From the Philippine Daily Inquirer - October 11, 2009

by Mary Racelis

Institute on Church and Social Issues

Everyone from the President on down is proclaiming that riverbank settlers must not be allowed to return and rebuild their shelters.  Yet, the settlers are in fact doing exactly that. Why? Are they simply stubborn and oblivious to danger?  Or is there something the rest of us do not understand about their survival strategies?

My visit to a devastated Tullahan River community below Quezon City’s North Fairview bridge in the aftermath of Ondoy’s flash floods offered some insights. A bevy of barangay officials in their crisp bright-blue uniforms set off by yellow piping – a  dramatic contrast to the faded and damp clothing of the flood victims – was striding through what was left of the settlement. Two of the officials had posted themselves prominently on an enormous rock that commanded a panoramic view of the settlement. Eying clusters of busy residents, the officials appeared to be making sure that no surreptitious attempts at housing reconstruction were underway.

The lively if sober scene featured young women and children washing mud-caked clothes with or without soap, immersed knee-deep in shallow pools along the edge of the brown and refuse-strewn river. Young girls were arranging spaces on makeshift clotheslines to hang up the “clean” laundry. Mothers were bathing stark-naked shivering toddlers with water whose source one didn’t even want to contemplate. Men were mainly fixing something – a chair, a table, a stove, or simply sitting around and talking. Were they perhaps waiting for the barangay team to leave so they could continue repairing their devastated homes?

Aling Edna (pseudonym) told us how she and her neighbors had attempted to construct temporary shelters on a vacant 2.4 hectare expanse of private land above them. But no sooner had they put up their structures than barangay officials tore them down. This was private property, scolded the demolition crew. Lamented Aling Edna, “Why does our  government allow a single family to hold so much unused land nearby, while thousands of us here are struggling to find a place where we can simply rest and begin restoring our lives!”

Their leaders elaborated: “Most of the year, living along the waterways is fine. If we had any other choice like better land nearby, we would surely go for it. But we don’t. So, we do the best we can living here, working hard to make a better life in the city, feeding our children and sending them to school.  Typhoons come and go but we are used to them. We usually move the women, children and older people to the schoolhouse to wait out the wind and rain. Some of us stay behind to guard our houses and possessions. When the weather clears up, we return, assess the damage and start cleaning up, try to get relief goods while reconstructing our houses, and go back to our hanapbuhay (livelihoods) as soon as we can. Ondoy took us by surprise though, like everyone else. The waters rose so quickly!”

“Danger zone? Maybe. But living on the river is not as dangerous as being forced into faraway resettlement sites where there is no work. The government dumps thousands of us there with insufficient food, water, health services, schools, sanitation, street lights, cheap transportation, but especially no hanapbuhay (livelihood). We cannot survive there. Yet, they still want us to amortize units that most of us cannot afford and never wanted in the first place!”

The  collective trauma wreaked by Typhoon Ondoy should at last force us to confront the questions that three million poor informal settlers in Metro Manila have been raising for decades: “Why is there no place in this city for us to live legally and productively as the hardworking upstanding people we are? We may be poor, but we pay taxes every time we buy something. And without our services, the city couldn’t operate!”

Urban poor people face daily emergencies around food, employment, residential location, and secure tenure. Living near their sources of income is central to their survival strategies.  Onsite security of tenure thus commands a far higher priority for them than housing. Nonetheless, government insists that houses in well laid out communities are their primary need, even if these are far outside the city and offer no work opportunities. Housing officials extol the number of units built in Bulacan, Cavite, and Laguna as “filling the housing backlog.” But they say nothing of the misery they have inflicted upon thousands of evicted families driven away from their livelihoods in the city to face economic uncertainty, family displacement and additional threats to their already precarious existence.

NGOs and People’s Organizations, supported by United Nations Habitat, have for decades advocated as most humane and economically efficient, community proposals for onsite secure tenure and upgrading according to people’s plans, together with low interest housing loans that allow for incremental construction. Examples of successful demand-driven schemes abound in Presidential Proclamation sites like Sama-Sama in Commonweatlh, Quezon City, and areas covered by the Community Mortgage Program and the Homeless People’s Federation of the Philippines. Private sector efforts like Gawad Kalinga and Habitat International likewise affirm the locational imperative.

