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.

Why volunteer?

• Your name will be placed on a nationwide list of Social Economy Angels (also to appear on the UNDP site too)
• You can learn new ideas for business and social enterprise in the early stages of social development and partake in their creation and development
• You can contribute to developing social entrepreneurship in Poland – and those good practices will be shared with developing countries.

A big thank you to our social angels:

Witold Buraczynski – Supports social enterprises in preparing successful business models

Lukasz Witkowski – Helped develop a long-term development strategy for a street-newspaper initiative run by homeless people

Anna Bulat-Switala -  Supported owners of a cafe-bookstore run by vulnerable groups with her knowledge on how to operate a cafeteria, and by sharing her business contacts

Katarzyna Gurszynska - Helps homeless people prepare their CV, practice for interviews, and apply for jobs

Aleksy Surma – Provides economic advice for social enterprises

Andrzej Krawczyk – Supports development of a cafe-bookstore social franchise model

Adam Wroczynski - Prepares suggestions to improve cafe-bookstore business model

Karolina Katarzyna Kuzia – Supports promotion of responsible production and consumption in the textile and clothing sector – an social economy  initiative

Dr. Artur Krzykowski – Gives legal advice to social enterprises

Maciej Migda – Supports social enterprises with public relations and marketing strategies

Michal Rokicki – Teaches English to people in vulnerable groups

Are you a business expert that wants to lend a hand to those trying to make a better life? (Contact me: magdalena.kostulska@undp.org)

What do you think about the idea of social economy angels? Do you think it could work in other countries in the region?

As the Tales from the Hood blog noted, innovation is en vogue in the development sector. UNICEF’s Executive Board opened last February with a statement on the importance of innovation. USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures is in full steam and the World Bank’s Innovation Practice is often making headlines with initiatives such as open data or Apps for Climate Change.

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?

These are some of the questions that are very much on our minds as we begin exploring innovation at UNDP. To help us answer these questions, we recently met with Geoff Mulgan, NESTA’s Chief Executive, Gail Davenport from the World Bank Innovation Practice and Robert Kirkpatrick, Director of the UN Global Pulse to discuss “Demistifying Innovation for Development.”

It would be too hard to do justice to the richness of the discussions in a blog post, so let me just focus here on three ideas that stood out for me:

1. Perhaps the most memorable image came from Geoff’s last slide, reproducing Turner’s famous Fighting Temeraire (above) – the ship depicted as it is about to be broken into scrap. At the end of the day, Geoff noted, innovation is about decommissioning and letting go, no matter how well established or respected the old habit was (NESTA recently published a great report on this subject, The Art of Exit).

This got me thinking: when it comes to development organizations, innovation is often seen as a new “activity” or “initiative.” Would a more useful starting point be to identify what needs to be decommissioned? More generally, how can we get development organizations to embrace “the art of exit”? 

2. Our speakers seemed united on rather than trying to identify “our way to do innovation,” development organizations are better off spending more time understanding and analyzing what is already being done and focusing their efforts in providing project managers with tools and approaches they can choose from (this is consistent with the Kafka Brigade’s principles I blogged about recently). The way that NESTA approaches innovation (below) and research provide a good starting point in this respect. (See: the open book on social innovation or the recently launched Center for Challenges Prizes). By the same token, the Global Pulse research on real time and agile development is a must read for anyone interested in new approaches to crisis management (and real time project monitoring).

But there is an implicit challenge here: how can we bridge the gap between the theoretical work on innovation and development practitioners on the ground? A recent Scidev feature on grassroots innovation has some interesting insights on this. (At UNDP, we are starting to think about how best to address this issue for our staff – suggestions welcome!)

NESTA approach to innovation process

3. In my trainings, I often like to use the quote that “it is easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.” Hearing Gail’s frank (and way too modest!) account on how the “crazy” idea of open development became a reality at the World Bank confirmed my hunch that learning by doing is the best approach to promote innovation within an organization.

This somewhat challenges the established paradigm that “competence comes before performance” (we send you to a course on innovation before you can actually do it). At a practical level, this means providing staff in the field with support to be able to experiment (as advocated by Owen Barder) and move quickly from ideas to prototype. Failing that, the barriers to implementation will often be perceived as insurmountable or it will always be way too easy to argue that “this is too difficult, costly, time consuming….” This left me wondering: is rapid prototyping the “killer app” for development organizations wanting to embrace innovation?

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.

Social innovation camp, Armenia

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).

The presence of a wide array of small-scale projects in turn creates a portfolio of possible paths and, as such, contingency.

