posted by: taiwanaid
November 27 (Friday), 2015 09:00-17:30
By Anthony Carlisle
Over 40 leaders of civil society, business and government took part in a workshop organized by Taiwan AID – the alliance of Taiwanese NGOs engaged in overseas aid – at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei on Thursday, November 27, 2015, on the "Private Sector in International Aid". The workshop was graced by not one, but two keynote speakers, both from Japan.
The first speaker was Mr. Koichi Kaneda, who is the CSR Head of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. Mr. Kaneda has previously worked in government relations for Sony Corp., the economic section of the US Embassy in Tokyo, Bloomberg Television, and Daiwa Securities Group. Kaneda is actively involved in Japanese civil society, serving as an advisor to Japan Platform, an intermediary NGO for emergency relief, as director of the Japan NPO Center and as chair of the subcommittee on corporate philanthropy at Keidanren.
The second speaker Mr. Takeshi Tomino, Deputy Secretary General of the Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC), has 15 years of experience working in the corporate world. He joined JANIC in 2005. Mr. Tomino is an expert in creating partnerships between NGOs, corporations, unions, and local governments; public relationships and fundraising.
Opening
Taiwan AID chairperson, Rebecca Wang, said Taiwan’s annual fundraising market is in the range of NT$54 billion (US$1.7b). Three keywords to raise money are “Taiwan”, “children”, and “hungry” so it is hard to fundraise for international work. Wang said that is why we are looking to the corporate sector. Similarly corporations need to look beyond disaster and aid relief, and consider sustainable development.
Former minister of foreign affairs James CF Huang (黃志芳), said MOFA established the NGO committee in recognition of the importance of NGOs in international development. The next step will be to engage the corporate sector. Taiwan has world-class NGOs, yet we share common problems. With the help of the corporate sector, Taiwanese NGOs can become more active and influential.
Ambassador Diego L. Chou (周麟) new executive director of MOFA’s NGO international affairs department. Founded in 2000 parallel to the development of democracy and the rapid growth of civil society in Taiwan, the department has worked to act as a platform to connect Taiwan’s NGOs with international society.
Although the government is only able to provide 10 percent of funding for overseas NGO development work, Ambassador Chou hoped the corporate sector could come in to help Taiwan’s NGOs bring their work to needy corners of the world.
Keynote Speech 1
Koichi Kaneda is the CSR head of CCPA at the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, which was founded in 1781. Takeda is the biggest pharmaceutical company in Asia and the 17th largest in the world. As Takeda expands into emerging markets, the company has to pay attention to sustainable development.
Takeda’s CSR strategy has three aspects: first, basic provision of good products and services; second, good business behavior; and third, corporate citizenship activities that bring value to society and business.
Takeda uses NGOs and other intermediary bodies such as JANIC or Taiwan AID to interact with society. Social investments or “gives” include direct donations, human resources, products, information, advertising and purchasing power. The relationship between the corporation and society is not just through financial contributions, but other assets.
In terms of the “take” factor, NGOs can help corporations make appeals to the public, mitigate risk, information on emerging market trends, employee motivation through volunteering programs, recruitment of graduates who are looking for a responsible company as priority career choice.
Takeda divides its CSR activities by non-communicable and communicable diseases, and human resources and research and development activities. The Takeda cooperation with Plan International focuses on both kinds of diseases with an emphasis on human resources development.
Activities include AIDS/HIV prevention in Thailand, healthcare support for children in the Philippines, village sanitation programs in Indonesia and nutrition for children in China. Through Plan Japan local Plan offices initiated programs according to local needs. Takeda did not need to micromanage each program.
On the input, output and outcome, impact reporting scale, Takeda asked Plan not only for inputs (how much money and resources were invested) and outputs (the direct results of the activities), but also asked Plan to provide outcomes (changes in behavior and positive effects on the target group) and impact (benefits for society as a whole). Wherever possible Takeda asked Plan to provide figures to back up these indicators. The program was a five-year plan because Takeda wanted to see lasting outcomes and impacts. If the model worked, other companies could imitate it.
Inputs were an average of ¥12 million (US$100,000) for each of the four projects. Impact was measured mainly by how the programs were reproduced in other villages and whether recipients had taken over the programs and had started raising funds or paying for services themselves. Outcomes included the decrease in the number of diarrhea patients, how many children have a balanced diet and have stopped snacking, and increased knowledge about prevention of STDs.
Some companies in Japan have started considering SROI (social return on investment).
Case Study Sharing 1
In case study section chaired by Professor Guan Youyuan, Zhongzheng University three local foundations shared their experiences of working on overseas aid.
Yang Shunmei (楊順美), senior advisor at the Fubon Foundation, introduced two projects supported by Fubon in partnership with World Vision in Africa and China. The program in China to aid orphanages for mentally disabled children has resulted in the publication of a handbook on early intervention programs for children with development delay.
Gong Tianxing (龔天行), director of World Vision Taiwan spoke about how his annual budget of US$100m, around half is invested at home and half abroad. World Vision Taiwan supports 50,000 local children in Taiwan – inviting all of them to spend the night in Taipei for a Christmas year-end gathering.
