|
HANOI,
Vietnam—Old-timers
to this socialist country’s capital will tell you that
Hanoi remains the same: swarming motorcycles that tell
pedestrians to drive and walk at your own risk; many small
businesses operating beside each other; and the abundance
of rice fields amid today’s global rice crisis. But many
Asian attendees at a regional gab here were surprised with
something else: Monies from offshore are swarming Asian
developing countries, and can even lead to social and,
obviously, economic development when maximized well.
“That’s
why I’m here,” says Ho Chi Minh-based Australian Lynette
Packer of Erigo Inc., an education-oriented nonprofit. “I
want to explore possibilities.”
And these
possibilities are enormous, Boston University’s Adil Najam
said. His homeland of Pakistan has received some
donations—as well as volunteer time—from compatriots in
the United States: Cash is worth $250 million, while
volunteer time is estimated to be thrice the amount of
cash donations.
But as the
Asia-Pacific Philanthropy Consortium (APPC), which
organized the conference “Diaspora Giving: An Agent of
Change in Asia-Pacific Communities?”, as well as Western
philanthropic experts, sought to know more about the
promises of what is called diaspora philanthropy, an
ordinary Vietnamese-American told them the potentials of
his sincerity.
$3M worth
of sincerity
What was
the worth of that sincerity from nuclear scientist Dr.
Doan Phung? $3 million.
The check
was even turned over to Phung’s colleagues of the
Vietnamese-American NGO Network (Vango), of which his Fund
for the Encouragement of Self-Reliance is a member. His
condition for the donation was that other NGO members of
Vango must find counterpart amounts.
“Oh, no,
more work for me,” said Vango official Binh Rybacki of
Children of Peace International.
But
diaspora-giving is as old as the movement of people to
other countries for better opportunities: Najam even said
there is a Pakistani-American foundation that’s 104 years
old, giving back to the homeland for that long.
Research,
as well as the response from nonprofits in the homeland
countries of Asian diasporas, are moving slowly to respond
to diaspora philanthropy, observes Dr. Mark Sidel of the
University of
Iowa.
Seven
countries presented country papers, and India, China and
the Philippines (all homes of the world’s largest
diasporas) had advanced studies and practices of diaspora-giving.
As for Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam, they
are catching up.
The
catching up, say many delegates, should be rapid: Asia is
the second-largest recipient of all types of remittance
inflows from migrants with $52.8 billion in 2006, says
data from the World Bank; even if most of the interest of
nonprofits and foundation experts to diaspora-giving is
toward the United States, the world’s leading global
migration basin and source country of billion-dollar
remittances.
But look
at the
Philippines,
Sidel says: “Donors even come from other countries, as
low-skilled and middle-class workers also give.”
Case in
point here is Damayang Pilipino sa Nederland, where vice
president Basco Fernandez said a project proposal contest
in the Netherlands that Damayan won led them to set up a
community wet market in Magsaysay, Misamis Oriental.
A
counterpart group in Misamis Oriental also provided
backstop support such as pilot lending services and
monitoring of the use of the money from Damayan.
“Diaspora-giving will not work without help from the
homeland,” Fernandez said.
Philippine
NGOs and foundations were surprised at the scale, for
example, of cash donations by overseas Filipinos: the last
segregated amount from the country’s balance of payments,
done in 2003, bared a $218-million single-year figure.
At that
year’s exchange rate of P55, thus totaling P11 billion,
ordinary overseas Filipino workers have more donations
compared with the 35-plus-year accumulated total corporate
giving by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP).
But all
that diaspora donors like Ismael Fabicon, of the Romblon
Discussion List-Cultural, Livelihood and Educational
Association of Romblon (RDL-Clear), wanted to do was to
simply help. Their giving to the home province of Romblon
is not even that big.
Traveling
from Banton Island in Romblon (which, if to include the
boat ride from Odiongan to Manila, will take 16 to 18
hours) to Hanoi (some four hours from Manila, with a Ho
Chi Minh stopover), Fabicon calls RDL-Clear “a unique
virtual organization based on volunteerism [and] with an
annual ‘peanut’ budget of less than $25,000 annually.”
The group
even needs help in fundraising, Fabicon said, while NGOs
from the homeland are also targeting the same diaspora
donors.
The APPC’s
conference tried to sort out issues of how diaspora
philanthropy alone, excluding the billion-dollar
remittances geared for families back home, can be made
efficient and effective.
And among
the many issues that confront NGOs, says executive vice
president Barnett Baron of The Asia Foundation, is that
diasporas distrust institutions as recipients “and would
rather give to individuals so that there is direct help
and personalized impact.”
What also
remained mysterious to delegates was how the different
uses of remittances—i.e., spending, saving, investing and
giving—can be all maximized to design innovative
socioeconomic development projects or even developmental
investments.
Conference
director Priya Viswanath of Charities Aid Foundation-India
said she has yet to see such trend while wracking her
brains on how charity-inspired diaspora-giving may lead to
strategic philanthropy.
And
Viswanath’s compatriot Shyamala Shiveshwarkar, a
journalist, was quick to point out such possibilities in
her country report: “Critical...was the government’s
realization that an enormous reservoir of skills, talent,
technology and resources was available within its diaspora
that could potentially be harnessed to contribute to
India’s
growth and development.”
Market-based approaches are even being piloted in India,
as in the case of the Deshpande Foundation that has
projects to lower malnutrition and dropout rates among
children in public schools, and which developed a
prototype kitchen that sold food for 4 rupees a day per
child.
And, for a
long time,
India
floated diaspora bonds that saw nonresident Indians buying
$6 million worth of these—with many of them wanting to buy
more but being told that the offering has been closed.
Diaspora-giving is about “credibility transfer,” says
Krishnakali Dasgupta of the American India Foundation, and
who’s also a former Citibanker.
This is
where Phung was consistent: He said he stayed at a cheap
$40 hotel outside of the conference venue, Melia Hanoi, in
his first trip to the homeland after six years.
He told
the audience during his speech that he’s wearing an
11-year-old yellow suit and a six-year-old pair of shoes.
Somebody
from the audience, a Vietnamese lady refugee to the US,
asked: “Why is it that your wife is not here with you?”
Phung
replied: “I have to save money.” |
