The Problem with Having a Problem with Administration

For one reason or another, this article appeared on my newfeed today. It's called "ICE BUCKET FRAUD: ALS FOUNDATION ADMITS THAT 73% OF DONATIONS ARE NOT USED FOR ALS RESEARCH".  All caps, so the author means business.

The article fumes that over 73% of the Ice Bucket Challenge donations (we're all familiar with that) go to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations.  They cite an organization called the ECFA.  It's a Christian nonprofit watchdog group that bases their standards of charity on the bible.  They write that only 27% of the funds will go to research.  That's true.  They even provide this handy pie chart.

Notice that, yes, 27% goes to Research, but 51% goes to Public and Professional Education and Patient Community Services.  That's 78% that goes directly to the services the ALSA says they provide in their mission statement on the homepage of their website:

Leading the fight to treat and cure ALS through global research and nationwide advocacy while also empowering people with Lou Gehrig's Disease and their families to live fuller lives by providing them with compassionate care and support.

Those monsters.

My real gripe with that article was how much the author despised administrative fees.  Admin is one of the most difficult areas to fund for any nonprofit.  Normally, the rule is to keep them below 20% of the total budget.  I think that's a rule created by the infinite network of trustees who have limited experience in nonprofit. Across the board, no one thinks their money should be used to pay people fair salaries. This is why nonprofits have difficulty finding qualified employees.  While the industry, as a whole, doesn't compete with for-profit businesses that provide a tangible product, they compete with every industry for employees.  An MBA graduate is less likely to work for the ALSA because they can make exponentially more money on Wall Street.

A real nonprofit watchdog, Charity Navigator, says Jane H. Gilbert, executive director of the ALSA, received $297,288 in the 2013 fiscal year.  According to the ALSA website, she has a masters degree and has been in her position for five years. Before that, she was the Senior Vice President for the American Red Cross in DC for 3 years, and the development director at the Boys and Girls Club in Omaha.

To put that in perspective, the average entry level salary for an MBA graduate in Washington DC is $109,000.  The average.  This doesn't include bonuses (the ALS gave $12,000 in bonuses in 2013).

What this shows is that someone who has extensive experience in nonprofit and has made it to one of the highest positions in their field, will only ever make three times as much as someone with a shiny new MBA, just starting their career.

Why do the public feel people who choose noble career paths in nonprofits deserve to be paid less than those who give their skills to capitalism?  Imagine what we could do for social services if the innovators who work at Google and the financial analysts who work at Bloomberg were tasked with running a nonprofit.

By not nitpicking where their money is spent, we could help nonprofits compete with for-profit businesses for qualified employees by offering higher salaries without the inevitable guilt trip that comes with a large paycheck.

Note: Admin spending isn't only executive salaries.  It's also things like new computers, copy toner, and office rent. None of those things sound as sexy to donors as petry dishes.

The Unremarkable Bella Swan

I'm not anti-Twilight.  There's a bizarre, one-sided, rivalry between Harry Potter and Twilight fans, where the latter's fanbase has something to prove as to why it's considered a piece of popular, modern literature.  I'm, obviously, on team Potter, but I haven't read Twilight not because of a fervent hatred, but because I've always had another book I've wanted to read more.

However, I've read enough plot summaries and analyses to understand Twilight's gist.  It can be summed up easily: the new girl in school falls in love with a vampire, they break up, then she falls in love with a werewolf, then they break-up, then she marries the vampire, gets pregnant on their honeymoon, dies in childbirth, and is resurrected as a vampire.

There's more drama, but that's the purest's takeaway.

There's countless opinions by feminists that reveal allusions to domestic violence and pedophilia (the werewolf falls in love with a baby!) but to me, the most interesting thing about the books is why teenage girls are enamored with them.

Bella Swan is never described in detail.  I googled "Bella Swan Physical Description" and this popped up:

Bella is described in the novels as being very pale with brown hair which is often described as mahogany, chocolate brown eyes, and a heart-shaped face. Beyond this, a detailed description of her appearance is never given in the series.

She's a blank slate. She likes to read books and never really fit in at her old school.  She's the faceless mannequin in a store window that are used by visual merchandisers to help women visualize themselves wearing their clothes.

