Class 4 Wrap-Up

In the first hour of class, Nathaniel Whittemore from Northwestern University presented a lecture entitled "A History of Citizen Philanthropy." Through an exploration of England's abolitionist movement in the late 18th and early 19th century, Nathaniel constructed an analytical framework out of concepts and lessons derived from the past.

When studying a situation consider the following questions:

Who are the Actors? What are their Interests? Their Perceptions? And the Context in which they live? Who has the Power? How much? And what kind?

Nathaniel posed two key questions in his presentation:

1) How can humanitarianism both challenge and reinforce inequality?
2) How would the abolitionist movement be remembered? What were its' long-term consequences?

In second hour of class, Jon Marino from Northwestern University divided the class into 3 groups and led us in an exercise with the following instructions:

You are a group of philanthropists working together to decide which of the following projects to fund. You have a collective budget of $10,000 to give to one of the following three projects.

-Financial Director for a School in Uganda
-Medicine for a TB outbreak in China
-Human Rights Advocacy in Guatemala

1. Come to a consensus decision about which project most people in the group want to support after weighing the tradeoffs you see embedded in each.

2. Identify 2 or 3 points of debate that your group spent the most time on when making your decision.

3. Think about the pieces of information that you feel are missing from the descriptions that would have made your decision easier.

This exercise introduced us to a number of inherent trade-offs that are embedded within choices we face in international development. No project is perfect. And different people with unique interests, values, and experiences make different choices.

At the end of class, Nathaniel presented us with this journal prompt:

If you had a $100,000, what would you do with it? And why? Describe your project using the analytical framework proposed in Nathaniel's presentation (see above).

>Daniel