gaia x Guatemala
The NGO and international development ‘industry’ suffers from skepticism in certain circles, and for good reasons. There is much to say about ethics and efficiency regarding general NGO practices, such as destinations of donations; the absence of evaluations of actual needs in help-receiving areas and of evaluations of completed projects; the lack of abiding by codes of conduct; and the distorted relationships with and dependencies on donors, donor countries and host countries. Due to the catastrophic effects that they may have, these practices are in serious need of re-evaluation and redesign. For those of you who are skeptic about such skepticism, I advise you to read the book De Crisiskaravaan by Linda Polman.
Research journalist Linda Polman writes about deplorable states of affairs in national crisis situations and the often distorted, arguably unethical relationships between donor countries, receiving countries, victims, refugees, warlords, local and international NGOs and media in these crisis situations. Even though gaia does all but pretend to have the solution for such grand-scale unethical practices in the NGO sector (gaia focuses on small-scale projects), lessons for the development of the gaia platform can nevertheless be drawn from the statements and experiences described by Polman.
The gaia platform is a peer-to-peer platform for giving and collaborating, which is currently in an early stage of development. In order to best design the platform in terms of technology and user experience, and to make sure that the features of the platform are built on the principles of needs-based, bottom-up, transparency, efficiency, collaboration and advanced technology, the gaia team is conducting extensive research. Up until today, due to the lack of necessary resources, the research has mostly been secondary, meaning that it is based on conversations with (ex-)employees of NGOs or international development organizations, books (such as De Crisiskaravaan), articles, online databases (data analysis), and the experiences of our friend Félix, who has been making most of his expertise — cooking — in Guatemala, to help victims of the eruption of the Fuego volcano that took place in June 2018.
From the moment of his arrival in Guatemala, Félix has been providing help according to the gaia principles: his ‘projects’ are born from local needs; he collaborates with locals in order to make his help as sustainable and well-suited as possible; and his help is peer-to-peer and efficient, as he is not contracted by any NGO but rather motivates other backpackers or locals to join his projects. Félix has been confirming the potential added value of the gaia platform in his and similar situations: a platform on which locals and skilled travelers are assisted in launching projects for the benefit of themselves or their communities; in efficiently establishing collaborations with other locals or travelers; and in efficiently collecting (earmarked) donations for the transparent execution of these projects.
The best way to explore and evaluate how a platform, based on advanced technologies such as AI, could help locals and travelers to set up small-scale projects and find donors, is to go and research first hand. By going to Guatemala, the gaia team aims to explore the practices of international and local NGOs in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption; to generally evaluate the results of these practices through accounts of residents of the affected area; to explore and experience Félix’s innovative peer-to-peer approach and its effectiveness; and to draw lessons from these explorations in order to effectively design the features of the gaia platform. Our practices and experiences will be made into a documentary.
From Oct 5 — Nov 1, you will be able to follow the experiences and findings of the gaia team on the blog www.medium.com/journey-to-gaia and Instagram www.instagram.com/moveforgaia. Updates of Félix’s projects are available on www.instagram.com/felixcooksforguatemala.
Are you willing to support Felix’s mission? Donate to https://bunq.me/gaiaforguatemala (iDeal) or https://www.paypal.me/gaiaforguatemala (PayPal).
