Philanthropy Age

Dedicated to thoughtful giving

Philanthropy Age

www.PhilanthropyAge.com

Middle East, North Africa and South Asia

Issue 02

July – September 2013

Happy Returns Why good causes are good business

The art of giving

The next generation

Out of the rubble

Is increased philanthropic spending set to kickstart a cultural revolution?

Sheikha Salama on the strategic evolution of Al Nahyan family philanthropy

How one Islamic charity is helping the women of Gaza to build their own futures

WFP/Jennifer Mizgata/Yemen

Fighting Hunger Worldwide In 2012, WFP provided food assistance to more than 97 million people in some of the world’s poorest countries.

As the UN’s frontline agency fighting hunger, WFP bridges relief and recovery. We feed the hungry after disasters, then provide “safety nets” such as food-for-work programmes or free school meals so families and communities can rebuild and become more resilient.

To learn more about our work, visit wfp.org

follow us @WFP

Contents

Contents...

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Regulars 08 Need to know 10 Trends 14 Guest Column 16 The Moment 75 One Day 76 Making a Difference 79 The Next Step

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30

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Generations of giving We examine the work of the Marafie Foundation, which has dedicated vast sums to helping thousands of people across the MENASA region.

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Legacy of a leader Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan tells us how her eponymous foundation is moving towards more strategic and results-driven giving.

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The art of philanthropy At a time when traditional sources of arts funding are on the wane, philanthropists and charitable groups are helping to drive the cultural cause.

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48

Beyond the slums Maria Conceicao is battling to raise Dhaka’s street children out of poverty.

She says that without further funding, eight years’ work could go to waste.

60

Model pupils We venture into the shanty towns of Kuala Lumpur to visit the Fugee School, an initiative that is changing the lives of young Somali refugees.

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The quiet philanthropist Indonesian tycoon Tahir has traded a strategy of discreet philanthropy in favour of public giving. Now he wants Asia’s richest to do the same.

Contents

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Cover Story We examine the rise of impact investing, which combines financial returns with social benefits. Do good causes mean good business?

72 05

CONTRIBUTORS

With our thanks to…

Muhammad Yunis

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf

Navi Radjou

Farahnaz Karim

A Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, Professor Muhammad Yunus is credited with developing the concepts of microfinance and microcredit. He is chairman of the Yunus Centre and founder of the Grameen Bank, both based in Bangladesh. In this issue, he explains how social business represents a new model for progress.

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is a leading Islamic scholar and has been named as the Western world’s most influential Islamic figure in the Muslim 500, the annual ranking of the world’s most powerful Muslims. He is the cofounder and president of Zaytuna College, and this issue writes for us on the relationship between Islam and giving.

A fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design Innovation, Navi Radjou is an innovation and leadership consultant based in Silicon Valley, US. In this issue he profiles the leader he admires most, Indian businessman Ratan Tata.

The founder and CEO of Insaan Group, Farahnaz Karim has worked for the UN, the World Bank and a range of non-profit organisations in locations including Palestine, Tajikistan, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this issue, she discusses how philanthropy is not something one does, but something one is.

Zaineb Bouftass

Peter Guest

Adrienne Cernigoi

Zaineb Bouftass is a translator and former journalist with Le Temps magazine. For this issue, she spoke to a Palestinian widow who has opened her own sewing business with the help of a microfinance initiative, and a social worker in Morocco who caters to the needs of African immigrants, offering guidance and counselling.

An award-winning journalist focusing on international development and environmental issues, Peter Guest writes for the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian, among other publications. In this issue he explores the rise of impact investing as an asset class.

Adrienne Cernigoi is a freelance writer specialising in international development and business. Before turning to journalism, she spent six years working in international aid and European affairs. In this issue, she tells the story of an initiative that has changed the lives of six young women in Yemen.

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Philanthropy Age is published by Touchline FZ-LLC The publishers regret that they cannot accept liability for errors or omissions contained in the publication, for whatever reason, however caused. The opinions and views contained in this publication are not necessarily those of the publishers. The publishers take no responsibility for the goods and services advertised. All materials are protected by copyright. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photography or storage in any medium by electronic means) without the written permission of the copyright owner, except as may be permitted by applicable laws.

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Why business matters Business is an ever-evolving concept. The word ‘business’ itself did not always refer to commercial activity, but derived from ‘busyness’, the state of being busy as an individual or society. And in the 21st century, ‘business’ as we understand it is concerned once again with society, as well as the individual.

Editorial Team: CEO, Editor-In-Chief Leonard Stall leonard@touchline.ae

Senior Editor Andrew White andrew@touchline.ae

Editor & Web Editor Joanne Bladd joanne@touchline.ae

Arabic Editor Fawaz Jarrah fawaz@touchline.ae

Publishing Director Salem AlShaikh

COO Waleed Gubara waleed@touchline.ae

Translation Zaineb Bouftass

Business Development Mona Mahmoud mona@touchline.ae

Director of Digital Juan Whitby

Digital Design Director Matt Walker

Office Manager Linda Musco

Office Administrator Imen Jennadi

For advertising enquiries: David Taylor-Evans david@elitemedia.ae

Touchline FZ LLC Studio Ahmad Marei; Anas Ahmad Albounni; Michel Al Asmar; Qaiser Nawaz

Contributors: Muhammad Yunis; Sheikh Hamza Yusuf; Navi Radjou; Farahnaz Karim; Peter Guest; Adrienne Cernigoi; Tara Gally; Ayesha Daya Images: Bahr Karim; Dave Singh; Christie’s; EFE; Getty Images; Islamic Relief; START; Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation; Marafie Foundation; Fugee School; Reuters ISSN: 2305–6525 Distributed by: GLS Media Services Printed by: Emirates Printing Press, Dubai

We cannot pretend that corporate social responsibility is a new phenomenon. Companies have been engaging in philanthropy just as long as they have been taking a social and environmental toll upon the communities in which they operate. However, corporate and social evolution is laying waste to the lie that companies must prioritise either profit or the public good.

Our cover story this issue explores the rise of impact investment. Impact investing is not entirely avaricious or purely altruistic. It raises an invaluable middle ground upon which corporations may pursue financial returns with social benefits. Crucially, it also borrows from the best of both worlds, welding proven commercial practices to sustainable initiatives that improve the lives of those on the lowest levels of society.

Our guest columnist, Professor Muhammed Yunus, employs the term ‘social business’ to encapsulate his theories, thinking which led to the creation of microfinance and microcredit and earned a littleknown economist from Bangladesh the Nobel Peace Prize. He argues that business methods should be applied to the eradication of poverty, unemployment and environmental degradation. He is a successful banker, a world-renowned economist, and an avid impact investor.

Ultimately, sustainability is a two-way street: by acting in a responsible manner, companies are cementing their own futures as well as those of the communities they serve. The general public is more educated and informed than ever before, and our flattening world means that customers are more able to vote with their feet. Whatever their size or speciality, corporations that fail to adapt sufficiently to this new reality will not be in a position to impact the lives of future generations. Quite simply, they won’t be in business.

Andrew White Editor, Philanthropy Age

Founder Sponsors:

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NEED TO KNOW

Nine things

you should know...

As to those who believe and do good deeds, establish the salat and pay the zakat, they will most surely have their reward with their Lord and they will have nothing to fear nor to grieve The Quran 2:277

Arab Idol takes relief and development role As 23-year-old Mohammad Assaf took to the stage in the final of this year’s Arab Idol competition, millions around the world held their breath. Later, when he became the first Palestinian to win the talent show, their voices rose as one to acclaim a new hero.

Born in Libya to Palestinian parents, Assaf returned to the Gaza Strip aged four, and was raised largely in a refugee camp in Khan Younis. A wedding singer and a virtual unknown until the televised competition, he has

since described himself as a ‘son of Palestine’ and a ‘son of UNRWA’, the relief and human development agency for Palestinian refugees.

Assaf’s mother is a UNRWA teacher, and the young star was educated in UNRWA schools. Now Assaf has achieved another first, after being appointed as UNRWA Regional Youth Ambassador for Palestine Refugees.

Having won the hearts of millions of viewers, Assaf’s greatest challenge still lies ahead.

UNRWA is struggling to keep pace with demand for services caused by rising numbers of refugees, growing need, and deepening poverty. The agency’s general fund, which supports its key activities, is 97 per cent reliant on voluntary contributions, and is running a deficit of $65m. Every donation makes a difference to the people of Palestine

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NEED TO KNOW

Since God bestows his graces on us providing us with wealth, it is our role to use this wealth for the benefit and prosperity of our people as an expression of gratitude to our Lord Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, founder of the UAE

$4bn

While other continents have set their sights on 2015 for the achievement of goals in the fight against poverty, HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, African leaders may be forced to defer their timeline to 2030. Are we leaving Africa behind?

The amount pledged by attendees of the Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi in April, for the development and delivery of lifesaving inoculations

Nearly 28 per cent of the Philippines’ 97 million-strong population lives on the poverty line. The country’s government is aiming to reduce this to 16.6 per cent by 2015. They won’t be able to do it alone.

Eye of the storm: Climate change could overturn hard-won gains in reducing poverty across South Asia, according to a World Bank report.

Extreme weather including heatwaves, floods, cyclones and droughts will wreak havoc across Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan in particular. What can be done to give the peoples of these countries the best possible chance of recovery?

45.2

million

The number of people worldwide classified as ‘displaced’. It’s the largest number since 1994, the year of the Rwandan genocide, and has been driven in part by the bloodshed in Syria

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Trends

UN warns of worst global refugee crisis in 20 years The world is facing its worst refugee crisis for almost 20 years as conflicts in Syria, Mali and Sudan have forced thousands to flee their homes, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in its annual report.

By the end of 2012, some 45.2 million people worldwide had been displaced, the largest number since 1994 and the year of the Rwandan genocide.

The figure includes 15.4 million refugees, 937,000 asylum seekers and 28.8 million internally displaced people (IDPS) – those seeking refugee within the borders of their own country. More than 45 per cent of refugees are children.

“These truly are alarming numbers,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio The globally displaced 15.4 million refugees

Guterres. “They reflect individual suffering on a huge scale and they reflect the difficulties of the internal community in preventing conflicts and promoting timely solutions for them.”

The UN in June launched the largest emergency appeal in its history, for $5bn, as it warned that half the Syrian population will need humanitarian aid by the end of 2013.

An average of 3,000 people per day became refugees in 2012, five times more than in 2010, the UN said. The escalating crisis in Syria has been a key contributor to these numbers, leading to 4.25 million Syrians being internally displaced and creating more than 1.6 million refugees.

Aside from Syria, other hotspots include Afghanistan, the largest source of refugees, Somalia, Iraq and Sudan. Worldwide, 1.1 million became refugees in 2012, and a further 6.5 million were internally displaced.

“We have not seen a refugee outflow escalate at such a frightening rate since the Rwandan genocide almost 20 years ago,” Guterres said.

Many of the evacuees have fled across borders to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, stretching resources and aid operations in the countries to breaking point.

Developing burden* Afghanistan 2,585,600

Somalia 1,136,100

million

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19%

Developed Countries

Iraq 746,400

Syria 728,500

Sudan 569,200

28.8 million internally displaced people

Countries bearing the biggest burden of refugees were again in the developing world, with Pakistan and Iran playing host to 1.6 million and 868,200 people respectively. The world's poorer countries host 8.5 million refugees, or 81 per cent of the global total.

Countries in conflict*

937,000 asylum seekers

45.2

A record 21,300 asylum applications in 2012 were from unaccompanied or separated children, the UN reported.

Dem Rep of Congo 509,400

*The leading source countries for refugees in 2012

81% Developing Countries

*The world’s poorest nations host the largest number of refugees

Trends

Pakistan schoolgirl calls for education for all

Middle East’s wealthiest philanthropists driven by faith Faith is the biggest driver of philanthropy among the Middle East’s wealthiest millionaires, new research from Paris-based bank BNP Paribas has found.

Some 63 per cent of the region’s highnet-worth individuals (HNWI) – people with at least $5m in assets – cited religion as the most important influence on their giving, the firm said in a report.

Among Asia’s super-rich, the top motivation for philanthropy is the desire to give back to society. European respondents named family legacy, altruistic desire and a sense of duty as their primary motivations.

“As a person of the Muslim faith, I tend to adhere to principles of zakat,” Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh Mohammed Al Amoudi told the report.

The Individual Philanthropy Index polled 300 HNWIs in Europe, Asia and the Middle East to measure and compare the commitment of philanthropists in the three regions.

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban last year for her advocacy of education for girls, marked her 16th birthday by urging governments around the world to provide free education for every child.

The survey, carried out between January and March 2013, ranked respondents on their giving, their promotion of charitable causes, and the impact of their spending.

Yousafzai, who was attacked on a bus in Pakistan’s Swat valley, told a United Nations youth assembly in New York that she would not be silenced and instead resumed her campaign to eradicate poverty and illiteracy.

Europe led the field, with a score of 51.2 out of 100, followed by Asia and the Middle East, with scores of 50.3 and 33.2 respectively.

“Let’s wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism,” she told the 500-strong audience. “Let us pick up our books and our pens – they are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”

“While the lower score in the Middle East presents an apparent paradox in light of the Islamic imperative towards charitable giving, this might be partly explained by the religious injunction to be discreet about one’s giving,” the report noted.

This trend is less obvious among the region’s wealthiest individuals. Some 43 per cent of the Middle East’s richest billionaires oversee their own charitable foundations and actively publicise their giving.

“This discrepancy… shows that openness about charitable giving may increase in tandem with the size of a fortune,” the report said.

Speaking from a raised platform and wearing a shawl she said belonged to the late Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, Yousafzai denounced the attack on her and two of her school friends and urged women around the world to be “brave” in the struggle against oppression.

“The extremists were, and they are, afraid of books and paper. The power of education frightens them. The power of women frightens them,” she said.

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon declared July 12, her birthday, as “Malala Day”. Introducing Yousafzai, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called her “the most courageous girl in the world.”

Yousafzai, who now attends school in the UK, has launched the Malala Fund to support education for young women.

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GLOBAL EYE

Equal measures Across the Arab world, women have succeeded in attaining leading positions in a wide range of fields including science, the arts, academia, business and politics. There nevertheless remains a marked gender gap when it comes to equality and opportunity. The efforts of governments and philanthropic organisations and individuals will play a key role in driving forward gender parity, helping to unlock the region’s full economic potential.

Mind the gap The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index rates 132 countries based on their sexual equality in spheres such as health, access to education, economic participation and political engagement. European countries lead the field, but significant challenges remain in the Middle East.

Gender Gap Wide

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Narrow

GLOBAL EYE

Workplace woes

Education for all

The global economic downturn has placed pressure on both men and women in the workforce. As prospects improve, governments and philanthropists must work together to ensure gender parity in areas such as salaries, career progression and leadership. For the Middle East and North Africa, much work remains to be done in this field.

Equal access to education is a key indicator of economic prosperity. Effective partnerships between philanthropic foundations, civic society organisations, community leaders and governments can bring about positive growth in providing quality education for all.

North America

North America

Europe & Central Asia

Europe & Central Asia

Latin America & the Caribbean

Latin America & the Caribbean

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Asia & Pacific

Asia & Pacific

Middle East & North Africa

Middle East & North Africa Wide

Gender Gap

Narrow

Wide

Gender Gap

Source: WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2012

Narrow

Source: WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2012

Earning change Research shows that in some job categories in the Arab world, female employees are paid as little as one third of their male colleagues’ salaries for doing the same job. Governments, along with rights groups and legislators across the region, are working to narrow and eventually eliminate the gap between wages for men and women.

Source: UNICEF, State of the World’s Children, 2007

57% Industrialised nations

39% South Asia

28% Middle East and North Africa

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GUEST COLUMN

A new model T

raditionally we talk about business as a vehicle for earning money, to make profit, to benefit personally in a financial way. I conceived the idea of social business simply because it reflected my own approach to business; as a means to solve social problems.

