Paul C. Fay Jr, more popularly known as Chip, is an artist and a zen practitioner, a dad of three girls, and a social scientist. He spent 25 years in Southeast Asia, first as an apprentice, learning from the farmers and indigenous dwellers in the Northern Philippines with the Peace Corps, and currently as Senior Policy Analyst at The World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).
Samdhana, whose name comes from the Sanskrit word means a “peaceful coming together”, is a nonprofit organization based in the Philippines. At the Institute’s core are the Samdhana fellows, a group of individuals who have dedicated their lives to equitable development practices. The Fellows include planners, builders, policy and lawmakers, economists, farmers, researchers and activists whose work spans Southeast Asia. Samdhana is also the new Southeast Asia member of the Greengrants Alliance of Funds, in which capacity it administers its own grantmaking and fundraising programs.
Q: How did Samdhana come to be?
A: There was a group of us who had worked for many years in the field of international development, and who had become frustrated with spending more time responding to the needs of the institutions where we work than to our institutions’ missions. We created Samdhana to provide space and support for fellows to do what they do best in the field of environmental justice.
Samdhana has three main activities. The first is to foster creative collaboration among fellows, which in turn leads to initiatives such as our program on conflict mediation. Another is to give small grants for creative philanthropy in the area of environmental justice. We also maintain a retreat center in Bali for Samdhana fellows or local groups to reflect upon and share their experiences, or just to rest.
Q: How has the Alliance Fund relationship with Greengrants worked out?
A: From our perspective, it’s working very well. We see it as a partnership among equals, with each of us bringing different skills to the table. We at Samdhana have received a lot of support from Greengrants, particularly institutional support. That has included, for example, advice on our small grants program, such as suggestions about grants management and fundraising.
Our contributions to the partnership with Global Greengrants include the “chain of trust” we have established, through our fellows and contacts, to our grantees. This increases accountability and the quality of reporting, by having the grant linked to people we know and trust.
Q. What is Samdhana doing now in Aceh? (Aceh is area of Indonesia hardest-hit by the December 2004 tsunami.)
A. We are doing a lot of work in the area, particularly in the areas of rehabilitation, small enterprise development and coordination of meetings among NGO’s. Our experience has been that a network like ours can react quickly in a time of crisis, and it can provide a “connectivity” among organizations and individuals that is often missing in grantmaking.
Another way that we have responded to the situation in Aceh is by supporting the “creative collaboration” of Samdhana fellows. For example, our fellows have started a network of 12-15 mediators, who have been able to help in situations like the land disputes that are part of Aceh’s rebuilding.
Q. What are some other efforts you have underway?
A. In general, we focus on the combination of livelihoods and sustainability. Environmental protection doesn’t have to be at the expense of livelihoods, if proper attention is given to free and prior informed consent of local people in development issues. For example, we are using that standard of free and prior informed consent to help define what constitutes “illegal logging” in Indonesia. It turns out that at present virtually all of it is.
For more information on Samdhana ,please visit their web site.