Born from an orphans’ fund

Hivos’s roots are indisputably humanistic. Conceived in the 1950s by eminent founding fathers such as Jaap van Praag, it took shape in the sixties with the help of Jaap Hekkelman and Louis de Winter. Hivos was marked by the typically Dutch ‘pillarised’ society: every aspect of life was dominated by either Protestant, Catholic or social-democratic organisations. The free thinkers, anarchists and intellectual innovators of the humanist movement aspired to create an independent – i.e. nonreligious – development organisation to express their solidarity with citizens in ‘less-developed’ regions. In May 1956 the Dutch Humanist League presented its first report on the issue, but it would take until 1968 before the Humanistisch Instituut voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking started operations. Ever since, core humanist values such as freedom and self-determination have formed the basis of Hivos’s way of working.

How to fund a humanist development organisation? The humanists lacked the wealthy congregations that the churches enjoyed, but they largely compensated for that by their creativity and perseverance. A crucial asset was the Weezenkas (Orphans’ Fund), founded to support non-religious orphans; Hekkelman’s father was a former treasurer and De Winter was the director at that time. De Winter was a multi-faceted man: he traded in sub-tropical fruit, was an expert in international law, and was director of the Aurora life insurance company (founded under the Weezenkas). In 1958 he purchased all of the Weezenkas’s shares in Aurora, then decided to sell them on becoming a Professor of International Private Law in Amsterdam in 1966. By that time orphans were the responsibility of the state, so De Winter decided – in the face of heavy protest from some humanists, who did not want to spend the money on development aid – to use two million guilders (approximately €900,000) of the revenue to set up Hivos. Hivos was originally known as HIVO, with the O standing for Ontwikkelingshulp (development aid), but there was already an organisation with that name. Hivos’s initiator Jaap van Praag commented, typically, “Well, the most modern term to describe our work is development co-operation.” And so the ‘s’ for samenwerking was added and Hivos was born.

Microfinance in Mexico

Hivos’s first director, Robert Sorgedrager, had to start from scratch. There were no projects, no networks, and no clear vision on ‘humanistic development co-operation’. But there were certainly advantages to not having decades of development work experience to hamper innovation. Sorgedrager, an economist, introduced a novelty that was to grow into a solid microcredit programme: the Hivos Loan Fund. Providing poor people with loans instead of giving them money was a perfect fit with the humanistic principles of self-reliance and self-determination. Hivos’s first investment was a 50% contribution to a loan fund initiated by the Fundación Mexicana de Desarrollo, equalling 150,000 guilders (approximately €70,000).

Sorgedrager and Hivos’s chair Jaap van Praag tried to raise political support for the funding of loan projects in the Netherlands, but the Dutch government felt that the risk that people would fail to repay their loans was too high. Other development organisations also rejected the idea. Sorgedrager recalls, “They looked at me as if I had spoken blasphemy. You were supposed to give to the poor!” But Hivos’s humanist supporters embraced the new approach. Within two years, their contributions were valued at almost 200,000 guilders (approximately €90,000). Supported by these private loans, Hivos was able to lend money not only to Mexican potters, but also to milliners and basket-weavers, while in Turkey money was loaned to a poultry project. In Africa, Hivos was initially turned down by the Africa Co-operative Savings and Credit Association which had projects in 25 African countries. However, in 1972,they started a fruitful co-operation, with Hivos lending 30,000 guilders (approximately €14,000) to ACOSCA.

ABAL, fair trade avant la lettre

The Mexican pottery co-operatives that benefited from Hivos’s first loans also delivered the first products for another entrepreneurial Hivos initiative: ABAL. ABAL was a true sales organisation and one of the first proponents of what is now quite common: fair trade and conscious consumerism. In 1975 the first ABAL shops opened in The Hague and Amsterdam, followed by two more shops in Arnhem and Utrecht. ABAL imported and sold items including Mexican pottery, Sri Lankan batik and tea, and African carvings. Unfortunately the initial growth was not sustained, and in 1984 a postal strike delivered the death blow to ABAL, which by then had started a (revolutionary) mail order business. The ABAL shops were sold and the stock was taken over by another company.

