Neutrality Paradox & Smart Investments in The Americas

PSYDEH was one of four non-profits from around the world, the only one from Latin America, invited by US-based GlobalGiving (GG) in October 2019 to convene in Washington, DC, USA with 20 others from the philanthropy sector to explore what GG calls the “Neutrality Paradox”, a multi-year project produced in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others, to help global and national platforms navigate complicated questions of fair access.

In late-March 2020, PSYDEH was again selected as one of only three nonprofits to participate in the GG Neutrality Paradox Design Sprint, the only from the Americas. Over the last three weeks, a team of 12 people comprised of GG staff and friends and their nonprofit partners virtually worked through what GG called their Design Sprint. The multi-week collaboration explored how the GG platform and its stakeholders could benefit from new GG products and services in the context of the Neutrality Paradox. At Sprint-end, each participant proposed a concept that GG can employ to smartly confront the Neutrality Paradox dilemma. Mahathi Kumar, PSYDEH’s Coordinator of Special Projects and PSYDEH’s representative in the Design Sprint says,

“The Design Sprint was a fascinating collaboration with people from different backgrounds. The Neutrality Paradox concept can be approached from multiple angles and the vastly different concepts that we all produced is a testament to that. It was an honor for PSYDEH to be a voice for grassroots Global South nonprofits.”

For PSYDEH’s part, we proposed this animatronic, an extension of our series of proposals made to GG’s projects team earlier in Spring 2020.

We have since banded together with the other two nonprofit partners from Africa to formally recommend that GG prioritize one or more of the nonprofit ideas when deciding which will be fleshed out in 2020-2021.