Boxes or ripples – the ripple effect of transformation of the poor

Boxes or Ripples? That is the question for NGO impact funding. All of us NGO’s struggle to get funding. It’s part of the fabric of each and every day of our lives. Seeing great need, having proven solutions, yet not being able to find the money to carry things out. It came to a point of real clarity for me one day when talking to a well known funding organization. I explained what Emerging Leaders does and they said "which of our five funding streams do you fit in?” I gave a slightly puzzled look and they said “Are you HIV? Women? Education? Sanitation? Or Human Rights?" This is what I call the “Boxes” approach. Which box do you fit in? How did we ever get to the box approach when it comes to working with the worlds most challenging issues? We know that all problems are complex, that all change requires a shift in whole systems. Boxes are there to make things simple and easy to manage from a funder point of view, but they make no sense in the real world of transformation of the lives of the poor.

All our programmes work on the ripple effect, not the box effect.

Take one person like Francis. Francis is one young man in the vast population of Rwanda’s youth. Francis is one of the lucky ones. He has a job that pays him just over £1 a day. Young men like Francis aren’t stupid, the poor aren’t stupid, they are full of amazing potential. Injustice has left them without a good education or even a complete education. While Francis is doing his poorly paid job, his friends are sitting along the street doing nothing. The unemployed and underemployed. In a country like Rwanda or India or Columbia, a young frustrated youth, doing nothing is not good. It’s a risk to security, it's a risk to their livelihoods, it's a risk to local and national GDP and it's a risk to that young person’s well being and the well being of the girl he gets pregnant and starts a new family with. 

What happens is that this potential remains untapped, un-released, locked up inside these young people. Potential doesn't die, it just sleeps, like Sleeping Beauty, it awaits someone or something to wake it up. What is their potential? I don't know. Nobody knows, not even the person themselves most of the time. So the first thing our programmes do is to wake people up to their potential. People need hope. Without hope the engine of our lives doesn't even get started, with hope, it does. (Impact measurement number 1 – how do you measure a young life waking up to its potential? They look at you, they raise their head, they speak, the walk differently, they write differently – something new is rising and it shows in their bodies).

What next? Once people wake up they are confronted with what is keeping them small; what is keeping this potential from being realsied. So the next thing our programmes do is help people see that poverty has got inside their heads and its their own thinking that is keeping them small – I cant; it wont work out for me, its all about me, nothing ever changes, no body helps me out – endless thoughts that keep us small and stuck. Now this young person sees the issue, they take responsibility for their own thoughts and they learn new ones. (Impact measurement number 2 – how do you measure a young life waking up to its potential? Their mindsets change - I can, I will, I'll find a way, I'll lift ip my head and get on my front foot)

What happens?

An explosion!

An explosion of potential. When potential is released it is not released in boxes, it is released in ripples. Young men like Francis, when their personal leadership potential is released don't do just one thing in one neatly defined area. Every aspect of their life changes. So Francis started saving, he used his savings to buy bikes which he hired out to the youth with no jobs on the street so they could each start cycle-taxi businesses, Francis got promoted, Francis used more of his savings to build a room on the side of his existing tiny house so he could rent it out to get more income. Francis is leading himself and others out of poverty and they are changing many things, not one thing. Youth start businesses, save money, stop beating their women, start reading to their children, start saving school fees, set up local relevant youth HIV testing strategies, clean up their street, fill the killer pot holes down their street…and….and….and. 

This is the ripple effect.

(Impact measurement number 3 – how do you measure a young life waking up to its potential? The ripple effect in every area of their lives)

So who is willing to see the world as it is and fund the ripple effect; or are we destined to be stuck in boxes?