Becca with 501c3 application!

A few big developments to share with you all this quarter! Firstly, I’m delighted to report that Setso Project has received tax exempt status and is now an official 501c3 organization. What does this mean? Firstly it means that you can now write donation checks directly to Setso Project! Secondly it means that I no longer have to spend weekends perfecting our application - so lots more time for more important programmatic work!

Equally exciting is that we’ve managed to raise over $3,000 for Grandma’s Pediatric AIDS Initiative. A huge thank you is due to Peggy who organized a fundraising event at the First Congregational Church of Madison and to the many generous donors. We are hoping to reach $5,000 by the end of August so if you have not yet had a chance, we still welcome your contributions :).

Finally, we’d like to share with you some stories from our June trip to Botswana, during which Wendy, Tom and I were able to see our projects in action (for Tom and Wendy, for the first time). Work is moving along beautifully and we want you all to be able to see what your donor dollars look like on the ground. Please read on and also check out our video presentation of our June trip.

For the video, right click here and save the file to your computer

-Rebecca

Becca and Grandma. Photo by Jen Matteis, The Source

Two wonderful articles have recently been written about my grandmother and Grandma's Pediatric AIDS Initiative:

Madison woman’s centennial birthday celebration well deserved
and
Lowry Celebrates Centennial with Anti-AIDS Initiative

Below is an excerpt from a summary of our June, 2009 trip to Botswana. Rebecca Lowry, President, led Wendy Lewis (Treasurer) and Tom Cleveland (Secretary) to visit partners and other local entities doing social and economic development work in Botswana’s villages.

Saturday 13 June: After driving for 6 hours from Johannesburg, we arrived in Otse about 3:30pm and Tom and Wendy met Ms. Wame Mhaphi, Development Coordinator for Setso.

Becca and Wendy set up the audio visual system (quite complex with 7 different pieces) which we had lugged from the USA in order to put on movie nights for young people in Otse. We promptly blew a fuse in the amplifier because the 250 volt system in Botswana is more powerful than the 110 volts in the USA where this equipment was bought. Cooked dinner for her family and mother, brother, sister and kids till 8pm. Tom, Wendy and Becca spent the first night at the only establishment in Otse, Barantani Lodge, sleeping a solid 14 hours. The sun goes down like a rocket at sunset, leaving long nights.

Thursday, 18 June: Met with John Aves, Environmental Director at Mokolodi. He offered to work with Setso in getting Otse kids out to their center for 2-3 day all expenses paid excursions. Setso would have to pay for the transportation there and run the logistics of sign ups, chaperones and permissions but the rest could be funded by his center.

Then, we met with the Kgothatso Orphan Care Center in Gabane where Setso had funded the purchase of some of their furniture and cooking equipment. Each week day, Kgothatso takes care of 38 kids till 2pm and basically helps extended families care for AIDS orphans. Run by the Lutheran Church, this center is well managed and incredibly lively, as you could imagine with 38 kiddos! Next, we met with Dr. Ryan Phelps, at Baylor Children’s Clinical Center of Excellence in Gaborone where Setso is raising money in honor of Grandma Lowry to provide transportation of kids to the clinic so that they can receive anti-retroviral (ARV) medicines. Monthly visits are critical for compliance and maintenance of health. “Dr. Ryan” confirmed that this is one of those small but critical services that their funding does not cover and they are very thankful for the help. Baylor specializes in pediatric HIV/AIDS in Swaziland, Rumania, Liberia, Congo and Botswana.

Kids at Kgothatso enjoy the playground

After lunch, we drove back to Wame’s house in Otse to do a small crafts workshop on how to make beaded jewelry and scrimshaw bone objects. Wame had invited a group of women and men, some who had participated in workshops at the Otse Home Based Care Center earlier in the year, and about 40 people showed up. We donated al the tools and materials that we had brought from the USA and people seemed to enjoy the exercise of making personal adornments. It is a big step from this to starting a business and making money at it, particularly in a small town like Otse, which is 30 miles distant from Gaborone where more tourists might gather.

Later, at 6:30 pm, we started our first movie night. We set up the AV equipment outside (it was cool at about 45 degrees Fahrenheit) and projected the film onto the side of the new Setso Project office. About 50 kids and adults watched the cartoons and films until late at night and the effort was deemed a success. The kids did not like our first pick (“Mad Hot Ballroom”, about school kids in New York City learning ballroom dancing) but really liked other action-oriented films. Most people in the village do not have TV and there is no movie theatre. Wame and her partner, Emmanuel, will be in charge of running the equipment and we expect that they will have regular shows at a larger indoor community center in the middle of town. Stayed in Otse that night at the Barantani Lodge – toilet still leaked......

Read More and watch the video (right click here and save the file to your computer)

Wendy and Wame discuss logistics

It was wonderful to arrive in Botswana to warm welcomes and optimism, but how do we know that what we’re aiming to do will be useful, long-lasting, efficient? I have to admit I’ve been plagued by these fundamental questions since I first contemplated Setso Project back in 2005. By that time I had lived with a host family that scraped by on one meager salary for a 10 person household, and I had volunteered with a number of small-scale NGOs that struggled to deliver core services to families and individuals underserved, or altogether unreached, by government funded programs. From this vantage point, I saw gaping needs and also a simple response: to leverage the charity of individuals in the US through an online donation mechanism. I could think of countless friends and family members who would contribute and I thought, just as Americans can make $20 donations to the Red Cross or Save the Children, why can’t we facilitate the same kind of frequent and small acts of generosity in support of Botswana’s struggling NGOs?

