Short Social Fiction: Adventures of Tupi 2

(Day 7)

The first week has passed. The theme of the week is change. Change was not easy for Tupi, and like many people, there were sleepless nights, anxiety and some depression. Tupi never had that much free time, and doing nothing was killing him. His schedules were always packed and his routine fixed. Tupi rarely took much leave or gone on a holiday, as he enjoyed having certainty.

Tupi with his new laptop has applied for many jobs which he thinks he has the right skill sets. By the end of the week, Tupi has exhausted all the contacts he had and applied for all the jobs he could find. Tupi decided to attend all the networking events he could find online. He reached out to friends, ex-colleagues and alumni, and after scheduling some meetings with friends he did not meet up for years.

Tupi ended up packing his schedule by going to help some friends move, baby showers and his friend's children's graduation. Tupi felt a lot better when he helped others and started to look to tasks to volunteer. Then it seemed like an opportunity has came -- Michael, Tupi's classmate from high school is going to Indonesia to work on a charity water project in a village.

Tupi took in a deep breath. It felt out of character. Then he nodded to himself and clenched his fist and pumped it like he was tugging on an invisible chain. "This feels right." Tupi muttered and took out his phone. "Here it goes."

Tupi could feel his heart beat faster. Suddenly he felt excited like he was going to do something good. He felt nervous and anxiety again. "What if I get rejected? Should I be looking for a job instead of spending money?" There was a lot of self doubt, but before Tupi put away his phone, he took in another deep breadth Tupi made himself dialed Michael.

Ring, Ring...

"Hello Michael." Tupi said as the phone got connected.

"Hi..." the voice responded.

"Its me... Tupi, from St. Andrews Secondary School?" Tupi said.

"Oh.. hey! What's up buddy?" the voice responded with an upbeat pitch.

"Saw from your Facebook post that you are going to Indonesia to help a village. Seems like a very noble and interesting thing to do." Tupi said. "How can I join?"

"Oh, I volunteer with a Church group, and they are working with an NGO here which is going there." Michael said. "I think there is a fee to join, and that is excluding your own airfares to get there."

"Can you send me more information?" Tupi requested eagerly. "I've not done this before, and I am free this weekend and have no plans anyways."

"Sure! Let me send you the information." Michael said. "What is your email address, perhaps I can send you the forms and links to register...."

Tupi got all the information from Michael and chatted a while. It seemed that many things have changed, and Michael is now a father of 2 kids. Tupi received the email and immediately registered and booked his tickets for the weekend trip. It felt spontaneous. It felt great. It is not go time!

The brown suitcase was taken out from storage. It had a layer of dust and Tupi used a damp rag and wiped it off. Many thoughts were going through his mind as his heartbeat increased, his breadth was shallow as he started to pack for the trip. Everything was well organized and he had no problems searching for what he needed. "Hello camera...." Tupi muttered and found his trusty old camera. It was a film camera - Canon EOS 1, and photography one of his hobbies he had before he got offered his first job.

Opening his refrigerator, Tupi found a few rolls of film. "They are still around..." he muttered and checked on the condition of the film. "Still looks good." Then continued to check on the batteries and other equipment he wanted to bring on the trip. This was an unfamiliar feeling, something he has not felt in a long time. Tupi was not sure if it was discomfort or otherwise, but the trip was going to happen and there was no turning back.

Short Social Fiction: Adventures of Tupi 1

Tupi

Tupi -- An International Capybara just read about Social Entrepreneurship. Recently retrenched from his boring job, Tupi thought he needed a change for the better. He loves to challenge himself and apply his creativity to create solutions, but have always been afraid to step outside his comfort zone. He had the same routine everyday for the past 15 years -- wake up, wash up, go to work - drive back from work, answer emails, watch TV, clean house and go to bed. On the weekends, he would do laundry, work on his model car, go to supermarket, and sometimes watch a movie with friends.

His routine got predictable. 2 eggs, toast and coffee for breakfast, milkshake and protein bar for lunch and some form of rice or pasta dish for dinner. His commute never changed. 7:30am subway train to work, 7pm rush hour jam to get home. His experiences were so consistent that even his expenses was almost identical every month.