Hivos director Bob Waisfisz was an economist, just like his predecessor Sorgedrager. When he heard that the Mexican potters were unable to sell their products, and received similar news from a Sri Lankan partner, he thought, “Why not import these products and sell them on the Dutch market?” As SOS (later SOS World Trade) refused to co-operate, Waisfisz established ABAL. Initially Hivos staff sold the products at markets, and organised sales exhibitions in humanist care homes. Boxes of imported items were stored in Waisfisz’s home – until his children complained that they could not even reach their own beds. In 1975 Hivos and ABAL moved to a more spacious building, and ABAL scaled up its imports. “Truckloads of stuff came in, including 100 toilet brushes produced by Bangladeshi homeworkers,” Janny van Es, who joined Hivos in 1977, recalls. Waisfisz returned to Mexico and said, looking at a floor full of pottery: “I’ll buy everything.” The pottery was sold in record time.

Hivos enters the Premier League

A key turning point in Hivos’ history was becoming a CFO or Co-Financing Organization. It took ten years of smart lobby work (and sometimes bitter fighting) before the “big three” – Novib, CEBEMO and ICCO – would allow the irritating intruder Hivos to join their CFO empire, and even then they only agreed when forced to do so by the then Minister of Development Cooperation Jan Pronk. All of a sudden Hivos became a wealthy organization with 7.2 million guilders (approximately €3.3 million) coming into its bank account each year rather than the previous 1.2 million. Without this budget, Hivos could never have become the professional organization and influential player in the field of development cooperation that it is today.

Bob Waisfisz successfully wrestled Hivos into the Dutch government’s Co-Financing Program (CFP), then chose to resign in order to pave the way for improved relations between Hivos and the other three CFOs. But the battle was not over yet. Hivos remained the smallest of the four and did not hold an equal position in the GOM, the consultative body of CFOs. CEBEMO’s director Jos van Gennip had supported Hivos’ claim to the CFP, but Novib was to remain a fierce opponent until the mid-1980s. As Waisfisz’s successor Rutger Engelhard recalls, “[Novib’s director] Sjef Theunis would make a show of reading the newspaper while I was talking!” It took several years and two new directors to profoundly improve the relationship between Hivos and Novib. Jaap Dijkstra (Hivos) and Max van den Berg (Novib) were both pragmatists and decided to focus on what the two organizations had in common and to increase their cooperation.

Closer to the field: Hivos decentralizes

A crucial decision was the decentralization of part of Hivos’ work to regional offices in Zimbabwe (1988), India (1991), Costa Rica (1994) and Jakarta (2004). Hivos wanted to get closer to the field. Realities on the ground were to be the starting point of its policies and programs. This was because Hivos deliberately took the risk of supporting young, unknown groups: it needed people who were able to assess local realities. The regional offices were given what at that time was an unusual degree of autonomy. All staff members except for the director were local, and it was they who decided which organizations and projects were to be funded, based on a broader regional plan approved in The Hague.

The Hivos office in downtown Harare was located above a row of Indian shops, a world away from the Novib office in the old colonial neighborhood. All the same, some Novib staff were a little envious of their Hivos colleagues. “To us, it seemed as if everything at Hivos went a lot more smoothly. Their partners were most satisfied and they seemed able to get things done a lot quicker.” An important difference was that regional director Peter Baas was able to draw up his own plan. That is, until he hired his first employee, Thoko Ruzvidzo. Baas says: “She was very enterprising and charming, a networker with an infallible feel for organizational strengths and weaknesses.” Ruzvidzo also brought in the Zimbabwean feminist movement. In no time she turned out to be the real boss of the Hivos office! A few years later the Bangalore office also recruited a strong advocate for women’s rights, Shobha Raghuram. In 2002 she took charge of the office as Hivos’ first local regional director.

