Margaret Gardner
Margaret is Practical Action's Marketing and Communications Director. She is interested in the potential of global movements to deliver sustainable change. Passionate about social justice and community, she continues to be excited by the role technology can play in poverty reduction and ambitious for Practical Action's work.
Recommended reading: http://practicalaction.org/directors
Posts by Margaret
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Barnaby Peacocke, one of my colleagues, is just back from Sudan and gave an update at our ‘stand up’, staff meeting yesterday.
The fighting along the border between Sudan and Southern Sudan continues. This is impacting our work in the Blue Nile and the EU funded project is temporarily on hold. The likelihood is that this state of armed unrest will sadly continue.
We need to work out how in this new reality our work can continue. Our commitment is undiminished.
Listening to Barney I felt particularly moved as when I visited the Blue Nile area, two years ago now, people were talking about their hope following the end of the conflict with the South, they talked of the impact of the war, how some had been forced to fight, others had lost family members, all had struggled to get food, vital medicine, etc. Life had been very, very tough but now there was the hope of a better life and they were ambitious for peace and development.
Now things have changed and we have to continue, increase our work but do things differently.
Thankfully we have a ‘model’, ie.development speak for experience that shows us how it can be done.
In Darfur we’ve worked throughout the conflict; improving peoples farming techniques and yields, access to and quality of water, improving stoves so that they used less fuel – requiring women to make fewer dangerous journeys in search of wood or other fuel, helped people market their crops so that they had money for vital items such as medicine, helped communities preserve foods through techniques such as pickling etc.
After the kidnap of several of our staff and the attempted kidnap of others (thankfully eventually everyone was freed safely, but scared and their vehicles stolen or burned), we decided we had to find a different way of working. All our staff are local and so know the situation in detail – where ever it was reasonable safe for us and the communities we would continue our work directly (sometimes this changed day by day). Where it wasn’t safe for Practical Action people to travel or community gatherings could attract violence we worked with a brave group of people who so valued Practical Actions support they were willing to take extraordinary action.
Village Development Committees and the Women’s Development Associations. Networks we helped established to expand and continue our work. From each village one or two people travelling together, often using unusual paths or routes could get safely through to places no-one else could.
How it worked was that people from these groups would travel to a safe point, coming together they would meet with Practical Action staff. They would be trained in stove making, learn how to grow a new crop, receive seeds, be trained in water conservation, or other support. Help that on a day to day basis would improve their and their communities lives. They would then travel back to their villages and share their learning and/or support with their family, friends and community. Through these networks we were able to continue our work, throughout the conflict, even in some of the most difficult to reach parts of Darfur.
We worked with hugely courageous, brave people in Darfur – speaking to them when I visited their villages I was moved particularly the bravery of the women.
Having met the communities we’ve been working with in the Blue Nile, I believe we will find brave people there, too.
The conflict in the Blue Nile is dire and needs to be stopped. But, if as news reports say, it’s likely to continue for at least the next two years – we have to do all we can to help people caught up in this continue to build their lives.
Our commitment remains undiminished.
Im sorry for the ramble – Ive just dashed this off – but I didnt want to forget how moved I was by Barneys words thinking about the people I met and shared with in Sudan.
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Today Practical Action, together with One and Christian Aid, organised what’s called a “civil society consultation” on UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative.
We had four members of the High Level Group, three members of the Technical Panel and about 50 representatives from charities, social enterprises, etc all working on energy access in the developing world.
Great conversation.
Helen Clark who runs UNDP kind of took the party line. She affirmed the Action Report they launched yesterday, given out to us today, but stated that we shouldn’t overstate the role of the private sector and should hold them to account. She also made the point that the key thing was implementation and this would happen in country.
Bunker Roy of Barefoot College and another member of the High Level Group came next. He held the report away from him, and for the first time ever I saw someone literally turn up their nose. He rubbished it! No real civil society engagement, incomprehensible to all but a few technocrats, top down, sustainability considered only in terms of business finance not impact, no thought of how parachuted in solutions would be maintained in the long term, no real mention or consideration as to the role of women and so on.
Andrew Steer from the World Bank, the third member of the High Level Group, navigated a route between the two previous speakers. I’d summarise what he said as: This is not ideal but if you trash it there is no hope of progress, we need to accept that this was a genuine initiative from the Secretary General, who himself grew up without electricity and go forward from here.
While the frankness was brilliant, on reflection it was quite unsettling. I’m not left with the feeling that we, as civil society trying to hold people to account, have a position to respond to that’s owned and supported.Is this final or just a first draft that we can all critique? I’d understood it was meant to be final.
