Grace

1. Introduction

The motivation for this proposal is the belief that there is a disparity between the level of caring that people have towards their surroundings and what is exhibited by their actions. That is, people care more than what their actions show. Many reasons can be suggested – lack of awareness of social problems, concern with personal wellbeing, disillusionment and a sense of powerlessness among others.

Consequently, the goal of the proposal is to suggest ways in which this disparity could be reduced. It describes a practical way in which people can be encouraged to act in ways that more closely reflect their level of caring.

The proposal is based on certain assumptions about human nature. These are best described as assumptions because people don’t necessarily act on them, so they cannot easily be inferred from behaviour. When faced with the suffering of strangers, the following is assumed:

• A majority of people empathise with the suffering and desire to alleviate it. These are the people who are primarily targeted by this proposal. It is hoped that, by making them more aware of social problems and how to address them effectively, they will convert their empathy into action.
• A minority of people also empathise with the suffering, but feel too disillusioned or powerless to even consider alleviating it. These people are the secondary targets of the proposal. Their outlook will hopefully change with wider participation of the first group.
• A small minority of people are unable to empathise and remain indifferent to or supportive of the suffering. These people are not targeted by the proposal.

2. Overview

The purpose of this document is to present a model of social interaction that was designed with the following primary goals in mind:

• To increase awareness of the various problems that currently plague our society
• To increase transparency with which these problems are dealt

It is hoped that making progress in line with these goals will yield the following benefits:

• Widespread quantification of social problems
• Greater awareness of the efforts currently underway to resolve social problems and how to join them
• Greater coordination of efforts to resolve social problems
• A shift in the public mindset towards more active involvement in dealing with social problems and away from helplessness and passive cynicism
• Reduction in corruption

In order to fulfil these objectives, the model was designed to exhibit the following primary characteristics:

• Decentralisation – it has no centralised point of control, and therefore no position of power
• Sustainability – the model is aimed at gradual long-term transformation; it fosters small social changes, consolidates them and builds on them
• Self-correction – when abuse of the system takes place, the system is able to detect and eliminate it

3. Case Study

The easiest way to illustrate the nature of the model is by means of a case study. It deals with Johannesburg – the largest city in South Africa and a home to some eight million people. The city contains numerous suburbs of varying levels of affluence, ranging from mansions to squatter camps. The case study will focus on the problem of homelessness that afflicts some of its inhabitants.

The city centre has undergone deterioration in recent decades. What used to be a prestigious centre of business and commerce now serves as a home to a sizeable street population. Most of these people have migrated to the city from rural areas. With nowhere to go, they now live and make a living on the streets. Because their resources are severely limited, they rely on humanitarian assistance from various organisations – such as churches and social welfare – that are active in these parts.

What this document proposes is that the visibility of all these humanitarian activities be increased. This can be accomplished by collating all of the information related to them. Specifically:

• The problem:
  • The cause of the problem needs to be explained – where do homeless people come from? This is an important source of future ideas on how to tackle the problem.
  • The consequences of the problem need to be described – what effect does it have on the people who are affected by it?
  • The extent of the problem in the absence of external assistance needs to be quantified.
• Current efforts at resolving it:
  • Information needs to be provided on organisations that are busy providing assistance. These organisations are often dependent on external support for their work, so knowing what they need and how to contact them is particularly important.
  • The nature of the assistance needs to be described.
  • The effect that the provision of assistance has had on the problem needs to be detailed.
  • The forms of external assistance that have been considered and/or attempted in the past but subsequently discarded need to be described, including the reasons why. This is to ensure that the same approaches are not needlessly tried again by people new to the problem.
• Work still to be done:
  • The nature and extent of assistance that still needs to be provided to completely take care of the problem needs to be described and quantified. Once-off solutions need to be distinguished from ongoing ones so as not to create unrealistic expectations.
  • The forms of assistance that are being considered for future provision need to be described, as well as their anticipated impact.

3.1 Who will collate the information?

There are several candidates:

• It can be a service provided by one of the organisations that are already dealing with the problem. In this case, a separate organisation must be formed that is dedicated to the task to ensure that there is no conflict of interests.
• All or several of these humanitarian organisations can jointly form and finance a separate organisation dedicated to the task.
• Local government can assume this responsibility.

The organisation that assumes the responsibility must not have any other interests or authority in the problem domain. It must especially not get involved in collecting donations or co-ordinating volunteer work. This restriction is imposed to avoid the centralisation of power and the associated danger of corruption.

3.2 Who is the source of the information?

Organisations that are actively involved in trying to rectify the problem.

3.3 How will information conflicts be resolved?

The responsibility for reconciling conflicting information can rest with:

• The organisations providing the data, in which case they need to reach mutual agreement on what information should be communicated to the public.
• The organisation doing the collation, in which case an appropriate strategy needs to be devised. Different reports can simply be averaged out to arrive at the final set of figures, possibly weighted based on the source.

