Philanthropic Aid Research Articles

Calculating war, calculating peace: the Rockefeller Foundation and science research in Britain

ABSTRACT The history of reconstruction and philanthropic aid efforts in Western Europe after the Second World War ended cannot be fully understood without examining the wartime networks, scientific projects and miscalculations of Allied planners. This case study of a Rockefeller Foundation project in Second World War Britain shows that the war gave scientists studying human nutrition an opportunity to conduct research on an unprecedented scale, with an unprecedented level of government support. The war thus paradoxically extended the vitality of certain international health projects at a time when support for many public health institutions and personnel was suspended. Nutrition research projects in Britain made considerable gains in refining the measurement and definition of malnutrition during the war, yet had little access to information about the fallout from food shortages operating across the Channel in occupied territory. Planning a rational, efficient system for dealing with hunger in liberated post-war territories proved to be an elusive goal. Only with the end of war in Europe could Allied scientists begin to witness the full force and extent of starvation policies imposed on civilians and prisoners by the Nazi regime and its allies. After assessing full-fledged starvation cases in the spring of 1945, a number of researchers who had worked in wartime Britain turned to assessing nutritional deficiencies in wider populations in Western Europe. The reconstruction period in Allied-occupied Germany provided a new set of opportunities for testing the effects of civilian rationing policies.

Çatışma bağlamında hayırseverlik faaliyetleri: Suriyeli göçmenlerin iş dünyasından örnek vaka incelemesi

This paper analyzes the ways in which the expatriate Syrian business community engages in philanthropic activities to provide help to its fellow countrymen in host countries. Why and how did this group of people, after experiencing the brutal war and losing their assets and families, decide to provide a giving hand to others after relocations? And why did some others not? The mainstream media and reports usually describe the refugees as aid receivers who are disadvantaged or resourceless. However, from the case of the expatriate Syrian businesspeople who fled from Syria to its neighboring countries due to the conflict back home, there are various groups of Syrian philanthropic organizations funded by those businesspeople to give help and aid to other Syrians in the host countries. Their philanthropic aid is not limited to material goods, but also includes religious courses, education, and employee training. The paper argues that although refugees are usually considered to live in a poor or weaker position, the economically strong members (mostly businesspeople) among them can bring positive effects to the difficult humanitarian situations.

“Vibrating between Hope and Fear”: The European War and American Presbyterian Foreign Missions

Scholars have argued that World War I and its aftermath caused a rapid transformation in American global philanthropy. The decline of the American “moral empire” coincided with the rise of professional, bureaucratic, and secular philanthropy. The reasons for this transformation appear almost self-evident: the crisis greatly exceeded the capabilities of all private organizations, leading to the growth of state-supported, public, and semi-public organizations like the American Red Cross. In fact, though, mainline foreign missions grew rapidly after the war and did not decline until the Great Depression. In 1920, for instance, they combined to receive over 80 percent of Red Cross receipts. Even amid the decline of the “moral empire”, therefore, mainline foreign missions remained major sources of philanthropic aid and primary representatives of American interests abroad. This article looks at the hopes and fears of Presbyterian (USA) foreign missions in the years before American entry into the (imprecisely named) European War, in order to understand the resilience of foreign missions during a period of crisis. The war created numerous practical, financial, and conceptual challenges. But, it also inspired the mission boards to seek greater sacrifices among donors, to coordinate with other boards and the federal government, and to find alternative methods to achieve its goals. These efforts in the first half of the 1910s prefigured a nationwide transformation in ideas about service and voluntary giving. After the United States entered the war, these “social goods” became nearly obligatory in the minds of many Americans.

Doing disability through charity and philanthropy in contemporary South India

Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Hyderabad, South India, this article explores the relationship between charity and disability. Despite a stereotype of philanthropic aid as reproductive of existing power structures or symptomatic of state failures to eliminate poverty, closer investigation exposes a more multi-layered picture. Disjunctures in donor and recipient perspectives on charity are shown to create spaces in which recipients might challenge the very characterisations that allow them access to aid in the first place, revealing both the potential and the limitations of charitable aid to bring about social change for disabled people.

