We are philanthropic advisors and strategists – and while our know-how in a given geography varies, we are process experts trusting the locals, following the locals, and always partnering with locals. As our Fellowship cohorts tailored to international NGOs are taking off in Denver, we want to share with you of our influences. What shaped us into who we are today? Where does our experience come from? What kind of expertise might we bring to the table? These are always powerful and revelatory questions.

While a most significant portion of our work has focused on local communities, for more than a decade we reviewed grant proposals for an Israel-based portfolio of grants. Additionally, work with international NGOs has come to us through personal history and interest in a given geography, and through magical discoveries done while traveling the globe – which is a significant piece for all of us at Sky(lark) Strategies.

Such learnings are never finite – we keep expanding each day and the lessons keep coming in different forms.  It could be knowledge that we arrive at from recent dialogues with young German NGO leaders such as Arnd Boekhoff from Hanseatic Help and Luisa Seiler from Singa Deutschland, while talking about the effectiveness of integration programs for refugees. Or it comes from digging into the potential format for an annual report with Simona Czudar from Ador Copiii Romania, trying to find the right way to convey the impact of her work on foster systems and adoption to the Romanian Parliament. Few days ago, we were talking about a potential pilot with Tamuka Chirimambowa who is forging a path for a low cost top notch institute in rural Africa focusing on training rural boys and girls in entrepreneurship, financial literacy and development economics…

We are big believers that as a strategist, you are never the expert in a given community, and you should start with breaking bread together and listening to what is needed on the ground. Throughout the years we have learned that regardless of political or ethnic context, all communities can find the middle ground when focusing on economic and social advancement. Everyone wants to improve their condition – that is the leverage.  And you don’t always need to involve people in official ways – in many cultures that is very difficult. When working with international NGOs to strengthen their capacity, it is best to help people do what they are chomping at the bit to do – not what you think they should do. By using the energy and the passion that is already there you can teach, train and build leadership.

Also, we’ve learned that the mechanics of funding and resourcing NGOs are very different in each place, each country, and each neighborhood because of variations in legislation, public perception and socio-economic engines.  Those variables impact not only fundraising practices which become radically different for relatively similar programs, but overall, it means that there is no such thing as pure replication: what works in Hamburg, Germany might not work in Berlin, Germany; and what works in Timisoara, Romania, might not work in Iasi, Romania. Because no two environments a
re ever the same, to scale you need to constantly adapt and take input from people on the ground.

Overall, there are certain things that we could have only learned from our international colleagues and from current and past programs we supported in a variety of ways outside the US. Below please find a select list of insights and the projects that catalyzed those insights throughout the years:

• By being witnesses to a given community’s vision for change, we become part of the change itself. In February 2016 we were in Colombia learning about the work of a handful or diverse programs: Damartes (Damas de Arte = Women of Art) is an association of seven women in Cartagena that since 2008 create jewelry, containers, vases, and accessories, using the proceeds to better their families and community; Casa Kolacho is a cultural arts center that provides urban graffiti tours sharing the story of the social clashes and atrocities that took place in recent history in the Comuna 13 of Medellin, while spreading the hip hop movement and strengthening the community through positive cultural reinforcements to combat the world of drugs and violence; and Periferia Dance Company in Cartagena, who uses arts education and modern dance as a political manifesto rife with undercurrents of racial, political, social, and economic equity messaging.  There were several other social enterprises that we visited including a small flower farm in Antioquia and a coffee plantation in rural Colombia – and for us, it is always clear that acquiring an understanding of local issues is almost always more powerful and longer lasting than the dollars we brought in support.

 

• Women are a force for change even in a culturally prescribed context. This is something we learned from our past work with organizations such as AJEEC-NISPED, an agency creating change with a double lens (Bedouin Arab and Jewish) using women’s education and entrepreneurship to address the challenges faced by underserved groups in Israel. How do you empower communities where half the population – the women – needs to fold their daily interactions into a traditional way of life? The answer involved supporting the establishment of women-led small businesses that would thrive by selling goods and services to other women. The foundation we were involved with funded catering companies for Bedouin mothers producing thousands of hot lunches each day and small businesses in photography, literature and DJ’ing for Bedouin women. We were part of this work from 2004 until 2006.Other programs that reinforced this lesson for us in the same portfolio of grants were: Economic Empowerment for Women/ Isha L’Isha – the Haifa Feminist Center, which supplied low-income women with the knowledge and tools to create their own small businesses and break the cycle of poverty, and Kol Ha Isha, The Comprehensive Program for the Economic Empowerment of Women, which worked with underprivileged women in Jerusalem to provide them skills and ongoing support to enter the job market.

