“Doing Development ‘Right’” (Salon on November 4th, 2006)

We hope you’ll attend our next salon. Invitations have been sent out; please respond quickly, as seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Summary:

There is currently a burgeoning and genuine interest in the non-profit development sector. People are willing to spend more resources than ever (both financial contributions, and their personal time) to stimulate progress in foreign communities. As a product of the attention being lavished on this sector, there is now a significant debate about how to do development “right.”

We will discuss the approach of some of the organizations that work in this sector in India to see what we can learn from their experiences, and discuss what makes for strong and weak approaches to development. We will use examples of both local and international non-profit agencies to discuss questions such as:
* What is the place of change agents within the community?
* What are the inherent tensions between the demands of development, and the demands of running a development organization?
* Is development best done at a grassroots or institutional level?
* When should development workers trust their own judgment versus that of the people who live in the communities they’re trying to help?

We will discuss examples including earthquake relief projects in Bhuj, local NGO’s such as Manav Sadhna, Aravind Eye Hospital, EkalVidyalay; and, international NGOs such as Indicorps, CharityFocus, BeTheCause, Kiva and others. Given time, we will also dig into the details of a project the speaker was personally involved with — handicraft marketing — and solicit input from the group regarding what alternative approaches that might have been taken.

Speaker

Rish Sangvhi has a degree in engineering from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Tuck at Dartmouth. Rish currently consults for the biotech and energy industry. He has spent some years examining and participating in the development sector – first as a fellow for Indicorps, where for a year he looked at developing a market for handicrafts to support low income urban communities. Currently as a board member, he is involved in shaping the vision of Indicorps to be a model of sustainable development.