COMMON GROUND CONSULTING LLC

Job Opening: International Development

I'm fortunate to be able to work often with the amazing folks at the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC).  As they're expanding their important work, they've just announced an opening in their Vermont headquarters. The Director of Business Development leads new opportunity development, with an emphasis on government resources, and ensures that revenue goals are met across ISC programs.

The position is responsible for intelligence-gathering, opportunity analysis, and proposal development of the highest quality. In coordination with ISC’s program team, the position supports the successful development of innovative and high-impact programs consistent with ISC’s strategic direction.

Responsibilities Include:

• Preparing an annual business development plan that meets revenue and performance targets, and supports the realization of program strategies.
• Directing and coordinating donor intelligence-gathering, opportunity analysis, and pre-proposal preparation to position ISC for winning proposals.
• Leading the proposal development process from USG and other government donors; managing cross-institutional teams to support project design and ensuring highest quality proposal submissions.
• Networking with key stakeholders (donor, partner organizations, etc.) to leverage funding opportunities consistent with program goals.
• Cultivating and recruiting a global network of external experts and potential staff to support assessment, design, proposal writing, and project leadership.
• Ensuring the smooth operation of business development activities: overseeing budget, systems, training, and staff needed to achieve business development strategy.

To Apply

Please submit cover letter, resume, and salary history with last name, first initial, and position title in the subject line to: [email protected]. Only applicants selected for an interview will be contacted.

Apply for an Echoing Green Fellowship (Updated)

This year, Common Ground is acting as a search partner for the Echoing Green Foundation. We've had the pleasure of working directly with EG for more than 15 years, as well as with several of their fellows, including George Soros who founded Building Tomorrow. We're working closely with George and his team on a strategic growth plan and just returned from Uganda, where his organization is about to finish building its 10th primary school.

To accelerate social change, Echoing Green invests in and supports outstanding emerging social entrepreneurs to launch new organizations that deliver bold, high-impact solutions. Through a two-year fellowship program, they help their network of visionaries develop new solutions to society’s most difficult problems.

These social entrepreneurs and their organizations work to solve deeply-rooted social, environmental, economic, and political inequities to ensure equal access and to help all individuals reach their potential. To date, Echoing Green has invested nearly $30 million in seed funding to almost 500 social entrepreneurs and their innovative organizations.

Echoing Green unleashes next generation talent to solve the world’s biggest problems. Through their Fellowship program, they identify promising social entrepreneurs with bold ideas and provide them with up to $90,000 in seed funding, strategic support, leadership development, and a powerful community of nearly 500 other Fellows and Alumni.

Echoing Green is particularly excited to announce a new hands-on approach to preparing applicants from groups underrepresented in their recent classes, This is intended to help them to stand out in the application process—local developing country social entrepreneurs, U.S. Latinos, women, and African-Americans.

View the Application Questions:

The 2012 Echoing Green Fellowship application short answer questions are now available online. While the application doesn’t open until December 5, 2011, the questions and help text are available to give applicants a head start.

 

Register for a Webinar:

As part of our effort to increase the pool of talent and bold ideas we see each year, we're introducing four new webinars specifically designed for women, African-Americans, U.S.-based Latinos, and local leaders from developing countries. During these webinars, past Fellows from these communities will give advice on how to put your best foot forward.

11/29, 4:00-5:00 pm EST - Opportunities and Challenges for Local Leaders from Developing Countries in Social Entrepreneurship

11/30, 10:00-11:00 am EST - Opportunities and Challenges for U.S. Latino Social Entrepreneurs

12/1, 10:00-11:00 am EST - Opportunities and Challenges for Female Social Entrepreneurs

12/1, 4:00-5:00 pm EST - Opportunities and Challenges for African-American Social Entrepreneurs

 

Click to Watch the General Information Webinar Video (Recorded 10/27/11)

Help Spread the Word

- Forward this post to friends and colleagues working in social change

- Share via Twitter: #EG2012Fellowship questions are out! Get a head start before the application opens on Dec 5. http://ht.ly/7owKg #socent #fellowships

- Share via Facebook: 2012 Echoing Green Fellowship questions are out! Get a head start on your application for social change. http://ht.ly/7owKg

International Park(ing) Day 2011

For the past six years, on September 16th, advocates, planners, bureaucrats and artists have joined forces to create mini pop-up parks in curbside spaces, generally reserved for cars. All this is part of a global movement called “Park(ing) Day” which uses these fun new public spaces to call attention to what is ordinarily a touchy subject for cities. Parking, how much to have and what to charge for it is right up there as a third rail issue for city and transportation officials.

Park(ing) Day showcases the myriad of alternate uses for curbside spaces and open lots, and creates a public dialogue about how we use this space, and what we should fairly charge for it.

At Common Ground, we're grateful to have added the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) as a client this year. We've now worked with them in seven countries and have seen the powerful impact of their important work.

