News from betterplace.org

Throughout our ecosystem water plays a complex and important role. But countless important water sources, from the Ganges to the Colorado and the Aral and Chad Sea, are threatened by extensive outtake and pollution, a situation aggrevated by climate change. In out new water portal you’ll find well-researched theses and exciting solutions in the realm of water and environment: „It can’t get any worse“, says tropical water expert Dirk Walter, regarding the situation of rivers in India. Nonetheless, he explains in this interview why he is still optimistic. To protect against fragile ecosystem deterioration, the German NGO BUND is actively working to salvage the Elbe River. Their lobby is strong and has already taken back many hectares of wetlands. River Regions Management: it sounds professional, and it is. The holistic methods of the Watershed Organisation Trust areexemplary and are increasingly being adopted by other organisations. Until the skin gets pretty wrinkly: the musician Heinz Ratz swimsup to 20 kilometres per day in the German rivers in order to raise awareness about their quiet deterioration. Discuss and comment these approaches and case studies here!

It sounds banal, but it’s vital: agriculture requires water. And people need agriculture to have full stomachs. It’s difficult to find an area of human life that is untouched by water. The areas affected by water problems vary so radically, as do their solutions. In our new water-portalour experts describe their experiences in the realm of water and food: Lena Partzsch, water expert from the work group GETIDOS (“Getting things done sustainably”) at Greifswald University, provides a situation update and challenges users to do some serious rethinking. Tread at the bottom, pump at the top: The Money Maker Irrigation Pump from the organisation Kickstart sounds enticing. Almost 100,000 small farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa have already invested in the technology. Rightly so? Work like an Egyptian: exploitative working conditions can be reduced through a combination of educational and health measures. That’s what SEKEM is doing. To improve groundwater levels, the Indian initiative “Barefoot College”uses rainwater. Other lands are now adopting this exemplary model. Comment and discuss these approaches and case studies here!

Today we are going online with an additional offering on betterplace.org: a knowledge portal on water. Over the past 3 months, the betterplace lab team, headed by Angela Ullrich as project manager and supported by a great crew contributors, has assembled relevant water knowhow for users of the betterplace plattform. Our portal addresses donors and project supporters as well as project managers: As donor you can find out about the main developmental challenges in the realm of water and which solutions have proved to be especially promising. We aim to give you some criteria based on which you can make an informed choice. Criteria and points of discussion which you may also want to use to engage project managers on betterplace directly. For project managers on betterplace, we hope to add to your knowledge about the field you are working in by presenting good practice case studies and pointing to promising technological innovations, which help you to improve your work - and thus win more supporters. The water portal focuses in three topics: Drinking water & sanitation Water & Food Water & the Environment We are curious about your feedback: check out what we have assembles and let us know, what you like as well as where you see room for improvement.

They are everything but still: Our the new water portalon betterplace.org experts share their experience from the field: Hannelore Knott has worked in a rural well program in Cameroon. In herinterview, she explains why it is sometimes so complicated to drill a simple hole in the earth. And what are the consequences from having a well. Mirina Meuss from the Society for Technical Collaboration (gtz) says: “Theoretically, we shouldn’t have any problems.” We have asked her why water is continuously one of the biggest problems in the world. The One-Man Show: Wolfgang Buchner wasn’t swayed from his calling, but travelled to Bolivia where he has developed simple and quite successful methods for drilling wells. Our portrait illustrates a man who just couldn’t keep his knowledge to himself. In addition we present exciting case studies with often surprising results: Should Aid be Free? The Kenya Rural Water projectillustrates that people won’t spend money for clean water, despite the costs to their children’s health. One reason: scientists and aid workers have heretofore paid too little attention to indigenous concepts of health. Children enjoying themselves on a merry-go-round simultaneously pump water for their village—what a great idea! PlayPumps in Africa were supported by numerous investors with millions of dollars. But this fun-and-plumb vision turned out to be a pipe dream. A critique. This problem stinks: Almost half the human population has little to no access to sanitary waste facilities. We outline which simple technologies are helping out and what new methods are worth noting. Comment and discuss these interviews and studies here!

As part of my guestblogging on Savage Minds I have written up (a few parts of) the story behind betterplace.org, also reflecting on how an anthropological perspective informs what we do. I’d be very excited to get more anthropologists on the platform. Here is my call to action for them: Although betterplace.org mainly targets the German donation market, we have projects and visitors from all over the world . Among the ways we’d love to get anthropologists envolved, let me name just 3: Tell us about organisations and projects you are excited about. We’ll contact them and invite them onto betterplace. Visit projects already on the plattform while travelling and write down your impressions on the projects betterplace-page. This helps grow the Web of Trust. Check out projects in categories you have some expertise in (health, education, good governance) and critically interrogate project managers on their theory of change etc.

The US anthropology blog Savage Minds invited Pál Nyíri and me as guestbloggers. Our last post - about the role of culture for development - might also be of interest to betterplace blog readers.