ASSISTING MRS TOMMY ATKINS: GENDER, CLASS, PHILANTHROPY, AND THE DOMESTIC IMPACT OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 1899–1902

AbstractDespite the well-established historiography examining the South African war's impact upon British society, little attention has been paid to the plight of British soldiers’ families or to the charitable efforts mobilized to maintain them in the absence of adequate state support. This article, focusing on the key charity in the field, the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association (SSFA), examines the SSFA's wartime policies and considers how the Association's actions influenced subsequent state policy-making. It explores the motivations and attitudes of its middle-class, mostly female, volunteers, on whose sustained commitment the work of the SSFA depended. In analysing the sources of the SSFA's funding, it considers how class and regionality shaped public giving to patriotic philanthropy. Finally, it investigates how perceptions of soldiers’ wives and mechanisms for their support in the First World War were affected by the South African war experience. Overall, the article aims both to demonstrate the importance of philanthropic aid to soldiers’ families in understanding the domestic impact of this imperial war, and to trace the longer-term effects on the development of policies towards servicemen's dependants.

Alternative financing mechanisms for ART programs in health facilities in Uganda: a mixed-methods approach

BackgroundSub-Saharan Africa is heavily dependent on global health initiatives (GHIs) for funding antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale-up. There are indications that global investments for ART scale-up are flattening. It is unclear what new funding channels can bridge the funding gap for ART service delivery. Many previous studies have focused on domestic government spending and international funding especially from GHIs. The objective of this study was to identify the funding strategies adopted by health facilities in Uganda to sustain ART programs between 2004 and 2014 and to explore variations in financing mechanisms by ownership of health facility.MethodsA mixed-methods approach was employed. A survey of health facilities (N = 195) across Uganda which commenced ART delivery between 2004 and 2009 was conducted. Six health facilities were purposively selected for in-depth examination. Semi-structured interviews (N = 18) were conducted with ART Clinic managers (three from each of the six health facilities). Statistical analyses were performed in STATA (Version 12.0) and qualitative data were analyzed by coding and thematic analysis.ResultsMultiple funding sources for ART programs were common with 140 (72%) of the health facilities indicating at least two concurrent grants supporting ART service delivery between 2009 and 2014. Private philanthropic aid emerged as an important source of supplemental funding for ART service delivery. ART financing strategies were differentiated by ownership of health facility. Private not-for-profit providers were more externally-focused (multiple grants, philanthropic aid). For-profit providers were more client-oriented (fee-for-service, insurance schemes). Public facilities sought additional funding streams not dissimilar to other health facility ownership-types.ConclusionOver the 10-year study period, health facilities in Uganda diversified funding sources for ART service delivery. The identified alternative funding mechanisms could reduce dependence on GHI funding and increase local ownership of HIV programs. Further research evaluating the potential contribution of the identified alternative financing mechanisms in bridging the global HIV funding gap is recommended.

The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development by Kevin Dougherty

Reviewed by: The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development by Kevin Dougherty Martin Ruef The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development. By Kevin Dougherty. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Pp. viii, 211. $65.00, ISBN 978-1-62846-153-4.) In November 1861 the federal occupiers of the Sea Islands off the South Carolina coast unleashed an ambitious experiment to transition several thousand slaves to freedom. Port Royal, the area’s largest harbor, was an attractive military target, offering an ideal site for the Union’s blockade of Charleston, Savannah, and Wilmington. But the Sea Islands were also a unique source of long-staple cotton, a commodity valued for its strength and utility in woven fabrics. The intervention of northern interests in the lives of the black workforce of the islands seemed to offer valuable lessons for the future of the South after a Union victory. Kevin Dougherty’s The Port Royal Experiment: A Case Study in Development departs from Willie Lee Rose’s influential treatment of Port Royal by suggesting that the events following Union occupation should not be seen as a “rehearsal for reconstruction,” but instead as a case study of institutional development that has parallels in modern nation-building efforts. Dougherty notes that there was a crucial difference between the war-era Sea Islands [End Page 185] and the postbellum South because the old planter class had fled the islands entirely, allowing Union authorities, missionary societies, and northern investors to pursue their objectives without the opposition of a recalcitrant white population. How would the development of civil society, philanthropic aid for black residents and refugees, land redistribution, and political inclusion proceed under these circumstances? The answer, Dougherty finds, is that institutional development was far more halting and contested than was anticipated. From the start, there was a lack of unity in post-combat operations, owing to the overlapping federal authority of the War and Treasury Departments. The situation was further complicated by the arrival of Gideonites and other missionaries from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, each with a competing agenda. These differences soon manifested themselves in the varied meanings that the diverse groups who came to the Sea Islands attached to “development.” The Gideonites embraced a free labor ideology that would orient former slaves toward education, family life, and wage work on former plantations. Union officers sought to maintain social order and mobilize resources for the war effort. The freedmen and freedwomen themselves wanted their own plots of land and communities that could thrive apart from the needs of northern markets. Many of these hopes were destined to end in disappointment. During the war, the plantations of the Sea Islands were confiscated by the federal government and often sold to white northern speculators. By 1870 most of the Gideonites were gone, leaving efforts to develop an educational infrastructure and civil society incomplete. Spoilers challenged the Port Royal experiment at every step. Dougherty draws analogies between these setbacks and modern peacemaking efforts. While his parallels may occasionally strike historians as anachronistic, they highlight the value of using the past to understand postwar organizing today. The Port Royal experiment reveals the difficulty of institutional development when interventions occur under conditions of profound uncertainty. Martin Ruef Duke University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