Professor Muhammad Yunus, the man known as the ‘father of microfinance’, explains how the model of social business could relegate poverty, unemployment and other global problems to the history books

This type of company, which I initially called Social Consciousness Driven Companies, was an expression of the many dimensions of human beings. Put simply, I believe that people are not exclusively selfish beings; they are strongly selfless beings too. Selfishness is a part of human nature; out of self-preservation, you protect yourself. This is how we have survived on this planet. But it does not exclude selflessness. We are a mixture of many different kinds of elements.

The theoreticians who designed economic frameworks did not pay attention to this diversity. They

These enterprises are not designed to generate individual profit, but to solve the problems of others.

I named this business, based on selflessness, as a ‘social business’. These are non-dividend companies. They don't operate to allocate dividends or returns on the initial investment. They exist to solve a problem.

A social business has three basic features: one, it is a non-dividend company; two, it is a problem solving company; and three, it is a business, because it is sustainable. It runs on its revenue, not on the continuous inflow of donations. Once you invest in it, and once it is successful, it runs by itself.

Grameen-Jameel Microfinance was the Middle East and North Africa's first social business. The company is a joint venture between the Grameen Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that I helped launch in the US in 1997, and a Saudi forprofit company, the Abdul Latif Jameel Group. Since its inception 10 years ago, the company has been able to extend capital and technical support to more than 20 microfinance institutions in 10 countries throughout the MENA region. The financing and capacity building of these institutions has allowed them to build a track record, so now they can approach traditional banks to secure capital and expand their own financing schemes to more and more small ­– or micro – business people.

I believe that people are not exclusively selfish beings; they are strongly selfless beings too remained true to one track, and created one form of business to reflect this profit-motivated mentality. But could business operate on the basis of selflessness? Would it ever work?

Without being conscious of these questions I pressed ahead with creating businesses able to solve social problems. After creating many such companies, I realised that they fell into a new category of business that was not recognised in economic theory.

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

Grameen-Jameel partners last year disbursed microloans to nearly 2 million poor clients, mostly women.

It is remarkable. Still, much work remains to be done. It is estimated that in the MENA region alone there are approximately 82 million potential microfinance clients. To date, only 4 million have been reached.

The first big company to come forward was the French food group Danone.

Together, we created the Grameen Danone Co, which now produces a yogurt called Shokti Doi. The objective of the company is to supply nutritious food to Bangladesh’s poorest children, using a product specifically designed to help malnourished children.

Danone does not want to turn a profit from this company, as its entire purpose is to solve the problem of massive malnutrition among the children of Bangladesh. If it is successful, we will all be delighted that it worked.

If it is not successful, we can say it is a step on the road to solving the country’s malnutrition problem. We will keep trying until we find a social business solution.

A study has been conducted on the impact of Shokti Doi in combating malnutrition and its findings were very positive. It has already made an impact on the health of many children. When the

impact is established and the company is able to break-even financially, it will become a successful social business.

Today, the Grameen Foundation has established partnerships with a raft of large businesses. We have joint ventures with the German sportswear brand Adidas, the chemical company BASF and with Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing retailer, among others. Our joint venture with Veolia Water Company aims to bring safe drinking water to the arsenicaffected areas of Bangladesh.

We did not know our partners before they contacted us. The fact that they took the initiative to do so means that the idea of social business created resonance in their mind.

The concept of social business is growing. Universities are creating institutes, chairs and centres for social business. Courses are being offered.

This is a very encouraging development.

And based on my conversations with business leaders in the Arab world, I sense that Grameen-Jameel will be joined by a wave of social businesses in the years to come. The Yunus Centre in Bangladesh stands ready to help get these off the ground and promote progress and learning.

Are people interested in social business? I very much think so. I was surprised that many people were not only interested in social businesses, but actively took steps to start them. When we rolled out the model in Bangladesh, we were contacted by large corporates from Europe, Japan and the US. We did not approach them; nor did we try to explain to them the benefits of social business or urge them to invest in the model. It just made sense to them.

They volunteered.

Grameen-Jameel, a joint venture between Grameen Foundation and Saudi's Abdul Latif Jameel Group, aided the delivery of microloans to almost 2 million poor clients last year

Making profit is good, but changing someone’s life is great. Let’s use business methods to relegate poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, and other social problems into museums for good. n

About the writer Professor Muhammad Yunus is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist credited with developing the concepts of microfinance and microcredit

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THE MOMENT

16

THE MOMENT

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Billion dollar Bill When the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, joined forces with Bill Gates to host the Global Vaccine Summit in Abu Dhabi, it was as a valued partner in the struggle against preventable disease.

In his opening address to more than 300 world leaders, business leaders, health and development experts and philanthropists, the co-founder of Microsoft said that the day would “go down in the history of global health”.

A few hours later those same attendees had contributed more than $4bn to the fight to eradicate polio, and Gates himself had pledged $1.8bn. As recently as 1998, polio raged in 125 countries around the globe. Today the disease is confined to three countries – Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria – and the number of recorded cases dropped to a record low of just 223 in 2012. Gates, in partnership with Sheikh Mohammed, has taken us a giant step closer to a polio-free world.

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Generations of giving Over three-quarters of a century, the Marafie family has dedicated vast sums of time, money and effort to enriching the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Andrew White tells the story of a philanthropic dynasty

I

n an office on the second floor of the Marafie Group headquarters in Kuwait City, a tattered map hangs on the wall. It shows a vast expanse of northern Pakistan, although the place names – Roundu, Shigar, Skardu, Khappu and Kharmang – are all-butobscured by hundreds of orange, red and green stickers. Each sticker represents a school, mosque or medical centre; like stars in the sky, there are too many to count.

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The bright lights in this otherwise barren firmament are the work of the Marafie Foundation, each signifying a bonfire of hope in a region darkened by poverty and instability. They are the work of thousands of volunteers, and three generations of one family that has dedicated 75 years and millions of dollars to the betterment of communities in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Morocco, Somalia and India.

“We are not giving something from our own pockets, we are giving something from the pocket of God,” says Abdul Ilah Marafie, chief patron of the foundation.

“God gave us this money, we take our part so that we can live, and then the rest is for charity. We are just watchmen for this money: God shows us a path.”

The family’s philanthropic journey can be traced back to 1938 when Mohammad Rafie Husain Marafie, Abdul Ilah’s

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father,,opened a school in Kuwait City providing free education for needy children. An entrepreneur and trader, Mohammad Rafie would go on to build a handful of schools and hospitals in Kuwait and Iraq. He would also enshrine in his sons a deep sense of philanthropic obligation.

of his brothers, Abdul Husain and Abdul Fatah. While in the early 1980s around 80 per cent of philanthropic spending was funded by the foundation, now more than 80 per cent of projects are financed by donors, with the rest coming from the foundation and individual Marafie family members.

“We used to go with him to visit people in poor communities,” recalls Abdul Ilah.

“He would give people money without anybody watching: what the right hand does, the left should not see. He told us that we should never reject any person who has a demand. Listen to him, and never think that you are above him.”

“We never go to anybody to ask them for money, but because now people know what we are doing, people are coming to us,” says Abdul Ilah. “Our operating model has changed very much in the last quarter of a century.”

Mohammad Rafie insisted that his sons inherit not just the family business, but its philanthropic responsibilities. Upon his death in 1976, the late patriarch’s real estate assets were consolidated under one company; a third of these assets have since been isolated to provide direct revenue for the foundation, which was formalised under the management of Abdul Ilah and two

20

Although funding levels have remained steady over the foundation’s lifespan, there have been shocks to the system, and never more so than in August 1990 and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Six months before the occupation around 30 Marafie family members visited the city for the laying of the foundation stone for a 99-bed children’s hospital, which would have been the family’s third medical facility in Iraq. When Republican Guard divisions rolled into Kuwait City,

all business and philanthropic activities were suspended immediately. Abdul Ilah and his elder brother were holidaying in Sweden; three other brothers and dozens of family members were trapped in occupied Kuwait, with no way to contact the outside world.

“We are not giving something from our own pockets, we are giving something from the pocket of God” “On the first day of the invasion we talked to Kuwait, but then communications were disconnected,” he recalls. “We only heard about our families through third parties, until almost a week later when somebody called us because my uncle had an amateur radio. He sent a message to a ham radio club in Holland, and they passed the message onto another club in Sweden, and they got in touch with us.”

PHILANTHROPY AGE

Zain Marafie pictured with his four-yearold son, Abdul Atif; part of a fourth generation of Marafie family philanthropists

Abduljabbar Marafie’s amateur radio skills offered the family, and others, a remarkable insight into life under lockdown. They enabled Abdul Ilah and his brother Abdul Husain to continue to run their businesses from Sweden, and also to free up funds which would be used to keep the family’s philanthropic activities afloat. In Pakistan, Marafie Foundation projects were in a “desperate” state: with no funds coming in, villagers survived only by selling equipment from a vocational school established to teach girls to cook and embroider. Sewing machines, wooden looms and countless other items were traded for food in the first four months after occupation.

“We received a letter from Pakistan which said that they were praying every day for the safety of our family, in all the mosques and schools of the area,” says Abdul Ilah. “We told them to stop selling and arranged to transfer money so they could keep the foundation operating.

They reduced their expenditures as much as possible, but at last they didn’t have to sell any more equipment.”

Upon the liberation of Kuwait in February 1991, the family was able to take stock of what it had lost as a consequence of the occupation. Iraqi merchants had stripped the family stores and the Marafie-owned Kuwait SAS Hotel, now the Radisson Blu Hotel, had been rigged with phosphoric C4 explosives. The hotel burned for two days, glasses and ceramics melting into ugly puddles in the foyer. It was a devastating blow in light of the family’s close ties with Iraq, and yet it did not sour the family’s relationship with the Iraqi people.

In the two decades since the occupation, the Marafie family has built a number of new schools in Iraq, as well as residential buildings for widows which have since been handed over to the Iraqi government. Every year, in the holy month of Ramadan, 2,000 families in Basra, Baghdad and Kurdistan are given ready meals and provided with baskets of essential foodstuffs including meat, rice, wheat, oil, and lentils.

PHILANTHROPY AGE

“Charity and philanthropy has no borders,” says Abdul Ilah. “We knew that Iraqis were suffering, and even though others felt differently and would not support Iraq after the liberation, we thought differently.Philanthropy is above the wounds of 1990, because it is not our money, it is God’s money. We are building this for the next generation.”

Pakistani girls attend a Marafie Foundationfunded school in the north of the country. Every two years, the family tours Pakistan to check the progress of their philanthropic projects

Around 10,000 people in Morocco and Pakistan are also provided with food parcels each Ramadan, and it is

“Charity and philanthropy has no borders, because it is not our money, it is God’s money” in the north of Pakistan that much of the foundation’s current work takes place. Every two years, groups of family members, led by Abdul Ilah,

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The legal waivers are not just for show: twice, Marafie family expeditions have come within an inch of tragedy on the treacherous Karakoram highway which snakes from China down through Pakistan. In one instance, a rockslide swept across the road metres ahead

“I had heard that people were suffering but I was shocked when I witnessed it first-hand” of a convoy of family members and foundation trustees. A few years later, a huge boulder demolished a tractor at a spot which would have been occupied

by Marafie jeeps, were it not for an impromptu photo stop a few moments earlier. “Everybody was frightened we’d end up in a ravine, although it got easier in the dark because at least we couldn’t see anything,” smiles Abdul Ilah, ruefully.

However treacherous, these expeditions allow the family to engage directly with the people the foundation aims to help.

On one occasion, the convoy was halted by villagers desperate for assistance:

a young girl was in need of medical treatment way beyond the capabilities of mountainside clinics. “After the snow melted it washed electric poles into the river, and cables were lying across the walkways,” recalls Abdul Ilah. “The children would see something and try to pick it up, and the very high current would damage their entire nervous system. Her fingers were stiff and locked like claws.” The family arranged for the girl, Aneela, to be flown to Islamabad for treatment. A year later the foundation opened a medical camp in the area and to date the facility has treated more than 60,000 people for a wide range of illnesses and injuries.

In addition to allowing the family to engage directly with the recipients of their charity, the Pakistan expeditions also enable the older members of the family to introduce younger generations to their philanthropic responsibilities.

A few hours after our interview, Abdul Ilah and I meet again at the Marafie diwaniya, a gathering place for family members, friends and neighbours. Also present is 31-year-old Zain Marafie, Abdul Ilah’s nephew and a member of the third generation of Marafie family philanthropists. Zain was 14 years old when he made the first of his many visits to Pakistan, and what he saw in the mountains would have a profound impact upon the then‑teenager.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” he recalls. “I had heard that people were suffering but I was shocked when I witnessed it first-hand. I was happy and sad at the same time: happy to see their smiles whenever we gave them food and support, but sad to see that what to us is so little, makes such a big difference to them.

“The experience had a great influence on me, as coming from wealthy surroundings I used to be a bit materialistic,” he continues. “However

after Pakistan, I started thinking carefully before purchasing anything.

I would remember those people who don’t have money, and ask myself: do I need to spend this money? Many times I don’t buy, after I have thought about it.”

spend weeks in the mountains on working parties. Each day begins at 4.30am and ends at 7pm, the team moving methodically from village to village to check on the progress of projects and take photos to show donors back in Kuwait. Each member of the party must sign a two-page waiver before they are allowed to travel, asserting that the foundation cannot be held responsible for their safety. Only family members are exempt from signing a contract. “They don’t sign because they don’t have a choice,” asserts Abdul Ilah. “It is their duty to go.”

PHILANTHROPY AGE

Each year, during the holy month of Ramadan, the Marafie Foundation provides around 12,000 people in Iraq, Morocco and Pakistan with food parcels

Zain’s son, Abdul Atif, is bouncing enthusiastically on his father’s knee.

Every morning the four-year-old boy, born of the fourth generation, puts money in a small box. The money is “for the poor people”, Abdul Atif tells me shyly. “When he sees that his grandfather and his father are sharing this type of life, he sees that he can continue our work,” says Zain. “At his age it’s important to practice giving, so that when he becomes a man it will come naturally. He just wants to help.” n

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Deep

impact Combining an active desire to create social value, with traditional commercial metrics, impact investing has begun to emerge as an asset class in its own right. Is this shift inspired by a necessary change in how investors are viewed, and how they view their own role in society? Or is it just good business?

By Peter Guest

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Philanthropy age

F

rom his company headquarters just off Nairobi’s Mombasa Road, Binoy Zachariah, chief executive of Kenya’s Bio Food Products, has just deployed his new mobile milk-processing unit to one of his suppliers.

As many social initiatives in the country are, the new outreach programme and the mobile milk truck were partly funded by international capital – but by commercial investors, rather than donor funds.

Even though agriculture remains the largest employer in Kenya by some stretch, the sector as a whole remains relatively under-developed. Infrastructure and storage facilities are poor, particularly in rural areas. The milk-processing unit, which was designed and built by the company itself, is based around a solarpowered refrigerated container that can be taken directly to farmers, chill the milk on site and keep it in hygienic conditions until it can be brought back to the central facility. This way, Bio Food, which provides yoghurt and other dairy products for the retail and hospitality markets, is able to maintain its consistency of quality, but also build the capacity in its supply chain.

African economies, in particular Kenya, have been attracting considerable attention from private equity and venture capital groups in recent years, and Zachariah had received a dozen approaches, he says. It was the thirteenth that he accepted, from Willow Impact Investors, a boutique investment firm that typifies a new breed of funds who are looking for more than just a financial return on their capital.

Where are you investing?

