The way to develop the social economy in Poland is by getting the private sector to help social enterprises become more professional.
Social enterprises often need to improve their business skills, and knowledge of the terms and conditions of business in the open market. That’s why our office in Poland is setting up a network of social economy angels (similar to the concept of business angels).
People who responded to our challenge so far are supporting social enterprises with their knowledge, experience, and skills to help them market and promote products and services, and to advocate for corporate social responsibility (CSR).
We’re looking for experienced managers, who are not afraid of risk, willing to devote their time and money to prove that it is possible to develop a social economy in Poland, and create sustainable social enterprises that will fill a niche in the market and fulfill social expectations.
Challenges such as 3D printing for development are becoming increasingly common practice. Judith Rodin, CEO of the Rockfeller Foundation recently declared to Forbes magazine that we are entering “the third phase of philanthropy,” marked by the effort to “seek out innovation on the ground – sourcing ideas from the crowd – and … scale them as often as we look to create them.” And these are only few examples.
So is innovation just the latest buzzword (fad?) in the development discourse (hold off clicking on the yes button, skeptics out there), or is it something we should embrace in an era of dwindling resources? If the latter, how do we move beyond generic aspirations to walking the talk? (As Duncan Green ironically pointed out “has anyone ever asked you to be less innovative?”)
If we are to take the raging debate over open data as an indicator, implementation challenges – once one moves beyond the buzzwords – are often non-trivial. For instance, should development organizations follow the stand-alone, skunk works model of innovation (which seems to be the favourite mode so far) or opt for approaches that encourage a closer link to operations? Or, what are effective tactics to embed in the organizational culture an appetite for prototyping, away from the comfort of pilots? What are the criteria to judge whether, say, a challenge or a crowdsourcing initiative successful?
Can development aid be innovative and effective? Which measures contribute to development and which not? How can we translate complexities of development to ordinary people?
Owen Barder, Director at the Centre for Global Development, former UK’s Prime Minister advisor and blogger will address those and other issues at the Kapuscinski development lecture on complexity and innovation in development in Bucharest on Tuesday, 15 May 2012.
You can watch the lecture live at 5 pm in Paris, 6 pm in Bucharest and 11 am in New York.
Join the conversation with @owenbarder and use #kapu in your tweets!
The lecture is part of the Kapuscinski development lecture series organized across the European Union by the European Commission, UNDP and partner universities.
>> Find out more about the lecture with Owen Barder.
All of five months have passed since UNDP in Armenia hosted a social innovation camp (known as Mardamej locally) and in that time my colleagues and I have delivered a few presentations on our experience and received numerous insightful questions from the development community.
A recurring theme concerns the use of the social innovation camp methodology for dealing with uncertainty within UNDP’s manifold operational contexts.
Late last year, Albert Soer and Balazs Horvath initiated a vibrant debate on Sustainable development and coming to terms with complexity, asking whether sustainable development is a normative outcome of a complex social system or whether a complex system is a product of a sustainable approach to development – a chicken and egg dilemma (almost).
The importance of the debate lies in the fact that both sides seem to agree upon the need for more dynamic programming, and in doing so, question the efficacy of linear thinking and an over reliance on central planning.
Complexity theory, in application, seems to require experimentation, learning and the inclusion of contingency by development agencies. Experimentation with small-scale project prototypes, it is argued, enables quick response programming and learning, but, equally, low impact failure (at least financially).
Exactly two weeks ago, about 250 extremely poor and disadvantaged families were relocated from Belvil, an illegal settlement in Belgrade, where they lived in squalor. The families were transported to four sites around Belgrade, and to a handful of communities across the country.
What I saw when I arrived in Belvil was gut-wrenching for me. Hundreds of families, with bags packed, sitting in front of ramshackle homes surrounded by years of waste and fetid pools of stagnant water.
The conditions were deplorable. It was no surprise that all families were eager to move.
The move began early in the morning and lasted late into the night. The United Nations, European Union (EU) and others provided teams to observe the relocation, and whether rights and dignity were protected, and resettlement standards met.
Municipalities in Southeast Europe share a similar problem: a lack of financial resources and fiscal autonomy. This affects their ability to deliver public services to citizens.
This is an important problem because in the region, local government investments are the engine in the catch-up game of providing modern infrastructure such as water and sewer systems, solid waste management, street lighting and roads.
One way to measure local government financial autonomy is to compare its own revenues as a share of its total budget.
While municipalities in Montenegro “own” the largest share of their revenues with 79 percent and non-conditional grants, conditional (non-discretionary) grants make up 57 percent of revenues in FYR Macedonia and 65 percent in Moldova, according to the Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South-East Europe. (See: Fiscal Decentralization for Southeast Europe (pdf))
During our work with small-scale entrepreneurs and farmers, we keep coming across the problem of cold storage. Finding good solutions for cold storage can have a tremendous positive impact on communities. For example, with appropriate cold storage fruit will no longer waste away quickly in the heat, or vegetables can be stored so that they can be sold when prices are higher.
The main challenges with cold storage in countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Western Balkans are the initial cost of investment, operating costs, and reliable access to energy.
We want to identify solutions that address all three challenges. Despite the higher investment cost, we are currently looking into cooling units that use heat pumps, as these can be used (with some alterations) for cooling in summer and heating in winter, thus improving the operating costs.
For those of you interested in climate change adaptation, our forest adaptation project in Armenia decided to join the blogosphere to share information and knowledge. For our first blog, we wanted to present our project – and in as few points as possible.
Our project promotes adaptation to the impacts of climate change on mountain forest ecosystems in Armenia. The project is about three quarters down the line and will be wrapped in 2013. Although the project has stayed well on schedule and several project successes have already been posted on our web site, now is the time to get the last, and maybe the biggest, things done. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week’s policy brief, Natural Disaster Risks in Central Asia, based on a UNDP review of available risks assessments, has provided some interesting information on landslides in Central Asia.
Landslides are one of the main natural hazards facing Central Asia. Their triggers vary, but they include the steepness of slopes – which has been continuously increasing due to seismic events, mining, increased torrential rainfall as well as rising water tables and continued degradation.
As shown in the map below, landslide risks differ among Central Asian countries and are most pronounced in the mountainous areas of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Currently, Tajikistan has around 50,000 landslide sites, of which 1,200 directly affect settlements. Read the rest of this entry »
What do places like Sevelievo (Bulgaria), Padjane (Croatia) and Evangelos – Florakis, (Cyprus) have in common? They are among the many ammunition storage sites where an accident took place in 2011, causing the death of over 440 people, injury to approximately 2,000 individuals, and leaving long-term environmental and infrastructure damage (See: Small Arms Survey report).
In 2011, the rate of accidents at munitions storage sites rose to unprecedented levels – 3.8 incidents per month. According to UN International Ammunition Technical Guidelines, Eastern Europe and Africa are areas of particular concern because countries in these regions possess significant surpluses, much of which are well past their safe storage life.
Given the sensitive nature of the materials, storage facilities require proper management by trained personnel, adequate conditions for storage and constant surveillance for security reasons. In many instances, the government or private owners of the facilities are unable to meet these requirements.
RT @MarijaNovkovic: No single prescription for #dev. Best practice or best fit? Embrace experimentation and make small changes. Adapt to ... 19 hours ago
RT @gquaggiotto: Owen: Development policy needs stop looking the missing ingredient. Rather we need to harness & shape evolution #kapu19 hours ago
RT @gquaggiotto: "From best practice to best fit" --> we need a #globaldev sector promoting experimentation #kapu19 hours ago
