in Fortune magazine.

I know you had a paper route. Was that your first job?

Well, I worked for my grandfather, which was really tough, in the [family] grocery store. But if you gave me the choice of being CEO of General Electric or IBM or General Motors, you name it, or delivering papers, I would deliver papers. I would. I enjoyed doing that. I can think about what I want to think. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. It might be wonderful to be head of GE, and Jeff Immelt is a friend of mine. And he's a great guy. But think of all the things he has to do whether he wants to do them or not.

How do you get your ideas?

I just read. I read all day. I mean, we put $500 million in PetroChina. All I did was read the annual report. [Editor's note: Berkshire purchased the shares five years ago and sold them in 2007 for $4 billion.]

From a Q&A session with Darthmouth's Tuck Business School students:

What is your career advice?

If you want to make a lot of money go to Wall Street. More importantly though, do what you would do for free, having passion for what you do is the most important thing. I love what I do; I’m not even that busy . . . A few months ago I was talking to another MBA student, a very talented man, about 30 years old from a great school with a great resume. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career, and he replied that he wanted to go into a particular field, but thought he should work for McKinsey for a few years first to add to his resume. To me that’s like saving sex for your old age. It makes no sense.

Buffett generally advocates three things to youth:

1. Be true to yourself...make all your decisions by referring to your "inner scorecard" (i.e. use your own gut rather than relying on what other people think to make a decision).

2. Love what you do...follow your passion. Pick a job that you would have done for free.

3. Read. Apparently Buffett spends 80% of his workday reading.


I keep emphasizing the "do what you love part" because this is particularly important in the development field. For the most part, international development doesn't pay well; and those of you who spend time in the field will attest to the fact that it is far from glamorous. It is frustrating, and can even get mind numbingly boring. The best people I've worked with in the field, were people who loved their work. What I loved about them is that even in the most difficult circumstances, they smiled. And they smiled because they still loved what they did.

If you want to go out into the field and get a job doing international development, then just get out there. If you love what you do and are good, people will hire you soon enough.

GDP and Happiness

Does happiness have anything to do with wealth (photo source: Gerard Boragay)

There is a fascinating discussion going on about the relationship between GDP and Happiness on the New York Times Freakonomics blog. I highly encourage everyone to follow it, particularly if you are interested in whether material wealth really increases happiness. So here's the basic gist:

Arguably the most important finding from the emerging economics of happiness has been the Easterlin Paradox.

What is this paradox? It is the juxtaposition of three observations:

1) Within a society, rich people tend to be much happier than poor people.
2) But, rich societies tend not to be happier than poor societies (or not by much).
3) As countries get richer, they do not get happier.

But then the author presents his own research and what his outcomes suggest. Apparently...

There is no Easterlin Paradox.

The facts about income and happiness turn out to be much simpler than first realized:

1) Rich people are happier than poor people.
2) Richer countries are happier than poorer countries.
3) As countries get richer, they tend to get happier.

Moreover, each of these facts seems to suggest a roughly similar relationship between income and happiness.

What explains these new findings? [read the rest...]

Of course he goes on to explain that most of it has to do with the flawed data set and resulting analysis.

Personally, I believe in some way that rich people are happier than poor people, but not for reasons that have anything to do with wealth. A significant number of the richest people in the world today (eg. Gates, Mittal, Buffett, Oprah, the google guys, etc) made their own wealth. Most of them came from average, if not lower than average circumstances and went on to make millions. The key to their wealth has been that they all LOVE their jobs. They all LOVE what they do. Their jobs got them wealth and they worked more (though I am pretty sure that if you took their wealth away or paid them nothing, they'd still do their jobs...the google guys are perfect examples). This has created a reinforcing loop of happiness and wealth. But more importantly, because they love what they do, they live more fulfilled lives and are happier. I can't say the same of the poor, who often take the jobs for the financial incentives or provide the best security. It doesn't matter how hard they work, but life continues to be an endlessly unfufilling struggle.

My point in this opinion piece is (and this goes with all the stuff about finding a job), do what you love (make enough to survive, but try to do what you love). Even in the worst case scenario, you might be poor...but a side of you will feel fulfilled, rich, and happy. This I say from multiple years of experience.

