Corporate Social Investment

The Corporate Social Investment (CSI) in Education Conference was held last weekend. All the major players in the effort to address the crisis were there - corporations, other NGOs, the government. The event was held, in part, in township classrooms, which I thought was really, really cool. These girls were playing this neat form of jump-rope outside the room in which the lecture on "Trends in CSI" was held.

The entire spirit of the conference was different from any of those I've attended before and as a result, rather than passing someone your business card and making nervous, smallish conversation with them over canapés, I actually formed real friendships with people there, including the Chief Advisor to the Chairman of the National Department of Education. His name was Martin.

I told him that I thought government should pay effective community-based NGOs to help them reach their benchmarks for education in poor communities, rather than the current top-down model. He liked the idea because we figured - grassroots NGOs have intimate community knowledge and the trust of the community, but they sometimes lack the big picture and always struggle for funding; on the other hand, government has a great view of the big picture and a ton of money but lack the knowledge and trust of individual communities and in part as a result of this, and the limitations of a one-size-fits-all methodology, its interventions meet a ton of resistance.

I mean, honestly, what do I know.

But Martin said he'd talk to his colleague about it.

I also met the head of Absa Bank - South Africa. I learned from her that, because it's against Muslim spiritual laws, Absa neither charges nor pays interest. Cool, huh?