83%

66%

Food & agriculture Healthcare Financial services Microfinance Education

44

51% 47% 46%

45%

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“In most of the areas where the farmers are, there are no roads, just tracks,” Zachariah says. “We’ve taken the trouble of going to where the farmers are and trying to work on a scheme whereby by going there, we will be able to interact even more with them, educate them more and try and improve things them Privatefor Equity all round, obviously helping ourselves in the process.”

Private Debt 26

Equity-Like Debt

All infographic statistics: JP Morgan Global Impact Investor Survey, January 2013

57%

Negatively screening investments for religious or ethical reasons is a wellestablished practice. Shariah-compliant In part, its proponents say, the surge vehicles exclude companies engaged in interest has been prompted by a in sectors that are haram, or forbidden necessary change in how investors are under Islamic law, while some secular viewed and how theyequity view their own role investors have begun to reduce their Private in society. exposure to businesses that are seen to have adverse environmental or The financial crises that rolled from social effects. This so-called socially country responsible investing, or SRI, has been Private debt to country at the end of the last decade have left indelible marks on in the mainstream consciousness for how societies and governments see the several years and has been credited financial sector. The economic with driving listed companies to % downturn Equity-like that followed showed the profound realembrace more sustainable practice debt world by creating incentives for them to Howeffects that investors’ decisions have, and highlighted the unsustainable improve their corporate, social and are you nature of nakedly acquisitive market environmental governance. structures and institutions.% investing?

Though it is difficult to pin it down to Other The so-called Arab Spring too, which a narrow definition, impact investing was as much a crisis of economic takes this process a step further, opportunity among disenfranchised integrating an active desire to create youth as it was a reflection of a desire social value with each investment for political self-determination, serves and combining it with traditional as a reminder for the custodians of the commercial metrics.

From a relatively Sector region’s wealth that society at large nebulous, academic idea with its roots investment must see the benefits of economic in US philanthropic organisations, focus growth, through the creation of jobs impact investing has begun to emerge and the freedom to create and build as an asset class in its own right over entrepreneurial businesses. the past few years.

In Dubai, a trading hub at the pivot of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA), the region’s challenges are sharply drawn, says Nicolas Farah, one of the co-founders of Willow Impact Investors. The UAE, of which Dubai is a part, had its own financial crisis, prompted in part by the exuberant debt-backed expansion of its real estate sector. UAE companies have also expanded across the region, gaining direct exposure to the political changes that have characterised the last two years.

83% Private equity

66% Private debt

44% How are you investing?

Sector investment focus

Equity-like debt

14 % Other

“You don’t have to have been long in Dubai and travelled the region to see and to understand the pressures of the demographic explosion that the region is going through,” Farah says.

“The [MENASA] region is going through tremendous flux, and unless we think about how to harness this change for the better – and there is no better way of doing it than through business – then the prognosis going forward is actually quite a bleak one.”

For all of the scale, scope and potential of its economy, Egypt’s youth unemployment rate hovers at more than 40 per cent. Bangladesh’s booming textile industry has been marked by a string

Philanthropy age

of fatal tragedies, often caused by low safety standards. India, the 10th-largest economy in the world, also has the largest number of people below the poverty line and has seen inequality grow for the past decade.

Outputs Vs Outcomes

In the run-up to the financial crisis in the developed world and since, demographic shifts were often touted as one of the region’s most compelling selling points: the vibrant, ambitious young populations surging to cities, consuming and creating. On those terms, the past few years’ turmoil was prefaced by a surge in appetite for investing in emerging markets, which has waxed and waned since, along with sentiment and the availability of liquidity globally.

As governments tighten belts and budgets around the world, social and development programmes have come under increased scrutiny to prove their impact, and the tribulations of the development industry to quantify its per-dollar outcomes are mirrored in the impact investment community.

If these social and demographic changes are going to remain as opportunities instead of becoming further crises, the approach to doing business in the region has to change.

“I think there was a certain revulsion in the way traditional investing had happened up until now, particularly in Dubai which saw a catastrophic falling off the cliff in 2008-2009. People were beginning to wonder whether traditional ways of investing couldn’t be improved upon,” Farah says. “There’s a real imperative when you sit in Dubai, which is that business must go hand-in-hand with economic development if we’re going to create successful businesses for the future.”

JPMorgan Chase and the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), a US-based association that convenes practitioners from across the spectrum of investors, from family offices and philanthropic foundations through to commercial asset managers, surveyed investors about the sector in 2012. Their research showed that respondents had committed $8bn to impact investments last year,

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Some firms define their own metrics. Leapfrog Investments, which focuses on micro-insurance products for low-income communities, considers the absolute number of individuals touched by its investments as a strong indicator of success.

“We went to some trouble defining what underserved people are in the countries that we work in, and then we work out the number of people that we’re reaching within those communities,” says Stewart Langdon, a partner at the company. “Then we have various other checks to make sure that we’re reaching them with what we call high quality, affordable and relevant products.

“You’ve got to make sure that it’s high quality stuff that’s helping to get people out of poverty.”

What works for Leapfrog will not work for everyone, and now, with the individual mandate or interests of investors into the asset class dictating how they allocate funds, the impact community has begun to develop standards for reporting. Among the most commonly cited of these is IRIS, developed by the Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN).

IRIS takes around 450 commonly agreed indicators across a range of social sectors, acting as what Luther Ragin Jr, GIIN’s CEO, calls “an online catalogue of generally accepted performance metrics”.

“By adopting a common language, it gives me an opportunity to streamline the reporting expectations with my investee, as well as for me to be able to articulate what I’ve achieved through my impact investment,” Ragin says.

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Philanthropy age

Embracing ESG The integration of environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles is an increasingly important element within the impact investment toolkit. Grounded in commercial applicability, they nevertheless focus on sustainable investment and carry significant development benefits.

Are you getting the right results?

Outperforming

Financial expectations

Impact expectations

21 68

In line

11

84

2

Underperforming

“If you are able to make the [target] company more efficient in its use of energy, it results in cost savings that could amount to millions of dollars, which has an immediate impact on the bottom line,” says Geetha Tharmaratnam, ESG manager at the Abraaj Group.

“Unhappy employees leads to business disruption, which absolutely impacts on your top line,” she continues.

“Finally, if you look to see what the large multinationals are doing, they’re very careful about channelling ESG and broader sustainability work into trying to attract new customers, for example through attaining Fair Trade certification. These efforts make a huge difference.”

An increasing number of MENASA firms are incorporating ESG analysis into their investment processes. However, although progress has been made across much of the region, still more can be done to foster an enabling market environment for firms to engage with ESG principles.

“You need capital to back innovative ideas, and so you need to make sure that the financing ecosystem is in place, whether that’s through governments or through philanthropic capital,” says Tharmaratnam.

“This might be to provide financing which covers risk of first loss. If you’re investing in an idea and it does not work out, it’s important to have investors that would still be happy to finance that risk so that if another project did work out, it might revolutionise a particular issue and make a real difference.

“Governments can also look at revising bankruptcy laws, which are so rigorous in some regions that they prevent people from setting up new businesses,” she adds. “If you think there’s a relatively strong chance that the business may fail, you know your chances of ending up in jail are pretty high, so you don’t take the risk and you don’t set up new businesses. That needs to change.”

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and forecast an increase to $9bn in 2013. While this is a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of commitments to more traditional investment vehicles, the asset class is growing in strength.

“The universe of players, where the growth is coming from, is really across a fairly broad spectrum,” says Luther Ragin Jr, the CEO of GIIN. “It includes philanthropic players, development-focused players, [and] commercially-focused players, who are finding opportunities that generate social and environmental benefit and generate rates of return around their parameters.”

While those players have different motivations and mandates, two-thirds of those surveyed last year said they expect a market rate of financial returns with their impact investments.

Even so, until the asset class has built a long track record of success, there will be a continued question mark over whether, and how much, the burden of ensuring social return weighs on more commercial factors.

“The essence of impact investing is taking your social return as seriously as your financial return, and not having any tradeoff between the two,” says Stewart Langdon, partner at Leapfrog Investments, which specialises in investments in financial inclusion in the developing world. “That would have been a very easy mistake for the impact investment community to make.”

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Echoing other impact investors, Langdon says that the methods that they and their portfolio companies employ can be a commercial differentiator in difficult markets. Just as Bio Food mitigates its supply chain risk by taking an active role in developing its partners, impact investors who improve their investees’ corporate governance practices and human resource development help to mitigate some of the most pressing social and political risks that exist in frontier markets.

Meanwhile, focusing specifically on low income communities and individuals can open up huge opportunities at the socalled ‘bottom of the pyramid’.

“What you’re going to see over the course of the 21st century... is billions of people moving out of poverty in Africa and Asia and joining the consuming classes,” Langdon says. “We see that as really one of the greatest market opportunities that has ever existed. We don’t see this as a purely social activity. We think it makes financial sense to capture that customer, to give him the tools he needs to climb out of poverty and continue serving him into the future. We think that’s a great way to build profitable business.” n

About the writer Peter Guest is an awardwinning journalist focusing on international development & environmental issues

Philanthropy age

Case Study:

Healthy returns

The AHF is configured to invest in businesses while ensuring that at least 50 per cent of the people who use their products and services come from the ‘base of the pyramid’ (BOP), the largest but poorest socioeconomic group that comprises 4 billion people who exist on less than $3000, in local purchasing power, per annum. At NWH, which specialises in maternity and paediatrics, and offers medical and surgical wards for both male and female patients, regular studies are conducted to ascertain the percentage of people from the BOP who are actually using its services. According to the hospital’s latest figures, 63 per cent of patients fall under the BOP banner.

“There are three areas one can target in terms of approaching the BOP: access, quality and affordability,” says Shakir Merali, manager of the AHF. “Access means increasing the availability of services where once they didn’t exist.

Quality is about ensuring this is availed at a level of quality that is, certainly at a clinical level, as good as anywhere else in the world. Affordability is around payment, and reducing the price point of these services.”

Access has been boosted through the establishing of a 24-hour outpatient centre, as well as the opening of clinics

in densely populated urban areas of Nairobi, where the majority of residents are classified as BOP. Improvements in the quality of services and care are reflected in the hospital’s infant mortality rate, which now compares favourably to some Western nations including Canada. And while revenues have more than doubled over the period since the AHF became involved, NWH is committed to ensuring that BOP patients are still able to afford treatment.

Three and a half years after the AHF first injected funds into NWH, another investor has approached the hospital with a view to providing additional capital worth four times the AHF’s initial outlay. And while such interest would indicate a successful private equity engagement on behalf of Merali and his team, the AHF is determined to continue its efforts to cleanse the hospital entirely of the systemic weaknesses that stem from its days as a small-scale healthcare provider.

“In terms of price, we don’t pretend that our fund is set up to solve the problem of poverty in Africa: we are looking to invest in businesses that are making a profit from the provision of healthcare,” says Merali. “However, we try and price ourselves below the market rate of larger hospitals, and have some innovative pricing schemes as well, in order to reduce the burden on those paying for the services.”

“There are difficulties ranging from issues with management, governance processes, cash haemorrhage, and fraud, to not being able to capture the information and statistics we want and need,” admits Merali. “It takes a while to be able to lock off all these areas, and it’s a process of evolution until the hospital becomes world-class. It’s far from being as successful as we want it to be, so there is plenty of work for us still to do.” n

A small private facility in the heart of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi Women’s Hospital (NWH) boasted a modest 56 beds when it was approached by an investment fund in late 2009. The Africa Health Fund (AHF), which had been established earlier that year by the Abraaj Group, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a number of other investors, injected capital that has since allowed the hospital to expand to more than 220 beds.

At least 50 per cent of patients attending Nairobi Women’s Hospital come from Kenya’s poorest socioeconomic group, with an annual income of less than $3000

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

Microfinance in Yemen:

Frock stars

By Adrienne Cernigoi

One wall is covered in lengths of patterned fabrics in reds, pinks and blues, while another is home to dozens of brightly coloured girls’ dresses, hanging in wait for collection or alteration.

On simple wooden tables, two veiled women run cloth expertly through new sewing machines; another is ironing a dress ready for sale.

Yasmin Alsiyaghi helps a customer choose some fabric; he settles on a white girl’s dress with gauze overlay and Yasmin sees another satisfied client out of the shop. She is similarly content. “My family are proud of me,” she says, smiling. “I was frustrated sitting at home, but now I have a creative outlet and the shop is famous in our community.”

Yasmin is the manager of the Six Stars shop, which designs and tailors clothing for women and children. Alongside her work Salwa, Rania, Enas and sisters Wadha and Samah, all of whom are aged between 16 and 22 years old. The six women met on the Youth Vocational Empowerment Program (YVEP), a training scheme organised by a local non-profit. Having become close friends they decided to pool the resources provided by YVEP – a tailoring start-up

toolkit – and set up a business after graduating. It was the sisters who came up with the name: Six Stars.

With their families, neighbours and local community now supporting the shop, Yasmin says their business has challenged conventional perceptions.

“Before we opened they said it was impossible to have a shop founded and run by women. But we resolved to do it and take on that responsibility. I hope it will prompt other women in the region to join the next YVEP programme.”

Before joining the programme, none of the six women had a job and employment prospects were bleak.

Wadha Alansi had been job-hunting for four years. Like her older sister and their father, Samah was also unemployed.

“Before YVEP I stayed at home reading,” she says. “I thank Allah this programme helped us improve our minds.”

Taiz is Yemen’s third-largest city and the majority of its 2.7 million inhabitants are dependent on agriculture, in particular coffee and vegetables, for work.

Moreover Yemen’s share of femaleowned businesses is among the lowest in

the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, at about 10 per cent according to World Bank data. And while 61 per cent of men in Yemen work for pay, currently only 12 per cent of Yemeni women under the age of 25 are in paid employment.

“I was frustrated sitting at home, but now the shop is famous in our community”

YVEP is just one initiative designed to readdress this balance. It is organised

by Yemen Education for Employment (YEFE), a locally run not-for-profit organisation set up in Sana’a and Taiz in 2008, and funded through contributions from private sector partners and grants.

Aimed at out-of-school young

T

he unassuming rough stone building with its pitted metal door is just like any other on the outskirts of Taiz. Step inside, however, and the muted greys and greens of rural Yemen are left behind in an instant.

Almost two-thirds of men in Yemen, the poorest Arab state, are in paid employment, compared to just 12 per cent of women under the age of 25

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people who struggle to find employment because they are not sufficiently qualified, YVEP teaches participants vocational skills – such as tailoring, hairdressing or electrical repairs – through job-specific training followed by a one-month apprenticeship with local companies. YVEP also provides training in important business skills: each trainee spends 30 hours on the Workplace Success programme learning soft skills like interpersonal communication, leadership, team work, professional ethics and time management.

According to Labib Shaher, Taiz branch director for YEFE, 224 young people in the city have so far benefited from the programme, including 78 women.

Meanwhile, five private companies and one NGO have signed up to hire YVEP graduates. Across the rest of the country, YEFE has trained more than 890 Yemeni graduates.

YEFE is also part of a broader Education for Employment (EFE) network – active in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine and

Tunisia – that aims to get 85 per cent of its graduates work by encouraging employers to pre-commit job places.

More than 2,400 young people across the MENA region graduated from EFE training programmes in 2011, and the group predicts it will have reached more than 22,400 young people in total by the end of the year.

The programme’s impact on the young women of Six Stars has been dramatic.

Like all her colleagues, Wadha says she discovered her self-confidence as a result of the training – a confidence that encouraged them to run a business together. “The best things I learned from YVEP were how to make better decisions, take responsibility and have courage,” agrees Yasmin.

Out of work just six months ago, each has acquired a skill, an income and hope. “Our friends and neighbours say we have a bright future,” says Salwa, the eldest of the Stars. Initially, Salwa’s family had been against her joining YVEP, but relented after being assured of its

PHILANTHROPY AGE

positive impact. Today, Salwa uses the income from the business to help her older brother support the family.