Take a lesson from the babe!

Field Jobs: How to get a job in International Development

Ian Howard today blogged about an interview he did with some names in International Development at University of Toronto. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but I'm particularly quoting the last couple of Q&A's because they have the most relevance to a previous post (Why getting hired by an International NGO is so hard):

Q: Your thoughts on the developing trends in the field of International Development?

[IH] I will talk about two things: what I think you should know and what you want to know.

First, in my opinion you should read at least these books if you are interested in this field:

1. Prahalad – The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid
2. De Soto – The Mystery of Capital
3. Sachs – The End of Poverty
4. Easterly – The White Man's Burden
5. Collier – The Bottom Billion
6. Stiglitz – Globalization and its Discontents
7. you should also listen to the CBC Massey lectures by Steven Lewis on AIDs

Second, now how to get work in this field. This is the classic chicken and the egg problem. You need experience to get the job and you need the job to get experience. Fortunately there are many groups that are there to give you the egg, if you give them your time. Here in Canada we have CUSO, NetCorps, CIDA, IDRC...
type “volunteer international development” and the first link is to CIDA – they have a great page about how to get this experience. Go, be brave spend some time over there. What you will learn will be invaluable so don't worry about not making money it will pay off in time, whether you work in development or not.

Q: Where you see the greatest impacts happening?

[IH] In my opinion the greatest impacts are made when people make long term concerted efforts. Groups like PaM who commit to people for the long haul. These are the stories we don't hear as much about because their work is slow and incremental and is hard to fit into a sound bite or a quick clip.

Q: What advice you would give someone who is just beginning their career in the field now?

[IH] I will share what a wise old man in a dusty rural town in South Western Mali told me, “you come here thinking that you can teach Africa, but in the end it is Africa that teaches you” he was quite right. Do not forget that you have much to learn and that one of the best things that you will do for Africa is to educate your family and friends about it and to take care of your adopted family who you will meet there when you come home.

Why getting hired by an International NGO is hard

I know I've talked a lot about getting field experience. But I've probably not stressed enough that I understand how difficult it is to get field experience, especially in the more difficult areas. While browsing around, I stumbled on Alanna Shaikh's brilliant blog. If you are a regular blog reader or just are interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading her blog. (she's also a bit of an overachieving :-) superstar...speaks four very difficult languages, has worked and lived all over the world, has a graduate degree, and is a happily married mom!!). She's written a great post on the pitfalls of finding good field experience, and how to get past them. You find the whole blog here; I'm quoting a bit of it for taste.

On the topic of "Why you can't get an international job (and what to do about it):"

This is why: when I worked for an international NGO, it cost us $16,000-$20,000 to put an unpaid volunteer in the field. The cost included health insurance, housing, food allowance, and transport costs. Even if a volunteer paid for their own plane ticket, we couldn’t ethically send them to Sudan or Sri Lanka without providing food, housing and health care. Those costs add up fast. For $16,000 in most parts of the world, you can hire a trilingual local person with better skills than any volunteer American. Add to that the possibility that the volunteer will flip out in the new place, and be unable to cope. For an NGO to justify sending you as a volunteer, you need to be skilled enough to be worth the cost and the risk. In other words, trying to be a volunteer isn't really much different from looking for an entry level salaried position. The following advice applies to both paid jobs and volunteer work.

You can make yourself worth the cost of hiring by having the right skills. Luckily for the international job seeker, NGOs are looking for a decent range of skills. The first and most obvious is clinical skills- doctors, nurses, PAs, EMTs, or midwives. They also need finance people - CPAs are great but a budgets and bookkeeping background will suffice. Technical experts on agriculture are very much in demand, as are water and sanitation engineers. Lastly, and this is what most of us get in on, they generally need writers. Any NGO doing development or emergency relief work spends about half their time writing reports on what they already did, applying for grants to do more things, and writing success stories to encourage private donors. They need native English speakers to write this stuff. If you don't have any of the necessary skills, you can gain them. You can train to be an EMT, or find a job where you work with budgets. Writing newsletters or grant applications for your local animal rescue group, neighborhood association, or homeless shelter isn't exactly the same as writing them for an international organization, but it's close enough to get you hired. [...]