It is in nurturing a range of small-scale development prototypes that the advantage of social innovation camps becomes apparent. The process encourages active citizenship by enabling self-organization and projects are designed and run by volunteers, therefore reducing the financial costs of failure. UNDP’s oversight of the projects also ensures that if a project threatens vested interests within a particular context, UNDP is well positioned to mediate or advocate for compromise, helping to reduce social or political risks.

Although it is too early to fully evaluate the impact of the social innovation camp in Armenia, initial signs are positive. The event’s Facebook page is still a vibrant forum for discussion, five out of the six projects created at the event are operational (one funded by UNDP, four funded by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation), three of which will soon conduct a hard-launch (more on this in the coming weeks). These positive signs in Armenia raise questions concerning the wider applicability of the methodology, especially concerning international collaboration.

Occupy the Buffer Zone, Cyprus

With the above insights and questions, I recently travelled to Cyprus to present the methodology and our experiences in Armenia to the Peace it Together network.  The network (formed as part of the USAID funded and UNDP implemented Action for Cooperation and Trust project) consists of civil society organizations and activists who have extensive experience of citizen-led peacebuilding in Cyprus and beyond.

They plan to host social innovation camps in preparation for what they hope will become an annual conference on citizen-led peacebuilding and reconciliation.

In Cyprus I developed a deep respect for the knowledge, vision and ambition of the Peace it Together network members. They were interested in the social innovation camps because they reach beyond the “usual suspects,” and saw the potential to engage a wide variety of people in peacebuilding efforts.

We concluded that social innovation camps are applicable to grassroots peacebuilding and reconciliation efforts, but that it would need to be contextualized along the following lines:

• Host itch workshops with participants from individual communities identifying issues pertinent to their daily lives
• Link issues which transcend dividing lines and are not directly linked to the causes of the conflict
• Engage with idea owners in order to identify individuals who are willing to work in multi-communal teams
• Conduct the social innovation camp for the participatory design of solutions to common issues
• Implement the prototypes within one community, or ideally within various communities (peace building in action)

Even if the projects designed at the social innovation camp were implemented only within one community, the Peace it Together network would have enabled contact between the two communities on common issues unconnected with the conflict.

Can the networks and projects developed at social innovation camps create a foundation for citizen-led reconciliation and peace building?

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.

The observers and I were “very encouraged” by what we saw. Police and hundreds of municipal health and social workers were generally polite and supportive.

The city transported families in safe and clean buses to destinations in and around Belgrade. According to the observer teams, “the municipality took steps that are firmly in the direction of respecting the human rights and dignity of families that were affected.”

Teams comprising the United Nations, EU and others have returned to the Belgrade sites multiple times. The World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a rapid needs assessment three days after the relocation, and this has guided subsequent interventions to fill gaps and address needs more fully.

The Municipality has convened a working group that is addressing needs that are as yet unmet, and has invited input from a variety of partners, including the United Nations.

To be sure, needs remain. Among the four Belgrade sites, the Obrenovac settlement is wet and isolated. Palilula lacks transport and some services. Shade and refrigeration are problematic at all sites. Trailers are small and cramped for larger families.

The Municipality is working with partners to relocate the Obrenovac families, and to bring Palilula services up to standard. Additional trailers have been provided to some of the larger families, but more are clearly needed. Over the long term, Serbia needs to find permanent and durable solutions – on this we all agree.

What we saw on 26 April when families were relocated from Belvil has nevertheless inspired high expectations, and we hope that vigorous commitment to protect rights and dignity will be sustained and endure in perpetuity.

Several times a week I ride my bicycle past the Makis settlement where close to a hundred Roma families now live. Makis is unique. It’s nicer than the other settlements, and it reminds me of trailer parks that are common in the U.S., and which I’ve seen in Appalachia.

Makis is clean. There are basketball hoops, swings and seesaws for kids. There are communal showers and latrines. Families have addresses where they can receive mail. Clothes are hung on lines to dry. School buses pick kids up in the morning and return them later in the day.

Makis is undeniably better than Belvil, where these families lived two weeks ago, and every time I pass I am reminded that Serbia is headed in the right direction, even though there is some distance to go.

William Infante is the United Nations Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Serbia. 

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))

In Straseni, Moldova, 80 percent of the town’s budget goes to the local school, leaving very little funds for investment.

There are several factors that reduce the ability of local governments to raise revenues including the heavy concentration of the population in capital cities.

The result is an uneven tax base where small municipalities struggle to generate local revenues. National governments that should introduce effective fiscal equalization measures can be influenced by capital cities that have disproportionate amounts of power over national policy and no interest in revenue equalization schemes.