(Day 1 out of work)

Tupi woke up as usual, cleaned up and before leaving the house, he had a sudden realization that there was no work to go to. He sat on his dining table and looked around. The house was neat and nothing needed replacement or repairs. The garbage was thrown, laundry done and all the errands were completed over the weekend. He took a deep breadth and sighed. "What should I do today?" he muttered. He looked at the clock - 7:15am, and thought, "Maybe I should take a short nap?"

Lying in bed, Tupi was restless. He wanted to do something and could not figured out what. Looking at his clock - 7:18am, but it felt like an hour. Tupi could not rest and decided to go out, but sitting at his table, he could not decide on what to do. Looking at his mail, an envelop dropped out. Tupi opened it and saw a thank you note from an organization where he donated some money to in Indonesia. Looking at the photo of the card, the villagers seemed to live in a very nice and green environment.Tupi smiled and decided to start his computer to perhaps look for a new job.

Looking at his notebook, it was stored properly in the drawer of his desk. It could not be powered on, but the power cables were neatly stored in the same drawer. Tupi turned on the power and started the notebook. Tupi went to get a cup of water and when he was back, the computer was still loading. The machine was old, when Tupi had his job, he never needed to use his personal laptop. "Perhaps I should get a new machine." Tupi's face lit up, finally, there was a task which needed to be done.

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Excerpt: Good Intentions Are Not Enough - By Robin Low

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Why We Fail at Helping

By Robin Low

Drawing experience and failures from working in post disaster areas and developing communities, and observing the inefficiencies of large organizations, Robin finds the reasons for these failures and suggests ways to get to sustainable impact.

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Helping is complicated and easy to mess up. That much is obvious now at the end of this book. But this does not mean it is ok to not try. Doing nothing at all is not a good option.

The problem with helping is that for the most part, it involves people being too assured of their ways to learn to do things differently and instead, just following status quo. There needs to be a better understanding of the problem, and purer motivations, with less religious ideology and more economics . But much condescension from colonizing countries towards the formerly colonized and sometimes, a racist mindset, may make people think otherwise.

I have often been in a position where I question myself: how am I going to change other people when I don’t exactly understand what is going on myself? What people tell you is usually not their immediate problem, because the problem is too complicated for someone external to understand immediately. They tell you what you want to hear and so they can get what they expect to get.

Change is difficult. Most people are difficult to change, and they sometimes do, but slowly and only slightly. They are not always grateful – some are resentful instead. Being too emotionally involved clouds judgement. On days when one is confronted with a devastating problem that cannot be fixed, the misery and helplessness rub off, perhaps making one feel angry and blaming systems and society for what one cannot fix.

Being angry does not solve the problem. Resilience is important and one needs to be tough, but not detached. Optimism, coupled with creativity and innovation may be a way to continuously look for solutions when encountering a dead end. Complaining does not help; only when the solution is found is the problem solved.

-- Robin Low

Many people mean well and want to contribute solutions to local and global needs. People often want to act for the sake of "doing something". Often, this means poorly thought-out ideas that are often unsustainable, or have little measurable social impact. Are these efforts actually helping? Are they solving problems or creating new ones? What pitfalls should a concerned giver watch for?

Rich People are Not the Solution

I’ve known many rich people who do not consider themselves rich. These people I know live in properties that cost in excess of US$25 million, run foundations or own businesses, and continue to generate a lot of income. Through my interactions with them, I have realized that most of them still have a lot of anxieties – anxieties relating to financial security.

Often, when I approach these people who run foundations, I’ve candidly asked them why they don’t do more for society personally, and I get the same answer all the time: “You know, the costs of education and necessities are getting more day by day, my businesses may be doing well now, but who knows what is going to happen tomorrow?” Sometimes, I do get puzzled as the small projects that I wish to be funded are under $10,000, and their response of financial insecurity in their Rolls Royce prompted me to follow up with another question: “So how much do you need to have in order to be financially secure?” The quick answer is often “$1 billion in the bank.”

