Transcription

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Daniel Emmerson  0:02

Welcome to Foundational Impact, a podcast series that focuses on education and artificial intelligence from a nonprofit perspective. My name is Daniel Emerson and I'm the Executive Director of Good Future Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to equip educators to confidently prepare all students, regardless of their background, to benefit from and succeed in an AI infused world. This podcast series sets out to explore the trials and tribulations of building a nonprofit from the ground up, while also investigating the changing world of technology in life, learning and work.

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Today, I'm joined by the incredible Sarah Brook. Sarah is a dynamic charity leader with over twelve years of experience in the third sector. She founded the Sparkle Foundation in 2015, a UK registered charity and international NGO that improves the lives of vulnerable children and communities in Malawi, Africa, using an innovative and sustainable model. With a BSc in psychology, Sarah started her career as a sports journalist at the BBC before moving into PR and media. As CEO of the Sparkle Foundation. She also works as a CSR consultant, helping develop social responsibility programs for organisations like the London Stock Exchange, PwC and Clifford Chance. Sarah's unique life experiences, including being held at knifepoint and recovering from a coma after a severe brain injury, have fueled her determination to succeed and do good. An award winning speaker, she was named one of the top seven CEOs of the Year in 2020 by the third sector awards and received the Middle East Humanitarian of the Year Award in 2017. Regularly invited to speak at high profile events worldwide, Sarah engages with governments, corporates and students to raise funds for the Sparkle Foundation and inspire positive change in the charity sector. She shares insights on topics such as career changes, finding one's purpose, the psychology behind the global gender pay gap, and building resilience for powerful results.

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Sarah, it's incredible to have you with us. It would be great if we could start, please, with a brief introduction from yourself to just tell us a little bit about your work and the role of Sparkle.

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Sarah Brook  2:30

Of course, I'll try and keep it as brief as possible. So Sparkle now, I'll work backwards. We're supporting 20,000 lives in Malawi. We've created a best practice model for the charity sector. That's not, as you know, Daniel, how it all began. It began at me pointing at a map when I was in Felsted and landing on Malawi, having never heard of it and thinking okay, I want to volunteer there during what was my gap year? And that course kind of changed my entire life. And I had. After a lifesaving operation in Malawi, I made a commitment that I wanted to make a difference to one child's life and show my age now over 14 years ago. We've now created this charity that's a pioneer, so to speak, in the sector for grassroots model. That's education, medical, community and nutrition programs that is transforming one community at a time. And as of yesterday, we're actually registered in the UK, Malawi, the UAE and now America. So it's been a journey, but one I'm extremely grateful for.

Daniel Emmerson  3:31

Congratulations on that, Sarah, that sounds phenomenal. And the organisation has grown so much, I'm wondering within that context, could you tell us a little bit more about the sort of day to day operations of a non profit that you said 20,000 lives?

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Sarah Brook  3:46

Yeah, the day to day. I mean, how long have you got? I think anyone that works in the sector or has any experience in the sector will know that there's never enough resource and it's a big thing that I spend pretty much 75% of my day to day job is educating people about what it actually takes to operate a charity. Because I think obviously there's a big conversation around administration, operational costs versus project costs and it's just impossible to do things on a shoestring budget. Yes, there's obviously AI making things easier, but the reality is if you want to deliver the best, be the best, then you also need to have the best people and that comes at a cost. So our day to day, we've got fundraising team here in the UAE, we've got marketing, we've got volunteer coordinator, and then on the ground, we've obviously we've got over 50 staff now in Malawi that are running all of our different programs across three different sites. So we have this strap line that no day is the same at Sparkle because I can go from being in a HR meeting to, as I've been today, going around filming for content, for socials, to then going out for a client dinner to try and fundraise, to being sat, doing the profit and loss kind of income versus expenditure for the month. Because you wear many hats as a CEO and as a charity like Sparkle with such big dreams, I think every single staff member or volunteer signs up for one thing and then ends up doing another because we grow arms and legs. We just decide the problem is still huge and there's never enough hours in the day.

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Daniel Emmerson  5:20

So what does that educating people look like when you say you're involved in educating people around? I'm imagining that's around the issues at stake and the impact that you're having as an organization. Can you tell us more about that?