Wadha’s family, likewise, never imagined that a business would emerge from her engagement with YVEP. “My goal is to be a famous businesswoman in Yemen

YEFE has trained 224 young people in Taiz to date, including 78 women. Five private firms and one NGO have signed up to hire graduates from the course

“Yemeni women are creative, but there is no one to discover their skills” and employ other girls and mothers who need work,” she says now. “I think that most Yemeni women are creative, but there is no one to discover their skills.

“Seeing our business, the people from our neighbourhood now say they consider women equal to a hundred men, because we were able to do something even men could not.” n

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Legacy of a leader Building on the remarkable achievements of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation is evolving into a strategic and results-driven organisation. In an exclusive interview, its founder describes this transition and explains how the foundation is introducing the next generation of Al Nahyans to their civic responsibilities

By Andrew White

A

fter the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan united seven desert emirates under one UAE flag, he spoke to his new people of unity and charity.

“Real wealth is faithful, hard work that brings benefit to both people and a community,” he said, later adding: “What is the use of strong people who do not extend a hand to help the weak?”

Decades later, and Sheikh Zayed’s message is echoed firmly by his daughter-in-law, Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan. Through the work of her eponymous foundation, Sheikha Salama is building a philanthropic organisation that works in parallel with the mandate of her husband Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

“I truly believe that we enrich our own humanity when we seek to serve others,” she tells Philanthropy Age. The inspiration for the Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation,

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which was launched in 2010 and has so far disbursed aid across a range of issues and interests in the UAE, came from Sheikha Salama’s desire to formalise the charitable giving she had engaged in all her life. She believes that the questions she asked herself will be familiar to many others involved in giving: “Am I truly having an impact, and if so, can that impact be greater?”

With the help of an experienced international team headed by Dr Salvatore LaSpada, a former head of the Institute for Philanthropy and associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation, Sheikha Salama has set about recalibrating her family’s giving along strategic lines. Outcomes are everything, programmes are modelled

“I truly believe that we enrich our own humanity when we seek to serve others”

on the rigorous examination of data and input from experts and stakeholders, and it is recognised that without bringing the best out of its youth, the UAE will waste its greatest resource: its people.

Focusing on three key pillars of interest – arts, culture and heritage; education; and health – the foundation is committed to long-term investment and engagement. It is, Sheikha Salama says, “generational work”, and this applies as much to her children as it does the children whose lives will be enriched by the opportunities the foundation provides in the coming decades.

Very deliberately, the foundation’s key pillars of interest have been aligned to reflect the interests of the next generation of Al Nahyans. Even outlying absorptions are catered to: young family members may draw on a ‘Special Interests and Explorations’ fund, which funnels money to causes outside of the foundation’s official remit, but about which they may be particularly passionate.

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Artwork: Maitha Demithan, 'To The Moon', 2011

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

State of the arts The arts are one of the key focus areas of the Sheikha Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation. The organisation has identified four strategic goals in its bid to enable young UAE nationals to achieve their potential: To support emerging Emirati artists, the foundation has launched a fellowship scheme in cooperation with the Rhode Island School of Design. The programme incorporates academic courses, technical workshops, professional skills training, peer critique, and international travel as well as creative production grants. “This kind of focus on human capacity building is central to much of our work,” says Sheikha Salama.

To build new audiences for the arts, the foundation is transforming a series of warehouses in Abu Dhabi into an arts district that will include studios, an artist residency programme in collaboration with the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, a non-profit exhibition space, and an arts park and library. “In May we even sponsored a learning trip for 10 14-year-old students to learn about careers in the arts,” says Sheikha Salama.

“The youngsters spent a week in Tokyo meeting with curators, gallerists and artists.”

Sheikha Salama’s passion, be it as a collector or as a promoter of arts education and community engagement, is lending great support to the government’s efforts to transform the UAE into a global hub for the arts. A highlight this year has been the foundation’s support for the UAE Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. “We are enormously proud of the fact that the UAE is the first Arab nation to have a permanent pavilion in Venice and the work of this year’s featured artist, Mohamed Kazem, was received with enormous enthusiasm internationally,” says Sheikha Salama. “As part of our support for the UAE Pavilion we are also supporting 18 interns, university students and recent graduates, to serve as cultural ambassadors.”

Finally, as parts of its efforts to capture and disseminate the UAE’s cultural heritage, the foundation supports the annual Qasr Al Hosn Festival, a showcase for music, dance and Emirati culture, and the Lest We Forget project, an exhibition and accompanying book of Emirati photography.

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Recent recipients of capital from this fund include a number of animal welfare organisations, a particular interest of Sheikha Salama’s 12-yearold daughter, Hassa. Funds have also been granted to the Fatima bint Mohamed Initiative, an incomegeneration project for war widows in Afghanistan established by another daughter, Fatima. A third daughter, Shamma, is fundraising on behalf of a special needs centre, for which she is a fierce advocate.

“We built out the foundation very much with our children in mind, and with their interests as guideposts on what areas to focus on,” reveals Sheikha Salama. “In terms of the special fund, this is something that the best family foundations do internationally.

“I have come to see that this blends the best of two worlds: we maintain focus on our key goals, while recognising that the active engagement of the children is equally important.”

In this manner, Sheikha Salama intends to use the foundation as a way of introducing her children to their responsibilities as custodians of a nation founded by their grandfather just 41 years ago. Her children may have been born into royalty, yet she expects them to continue the great tradition of giving for which the Al Nahyan family has become known.

“The foundation gives the children the opportunity to learn about new ideas and new approaches to social development, and it puts them in direct contact with fascinating individuals in the community who are crafting new solutions to social issues,” she says. “It allows them to have an even greater sense of agency in the world.

And it gives them the opportunity to contribute to the nation that their grandfather founded.”

She speaks with great pride of the enthusiasm with which her young children have so far embraced the opportunities provided by the foundation: as the children have grown, so too have their roles within the organisation. “It has been enormously gratifying to me as a mother,” she says, “to see the ways in which my children have become involved in philanthropy, and to watch them as they develop their passions and commitments.”

Sheikha Salama’s passion for the arts is reflected in her eldest daughter, Mariam, who has taken the lead on the foundation’s arts, culture and heritage funding, and who also serves as chair of the foundation. Sheikha Salama's eldest son Khalid, a voracious reader, is working hard to develop funding initiatives for libraries, reading drives and even book clubs. Another daughter, Shamsa, herself a mother of four young children, is spearheading work on early childhood education.

Sheikha Salama insists that she and her family are just starting out on their philanthropic journey, and hesitates when asked to offer advice to those plotting their own foray into giving.

PHILANTHROPY AGE

Nations and foundations

Nevertheless, she can identify key principles that now inform her own approach to philanthropy.

and humility at the great and difficult task ahead of you, namely that of achieving impact.”

“We’ve learned that in building strategies in the areas where we are funding, it is essential that we build on platforms of knowledge,” she says. “We ask ourselves: what can the experts and

Finally, commitment is key. Perhaps the greatest challenge for any foundation is that of maintaining focus over time.

The more the foundation achieves, the more Sheikha Salama wants to do, and it takes significant discipline, she says, to stay concentrated on the foundation’s three key areas of interest. Essentially, the driving force of the foundation still springs from the passions of its founder and her children, bringing to Sheikha Salama’s mind a quote by the British poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.”

“It has been enormously gratifying to me as a mother to see the ways my children have become involved” stakeholders teach us about the latest thinking in our fields of endeavour, what has been tried previously and worked or not worked, and where are the gaps where we can add value?”

In addition, she urges, philanthropists should not be afraid to take risks, as testing new ideas and approaches represents “some of the best use of philanthropic capital”. Would-be philanthropists should furthermore approach their endeavours with gratitude and humility. “You need gratitude for the opportunity to be able to share your resources with others,

“Zakat or charitable giving is one of the core pillars of Islam, and is a requirement mandated in the Quran,” she says. “Nevertheless, I must confess that I have derived so much satisfaction in helping in whatever small way I can, that it has come to feel more as a source of joy than obligation.

“The foundation has given me an opportunity to give back, and it has challenged me to do so in a way that seeks to have true impact,” she adds. “Also, it has enabled me to work alongside my children in new and wonderful ways. It has been an enormously joyful experience.” n

The Al Nahyan family has for decades been synonymous with giving, giving that continues today in perpetuity.

The founder of the UAE, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, is known the world over for his generosity, having built countless hospitals, schools, mosques, orphanages, libraries and even entire towns across the globe.

Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, the late founder’s wife and Sheikha Salama’s mother-in-law, has undertaken pioneering work in women’s rights, girls’ education and children’s health, among other issues, through her Family Development Foundation.

Sheikha Salama’s brother-in-law, UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has donated huge sums to the fights against cancer and cardiovascular disease, through renowned healthcare institutions including Johns Hopkins University and the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also building a housing complex for released prisoners in Gaza, among myriad other endeavours.

Her husband, meanwhile, Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has lent his weight to species conservation, as well as efforts to combat human trafficking. He has also, in cooperation with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, donated more than $170m to the provision of life-saving vaccines for children, with Afghanistan and Pakistan a particular focus.

“We truly stand on the shoulders of great men and women,” says Sheikha Salama. “This, I am proud to say, is the greatest legacy that my children have inherited: that of giving back to society both here in the UAE and internationally.

“Inshallah, this work will continue for many years to come, as we welcome a new generation of young family members committed to the community and its development,” she adds.

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

The

of

philanthropy At a time when traditional sources of arts funding are on the wane, philanthropists and charitable foundations are helping to drive the cultural cause

By Joanne Bladd

W

hen actor Leonardo DiCaprio addressed the room at a Christie’s fundraiser in New York in May, he urged the audience to “bid as though the fate of the planet depended on us”. They listened. Over the next few hours, all 33 of the auction’s artworks sold amid frenzied bidding, raising $31.74m. Additional donations pushed the total to $38.8m for the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, with the proceeds going to fund global conservation projects. It was, according to industry chatter, one of the highestgrossing charity auctions on record.

“All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you,” DiCaprio told the crowd.

Art and philanthropy are natural bedfellows. Around the world, the art sector is both a beneficiary of, and a

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vehicle for gifts from wealthy donors.

From museums to opera houses, to galleries and theatres, few would survive without support from rich patrons. At the other end of the scale, high-ticket artworks regularly go on the block to raise funds for a raft of worthy causes, gifted either by owners or by the artists themselves.

“Art as a commodity is easy to handle and it’s beautiful,” says Hala Khayat, head of sales and associate director at Christie’s Middle East. “It’s something people want to buy into and that cuts across all cultures and pockets. It’s an attractive form of philanthropy.”

The affluent Gulf states came late to the art industry, but are gaining ground rapidly. Both Qatar and the UAE have invested millions of dollars in sprawling

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

museums, exhibitions and activities, seeking cultural parity with the West.

Abu Dhabi, home to one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds, is building offshoots of the Louvre and Guggenheim alongside the Zayed National Museum, an institute set to trace the UAE’s history through the life of its founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

Nearly 200 miles away, Qatar has established itself as a blue-chip art industry player, using its vast budget to secure collections of Islamic art, modernist Arab painting, photography, coins and natural history. The emirate’s Museum of Islamic Art, designed by architect IM Pei, is thought by many to rank alongside the world’s best museums. For both Arab states, this is philanthropy on a macro scale, exposing local audiences to priceless art and striking up a dialogue between the region and the rest of the world.

“There is a direct correlation between the global economy, art and philanthropy,” says Scott Stover, president of Global Art Development, a consulting firm that offers strategic planning to cultural institutions, private collectors and museums.

$1.25m

The amount raised at MoP's most successful art auction “In parts of the world that are experiencing rapid economic growth, such as the Gulf states, we’re seeing an increase in philanthropy which helps to underpin a local art culture,” he continues. “These countries understand that encouraging, supporting and

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communicating culture from their part of the world is very important in terms of global influence.”

This state-sponsored philanthropy has also helped spawn a fledgling local art scene. Dubai alone is today home to more than 100 galleries and the Middle East’s biggest annual contemporary art fair, Art Dubai. In March, the fair played host to 75 galleries from 30 countries and welcomed 25,000 visitors.

The event also sees the award of the Abraaj Group Art Prize, a yearly award launched in 2008 to shore up the region’s contemporary art scene. The prize enables five artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia to create a dream artwork, work with a global curator and then see their work exhibited locally and abroad.

“The prize has allowed artists to dream, to enable an idea to change their lives and their world, and through their artwork, help society to pause and reflect,” says Savita Apte, chair of the award. “It’s like funding education or health. But this time you’re funding an individual.”

London-based Christie’s has had a ringside seat for this cultural shift. The auction house has held two sales of jewellery and art a year in Dubai since 2006, and has done much to encourage interest in Middle East art. As arts philanthropy has gained traction in the region, Christie’s has added its weight to the use of charity auctions to raise money for local causes. “It’s still a very new thing in the region, but art auctions are rising in popularity,” says Khayat.

“It shows the market’s capacity to raise money for good causes.”

Christie’s has lent its name and expertise to a stable of charity auctions, helping to raise funds for non-profits including Noor Dubai, the Sharjah-based fund Tawasul, and the UN’s World Food

Credit: MoP

PHILANTHROPY AGE

still do not have enough to eat,” said businessman Irfan Mustafa, one of the organisers of the event.

The region’s new-found philanthropic bent has not gone unnoticed in Europe, where shrinking state coffers have left many arts projects exposed to a turbulent economy. Starved by funding cuts, museums, national galleries and theatres are increasingly courting private donors to help plug the holes in their budgets. Faced with Europe’s fiscal woes, many are broadening their horizons and looking east for patrons with an interest in arts philanthropy.

“Our major donors are not necessarily within France any more, or even French,” says Croisine Martin-Roland, development association for the Louvre Endowment Fund, based in Paris. “We know we must look internationally for private philanthropic support.”

The Louvre launched an endowment fund in 2009, the first French museum to do so. It opened with a €120m (about $159m) injection from the government of Abu Dhabi, revenue from the Louvre’s first foreign outpost. Until the early 90s, the flagship of Parisian culture was entirely state-funded, but today less than half of the Louvre’s €220m ($292m) annual budget is subsidised. With the launch of its endowment – a lump sum from which interest can be drawn as income – the museum hopes to cement its long-term future.

Last September, the museum unveiled a new wing for its Islamic art collection, a spectacular space roofed with curved glass panels and metallic gold mesh sheets.

The €93m ($123.5m) gallery showcases 2,500 objects and was funded largely by private gifts and sponsors. Donors included the rulers of Kuwait and Oman, and Saudi’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who said he hoped the gallery would help to promote understanding of Islamic culture and history through art.

“After 9/11 events, all Arabs and Muslims have a duty and responsibility to do as much as they can to tell the West about real Muslims, about real Islam and how peaceful our religion is,” he said.

Such cultural collaborations are becoming more popular. As competition for funding heats up, art ventures are being forced to think creatively about what they can offer

“There is a direct correlation between the global economy, art and philanthropy”

[Above] The Louvre Endowment Fund, launched in 2009, is designed to secure the museum's long-term future. [Left] MoP's main source of funding is art auctions, held every 18 months

Programme (WFP). In April, Noor Dubai’s Art4Sight initiative, which seeks to prevent and treat blindness around the world, raised around $326,000 by selling off artworks by 40 Arab and international artists.

More than $230,000 was raised at a May auction for WFP, presided over by Christie’s, which saw 56 paintings from Pakistani masters and emerging artists go under the hammer. The Dubai sale was labelled a double philanthropic victory, raising both funding and the profile of up-and-coming Pakistani artists.

“It showcased the richness and dynamism of Pakistan’s contemporary art scene, while supporting those who

“The Louvre was made to welcome 4 million people a year, and last year we welcomed 10 million,” says MartinRoland. “It has an exceptional heritage and we want to preserve that and share it with future generations.”

philanthropists in exchange for cash. To win at the sponsorship game, says Stover, museums need to make a convincing business case to potential patrons.