Many people talk about doing social good, creating social impact, and many of them have the means to do it. Some who run foundations will get their foundation to be involved, but foundations usually do not spend time on small-scale prototypes, and many rich people do not seem to be financially secure enough to part with some money.

I’ve met public servants earning more than US$1 million dollars a year, refusing to support an educational project for local youths and who pointed me to government grants which either take too long to apply for, or simply are not the right match.

If you are in the business of fund-raising, you often get this common reply: “I’ll donate more next time when I have more money.” Boston College did a study on the Fears of the Super Rich, and found that even people with an average net worth of US$78 million are dissatisfied with their sizable fortunes .

So if you think that you will donate only when you are rich, the question you should ask yourself is, how much money do you need before you can consider yourself rich?

Social Enterprises – Really that Social?

When Social Entrepreneurship came along as a new and shiny concept , many people jumped on board. Many entrepreneurs like the idea of creating business that does good at the same time. Fundamentally, the very concept of a social enterprise is flawed. Companies pay taxes, and the taxes go to schools and roads. So, does that make all companies social enterprises? What's more, when examining these concepts in practice, flaws are even further exposed. At the bottom of the social pyramid, the needs of the more similar people's needs are similar. 

Poorer communities need basics like food, shelter and clean water. If you can sell to meet the needs of one community, you can also sell to others. As such, many enterprises that sell to one poor community will try to scale-up and sell to others. However, when a startup scales, it runs into problems. It can lose its ability to be nimble. It can become bureaucratic, and communication with the ground level can suffer. Social projects that scale too quickly often fail. When scaled too quickly, many social enterprises which may have seen success in the small scale may even lose their social impact and cause social harm.

Microfinance is a good social idea that allows poor people to have basic financial services. Recipients of microfinance could start a small business and are less likely to pull their kids out of school due to economic reasons.

However, many people take the simple idea of giving loans to the poor and twist it to make it very profitable. Payday lenders are getting popular in many poorer parts of the country and each year, about 12 million Americans incur long-term debt by taking out a short-term loan that is intended to cover borrowers' expenses until they receive their next paycheck. This causes many people to slip out of the middle class. Some of the lower income borrowers may pay up to 400% per annum in interest rates, causing up to 40% of them to default and push them closer to poverty .

Many people want to do good. Some want to help one person at a time, and others want to change the world. Helping one person at a time creates intimacy, but some fear that the blunder may get personal, and even when it succeeds, it does not change anything in the big picture. Trying to change the world may be ambitious, cleaner and more abstract. But success is distant and unlikely, so people who attempt this often taste a noble failure.

I’ve met many people and learnt from many mentors, some even younger than me, trying to do good. Learning from their experience, models and failures, I realize that many people may not know the best way of doing good. Some do it because of their religions; others may like the feeling of helping someone. Everyone has their reasons. As I look at the result of their project, I realize that many people doing the same thing and getting the same results may come up with different conclusion of success or failure. Nevertheless, what matters most is the real impact of the effort. Is it moving in the right direction?

I have worked on many projects in the past 15 years. It is interesting to me that my perspective has changed in these years, and some projects which I’ve considered a success in the past, are failures to me now. My failures taught me a lot, and even if I cannot convince you about what you should do, let me at least share what not to do.

Why We Fail at Helping

Charities and non-profits have been around for many years and charities seem to get bigger with record donations received almost every year. Yet, the problem of poverty seems to be getting worse.

There are many attempts at making charities more efficient after complains about how the bulk of money donated to the non-profits is going towards administrative costs and not to the beneficiaries. Some people think that applying for-profit business management techniques and using business matrices to measure efficiency is a good idea, but sometimes, it does cause other issues.

Traveling Overseas to Help? Whom are you Helping?

“Voluntourism” is getting popular, but there are many ways to smell foul. All over the internet, you can find articles about how ineffective short-term voluntourism trips to developing nations are, but many people still engage in them.

I have been guilty of volunteering for some NGOs to organize some of these trips, and after visiting the location and looking at the actual activities the volunteers will do, I was appalled.