If you happened to watch television in the evenings during December, in order to relax after a long work day, you may have noticed more than one “Year in Review” program. Well, we’re also taking the time to recap everything that happened in the turbulent year of 2009. As Joana Breidenbach already reviewed the social sector in her four part blog posts, I will dedicate this year in review more toward what has happened specifically at betterplace.org (and sorry, some links are in German!). 1st Quarter The year began just the same as it ended in 2008: eventfully. Many exciting projects found support on betterplace.org. One such project, that we found particularly interesting, was Cinema Jenin. The goal of the project was to build a cinema in the Palestinian town of Jenin to revive the film culture within the city and refugee camp. The construction of the cinema building is now nearly finished. Two other cool projects that we’ve promoted since the first quarter of the year, are Skateistan and Boxgirls International. Skateistan is an educational project founded as a skate school in Afghanistan. This approach had us thoroughly fascinated. The same goes for Boxgirls International, which provides women and girls the opportunity to develop abilities in the ring and further apply those strengths to their own personal and professional lives. This project is just bursting with energy. But everyone also sometimes needs a time-out. And that applies to servers as well. It was this fact that spurred our campaign „Server down – Engagement hoch“ which we brought to life on the International Day of System Administrators. Instead of a boring “The server is temporarily unavailable” message, our banner allows webpage operators to now offer their visitors the opportunity to shorten their waiting time while simultaneously making the world a little bit better. 2nd Quarter We received a lot of visits in April. During our Open House day, Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen, the founder of Transparency International, gave us the honour of holding an impressive speech. He elaborated on the idea of an Open House and awarded betterplace.org as a “Chosen Place in the Land of Ideas”, an initiative under the patronage of Germany’s Federal President, Horst Köhler. That the activation of one’s own community can work like a charm if the context is right was shown this year by Pennergame. Throughout 2009, the animators for online games encouraged their members to support homeless people over betterplace.org. Even now, they are the largest Team on our platform. Keep it up! Around the same time, we were able to announce an important next step for ourselves: the betterplace.org nonprofit will become a nonprofit corporation in the near future. This step should help us to be stronger without inflating our organisational structure. 3rd Quarter We were of course also very happy about the engagement of actress Anna Maria Mühe with betterplace.org. In July, Ms. Mühe visited the Children’s Hospital Bärenherz in Leipzig and has been supporting it ever since. You can read about her visit on the Bärenherz project site on betterplace.org. In addition, she agreed to grace our homepage with her photo during the second half of 2009. In the fall, the Mozilla Contribute Week took place. All those Internet-savvy people out there were challenged to make accessible their knowledge of the Internet and its possible adaptation for social projects. betterplace.org supported the Mozilla Contribute Week in Germany as the mediator between volunteers and suitable projects. During the fashionable autumn season, we decided to try out our trend-setting capabilities. Together with the creative portal 12designer, we launched a t-shirt contest. The resulting contributions were all of very high quality. You can view the winning shirt design at Speradshirt. That’s how sexy changing the world can be. betterplace.org is there for everyone. That’s why even large organisations use betterplace.org to collect donations. A good example of this is action medeor, Germany’s largest medical aid organisation. In just one year, they managed to collect 12,250 Euros for their work. The organisation was especially convinced to use betterplace.org because of the ability to stay very current as well as the inexpensive cost of new donor acquisition. In the 3rd quarter of 2009, we were also able to prove that television viewing doesn’t inevitably make one overweight, ignorant and depressed. The agency “Heck-Antrieb” (“Rear-Wheel-Drive”), together with “Kropp & Ritzert Create GmbH” produced a pro-bono spot that was broadcasted nationwide. You can see the program online here, on our Facebook page, or on our profile on meinVZ. 4th Quarter Another wonderful campaign took place in the 4th quarter of 2009. Together with eBay and the sale service providers LIMAL and DHL, we were able to setup an infrastructure allowing brand manufacturers to donate goods auctioned at retail price on eBay to projects on betterplace.org. And the nice thing is: the manufacturers and other parties agreed to forego service costs and donate 100% to designated projects over betterplace.org. That’s how far we’d come by October 2009. Just two years since the founding of betterplace.org, we’d almost broken the 1 Million Euro record of generated donations. We’re naturally very happy about this and thank you for your excellent involvement! Jumping the hurdle of 1 Million Euros in donations was also a timely concept for us, since we arranged the annual “Global Online Giving Marketplaces Conference” in November. Attending this conference in Berlin were 13 international online giving platforms. Together, the organisations agreed to work deeply together, planning a global campaign to move more people toward engaging online. Just in time for Christmas, we began a whole slew of activities, such as another online Christmas Wish Tree campaign, wherein supporters could fulfill the wishes of young Children’s home residents. We crafted together an online Advent calender featuring 24 “doors” that opened, thereby providing 24 different opportunities to do some seasonal good. Companies also use Christmas as a time to spread the cheer. Take SoftMaker for example, whose Load and Help 2009 campaign allowed users to download their SoftMaker Office 2008 package free of charge. The company donated 10 cents per download toward projects on betterplace.org, gathering altogether 6,089 Euros! Just before the end of the year, we were able to launch the Payback Payback Donation World, enabling Payback credit card holders to donate their collected rewards points toward online projects at betterplace. Donors can see exactly what their generosity impacts. Naturally, 100% of the points are passed directly to intended projects. Last but not least, a super story for the end of the year. A flower shop in danger of closing in Charlottenburg was saved by an initiative over betterplace.org. The initiative caused such a stir that it was even reported on by various offline media. Brilliant campaigning! It’s what we always say: stop crying, get cracking! As you can see, a lot has happened. But we’re still far from done. Quite the opposite, rather. We are eager for the new year and look forward to more exciting stories, gripping campaigns and interesting experiences. Our transformation into a corporation will take place soon and then it’s full steam ahead! We’re still brimming with ideas…