Now, imagine every situation that makes a teenage girl feel insecure (moving to a new town, being ignored by the school's resident hottie (the book's "David Cohen" of my high school years)), and have everything come up roses.

She immediately becomes accepted by the popular crowd and David Cohen was ignoring her because he's a vampire who thirsted for blood and was in love with her (if only, David.  If only). Oh! And the whole thing about being a child of the undead is that you get to live forever.  When he turns you into a vampire, you live happily, literally, ever after.

Honorable mention goes to adding a second hot guy (the werewolf), who fights the vampire for Bella's affection.

How does a casting director fill the Bella Swan role for the movie adaptation when the character has no defining characteristics except for her pale skin and dark hair? They find an actress who, similarly, has no discernable personality with pale skin and dark hair.  Enter: Kristen Stewart.

Something fascinating happened with Kristen that hadn't happened to past female protagonists in past cinematic love triangles (Rachel McAdams in the Notebook, Emma Watson in Harry Potter, Jennifer Lawrence in the Hunger Games).  That's right, DEATH THREATS.  Pure, unadulterated jealousy from millions of scorned young women who spent years imagining themselves riding on a vampire's back through a forest (I saw that in the trailers).

This is why boy band members are contractually obligated to not take their girlfriends out in public.  Crazed fans can't know the love of their lives' bland, factory pop ballads could be about someone who is not them.  Two members of One Direction went public with their relationships, and guess what their girlfriends received? DEATH THREATS for stealing away the unripened, cherub-faced heartthrobs from every adolescent girl on the planet.

When Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson (the actor who plays the vampire, Edward) became a real life couple, she did a big no-no and cheated on her sparkling shadow of the night with the forty-year-old, married with children director of Snow White and the Huntsman.  Even I view that as a slight to the Warrior of Darkness.  If that illicit affair was as exciting as Snow White and the Huntsman, then it would've peaked when a flight attendant refilled my coffee on my twelve our flight from Seoul to Dallas, but without the saving grace of Chris Hemsworth.

Twilight fans went nuts. Most of them had lucid daydreams where the Bringer of Handsome confessed his realization that she never would've broken his heart.

Juxtapose this with Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, where fans were rooting for their real-life relationship to work out (it didn't).  Or rooting for Jennifer Lawrence to end up with her Hunger Games co-star Josh Hutcherson.  These are insanely popular books and movies where the male characters have huge fanbases, but those fans lack the sheer ferocity of the Twilight Saga.

Stephanie Meyer, Twilight's author, is a genius if she created this character intentionally.  No one can deny the books are well-loved and have reached every corner of the globe, and I am definitely not the person to judge if it qualifies as brilliant literature.  But, I feel sincere empathy for teenage fans because I know how anxious a celebrity crush can make you feel, and how a book can create a world of escapism to make up for the short comings or real life.

I can, however, confidently say that Bella Swan is not a role model.  That's because being a role model requires the possession of human characteristics that aren't associated with a love interest. Bella Swan is...wait for the Harry Potter reference...The Mirror of Erised.  Girls "see" her and she reflects back the ideal of what they want.  But, I want those girls to really see that having popularity and a boyfriend aren't personality traits.  The person they were reading about -- the object of their jealously -- was, ultimately, themselves.

Somaly Mam: Means Justifying an End

 If you keep up with current events, you've probably seen one or two articles on Somaly Mam, the founder and former CEO of the eponymous charitable foundation.  This organization addresses women's rights in Cambodia, specifically in terms of sex trafficking and exploitation.

I've been putting off this post because, in truth, I have no idea what to make of the new revelations about the Somaly Mam Foundation.  Here's the controversy's gist:

• Mam claimed to be a survivor of child sexual exploitation, which is untrue.  She grew up with both parents and graduated high school.
• The women in Somaly Mam's videos were not trafficked and were coached to say they were forced into sex slavery for the sake of donations.
• Some of the women were "willing prostitutes" who were rounded up during a police raid of a brothel and sent to a vocational training school where they were instructed to tell foreigners they were trafficked.

The knee-jerk reaction to this is, simply, outrage.  This has provided fodder for the anti-NGO crowd to continue their crusade in convincing the world that NGOs are inherently evil and profit-driven. Those who are less-invested in tearing down all privately-funded social services simply think lying is very bad.  Mam lied.  Therefore, she is very bad.