Yes, I’m talking about the short trips where professionals or students visit Nairobi to build orphanages, and up with a short trip to Rift Valley taking photos with the wildlife to prove it. There are too many examples where people visit Haiti to build schools, or visit communities in the rural communities in Latin America to teach English for a few days, and end up visiting exotic sites.

Even in local communities, people with the best intentions may visit orphanages or mentally challenged children, but after bonding with a child, their leaving may sometimes cause more harm to the child’s psychological growth. And when you bring such good intentions overseas, some organizations do exploit the people or communities they pretend to help and ending up doing more harm than good.

The idea of service learning is good, doing meaningful community service with instructions and reflection can enrich the learning experience. However, many people are ill-prepared and lack the necessary tools to be effective. Yet they would like to believe that their presence (not their money) would make a lifelong difference in a child’s life.

A common response after doing a voluntourism trip is: “I was heartbroken to see how life is there. It really makes me realize just how good we have it. My life will never be the same.” Many popular voluntourism trips cost a lot of money and are essentially self-fulfillment trips. It is about “you” and your experience, and giving you a different perspective. Let us not call it humanitarian work when the only person that benefits from it is “you”. 

As reported in Al Jazeera America, “As admirably altruistic as it sounds, the problem with voluntourism is its singular focus on the volunteer’s quest for experience, as opposed to the recipient community’s actual needs.” Calling a Spade – a Spade

Tourism does help the local economy, and the locals in that community do benefit in some form or other. After a disaster, visiting the disaster country, using local services, and buying local products do help the local economy. Go because the country is interesting, but do not call it altruism.

The Curse of Exclusion

There is much evidence that has shown that depression overcomes many survivors in the shelters when they have lost everything and have everything done for them. Helplessness sets in when they feel that even simple tasks such as cooking are being done for them. There are a lot of benefits to empowering survivors to participate in the relief and recovery, yet in most cases, they are being excluded.

The rebuilding process and planning is rarely done with any inputs from people living in the shelters, even though it is their homes and town that are being rebuilt.

While I do believe that NGOs are doing a good job providing shelter and food after a disaster, I feel that in many cases, volunteers can come from the shelters and these survivors can be engaged and consulted in the recovery of their own towns.

The curse of exclusion does not only apply to post-disaster recovery. In fact, this happens in many other cases when we fail to engage while we are trying to help a community.

The Power of Crowds

Communities have the ability to solve their problems.

–             They understand the problems they face better than anyone else.

–             They are not stupid and can solve many problems.

–             They don’t need pity, donations or continuous aid.

–             They must be allowed to try new ideas to get out of their bad situation and allowed to fail and learn from the experience.

Billions go into fighting poverty and yet more people fall into poverty everyday. NGOs have provided food, medicine and shelter for people, but require more and more funding as it does not address the problem. Giving food to people today does not reduce their need for food tomorrow.

Social Enterprise and social business ideas have a lot of potential, but I’ve encountered many great businesses which seem to be doing well and expanding fast but which cease to exist within two years of expansion.

Never Help; Engage, Enable, Empower & Connect

Social intervention is a lot more complex than what people make it out to be. Over occasions such as Christmas, I see many people participate in giving. They donate money, warm clothes and many other things they do not need, and feel good about it.

I have asked a few of them when they donate about their stance on social welfare, minimum wage and redistribution of income. Consistent to my research, many of these people like giving, but do not like the idea of empowering others. They believe in the bootstrap theory where the poor should work harder and pull themselves out of poverty, and those who remain poor simply do not work hard enough.

Many people do not think it is a problem that there are people working full time, yet unable to support themselves and their families, because the wages are too low. They do not see the widening income gap causing more inequality. They think poor people are lazy and are not taking accountability for their actions.

After a few long discussions, my conclusion is that many people do not want to share power. They prefer to have all the power and give a little at a time under their total control. People feel they will lose power if they share it with others.

As far as the helping goes, much of the giving is for oneself to feel good, some give it out of pity, and others give to feel positive about themselves. As far as they are concerned, the impact of the giving is not important. They also do not care who it benefits and how it benefits the beneficiaries.