3.4 How will the information be presented?

A website is the obvious choice for anyone who can gain Internet access with relative ease. A dedicated local newspaper or a dedicated section in another newspaper is an alternative for those who can’t. Local municipal offices can display the information. If the organisation that collates the information has dedicated offices, the information can be presented there too.

Internet presentation has a considerable advantage over all the others in that it is possible to interlink all of the websites, creating an up-to-date and readily available information network.

Presentation should be done in a transparent manner. The source of the information should always be quoted. If calculations were performed – to resolve conflicts or provide estimates – their nature should also be disclosed.

3.5 How will the information be publicised?

Regular advertising channels – such as television, radio and newspapers – can be used. Publicity can also be gained through channels unique to the organisations that are actively dealing with the problem, such as church congregations.

An important way of gaining publicity is by creating a consistent brand for the initiative, no matter where it is implemented or what form it takes. This way, the publicity that is generated for it in any one location promotes it all.

It is vital for the information to be publicised in a manner that promotes action. Concrete details of when, where and how to get involved in the various humanitarian initiatives should be provided. This is needed to help convert the general sense of empathy towards the people afflicted by the problem into concrete steps taken to alleviate it.

3.6 Feedback

A means to contact the collators of information needs to be provided, via their website, phone, snail mail or in person. The general public can use these channels to alert them to any problems that they may have encountered – such as misappropriation of funds on the part of an organisation supposedly dealing with the problem – as well as for suggestions on how to improve the process.

4. Geographical Expansion

The case study represents the smallest unit of interest – a relatively small group of people that share the same geographical location. For the purpose of this proposal, it will be referred to as a community, even though it may lack the cohesion of one. Other examples of communities for which information gathering can be implemented are townships, squatter camps, villages, hospitals, halfway houses, and so on.

The case study can be expanded to include other communities as well. Within the context of the problem of homelessness, this would typically consist of geographical areas similar to the city centre rather than specialised communities such as hospitals. Each one would function along the lines of the city centre – an organisation would collate information on the problem and make it available to the general public.

This gives rise to an additional consideration – how to present all of this information so that one gains a clear picture of it for the city as a whole? This can be done along similar principles to those utilised above, with additional ones discussed below.

The concept of hierarchical collation of data can be extended further – from cities and rural areas to regions/provinces/states, then to countries, continents and finally to the planetary network.

4.1 What is the relationship between different organisations that collate information?

No relationship is forbidden or enforced, provided that the authority of these organisations is restricted to collecting and disseminating information. However, as the data collection efforts grow in size, so will the resulting influence. It is therefore recommended that a single organisation not be responsible for the collection of data pertaining to more than a cluster of communities. The organisation that collates the data from different areas into a unified set should be separate from the organisations that collate the data for those areas.

4.2 Who is the source of the information?

The organisations that are responsible for collating it for the constituent areas. No omission or interpretation of the published data should be performed.

4.3 What should be done about the missing information?

A likely situation, at least in the beginning, is that information will be available for some parts of the city but not others. This can be handled in two ways:

• By indicating the areas for which no information is available and simply excluding those from the overall data set. The drawback of this approach is that the problem will definitely end up being under reported.
• By providing estimates and indicating the areas for which no information was available and estimates had to be provided. The drawback of this approach is that the accuracy of the reporting is dependent on the accuracy of the estimates.

5. Problem Expansion

Just as the case study can be extended to other geographical areas, it can also be extended to other problem domains. In addition to homelessness, other basic problems – food, clean water and clothing (and possibly medical care) – should also be considered from the outset. This group of problems has to receive priority over all the others as they deal with basic human needs.

Once information collection efforts dealing with the basic problems are sufficiently well organised, attention should be given to other, less pressing problems. Any problem that can benefit from public contribution – be it in the form of material aid or labour – should be included. The following list should give some idea of the possibilities:

• Taking care of orphaned and abandoned children
• Frail care and care for people with disabilities
• Creating and maintaining local infrastructure (roads, water supply, etc)
• Growing local crops
• Providing local education
• Funding for scientific research
• Ecological restoration
• Recycling

It should be clear from the above list that the model proposed in this document is not limited to the currently widespread social problems. It can be used in any situation where information pertaining to supply and demand needs to be independently collected, structured hierarchically and publicly disseminated. For example, if living in small communities (eco-villages and such) were to become widely adopted in the future, this model could be used to create a network of communities by means of which they could exchange information pertaining to their shortages and surpluses and thereby support each other.

6. Emergencies

Once in place, the infrastructure can be used to facilitate the response to disasters, both natural (droughts, earthquakes, floods, fires, epidemics, etc) and man-made (armed conflicts, oil spills, etc). These events will typically make news quite rapidly. Where the information infrastructure can be used is in supplementing the news releases. News are effective at getting attention, but not at conveying detailed information. This can be accomplished by entering it into the information network that pertains to the disaster areas and letting it propagate via the established channels. This can help communicate both the scale and severity of the disaster, which can then be used to guide the relief efforts.

