As NetHope celebrates 10 years, CEO Dr William Brindley explains how the organisation tackles issues of the developing world

IN JANUARY 2010, Dr William Brindley was on his annual “time out” cruise. It’s a period when he takes a holiday from work and, for two weeks, accedes to his wife’s urgings that he turn off his mobile phone, avoid e-mail and ignore the internet.

As the chief executive of NetHope.org, Brindley’s life revolves around technology and communications. NetHope is an unusual US-based not-for-profit that brings together 34 of the world’s leading aid and conservation organisations and many of the world’s best-known information and communications technology sector companies to tackle the problems of the developing world.

“We were just passing by Haiti – and suddenly, we were watching the earthquake on CNN, literally as we were going by,” he says. And that was that. As soon as he could get ashore, his phone was back on and he was swamped with voicemails and e-mails, asking for NetHope’s help.

Brindley was in Ireland last week for NetHope’s 10th anniversary conference – an important annual networking, learning and discussion event for the organisation, hosted by Intel and Concern and held at Intel Ireland’s conference facility in Leixlip.

About 200 members – including the top figures in many of the best-known international aid and conservation organisations – listened to presentations, shared experiences, and planned new projects.

Why Ireland? NetHope felt it was timely to host its annual event in Europe. “And this is ground zero for technology in Europe,” says Richard Hall, Intel’s California-based director of global strategic alliances who came over for the event.

He notes that Ireland is one of only three places in the world where Intel does advanced chip manufacturing and is considered by the company to be one of the leading-edge technology locations in Europe, and therefore a good symbolic choice for the conference.

NetHope’s response to the earthquake in Haiti is a microcosm of what the organisation does, day in and day out. “We have 22 members in Haiti,” Brindley says. “They were devastated by the earthquake – both their infrastructure and by the deaths of many of their staff. As soon as the earthquake happened, NetHope went into action.”

The immediate focus was to get a communications system up and working so that aid organisations could function as effectively as possible.

“We immediately sent in teams. We had support and equipment from Cisco, Intel sent engineers, Dell sent laptops . . . this was real devastation. We had to do a line of sight network, from rooftop to rooftop. But we set up a broadband network. And then members could send out reports, and get help in. Eventually, we handed over the network to the Haitians.” But it was quickly apparent that there was a shortage of Haitians with the skills needed to run and repair communications networks and IT systems.

“That led to members asking if we could help with skill building – eg train up young people. So we started the NetHope Academy.”

Its initial intake of 39 students in Haiti have all graduated with many going into immediate employment with the aid organisations themselves. Brindley is particularly proud that an increasing number of Haitian women have enrolled in the academy.

This kind of evolving response to what developing world communities need is central to the organisation, Brindley says. With the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NetHope had already set up some basic IT skills training in Thailand following the 2004 Asian tsunami, but in the academy, this has now crystallised into a more formal initiative to bring the kind of training that not only enables people to run their own IT networks, but also creates jobs within communities and new opportunities for its graduates.

The goal now is to roll out similar projects around the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa, he says.

NetHope has a broader remit than helping in crisis situations. It has also worked on projects to help mothers and children with HIV, to build housing in India, to set up a solar-powered school in Namibia and to support farmers in developing nations.

But it does this in a way that demands participation – including financial commitment – from both its members and the communities themselves.

“Our model used to be that we would write a cheque. Now, when we work together with other organisations, instead of saying ‘we’ll give you money, you go figure it out’, we’re figuring it out together,” says Hall.

NetHope wants partner members to donate time and expertise to projects, not just money. But there is also an expectation that communities and NGOs do more than just hold out a hand to receive technology that likely could just end up sitting unused in a back room. Instead, communities, as well as the NGOs, help design the projects, select the technology they need to run them and pay some portion toward the cost of equipment.

Chris Thomas, Intel’s chief strategist and director of architecture for its NetHope projects, says that while it might seem controversial to ask communities or aid organisations to pay for the IT – even if at great discount – this approach gives communities a real sense of ownership of projects and, also, real intent to care for and make use of their equipment.

The big challenge right now for NetHope, they all say, is to figure out how to put the efficiencies and resource management capabilities of cloud computing at the service of NGO members and the developing world.

Thomas says there are many projects and work processes across the developing world that can serve as models and templates for projects elsewhere – the problem is spreading knowledge about them, as well as creating a repository of information that could be accessed as needed by field workers.

For example, one organisation might be able to use another project’s IT architecture, or guidelines for successful crop planting, or manuals for managing a network, or system for managing children in care, or teaching materials for a class. This would save time and money as well as duplication of effort.

“With the cloud, just as with business processes in corporations, it’s changing the way we work in philanthropy,” says Thomas. “We haven’t worked out a funding model or the market yet, and we haven’t got a donor system yet. We have to break a new set of barriers, but it’s going to be the engine inside the NGO.”

NetHope, says Brindley, is all about figuring out an IT challenge like this – how to take such cutting-edge developments in technology and communications and bring them to bear on developing world issues.

“And for the first time,” he says with a grin for his Intel partners, “these competitors on the IT front can be collaborators.”

TECH SUPPORT HOW NGOs POOL RESOURCES TO TAP SPONSORS

FOUNDED IN 2001, NetHope had its origins in a paper written by Ed Granger-Happ, then chief information officer of Save the Children, entitled Wiring the Global Village.

It proposed that international non-profits could accomplish this task more efficiently and at less cost if they worked together rather than individually, and that they could be more effective if, as a group, they approached potential corporate sponsors and partners.

The paper was offered to the corporate philanthropy group inside Cisco, which became a founding partner and a key driver for the initiative.

Primary supporters now also include organisations such as Intel, HP, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Accenture, and Microsoft, with more than 30 additional supporters including Dell, Skype, Google, McAfee, Lenovo, Salesforce.com Foundation, Yahoo, Trend Micro, and Xerox.

Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, NetHope now has 33 members, all leading non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that focus on humanitarian development, emergency response, and conservation programmes in more than 180 countries.

They work with companies across the information and communication technologies sector, as well as foundations and individuals, typically through public-private partnerships to bring technologies of all types to the developing world.

Funding comes from a wide range of sources, including donations from the private sector and foundations, as well as member dues.

But NetHope says a key element of support remains the donation of time, from ICT specialists, academics and members.