Another problem is the low population density of rural municipalities – often comprised of several villages and a small town, which means that the cost of delivering services is higher than it is in bigger cities with more compact populations.

On top of these demographic issues, the financial crisis resulted in a sharp decrease in property transaction taxes, land development charges and property taxes, reducing local government revenues by 19.7 percent in Bulgaria, 15.7 percent in Croatia and 13.3 percent in Romania, according to a Council of Europe report (pdf).

Consequences include increased debt, postponed investments and reduced expenditures – especially in personnel, which makes up the major share of expenditures.

One solution is taxes and charges on businesses, a popular form of local government revenue in the region. But with an emphasis on improving the business environment, there is pressure to reduce these types of financing – as in the cases of Albania and Kosovo (hereafter referred to in the context of UN Security Council Resolution 1244/1999).

Another possibility is the Scandinavian model of introducing a surcharge on personal income tax, but to make this work, it is important that income tax is attributed to the jurisdiction where the person lives and not in the location of the employer.

As for property taxes, revenues collected in Southeast Europe are quite low compared to the European Union (EU) average, particularly in Albania, Croatia and FYR Macedonia, mainly because it is administratively complex and not popular anywhere.

This means that in the medium term, the financial autonomy of local governments in Southeast Europe will be less dependent on increasing their own revenues than on stable and predictable transfers and cost-saving solutions.

One cost-saving solution is inter-municipal cooperation, where small municipalities join forces to enjoy the same benefits as big cities. It can be used for capital investments such as roads, delivery of public services such as solid waste management, and organization of professional services (especially those related to information technologies).

One such measure municipalities can use to reduce costs is e-procurement, which increases access to markets and combines their purchases to get better prices from suppliers and a faster and more efficient method to get quotes. In fact, Transparency International says that e-procurement has cut public procurement costs by 50 percent in Slovakia.

Moldova is now on the verge of implementing fiscal decentralization and looking at several  options to improve local revenue generation and revenue-sharing. One proposal would have the personal income tax shared between municipalities based on the residence of the employee.

In today’s context, what should Moldova expect from increasing local government fiscal autonomy?  

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.

However, the required temperature for cold storage is zero to five degrees Celsius, which heat pumps cannot usually achieve; customized and affordable cooling units would have to be designed.

Do you have any suggestions for cooling systems that are:

1. Capable of cooling to zero degrees Celsius

2. Affordable (small initial investment, or systems which can start small and be expanded)

3. Viable (low operating cost, low maintenance)

4. Reliable (low dependence on outside energy resources)

5. Environmentally friendly

We’d like to hear ideas about already tested systems or any new ideas too.

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.

1. 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.
2. The issue: The impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems. Forests tend to be at the centre of many climate change mitigation projects, but our project concentrates on enhancing forest adaptation to climate change. This approach is relatively new and the project is testing some theoretical assumptions on the ground. Adaptation measures are important for the protection of scarce forest resources in Armenia, but should likewise be at the heart of forest mitigation projects, like REDD+, to improve their sustainability.
3. The solution: adaptive forest management. Traditionally forest management is based on expectedly unchanging conditions, an assumption that will not hold under climate change – especially when we look at the rotation lengths of several decades up to a century of forests. Adaptive forest management is not about reinventing the wheel though; it is about fine-tuning the timing and practices of current forest management, rethinking the type and mixture of seedlings, learning as we go and, most importantly, identifying the local impacts of climate change on forests.
4. Climate change in the forests of Armenia is a burning issue. Literally, as wildfires are one of the main threats posed by the drying and warming climate of the region. It is also a gnawing problem as leaf-eating forest pests are greatly benefitting from the new conditions. Forests in Armenia are fragmented and degraded due to several human factors, which is leading to reduced forest resilience under climate change.

   

5. The forest adaptation project includes work on strengthening capacities to manage wildfires and demonstrate environmentally-friendly pest control. Partners range from forest enterprises of “Hayantar” (the state forest authority) and protected area managers to the fire brigades of Armenian Rescue Service and students in local communities. The project also has four reforestation sites in the Syunik region of Armenia.
6. The big task remaining on the project’s to-do-list is including climate change risks in the 10-year forest management plans.
7. The project is one of the only 26 projects to receive funding from the Global Environment Facility for adaptation initiatives – making the project a global pilot. Examples of similar projects are not widespread.

I’m one of the three volunteers that will send blog posts from UNDP in Armenia and represent the Climate Change Programme Unit working in cooperation with the Ministry of Nature Protection in Armenia. So stay tuned for future posts on forest adaptation.