“Donors have used the global economic crisis as an opportunity to restructure the way they make their philanthropic contributions,” he says. “Public institutions now have to figure out how they can complement the strategic vision and interests of the donor. They can’t simply say; ‘Please give us a cheque.’ They have to find a more compelling reason.”

The Louvre offers major donors the opportunity to create a fund in their name, and crafts tailor-made

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Š UNICEF/NYHQ2012-0156/

Every child everywhere deserves a healthy start in life

Saving lives with vaccines Since 2000, the GAVI Alliance has helped protect over 370 million children from life-threatening childhood diseases – over 140 million in Islamic countries www.gavialliance.org

PHILANTHROPY AGE

In Place of War When Unicef asked James Thompson to develop and run theatre workshops in northern Sri Lanka in 2000, he expected the worst. Instead, and despite more than a decade of civil war, he was met by a thriving, dynamic theatre community whose activities stretched from street theatre to children’s shows.

“It set the ball rolling for me,” Thompson says. “I started to think; ‘Are there other artists working in war zones around the world? Can we learn something from their responses to terrible events?’”

projects for them. One such fund backed

by Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, mother of eBay founder Pierre Morad Omidyar, is dedicated to the promotion of Iranian arts and culture. French entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset champions outreach programmes, taking the Louvre to audiences in hospitals or prisons.

“Major donors really invest a lot of money,” says Martin-Roland. “For them to really commit and engage, we need to provide something that connects with the donor and their interests.”

Personal ties are the primary driver behind another tendril of arts philanthropy: diaspora giving. This class of philanthropy, which sees a nation’s far-flung citizens rally to support national artists and culture, has gained traction in a globalised world.

Iran-born Shirley Elghanian founded Magic of Persia (MoP) in 2004 in an attempt to keep national art and culture alive for London’s large Iranian community. Today, MoP is an advocate for contemporary Iranian art, offering funding, residencies and exhibitions to emerging artists. Its art prize, which awards the winner a solo show at a London gallery, has become a byword for bright young Iranian talent.

The charity has done much to bring modern Iranian art into the mainstream, offering a counterpoint to the oftennegative portrayal of Tehran seen in the broader media.

“Iranian culture has contributed so much to the global social and culture discourse,” says Alexandra Terry, art director and curator at MoP. “At this moment in time, there is really a

€93m

The cost of the Louvre’s new Islamic art exhibition space

misunderstanding about Iran, about its people and everyday life. I think contemporary artists and filmmakers are the voice of this generation… their art is incredibly important internationally in allowing us to find common ground.”

MoP’s main source of funding is art auctions, held every 18 months in the UAE or London. Donated artworks from both established and up-and-coming Iranian talents go under the hammer,

This idea gave rise to In Place of War, based at the UK’s University of Manchester, which documents and supports art and creativity in sites of armed conflict. The project received its first grant in 2004, and Thompson has since travelled around the world to meet artists in conflict zones ranging from Cairo to Kosovo.

“It says something about human endurance I think,” he says. “It tells you something about the way people live in war zones that is often surprising. Art can be a form of relief.”

In Place of War launched its digital platform in January, as a means for artists to document, store and share their work, and engage with other creatives. Thompson eventually hopes to use the platform to create virtual exhibitions, with galleries projecting images of work from artists around the world.

“Artists provide a completely different angle or vision of conflict,” he says. “Art is a good story that is not the obvious story. It’s important not to just have one narrow understanding of what’s going on in these places.” raising money to aid the next generation of artists. The charity’s most successful sale to date generated $1.25m.

“There’s a huge, growing scene and it’s incredibly exciting that we’re seeing more opportunities for these artists worldwide,” says Terry. “An artist is an artist no matter where they live, and we want to see doors open for them. That’s our contribution.” n

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Refugees in Jordan:

Art in exile

By Tara Gally

Living in a refugee camp in northeast Jordan, a nation home to more than 2 million Palestinians who have fled the fighting in their home country, the art classes provided by Dubai-based charity START have become a means of escape for children like Majd.

“In the beginning, there wasn’t much interest in the workshops,” says Ola Mohammed, the charity’s manager in Jordan. “Now the kids count the days to the classes.”

Mohammed holds on average 10 art workshops each week, teaching children in refugee camps, orphanages and special needs centres skills such as drawing, painting, yoga and handicrafts.

All classes aim to encourage “freedom of expression and creativity” among children living in dismal circumstances, a departure for many from the daily struggle for food, shelter and survival.

“When you see an environment like this, with a great deal of suffering, no one has the time to ask the children what they feel, how their day was or why they’re upset,” says Mohammed. “The workshops help them bring this out through art and creativity, giving them an outlet to express themselves and to tell their stories.”

START was founded in 2007, the result of a tie-up between UK-based education charity Al Madad Foundation and Art Dubai, the Middle East’s largest annual art fair. The idea, says director Tanaz Dizadji, “was that through art, they could educate and develop key skills within underprivileged children across the Middle East.”

The charity seeks to fill a void in the curriculums taught to children in refugee camps, where priority is given to core subjects such as maths, science and English.

“It’s not about becoming an artist or being great at art, it’s about the key skills that are involved in art such as creativity, confidence and appreciation of beauty around you,” says Dizadji. “There is an element of hope to it. It’s a very peaceful subject.”

“When you see an environment like this, with a great deal of suffering, no one has the time to ask the children what they feel”

At present, START runs around 50 workshops a week across the UAE, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and India, reaching more than 1,000 children. The charity employs a full-time teacher in each country, and works with roughly 18 to 20 refugee camps and orphanages.

Each teacher gives two workshops per camp per day, to reach as many children as possible. Classes have on average 20 to 30 participants and are typically held in camp community centres.

N

ot even open-heart surgery could keep 12-year-old Majd Mahmood from the art class she’s attended for the past few years.

It had been only 10 days since the operation, the reason for her mother’s reluctance to let her go, but Majd was insistent.

START operates around 50 workshops a week in five countries, reaching more than 1,000 children.

Classes are often held in refugee camp community centres

“Underprivileged children don’t have the means to come to us so we go into the camps and run the workshops there,” says Dizadji.

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The non-profit organisation also offers scholarship programmes to disadvantaged children, helping them to pursue further education in the arts.

$1.1m

The amount raised at the charity’s most recent annual gala dinner, held in March during Art Dubai For financial support, START relies on fundraising through one annual gala dinner, held during Art Dubai. The exhibition this year attracted 25,000 visitors and hosted 75 galleries from 30 countries. The gala dinner, the result of six months of planning, raised $1.1m, up from $975,000 in 2012. “We hold it during Art Dubai because we have a city full of people who appreciate the importance of art,” says Dizadji.

In order to keep costs manageable, the organisation also works with volunteers, including art students and young artists who can help to mentor the children.

Artists from the UK, US, Pakistan, Jordan and Canada have participated in giving classes in Jordan.

For Mohammed, the satisfaction comes from helping children in need. “They really appreciate what I do and it makes me want to give more and more,” she says. “The best part of the job is when they see their works exhibited, which makes them very happy and proud.”

Mohammed holds one exhibition every six months, collaborating with different educational and art bodies. The latest display included 600 works of art and attracted more than 600 visitors.

At present, START is eyeing Pakistan as the next venue for workshops, considering the cities of Karachi and Lahore. It is also focusing on doubling

PHILANTHROPY AGE

resources in each country to provide more workshops to a larger group of children.

While many countries in the Middle East could benefit from START’s presence, stability is essential, says Dizadji. “We considered Egypt and Syria and didn’t end up going, but the minute the situation settles we are in. We don’t want to be too ambitious as the programme has to be sustainable.”

Artists and volunteers from the US, UK, Pakistan, Jordan and Canada are among those that have helped to mentor children enrolled in START workshops

For many children, START’s workshops have become a rare pleasure in an otherwise difficult and volatile existence. Dizadji recalls a cold winter’s day in a Lebanese camp, where an electricity blackout threatened to disrupt a class. “Beirut is famous for power cuts,” says Dizadji. “It was January, so there was no light, no electricity and no heating. But the kids still wanted to have the workshop. They did the whole thing by candlelight.” n

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Beyond the slums Maria Conceicao is battling to raise Dhaka’s street children out of poverty. Without further funding, eight years’ work may be wasted, leaving hundreds of young Bangladeshis facing a bleak future

By Joanne Bladd

D

haka is a city of the poor.

Beneath its gleaming towers, Bangladesh’s capital is bisected by shanty towns, labyrinths of dark alleys crammed with flimsy, makeshift shacks.

In its poorest slums, corrugated-roofed huts open directly into lanes strewn thickly with litter and channels of fetid sewerage. The stench is overpowering.

A quarter of Dhaka’s 12-million-strong population lives crammed into these narrow rows, many surviving on less than $2 a day. More than 300,000 migrants swell their number each year, swarming the city in search of jobs. It has little to offer them. Unemployment and underemployment are rife and pay is poor. In the garment industry, the backbone of Bangladesh’s economy, the

minimum wage is just $38 a month – less than half that guaranteed to workers in Cambodia.

For the children of slum-dwellers, the picture is just as bleak. Crushing poverty forces many to trade school for work, by begging, selling trinkets, or toiling long hours in factories and stores. Denied an education, the result is a slavish cycle of penury, where the children grow up reliant on any available scraps of work.

These were the scenes that greeted Dubai resident Maria Conceicao upon her first fleeting visit to Bangladesh in April 2005. The then 28-year-old airline hostess was struck by the grim existence of Dhaka’s poorest families, and the begging children that

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“The poverty starts as soon as you leave the airport,” she says. “All you see is people begging, trying to earn money. I was appalled by it. I knew that I couldn’t be someone who just turned a blind eye and said; ‘Oh, it’s a third world country.’

After the things I’d seen, I couldn’t ignore it. When I got back to Dubai, I began to plan how I could help.”

Portugal-born Conceicao is the first to admit this is personal. Adopted at the age of two by Cristina Matos, an Angolan refugee and mother of six, she saw uneasy parallels with her own life.

“Every single child there, I related to. I feel like it could have been me,” she says.

“I had someone who adopted me, who gave me a home, a roof and a life. What if that hadn’t happened?”

Conceicao, a petite brunette, started small. For her birthday that year, she asked friends and colleagues in Dubai to donate clothes, toiletries and other essentials to her, rather than buy gifts.

The result was a 100-kilogram shipment that was dispatched to Dhaka, and distributed among a handful of families.

By July 2005, Conceicao was on the

fundraising trail, drumming up enough money to take 39 slum children from the streets, and enroll them in local schools.

“It started very slowly; I had no big plans, no business proposals,” she says.

“Everything I did, I was just trying to meet the needs of these kids.”

It was often an uphill struggle. Both parents and children recoiled at the idea of full-time school, and Conceicao resorted to bribes to keep their attendance rates up. With little grasp of local prejudices, it was months before she realised that, despite diligently attending classes, the children had barely mastered the alphabet or basic counting.

Their lower caste status, Conceicao discovered, meant the teachers ignored them.

“I faced so much resistance, but I had to understand the culture and its limitations,” she says. “People think I was welcomed with open arms; it’s not the case. When I first approached them, those 39 kids didn’t want an education; they didn’t know what that was. They wanted the clothes, the food I gave them.”

Conceicao opened her first school in 2005, scraping together enough money to rent two bedrooms, install furniture and hire staff. Under the banner of the Dhaka Project, her activities spilled into offering medical and dental care to slum dwellers, building wells and roads, and rolling out free primary and secondary education. At each juncture, she sought the help of a tight-knit circle of fundraisers and volunteers to keep the charity afloat, as the number of children in her care grew.

“Each time I asked for help, then I took the skills of other people and put them where they needed to be,” she says.

“When the kids, say, needed a dentist, I found two and asked them to help me. When we needed to set up the

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wells, something I know nothing about, I found a company and asked for help.

Everything I’ve done is on those terms. I put my faith in other people.”

Eight years on, much has changed.

Conceicao’s brood has exploded from 39 to 600 children, spanning from eight to 17-years-old, while her charity has

3.4million

punctuated the drive from the airport to the hotel. The compulsion to help, she says, was overwhelming.

[Above and left] More than 300,000 migrants move to Dhaka’s slums each year, many travelling from Bangladesh’s rural regions in search of work

More than 25 per cent of Dhaka’s 12 million residents live in slum towns

PHILANTHROPY AGE

basic hygiene and social skills before their job interviews. The prospective employer “should never know they are any different to any other candidate,” she says.

Underpinning this is the constant battle for funding, and the fight to keep the charity imprinted on the minds of the public. During her grueling Mount Everest climb earlier this year – one of many bids to attract fresh sponsors and raise cash – Conceicao was haunted by the fear of dying before delivering on her promise to raise Dhaka’s children out of poverty.

“The most important thing to me is to honour this promise,” she says. “I’m terrified – these kids have so much faith in me. I’ve made them think beyond the slum; I’ve given them dreams. What if now I can’t make it happen?”

In March, the Maria Cristina Foundation ran out of funding, a victim of the dive in donations seen after the global economic crisis. With no money to pay rent, the staff and other bills, the foundation shuttered its school and found spots for 400 of its children at local institutes. The remaining 200 children have yet to find seats. stretched to encompass seeking out jobs in Dubai for her school-leavers and the parents of slum-dwellers. Five children have secured scholarships to Dubai schools, with paid tuition, travel, meals and uniforms until they are 18.

In that time, Conceicao’s quest to lift Dhaka’s children out of poverty has taken her to the North Pole, through eight marathons and, earlier this year, to the summit of Mount Everest, as she tries frantically to raise enough funding to keep pace with demand. “It’s just so hard to say no,” she explains. “I don’t want to see these children regress into poverty, because there are no opportunities for

them. It’s so important they have access to an education for any sort of future, so I have to find the money for it.”

Conceicao’s drive goes far beyond the boundaries of casual philanthropy. In person, she is possessed by her work, blazing with conviction. The Maria Cristina Foundation, as it was formally named in 2010, is, she says, “my whole life”. She devotes her salary to it, and she has sold her car to raise funds for it.

Her home has become a halfway house for Dhaka school-leavers and parents seeking work in Dubai; she spends a month drilling them on

For Conceicao, it was a devastating blow. “It was like a hurricane came and destroyed everything that I’d built,” she says. “I’ve dedicated the last eight years to this. But then I thought, no, we still have the kids. So the work goes on.”

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“I faced so much resistance. When I first approached them, those kids didn’t want an education – they didn’t know what that was” 51

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

[Right] Maria Conceicao urgently needs funding to continue her work in Dhaka. [Below] The price of sponsoring a child’s living costs for a year is $816, or $68 a month

New horizons Offering a better future to Dhaka’s poorest children meant starting with their parents. In 2009, Conceicao realised that bolstering the income of slum families would be critical to keeping their children in school.

Faced with no money, parents were likely to pull their offspring out of class to earn a few dollars in the labour market. Her answer was to launch English classes for the parents, to boost their chances of well-paid employment. It was, she says, a battle.

That work involves sourcing new sponsors for her children, raising enough cash to reopen the school, and digging out new potential employers for those in her jobseekers programme.

The price of sponsoring a child’s living costs for a month is $68, or $816 a year.

Paying for a jobseeker to learn English, in preparation for moving to Dubai, is around $100 a month or $1,200 a year.

But any donation, says Conceicao, is welcome. “Everything helps us. It would be fantastic to have a major sponsor to help the foundation, but everything counts in keeping it going.”

77%

The percentage of Bangladesh’s population that survives on less than $2 a day

“I had to bribe them,” she says, frankly. “They didn’t see investing in English as a benefit; it was a waste of time.

So I gave pocket money to everyone that attended lessons for one month.”