That was more than three years ago. Since that time, a growing corps of Setso Project advisors and I have continued to struggle with increasingly nuanced questions of feasibility, efficiency, utility and accountability. It’s difficult for me to admit how much time has passed, but the reality is that three years later I still don’t know the answer to these core questions. I’ve gone through numerous iterations of giving up, renewing faith, accepting half measures and giving up again. Nevertheless, with each round, I seem to gain a clearer understanding of our aims and the barriers that stand in the way. I believe my partners have also experienced these same ups and downs and this recent visit to Botswana (we sit on the plane on the last leg of our journey home) is just another step in the process of discovering.

Tom teaches the art of scrimshaw

So what of utility? Is what we’re aiming to do useful? The short answer is we don’t know and we may never know. As someone who has worked for 6 plus years in the field of economics research, most recently for a firm (Innovations for Poverty Action) that scientifically evaluates impacts of social welfare programs, I have come to accept that a controlled experiment, with a large enough sample, is the best way to measure the impact of a development program. But there is room for involvement in the development challenge on all levels. Researchers, like those at IPA, need inputs/ideas/practices to test , just as we, as practitioners, need proven solutions to implement. To the extent that answers are available on what works in development, we will incorporate them (see IPA, FAI and JPAL websites to learn about what we know works). And where answers don’t exist, we will use our intuition as well as guidance from potential beneficiaries to make our best guess at useful interventions. I don’t think intuition alone is a good idea for multi-million or –billion dollar development budgets I think it’s the best we’ve got for filling in large gaps with small funding while we wait for more definitive answers.

And efficiency? As someone trained in economics, the question of efficiency plagues me. Are we doing the most we can with the money we have? With about $10,000 annually, much of it coming from friends, family and my own pocket, I think the question of efficiency is somewhat negligible at this point. At the moment we have one paid staff member who is paid out of my pocket (donations please :)) and nominal other administrative expenses. The rest goes to program expenses. Period. In the future, we hope to have ongoing support for administrative expenses as well but thus far we have tried our best to put every dollar of donations into projects on the ground.

How about accountability? This may be the hardest question of all. First of all, it requires some knowledge of what should be done. And as the discussion of utility argues, we’re a far cry from knowing what works in development in general. The question also queries ‘accountable to whom?’ - to local beneficiaries? To donors? To local governing institutions? My experience working with NGOs in Botswana tells me that charitable initiatives will fail if they lack any of the following: the buy-in of local government and community representatives, diversity of inputs (ideas as well as resources), and sustainable (often external) financial support. To these ends, our recent visit attempted to secure the necessary inputs. We met with local government (both the traditional chief and the local schools, social services and development committees) and brainstormed ways of raising funds both locally and internationally.

For Tom and Wendy, this trip to Botswana was the first exposure to the difficulties of the development work we aim to facilitate. I believe they experienced what I first experienced in 2005 – an overwhelming sense of need and a dearth of tools to address those needs. But they were also buoyed by the experience of meeting with like-minded individuals – social workers, community development council members, young entrepreneurs, and researchers who all, despite an overwhelming shortage of resources, believe in the ability to make progress.

Two women show off the jewelry they've made

Three hours of flight left on this trip. I wanted to get some thoughts down before being swept up in the demands of homecoming and "life as we know it". These past 10 days in Botswana have been a hugh departure from that life.

Being on the ground... between meeting our day to day needs of traveling in a challenging environment/culture to the wakeful nights of questioning the value/impact of moving Setso Project's work forward to meet those challenges, it was easy to miss the bigger picture.  A quick replay of one of many times we were received by the friends and contacts Becca has developed over these many years of working on Setso, serves as a powerful reminder of why we were there.

A red-head in Botswana is notable, but a red-head who is so dear to so many and who speaks for Setso's work so eloquently, always with sensitivity toward the perspective of her audience is something I want to give equal weight to as we ask ourselves those questions Becca has put forth above.  I can't promise that what we are doing is sustainable, efficient etc, but the words that keep buzzing around my brain are "simple joys". Everywhere we made contact we were met with faces that registered "simple joys", no small thing in the challenging lives of those whom Setso attempts to support through our projects.

I can't know where we will be 5 years from now. If we can continue to raise small donations from family and friends by you remembering Setso Project at birthdays and holidays that would be terrific. If we can find large foundations and donors willing to join us... even more terrific!  What I do know, after this trip, is that the people Becca has put in place for Setso Project have what it takes to guide us successfully into that future and that the network we established in our 10 day visit is strong and excited to be working with us.  From the village chief to the teachers, social workers and Otse staff, we are in good company.

So, as we wend our way into Setso's future, "simple joys" will be enough for me and I hope, through these photos, you will be able to share some of that joy and pride knowing that your financial and emotional support made these smiles shine through.