The slow but sure emergence of women’s issues

Women’s emancipation was incorporated into Hivos’ policies and practices fairly late. The staff were afraid to be seen as being “moralistic” towards the partners. Besides, wasn’t the women’s movement too elitist and urban, and disconnected from Hivos’ rural development work? It took until the mid-1980s before champions such as Ireen Dubel, Corina Straatsma and Jan Reynders, with the support of Jaap Dijkstra, successfully advocated for a greater focus on gender. Following a staff retreat on gender in 1987, Hivos’ policy paper “Women and Development” (1988) marked a turning point. From then on, Hivos included matters such as sexuality, violence against women, and women’s right to self-determination in its agenda. This transformed the organization into a frontrunner in the fight for women’s issues.

Unhampered by dogmas and taboos, Hivos supported groups that other donors ignored. Sex workers in Latin America, for instance. In 1997, Hivos organized a congress to connect the different South and Central American female sex workers’ organizations it supported. For safety reasons, the event was held outside the city of San José in Costa Rica, but the press soon got wind of it. On national television a popular priest decried the congress as a disgrace and called on all “decent women” to demonstrate in protest. Articulate Argentinean sex worker Elena Reynaga entered into a televised debate with the priest and wiped the floor with him, resulting in a lot of international media attention. The congress marked the start of the Network of Women Sex Workers from Latin America and the Caribbean (RedTraSex), which is still supported by Hivos today. Since that historic day, RedTraSex has worked hard to end violence against women and gain recognition for the labor rights of sex workers.

Access to Power: supporting social movements

Hivos was a pioneer in many respects, including the way it developed, applied and refined the concept of civil society building. Supporting social movements to build a democratic, plural society was the logical outcome of one of Hivos’ most important strategy documents: “Access to Power”. Its main message: real and lasting change for the poor and marginalized will only be possible if they have greater access to power – and that includes all forms of power, not only the right to vote. A radical democratization of society is needed: a society in which “as many people as possible in a wide variety of small and larger social groupings” actively participate.

Three people played a key role in the brainwork preceding “Access to Power”: Ian Cherrett, Manuela Monteiro, and Peter Baas. Ian Cherrett was a Scot forced to flee South Africa due to his activities for the ANC; he later became Hivos’ liaison officer in Central America. In the mid-1980s he returned to Southern Africa, where Manuela Monteiro – who later became Executive Director of Hivos in 2002, joined him on several trips aimed at expanding Hivos’ Africa program. Monteiro learned a lot from this ‘in-house ideologist’ who had always promoted the principle of self-reliance: supporting people to help themselves. Cherrett’s ideas were in line with those of Peter Baas, the then deputy director of projects, who emphasized the importance of organizing civil society. The story goes that Monteiro and Baas wrote “Access to Power” at a beach house in the remote province of Cabo Delgado, Mozambique. They were awaiting official approval for a program and spent long hours on the beach. “We had to wait a long time, so we had a great deal of time to think,” Monteiro explains. The document was eventually written in a week by Monteiro herself during the Christmas holiday of 1987. However, she admits that “the seeds were definitely sown” in that beach house.

AIDS is a human rights problem

Hivos was one of the first development organizations to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic that had hit Africa so hard. Hivos chose an unconventional approach, arguing that AIDS is not a purely medical problem, but a development and human rights problem. Its HIV/AIDS program focused on the dignity and human rights of the groups that were most at risk of infection, such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, and transgender persons. As long as these people were discriminated against and stigmatized, they would lack access to HIV prevention and treatment. Hivos encouraged and supported them in advocating for their right to fully participate in society.

Frans Mom played a key role in developing Hivos’ HIV/AIDS program. “In the eighties many men around me were dying. It was pure luck that I was not infected and could go on with my life.” The fight Mom fought on Hivos’ behalf against HIV/AIDS and for gay rights was both a job and a personal mission. Edwin Cameron, Supreme Court Judge in South Africa and one of the founders of the Aids Consortium, remembers working with Frans Mom and Ireen Dubel. “They encouraged us and gave us leeway. In the battle against AIDS, Hivos has tirelessly brought the rights of LGBTI people into the limelight. That was and still is of great importance.” Cameron was not the only one to recognize Hivos’ pioneering role in this field. Today Hivos manages six HIV/AIDS programs covering 26 countries, funded by the Global Fund. It has more than 150 partner organizations across 30 countries, which together reach over 500 community-based organizations.

