Month: April 2010

Sakeena Yacoobi and Healthy Mothers

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

I have been watching the Ashoka Healthy Mother Competition with interest. Maternal Health is one of my passions; I studied it in graduate school and it has been part of my work for the last ten years. The ideas submitted to the competition have ranged from half-considered flashes of thought to fully imagined comprehensive maternal health programs. I am an advisor to one of them – AYZH, a social venture that works to provide clean, green birth kits to women in India.

It will not surprise you, then that I would love to attend the 2010 Maternal Health Change Summit in India. This post is my entry in the contest to attend the summit. I’m not going to talk about AYZH here, because it doesn’t seem quite fair to write about something so close to my heart in this context.

Instead, I will write about Sakeena Yacoobi. Founder of the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL), she is one of the true heroes of this world. An Afghan-American, she returned to Afghanistan to serve women in her country of birth. The Afghan Institute of Learning offers services from basic education to human rights leadership training for 350,000 women and children in Afghanistan. They supported underground schools during the Taliban regime.

They also offer health care and health education. AIL is the provider of medical care for thousands of Afghan women. They use a family health approach, focusing on education and preventative care as well as medical services. When you are dealing with maternal health, it’s the gold standard. Women need knowledge in order to have a health pregnancy, not just skilled care when giving birth.

One of the most interesting things about maternal health is the range of interventions we have to improve it. We need both innovations like better incubators for premature infants and well-known essentials like educating mothers, supporting maternal nutrition, and skilled personnel to accompany births.

AIL offers those essentials, to women who have no other options. Maternal mortality rates in Afghanistan are staggering. 18 mothers out of every thousand die as a result of motherhood; the second highest rate in the world. The three clinics of the Afghan Institute of Learning are helping to bring that number down, and they deserve our support to do it.

Check out other solutions for improving maternal health or to participate in the global call to solutions, please visit Healthy Mothers, Strong World: The Next Generation of Ideas for Maternal Health.

Say No to Old Clothes

By Alanna Shaikh | | 64 Comments |

used clothing stall

Some of you may have heard of a new campaign called One Million Shirts. They want to collect 1,000,000 used and new t-shirts and send them to Africa to help people with no clothes. They are also collecting money for the shipping costs. They’ve got some NGO partners, and they are starting to think about how best to distribute the t-shirts.

When I first heard of it, I thought it was an another well intentioned mess. The project is taking criticism for obvious reasons (if they’re not obvious, I’ll come back to them at the end of this post). The consistently brilliant Texas in Africa blog vouched for the good intentions of the founder, Jason Sadler, despite the terrible weakness of the idea. I decided I was going to stay out of the argument. Other, smarter people were saying everything I would have.

Then I saw the video. Now I don’t think it’s a well intentioned, poorly planned charity effort. Now I think it’s a marketing ploy from someone who is totally uninterested in helping others. When you actually want your project to have an impact, you listen to criticism. You put your ego aside and learn from what people have to say. You don’t cling to your original idea with wounded fury and attack the people questioning you.

I watched the video seven times, and transcribed it for you. My notes are in red:

****

Hey internet trolls, angry people on twitter, whatever you want to call yourselves.

Angry people on Twitter seems accurate. I don’t know about trolls. Trolls make trouble for the fun of it. Not everyone who disagrees with something is a troll.

You all have a problem with me? That’s fine. I’m very easy to get ahold of. 904 312 2712. Call me.

I am not calling. I am writing this blog post, because I think public discussion is important. And you put your idea out into the world. It seems unreasonable to then demand that all conversation about the idea take place in private. Also, I live in Tajikistan, where I do international development work. Calling you by phone would cost me a fortune, and my internet is too slow for a decent Skype call.

Be a man.

This is sexist. I for one cannot be a man, without major surgery and life changes, because I am female. Are you assuming that everyone who disagrees with you is male? Or that everyone in the world is male? Or, wait – I get where you’re going with this. You think the people who disagree with you are cowardly, and you want them to be straightforward and courageous. Fair enough. But associating bravery and candor exclusively with men is sexist. And yes, your sexism is relevant here. I don’t trust you to do a good job working with women and children if you think they 1) don’t exist or 2) are incapable of courage.

