Hey Crew,

Latest updates from our adventures around Toronto. We were able to attend a fantastic conference last weekend in the city called re:Vision hosted by Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (www.ysec.org). re:Vision united 100 young social entrepreneurs at various stages of project development to share their vision, best practices and develop skills to enhance social change initiatives. For us, this conference represented our first opportunity to share Esther's Echo with young like minded change makers, especially those leaders focussed on youth engagement and leadership development. re:Vision was definitely the most comprehensive networking opportunity we've had to date. You can check out the conference website at http://revision.ysec.org/

While we were at re:Vision, Matthew was able to reconnect with Matt Tod. Referred to as Matt Squared, Matt and Matt both worked as motivational speakers in the past with Free the Children. Matt Tod has gone on to found Leadership Rewired, a youth engagement and training program with the Institute for Health and Human Potential. http://www.ihhp.com/eq_youth_leadership.htm

Matt Tod was kind enough to post a quick video blog about Esther's Echo. Here it is below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjIZCsVRdx8&feature=player_embedded

Thanks to everyone for your continued support!

-Local Communities, Global Vision

-The Esther's Echo Team

Toward the end of September, Stephen and I attended the ArtezInteractive conference hosted by online fundraising and marketing company Artez. The conference explored ways of effectively fundraising using the Internet. The conference had some fantastic speakers who spoke on topics all very relevant to our growth as an online fundraising organization. Two very notable speakers were Ted Hart and Dan Pallotta. Ted Hart is the co author of a book called People to People fundraising that we used extensively for our first grant applications and to provide critical research for the Esther's Echo model. His site can be found at www.tedhart.com. Dan Pallotta is the author of a book called "Uncharitable" that reviews the challenges faced by non-profits from a variety of sectors that results in stunted work and confused performance indicators. One of the very interesting points he raised is the question of "overhead costs." Overhead is used to describe costs of NGO operation that is not directly linked to the work of the NGO itself but rather to expenses such as administration. Typically, donors are trained to look for NGOs that spend less than 20% on overhead. These are considered "good" or "responsible" organizations. Dan warns that this measuring stick fails to take into account the real world impact of a particular organization. For example, organization A may spend only 10% on administration while Organization B may spend 20%. We are trained, as donors, to donate to organization A. But if we actually visited organization B and found that staff treated much more equitably, that the overseas operation was far more sound and reporting was far more accurate, we would most likely switch our donations to B. He also argued that some real world problems are not being addressed because of the focus on overhead costs as these problems are simply more costly to deal with, require more logistical infrastructure and unique skills. More on uncharitable can be found at Dan's web site www.uncharitable.net. There is also a post Stephen made on the Esther's Echo Facebook Page

Hey Crew,

It's been a while since I made  a post. I wanted to talk about September in the next few blog entries since it was a great month both personally and for Esther's Echo .

Mid September Steve and I found ourselves at the U2 360 concert in Toronto. I have been an enormous U2 fan for years. The band's ability to speak truth through music is inspiring. I have never been able to actually make a concert before however. The last time U2 was in the Toronto area was 2004 and I will still in Sierra Leone. There has been speculation that this will be U2's final tour/album. I was, therefore, compelled to make it to this show. Dazzled by the uniquely designed 360 degree stage, the open roof of the Skydome and U2 classic and newer tracks, we made our way down as close to the stage as possible. Part of the performance was dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma who has suffered under house arrest for nearly 15 years. When U2's "Walk On" was played, the band asked the audience to remember the political prisoner and hold masks of her up in support. The concert also featured an enormous video of Archbishop Desmond Tutu calling for peace and a speech from crew aboard the International Space Station. Bono certainly knows rock. He also certainly knows how to network. The concert was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. I do indeed hope that others were as inspired as me to take up or continue causes to support meaningful social change. As Bono once said..."when you listen to rock music. It should make you want to change the world"

We had a whole whack of photos on a friend's camera that the memory card is currently missing for. When I locate it, I will throw on some others. I did dig this one up below from Facebook.

Matthew being interviewed by Much Music at U2 360 With  Aung San Suu Kyi Mask in Hand

Last week Steve and I had the opportunity to bring Esther's Echo to a law firm that deals specifically with Canadian charity laws. Esther's Echo and Esther's Arts (our social enterprise which will import handicrafts and clothing from overseas) can be registered as legal entities in a matter of days. But becoming a fully registered charity is another matter. Registering for charitable status in Canada can take between 9 to 16 months to accomplish.

Most organizations that use an online platform to connect projects overseas with donors, such as we intend to do, work through third party charities either in their own country or in other developed nations. The reason for this is the way that charity laws are designed. In Canada, money that has been donated to a charity cannot be sent to a non-Canadian (and in some cases non-US) charity. Rather than send funds directly to a community initiative in a developing country, these organizations send funds to another charity that is working in these communities. Esther's Echo wants to send funds directly to community leaders without using a third party. Canada does not allow this direct transfer in order to protect donors and ensure that funds are being used effectively.

The law firm we spoke with informed us that in order for our model to work, we will need our community partners to effectively become agents of Esther's Echo to carry out the mandate of our organization. This becomes a bit of a catch 22 since the mission of Esther's Echo is to support community organizations and their own mandates. To reconcile this loop, we must craft a mission that is broad enough to encompass the various poverty alleviation efforts undertaken by the thousands of community organizations across the world so that, in a sense, these organizations become agents of our mandate by conducting their activities.

We are presently working to construct these mission goals and decide how to formally connect with our potential community partners as agents of Esther's Echo. Our next step is to develop a means of screening our community projects to ensure our commitment to our donors and stakeholders like you.

We will keep you all posted on how this develops. Remember to stay in touch, sign on for our RSS feed and send us an e-mail if you have any questions about what we do!

Small contributions, BIG CHANGE!!

Matthew