Open for Africa

Africa is so much more than misery and hunger. To commemorate its 25th anniversary, Hivos invited famous creative artists such as Buchi Emecheta, Chenjerai Hove and Busi Mholongo to showcase Africa’s rich culture and trade products. The month-long ‘Open for Africa’ campaign was designed to create an open mindset towards Africa. It launched with a spectacular festival in Rotterdam, after which an Africa caravan traveled to 10 Dutch cities. The campaign included a congress, lectures at universities, a “Posting Ghana” broadcast on national radio, and African music concerts all over the Netherlands. Open for Africa culminated with two concerts by Peter Gabriel in the huge Rotterdam Ahoy concert venue which were completely sold out.

“How did you make that happen?” Loe Schout and Jan de Witte heard this constantly when singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel started his packed concert with a ten-minute speech on the importance of Hivos and its Open for Africa campaign. Schout, well-known for his extensive cultural network, had wrangled an introduction to someone at concert organizer MOJO. Schout and De Witte made several trips to MOJO’s offices to negotiate Schout’s dream event: Peter Gabriel supporting a Hivos campaign with his music. And they succeeded! They even managed to get Ahoy to offer a special reduced price for the venue. Shortly before the concert, Schout and Hivos director Jaap Dijkstra visited Peter Gabriel in his dressing room. When they later heard Gabriel addressing the large audience about Open for Africa, they realized he had listened carefully and he supported Hivos’ campaign wholeheartedly. Loe Schout still recalls the event as “my finest hour”.

Hivos Triodos Fund

Hivos’ businesslike way of dealing with money has remained a constant throughout the organization’s history. The Hivos Loan Fund launched by Sorgedrager in 1971 was still operational in the nineties, but in a new form – a risk-bearing loan fund – completely separate from the rest of Hivos’ activities. Then director Jaap Dijkstra took a bold, though well-considered next step: cooperation with an actual bank. Although Triodos Bank was not just any bank, it was still a bank, and such a cooperation was unusual for a development organization. But despite some people’s reservations, today almost 25 years later, the Hivos Triodos Fund (HTF) has enabled tens of thousands of businesses to thrive, while still realizing a reasonable return on investment.

Hivos’ loan policy had always been a point of discussion, and its new Risk-bearing Loan Fund raised many eyebrows. Jaap Dijkstra was given a clear message: a development organization is not allowed to “play bank”, and the Dutch Central Bank will never give it permission to do so. This was one of the reasons why Hivos opted to cooperate with Triodos Bank. But before long, new dark clouds gathered over the HTF. Hivos was formally refused permission to use its co-financing funds to cover the HTF’s risk-bearing loans. Fortunately for Hivos, some officials turned a blind eye to the construction and their actions were backed by Minister Pronk of Development Cooperation, allowing Dijkstra to continue the experiment. A fund containing the equivalent value of the loans granted was set up as an alternative. Today, this fund contains many millions of euros and basically functions as the financial backbone of the Hivos organization.

Hivos Culture Fund

“Free expression is vital to every society.” The phrase comes from the Zimbabwean poet and writer Chenjerai Hove, but also embodies Hivos’ humanistic values. In 1995 the organization launched a brand new fund. It was based on the premise that creative artists are important catalysts for social change; that they stimulate the imagination and critical thinking. The Hivos Culture Fund was unique in financing art and cultural initiatives “for art’s sake”, and not just for their social or political messages. From an independent film collective in Tajikistan to Yvonne Vera’s National Gallery “for all Zimbabweans”, Hivos’ support for artists spread all over the world.