I have a slightly different view.  

The media isn't doing any favors for survivors by pointing out a phony.  Rather, they're portraying the image of a "happy hooker";  someone who, by their own free will, decided to sell their body for sex.  Even that idea is shrouded in an apologetic misogyny that might comfort men when they're paying for sex.  But, I'm willing to admit there may be at least one prostitute on Earth who, if given every opportunity on the planet, would choose prostitution. 

I'm absolutely, 100% positive there are no "happy hookers" in Cambodia. Without realizing, news outlets are using the idea as reason for scorning Mam. Al Jazeera wrote about a prostitute, Srey Mao:

Srey Mao said she became a prostitute because she believed it was the best option to support her aging parents and young daughter. . . Seven months into her stay at the shelter, Srey Mao ran away and returned to life as a prostitute.

When I interviewed with Senhoa, who works with victims of sexual assault and exploitation, the country director told me it's really difficult to retain clients because they can't make as much money working in hospitality as they can "lying on their backs for a few hours."

This isn't just a problem about choice.  This is a problem of empowerment.  In a country where everything boils down to monetary worth, how can we expect women to leave a job that can pay a week's salary in a single night?  One could argue that I'm viewing this through a privileged gaze (which I am), and maybe women don't view their bodies as sacred in Cambodia like they do in the United States (which is false), but no one can argue with the health ramifications of prostitution.  Cambodian brothels and red light districts are not the Mustang Ranch.  Health studies rarely account for the higher prevalence of HIV and other venereal diseases among men and women who are immersed in this lifestyle.  How long will Srey Mao be around for her little girl?

Knowing what it's like to beg donors for money, I can't blame Mam for using trendy buzzwords like "sex trafficking" to solicit donations to give women better lives with vocational training.  Here's another excerpt from that Al Jazeera article:

One of these girls was Pros, who, according to Newsweek, actually lost her eye to a tumor and was sent to Afesip for vocational training. The same was reportedly true of Meas Ratha, a teenager allegedly coached by Mam to say she had been trafficked when in fact she was sent to Afesip by an impoverished farming family, desperate to give their daughter a better start in life.

In my experience, donors -- especially Americans -- don't like preventative methods as much as reactionary. Helping someone who has hit rock bottom is more impressive then making sure they never hit rock bottom in the first place.

Newsweek, who broke the story, talked to a girl who was coached by Mam to speak in front of cameras:

Late last year, Ratha finally confessed that her story was fabricated and carefully rehearsed for the cameras under Mam's instruction, and only after she was chosen from a group of girls who had been put through an audition. Now in her early 30s and living a modest life on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, Ratha says she reluctantly allowed herself to be depicted as a child prostitute: "Somaly said that…if I want to help another woman I have to do [the interview] very well."

My first thought was how damaging it would be for a survivor to be interviewed on camera about something that's traumatizing beyond imagination.  If we give Mam the benefit of the doubt and there was "another woman," then I would've acted exactly the same.  NGOs pander to donors, and donors like stories and pictures.  Rarely do they think about how difficult it is to recall horrific events.

But, don't put me on team Somaly Mam.  Little tit bits in different articles makes me think they're too big to have a proper impact.  Let's go back to Srey Mao:

Months in the Afesip shelter did not change her mind. She claims that after she arrived at the shelter, she was not given access to anti-retroviral drugs for five days or allowed to see her family. Instead, she was enrolled in a yearlong sewing course, entailing eight hours a day of study or garment work. 

"I was not happy to be there ... Very often, during our short break for lunch, Afesip staff and sometimes Mam Somaly came to us and told us to tell donors and foreigners who would come to visit shelters that we were victims of human trafficking.

For lack of a better term, there's a certain je ne sais quoi that comes with case management, especially with survivors of sexual abuse. I went to AFESIP Shelter's website and downloaded their 2012 annual report.  They received $600,000 (about half of their annual budget) from the Somaly Mam Foundation, so it's no wonder they've come under fire along with their main funder.