Giving has been going on for decades and few beneficiaries are now in a better position even after receiving aid for many years. This is because the current system of giving does not solve the root cause and people are content to continue to give.

This system is however not very sustainable. When the economy is bad, the giving stops while more people are in need of aid. The people requiring aid continue to require aid and it often form an endless cycle.

NGOs who want to continue their existence will continue to ask for donations and maintain status quo. They will show pitiful photos of human suffering to “guilt trip” people into giving. And over the years, the situation of those who suffer does not improve, it just remains the same.





Book is available at
http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/10294

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)

It is such a disappointment that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is being repealed by the Republicans and this would certainly affect the already bad income inequality. 

It turns out that taking away health insurance from struggling families can be a windfall for the well-to-do. The top 0.1% of households—those with income of at least $3.7 million a year—would receive a tax cut of about $197,000 in 2017, on average, if the ACA is repealed, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Removing the ACA would basically remove all subsidies for insurance of the lower income families and make health insurance much more expensive for them. Sadly, many Republicans in Republican states do not like Obama, and by having right wing media calling it Obamacare, they are automatically opposed to it. 

Many people who cheered when the Republicans repeal the ACA did not realize that Obamacare and ACA is the same thing. 

Since 2010, about 20 million Americans obtained coverage and the uninsured rate has fallen by more than one-third nationally. Some of the states that saw the biggest drops in their number of uninsured helped elect Donald Trump, including West Virginia (-58.6%), Kentucky (-57.1%), Michigan (-49.3%), and Ohio (-44.7%).

I personally have friends who have recent health issues and able to afford medical care because they had insurance due to ACA.

So who benefits from the repeal of the ACA?

Abolishing the ACA gives big tax breaks to the most privileged members of our society while increasing the economic burdens on millions of working Americans—while also endangering their health.

This is no longer an issue of bipartisan or politics. If you benefit from ACA and voted for Trump, you probably will have lose your health insurance and simply pay more. Sadly, millions more will be affected by this -- millions who need lower cost heathcare insurance. The 1% that earn millions will probably benefit and everyone else will pay more for insurance.

For any reason why people hate Obamacare, repealing it would be worse for millions. If you have voted against your own benefit and you lose your health insurance, all because you listen to some  outlets media, I really hope that all will be well.

-- Robin Low

Haters will hate in 2017

Many people fear technology.  Self-Driving Cars Will Make Organ Shortages Even Worse.



Electric cars are dangerous for blind people.

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Technology is advancing by solving the current problems, and people are still against clean energy, because people working in oil and gas (and coal) will lose their jobs.

Self driving cars will make truck drivers obsolete. Uber drivers soon will not have jobs too.

When streaming videos became more popular, have they thought about how many Blockbusters will they put out of business?

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The fact is, there are always something new in the horizon. sometimes it is incremental with minor changes, and sometimes the change and wipe our whole industries. Digital cameras put a lot of photo development shops out of business, and smartphones and tablets also killed the whole PDA and personal calculator market.

Online media, the kindle and other digital publishing is probably responsible for the slow down of print media.

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No matter what innovation we bring, people will be affected and we need to understand how to mitigate the effects. Automation in the near future will make a lot of manufacturing jobs obsolete. In most cases, the benefits outweigh the problems and when it is financially viable, change will happen.

No matter how good your solutions to the problems are, the haters will hate. Sometimes they do so because they felt offended as they did not come out with the solution themselves and are jealous, and other times, they are affected by the progress you have made, and they don't want to adapt.

People who think they are creating good social impact should focus more on the impact and less on how others view them. If you want to please everyone, sometimes, progress is impeded. As a result, more people are harmed in the long run.

No matter what you do, Haters will hate. So keep calm and carry on, do what you think is good and keeps you happy.

-- Robin Low

Can we learn resilience and empathy?

I've encountered many people who are psychologically fragile, breaking down after facing the slightest of stress. Some people get depressed after their first basic failure. It has became a problem now, as more and more people seemed to be more fragile than ever.

I've also met people who lack empathy. Not to be confused with pity of course. Empathy is often confused with pity, sympathy, and compassion, which are each reactions to the plight of others. Pity is a feeling of discomfort at the distress of one or more sentient beings, and often has paternalistic or condescending overtones.