What is clear is the need for much more engagement with communities who will be impacted and/or benefit from the initiative. Engagement too with Southern governments. And better communication – writing that people can understand and a timetabled process that’s transparent.
For me, it’s also about old lessons that need to be re-learned or remembered. Development must start with people. Sustainability is not just about finance. It’s about community support, ways of working that help things work for the long term. It’s about people having a say in things that affect them and a choice. It’s about our environment.
Forty years ago Fritz Schumacher called for a new form of development, development that started with people and technology because people matter.
Sustainable Energy for All is a great initiative. It is, I believe, genuinely motivated. As it goes forward it needs to listen to the lessons of good development.
Margaret Gardner
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Marketing & Communications Director -
Energy lies at the heart – Clean Energy Ministerial
April 23rd, 2012I’ve just put up a blog railing at poor communicators – now my team have come back to me and said I need to include some figures – without them people can’t get an idea of the scale of the problem. Always happy to be critiqued – don’t … if you can’t take it etc.
One in every 5 people on our planet lives without electricity. Nearly 3 billion people use wood, charcoal or dung to cook. According to the UN fumes from these cook stoves damage health and kill nearly two million people every year. I’ve also heard it said that 85% of those who die are under 5.
95% of the people who lack energy and/or cook on deadly cook stoves are in sub-Saharan Africa or developing Asia.
Scientists warn that if we continue on our current energy path our world could warm by on average 4 degrees this century – maybe more. Poor people will be hit first and hardest.
We can continue along this path – we can gamble with our planet and push even more people into poverty.
Or we can do something different – we can commit to tackling climate change, we can commit to sustainable energy for all – we can commit to technology justice.
The Clean Energy Ministerial is important. Lets encourage our politicians to give a lead.
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Clean Energy Ministerial 3
April 23rd, 2012Clean Energy Ministerial 3 – I wonder if I could have found a title that would engaged people less.
20 countries, world changing decisions, the future of our planet and routes out of poverty – but they say
More than 20 countries will gather for this meeting. They will ‘discuss progress made by the Clean Energy Ministerial’s 11 clean energy initiatives, explore ways to enhance collaboration between participating governments, and develop strategies to drive public-private engagement to support clean energy deployment.’. There will be side events too ‘CEM3 will feature side events presented by the Multilateral Working Group on Solar and Wind Energy Technologies (MWGSW) and the Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) Women’s initiative.’
I’m not going. I haven’t been invited even to the one for women!
I’m not really cynical; I am frustrated that something so important is communicated so badly.
I’ve seen the impacts of climate change on the people we work with – often some of the poorest in the world. I’ve seen the hope that energy access can bring to communities – people able to power medical centres, schools, the basic equipment they need to do their jobs. Lives free from the deadly smoke produced by cook stoves burning twigs, dung and even plastics.
Getting the right energy is vital to our planet and to poverty reduction – don’t let jargon, the desire of politicians and their media types to say nothing in case they get just one word wrong put you off – this is The issue – we as citizens need to engage.
As Wolfie would say ‘Power to the people!’
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Practical Action Strategy 2012 -17
April 2nd, 2012A confession – I hear the word strategy and sometimes I switch off – dull, boring business speak, consigned with phrases like ‘low hanging fruit’ to the Room 101 of development i.e. put in the bin!
But for the last 18 months we have been working on Practical Action’s new strategy – not full time you understand but taking our time so that people were able to input their views and ideas could be tested out.
Today is the first day of the new strategy. It’s exciting! The strategy builds on Practical Actions strengths, on the great work we do, the needs of the communities we work with, it also thinks about what we can do and learning we can bring that’s additional to the work of others.
It focuses on Technology Justice to meet our vision of a sustainable world free of poverty and injustice in which technology is used to the benefit of all.
Let me introduce you to our strategy 2012 – 17 :-
We continue to live in a world where the gap between those who have access to the technologies they need for a decent quality of life and those who don’t is a yawning chasm.
1.6 billion people have no access to electricity, 1.3 billion no access to safe water, 2.6 billion have no sanitation and 1 billion people are undernourished. Huge numbers of lives are being made poorer. We live in a world of technology injustice.
This needs to change. Over the next 5 years we will work with others towards four universal goals:
• Sustainable access to modern energy service for all by 2030
• A transition to sustainable systems of agriculture and natural resource management that provide food security and livelihoods for poor people in rural areas
• Improved access to drinking water, sanitation and waste services for poor people living in towns and cities
• Reduced risk of disasters for marginalised groups and communitiesAs a direct result of our work, the wellbeing of 6 million people will be improved.
