light bulb | david damberger’s TED talk

here is an inspired TED talk by david damberger titled: “what happens when an ngo admits failure.” it's a battle cry for nonprofits and ngos to start publicly taking responsibility for their mismanagement failures in order to help the development industry succeed across the board.  it points out how the dominant trend in development is to set an agenda based on what donors want instead of the actual need of the communities they serve.  damberger also discusses the need for development to be sustainable—focused on software instead of just hardware—and he give examples of the past failures of his organization engineers without borders.  if you are passionate about seeing positive change and you work in the development field or donate time and resources to a development organization this is an important talk to listen to. donors have the power.

i stand behind this issue because i believe in order for the development industry to succeed, it must work together. listen to the TED talk here.

here is the development sounding board for admitting failures so that other ngos can avoid the same mistakes: http://www.admittingfailure.com/

“all my successes have been built on my failures.” – benjamin disraeli

                                         image | vintage glass lamps via | san francisco bay girl