Unfortunately, in my experience working in disaster relief and recovery, I've met many people preying on pity when they go about fundraising. Some volunteers and donations are also given out of pity, making the disaster survivors not only losing their physical possessions, but also their dignity.

As an entrepreneur, I've always been challenged the boundaries of what people do not think would be possible. Sometimes they are right, however, I would have to test some of my assumptions, and fail. In the process, I do learn a lot, and I understand the topic better.

I've been running Dreamity - Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for kids for years, and many people want me to do a "Social Entrepreneurship for kids". I've tried a simple workshop and found that many kids aged 8 - 12 today lack the ability to feel for others and mentally put themselves in their place. There are a lot of challenges to get them to innovate around donations and volunteerism as some of them were trained from young to do things and think a certain way.

After running the Bootcamp for a few years, I also realize that many of the kids do not have the ability to cope with failure. Some simply give up and NEVER want to try again, while others get really depressed.

Actually, I would say that even though the kids can't cope with failure, the feeling does not last, and as long as they want to learn, with proper guidance, they can grow to be more resilient.

It is possible to work on resilience. After reading a few papers by Garmezy, I learn the following. Whether you can be said to have it or not largely depends not on any particular psychological test but on the way your life unfolds. If you are lucky enough to never experience any sort of adversity, we won’t know how resilient you are.

Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity


Empathy is also trainable. Through roleplaying and engagement with others, you can get to learn how others feel when an event happen. Without empathy, it is hard to find sustainable solutions. Sadly, these are life skills not taught in school, with no written exams, and parents do not put high priority, and as a result, countries like Singapore does see a fair share of suicides from exam stress.

I would like to work on some solutions and workshops for resilience and empathy and people to work on these important life skills from a young age.

If anyone would like to work on these, feel free to contact me.

-- Robin Low


By the way, my book, Good Intentions Are Not Enough: Why We Fail at Helping Others is out on the shelves now.

Ease and Convenience does not drive results.

My book will be launch tomorrow, and I've already been giving several talks on Social Impact.

The most common respond I commonly get is, "Getting real impact is very hard. Can we just donate instead?"

Is this is the state of mind we have now?

Do we require everything to be easy and convenient?

Sadly, this is probably a reason why the current solutions do not really address the problems the world faces. Its because many people don't really think about social impact of their actions.

Many people want to help, they donate to large organizations for disaster relief, they donate to programs to support kids living in poverty. Some people even volunteered and visited the recipients of their aid.

I have met some good Christians who donated their time and effort to support the elderly and helped cook meals and cleaned the homes.

Many people however did it out of duty, or did it out of convenience. When you do not think about the problem, and assume the dollars or even actions you have done is enough to solve the issues the recipients are facing, you are often wrong.

Social intervention does create an impact, but not always positive.

When you help, you life decision for others.

The recipients often do not ask for help, and when you force your "help" on them, you may make them feel helpless and dependent.

Sometimes when you help, you do things for your own convenience, because you don't take joy or pride in whatever you do. Your only excuse is, "Well, I'm still better than most people who are doing nothing."

When you help, you exclude the locals and make decisions for them.

When the initiative fails, you blame the recipients for not taking initiative.

If you want real results, it is not going to be easy.

Just like starting a business or becoming a successful athlete, it takes time and effort to yield results.

There are multitudes of problems we face today, many are created by man, and they all have solutions, but we have yet to found them. Instead, we often look of convenient solutions to patch the problems and continue to patch as we go along.

The problems are getting more serious as time passes and apathy, complains and protests do not solve problems.

We need to take ownership and work with communities, support these initiatives and work towards sustainable change. There are solutions out there, solutions to many problems we face today, but everyone wants to pretend to be a savior to solve the problems, when they need to consult the locals who face the problems and know the situation best.

Lets find some time to contribute our capabilities, skills and resources towards disruptive activities which create real social impact. Lets explore the boundless possibilities and test solutions to make this happen.

We all live on the same planet. Lets create a brighter future for all.

-- Robin Low