If you are interested in any particular aspect of the project, just let us know and we would be happy to blog about it!

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.

Landslide risks in Central Asia

>> See larger version of the map

There are a multitude of transbourdary hazards in the Ferghana Valley, which straddles Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Here and elsewhere, landslides can trigger other transboundary hazards, such as glacial lake outburst floods and the release of toxic substances into river basins (particularly in the Mayli Suu area of the Ferghana Valley), with the potential to adversely impact a significant number of people.

Scientists in Uzbekistan have been able to establish a strong correlation between landslide activation and four to five year cycles of wet and dry years. The volume of season and annual precipitation, snow and glacial melting and intense precipitation play a critical role in triggering landslides.

Landslide monitoring and research has declined since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Even in countries such as Kazakhstan that have greater resources to devote to hazard analysis, landslide surveys remain underfunded and adequate observation posts are lacking. Thus, the available hazard analysis of landslides in Central Asia is outdated and in need of increased support.

At the same time, according to the available projections of climate change in the region, landslides will become more widespread, owing to the increasing prevalence of extreme rainfall events and more rapid melting of glaciers.

Landslides exist in nature and in many cases cannot be prevented; however their impact and consequences can be mitigated by reducing the vulnerability of people and infrastructure to natural hazards. With the appropriate preventative measures, significant loss of life and economic damage could be avoided.

Weapons destruction in Serbia, 2010

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.

As a result, weapons are sometimes illegally taken out of the storage or accidents such as those in Svelieve, Padjane and Evangelos Florakis take place.

Small arms and light weapons pose a direct threat to the communities where they are located. They can have a negative long term impact on the region’s sustainable development, and contribute to the spread of insecurity.

The project that I manage is helping combat the threat posed by small arms and light weapons in Southeast Europe. The project’s official name is the South Eastern and Eastern Europe Clearinghouse for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons. Yes, it is quite a mouthful, so around here, we just call it SEESAC. The project is a joint initiative of UNDP and the Regional Cooperation Council.

So what does controlling and reducing the proliferation of arms mean in practice? I often get asked this and every time I try to answer I realize the scope and complexity of our work. At the hard, visible end of the spectrum are the weapons destructions.

Since 2009, in cooperation with ministries of the interior throughout the region, we destroyed some 85,000 pieces in Croatia, Moldova and Serbia alone. Because people like to see a heap of guns as they get destroyed, these activities attract media coverage, providing us with visibility and powerful images to illustrate the results of our efforts.

Destruction of weapons have another benefit – they ensure that those weapons we destroy can never find their way to a conflict zone, or to the street.

However, we also realize that we cannot destroy all weapons and hence we increasingly work on more secure storage solutions. It is obvious that states will continue to keep large arsenals of weapons and ammunition. What we want to ensure is that they are kept safe and secure – that weapons and ammunition do not “walk” away from storage, or explode, as is sometimes the case.

In the past three years, I have had to learn a tremendous amount about storage, how they are built, how ammunition is kept, and guarded.

In order to make sure all illegally owned weapons are destroyed or safely stored, my team and I also help with campaigns to raise awareness and collect weapons. As I sit and write this, I am wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan – Manje oruzja, manje tragedija (Less weapons, less tragedies), a souvenir from the recently concluded awareness raising and collection campaign carried out by my colleagues in Croatia together with the Ministry of the Interior. Highly visible, it resulted in large numbers of weapons and explosive devices returned by citizens, making Croatia safer for its citizens.

Campaign against celebratory shooting in Serbia, 2011

>> See more photos

However, as the topic we deal with remains highly sensitive, a lot of what my team and I do is much less visible and has to remain so.

For instance, we facilitate the meetings of the Informal Regional Information Exchange Process on Arms Exports, a process which brings together government officials from six countries in the Western Balkans. These are the individuals who deny or grant import and export licenses for arms, on a day to day basis. As we facilitate these informal gatherings, the latest of which just took place some weeks ago, where experiences but also difficulties are discussed, we are privy to discussions that have to remain off the record. In these cases, measuring and demonstrating impact is challenging.

In my line of work, the main challenge for Western Balkan countries is the practical implementation of their existing legal and political commitments in the control of small arms and light weapons.

Consequently, in order to minimize the risk of proliferation of small arms and light weapons, it is crucial to increase the safety of existing stockpiles, to destroy surpluses and to establish more stringent controls – including through marking and tracing tools.

Together with its partners, UNDP has been working for 10 years to achieve these goals and my team and I look forward to continuing to do so.