If millions of poor Filipinos are to have a place in the city, a deeper set of issues must now surface. These concern land values, land availability, concepts of ownership, LGU responsibilities, and the right to the city.  Ondoy reminds us it is time to take stock and get serious about urban land reform. There is vacant land in many of Metro Manila’s constituent cities, but it is not available for housing the city’s low-income workforce. Contributing to this skewed situation are low idle-land taxation rates, rising land values, obsolete ownership laws, and inappropriate institutional set-ups. The result is helter-skelter city planning that allocates available land to malls, upscale residential subdivisions, and commercial uses bringing higher taxes and possibly corruption, while  ignoring the needs of millions of urban poor families.

The recent calamity represents a wake-up call for government policy planners. Before relegating riverbank dwellers to housing units in Bulacan and Laguna, officials need to listen to and discuss real options with the one-third of the metropolitan citizenry victimized by the flash floods. It is time to clear our societal channels of the debris formed by obsolete rules and outlooks, and regenerate ourselves as a fast-flowing mainstream force toward social reform. As hard working but marginalized residents, the urban poor form our city workforce. As Filipino citizens they are entitled to live in the city, like everyone else. That is the message of Typhoon Ondoy.

From BU Today

October 27, 2009

From Washington University in St. Louis News & Information

By Barbara Rea

Oct. 14, 2009 — Urvashi Vaid, one of the most visible faces of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement, will deliver the Spencer T. Olin Fellows annual lecture at 4 p.m. Oct. 23 in Graham Chapel.

Her talk is titled “Beyond the Wedding Ring: LGBT Activism in the Age of Obama.” The event is free and open to the public.

In 1979, Vaid was a 21-year-old college graduate whose strong streak of activism, exhibited from an early age, was channeled into the feminist movement and encompassed lesbian and gay rights.

By the mid-1980s, Vaid was an attorney working for the ACLU’s National Prison Project. She left that position to become the public information director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), the oldest national LGBT civil rights organization in the country.

In 1989, she became its director and then executive director of the NGLTF “think tank” policy institute.

Thirty years later, Vaid is as passionate as ever about human rights and social justice issues and continues to work toward real equality for all.

Throughout her career, Vaid has fought for equal rights for gays and lesbians. In her 1996 groundbreaking book, “Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation,” she lays out her view that true liberation will come only from institutional transformation.

After leaving the NGLTF, Vaid became deputy director of the governance and civil society unit of the Ford Foundation. Since 2005, she has led the Arcus Foundation, whose mission includes the achievement of social justice that is inclusive of sexual orientation, gender identity and race.

Born in New Delhi, India, Vaid arrived in the United States with her family as an 8-year-old. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a law degree from Northeastern University.

The Berlin Call to Action (September 4, 2009) from the NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development meeting in Berlin, which was the official 15 years post ICPD follow up meeting….

“Were any of you there?  What were your impressions of the meeting?  Lia attended the Bangkok NGO meeting for Asia-Pacific and felt it was a big disappointment as there was not discussion on rights whatsoever and the NGOs present were pretty mainstream. Her impression was that the more empowering part of Cairo has lost steam.  Feedback from the Berlin meeting was that there was a certain lack of unanimity at the meeting – some unhappy people who didn’t see the term “family planning” in the main text, and others advocating to use the SRHR framework (presumably because FP=Population=Population Control) consistently in every setting with every audience. Some felt the “Berlin Call to Action” was written to policymakers with an explicit agenda by some donors who are trying to reposition family planning.    It would be great to hear from anyone who was there – whether this is an accurate analysis of what went on.”   Joan and Lia

Guest Editorial by Kent H. Redford

Hitting the window at high speed killed the peregrine instantly. Why the falcon flew directly into that sixth-floor window of the Ford Foundation building in midtown Manhattan will never be known, but its death did not go unnoticed….[read whole article]

For this issue of Effect, we decided to focus on the concept social justice as a goal of philanthropy and invite a number of European Foundations to tell us about their understanding of “social justice” and how it influences their overall approaches and especially their grantmaking policies.

