ArticleIn northern Uganda, I visited maternity wards serving communities where nurses had once delivered babies on dirt floors, sometimes working by the light of a torch held between their teeth. In the country’s south, I saw schools with libraries, kitchens and systems for harvesting rainwater, serving communities devastated by HIV/AIDS.
It may seem unlikely, but two Australian companies helped build them, Cotton On and Mountain Blue.
I travelled to Uganda most recently as an adviser to the Mountain Blue Foundation, at its expense, after the Cotton On Foundation invited us to see its work. I had previously introduced Mountain Blue’s founders to Uganda during my 13 years as CEO of World Vision Australia. Those connections gave me the opportunity to see the projects firsthand and raised a question about how we respond to them. At a time of well-earned scepticism about corporate conduct, how do we distinguish serious, sustained philanthropy from an exercise in reputation management?
Uganda, which Winston Churchill dubbed “the Pearl of Africa” in his 1908 book My African Journey, can seem a long way from Australia and of little relevance to us. During my years at World Vision, however, I visited development projects across the world and took a number of people from Australia’s business community with me to gain perspective.
At a time of well-earned scepticism about corporate conduct, how do we distinguish serious, sustained philanthropy from an exercise in reputation management?
In Australia, we have become accustomed to stories of companies mistreating workers and customers, avoiding responsibility and then spending heavily to restore their standing. Alan Joyce’s redemption tour following the public anger at Qantas comes to mind as one recent example.
That history shapes how we respond when a company tells us about the work it sponsors. A philanthropic project does not excuse poor wages, damaging supply chains, environmental failures or the mistreatment of customers, and a compelling story should not be accepted without examining whether the work has produced lasting benefits.
The projects I saw in Uganda had continued for more than a decade and were being used every day by the surrounding communities. Ugandan teachers, nurses, health workers, administrators and families had made the schools and hospitals part of their lives.
We travelled five hours south of Kampala to the Rakai district on the Tanzanian border. Rakai was one of the earliest epicentres of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Before antiretroviral treatments became widely available, the disease tore through communities in the district, leaving many children without parents and responsible for their younger siblings.
I travelled with Tim Diamond head of the Cotton On Foundation, one of Australia’s most recognisable retail brands. The company began in Geelong and now has more than 1400 stores around the world.
That history shapes how we respond when a company tells us about the work it sponsors.
Nearly two decades ago, founder of Cotton On Nigel Austin was encouraged by his local priest, Fr Peter Foley of Belmont Catholic parish, to visit a health clinic the Church had opened in Uganda. That clinic is still operating, and during our visit we stayed at the parish and saw its work.
Cotton On’s involvement in Uganda later expanded into education. Its foundation says that over the past 17 years it has helped build more than 20 schools and invested more than $100 million in projects in Uganda. The schools are public and charge no fees, serving some of the country’s poorest children.
Although the retailer has no commercial operations in Uganda, its support has continued since Nigel first travelled there and witnessed the need. Seventeen years later, the schools have outlasted the initial attention that often accompanies corporate-sponsored projects and become part of the communities they serve.
They have also been designed around local conditions. Rainwater runs from the classroom roofs into large Rhino storage tanks sent from Australia, providing an essential source of water in a dry region where communities cannot sink enough bores to meet their needs.
Rather than cutting down trees for firewood, students collect biomass from the surrounding bush and mould it into small briquettes, which are then placed in a kiln. The finished briquettes provide cleaner fuel for the school kitchens, where, according to the foundation, two meals are cooked each day for every student. Students learn how to make the briquettes during school hours, and the foundation says some have used those skills to establish side businesses in communities where many families depend on subsistence farming.
I was particularly struck by the libraries, which stand apart from the classrooms as quiet, inviting spaces with open windows and thatched roofs. Many of the children have few books at home and little access to public libraries. Here they can sit, read and discover books for themselves, entering the rich imaginative life that reading can bring whether or not they eventually attend university or find professional work.
A school that is locally staffed, adapted to its environment and still operating after many years has achieved more than a short-lived corporate campaign.