Epilepsy surgery in a developing country (Lebanon): ten years experience and predictors of outcome

We present our 10-year experience and preoperative predictors of outcome in 93 adults and children who underwent epilepsy surgery at the American University of Beirut. Presurgical evaluation included video-EEG monitoring, MRI, neuropsychological assessment with invasive monitoring, and other tests (PET, SPECT, Wada). Surgeries included temporal (54%), extratemporal (22%), and multilobar resections (13%), hemispherectomy (4%), vagal nerve stimulation (6%), and corpus callosotomy (1%). Mesial temporal sclerosis was the most common aetiology (37%). After resective surgery, 70% had Engel class I, 9% class II, 14% class III, and 7% class IV. The number of antiepileptic drugs before surgery was the only preoperative factor associated with Engel class I (p=0.005). Despite the presence of financial and philanthropic aid, many patients could not be operated on for financial reasons. We conclude that advanced epilepsy presurgical workups, surgical procedures, and favourable outcomes, comparable to those of developed countries, are achievable in developing countries, but that issues of financial coverage remain to be addressed.

‘I am well if you are well’: nervous conditions of African philanthropy in Tsitsi Dangarembga's novels

Tsitsi Dangarembga's novels provide us with ways of thinking about philanthropic practices in Africa and in the world by using the lens of the gift-as-charity in a self-help project. It becomes clear that the power structures which are animated in the act of charitable giving do create bonds of violence, instead of solidarity, where inequalities are exacerbated, instead of being lessened. Charity sometimes deepens these inequalities that bedevil any kind of project which assumes that philanthropy necessarily induces positive development. There are often clashes between the receivers and givers, all to do with largely overlooked aspirations and initiatives of the receiving as well as giving communities. The world view of the receiver is very important and more participatory and deliberative democracies need to be instituted so that the receiver of philanthropic aid does not feel insulted and disempowered ironically by the act of being upraised. A recognition that charitees might not necessarily want to develop in the ways devised by the giver is important, as overlooking that fact, and not devising ways of matching project to aspirations, creates alienation and frustration. This shows through the vindictiveness with which charitees, and even givers of charity, sometimes show to each other, when strategic interests in the gift clash. African folklore abounds with warnings about how to receive, and how to create cultures of giving and receiving that don't kill or create an abusive dependency. More than in any other cultural site, it is in the spaces of the excellently written novels of Tsitsi Dangarembga that complex African reactions to philanthropy-as-development are registered.

FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE COMPLEXITY IN THE MICROFINANCE INDUSTRY: WHICH WAY FORWARD?

The microfinance movement has gained tremendous popularity over the past 30 years, but it is still far from meeting its full potential. The industry stands at a crossroads between increased commercialisation and increased philanthropic aid. Standard economic discourse does little to resolve the debate. F. A. Hayek's concept of the‘extended order’ sheds new light on how we might understand the future development of microfinance.

Four different ways of philanthropic aid to the blind in medieval Eastern Christendom

The care of the blind, either as medical treatment or as divine therapy, has probably been the most ancient form of help for ill people. However, it was during the Byzantine Empire (325-1453 AD) that the state organized a 'blindness relief' plan as part of a widespread public health system. Our sources for the subject include medical writings, state decrees, Saint's 'vitae' and representations of relevant works of art. Based on the above data we classify the health care for the blind in Byzantium as: (a) support of ophthalmological education as evidenced by an abundance of medical writings on the subject; (b) establishment of charitable institutions exclusively or partially for the blind, where there was not only medical care but also provision for a wide range of social aid - the most advanced being specially trained escorts for each blind person; and (c) support by the state of an extended chain of religious institutions where miraculous help for the blind was promised. We conclude that the public health policy in Byzantium made adequate and very early provision for the blind.