Over the next pages you will find a series of articles that reflect the diversity of how different foundations approach the idea of “social justice” and how they are working towards this goal through their actions and grants. To introduce the topic, we asked two leading practitioners to share their thoughts about this increasingly important and sometimes controversial branch of philanthropy….[read whole newsletter]

President and CEO

October 05, 2009

About The Foundation

Nokomis Foundation is a private, non-profit charitable trust, which through grantmaking, convening and collaboration seeks to create a stronger voice for women and girls.  The Foundation’s grantmaking and initiatives are focused on promoting economic self-sufficiency and advancing the civic and political participation of women and girls.

Nokomis Foundation is seeking to fill the position of President and CEO with a seasoned, creative applicant with a minimum of seven years of leadership experience and passion for the Nokomis feminist mission. The successful candidate will work closely with the Founder to advance her philanthropic vision, leading a team of two other full-time staff to affect social change.

Position Overview

The President/CEO is responsible for the broad leadership of Nokomis Foundation including the management of staff. She is responsible for positive and productive relationships with the Founder and Advisory Committee, effective relationships with grant partners, and efficient business operations.  The President/CEO represents Nokomis Foundation to the public and community. The President/CEO stays abreast and aware of developments in focus areas, and advises the Founder and Advisory Committee on strategic action to support these developments.

Because of the small number of staff and the fluctuating nature of the workload, an attitude of flexibility and cooperativeness is essential to job success.

Duties and Responsibilities

Lead and guide the development and execution of the strategic plan and vision. Ensure that Nokomis staff and stakeholders are involved with initiatives that support the Foundation’s strategic intent.

Provide staff leadership and accountability.

Recruit, hire, manage, and evaluate staff ensuring that fair employment practices are followed.

Represent Nokomis Foundation and its mission, vision and values at the local, regional, state and national levels. Act as a primary spokesperson for the Foundation, and coordinate public communication responsibilities of the Founder and staff.

Actively identify and understand new developments and initiatives related to the mission of Nokomis Foundation.  Connect with fields of philanthropy and seek collaborative opportunities.

Build community awareness of research activities, findings and other data driven activities that support or enhance the mission and strategies of Nokomis Foundation.  Create public relation campaigns, reports, conferences, and other educational experiences to communicate the impact of such findings on the advancement of Nokomis Foundation’s work.

Maintain positive and productive Advisory Committee relations.  In collaboration with the Founder help to identify, recruit, and support Advisory Committee members. Oversee and facilitate communication and correspondence with the Advisory Committee, and work collaboratively with Advisory Committee members to honor the Founder’s intent.

Prepare an annual budget recommendation for the Founder.  Oversee all Foundation financial activity to ensure accuracy, integrity, sound fiscal practices, and compliance with IRS regulations.  Provide appropriate analysis and reports.

Identify, select and manage consultants and suppliers to Nokomis.  Negotiate and execute contracts and agreements.  Monitor performance and address issues or concerns with consultant or supplier.

Required Skills and Knowledge

A strong interest and passion for the mission and vision of Nokomis Foundation

Broad leadership and team building skills that can be applied at the Advisory Committee, staff, and community partner level

Sound organizational abilities in management, operations, finance, and human resources

Aptitude with current technology

Experience in public policy analysis and development

Strategic thinking, planning and decision making skills

Demonstrated public speaking, writing, and presentation skills

Excellent oral communication skills and personal ease in public and social settings

Education and Experience

Master’s degree preferred; bachelor’s degree required, with a preference for a degree in management, public policy, or social science.

A minimum of seven years of program development and/or leadership experience.

Application Process

The President and CEO position is open until a candidate is selected with a goal of filling the role no later than January 1, 2010. The application deadline is Friday, October 30, 2009 or until filled.

Please furnish a letter describing interest in the position, current resume of qualifications and experience, salary requirements, and three professional references.

Submit required documents electronically at info@nokomisfoundation.org  <mailto:info@nokomisfoundation.org>  Indicate “President and CEO Search” in the subject line.