At Hivos’ request, a motley crowd of artists and cultural representatives gathered in 2007 on the former slave island of Gorée, just off the coast of Senegal. Paul van Paaschen, who had been the man behind the Hivos Culture Fund for over ten years, wanted to take the next step by establishing cultural networks. Chenjerai Hove, who had helped to shape Hivos’ culture policy, was present, as was another early supporter of the Hivos Culture Fund, South African writer Breyten Breytenbach. The artists talked extensively about the challenges, limitations and opportunities of the African cultural sector. To Van Paaschen’s pride, the Arterial Network was launched at the end of this large conference at Gorée. South African dramatist Mike van Graan, the Network’s first secretary-general, took time to reflect on the organization’s tenth anniversary: “It is an organization whose time had come in terms of the needs of the continent.”

Embracing cyberspace

In 1994 the internet was still quite new. Loe Schout, head of Hivos’ Communication Department, realized it would change the world. He introduced the apparently limitless possibilities of the World Wide Web to Jaap Dijkstra and soon got the go-ahead to initiate Hivos’ first online experiments. In 1995 Hivos became the first Dutch development organisation to have its own website, and by 1999 an intranet connected all regional offices to the head office. In 2000 the document “Access for All” laid the foundations for Hivos’ internet policy. Hivos’ aims and expectations were emphasized in its subtitle: “Equal opportunities in cyberspace”. Access for all should mean access to power, for people in the South as well.

Two memorable events marked Hivos’ early steps into cyberspace. The first was the livestream connection with Nairobi, which Hivos demonstrated during a large-scale event in Rotterdam in 1998. Journalist Koert Lindijer conducted live interviews with Kenyans in Nairobi and people in Rotterdam. Assisted by Hivos personnel, they were invited to type messages on what would now be considered huge computers. Among the guests were celebrities such as Minister Jan Pronk and Dutch singer Anouk. Willy Mutunga of the Kenya Human Rights Commission recalls, “That concert [by Anouk and Papa Wemba] was broadcast live in Kenya. It was fascinating!” Another characteristic early-days event was the 1999 workshop that Hivos and IICD organized for partners in Tanzania. Budgets were limited, so the participants had to work some ten kilometres outside Dar es Salaam. There was absolutely nothing out there except an internet connection supplied by an Indian company via several Wi-Fi points. As Loe Schout puts it, “We didn’t have running water, but we did have running internet!”

Middle East Adventure

In 2002 Hivos decided to expand its activities westwards from India, aiming to actively support freedom, a strong civil society, and the empowerment of women in particular. Iran turned out to be the best choice, with its emerging NGO movement and no Western development organizations to support them. Hivos assigned two Iran experts to initiate the first contacts. Following their visit, Hivos’ Asia Department Head Tini van Goor and Project Officer Marcel van der Heijden traveled to Teheran in 2004. The duo’s initial conversations with women’s activist groups and NGO training centers marked the start of a growing Iran program until increasing repression meant that Hivos’ partners were forced to close down their offices in 2007.

When Ahmadinejad became president in 2005, the political climate in Iran changed for the worse. Hivos’ Iranian partner organizations came under increasing pressure. When Marcel van der Heijden visited Shiraz in late 2005, the security services urged his Iranian contacts to tell him to leave. The pressure increased by the day, and eventually by the hour, so Van der Heijden’s Iranian contacts in Shiraz asked him to comply. Given that his return trip was scheduled for the next day, he did so, with the partners organizing a trip to Persepolis to ensure that the Hivos employee kept a low profile on his last day in the country. Van der Heijden remembers this trip to the ancient city as absolutely superb. “But the situation was saddening. It was a truly memorable moment in what turned out to be one of my last visits to Iran.”

Markets for Biogas

Clean energy sources that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve people’s living conditions. That was the aim of Hivos’ biogas programs in Indonesia and five African countries. In cooperation with SNV, Hivos chose a market-based approach, helping to build mature biogas sectors that create their own commercial markets through the installation of tens of thousands of biodigesters. This required targeted investments on both the demand and supply sides of the market, ranging from locally-trained contractors and masons to demo sites and promotion teams. To date, over 70,000 biogas plants have been built in Africa alone, providing 350,000 people with smoke-free cooking and lighting facilities, as well as excellent organic fertilizer.