Her next challenge, just six months after scaling the world’s highest mountain, is to run seven marathons in a week, stretched over seven continents. If all goes to plan, she will complete the last leg on December 2, in time to mark the UAE’s 42nd National Day. “I live, breathe and sleep this work,” she says. “I’m 36 but I’ve had no life, because the charity has to come first.

Until the last child has a job, that’s what I have to do.” n

Today, the Maria Cristina Foundation funds classes for 26 families at the British Council in Dhaka. A further 100 remain on a waiting list, until Conceicao can raise the $99 needed per adult each month for lessons. The aim is to shape the parents for jobs in Dubai, where monthly wages are more than they could earn in a year in Bangladesh.

To date, 30 parents and six school-leavers have netted jobs in the Gulf state, with employers ranging from Emirates Airline to Al Jazeera. Their flights are paid for

by Etihad Airways, which also flies the foundation’s scholarship children to and from Dubai twice a year.

“Everyone says the kids are the future, which is true, but there is less chance of a future if you don’t help the parents,” Conceicao says. “The poverty doesn’t end.”

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EXPERT COLUMN

The highest of virtues T

The act of giving is a central aspect of Islamic faith and practice. Islamic scholar Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, with Mahan Mirza, explains why the gift of giving is the greatest joy of living

he 13th century Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote that charity “extends not only to the love of God, but also to the love of our neighbour.” The Latin root of charity, caritas, is itself an expression of the love of humanity.

Similarly, philanthropy was first coined by Aeschylus as an adjective in Prometheus Bound to describe Prometheus as “loving humanity” (philanthropos tropos). Throughout history and across all traditions, the virtue of giving, whether it is gifts to our loved ones or alms to the less fortunate among us, has always been associated with love and divinity.

reported to have said that people have a right to receive charity from a wealthy individual beyond mere zakat. Such supererogatory acts of charity fall under the umbrella of sadaqah.

Judaism has the obligation of tzedekah, and in Buddhism and Hinduism almsgiving is an act of respect towards the monk or the priest. In every faith tradition, giving is considered among the highest of virtues.

For Muslims, the act of giving is a central aspect of Islamic faith and practice.

Governed by a worldview in which all things come from God and ultimately return to God, Muslims are taught to live as trustees of God’s blessings on earth and to serve as vicegerents of God. The idea of trusteeship is embedded in the meaning of the word ‘Caliph’, which was adopted in Islamic political thought to mean 'ruler'.

Charity in Islam can be viewed as an act that demonstrates our love of God

Alms giving, or zakat, is an annual obligation for Muslims and one of the five pillars of Islam. Stemming from the tri-literal root z-k-w, the word relates to purification, signifying the cleansing of one’s lawfully earned income from any taint or impurity. As such, zakat benefits both the giver and the receiver.

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is

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The tri-literal root of sadaqah is s-d-q, which has many meanings depending on the derivative form of the word, but two key meanings are truthfulness (sidq) and friendship (siddīq). So charity in Islam can be viewed as an act that demonstrates the truth of our love of God, and also of one’s fraternal love of our fellow human beings, the same twin notions echoed in Aquinas’ words regarding charity.

The Quranic injunction of giving has guided Muslims across lands since the dawn of the religion 1,400 years ago. It has spawned an extraordinary tradition of philanthropy, exemplified in the 9th century by Fatima al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy Tunisian immigrant to Morocco, who used her inheritance to endow both a mosque and the world’s oldest university, the al-Qarawiyyin University in Fes. The Quran provides both a spiritual framework for the possession of wealth, and practical guidelines for its dispensation. If we believe that all things, ultimately, belong to God, then

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it behooves us to spend everything we have beyond what is necessary for the sake of God. This is categorically stated in the Quran (verse 2:219), “They ask thee how much they are to spend; say: ‘What is beyond your needs.’”

It is the human predilection for riches that the Quran cautions against, yet it acknowledges that spiritually immature souls may jeopardise their own moral standing by regretting reckless acts of charity that leave them destitute. Some verses (including 17:29 and 25:67) speak of maintaining a balance between extravagance and parsimony. This is in recognition of human nature, which has the dual impulses of compassion and an inherent love of wealth. In this way, Islam’s legal teachings counsel temperance and prudence, whereas Islam’s spiritual teachings urge selflessness and generosity.

It is generosity that impels the spread of wealth in all corners of society, especially among people who are the casualties of commerce, not its beneficiaries. It is a Quranic principle that wealth should not merely circulate among the wealthy, and the verses on spending (infāq) appear adjacent to the verses on the prohibition of usury (ribā). On the one hand, wealth apparently decreases by the act of giving it away, and on the other, it apparently

increases by fixing rates of return. From an Islamic perspective, the increase of one’s wealth from ribā is transient and illusory, far outweighed by a net loss to soul and society, most grievously in the hereafter.

So in addition to purification of our wealth through charity (zakat), another meaning that stems from the root z-k-w is ‘to grow’. The spreading of wealth, then, benefits the commonweal, while the hoarding of wealth blights it. It is worth noting that the word for pure gold in classical Arabic (‘iqyan) is derived from the word for an infant’s faeces (al-iqī). Wealth is like manure — when it is spread around, many things grow, but when it is hoarded, a great stench rises.

Zakat, as a minimum requisite or pillar, thus lays the foundation of charitable giving in Islam. It is both a means of purification for the individual, as well as a source of growth for the health and healing of society. An oft-repeated

story in the Muslim world tells of a Shah in Persia who came upon an old man planting an olive tree, which takes decades to produce good fruit. When asked why he is planting a tree that will not benefit him, the old man replies, “Those who came before me planted, and we benefited. I am planting so that those who come after me shall benefit.”

For Muslims, the Prophet’s (pbuh) life serves as a model for alms and charity. It is reported that any surplus wealth that came to the Prophet’s (pbuh) household was distributed before dawn. One report narrates that upon inquiring about the meat of a sacrificial goat, the Prophet (pbuh) was told that the shoulder had been saved, because it was known that it was his favorite, while the rest had been distributed among the people. On hearing this, the Prophet (pbuh) replied that, to the contrary, everything but the shoulder – which would be consumed – had been saved.

The Quranic injunction of giving has guided Muslims across lands since the dawn of the religion 1,400 years ago

Intrinsic to the obligation of giving in Islam is the universal truism that a love of humanity and a love of God beget charitable deeds. n

About the writers Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is a leading Islamic scholar and the cofounder and president of Zaytuna College.

Mahan Mirza is Dean of Faculty at the college

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56 Credit: Islamic Relief

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Women in Palestine:

City of widows

By Joanne Bladd and Zaineb Bouftass

“My husband was the only breadwinner in the family,” Salhy says today. “I sought help from different organisations but it was all in vain. My parents helped me but it was not enough. My father was too old to work.”

Salhy’s story is one of many. After years of conflict in which the casualties are mainly men, the Gaza Strip, a tiny sliver of towns, villages and farmland between Egypt, Israel and the Mediterranean sea, is home to hundreds of widows.

Their husbands have died in bombings, sectarian slaughter, or simply as a result of life in a brittle, war-torn state, leaving them to fend for themselves in a region saturated with poverty.

In Gaza City, the blackened buildings are a reminder of the most recent military assault in November, a strike that again reduced the enclave’s fledgling industrial district to rubble. Widows, as newlyappointed breadwinners, are forced to navigate this volatile landscape alone, often raising children with little money or family support.

“For any person in Gaza life is very hard, but a widow’s suffering is huge,” says Hatem Shurrab, spokesman for Islamic Relief Palestine (IRP). “She is the mother and father, and she lives dependent on aid and local sponsorship. It barely covers the basic needs. Some may have to move into their family’s home, which is a big burden for the wider family. It is a very difficult economic and social position.”

“For any person in Gaza life is hard, but a widow’s suffering is huge”

Credit: Islamic Relief

Unable to pay her rent and feed her two children, she moved back to live with her parents, struggling to scrape by on less than 167 shekels ($47) a month.

Nearly 39 per cent of the enclave’s 1.6 million residents exist on the breadline, with more than half of households classed as ‘food insecure’.

Unemployment stands at 34.5 per cent, a stark reminder of how the long-running land-and-sea blockade has choked the local economy, curbing the flow of people and goods across the border.

Some 80 per cent of families are aid recipients, dependent on a slow drip of money, food and essential goods to survive.

IRP, an arm of the UK-based charitable organisation Islamic Relief, launched operations in Gaza in 1998. Along with other non-profit agencies, its 170 employees channel vital aid to local families, help to fund reconstruction efforts and support employment projects. Backed by donors, it also sponsors some 5,000 Gazan children who have lost their fathers, or both parents, paying $50 a month to help cover their school and living costs.

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iveen Salhy lost her husband in a car accident on Gaza’s potholed streets in 1995. At 17, pregnant, and mother to a toddler, she had unwillingly joined the ranks of Gaza’s least appealing club, abruptly finding herself in charge of both a funeral and a family.

Nearly 39 per cent of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents exist on the breadline, with more than half of households classed as ‘food insecure’

Five years ago, IRP also began offering grants and interest-free loans to Gazan widows seeking to set up their own small businesses and earn a living.

The money has been used

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“We are investing in these women so they can depend on themselves. Aid is not a long-term solution�

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to furnish small grocery stores and beauty salons, bought sewing machines, fabric and even cattle, fuelling a slew of entrepreneurial ideas.

“We are investing in these women, so they can depend on themselves,” says Shurrab. “They want to be able to buy their own food, not wait for a food parcel. They want to buy clothes for their own children, without charity. Aid is not a long-term solution for Gaza.”

The charity offers interest-free loans ranging from $2,000 to $4,000, shaped around the scale of the business and the start-up funding required. Grants span from $5,000 to $7,000, and are often used to help rent and decorate premises, as well as to buy goods.

To date, the charity has helped to finance 2,000 small businesses or projects in Gaza, 700 of which were launched by women.

“First-time loans are usually around $2,000, but if the project goes well, we encourage them to take a second loan

and expand their business,” says Shurrab.

“Last week I visited a widow in the northern Gaza Strip, who started with a $1,000 loan to open a business selling clothing. Now she’s supporting her family. It’s a success.”

Salhy applied to IRP for a grant to open a sewing business, using the money to buy fabric, threads and a sewing machine.

Working from a room in her parents’ house, she now creates abayas and other clothes for her customers. Eventually, she hopes to earn enough to send her eldest son to college.

“I could not sit and wait for aid,” she says. “The cost of living here is rising every day.”

80%

The number of Gazan families that depend on aid to bolster their income

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Without her sewing business, Salhy faced competing with a glut of other jobseekers for a handful of poorly paid roles, some offering just 15 shekels (about $4) a day.

Unemployment in Gaza stands at 34.5 per cent, and even those with jobs can earn as little as $4 a day

“Now, I make 30 to 50 shekels a day [about $8-14],” she says. “It’s better to have a permanent source of income, no matter how small it is. I wish I had a shop, but I’m happy with what I have.”

IRP hopes to smooth the path for more widows to enter the workplace.

In 2011, it rolled out a pilot education scheme that paid for 20 women to return to school and complete two-year diploma courses in subjects ranging from administration to media. In June, all 20 of the women graduated.

“They want to move on, all of them, to work to improve the economic situation of their families,” says Shurrab. “Yes, they can manage to survive, but that is not the goal. The goal is to survive with dignity and for their children to thrive.

For that to happen, we must invest in the people themselves.” n

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Dave Singh

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Model pupils The Fugee School, a small facility nestled amid the tumbledown slums of Kuala Lumpur, is helping Somali refugees to dream of a brighter future

By Andrew White

A

hmed Bashir was just 12 years old when he and his two younger sisters fled Mogadishu for a new life in Kuala Lumpur. In Somalia, Ahmed and his siblings had attended a religious school where they learned the Quran; in Malaysia the orphaned refugees, none of whom spoke English, found themselves free of violence, yet struggling to envision a brighter future.

Today, six years later, Ahmed stands proudly at the front of his own classroom where he teaches regular lessons for primary-age children drawn from the plaster-and-plywood ghettos that are home to Kuala Lumpur’s embattled Somali community. His enthusiasm for his young students, likewise blessed with a second chance that Ahmed grasped with both hands, is infectious.

“When we were in Somalia we never thought about our future or had dreams”

“When we were in Somalia we didn’t know anything about the world and so we never thought about our future or had dreams,” he recalls. “Now I have learned that we can be whatever we want, if we believe, if we work hard and we help each other.”

The catalyst for this change has been the Fugee School, a simple facility that has nevertheless turned around the lives of hundreds of young refugees.

In spring 2008 a young model, television presenter and former Miss Malaysia winner named Deborah Henry was approached to front an in-house documentary for the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR. Armed with a degree in economics and political science, Henry was one of the rare pageant contestants whose pledge to make the world a better place proved more than just a sop to the judges. What she saw of Kuala Lumpur’s refugee communities would change her life, as well at that of Ahmed, and many others.

“It happened almost by chance,” says Henry. “I wasn’t really aware of the refugee situation in Malaysia. Very often you see things but you think,

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nationalities. Today, the school operates out of three converted apartments nestled among the poverty-stricken communities that they serve.

are many schools like ours, and they are happy we do what we do. However they’re not directly supportive, and we don’t get any funding from them.

“We need to be close to where the refugees live because they can’t travel for security and financial reasons,” explains Henry. “In addition, a lot of the parents are more comfortable with their kids being near them, and we need the help of the parents to make sure the children stay in school and commit to it.”

“A lot of these kids just want to catch up with the rest of society.

They need to have the confidence to believe they can do something”

Determined to tutor the young family in any way she could, Henry returned to their home every week and before long it became apparent that the community was in desperate need of proper educational facilities, however rudimentary.

The security situation is complex, and apparently intractable. As refugees, those transiting through Malaysia and on to other countries are unable to take jobs or attend official schools. Ahmed and tens of thousands of other displaced people are simply passing through on their way to resettlement elsewhere.

“We have had contributions from corporate sponsors and private donors,” she continues. “It’s just that nobody wants to hand over a cheque and appear on the front of the newspaper – people who understand the cause and believe in the work can very easily give money, and see the effect of it, they just can’t put on a show.”

In May 2009 Henry and a university friend, Shikeen Halibullah, formalised their efforts and the Fugee School was born, catering largely to Somali students but open to young people of all

“The main issue with refugees in Malaysia is that adults can’t work and children can’t go to school,” says Henry. “We operate in a grey space; the government knows we exist, there

‘that’s the way it is, such is life’ and you leave, but this was a moment when I knew I couldn’t walk away.”

Henry met four families that springtime, Ahmed’s among them. He and his sisters, along with their grandmother and cousin, had been in Malaysia for around six months. “They were all orphaned and everything was shut down,” recalls Henry.

“They had no imagination, no creativity, they could barely speak or write, and they were completely closed off. It was shocking.”

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Thanks to the selfless generosity of those willing to forgo publicity, the Fugee School today teaches more than 120 children between the ages of four

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will go to university, she says that they hear regularly from resettled students grateful for the lessons they learned in the cluttered former apartments of Kuala Lumpur.

“The school has taught me to work hard, and to help others”

“As well as equipping the students with academic skills and helping them to take part in extracurricular activities, it’s also about giving them confidence in who they are,” says Henry. “Once they can add and subtract and speak decent English that’s all well and good, but we need to help them develop life skills, given what they’ve been through, so that when they are resettled they are able to adapt and still build a life for themselves.”

“A lot of these kids just want to catch up with the rest of society,” she says. “They’ve missed such a chunk of learning, and if they don’t go to university, they at least need to have the confidence to believe that they can do something. From Somalia, to Malaysia, to somewhere else: we’re preparing them for that process and trying to give them some skills they can use to deal with it.”