Skip to the complete list of locations where ITDP has assisted with Park(ing) Day activities or download the press release about ITDP’s Park(ing) Day activities

It is clear that parking policy, if it exists at all, is currently an afterthought rather than central to a long-term congestion mitigation and air quality. This makes parking unreliable for motorists and inefficient for cities. Motorists circle endlessly to find an available spot at the curb. Retail employees park in front of their stores for the entire day, taking choice parking locations away from potential customers. Developers are compelled to provide more parking than the market requires, which hurts their bottom line. And traffic managers encounter difficulty handling traffic generated by new parking as there is often no link between parking price, supply and the amount of available road space.

In cities in the developing world the issues are complicated further by governments’ failure to crack down on bad parking behaviors including illegal parking, especially on sidewalks, or illegal valet operations.

At the end of the day, we all pay, as hidden subsidies on parking encourage over reliance on private car use—a major, growing contributor to global warming and air pollution.

Many cities try to build their way out of the problem, thinking the solution is just a few more spaces away. But the issue is not lack of supply; it’s lack of appropriate management and enforcement.

Climate Change is Real (Rick Perry!)

As many of you know, I've been working with the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) for many years now. Today, my friend (and their president) George Hamilton, released an important letter about climate change. Please read his note and check out the video.

Dear Friends,

There has been much debate in the media lately about whether or not the extreme weather events we’ve been having are caused by climate change.

I say it doesn’t matter.

 

This year, record-breaking rainfall, drought,  and wildfires followed record-breaking floods, landslides, and tornadoes which followed record-breaking snowfall. All over the world.

The fact is 97% of publishing climate scientists agree that climate change is occurring and is caused primarily by human activities. And a changing climate will mean more frequent and more cataclysmic weather events for all of us.

So whether or not the overwhelming drought in Russia, the catastrophic tornadoes in Missouri, the intense wildfires in Texas, or the devastating floods in my home state of Vermont were each caused by climate change doesn’t really matter.

This is just a sample of what our future will look like if we don’t take action today.

Tomorrow, the Climate Reality Project is inviting people all over the world to share the reality of the climate crisis. People living with the impacts of climate change will tell their story through a presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once an hour for 24 hours, in every time zone around the globe. You can watch at 7pm in your time zone atwww.climaterealityproject.org.

I hope you’ll join me in telling the world that we know climate change is real – and that we can do something about it. We can reduce the impact by taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We can help communities adapt and become more resilient to climate impacts. We can think and act creatively to turn this challenge into an opportunityto build a better world for future generations.  Local action matters.

Let's go do it.

Warmly,

George Hamilton

President, the Institute for Sustainable Communities

ISC on the PBS NewsHour

As many of you know, the Institute for Sustainable Communities has been a client of Common Ground for many years. In recent years, they've been very active on climate issues—work that has been dovetailing with some of our new work with the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

Last night, PBS’s NewsHour aired a short segment on the tremendous cost that China’s industrial growth—largely fueled by coal—has had on the environment. As a result, China now generates more greenhouse gasses than any other country.

 

ISC’s Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) Academy in Guangdong was highlighted as one solution. With a second site in Jiangsu, their Academies will train 4,000 factory managers each year.

Through efforts like these, ISC is helping both the United States and China accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy, reign in energy use, and achieve significant reductions in toxic pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

PS: ISC’s annual countdown to Earth Day is well underway. This year they’re highlighting 22 of the many partners who help us do exceptional, innovative work around the world.

Global Youth Service Day is April 15th

Global Youth Service Day (April 15-17) is an annual campaign that celebrates and mobilizes the millions of children and youth who improve their communities each day of the year through service and service-learning. Established in 1988, Global Youth Service Day is the largest service event in the world, and the only day of service dedicated to children and youth. GYSD is celebrated each year in over 100 countries.

Each year, millions of children and youth around the world work together with schools, youth organizations, nonprofits, community and faith-based organizations, volunteer and national service programs, government agencies, faith communities, and other individuals to address the world’s most critical issues and change their communities on Global Youth Service Day.

GYSD Partners

Global Youth Service Day is organized by Youth Service America and its Global Youth Service Network, which includes:

Sponsors: State Farm, UnitedHealthcare, Disney, Sodexo, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and Learn and Serve America

International Partners: 50+ Global Partners, 10 Regional Partners, dozens of Country Partners, and hundreds of Local Organizers

U.S. Partners: 150+ National Partners, 75 GYSD Lead Agencies, 13 Semester of Service Organizers, and hundreds of YSA Grantees and Local Organizers

GYSD 2010 Highlights

During the weekend of April 23-25, 2010 millions of youth participated in thousands of service and service-learning initiatives in order to improve their communities.

• Volunteers participated on 6 continents.
• 3,091 projects registered on GYSD.org.
• 648 grants disbursed to youth, nonprofits and schools, totaling $716,000.
• Thousands of media placements with close to 2 billion media impressions.
• 1,165 local, state, and federal government officials with 35 state proclamations; 27 co-sponsors for the U.S. Senate resolution; 44 co-sponsors for the U.S. House resolution.