Following the catastrophe in Haiti, many donations have been made over betterplace.org for organisations that work with emergency aid, from Care International by way of the German Red Cross to the Alliance Action German Aid. Our guest blogger Alexander Glück takes a critical look at this topic. Of course, probably not everyone on the betterplace team shares his five theses, but we find it important to take a look at this particular perspective on emergency aid and we are excited to hear your responses as well: The moment one has written a critical book about the donation market, the next moment next large donation campaigns are confirming the social giving mechanics that I have described in “The Marketed Responsibility” (Essen: Stiftung & Sponsoring, 2009). If the claims in that book hold true, then one will also have to allow the following prognoses regarding coming developments: 1. There will be new records in giving. But that won’t initially provide emergency relief. The media tells daily of the overwhelming donation response that has surpassed all expectations, while simultaneously flashing on the screen the donation account numbers, together with strong visual images of suffering. Public heads such as Anne Will, Thomas Gottschalk and — as a columnist for the Bild newspaper — Angela Merkel, apply pressure to the already-existing call for ever-more donations — donations with as few strings attached as possible so as to ensure the most efficient application. The problems with earthquake areas, however, are more logistical and technical in nature, as the needed resources are already in large part available. The media’s suggestions notwithstanding, a financial payment of any amount does not save a single child buried under the rubble. 2. Haiti is facing a profound structural change The funds acquired won’t finance immediate aid, but will rather go toward initiatives for long-term reconstruction projects. Which is all well and good, except that it will never be discussed. Distribution and allocation conflicts will be the result, and without a functioning structure, unjust allocations and benefits will inevitably occur. Add to this the substantial roll of Haiti’s oligarchy, which before the catastrophe lived at the expense of the majority population, and which will in the future further attempt to allocate the funds according to such a structure. The coming changes can breakdown old structures of exploitations in order to build new ones in its place. 3. Initiatives not engaged in Haiti will see a slump Whoever is donating to Haiti is not going to donate to another initiative. Donations for long-term aid in Haiti are now so important that, in the in the current donation frenzy, they threaten to overshadow many other equally-urgent projects; such projects will consequently see a clear decline in giving toward their causes, since after giving generously to Haiti, many donors won’t make the decision to give toward yet another project. 4. Incompetent initiatives will propagate the Haiti issue We saw it during the Tsunami catastrophe of 2004. Fundraisers and advertising agencies crowded in to adopt the cause in order to increase their own donation profits. This will happen again, though most of these initiatives are incompetently prepared to engage this realm of aid, therefore eventually risking a considerable loss of prestige to their organisations. 5. Haiti will come more firmly under U.S. control For the time being, the United States’ military presence in Haiti is ensuring the necessary structures to quickly and effectively distribute needed relief. The almost invasion-like arrival of the U.S. soldiers in Haiti will in all probability last for two decades and after awhile, won’t have anything to do anymore with aid to the earthquake victims. Alexander Glück www.der-spendenkomplex.de.tt

New digital technologies are enabling radical possibilities in catastrophe situations (apart from the fact that they are able to enlist record-high donations via online donations, text-messages etc.) . Take a look at the Haiti Crisis Map from the Ushahidi Situation Room. Just in the last few days, it lists hundreds of messages updated almost in real-time, indicating, for instance the ruins containing trapped victims: “The school behind St. Gerard still has people buried in it. Unclear if alive or dead” and those trying to find missing friends and acquaintances” or “Looking for the entire Bontemps family in Haiti (Father Dr. Sainfard Bontemps).” They describe concrete assistance from onsite aid organisations: “MSF is starting to truck drinkable water to Choscal hospital for the patients and the people nearby” as well as acute needs and bottlenecks: “St. Marc: We are receiving a lot of surgery cases. We have operating rooms, nurses, equipment but no surgeons.” Visitors to the website have the possibility to verify individual reports. Ushahidi originated during the crisis following Kenya’s 2008 election and is an open source platform making collective crisis information accessible. On the Haiti Crisis Map, the information comes from diverse channels located onsite—from the people in Haiti who post a report on the Ushahidi website, to those posting over SMS, blogs, emails, radio, twitter, Facebook, television and list-serves. But Ushahidi doesn’t just leave the crowdsourcing to manage itself. An active team of volunteer workers (including students from Tufts Fletcher School as seen in this video) coordinates and organises the information. You can find an interesting interview with Patrick Meier from the Ushahidi Team on the TED Blog.