Since the inception of the Fugee School, around 40 former pupils have been resettled, the majority to the US or Australia. While Henry accepts that few

While the ‘grey’ status of the school, and dozens of others like it across the country, makes it impossible for students to take official exams and attain

recognised credentials, the school’s 10 full-time teachers are augmented by the part-time presence of high-level individuals from the NGO and corporate spheres. Often retired, these friends of the programme work pro bono, sitting with the students and assessing them on both their academic and wider life skills.

Dave Singh

and 18. Subjects range from basic-level English, maths and science, to Somali language and history, art, and sports and activities including dance classes and the performing arts. At least as importantly, the school makes great efforts to build the confidence of its young charges: one programme, of which Ahmed is particularly fond, even uses an American Idol-style competition to develop students’ public speaking skills.

The Fugee School, which was founded in a single room in 2009, now teaches more than 120 children between the ages of four and 18

Ahmed hopes that his skills will one day enable him to open his own business, wherever that may be. “When I get resettled I am hoping to finish my studies, so that I can use my skills to help the community,” he says. “The school has taught me to work hard, and to help others. It doesn’t matter how small the change, as long as I am helping people.”

“So many of these kids have seen so much horror and violence,” adds Henry.

“When we first asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, they didn’t want to be anything. Now we have kids that want to be a doctor one day and a pilot the next. This is how kids should be, their ambitions changing every day.” n

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FARAHNAZ KARIM

The new age of giving I

n May 2005 the celebrated writer and philosopher David Foster Wallace gave a seminal commencement speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College in Ohio, US. His address carried a simple message: “The really important kind of freedom involves... being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day”.

Farahnaz Karim has spent her career connecting philanthropists with impactful social enterprises. She tells us how philanthropy is not something one does, but something one is

Wallace’s words call for philanthropy as an answer to the existential challenges of human life. They speak to philanthropy or the love of humanity in the broadest sense, not of charity or investment or some legal variant of the above. Wallace argues that being aware of and caring for another human being gives us purpose, fulfilment and may in fact be one of the few things that elevates us beyond the worshipping of the self. Wallace was speaking to the youth, what many call the next generation of philanthropists.

So who are these next-generation philanthropists, and what matters to them? In my view, Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millenials are distinct from previous generations of givers.

Their worldview sets them apart and in turn influences their approach to philanthropy. The first difference is that philanthropy is no longer something you engage in when you have amassed significant wealth, but is something you engage in early on, no matter what your income level.

The second shift is that philanthropy is not something one does, but something one is. In other words, next-generation philanthropists do not live their lives

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(or at least the majority of them) in dichotomous ways. Sharing wealth and caring for others is not an activity or a hobby or an event they attend. For them, philanthropy is a way of life, a conscious choice.

Finally, whereas in the past philanthropists may have come from specific wealth-creating industries, mainly industrial conglomerates, nextgeneration philanthropists work across the hi-tech and financial industries, arts and media, combining a plurality of skills and knowledge bases, both rational and creative. Together, they are transforming the landscape of philanthropy in several notable ways.

Philanthropy means talking to people and not about them, working with them and not for them In a report published in July 2010, the Monitor Institute highlighted that “acting bigger” is of importance to next-generation philanthropists. Rather than creating their own foundations or their own programmes, next-generation philanthropists are happy to pool resources together, leveraging each other’s resources and understanding that making a bigger impact makes more sense than supporting fragmented, smaller, short-term initiatives. And by resources they mean more than just money, but the three Ts; treasure, talent and time.

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Herein lies the challenge: what is a social return? Measuring success in business is fairly straightforward, but in philanthropy the metrics are harder to ascertain.

There is an ongoing debate between those calling for more uniformity in metrics, and those who insist that human change is too idiosyncratic to the culture in which it occurs, to be measured across countries.

According to Forbes’ Next Generation Philanthropy report, 46 per cent of donors use IRIS indices to assess philanthropic impact, and another 37 per cent use the Global Impact Investing Ratings System. These systems, however uniform, are heavily weighted towards outputs and outcomes rather than impact on people’s lives. In education, for instance, they emphasise enrolment over test scores, and test scores over changes in life goals and meaningful employment. While useful, they do not capture the whole picture.

The field is also divided, to some extent, between the economists and social scientists that would prefer statistical evidence, and the students of mixed methods and humanities, who insist that

such a narrow definition of progress will inevitably limit our ability to innovate.

Ultimately, the key is the ability to measure human change and that is not something that can be easily accounted for using a single method or index. Human change is cumulative and incremental and occurs over generations. Systems thinking, which considers individuals in terms of their relationship to the whole, and considers iterative rather than linear learning, perhaps offers a better framework. This means listening to people, asking them what change means to them in the context of their culture, their ambitions and values, and using that to develop and interpret the statistics we generate.

It means talking to people and not about them, working with them and not for them. It means using stories and statistics, but always making sure to be people-centred.

In May of this year, a nine-minute video featuring excerpts from Wallace’s commencement speech went viral, attracting more than 4 million views on YouTube in just two weeks. I hope, and believe, that this overwhelming response to Wallace’s message is indicative of a growing consciousness that we can indeed choose to decide what we value, how we act and react, and demonstrate a greater level of empathy and care for others, every day. n

The next-generation philanthropists are also wise to the challenge of allocating capital effectively. Over the years many have argued that doing good cannot be reconciled with making money; others contend that making money may be the best way to ensure social change, driving entrepreneurial ventures in both developed and developing markets.

Next-generation philanthropists tend to think differently, beyond these ideological lines. They know that engaging in charity or donating to relief organisations is needed, but in parallel they back innovative social enterprises.

Diversification and value creation are achieved through the use of different tools: support for charity, microfinance, social enterprises and impact investing.

Human change is cumulative and incremental and occurs over decades. So how do we measure it?

About the writer Farahnaz Karim is the founder and CEO of Insaan Group. She has worked for the UN and the World Bank, as well as a wide range of non-profit organisations

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Wise

words Ratan Tata is one of India’s most successful businessmen. As the industrial tycoon moves into full-time philanthropy, Navi Radjou suggests that six specific leadership qualities make Tata perfectly suited to his new task

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n December last year, when Ratan Tata retired as chairman of the Indian conglomerate Tata Group, the international news media was awash with praise for one of India’s most prominent business leaders. His 21-year tenure as head of India’s most-respected private enterprise was celebrated as a triumph unmatched in modern Indian industrial history.

Undoubtedly the Ivy League-educated Tata is an intelligent individual. However, what marks him out – and the reason he will be remembered as a once-in-ageneration business leader – is his ability to combine intelligence with a rarer quality: wisdom. Tata was, and is, a wise leader. And it is this quality that will inform and inspire his decision-making as he turns his full-time attention to the

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philanthropic sphere, as leader of the various charitable organisations known informally as the Tata trusts.

Smartness is a necessary but insufficient qualification for being an effective leader in today’s complex world.

Smartness is akin to a wild horse: riding it can be exciting for a while till you get thrown from it. The media in recent years thas been full of headlines about smart leaders who found themselves out of job – or worse, in jail – for abusing their intelligence for selfish purpose. To tame and harness smartness for the long run, you need wisdom, which offers you ethical clarity and a greater sense of purpose.

Smartness can become even more potent when guided by wisdom, which serves as a moral compass.

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The world desperately needs smart leaders who can act and lead with wisdom. Ratan Tata is one of them.Tata demonstrated practical wisdom through his actions and decisions as head of Tata Group. He practiced wise leadership by exercising six core capabilities that all wise leaders share:

Operate from a holistic perspective. A wise leader’s

worldview is oriented towards his or her North Star, which represents his or her noble purpose. A noble purpose transcends personal needs and ego and compels one to contribute to the common good in an honourable manner. Tata always operated from a holistic perspective: he strived to create value for all stakeholders, felt a moral obligation to give back to society, and enforced environmentally responsible business practices. In many ways, Tata’s holistic perspective mirrored that of his great-grandfather Jamsetji Tata, who founded Tata Group in 1868 as a unique type of private enterprise that is entrepreneurial and yet deeply committed to community development.

Today the majority of shares in Tata Group are held by Tata Sons. In turn,

66 per cent of Tata Sons is owned by the Tata trusts, a group of philanthropic organisations. These trusts ensure that a majority of Tata Group’s profits are reinvested in community development projects in areas ranging from healthcare to education to sustainable farming to affordable housing to clean energy and environmental protection. While he has retired from the Tata Group, Ratan Tata will continue to serve as chairman as the Tata trusts, devoting all his time and energy to charity initiatives.

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Act both authentically and appropriately in any context. Wise leaders act with great

authenticity, consistently aligning their actions with their North Star. But they also pay attention to the changing context and willingly take appropriate actions that serve a larger purpose. They consistently act with prudence, courage, and equanimity even in highly stressful circumstances. Ratan Tata never repressed his authenticity. An “introvert and kind of private person” (in his own words), he shunned public limelight and

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granted very few media interviews. Yet, Tata never minced words when criticising corruption that plagues the Indian economy and politics. He was a staunch critic of crony capitalism and ensured that none of Tata Group’s senior managers – himself included – indulged in unethical practices.

03

Lead from any position with role clarity and humility.

Wise leaders have great role clarity; that is, they recognize that ‘leader’ is merely a role and not a person’s identity.

Hence, they perform their leadership role with detached engagement: they are fully engaged in an action and yet remain emotionally detached from the action. When he took over Tata Group in 1991, Ratan Tata initially struggled to establish himself as a leader and had to overcome the scepticism of seasoned executives in his company who found him inexperienced, or even undeserving, of the role. Eventually Tata discovered his authentic leadership style and led his company to new heights during his time as its chairman. Even though Tata

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[Above] Tata Steel has major operations in Jamshedpur and provides electricity, water, healthcare and education for the city’s residents. [Left] the Nano was designed for poor Indian families

In their actions and decisions, wise leaders are motivated by something far beyond personal gains 69

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Group bears his name, Tata never ran it as a family business. Rather, he saw himself as a “servant leader” who offered “stewardship” for his company, and had no qualms relinquishing his chairman role when his term was up.

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Combine intuition and logic to make ethical and pragmatic decisions. Wise leaders

don’t make hurried decisions. They take time to reflect and rely on sound judgment and ethical clarity when making decisions. They use great discernment, the ability to judge well in crises, to make ethically sound and yet pragmatic decisions using a combination of logic, instinct, intuition, and emotion. Tata’s decision to launch the Nano – a $2,000 ultra-compact car – was shaped by his empathy for Indian families who ride precariously on twowheelers and couldn’t afford a regular car. Heeding his intuition, Tata decided to create the Nano and in the process

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he also spawned an entire new market, disproving critics who believed such a market would never come to exist.

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Know when to hold and when to fold. Wise leaders

demonstrate flexible fortitude; that is, they know when to stick to a decision and when to revise or reverse it, and do so for the larger benefit. When Tata decided to acquire the luxury car brands Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) in 2008, his decision was widely criticised by investors and scoffed at by Western media who worried that the Indian firm would tarnish the quality of two iconic British brands. Worse, the financial crisis made it harder for the Tata Group to finance its costly acquisition. Tata, however, stuck to his decision and weathered the storm. That fortitude paid off: Tata Group successfully turned around the ailing JLR businesses and reestablished the splendour of these two premium car brands. Tata was tenacious

but not obstinate since he was willing to revisit prior decisions when appropriate.

For instance, in 2008, Tata swiftly shifted the production of the Nano to the investor-friendly state of Gujarat, thus rolling back his firm’s prior plan to manufacture the car in the state of West Bengal, where activists opposed the setting up of a factory.

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Act out of enlightened selfinterest. In their actions and

decisions, wise leaders are motivated by something far beyond personal

Tata believed that his business could not flourish without healthy and happy employees

gains: enlightened self-interest and serving a noble purpose. Indeed, wise leaders strive to tread a middle path between two extremes in the motivation spectrum: sheer self-interest and selfless altruism. Unlike self-centred smart leaders, wise leaders are ‘othercentred’, driven by the belief that a rising tide lifts all boats. Jamsetji Tata, founder of the Tata Group, famously said: “We do not claim to be more unselfish, more generous or more philanthropic than other people. But we think we started on sound and straightforward business principles, considering the interests of the shareholders our own, and the health and welfare of the employees, the sure foundation of our success.” Like his great-grandfather, Ratan Tata cared for the welfare of his workforce and that of citizens in the cities and towns where his group operated since he believed that his business could not flourish without healthy and happy employees and sustainable local communities.

This enlightened self-interest is quite manifest in Jamshedpur, an industrial township in the north-eastern Indian state of Jharkhand that houses the majority of operations of Tata Steel, Tata Group’s flagship company. Tata

Steel maintains Jamshedpur’s public utilities supplying electricity, water, healthcare, education, and sanitation for all citizens. Today Jamshedpur is ranked as one of India’s greenest, cleanest, and best-educated cities.

Throughout his 21 years as Chairman of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata exercised the six core leadership capabilities – perspective, action orientation, role clarity, decision logic, fortitude, and

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motivation – in a wise manner. As he steps full-time into his role as head of Tata trusts, one can expect him to lead numerous charity initiatives with great wisdom.

In particular, Tata is keen to shift the focus of Tata trusts from merely signing cheques to small-scale projects to forging strategic partnerships with influential organisations, such as top universities like MIT and Cornell, to cocreate innovative large-scale solutions that comprehensively address India’s manifold and most pressing socioeconomic needs. As a consequence of Tata’s wisdom, the headline-writers of the future are one day likely to have to employ a whole new set of superlatives. n

[Above] Tata Medical Center, in Kolkata, is just one of the many healthcare facilities built by the Tata trusts.

[Below left] Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover proved to be a shrewd move

About the writer Navi Radjou is an innovation and leadership consultant based in Silicon Valley, US. He is coauthor of the books Jugaad Innovation and From Smart To Wise

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The quiet philanthropist Indonesian tycoon Tahir has traded a history of discreet philanthropy for a policy of public, strategic giving. Now he wants Asia’s wealthiest to do the same

By Joanne Bladd

O

n a warm April morning in Abu Dhabi, Indonesian businessman Tahir stepped into a hotel meeting room and into the big league of philanthropy. Within minutes, flanked by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the 61-year-old had quietly signed away more than $100m of his fortune against a muted background of clicking and flashing cameras; money to be doubled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and funnelled into tackling some of Indonesia’s most intractable public health problems. It was, he told the clutch of waiting journalists, a new beginning.

Tahir is no stranger to largesse. A selfmade billionaire, he’s built a sprawling empire with interests in banking, retail, healthcare, media and more; propelling himself into the ranks of Indonesia’s wealthiest with, according to Forbes, a $2bn fortune. Along the way, he has siphoned off millions of dollars for philanthropy through the Tahir Foundation, gifting money to needy

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students, to universities in Indonesia, Singapore, China and the US, and, in 2012, to fund medical research. For much of this Tahir ducked the limelight, preferring instead to unobtrusively clear medical bills for poor families, or fund scholarships for aspiring academics.

Headline-grabbing donations were a scarcer occurrence. His private foundation, arguably one of Indonesia’s largest, doesn’t even have a website.

The tie-in with the Gates Foundation, however, was a game changer. It not only marked Tahir as the first major private donor in Indonesia to align himself with the multibillion-dollar foundation, but also signalled his own shift towards a policy of public and strategic philanthropy.

“I have a lot to learn,” says Tahir, pinsharp in a dark suit and tie. “In Indonesia, we carry out philanthropy on a more individual, direct basis. The Gates Foundation has a broader approach – they look at how to make the biggest

impact with their money. I have been given enough wealth to do good work.

But this is an opportunity for us.”

to Indonesia’s coordinating ministry for people’s welfare, has seen much of this destitution first-hand.