7. Contributions

Two types of contributions are anticipated:

• Material contributions, such as food, clothes, medicine and money.
• Voluntary action, such as taking care of people with disabilities, teaching, planting trees and collecting refuse.

Unlike voluntary action, material contributions present an immense opportunity for corruption. This is why they should be handled with complete transparency. For each item (including monetary) that enters the system, this entails:

• Being able to uniquely identify it.
• Reflecting it in the information that is made available to the public. If it is not reflected, the donor is able to query it. If it remains unused after a reasonable amount of time, the donor can also query it.
• If it has been used according to the public information, but the reflected recipient has not received it, the recipient can query it.

Apart from curtailing corruption, another benefit of transparency is that the donor can have a direct sense of the effect that her contributions have had on the problem. This feeling is both rewarding and empowering. Hopefully it will encourage people to intensify their efforts, and others to join them.

8. Potential Stumbling Blocks

8.1 Sceptical reaction

It is likely that some people will react with pessimism and even cynicism. This entails criticising the initiative for what it is trying to achieve – because one believes that an initiative of this nature cannot succeed – rather than because of any particular flaw that it may exhibit. This kind of reaction is to be expected and is not as much of a problem as may appear at first. The model relies for its success on the dedication of people who already contribute towards humanitarian causes or have a strong desire to do so. These efforts are ongoing despite existing pessimism and cynicism, so it is to be expected that they will continue at least as well using this model.

8.2 Dodging-responsibility reaction

The proposal might be criticised for trying to shift the responsibility for social welfare from the government to the community. The perception that the task should be left to the government is widespread in the modern society and extends to many other areas – provision of health care, education, infrastructure, etc. This way of thinking has a disempowering effect on the local population, to the extent that initiatives that could be effectively implemented by the local community are nevertheless habitually deferred to the government. This mindset needs to be challenged.

8.3 Misappropriating material contributions

Corruption is rife with some of the existing humanitarian funds, especially those that rely on mandatory contributions and practice opaque financial transactions. We can reasonably expect that transparency with which material contributions are handled in this model will be an effective counter to these practices, provided that they are supported by free press and an effective rule of law. Should these key ingredients be absent, little can be done to ensure the effectiveness of any kind of humanitarian assistance.

8.4 Bogus charities

Some people will register humanitarian organisations specifically for the purpose of using voluntary contributions for personal benefit. This is already taking place and can be expected to intensify as the initiative gains popularity. Unfortunately, there is no reliable way of completely eliminating this kind of misappropriation of funds. The best we can hope for is to uncover and eliminate it after it has taken place.

Transparency in the handling of material contributions will not be an effective counter to these practices. All that transparency ensures is that both the donor and the recipient agree that material contributions have been steered down the intended channels. It cannot also ensure that the recipient is who it claims to be. Transparency in the internal operation of the recipient organisation would definitely help in this regard, but it suffers from two shortcomings:

• It may not be practical for the people whom the recipient organisation is trying to help to police its efforts. For example, homeless people are not likely to be able to keep effective tabs on the assistance that they are supposedly receiving.
• It is simply not practical to keep a watchful eye on the beneficiaries of every recipient organisation to ensure that they are who they claim to be.

A form of peer review may be a more effective counter. Since multiple organisations will typically be operating in the same domain, they are in a better position to ensure each other’s legitimacy, and report any behaviour that appears suspicious to them. The same should be done by other individuals who come into contact with these organisations.

What the model needs to ensure is that, once suspicious behaviour has been reported, an independent investigation into it is launched and its findings are made publicly available. Hopefully, the combination of openness to the reporting of suspicious behaviour, willingness to have it investigated and public presentation of the findings will be sufficient to eliminate this kind of corruption once it has been uncovered without permanent damage to the cause.

9. Parallels with HMIS

There are many similarities between this proposal and the Homeless Management Information System that is currently being implemented in the US. Both are aimed at gathering information about social problems in an effort to combat them more effectively and hopefully eliminate them. However, there are also significant differences. The key difference lies in the nature of the response to the gathered information.

The HMIS is a government initiative created to deal with the problem of homelessness. It is an attempt to resolve the problem – and keep it resolved – by means of sustained government action. It epitomises the idea of external intervention as the appropriate means to resolving social problems.

This proposal is primarily concerned with gathering information about social problems for the purpose of raising public awareness of them. It is hoped that this will give rise to an upward spiral – people acting to alleviate social problems to a greater extent than before, in the process gaining greater appreciation of the benefits of social action, and acquiring greater awareness of the problems that remain to be solved, thereby triggering another cycle along the spiral. This approach epitomises the idea of community action – people developing a sense of personal responsibility for the developments that take place around them. It is the fostering and growth of this kind of awareness that will hopefully ensure that the solutions to various social problems that we put in place endure and survive changes in political and economic climate.