Among the plethora of facts that come with these reports, one is that their 100 person staff is 50% male.  Men in this country -- I'll go ahead and say it: Cambodian men -- aren't exactly the most empathetic population.  There is a strong cultural precedence of superiority that makes women second-class citizens. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but I have never seen a women's shelter have such a high number of men, because their presence could be triggers for women who have survived domestic violence, gang rape, incest, and all other violent sex crimes.

That statistic does, however, explain why AFESIP could come off as a bit "cold" to the media. Eloquence is not a strong suit of people who work in a second language.  Also, speaking from personal experience, I gave birth in a room of six male Cambodian doctors.  You will never, EVER, convince me that Cambodian men are top candidates for working with vulnerable women.  They do not have the je ne sais quoi.

Other than that, I can't find anything about this shelter that is "outrageous."  Here's one of the personal anecdotes in the report:

Champey - has worked for 6 years in the sex trade. She cannot afford to leave because her family are poor and she will always to seen as a prostitute in her community now. It would bring shame on her family if she returned home. She knows the dangers of the streets. She has been beaten, gang raped and threatened with guns many times. When you are poor your own safety comes second to the welfare of your family. Champey uses AFESIP's outreach services to stay as safe as she can.

That could easily be a continuation of Srey Mao's story. The story might be embellished (maybe she only visits them once per year), but they are openly admitting they couldn't "save" someone from prostitution.  In fact, they work with survivors of sexual abuse, which is the umbrella sex trafficking falls under.  If anyone bothered to look into the organizations the Somaly Mam Foundation fund, maybe they would've seen what a small number of women were actually trafficked.

So what about Mam? There's no doubt in my mind her foundation is, in part, a vanity project.  Who, in their right mind, would romanticize a life of sex slavery to write a book is beyond my comprehension.  She reminds me of a certain CEO of a prominent London-based charity who Let Us Create used to work with, who put aside what the children actually needed for what would appease donors and make her look like a hero.

But, alas, I don't think the problem is that she lied.  The problem is that we (the Western world) need to stop focusing on trendy charitable causes, or in this case, the lack thereof.  This Somaly Mam song and dance could cost AFESIP a fair chunk of their budget and why? Because the rhetoric around their clients' backgrounds was embellished? Because the reason they need help isn't as tragic as we thought? Outrage, I say! My money was going to the wrong type of poor person!

Donors are the bane of every NGO's existence because their money makes them believe they know what's best for people on the other side of the world.  Now, we're crucifying this woman because she chose to use the rhetoric that donors want to hear to help women they are incapable of empathizing with. They need to realize that what charity clients need may not be romantic or even ideal, but that doesn't make them less deserving.

Handcrafted by No One in Particular

What is this "Handmade Movement" that Etsy goes on about?

Don't get me wrong, I love Etsy.  There's a link on the right of this site to take you to my Etsy site.  In fact, I've started this mid-year resolution to stop buying clothing from mass retailers and start perusing Etsy more because I'm trying to stop hypocrisy in at least one area of my life.

But there's something incorrect about the phrase "Buy Handmade."  When you think of something that's been made by hand, you think of a pair of baby booties your grandmother knitted, or maybe a luxe pair of shoes stitched from Italian leather. Even the lace on Kate Middleton's wedding dress was hand-knitted by the Royal School of Needlework (that's a thing!)  The "Handmade Movement" now associates handmade items with emotion, time, love, and detail.  Lest we forget, someone out there sews for Forever 21.


Garment factories are spilling out of Phnom Penh and popping up around Takeo, near my mom's mango plantation. For most of us, nothing good comes to mind when we hear "garment factories."  But I recently found out about, for lack of a better word, factory homework. Women take projects home with them and paid per piece.

Pictured is my mom holding up a piece she made for a gigantic American retailer.  We don't know for sure, but let's say Banana Republic (owned by Gap Companies) for the sake of perspective.

Mom is the most talented craftswoman I've ever known and probably ever will know.  She taught me how to sew, and can recreate anything from scratch whether it be a prom dress from a magazine picture, a bracelet drawn on a napkin, or an aluminum baby crib conjured up from her own head (It's not practical, but clever nonetheless).

Guess how much she was paid to painstakingly hand bead that collar for Banana Republic? Go on....I'll give you a minute.
...
...
...