The $206.5m pledged by the Tahir and Gates foundations will be dripfed over five years into five critical areas of public health. The first $50m was promised to the global effort to eradicate polio, a paralysing viral disease that once raged in 125 countries but now, thanks to titanic public health campaigns, has been corralled into just three. A further $130m was ringfenced to fight HIV, malaria and tuberculosis in Tahir’s home country, while $26.5m was set aside to bolster access to family planning tools in Indonesia and the wider Southeast Asia region.

“Nearly 40 per cent of our people are in poverty and the gap between the rich and he poor is widening,” he says. “I was born in Indonesia, it gave me a chance to make a living, to raise my children. I have taken from society, so it is only natural that I should give back if I can. And there’s a lot of work to do.”

This is high-margin philanthropy that tackles the scourge of ill health, a blot that spreads poverty and stifles economic development. Improved family planning alone holds the promise of high returns: for every $1 spent on contraception, countries can save up to $6 on water, health, housing and other critical public needs.

“We have a lot of challenges in Indonesia, and our philanthropy has to match those needs,” says Tahir. “I want to see people healthy, upgraded in their education, able to work for their families.

There is a Chinese saying; ‘the demand is so much but the pot is so little’.

That’s why we need the best return on our funding.”

By any measure, Indonesia’s needs are vast. Of a population of 234 million, half of all households remain clustered on the national poverty line, grinding out an existence on less than $22 a month.

More than 32 million Indonesians live below the line in dense poverty, yet to be touched by economic growth that has reached 6 per cent in five of the past six years. Tahir, an expert assistant

Tahir himself grew up in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, in a home that faced its own share of financial difficulties. His parents ran a pedicab business and leased the threewheeled vehicles out to drivers, an early sign of the entrepreneurial flair that would later propel Tahir to fame. After high school and a stint at Singapore’s Nanyang University, he began his career in business, initially peddling clothing and textiles to Indonesians seeking imported goods. In 1990, he founded Bank Mayapada, the first cornerstone of his business empire, which went on to list seven years later.

“My business is second to my philanthropy. To be the richest person has never been my goal” In the years since, Tahir’s Midas touch has given him a grip on much of Indonesian industry, but his goal has never been to pile up riches. As his business grew, so did his philanthropic activities: last year saw Tahir donate $24m to the National University of Singapore for medical research. In 2011, he gifted $1m to the University of California, Berkley, to fund scholarships for MBA students primarily from Asia, building on the raft of scholarships he already funds at more than 20 state universities in Indonesia.

“My business is second to my philanthropy. To be the richest person has never been my goal,” he says. “I use that because you need to have proper financial power to do good work, and carry out philanthropy. But entrepreneurship is only a means; it’s not the end.”

He is also quick to inveigh against the cutthroat policies of multinational corporates, and against titans who wait to amass a fortune before deigning to give any of it away. As a philosophy, his has strains of the great 19th-century industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who insisted that the man who died rich, died disgraced.

“It is not just what you do after you are rich, it’s also a question of how you made your money,” Tahir says. “This is very important. There is philanthropy in the process as well: you should earn money in an ethical way. Yes, once you have wealth, you also have to distribute it properly, but I try to instill philanthropy in the journey too.”

In the wake of his pairing with the Gates Foundation, Tahir is now turning his attention to persuading others to follow in his footsteps, making waves among Asia’s wealthiest. His first target was tycoon Syed Mohktar AlBukhary, named

by Forbes this year as the eighth richest Malaysian, with a $2.75bn fortune. Tahir brokered an introduction to the Gates Foundation and says he hopes to see the two working together in the near future.

“Philanthropy is about setting an example,” he says. “I want to be the inspiration for others to follow. We hear again and again how China and Asia are rising in the global economy, but I'd like to see the region play as big a role in the philanthropic world. If we are in the spotlight of the whole world, then let’s use it. We should be an example to others.” n

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Ruwwad is a non-profit community empowerment organization that helps disadvantaged communities overcome marginalization through youth activism, civic engagement and education. www.ruwwad.jo

EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES IN EGYPT, JORDAN, LEBANON AND PALESTINE

ONE DAY

“Our role is to help people, not judge them” Global charity Caritas offers guidance and counselling to African immigrants stranded in Mahgreb countries while undertaking the perilous journey to Europe. Fatima Boulaalam, a senior social worker responsible for coordinating the charity’s efforts in Rabat, Morocco, recounts a typical day at work

We also try to assist immigrants in finding accommodation. We escort them to the UNHCR and social service centres, and take pregnant women, children and the sick for medical check-ups or treatment at health centres. I usually spend the afternoon doing administrative work, followed by field trips to where immigrants live to check on them and give them support.

What affects me most is to see women and children passing through this experience. It is very hard and insecure living, which can extend to two or more years, with children deprived of education, although we try to provide assistance in this area as well. We also

help teenagers who choose to brave the journey, whether because they have lost their families or they hoped for a job in Europe to support their families back home.

It may be even harder for those immigrants who choose to live in the wild with no food, water or shelter, trying to slip into the Spanish enclaves or daring the sea in a dinghy in hope of reaching Spain. Illegal immigrants come from as far as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but mainly from western Africa, countries like Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

One of the cases that I felt personally connected to was that of a 15-year-old girl from the DRC. She had no family left when she joined a group of immigrants bound for Morocco. When I first saw her, she looked so traumatised and untrusting. She would hardly talk to us.

I decided to give her time and extra care, and let her build trust in us. We looked after her, and she stayed with an African woman. It took several visits until she started to open up to me. She finally knew we loved her and truly cared about her. Two years later, she was flown abroad with a family to start a new life.

One day before her flight was due, she came to say goodbye. That moment – more than any other – I felt a strong sense of accomplishment; I really helped to make a difference in her life forever.

I

arrive in the office at 8:30 in the morning, 30 minutes before we start receiving immigrants. We listen to their individual cases before we prioritise how to assist them. Our main objective is to give them legal advice and guide them through the process of applying for refugee or asylum seeker status with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), to protect their rights and put them on the right track. However, we help in any other way we can, whether with human or material support, to make their lives less difficult.

Rights groups have estimated that there are currently as many as 25,000 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Morocco

I believe everyone has the right to decide their own course in life. Our role is to help these immigrants, not judge them. Charity is a key value in Islam and other religions. I have faith in willpower, and that everyone has the capacity to overcome any obstacle no matter how hard the circumstances may be. But we need support from others to make difficulties more bearable. There are millions of people who need help and a lot of causes that need support.

I’ve been working with Caritas for 10 years, and I like my job. I’m always touched when a new immigrant addresses me as ‘sister’. It is, simply, my little daily reward. n

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Making a Difference

Prince Maximilian Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein is the founder of LGT Venture Philanthropy, an impact investment group launched in 2007 with the aim of narrowing the social divide between rich and poor. The firm invests or donates between $200,000 and $10m per organisation, supporting them and enabling them to expand and upscale operations in education, health, nutrition, renewable energy, resource management, and water, across Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, India and China What is ‘venture philanthropy’?

For us, venture philanthropy is investing in organisations and supporting organisations that have significant positive social impact on the disadvantaged people of this world.

We do this by using venture capital principals and the private equity toolset, competences and processes that have proven themselves over decades of development, which we believe can be applied not just to achieving good financial returns, but also achieving strong social returns.

Are your financial returns meeting market benchmarks?

We think that over time we will be able to show a track record of investing in organisations that achieve very strong financial returns in combination with social returns. Are we there yet? Not quite, because our effort is still young.

At this point we have a couple of companies which have developed well financially and which have developed well from an impact point of view, but the life cycle in private equity and

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venture philanthropy is relatively long and we only got started six years ago.

The average age of our portfolio is two-years-old and our capital is still in there: we haven’t exited. I think that if you have a track record of having successfully invested and exited in 10 or more companies, where you could achieve that combination, then I think there will be more statistical evidence that it is truly working.

How are your clients responding to this new approach?

The amount of giving by wealthy people out there is already huge, because a lot of people who have been successful in business have a desire to give back.

However they realise that engaging with the objective of having strong social impact is almost as difficult, if not more difficult, than investing successfully. We do think it’s a relatively broadly shared challenge for wealthy people. What is interesting is that there is still not enough discussion about how giving can be done in the best possible way.

We think this is an important discussion,

because the problems we’re trying to address are significant, and the capital with which to do it is constrained. Hence it matters a lot if your social returns are very good or not, relative to the capital that you’ve deployed.

How are you working to engage clients in venture philanthropy?

Every human being has social and environmental responsibilities; I’d say that billionaires have broader possibilities. Quite often it comes down to the client and where their passion lies, whether that’s in education, social concerns, healthcare or the environment. It’s also important for the client to decide whether they want to donate, which currently accounts for around 25 per cent of our funds, or become involved directly. We customise things for them, helping them choose what countries and topics they want to be active in, and we do this in a very transparent and entrepreneurial way. Normally when you are doing charity work you give the money away and hope that something

Making a Difference

they can decide about their own lives.

Once they get in a little bit deeper they might see a bigger picture: how the kids might go to a great quality school but if they’ve been drinking bad water then they won’t be able to concentrate. Then they are starting to think about healthcare, and next comes nutrition and so on. It’s not often that you can focus on one thing and then just forget about everything else. It broadens out over time.

is happening, but very often you don’t even have an analysis in the first place.

When we take a decision it’s based on 30 to 40 pages of analysis and hard discussion. It becomes very transparent for them, why they engage, and then they get regular reports and updates.

And how do you decide which projects to invest in?

We have criteria which we analyse and which have to be there, and we measure the impact, but it can still be very hard to compare two different projects.

For instance, when you compare one million farmers who use drip irrigation technology, against an organisation in Nairobi which provides primary school education in the slums of Kibera, where we started with only two schools for about 500 kids and today we’re in 135

schools for more than 130,000 kids, it’s a very personal and subjective call. It’s never black and white.

How important is it that clients venture into the field, to witness first-hand the social impact of their investments?

Speaking personally, I think it’s great to be out there and have first-hand experiences and learn more about the issues. I find I learn a lot, so for me it’s very valuable. However, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary and different people have different sorts of approaches. Some people work most effectively from their desks, while some people are not of the age any more when they can travel the world and get out into the field, into the rural neighbourhoods of India. People can still contribute a lot without having to go there.

Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein out in the field

Which sectors receive the majority of venture philanthropy capital?

Most is going into supporting children and into education. These are the most attractive areas, which is logical: the first thing people think about when they think about philanthropy is how education helps everyone to get to a situation where

“Every human being has social and environmental responsibilities; I’d say that billionaires have broader possibilities”

Is there a particular project that has impacted on you personally?

One stands out for me. I hadn’t spent too much time in slums before I visited one in Manila where we invested in an organisation called Rags to Riches. It helps women make simple but stylish fashion products out of the leftovers from the garment industry. Spending some time in the slums was hugely educational and absolutely fascinating.

I bought a couple of handbags for my wife and she loves them, still uses them. But more than that, I took away a greater understanding of how people lived and worked there. Rags to Riches is still a growing organisation, financially profitable and making a difference. Will it prove to be a successful investment financially? I hope so. n

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To create we need to

jobs for Arab youth, go beyond training and connect youth to employment & entrepreneurship support.

Education For Employment (EFE) provides economic opportunities to unemployed youth in the Middle East and North Africa through job training and placement as well as entrepreneurship programs.

EFE’s unique approach goes beyond education and training alone to place youth in jobs and link aspiring entrepreneurs to startup support. EFE is a network of locally-run nonprofits in:

Egypt | Jordan | Morocco | Palestine | Tunisia | Yemen

www.efe.org

Spain

| U.S.

THE NEXT STEP

Never think you can’t make a difference…

The stories featured on these pages are just a starting point. Many of the organisations we focus on are saving and changing lives on a daily basis, but they need support to survive. If you want to learn more about the issues, or get busy solving them, then don’t hesitate to get in touch and take the next step on your own philanthropic journey

Changing lives in Baltistan The Marafie Foundation (www. marafiefoundation.org) is focused primarily on projects in Baltistan, in northeast Pakistan. It is building mosques, schools and more in an effort to improve the lives of the region’s million-strong population, many of who live in severe poverty.

Opportunities for women in Yemen While 61 per cent of men in Yemen work for pay, only 12 per cent of women under the age of 25 are in paid jobs.

The Yemen Education For Employment Foundation (www.yefe.org), which supported the Six Stars sewing project, has so far trained almost 900 young Yemenis, many of them women.

Helping Syrian refugees Since the outbreak of civil war in March 2011, an estimated 1.7 million Syrians, many of them children, have fled to neighbouring countries including Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey. Programmes such as START (www.startworld.org) are working hard to make their lives a little better, but require ongoing support.

A better future for Bangladeshis Around 77 per cent of Bangladesh’s population survives on less than $2 a day. The Maria Cristina Foundation (www.mariacristinafoundation.org) is one of many organisations trying to give slum kids a second chance. Funding offers these children access to an education and a brighter future.

Supporting widows in Gaza Nearly 39 per cent of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents live on the breadline, while unemployment stands at 34.5 per cent.

Islamic Relief Palestine (www.irpal.ps) offers grants and interest-free loans to Gazans seeking to establish their own businesses or projects, many of whom are widows with families to support.

Teaching Somalis in Malaysia The Fugee School (www.fugeeschool. com), in Kuala Lumpur, teaches more than 120 children between the ages of four and 18. As it receives no government funding, it relies on the generosity of donors to pay for teachers, administrative staff and much-needed equipment such as textbooks.

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Diary

Key events this quarter Kuala Lumpur

August 20-23 The International Workshop on Resource Mobilisation (IWRM) Asia is a four-day event focused on sustainable fundraising theories and techniques.

New York

September 3-5 The annual Forbes Global CEO Conference is a clarion call for global leadership. Delegates will debate economic growth, job creation and how best to build long-lasting social stability.

September 23-26 The annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting will focus on the theme of mobilising for impact. The three-day event aims to drive effective action on global challenges, bringing together heads of state, policymakers, and business and civil leaders.

Dalian

New York

Bali

September 11-13 Billed as the Summer Davos, the Annual Meeting of the New Champions will bring together more than 1,500 stakeholders from 90 countries to debate key development issues and share potential solutions.

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September 30-2 October The annual conference of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs will gather investors, corporates and research institutes to share knowledge, challenges and insights around growing small businesses.

Asia

October 16-25 The annual AVPN roadshow seeks to promote high-impact venture philanthropy in the Asia-Pacific region. Now in its third year, the roadshow will be bringing its workshops to Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo.

Diary

Also coming up November 13 Arab Foundations Forum Annual Meeting, Abu Dhabi November 18-20 Summit on the Global Agenda, Abu Dhabi November 26-27 Ninth EVPA Annual Conference, Geneva November 30 Brazilian Philanthropy Forum, S達o Paulo

Palo Alto

October 17-19 The Audacious Philanthropy conference is produced by Social Venture Partners, a global network of donors.

The event will examine the opportunity for novel models of social change, and debate the challenges that lie ahead.

London

October 28-30 A three-day event, Financial Inclusion 2020: A Global Forum aims to engage a broad range of players in mapping an agenda for achieving financial inclusion by 2020.

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PHILANTHROPY AGE

In the next issue...

Karachi Confidential Blighted by economic stagnation, a worsening job market, and political instability, Pakistan stands at a crossroads. The country’s education system must equip its young people with the essential skills required to drive economic growth of 7 per cent per annum, if Pakistan is to create the 3 million new jobs it needs each year to assuage its booming young population.

For our next issue, as part of a wide-ranging report on education, vocational training and job creation, we go behind the scenes at one of Karachi’s leading non-profits, the Aman Foundation, as it strives to prepare the next generation of Pakistanis for the world of work.

We talk to educators, decision-makers and students and ask what needs to be done to turn the country’s youthful demographic into a dividend. And from the streets to the senate, we examine the issues that will shape the future of Pakistan. n 82

www.PhilanthropyAge.com