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Sarah Brook  5:33

Yeah, I mean, the big thing for me is changing a mindset. If I'm being completely honest, some people, it's controversial. There's a big thing in the UK charity sector that no person of a certain size charity should earn a certain salary. I think I'd love to ask corporates, like, how many times do you go and give a presentation and someone at the end of the presentation says, great, so do you take a salary? And how much is that? That's a very common question that I get asked. I'm like, oh, we're still here. And I was like, okay. And I always bring it back to this analogy that I heard actually pretty much two, three months ago, was, if you were going to offer someone a heart surgery because they needed it, it was a life saving operation. And then you got to the hospital, you said, you're going to pay for it, but then you said to the surgeon, I'm really sorry, but I'm not going to pay you, but I'll just pay for all the services to enable it to happen. It just wouldn't happen. But yet that's what's happening in the charity sector. People don't want to pay staff members a competitive rate because they don't want your admin and overheads to be high, but they want to feed as many children as possible. But the reality is we can't feed the children without the cooks, we can't feed the children without people giving the right nutritional advice. We can't feed the children without fundraisers or a marketing budget so that people are aware that we are feeding children in the first place. So you're stuck in this vicious cycle, and that's what I'm doing, is going out and educating people to say, okay, I understand why you see it like you do, that you want 100% of your money to go to the end result, but the reality is to get there, there's a process, and to ensure that it reaches there, you need to pay for that process. And part of that is administration costs. So that's what we're trying to change the narrative there with that side of it. And then the other thing is how, I suppose, you know, I'm not always well liked within the sector in the sense that I say, my opinion is that stop putting a plaster over a wound. Like we don't as Sparkle ever go out and hand out goods like we don't want to create donor dependency. And that's what has been a huge problem across the world with charity sector. Because the biggest problem for me is when I go to Malawi, is not the people it's more the other charities that have been before me that are paying allowances for just to talk to people or have been giving out virtualiser tokens or have been handing out clothes. So that when you start trying to create sustainable income streams and entrepreneurial spirit, people are just saying, well, what's the point? Because we'll get it for free from the next NGO and you're up against it, because what can I do? And it's become a way of life, it's become a behavioural pattern, especially in Malawi, and we're struggling to get out of it. So my best approach now has been to educate donors, educate corporates, educate schools, universities, that yes, we all may have the right intention, but the reality is there's a big difference between impact and intent. And I think we need to change the impact that we're having. Yes, our intent is to make a difference, but there's a different way of doing that to what's been done before us. Because look, the world isn't in a better place than where it was ten years ago when you look at the humanitarian sector, but yet we're pumping more money into it than we ever have before. Why is that? Because the model's not working anymore and it's time for change.

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Daniel Emmerson  8:45

Is that how that narrative is being driven, through an evaluation of, for example, impact? Or where is that narrative coming from? Why is that suddenly becoming more prevalent?

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Sarah Brook  8:59

I think there's a big lack of trust in the sector in general, which has forced people to deep dive into, actually, why is it that people aren't giving? I think it just recently was named, the UK dropped out of the top 20 most charitable countries to give. And I think that's such a telling sign. That's never been, you know, I was born watching these shows, BBC Comic Relief. It's part of my culture from school days, you know, giving, that just doesn't seem to be the generation who do want to give and do care more about the world than ever before. But there is this lack of trust from the older generation of, we've been giving now for so long, but we don't really see the difference we've made. And cost of living obviously, around the world is increasing. And for me personally, the narrative has come from just going on the ground and actually being with the people, spending the time in the community. I've been fortunate enough, over 50 countries now have travelled and there's a lot of charities that are operating with people in these big fancy offices, which is not a problem if that's what works for them, but they're so disconnected. They're not actually being on the ground. They don't actually know how things work. And we never want to be a charity that's dictating from here, the UAE, or from the US or the UK, how to operate in the community in Malawi, because we don't know what's best. We can only provide the resource. And I think, as you said, changing that mindset, that just because we're western educated that we know what's best, it's not the case whatsoever. And in fact, I've probably learned more. And I say all of our volunteers end up learning more when they go to Malawi versus what the people learn themselves that are on the ground.

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Daniel Emmerson  10:27

You mentioned community earlier. Are you talking there specifically about the community on the ground that you're working with, or is that the community within Sparkle or both?

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Sarah Brook  10:37

I think it's both. We educate people coming into our offices who come with the intent to say we want to send all of our children's clothes to Malawi and we need pictures of those children in those clothes. And we say, I'm sorry, that's not going to happen. We're not going to stand there and hand out clothes.

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Daniel Emmerson  10:53

Wait, wait, sorry, can you say that again? So you have people who offer to donate clothes and they want those children to be photographed wearing those clothes. Did I get that right?

