Establishing and Sustaining an NGO: Successes, Dilemmas and Lessons Learned

Posted on 19 February 2010

The next session of the NGOs & Development Study Group will meet at 4 pm on Thursday, February 25 at Weil Town Hall (Belfer L1). The topic of discussion will be “Establishing and Sustaining an NGO: Successes, Dilemmas and Lessons Learned.”

The session will be an open conversation with five Harvard Kennedy School students who have started up NGOs in countries including India, Brazil, Uganda and Zimbabwe. 

Ramaswami Balasubramaniam is a physician who founded the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM) as a young medical student and became its President and CEO.  Twenty five years later, SVYM implements some 60 projects in health, education and community development and reaches nearly 5 million people in the state of Karnataka.

Ryan Keith established Forgotten Voices International to help church leaders in southern Africa to meet the physical and spiritual needs of HIV/AIDS orphans in their communities.  Ryan serves as the President of the organization, which focuses on education, home-based care and skill development.  

Carolina Larriera started up and ran the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI) in Rio de Janeiro.  DNDI is a Swiss-registered NGO which is an offspring of Medicins San Frontieres; it is a nonprofit drug research & development organization focused on developing new treatments for neglected diseases.

Paul Wang and Esther Hsu helped establish TamTam, an NGO that distributes free bednets to help prevent malaria in a cost-effective, evidence-based manner, and conducts operational research to improve the use of bednets worldwide.

This will be a moderated session that will provide each study group attendee a chance to ask about or share their views on: the experience of starting up an NGO and what it takes to sustain different types of NGOs.  The study group will focus on discussion and exchange, rather than presentation.