Don’t sit behind Twitter. 140 characters. You don’t even have the time to email me, and you’re going to talk to me on Twitter.

Twitter is a pretty common forum for public discourse. This comment seems roughly equivalent to comparing that someone is hiding behind email or a telephone. I do agree that 140 characters doesn’t lead to useful, detailed discussion. That’s why people are writing blog posts.

I don’t care. I don’t drink hatorade. I really don’t. I don’t care at all. My dog doesn’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care at all.

That is not exactly the response of someone who is interested in learning from criticism. This isn’t personal. Nobody has any problem with you. This is about fear that this project you have founded will hurt the people in Africa that it intends to help. You getting mad does not change that.

If you have a problem with 1 million shirts, you probably really don’t like the fact that I get paid to wear t-shirts for a living. So, go to iwearyourshirt.com if you really want me to ruin your day.

Either this is a massive logical fallacy or a blatant plug for your business. I will assume the best and address it as a logical fallacy. Nobody is opposed to this project because they hate t-shirts or people who wear them. We are worried that sending a big pile of used clothes to African countries will hurt the local textile industry and people who sell retail clothes.

Otherwise I’m going to keep trying to give kids and families who don’t have shirts in Africa clothing to wear. Because you guys all seem to think that everyone in Africa has clothing.

Not everyone in Africa has clothing you would approve of, or want to wear. But yes, I am willing to state that just about everyone in Africa has clothing. Certainly in the countries that you are planning to target: Kenya, Uganda, DRC, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Swaziland, and South Africa. For one thing, Kenya and South Africa are among the strongest economies on the continent.

So apparently you know better than I do. I’ve only been talking to charities who go there often.

Most of the people arguing with you are experienced aid workers and international development professionals with long histories of working with Africa. I am not. I have backstopped Africa programs from DC, and I have a degree in global health, but that’s all I’ve got. J from Tales from the Hood is a different story. So is Texas in Africa. I can pretty much guarantee they have as much or more experience with Africa than the charities you’ve been talking to.

So just want to let you guys know 904 312 2712. I’m happy to talk to anyone who wants to talk like a man maybe step up and actually speak to somebody, not just sit behind a computer. I don’t do that. I step up and get things done. So have a great day, I wish you all the best.

I’m still a woman. Still interested in public discourse, not closed doors wrangling. And I still live in Tajikistan. You have a good day too.

****

For more information on why donations of used clothing can hurt Africans, see the following resources:

1)      The T-shirt Travels – a documentary on used t-shirts in Africa

2)      Dead White People’s Clothes

3)      Oxfam Report on secondhand clothing in Africa

Photo credit: Kim_TD

US Congress Discovers Urbanization – director’s cut

By Alanna Shaikh | | 1 Comments |

I try to keep my blog posts to one major point. If I have a lot to say, I turn it into a series. So when I wrote my most recent UN Dispatch post, about Congress and USAID, I ended up cutting the last paragraph. It was a good last paragraph, though, so I’ll put it right here. Kind of like a DVD extra:

Finally – maybe our legislators should consider letting USAID do its job. We know that development works best when programs are integrated and part of a larger strategy. Holding USAID programs hostage to every trendy new stand-alone topic – avian flu (remember when it was a USAID top priority?), job creation, rebuilding Iraq, basic education, drug resistant TB and so on ad infinitum – is the exact opposite of the kind of coherent long-term planning we need for development.

Me, in other places

By Alanna Shaikh | | 0 Comments |

What if we renamed Chagas to “blood sucking assassin bug disease?” I sexify NTDs over at End the Neglect.*

Just to demonstrate that I have range, I also have a post up at UN Dispatch, looking at the possible outcomes of the events in Kyrgyzstan.The scenarios range from almost good to very, very bad.