As well as working directly with people through our project work we will actively share our knowledge, we will encourage people to learn from and replicate our work, and where appropriate we will use our experience to influence policy change. Over the course of the next 5 years we will scale up and share our ‘small is beautiful’ solutions delivering more than 25 cases of where at least 1 million people have benefited from an improved ability to access technologies, services, natural resources and markets, or have risks mitigated as a result of Practical Action’s knowledge, partnership and influencing work.
To achieve this large scale change we will
• Reinforce our focus on technology
• Strengthen our role as a knowledge broker
• Expand our programme work into West Africa and open a new country office in Rwanda
• Grow our income by 50% by 2017
• Recognising the value to all of our work of our expertise on markets and on climate change we will mainstream this work across all four goals
• Focus across Practical Action on a major global change priority, the first of these being energy access for all.We know that improving people’s lives is not just about material goods. People’s material concerns relating to access to amenities and basic services, to establishing sustainable livelihoods must be met – but the way things are done is also vital. People need the opportunity for meaningful choice and the power to exercise control over their own lives, to live in dignity and have respectful relationships in their households and the wider world. Improving people’s material and relational wellbeing is fundamental to our work.
Practical Action believes in Technology Justice and our strategy sets out how we, together with people living in poverty, with partner organisations, with businesses and with governments, will help move our world towards Technology Justice.
Through this strategy we will help millions of people, we will strengthen our work, add value to the work of others and in all that we do will improve wellbeing, because people matter.
Together, we in Practical Action will help over 30 million poor people achieve positive change in their lives. We will affirm people’s right to choose and use the technologies that help them lead the kind of life they value, without compromising the ability of others and future generations to do the same.
We will change, and move – and know that we have moved our world towards Technology Justice.
We will be proud to take Practical Action.
So that’s some of the key concepts of our strategy – why do I think its important? The numbers mean something to me. I’ve worked in development, in trying to make the world a batter, fairer place for 20 years now. I’ve talked with people struggling to make a living, people living in extreme poverty who want somehing better for their kids – and the numbers arent faceless anymore. Technology because people matter.
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Blue Nile, Sudan and Practical Action
March 21st, 2012The Famine Early Warning Systems Network estimates that 4.2 million people mainly in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan regions of Sudan are ‘likely to be in the stressed, crisis or emergency phase of food insecurity during the first quarter of 2012’.
I visited the Blue Nile in 2009. At that stage people were hopeful that peace would come. The war between what is now Sudan and South Sudan was seemingly coming to a close and people were hopeful about the future. Don’t get me wrong there were still huge problems but people were looking forward. Some people I spoke with had been displaced by the war but had now returned to their villages.
Tagura Amir told me ‘this is my home, we have settled in this village for 22 years. We were displaced by war but now we have come back, I have been working with Practical Action and learning how to cultivate. I have passed my learning on to 50 other women so they now too know how to grow more and better crops. They like my help’.
It’s hard to contrast this optimism with the conflict and food insecurity that threatens people now.
Colleagues in Sudan tell me that large numbers of people are once again displaced into the newly created Southern Sudan, to Ethiopia and into the more urban areas of Sudan. Our office in Damazien (capital of the Blue Nile) continues to operate with staff travelling to project sites and working in those areas where they can get access – in other parts no NGOs are allowed. We are continuing as much of our work as possible – these are communities we know and support.
Many donors are reducing their funding for Sudan moving instead monies into funding the newly formed South Sudan. Inflation is high reported officially at 20% but some unofficial reports giving rates of up to 50%. There is a shortage of imported goods like medicine.
The situation is bad. But I won’t give up hope. I remember people I met battling to have hope and although now the situation looks dire – now is the time for us to work harder to help those people we can help to build and make resilient their ways of making a living, and to work together for a long term solution.
I understand that the situation is complex. If hard it takes people to work yet harder. The people I met and the others who live there should not be abandoned, there must be a way to build peace – in the meantime we will continue doing what we do best taking practical actions.
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George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Lenny Henry and me
March 21st, 2012On Monday I was at a session looking at how we build awareness in the UK of the importance of international development. The background to this was a YouGov poll reported in The Sunday Times which showed that 66% of people questioned thought that Britain spent too much on foreign aid.
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Obviously as development NGOs we have a different view – knowing for example that as a result on vaccines paid for by the UK government 1.4 million children who would have died haven’t, that’s over a million mothers who haven’t suffered the pain of the loss of a child, families who haven’t had to go without food to trying desperately to get medical help ….