Leo Lin (林明宏), executive director of the Haoran Foundation. Taiwan’s GDP fell by 1% this year, but despite negative growth fundraising is up by 3-5%. The government plans to tax overseas aid.
In addition to the three-way relationship between the government, NGOs and business, there is an interlocking triangle of public owned corporations, government organized NGOs, and social enterprises. The definitions of the points of this hidden triangle are controversial: for example, what classifies as a social enterprise?
Haoran’s global partnership grant offers money to NGOs to develop cooperative projects overseas in Japan, the Philippines, Germany, the UK and other countries. The results of these programs help Taiwanese NGOs raise their capacity.
Haoran also sends volunteers from Taiwan, China and Hong Kong overseas to learn about social enterprise, organic farming and other techniques. Although they all come from a Chinese ethnic background, volunteers from the three areas will come away with different perspectives, adding to the depth of Haoran’s discovery.
Keynote Speech 2
In the afternoon session, Takeshi Tomino, deputy secretary general of JANIC introduced the requirements for joining JANIC. Members include Plan, World Vision and Save The Children. The 130 supporting members are divided into NGOs and private enterprises, including Toshiba, Sony and many of the largest corporations in Japan. While JANIC is an NGO, other sectors including businesses can join.
JANIC has four main activities: (1) to facilitate policy advocacy on global issues, including regular dialogue with the government; (2) promote citizen participation in NGOs, because ordinary people in Japan do not understand what NGOs are doing; (3) encourage dialogue between NGOs and other sectors in society; and (4) strengthen the capacity of NGOs and the promotion of social responsibility initiatives – since most NGOs in Japan are small and do not have the ability to organize trainings and other capacity building programs.
Expanding on the third area of work, Tomino explained how JANIC provides opportunities to develop partnerships between NGOs and the business sector.
In Japan, civil society organizations are divided into NPOs, NGOs and volunteer organizations. NGOs are civil organizations engaged in international cooperation, while NPOs concentrate on domestic issues. Japan has an NPO Center for local issues, while JANIC is the NGO center, but there is a lot of cooperation between the two organizations.
There are more than 50,000 NPOs in Japan. Most NGOs (80%) work in Asia but the number of NGOs working in Africa is increasing because the global issues are most severe in Africa. NGOs work mainly in education (64%), healthcare (41%), agriculture and forestry (40%) and domestic education (31%).
The total annual budget for 224 NGOs is Y27.5b, so the average is more than Y100m, though 51% have a budget of less than Y20m, which shows that there are a few giant NGOs in Japan and most are very small. The top four members of JANIC are all international NGOs, and have a collective budget of nearly Y18b, including MSF, World Vision, Plan Japan, Save the Children. In fifth place Peace Winds Japan has a budget of Y2.7b.
Regarding the MDGs, although there has been good progress generally, Sub Saharan Africa will not reach most of the goals, and goal 5 on maternal health has generally failed in all areas of the world, which shows that gender inequality persists. Elsewhere although the total number of poor people has decreased there is still a big gap between the rich and the poor. Climate change and conflict also continue to worsen.
Now the world has moved on the SDGs, which developed through three streams – the Rio+20 climate change conference, the sustainable development financing line and the post-MDGs line. These were combined into one stream in 2014 and in September 2015 the UN General Assembly adopted the combined SDGs for 2015-30.
The new SDGs contain development, environment and other issues integrated into one plan. MDGs were mainly for developing countries but SDGs are for everyone. This time structural development issues are also addressed, including peace, responsible consumption and production, eliminating violence against women and children, climate change and so on. The third difference is stronger sense of ownership between industrialized and developing countries.
Importantly no country can claim the SDGs are “forced goals” because unlike the MDGs they have been decided by consensus after a three-year period of dialogue involving everyone. The MDG concept that put wealth above other indicators with the ultimate goal that developing countries would become as rich as the industrial world is also gone with a new sense of values on “sustainability”, “equality” and “human rights”.
Which goals can business contribute to? Tomino said goal 12 on responsible production and consumption, and the goals related to education and health through philanthropic activities are areas where corporations can make a contribution.
Moving to his final point, Tomino discussed how NGOs and businesses could cooperate to achieve the SDGs. Currently the relationship between the parties is “one way”, either in confrontation or support. Both are important – NGOs must monitor corporations and corporations need to sponsor NGOs. But the relationship is changing with changes to the external environment, including the new SDGs.
While one-way relationships are still important, the partnerships are becoming more interactive.
Talking about partnership, JANIC defines it as “to work together to achieve the common/shared goals, recognizing each characteristics and bring resources/capacities in order to solve global issues for the achieving of sustainable society”. The point here is partnership need common and shared goals.
But the partnership should not be the purpose, it should be the means of achieving the purpose. Both NGOs and corporations need to gain merit from the partnership, as mentioned by Kaneda in the morning, but the most important thing is to solve global issues.
Businesses and NGOs need support from the government and international organizations, as well as local enterprises, NGOs, academic institutions, and local governments to achieve win-win situations.
For example, Ricoh, Save the Children and JICA tied up to organize an aid project for children in India.