Keeping girls at school also changes the course of their lives by delaying early marriage and giving young women a better chance of finding paid work or starting a business. Each additional year at school gives a girl more say over when she marries, how many children she has and how she earns a living.
These schools cannot resolve the larger problems confronting Uganda’s education system, and outside funding does not remove the Ugandan Government’s responsibility to provide education. Even so, a school that is locally staffed, adapted to its environment and still operating after many years has achieved more than a short-lived corporate campaign.
Mountain Blue’s involvement in Uganda also began after its founders saw the conditions for themselves. The company is an Australian blueberry-breeding business based in Lismore. Its varieties are grown under licence in more than 48 countries, but it does not grow blueberries in Uganda and has no commercial interests there.
In 2013, when I was CEO of World Vision Australia, I took Mountain Blue’s founders, Ridley and Mieke Bell, to northern Uganda, before there was any Mountain Blue Foundation.
Communities in the north were still living with the damage caused by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. For decades, the group had terrorised the region, abducting children and forcing many to become soldiers. Its campaign in Uganda had ended, but the north continued to lag behind much of the country in healthcare, infrastructure and employment.
During that visit, the Bells saw nurses delivering babies on dirt floors without adequate beds, instruments or lighting. The conditions led them to establish a foundation that, over the following decade, built four 25-bed maternal hospitals with delivery suites and medical laboratories.
Corporate giving cannot provide Uganda with all the schools, hospitals and public services its people need.
The buildings are only one part of the work. The hospitals depend on the clinicians, nurses, health workers and public institutions that keep them operating. Under an agreement with Uganda’s Ministry of Health, the foundation pays the wages of clinicians and nurses during a facility’s first year, after which the ministry assumes those costs. This allows the hospitals to become part of the public health system rather than remaining indefinitely dependent on an Australian donor.
The hospitals also work with village health teams made up of Ugandan volunteers who travel into surrounding bush communities to provide health education, preventative care and referrals. They connect the hospitals with women who might otherwise remain beyond the reach of formal healthcare.
Around one in ten pregnant women will experience a complication during pregnancy or childbirth. In an Australian hospital, a woman has trained staff, medicines, clean facilities and emergency care close at hand. In remote northern Uganda, the same complication can quickly become fatal.
The Mountain Blue Foundation reports that no mother has died while giving birth in any of its four facilities since they opened. Properly equipped wards and trained staff have transformed the care available in communities where women previously faced childbirth in dangerous conditions.
Corporate giving cannot provide Uganda with all the schools, hospitals and public services its people need. Governments carry that responsibility, and wealthy countries such as Australia have an obligation to support effective overseas aid. Private philanthropy must not become an excuse for governments to withdraw or for companies to avoid scrutiny of how their wealth is made.
A company’s charitable work does not absolve it of responsibility for its conduct elsewhere.
There is also a danger in telling these stories as though Australian benefactors arrived to rescue passive communities. The institutions I visited depend every day on Ugandan teachers, nurses, health workers, administrators, parents and volunteers. Australian funding helped provide buildings, equipment and resources, but Ugandans make the schools and hospitals work.
The companies benefit when this work strengthens their reputations, but that does not diminish the good resulting from the projects. The stronger test is whether the work meets needs identified locally, supports the institutions already there and continues after the first publicity has passed.
A company’s charitable work does not absolve it of responsibility for its conduct elsewhere. Corporate Australia does, however, sometimes support work that is sustained and genuinely valuable, and we should be able to recognise that while continuing to hold companies accountable in every other part of their operations.
In Uganda, I saw children eating meals cooked at school, girls reading in libraries and mothers giving birth in properly equipped wards with trained staff beside them. Companies have often given us good reason to distrust claims of social responsibility, but these schools and hospitals have continued serving their communities for more than a decade. That good work is worth recognising.
Tim Costello is a senior fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. For 13 years, he was Chief Executive of World Vision Australia and he remains a sought after voice on social justice issues, leadership and ethics.
This article first appeared in Eureka Street.
Image Source: Cotton On Foundation.