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Sarah Brook  11:03

Yes. So we have people that come in and say, oh, our little Jimmy, you know, all the clothes, we don't want to throw them away. So can we give them to you and you can take them to Malawi and then give them to some of the children that can't afford clothes. And I'm always like, okay, I understand your intent, that you've thought, okay, there's people that are less fortunate that want those clothes, but then when it's also, we want a photo so we can show the difference that little Jimmy's made. There's two-folded problem here, is that what we're trying to create, at Sparkle certainly, is that all children deserve equal rights. And therefore, if you're not going to give those clothes to your own children or to your own siblings, then why should they go to a child in Malawi? Number one. And number two is the photo part. I understand it's because of trust, they want to see that the clothes actually reach where they went. But just imagine putting yourself in the shoes of that person. Some random person, just giving you some clothes to wear, and then next thing is taking a picture of you and you don't know where that picture could end up what it's being used for and you're just walking with the clothes. And worse though, I've seen then the clothes be removed by parents of said child and then be sold in the market and they never see the clothes again. So there's a whole process that goes into things like that. The intent, again, as I said, was good, impact had actually negative implications. So when I talk about community, it's that side educating our donors, but then equally educating people on the ground in Malawi, because they're not used to people saying, let's make this mutually beneficial, they're waiting to be helped or to be saved, and we don't operate like that. So as an example, at Sparkle, we don't charge obviously school fees, but we say what you can contribute, you will. And so if it's firewood, they bring, if it's vegetables that are in season, they bring. And if families don't have anything, then they donate their time and that way they're able to contribute back something so that we have that. This isn't a Sparkle thing, this isn't a Sarah thing. This is actually a community initiative that's changing the lives of Malawians for a better nation.

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Daniel Emmerson  13:08

Can you perhaps talk about that a little bit more just to set up on the ground what that looks like, particularly from an education perspective? A lot of the school or education environments that we've been looking at as part of this series are probably focused on quite a different model. I'd love to understand more, Sarah, about what that involves at Sparkle.

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Sarah Brook  13:23

Sure. So we learned through failing. I can't say anything other than that. Obviously education is key. We hear every quote that comes, education will change the world. Education will, but there's a lot of other contributing factors towards that. And when we started with education, by 10:00 our children were falling asleep. And it's like, okay, well, there's no point educating children that are falling asleep. Why is that? They're hungry. So we brought in the feeding program. Okay, so then we had the education and the feeding program. Children were attending classes for longer, but then sometimes they were missing classes or didn't come at all. Why was that? Because they had medical conditions that prevented them from being able to focus, prevented them from being able to come, walk to school. Okay. So we started educating, feeding and offering medical support to our children. Final thing, our attendance was at 60% to 70%. Why? Parents weren't educated themselves, so didn't value what Sparkle was offering. We changed the narrative, we started educating the parents, giving them opportunities. We did a day in the life of a child. They all came and I'll never forget seeing their faces when they were holding the toys and I was like, this is like madness. But they were so like they were grabbing themselves amongst parents. I was like, okay, the penny then dropped. And once they then realized what their children were being offered for free, it went to pretty much 95% within a week's period. So for us, when you talk about education, we started with early childhood development. We initially were Montessori, it then blended with the local ECD curriculum, and we're now having a curriculum developed through our school partners, which will align with the Ministry of Education in Malawi. And we're hoping if it takes off, it could be rolled out across the country. Then obviously there's a huge issue still today with primary education in Malawi. I think it's 36% off the top of my head will make it through primary school, which is a very low rate of success. So for us it's what can we do to supplement that? Our children go to government schools and then in the afternoon they come for primary after school support. We then have a youth group, we've got a women's group, and education is sort of feeding in through each of those different areas. But as I said at the start, there are different things secondary to it that enable that education program to run. And I think we really have to get that balance correct. A from a are we expecting all of our children to get a university degree by the time they finish their education program at Sparkle? Absolutely not. Because we have to face the reality of what are the chances of that happening within the community that we're supporting. Are we expecting every single one of our children who goes through our program to have a better opportunity of generating an income for themselves so they can stand on their own two feet and don't have to send their own child, if they have one, back into being supported by an NGO? Yes, I do think that's achievable. Whether they're a tomato farmer, whether they're online doing marketing or graphic design, or whether they are at university, as long as we can provide them with an opportunity to generate an income, that's for us what education means.

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Daniel Emmerson  16:27

And what does that in class experience look like?