*Clever description stolen from Kathleen McDonald

A Kyrgyzstan Cheat Sheet

By Alanna Shaikh | | 1 Comments |

This is way off my usual topic, but I have been living in Central Asia on and off since 2001. I love this region, and I love Kyrgyzstan (my mom and I had actually been planning to go to Bishkek this week for a long weekend). I don’t have a whole lot of insight to offer on the situation in Bishkek right now, but I thought some background might be useful. Your Kyrgyzstan cheat sheet:

  1. Kyrgyzstan was part of the Soviet Union, and became independent in 1991 after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The president of the Kyrgyz SSR, Askar Akayev, became president of independent Kyrgyzstan.
  2. Initially hailed as the “Thomas Jefferson of Central Asia,” Akayez grew less committed to democracy and more corrupt over time. His family, particularly his children, began to dominate all forms of commerce in Kyrgyzstan.
  3. In March 2005, Akayev’s party swept the parliamentary elections in an election that nobody thought was free and fair. It was criticized by the OSCE and led to massive protests all over the country. On March 24th, there was a bloodless coup and Akayev fled the country. This was known as the Tulip Revolution.
  4. The new president was Kurmanbek Bakiev, a former prime minister and leader of the People’s Movement of Kyrgyzstan. He expressed his commitment to a freer, more democratic Kyrgyzstan.
  5. That didn’t happen. His term in office has been marred by state-sponsored violence and widespread corruption. The protests against him began in April 2007.
  6. Here and now, April 2010, the protests are starting again. The media is reporting that the State TV station has been occupied by protesters, and approximately 10,000 people are gathered in the nation’s main square. At least four people have been killed. Two provincial government offices have been occupied. Twitter is reporting that the Interior Minister was killed. Friends in Kyrgyzstan tell me that more people are on the move from all over the country to Bishkek to support the protesters, and their goal is revolution.

Easy

By Alanna Shaikh | | 11 Comments |

easy button

I get a lot of questions on how to succeed in international development. How to make an internship turn into a job, how to use a bad job to get a good job. I give the same answer, every single time. Be easy. More than anything else – more than being skilled, more than being high performing, more even than brilliant – be easy.

This is a small world. You see the same people over and over again over the course of years. Hierarchies turn sideways and upside down in the space of months – every time a new grant gets awarded. My friend Simon has been my boss, my HQ backstop, my subordinate, and my colleague working at another NGO.  If you screw up your relationships with colleagues, you don’t get to leave your job and never think of them again. They’ll pop up in the future – maybe working for the donor that funds you, maybe managing you.

You will work with a limited pool of people. If it’s a good project, you have a big national staff and a small expat staff. Even the largest project is smaller than your average corporation. You need to be able to manage the complexity of the national-expatriate balance. If you can’t manage that, you can’t do your job – no matter what else you have going for you.

That means that when people are hiring, the thought at the front of their minds is, “Will this person be easy to work with?” Because it doesn’t matter how good you are if you’re hard to work with. I remember recommending a colleague for promotion and getting the rapid, muttered response: “We can’t move him up. He doesn’t play well with others.”

I have burned my share of bridges. You can’t be easy all the time. I have ex-colleagues that hate me, I am sure. At least one of them comments on this blog to express his disdain for me. But I do my best to be easy.

Four ways to be easy:

  1. When given a task to do, don’t complain to your boss about it. Just smiled and go do it, even if it’s awful.
  2. You can complain to your colleagues a little, but not all the time. You’re aiming for “this sucks but I can handle it” not “this sucks and I’m miserable.”
  3. This part is kind of awful: you can complain to your expat friends a little, but not all the time. Because very often your friends are the ones who tell you about job openings and float your resume around. They’re not going to do that if they think you’re whiny or bad at your job. (Though, honestly, it occurs to me that if you want to complain all the time you probably need a new job better suited to your skills.)
  4. It’s inevitable that your personal and work life will get mixed up, because living overseas does that. Keep them as separate as you can anyway.

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Photo credit:  Jason Gulledge

Chosen because I was trying to be a little edgy with the word “Easy,” not over the top.