1000 Riel, or $.25.

An expert needle-worker could make about five of those in a day, totaling a whopping $1.25 per day to do something that takes incredible skill and patience.  I went to our good pal, Etsy, to see how much first-world artisans are charging for something similar. Depending on the material, the bare minimum is around $40.00 and the max is $1,200.

That.  That right there.  That's how places like Forever 21 can charge $5 for a dress. Some argue that the living costs are lower here, but tell that to a woman who is the sole provider for her children, living in a rural area that's dominated by the back-breaking labor of rice farming and the ubiquitous factory industry.

If you're not paying very much for clothing, please know that somebody is. There's a human putting every stitch, every bead, and every button in place, whose only shortcoming is that she was born under the wrong circumstance.

The Shoe Rule

I have just one question for travelers wanting to work in Cambodia:

Do you wear shoes?

Shoes are the best indicator of competence in Sihanoukville.  The town is somewhere between civilization and a deserted island where scorching hot pavement is littered with shards of glass.

Despite this, a lot of tourists insist on walking around barefoot. I'm a pragmatist, and there's no logic to this trend except for a foreigner's insistence on "going native."  But, if anyone has adapted to the heat and treacherous, man-made terrain, it's the people who have lived here since the dawn of time. And they wear shoes.  If a local isn't, then it's not a noble "be-one-with-nature" reason.  It's because he or she is poor.

Maybe my patience runs thin with the no-shoes-by-choice crowd because I worked for an NGO that had a monthly budget for children's shoes.  A good portion of our days were spent cleaning wounds and subjecting young children to painful antiseptics because they stepped on a rock or broken beer bottle.  These were not "kids being kids" cuts.  They were "Try not to retch while I wash off this hemorrhaging flesh wound" injuries.

And yet, as I walk down Serendipity Beach Road under the equatorial sun, there is never a shortage of white people playing a perverse game of hopscotch to get from point A to point B.  Point B is never one of the countless shops that sell $2 flip flops.

At least there's one saving grace for their habit.  If they walk through the river of shit that runs down the hill from Sokom Guesthouse to the pier, they'll develop incurable rashes and infectious boils that double as signs that say, "Don't interact with me." 

Also, the shoe-less provide hours of entertainment for the kitchen staff at Monkey.  There's nothing like a big Barang lad navigating scalding hot gravel and hopping past the window to give someone a moment of zen during a busy shift.

It's safe to assume that if someone comes up the road looking for a job, they have been here for at least a month.  They've realized that working on the beach as part of a revolving door of idiots will lead to an early grave, but they don't feel like going home yet.

So why -- WHY -- do some insist on not wearing shoes?  I get it.  You're in Sihanoukville.  you would wear Daisy Dukes and/or an ill-fitted tank top if the POTUS came to dinner.  But, if you hike up the road from whatever cesspool on the beach and fail to stop in a shoe shop, then I question your sensibilities.  Why should you be trusted with a cash register and an unsupervised, limitless supply of booze?

Of course, I'm not saying shoes = responsible. I am, however, absolutely saying no shoes = irresponsible.

Perpetuating White Beauty on Pinterest

Social media is tricky for international social businesses.  The coordinator precariously straddles a line between depicting their clients with beauty and dignity, and appealing to their customer.  When you are working in the West, you're trying to appeal to the people who will most likely spend money on your product.  Without mincing my words, they're appealing to White people.

Pinterest is the fastest growing social media site.  If you're unfamiliar with it, it's an online image congregate where you sift through products and save them onto different "boards." I've been an avid user since their invite-only launch in 2010.  I'm shamelessly into consumerism and find scrolling through their DIY and Women's Fashion categories cathartic.

The website has become vital in maintaining a business' online presence.  It drives the most ecommerce traffic to websites -- more than Facebook and Twitter combined -- because it's a way for customers to go window shopping at every store in the world simultaneously, and save everything they liked for later.  In fact, when it was just starting 4 years ago, I was being contracted to run a wedding stationer's Etsy account.  Within the first six months of it's debut, Pinterest was the shops second highest referral source after Etsy, itself.

For a business to run its Pinterest account successfully, it must do more than just post its products.  The business has to create online vision boards that are cohesive with their mission.  For example, a wedding stationer could create a board called "Vintage Country Rustic Wedding" and post dresses, venues, decorations, and anything else from other companies, along with their invitations, to cater to a popular theme.  It's a way to visualize a concept and sell a product in a specific context.