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Sarah Brook  16:30

So, nursery programme in the morning, you're coming, 730 till twelve. I think we stick to the international standard of two teachers to 25, which for a free early childhood program in Malawi it's unheard of. We've got people that want to pay to come to Sparkle and it's really, really impressive what we've been able to create. And then it's, I mean, resources, we've had people locally make resource, we've had people bring it from overseas and now we've got Wi Fi with solar, we're connected to people constantly, so we can do shared learning through schools, we can do online sort of curriculum joining sessions, we've had things like poem sharing, we've had cookbooks, we've had digital pen pals, I mean, you name it, we've had storybooks that have been jointly written together. And then as we've got older children, we've built more sort of looking at online learning resources, how can we train people? And then our youth and our women's group are being mentored by students or by teachers themselves. So it's completely 360 degrees, shared learning.

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Daniel Emmerson  17:33

And that wifi through solar, when and how did that come about?

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Sarah Brook  17:37

So we formed a partnership with Sopowerful who fitted solar. I think off the top of my head about three years ago, which made a huge difference, only 25% of Malawi has electricity, so you can only imagine. And then within that 25%, it's so hit and miss because there's load shedding. So for us to now be permanently connected, it's a game changer. And then in terms of the Wi Fi, obviously we connect the Wi Fi to the solar. It works when the Wi Fi poles are working, but the challenge is sometimes network connections. We found our way around it. 5G is in Malawi and we can operate, but it comes at a huge cost and we're talking two to three thousands pounds cost to keep ourselves connected, which technically people would say would fall under an admin cost. So we're trying to do what we can, but like any business, any charity, you need connectivity to operate. I mean it's this, and look at, I mean, ChatGPT prime example, you can half your workload these days, and for Malawians not to have access to it, it would be criminal. So we want to give them the same opportunities that we do so we can be the best we can be.

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Daniel Emmerson  18:43

And is that something that you're doing actively at the moment? Can you tell us a bit about what that looks like?

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Sarah Brook  18:48

Yeah, I mean, we're pushing AI as far forward as we can. Look, I'm based here in Dubai and Museum of the Future is down the road. We're having our gala dinner in November outside Museum of the Future, which is all about AI advancements, technology, where flying cars, I've seen it all here and we seem to be ahead of the curve and I don't want Sparkle to be left behind. So for us, especially when we talk about scalability of our model, what I really believe is possible is that rather than having to send men women on the ground to do the viability assessments, we can now use AI's to input our data and to be able to work out is it viable, yes or no for a Sparkle to expand into this country, into this area and it can work its magic behind the scenes and say yes or no. And if it's a yes, at that point, we then send people. What's happening at the moment for a lot of organisations is they're having to pay staff to go travel expenses, involve communities on the ground to get the information, to do the research. And then you're talking about one or two years before you can actually probably move forward. AI is going to change the time, it's going to reduce the cost significantly. And I think actually it's probably going to give a more accurate answer because it can take into more, can take more depth and more consideration to the different points.

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Daniel Emmerson  20:08

It's interesting you're looking at this as something that the young people at Sparkle need to have access to and you see that as having a benefit to them. There may be a flip side to that, right, when it comes to how impactful this technology is going to be in their lives and what they're going to be doing with it either once they graduate or once they move on from Sparkle itself. What's your thinking behind that at the moment, Sarah, and what might be able to sort of tease from that in terms of additional support that other organisations might be able to offer you in that space?

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Sarah Brook  20:46

I was talking about it actually today at work because I was saying, do you remember when people said about the laptops, I wasn't around when those conversations were happening and people said, you know, oh, no, we don't need it. It's not going to go all digital. And look, now people that haven't got laptops are struggling because everything is online. And I think the same thing applies with AI. There's been a bit of reluctance of all the negatives, oh, it could be done, loss of jobs and all of the other things. But as I see it now, I wouldn't really recruit anybody who doesn't have knowledge of how to use AI, which shows the shift in my mind. Yes, it's got negatives, yes, it can impact things. But for the younger generations coming through, I think if you don't know how it works and you're evolving with it, then I think you would struggle to have a job anyway. So you've got to, you've got to take it on the chin, make it part of your everyday and make life easy where you can. Yes, there's still going to be an element, and I still stand by this, that humans will do it better because of the emotional side, especially in the job that I have. Like our children will never be a number on an excel spreadsheet. You'll never be able to feel what you feel when you walk into Sparkle through an algorithm. But what we can do is use technology to our advantage to be able to reach and change more lives. And that's how I see it.

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Daniel Emmerson  21:59

And so that's something you're using within the organisation as well. Can you tell me about how it might be deployed in different areas?