Alternately, application documents may be mailed to:

President and CEO Search

Nokomis Foundation

161 Ottawa Ave N

W, Suite 305-C

Grand Rapids, MI 49503

If you are selected for an interview, you will be contacted directly. Thank you for your interest in Nokomis Foundation.

Nokomis Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer

By Richard Magat

One must respect the eloquent tributes to Robert McNamara in a recent blog and in  the last LAFF newsletter by Peter Bell, Bud Harkavy, and Rocky Staples. But another view of this multidimensional man is not inappropriate. I advanced it many years ago in my review of his mea culpa, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, in Foundation News and Commentary (November/December 1995).

My review touched on his role as a (self-described) ”private man,” though he occupied a plethora of roles in nonprofit organizations besides his government service— the boards of the Ford Foundation, the Brookings Institution, the Trilateral Commission, the Oveeas Development Council, the California Institute of Technology, and many others, along with several corporate boards. Excerpts follow:

Nonprofit institutions have not been immune from…mistrust, given such scandals as Covenant House, United Way of America, and the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy….

In Retrospect says little about that sector. Of participants in the miscalculations that escalated Vietnam…McNamara declares ‘I do not believe, on balance, that America’s political leaders have been incompetent or insensitive to their responsibilities and to the welfare of the people who elected them and to whom they are accountable. Nor do I believe that they have been any worse than their foreign counterparts or their colleagues in the private sector.’ Hardly  a round of applause for the private sector, which includes nonprofits.

…[T]he nonprofit community was slow to officially acknowledge ethical trouble in its own corridors .Nor was it moved by Sisela Bok’s provocative book, Lying:Moral Choice in Public and Private Life.

In 1989 the Council on Foundations produced a report, “Moral Values,Philanthropy and Public Life.”…Not until 1990 did Independent Sector commission a wide-ranging inquiry…”Obedience to the Unenforceable: Ethics and the Nation’s Voluntary and Philanthropic Community.”  The W.K. Kellogg Foundation granted $100,000 to the Josephson Institute…to draft an ethics curriculum for philanthropic givers and recipients, and the Lilly Endowment funded a study…on ethics in high education fundraising…

McNamara’s book is full of ruminations about moral and ethical choices (“I believe we made an error not of values and intentions but of judgment and capabilities.”). He also includes among the defining moments of his undergraduate education at Berkeley “ethics course [that] forced me to begin to shape my values.”

Any number of ethical issues…in the McNamara mea culpa have parallels to, if not lessons for, behavior in the nonprofit sector.

For example, he explains his public silence as loyalty to the office of the President, a tenet of the country’s political culture. The whistleblower issue has also arisen in the nonprofit world. Was it, for example, hierarchical loyalty that prevented those United War insiders who were suspicious if not knowledgeable of their leaders’ malfeasance from coming forward?

The miscalculations of Vietnam are laid at the feet of technocrats as well as politicians…the lesson for leaders of nonprofit enterprise is obvious but bears emphasis—to strike a balance between credentialed experts and well-meaning amateurs.

…        The price of hubris and stubborn folly of those responsible for the Vietnam debacle was vast. The Independent Sector report declared, “This sector depends on public goodwill and participation. If public  support is eroded so is our capacity for public service…We act ethically because we have determined that it is the right thing to do.”

Robert McNamara has been condemned for the part he played in Vietnam and for the tardiness of his confession. [But] outspoken critics…have said,” We welcome his acknowledgement that the United States was wrong then, believing that America can never be damaged by an act of contrition.”

Nor can the nonprofit sector be damaged by acts of candor, modesty, and openness to the views of those outside familiar circles.

by Frank Sutton

When Mac Bundy told in later years how the trustees appointed him in 1966 he liked to say that they made Jay Stratton chairman of the board at the same time to keep an eye on what he might do. When Jay Stratton came to the 70 year limit for trustees in 1971, there was on the board another university head to succeed him as chairman and keep the watch on our lively president. Alexander Heard, chancellor of Vanderbilt University , had been on the board since 1967, not long after Bundy himself came. Like Bundy, he was a political scientist, indeed a very distinguished one, having done classic studies of Southern politics with the legendary V.O. Key, and probed deeply on money in politics. Both were veterans in academic administration , and Heard outlasted Bundy at the Foundation .