World Health Day

Today is World Health Day, an event held on the 7^th April every year since 1950 to mark the founding of the World Health Organisation and an opportunity to draw worldwide attention to a subject of major importance to global health.

Antimicrobial resistance: no action today no cure tomorrow

This year the World Health Organisation has devoted World Health Day toantimicrobial resistance. This is a problem that is becoming more widespread as bacteria, viruses and parasites develop resistance to antibiotic. Antibiotics and antimicrobial drugsa have changed human history since their introduction in the 1940s, reducing the burden of major diseases such as syphilis, tuberculosis (TB), and leprosy. But in a statement on the WHO website Margaret Chan raises the prospect of a “post-antibiotic era, in which many common infections will no longer have a cure and will, once again, kill unabated.” This statement underlines the urgency of the issue in malaria and TB in particular –  resistance to the latest generation of malaria drugs has been detected and although worldwide deaths from TB are declining, the WHO reports that nearly half a million people last year developed multidrug resistant TB. (This videohighlights the effect of drug-resistant TB in Kazakstan, Lesotho and the Philippines).

A major factor contributing to the growth of antimicrobial resistance is the inappropriate use of medicines and this features in the six point policy package that the WHO proposes to encourage governments to take the right measures to tackle the problem. The package emphasizes the need to regulate medicine use and ensure that patients gain uninterrupted access to essential medicines, to enhance infection prevention and control, as well as developing comprehensive national financial plans, strengthening laboratory and surveillance capacity, and help foster innovation and research into new tools to deal with the problems.

 

Earth Hour 2011

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Only a year later and Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries/territories participating. Global landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, CN Tower in Toronto, Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and Rome’s Colosseum, all stood in darkness, as symbols of hope for a cause that grows more urgent by the hour.

In March 2009, hundreds of millions of people took part in the third Earth Hour. Over 4000 cities in 88 countries/territories officially switched off to pledge their support for the planet, making Earth Hour 2009 the world’s largest global climate change initiative.

On Saturday 27 March, Earth Hour 2010 became the biggest Earth Hour ever. A record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Asia Pacific to Europe and Africa to the Americas switched off. People across the world from all walks of life turned off their lights and came together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.

Earth Hour 2011 will take place on Saturday 26 March at 8.30PM (local time). This Earth Hour we want you to go beyond the hour, so after the lights go back on think about what else you can do to make a difference. Together our actions add up.

 

Visit our Beyond the Hour platform to share your stories and to get inspiration from the actions our supporters have shared with us already.

Earth Hour is organized by WWF. With almost 5 million supporters and a global network in over 100 countries/territories, it’s one of the world's largest and most respected independent conservation organizations. WWF’s mission is to stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment and build a future where people live in harmony with nature.

Glimpse Correspondents Program

The Glimpse Correspondents Program is for talented writers and photographers with a passion for storytelling and a knack for finding truly unique stories. The program is open to anyone who will be working, volunteering, or studying outside of their home country for at least 10 weeks.

And it is super cool!

Glimpse believes that independent travelers, particularly those who spend significant time abroad, have a unique and often overlooked opportunity to effect positive change around the world. This begins with bearing witness to place, people, culture, and especially the stories and struggles that might otherwise go unrecorded.

Glimpse is a worldwide program powered by Matador and supported in part by the National Geographic Society. Glimpse connects young writers, journalists, photographers, and filmmakers with professional editors who help them develop their storytelling voice and media skills.

Correspondents receive the following benefits:

• $600 stipend
• Support from a team of professional editors
• Career training in writing and photography
• Guaranteed publication on Glimpse.org and Matador Network

To learn more about the Correspondents Program, check out the program requirements, frequently asked questions, and the program dates and deadlines .

Applications for the Fall 2011 Correspondents Program are now open! You can apply here for the program.

Traveling Lifts the Soul

Mark Twain once famously said that: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”

And as I take my last short flight home from New York's JFK airport, I can't think of a better way to put it.

Working with two clients, I was able to visit seven new countries (if you include Hong Kong) and see parts of the world I had only imagined until now—Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, India, and Nepal.

Each place was so amazing, so unique. I can't imagine how I'll be able to share all of the stories. I'm really grateful to be able to do what I do. When I'm traveling for work, it means I'm doing what I love—helping social justice organizations make the world more fair and more just; and working everyday with people whose stories inspire the imagination.

I wish that I could share the sense of awe that I seem to experience almost everyday. There are days, of course, when I wake up exhausted, longing for my own bed and a simpler routine. But, it doesn't take long before I'm aching to go exploring once again—new cities, new faces, new food!

With this last adventure, I've now visited a new country for ever year I've been on the planet. For me, the longing to see the world started when I was an exchange student at sixteen. It's never stopped and I hope it never will.