Social businesses in Fair Trade fashion use Pinterest to not only post their products, but to help perpetuate their humanitarian missions.  However, I stumbled upon a few organizations that inadvertently "othered" the people they aim to help.   What I mean by "othered" is "Us vs. Them."

"Us" as being the first world consumer and "Them" as the third world maker.  The example I have is from Live Worldly.  They wholesale items that are made by marginalized people in South America, Africa, and Asia.  But, here are screenshots of their Pinterest profile:

For priding themselves on being a business with an expansive worldview, their boards have the American ideal of what females should look like. These models look nothing like the women who actually make their products.  Where are the dark skinned women, the flat noses, and the voluptuous figures?  Why are some of the fashion pieces from companies that use sweatshops?  It's convoluted and, frankly, offensive.

In every Asian country I've been to, White is equated with beauty.  There are women who use painful bleaching creams because they think they're too dark.  Lighter skin is associated with wealthier classes because they are not doing physical labor in the sun all day.  Even my mother, who has always been a goddess to me, told me her dark skin was ugly and how lucky I am that my father "lightened me up."  Growing up in White Suburbia, I was well into my twenties before I recovered from the "light is better" mental conditioning.

Of course, like any social business, their is a fair labor board where we see the people who make their products.  Us vs. Them.

Conversely, Raven + Lily know their product, clients, and customers. Here are screenshots from their Pinterest Profile:

This is called "brand cohesion." There are women who represent multiple ethnicities.  The model in their 2014 lookbook proudly shows off her natural hair texture. They showcase clothing and jewelry that are culturally appropriate for their products and the products' makers. Granted, the models are still "model skinny" but I only fight one fashion battle per day.  Models are used as "placeholders" by designers.  They are meant to be unremarkable so women can imagine themselves wearing the clothing.  This is why the term "supermodel" exists -- being super in that industry is few and far between.

Part of a social business' responsibility is to use their public image to speak for those who can't speak for themselves.  They are meant to elevate their clients' standard of living by giving them access to the global marketplace.  This cannot be done if the only customers in that marketplace they are speaking to conform with what society tells us in beautiful.

A Love Story Between a Girl and Her Water Filter

The Super Tunsai is, hands down, the best purchase we've made for our home. It uses a clay pot to filter water until it's 99.9% pure.  It cost $28 from a local store called Electronic City.  We love it so much, I made Torie buy one when she got to Sihanoukville, and we gifted one to my mom so she could stop paying for water deliveries.

The most impressive aspect of the Super Tunsai is that it's made, start to finish, in Cambodia.  You can see a video (a poorly produced one, but a video nonetheless) of the Super Tunsai warehouse by clicking HERE.

I lived in Cambodia for a full year when Lee discovered the water filter.  About 9 months before, when I was working for Let Us Create, our little town was visited by the USNS Mercy, a massive, fully equipped naval hospital ship that runs humanitarian missions.

Part of their mission was bringing water filters to poor neighborhoods that may not have had access to clean water. I know three separate NGOs who were given these filters, and they were complete failures at every site for three reasons:

• They used several different types of gravel that couldn't be sourced in Cambodia.
• They required constant monitoring to make sure they didn't break.
• When a problem arose, we had to email the water engineers (who, by that time, were back home on the other side of the world), who could only troubleshoot using educated guesses.

With the amount of time we spent trying to figure them out, we could've just bought clean water for $1.25 and spent our working hours doing other things.

When Lee brought home our Super Tunsai, I had a "where have you been all my life" reaction.  All it needs is a good scrub once a month, and even our son drinks water from it.  It's paid for itself several times over.  In fact, Lee put two of them in one of his businesses.  Since the only overhead is it's initial cost (plus pennies for tap water), customers can refill their water bottles using the honor system and put 1000 riel ($.25) into a collection box for the Sihanoukville Tourism Association.  That money is then used to pay workers to clean the beach.  

The filters are an illustration of a problem with most international NGOs. It's the idea that "stuff" from the first world is better and more capable than "stuff" here. But, when money is invested in local resources, it's invested in the entire town.