In conclusion Tomino said SDGs should be common values to be shared by all stakeholders, and as the role of business grows there is a possibility that the SDGs accelerate the partnership between NGOs and businesses, and NGOs can act as a navigator for businesses through the minefield of solving social issues.
In Q&A session, Tomino explained the role of JANIC in NGO-corporate partnerships, saying that JANIC publishes guidelines for cooperation and provides a platform for communication. Tomino recommended that Taiwan AID could create a platform or network to build mutual understanding, which is very important.
Regarding the 38 corporate members of JANIC Tomino said most are global corporations who are looking for good partners overseas. Rebecca Wang said in Taiwan the government would have to encourage businesses to invest in NGO partnerships. Tomino commented in his model of business-NGO partnerships, the Japanese government was needed to provide seed funding, feasibility studies.
On the new Development Cooperation Charter, the Japanese government has made business cooperation an important part of ODA. Tomino said while business is business, and development is development there ought to be common goals such as social impact and social investment. So while the relationship between NGOs and business is warming, the confrontational role of NGOs in monitoring businesses is still very important.
Case Study Session 2
In the final case study session chaired by YWCA Taiwan board member Li Ping (李萍) another three leaders of the corporate and civil society sector in Taiwan shared their experiences.
Jaeyoon Chung, manager of Hyundai’s China business assistance team, said Hyundai is the 39th biggest car brand in the world while Kia is the 74th. Hyundai has Green Move, Happy Move, Safe Move and Easy Move programs to promote environmental protection, skills development and other CSR services.
Hyundai’s slogan is “moving the world together”. The “skills for the future” provides education programs to young people, “Hope on Wheels” is a fundraising program, and the “Green Light” program improves schools and builds hospitals in Africa.
Chung focused on Hyundai’s CSR activities in China, where three of companies in China – Hyundai China, Beijing Hyundai, and the Headquarters – cooperate together. The process of cooperation is very complex because of the hierarchical structure within the company.
Hyundai’s vegetation program in the Mongolian dessert takes college students to plant trees for a week, living in Inner Mongolia. Students live on just three buckets of water a day. In the Happy Move program, Hyundai gives scholarships and aids poor areas to build schools, including in Zhejiang, the suburbs of Shanghai, and Guilin.
In Taiwan, Hyundai ran a traffic safety education campaign in February 2015. Worldwide Hyundai sent 7,000 volunteers to 20 countries, including 2,480 to China.
In Korea, Chung said, many businesses want to do something for society but do not know what to do. Chung suggested that we start with small programs, just do it, assess the results and work towards more ambitious projects.
You Shuzhen (游淑貞), director of the social resources department of the Taiwan Fund for Children and Families started with the homepage of TFCF’s website, which says we cannot wait for tomorrow. TFCF started by helping Taiwanese children with donations from overseas and now works in countries all over the world.
Ten years ago, TFCF started direct services in Mongolia, expanding to four other countries. In Mongolia when TFCF started a decade ago working overseas was very difficult. TFCF focuses on four key areas – living standard improvement, nutrition and health, universal education, and family home environment improvement. Gender equality in each of these is key, so girls and boys can enjoy the same right to education.
On the question of where the money comes from, You said it was not feasible to raise money in developing countries, and since population is shrinking in Taiwan, TFCF has started fundraising overseas, though at the moment the amount raised is very small. The first campaign made just NT$150,000. Over 90% of TFCF’s funding comes from Taiwan, including overseas Taiwanese businesses.
In partnerships with business, TFCF takes into consideration the needs and benefits of the corporations to ensure that the relationship is sustainable. You said it works on exposure so TFCF’s services come to the attention of businesses. Second, TFCF searches for businesses that have an interest in their services. Third, there must be a desire for the business to work together with TFCF. Finally, there will be actions between the partners.
The final presentation was by Li Dingming (李鼎銘) who is the general director of DaAi Technology, a green industry under the Tzu Chi Foundation, which is the biggest Chinese NGO in the world. Tzu Chi has 5,600 recycling stations in Taiwan which collect 450 million plastic bottles a year. These are recycled and turned into saleable products by DaAi Technology. The company has a CSR policy and has won first place in the GCCA awards. Although it is not a profit-making business, recently DaAi has produced pressure garments for burns victims together with the Sunshine Foundation to help victims of the Baxian Waterpark explosion.
In the Q&A session, Li answered a question about what to do in developing countries which do not have a recycling or even a garbage disposal system by saying the important thing was to change attitudes. Li said he had encountered resistance even in the advanced country of Singapore.
Answering a question about how Hyundai chooses partners, Chung said they went through NGOs in Korea, and used a monthly platform of businesses in Korea who meet to share CSR program experiences and seek suitable NGO partners.
Conclusion
In the wrap-up session, participants brought up issues of evaluating success, impact measurement, the problem of promoting international aid in the Taiwan market which does not have many transnational companies, finding mutual advantages between NGOs and businesses, the problem of balancing the corporate need for marketing the need to protect the identity of recipients.
In conclusion, Wang thanked the keynote speakers for sharing the experience of Japan. The workshop gave us a lot of input which will be converted into outputs, outcomes and social impacts.