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Sarah Brook  22:06

Yeah, I mean, basically at the moment we're just using it as almost a resource for, if you think of our standard operating procedures that we're going through and pulling all of the information together, legal contracts, obviously we get everything checked by lawyers, but when we don't have the budget to be able to do all of these things, we can just go to somebody and say, okay, ChatGPT, what can you do? Make it into something relevant. And then here from a marketing perspective as well, there's loads of different ideas that can remove the need for a person spending a lot of time doing it. And then we actually bring in a person for the finer detail, the personal touch, the human element that is always required. We've not got to a point yet that any part of our business is solely AI operated. Every part has a touch point that human is required. It does mean, though, that we are much more efficient. And especially for me as the CEO, I'm able to do the job that I've actually signed up to do and not necessarily all the heavy loading admin that I was doing before.

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Daniel Emmerson  23:06

We talked at the beginning, Sarah, about some of the challenges and complexities of running a non profit in their space. Your story and the foundation for Sparkle is very, very personal. Right. I wonder, and I'm sure you do a lot of speaking on this subject as well, but what do you say to people who are looking to either set up their own non profit or give generously to a specific cause or indeed donate their time? It's fraught with challenge from the inside perspective, I suppose. Can you tell us about how you navigate those conversations?

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Sarah Brook  23:41

Do your research is my number one thing that I say. I don't think the world needs another charity. If you look at honestly, what all charities are doing, our end goal is all the same, to make a difference. If we could collaborate more, we could learn best practice from one another and we could share resource, we could tackle this problem that there wouldn't actually ever need to be another charity again. The problem is that's not happening. And because we're all fighting for the same grant funding or the same amount of money and pool, there's this unspoken rivalry in the sector, which isn't nice, it's not healthy, and that's stopping the sector from moving forward like the corporate sector is. And that's hard. But equally, if people do want to give, I think there's an accountability and a responsibility. The easiest thing to do is to write a check and just hand it over. But actually giving your time, getting involved, sharing knowledge, it's much harder. And I think there is a level like if you were going to buy a house, say as an example, you would get the lands person to come and check the land, you'd get a building person to come and check, a specialist to do this before you then paid for your deposit. But yet people donate charity blindly without doing any research. And then God forbid they hear that the money hasn't gone to where they thought it was, and suddenly there's this outrage on social media. No charity can be trusted and suddenly we're tarnished with a brush of something we didn't even belong to or be a part of. But you then find out that said person saw a poster or saw an advert on social media and just said, oh, it looks good, I'm going to donate. And didn't actually do any background checking, so you can probably hear from what I say, I don't have too much sympathy in those circumstances. So I will come back to my original point. Do your research, find people. I'm not just saying, just Sparkle, but there are charities out there that, especially on the back of COVID have gone through an extremely difficult time and they want to continue to see their legacy move forward. And if you can find a common cause, times are changing. People want to collaborate, people want to join forces. And I think we've gone with the days of when people just want their name on a building and say, wow, look what I've done. That's no longer seen as success in the sector. It's what can you do long term to create a sustainable impact and change within the world. And that's not an overnight thing, and that needs more than one person.

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Daniel Emmerson  26:03

So where do you find the tenacity and the courage to keep going?

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Sarah Brook  26:07

I think for me, it's my faith, truthfully, you know, as a born again Christian, for me, I go back to God and say, you've called me to do this, so I'm going to keep going. And until I'm told to stop, I will keep going until the day I die, because I believe this is. I've been called to do this. I think for anybody that doesn't necessarily have religion, when you go to Malawi or any type of work that you get involved in, I'd be a billionaire right now if I could package the feeling that I have. When you are able to see that you've changed someone's life, if I could work out how I could multiply, that everyone would want it. No paycheck, no promotion, nothing's going to beat that feeling. And I think for me, waking up every single day and knowing that I get to make a difference. And now seeing we've got 248 volunteers as of today who are joining our movement, who want to be change makers, and that's because they also get the feeling and there's nothing like it. So while that continues, we keep going and we can see, I mean, only you can see. Over the last 14 years, Sparkle started as me, one person with three volunteers and 50 children. And now where we are today is testimony to the people, but also to the growth of the organisation and what we've been able to achieve.

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Daniel Emmerson  27:17

Sarah, you're such a positive force and an inspiration to so many. Thank you so much for being with us today and for your insights. It's wonderful to have you here. Thank you so very much. Look forward to catching up again soon.

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Sarah Brook  27:29

No problem. Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.

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Voice Over  27:31

That's it for this episode.Don't forget, the next episode is coming out soon, so make sure you click that option to follow or subscribe, it just means you won't miss it. But in the meantime, thank you for being here and we'll see you next time.

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