 

• Sometimes it’s the most unusual approach that makes a difference. How do you reach troubled Arab and Jewish young girls who are not allowed extensive interactions outside their traditional household? How do you include them in workforce development programs, provide them with mental health services and wrap-around support? The answer involved funding The Women’s Courtyard, an Israeli NGO – an organization located on a main street in Jaffa, a mixed Arab and Jewish neighborhood where poverty is a shared experience. The high-end “Shuki Zikri Hair Designers’ Salon,” an integral part of the Women’s Courtyard, attracted women and girls from all over Jaffa, providing a non-stigmatizing reason for going to the facility, and offering a number of different interventions, from yoga, oriental dance, and art classes, to job skills training, tutoring, homework assistance, and education for girls that have dropped out of school. The center also provided crisis intervention when young women found themselves in difficulty with nowhere else to turn. We were part of this work from 2004 until 2006.

 

• Never underestimate the power of a crowd. Look for natural entry points and keep your POV free of preconceived notions because sometimes knowing nothing about a particular context can be a hotbed of innovation. For example, in July 2016, as part of our +Acumen Corps contribution, we helped SimebraViva, a Colombian social enterprise strengthen their efforts to scale their organization and overcome issues on the ground. SiembraViva is connecting smallholder farmers selling organic produce to urban customers and was struggling in getting crop reports from farmers. This impacted their logistics and e-commerce platform so they turned to +Acumen for help. +Acumen catalyzed more than 200 people from a variety of backgrounds from philanthropy to design and engineering (and Sky(lark) Strategies was part of this effort). The number of ideas and the degree of innovation prototyped by the group was nothing short of astonishing and it helped SiembraViva get unstuck.

 

• Success is often defined by a combination of big visions and small victories. While in the US or Europe one can’t measure outcomes by having a success metric focused on the completion of elementary education (or other similar basic benchmarks), in other parts of the world it is essential to flex our perspective and define success with a local system of reference. When visiting Guatemala in 2005, we were introduced to the Mayan communities of Livingston and Rio Dolce. Ak’ Tenamit and Guatemalan Tomorrow Fund have been an instrument of change in this area since 1992. We’ve learned from their work that almost 90{9885c0486e5a2dcd1a1edbf76fce71054dca1b0da4585463b276be294d4d00e8} of Guatemalan Mayan girls do not finish elementary school, entrapping the girls and the community in a circle of poverty. This is not uncommon in developing countries. Our interaction with Ak’ Tenamit was not particularly extensive, but it taught us that  in order to decrease childbirth and infant mortality, teenage birthrates, HIV/AIDS incidence and malnutrition while increasing economic growth and gender equality, one has to start small and help village girls finish sixth grade. While a modest goal, it is a significant stepping stone.

 

• Change often starts with the kids. Offering opportunities to move out of poverty is a good platform for change and a way to galvanize people around education for children and youth. This lesson came to us again and again through a variety of the programs we worked with or supported throughout the years.  One example is our exposure in 2005 and 2006 to the work of The Israel Association of Community Centers, which, in partnership with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, worked to narrow the education gap for Bedouin children through an educational enrichment program called Budding Scientists, preparing students to study engineering and science in institutions of higher education.  To contextualize, it is worth noting that at the time, approximately half of the 170,000 Negev Bedouin lived in seven “recognized” towns, the other half living in unrecognized villages, in squalid conditions far removed from social services and with no high schools.  Another example is our work with Ador Copiii, Romania an organization focused on creating systemic change for 60,000 abandoned and foster children. Here, everything is always about the kids: providing regional state centers with know-how and support, bringing attachment theory and early childhood education practices to service providers, providing education to community advocates and potential adoptive parents, sharing information with state institutions as high up the chain of command as the legislative body. To create change, this small team taps both into the power of women-fueled entrepreneurship and the motivation provided by the desire to create opportunities for children and youth. We are proud to have been a partner in Ador Copiii’s work since 2013.

 

• Sometimes the first necessary step in creating change is simply the willingness to have difficult conversations. In early August 2016, together with two German foundations and a handful of NGOs and strong thinkers and doers from both side of the Atlantic, we were immersed in intimate, high-level conversations about potential ways to keep a post-Brexit UK in the Transatlantic dialogue while keeping an eye on the rise of authoritarianism as a global movement. For the next 12 months we’ll work with our partners to explore ways to reach some of the unreached. Paradoxically, we look forward to complicated, uncomfortable conversations with young, sophisticated leaders that voted for Brexit, or that might be embracing extremist views in Germany, or are agreeing with populist campaigning in the US.

Why do we search and hunger for this work? Because we consider ourselves part of the whole and because international work calls us. Every day, we want to do more of it and if you are a US-based international NGO give us a call; we want to hear from you.