Heard and Bundy not only shared much experience of American political life. They had common liberal sympathies and interests at a time when the New Left was emerging among the youth of this country, and indeed across the world, to test the sympathies and flexibiity of older liberals. Alex Heard had the distinction of guiding Vanderbilt safely through years that brought much worse troubles to other universities and he was sought after by the White House for his counsel on controlling the campuses in that time. His sober judgments and managerial talents were evident to anyone who worked under his eye at the Foundation. It wasn’t immediately obvious to those of us fully occupied with international matters where Alex’s sensitive understanding of the new and refractory generation of youth at home came from. Surely, Fred Friendly , his good friend and regular tennis partner, could better answer this question and one wishes Fred were still available to do so. But clearly one answer is that Alex assiduously studied what the youths of his time were reading, hearing and looking at. He kept up with this hot stuff better than most of us.

Long ago, back in the 1950s, Dwight McDonald found the Ford Foundation a rather stiff organization speaking a language he called “foundationese”. But he also heard there a first name familiarity between staff and trustees, something that continued into our more relaxed later years. Alex Heard’s time on the board of trustees was certainly a time of much trouble, from the hostility to the Foundation that brought on the 1969 tax act, the turbulent domestic and international changes of the late 1960s going on into the 1970s, with the painful contractions the stagflation of the 1970s forced on us. There is much more to be told about his astute steering of the Foundation through those years than can be ventured here. But there was also a great deal of fun too, when the Heards partied and danced with us, and even went off as far as India and let the chairman’s face be painted by exuberant locals. Alex Heard was up for all of this, and we should have come through those years less happily and well without him.

From PRNewsire.com

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has named Miguel A. Garcia from the Ford Foundation as executive director of Los Angeles LISC, its 22-year-old local program that has invested $425MM in grants, loans and equity in low-income communities throughout the L.A. area.

Nationally, LISC is the country’s leading community development support organization, having raised more than $9 billion since 1980 to help transform disadvantaged communities into good places to live, work, do business and raise families. LISC operates in 30 urban areas and partners with rural organizations that serve 76 communities nationwide. Los Angeles LISC focuses its efforts on supporting affordable housing, charter schools, retail development and development of community space in areas battling stagnation and decline.

“At a time when unemployment, foreclosures and overall poverty are all rising so dramatically, this work is more important than ever,” said Michael Rubinger, LISC president and CEO. “We are excited to have Miguel on board to help steer our plans and strengthen our partnerships throughout the greater Los Angeles area.”

Garcia most recently spent seven years as program officer and acting deputy director at the Ford Foundation, where he managed a community development portfolio that focused on mixed-income housing and funding for public/community space, such as neighborhood arts venues, technology centers, recreational facilities and farmers markets.

Prior to that he was a Community Builder Fellow in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Houston office. There, he provided technical assistance and funding opportunities to local government, nonprofit organizations and businesses with programs targeted to low- and moderate-income residents.

“Miguel’s extensive experience is a strong match with LISC’s Building Sustainable Communities work,” Rubinger said. Building Sustainable Communities is LISC’s strategic approach to helping struggling communities raise their standard of living. It integrates support for affordable housing, access to quality education, economic development, healthy lifestyles and environments, and family asset building as part of a holistic, locally driven plan for revitalization. “Miguel understands how all of these community pillars reinforce each other to create places of choice and opportunity,” he added.

Garcia’s experience also includes four years as assistant director in the city of Houston’s planning and development department and two years as executive director of the Harrisburg-Wayside Commercial Revitalization Project in Houston.

“Miguel has first-hand knowledge of the on-the-ground development challenges and complicated financial and public policy issues that underlie successful community revitalization efforts,” noted Mariano Diaz, LISC program vice president for the Western region. “There is no doubt that there is tremendous need in many L.A. communities for the technical, management and financial support LISC provides. Miguel is the ideal person to help lead our work collaborating with local funders and community-based organizations to promote lasting change.”

Garcia can be reached in LISC’s local office at 500 S. Grand Avenue, Ste. 2300, Los Angeles, CA 90071. His phone number is 213-240-3127.