Four different ways of philanthropic aid to the blind in medieval Eastern Christendom

SummaryThe care of the blind, either as medical treatment or as divine therapy, has probably been the most ancient form of help for ill people. However, it was during the Byzantine Empire (325 – 1453 AD) that the state organized a ‘blindness relief’ plan as part of a widespread public health system. Our sources for the subject include medical writings, state decrees, Saint's ‘vitae’ and representations of relevant works of art. Based on the above data we classify the health care for the blind in Byzantium as: (a) support of ophthalmological education as evidenced by an abundance of medical writings on the subject; (b) establishment of charitable institutions exclusively or partially for the blind, where there was not only medical care but also provision for a wide range of social aid – the most advanced being specially trained escorts for each blind person; and (c) support by the state of an extended chain of religious institutions where miraculous help for the blind was promised. We conclude that the public health policy in Byzantium made adequate and very early provision for the blind.

Schools for All: The Blacks & Public Education in the South, 1865-1877 (review)

90CIVIL WAR HISTORY and whites to determine whether racial equality or white supremacy would be the guiding philosophy behind public policies" (p 77). Otto H. Olsen Northern Illinois University Schools for All: The Blacks ir Public Education in the South, 1865-1877. By William Preston Vaughn. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky , 1974. Pp. x, 181. $12.50.) Vaughn's account of black education in the South during Reconstruction is a straightforward narrative utilizing excellent research. There are few surprises, however, for the reader familiar with black education —and the lack of it—during Reconstruction. Vaughn traces the beginning of black education during the Civil War, the white reaction to black education, the various struggles in southern states to construct school systems, the experiments in New Orleans public schools and in the University of South Carolina, the faltering attempt of Congress to legislate on education, and the segregationist nature of the Peabody Fund. Though there was the possibility of integrated schools throughout the South during Reconstruction, there were few experiments; the dim ghost of possibility haunts the book making it relevant to a society still unable to accomplish desegregation with grace. The title, Schools for All, is more hopeful than accurate; there were schools only for about 10 per cent of the southern black children during Reconstruction eventually rendering some 25 per cent literate by the end of the era. Southern whites regarded black schools, Yankee schoolmarms , and the Freedmen's Bureau with jealousy and apprehension and preferred southern white to northern teachers with, as Vaughn explains, "their preoccupation with reconstructing the South along New England lines" (p. 28). The southern white insistance on control over all aspects of black life lingered on after emancipation, and many of the northern teachers were intimidated throughout Reconstruction. Vaughn reveals that Radical southern state governments usually avoided the issue of racially mixed schools. Though the experiments in the New Orleans public schools and in the University of South Carolina both worked well in the short run, both ultimately failed as Reconstruction ended. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 had the mixed schools provision amended from it before passage ending any hope of federal support . Thus, as is well known, southern state school systems would limp along separate and unequal for generations. Neither the Peabody Fund nor other philanthropic aid would end southern illiteracy. The main virtue of this book is Vaughn's diligent research and his placing in one work the history of the beginning of black education in the South. Pete Daniel University of Massachusetts, Boston ...

Some Major Implications of the Fifth Yearbook of the Journal of Negro Education

It is not the purpose of this chapter to summarize each of the twentythree studies and discussions that constitute Parts I and II of this Yearbook, but to present certain observations and conclusions by way of general summary and by way of comment upon some of the larger aspects of the vital issues that the Yearbook opens up. The contributors deserve commendation, at the outset, upon the general evenness, clarity, and cogency of their discussions. It could be wished, however, that at least one of the selected contributors to the symposium (Part II) had been a person less closely associated with the education of Negroes than any of those represented. All of the thirteen Negro and three of the eight white contributors are, or have been, members of the administrative or teaching staffs of Negro schools or of organizations concerned exclusively with Negro education, while the other five white contributors have for a number of years been more or less closely associated with Negro education and its problems. It may be that their very closeness to the situation makes them, in spite of themselves, less objective and impersonal in their interpretations and conclusions than could be desired, and if so, that the points of view they present might be corrected or modified, for the lay reader, by comparison with the views of one or more equally competent students whose chief or sole interest is in the general American scene, without special interest in the welfare of Negroes, the education of Negroes, or philanthropic aid to the education of Negroes. Certainty of perspective, above all else, is needed when longdistance planning is being projected.