Febryary 27, 2007--Everything Old Is New Again

For decades we have believed that solutions to daunting political and social problems require unique and innovative thinking. I used to work for the Ford Foundation, which is devoted to supporting programs that attempt to deal with injustice, inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, among other global problems. Like so many organizations, the FF wanted to have a tag line, which in just a few words would signal its values and purposes. After months of discussion, we came up with—The Ford Foundation is a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide.

This seemed appropriate and benign enough, but I soon began to struggle with the value placed on innovation. Thinking, shouldn’t the FF and other philanthropic organizations provide resources to effective, rather than creative practitioners? If we were wanting to help alleviate poverty and protect women’s rights, might our focus on innovation lead us astray, drawing us toward glitzy new things that showed promise that they might work, but in fact might not?

If instead we were to turn our attention and direct our resources (money) to things that had a proven record of helping people emerge from poverty or increasing literacy among girls, in other words effective approaches, wouldn’t that make us as funders more effective in contributing to the solution to some of the world’s more frustrating challengers?

There are large-scale and more modest examples of what I am suggesting. Here’s a large-scale example of something that started quite small: if making micro-loans to impoverished women so they can start small businesses via the Grameen Bank in South Asia works to accomplish that, support the growth of that effective approach. Happily, the FF and others did just that.

And a small-scale example: just today, in the International Herald Tribune, there is a story about the Foundling Wheel. During the Middle Ages it provided an anonymous and effective way for women who had unwanted infants to place them in the care of a convent or other safe place. They did this by placing the baby in a simple basket that was attached to a wheel, kind of a revolving door, which could then be turned to deliver the child to the care of others.

The IHT reports that contemporary versions of this Foundling Wheel have been placed in operation at various sites in poor neighborhoods in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and elsewhere. (Linked below.) Today’s Wheel allows a mother, as in the Middle Ages without revealing herself, to put the infant in a heated cradle and revolve it to the emergency room of a hospital which stands ready to take good care of it and presumably help find it a new home.

Sometimes all one has to do is look around to find ways to make the world a better place.