I would sometimes critique how aid is applied but not that it’s necessary.
Which brings me back to George Clooney. As an add on to the session Comic Relief had turned up to talk about working with celebrities and how they can be effective if they truly have affinity with your cause (and how just occasionally they can be a nightmare). It was really informative and timely given the arrest of George Clooney for protesting against the conflict in Sudan.
George believes in what he says. Obviously the situation is more nuanced and the reports we have from our office in the area spell out both the problems and the opposing views. But I believe that interesting people in our world, getting people to talk about the big issues, seeing justice as something that is global and a care for all of us is great. And is celebs can help spark the debate and get people interested well good for them – they have the right to speak up, it’s good to see them expressing their views and maybe they/we can encourage others to be interested to.
So good for George – taking a step for something he believes so passionately in.
Harrison Ford and Lenny Henry were given as examples of people campaigning for issues they deeply believe in – so good on them too! -
International womens day plus 1
March 9th, 2012Let’s continue celebrating women today! My friend and colleague Doris Mejia in provided this update on the struggles facing women in Peru.
Women in Peru have to face a lot of challenges, not only take care of their children, animals and farms in a context of extreme poverty and weather, but deal with machismo, violence and very few opportunities of education and personal realization. In Practical Action Latin America we´ve worked through the process of our women kamayoq (expert farmers who train other farmers)starting to find their voice, their security, their abilities and being respected for that in their communities. We hope to continue strengthening those voices so they feel happy to be who they are. We will be working, as well, to create opportunities of technical education that can be taken at their farms and that’s appropriate, works and considers their life styles and family. We are in that path right now, and we are also working closely with the government to get recognition to this kind of education – so we can reach out to even more poor communities!
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A very happy International Women’s Day!
March 8th, 2012I asked my colleague Grace Mukasa in Kenya what she would celebrate today, she said
‘In East Africa I would celebrate the work of younger women, those still of reproductive age, who are often too overloaded with pregnancy, childcare and family welfare to have even a little time to rest or look after themselves. The younger women who lose out on so much opportunity because they are so busy looking after others. The period in life where husbands and relatives combine to control your mobility because of fear of adultery. The young women who have no older daughters or daughters-in-law to delegate to! It’s a day to celebrate their resilience. It’s an opportunity to look forward to the day they will know they have the abilities; the family, community and government support; and the means to use opportunities to improve their wellbeing.’
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I’m with Grace – let’s celebrate resilience and the day when young women in East Africa can take opportunity. -
Poor Peoples Energy Outlook – making friends and influencing people
January 27th, 2012Earlier in the week I went to the launch of the Poor Peoples Energy Outlook. The report’s produced by Practical Action and the launch was hosted by DFID in their offices in London. I sat next to people from The World Bank, talked to a guy from GIZ (German government), said hello to friends from IBM and chatted to some people from Oxford University.
You get a sense of the gathering.
What struck me was the high regard in which Practical Action’s held and the breath of our energy work. Plus our real efforts to try and make a difference in the world – even if it means moving outside of our comfort zone – in my case talking with posh people! Ill confess to being much more at home chatting with villagers or project workers.
The question some of our supporters may ask is ‘why bother’. The reality is that the UN have launched 2012 as the year of Sustainable Energy for All and at Rio +20 in June the Secretary General will make a call to see this happen. We want to see this succeed but we also want it to build on the lessons we take from our work (it seems silly to have to learn them all over again and a waste of vital development effort) – for example
• The importance of working together with people rather than imposing solutions or dumping kit
• Thinking of energy in a holistic way – for cooking, lighting, clinics, hospitals, powering businesses
• That much as energy is vital – without it sustained poverty reduction is a hundred times more difficult – it isn’t enough on its own you need to think about business, helping people skill up, education and so on
• The vital role small scale renewable solutions can play
• The importance of appropriate finance systems – and for the most vulnerable clever subsidies – so decent energy can be affordable to allCreating energy access will be one of the great challenges of this century, as we face the reality of climate change there is the opportunity for transformative leadership and transformative energy supply.
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But as much as Practical Action can ‘play with the big guys’ our heart and overwhelming focus remains in our projects and with the people in the communities where we work.
“I used to spend all day looking for firewood and cleaning pots and pans. Those days are now gone! Now it’s cheap and easy to cook rice, lentils and vegetables for my seven people family, When my neighbours saw that I had more time for other chores, they decided to install their own biogas plant too!” Mahesh, Nepal
Let’s hope the Secretary Generals call is heeded for Mahesh’s neighbours in Nepal and poor communities around the world.
