Networking
Networking is rubbish; have friends instead. - Steve Winwood
Government Relations
Government relations are an essential part of development work. During my time in Mtito Andei, Kenya I worked with World Vision on a number of advocacy campaigns. We gathered community leaders and local political members for a child rights advocacy campaign. We visited the local government offices in Mtito Andei to recruit members of the city council to the event. Here’s a picture with the main official in charge of child protection efforts.
At Walla Walla University (WWU), my efforts to help the EWB local project team find a project have put me in contact with Walla Walla local government. Walla Walla established a homeless camp last year and the city council has been debating whether to keep the camp, move the camp, dismantle the camp, etc. I attended one of the city council meetings on behalf of EWB to see how we might be able to help. I corresponded with several members of the city council through email. The situation is still in development so there isn’t yet a role for EWB in the project but it’s been an interesting experience.
During our trip to Japura, Peru over spring break 2017 for the EWB solar energy project implementation trip, government relations were vital. EWB-WWU partnered with the local Municipality to split cost on the solar energy project. We visited the municipalities government offices several times throughout the trip to meet key leaders, provide technical information to the engineers and to discuss the municipality’s role in the partnership. Learning to understand how the local government operates has been enlightening. In hindsight, we wish we would have known more details about procedural issues that are now causing some issues on the project but it’s all a been an excellent learning experience. Before we left Peru, the municipalities gave us parting gifts (locally hand-crafted alpaca wool beanies) for our hard work with them. Here’s a picture of the EWB team at a meeting with the municipality and a video I took of a meeting with community leaders in Japura along with representatives from the municipality.
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EWB Peru Solar project team meeting with Municipality in Peru (Photo)
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Meeting with community and Municipality Representatives in Japura, Peru (Video)
Partnership (Public/Private)
Development work is increasingly about partnerships. One of the most important, if not the most important partner on any project is the community we are aiming to help. During my time in East Africa, I saw many partnerships in action. One event in particular, involved significant partnership - Child Protection Rights Advocacy and Social Marketing Campaign. My partner, Mark Mutai, and I worked with WVK staff and local community partners to mobilize the community for this event. As you can see from these youtube videos, we had significant turnout involving key partners in the community and many children.
Throughout my internship at Walla Walla University (WWU), I have kept in touch with potential partners to seek out collaborative opportunities for EWB. For the international projects in Japura, Peru, EWB has partnered with multiple civil society actors including ADRA Peru, the local Municipality, the local Community and even the Boeing Corporation (for Funding).
The TEAMS forum was all about building partnerships. In the summer of 2016, I had the honor of contributing to a major networking event hosted by Southern Adventist University – the TEAMS (Transforming and Educating Ambassadors for Missions and Service) forum. Walla Walla University was asked to contribute by designing the logo for the new TEAMS forum and by providing guest speakers. I networked with many different people at the event and even ran into an old friend who now happens to work for ADRA as Director of the Amazon region (Bradley Mills). I’ve been in touch with him and many others to explore potential future partnerships. It looks like Walla Walla University might be hosting the next TEAMS forum in 2018, which will be an excellent networking opportunity for us.
Donor Relations
Donor relations has been a major emphasis of my work with Walla Walla University (WWU) in the Edward F. Cross School of Engineering. Humanitarian projects cost money and without willing donors, no new initiatives would be possible. I spent the early part of my internship at WWU learning everything I could about fundraising and donor relations through Funds for NGOs. I sifted through many potential donors and calls for proposals to find sources of funding that matched our initiatives. I was able learn a lot about donor relations from many seminar trainings I attended through Funds for NGOs. Here are a few of those seminar trainings.
All of this training helped me hone my proposal writing skills and it paid off. I helped EWB win a $5000 grant from Boeing. I think this was helped in part by the final report I compiled thanking them for another $3000 grant that was awarded to us for a previous project. Here’s thank you letter to Boeing that I wrote (with input from faculty mentors) for that $5000 grant award.
I also worked to find more local sources of funding through a mailing campaign to local donors. We received at least 1 positive response from this cold marketing effort.
The EWB Gala is an annual fundraising event that helps EWB raise funds for international projects. I’ve helped the EWB club with 2 gala events so far. Part of the work involves calling potential donors from a list of leads with a semi-formal/informal script. I have been able to recruit several attendees to both galas including one very generous new donor. I have donated my photo booth to the event every year and gala attendees love it. Here are 2 photo booth galleries with gala pictures (as featured on the EWB gala page).