With such massive numbers at play, it was impossible to visit all farmers to check that their biodigesters were still working and they were using the nutrient-rich by-product bioslurry. Call centers seemed to be the best solution; after all, every farmer had a mobile phone by that time. So the African Biogas Partnership Program contracted commercial call centers and trained their staff in basic knowledge of biodigesters. The call center employees, who speak several local languages, use an extensive protocol to ask farmers whether they are satisfied with their biogas plant. They also report non-functional digesters directly to the company that installed them. However, not all complaints are equally relevant. For instance, a woman in Tanzania complained that she always ran out of biogas before finishing her cooking, although her domestic biodigester was twice as large as the average. After some additional questions, it turned out that she was baking a thousand cookies every day to sell them at the market.

Sumba Iconic Island

In 2010 Hivos issued a revolutionary message for a development organization: we opt for 100 percent renewable energy worldwide. Not only as a solution to the climate crisis, but also as a motor for development. Millions of poor people living in remote areas lack access to clean and affordable energy. On the Indonesian island of Sumba, Hivos invited all stakeholders to help provide the 650,000 inhabitants with renewable energy. This approach paid off. Villagers, farmers’ organizations and locally-elected leaders are now working with the state energy company PLN, the Ministry of Energy, and private sector parties to realize Sumba Iconic Island, which now serves as a replicable model on an international level.

Karaoke is extremely important in Indonesia. Iconic Island Sumba’s first local coordinator, Pak Adi, is a big karaoke fan and tries to slot in some karaoke singing whenever he can. During his time as coordinator this wasn’t always easy, like the time he took a Norwegian diplomat to a karaoke bar after a ten-hour drive over a bumpy road. But Pak Adi’s passion also played a part in the project’s success. Twice a year all stakeholders met to discuss the progress and make important decisions. Officials of all levels were present to prepare decisions, look for solutions and divide tasks, but some of them were not used to cooperating and not very eager to do so. This changed dramatically after a night of karaoke! Dinner was barely finished when Pak Adi took to the floor and started singing. Soon even the most reluctant person followed and was transformed into a full-fledged karaoke star! The next day the atmosphere had changed. Solutions were found and the officials worked together to formulate objectives that supported the interests of the Sumba villagers.

Human Rights Tulip Awards

2009 The second Human Rights Tulip awarded by the Dutch government went to one of Hivos’ many brave human rights partners: Shadi Sadr, an Iranian lawyer, journalist and researcher. Sadr led Raahi, an organization that provided legal assistance to women in family law cases (divorce, domestic violence) and was supported by Hivos until it was closed by the Iranian authorities in 2007. Shadi Sadr is internationally known for her “Stop Stoning Forever” campaign to ban stoning in Iran. Hivos’ longstanding support of human rights is firmly rooted in our humanist foundations and informs all our activities.

2014 One year after the Human Rights Tulip Award shifted its focus to “the promotion of human rights in innovative ways”, the prestigious prize was handed to Esra’a Al Shafei, founder of Hivos’ partner Mideast Youth (now called Majal). The organization, founded in Bahrain in 2006, built online platforms where (young) people could freely speak about issues that received little attention, such as the rights of Kurds, LGBTI+ people, and migrant workers, as well as the right to play “dissenting” music. Through its Digital Defenders Program, Hivos was the first supporter of Mideast Youth. Esra’a Al Shafei is now one of the most influential internet activists in the Arab world.

2017 Graciela Pérez Rodriguez is another Tulip Award-winning human rights champion. Her association of Mexican families and researchers investigates the disappearance of their loved ones despite incredible risks. Rodriguez’s daughter, brother and three nephews disappeared in 2012. To her anger and grief, the Mexican police did not even initiate an investigation. Rodriguez decided to take action herself and founded Mylinali. Hivos helps her to protect herself from members of the drug cartel, both online and on the street. Hivos’ Digital Defender Partnership supports Mylinali with a fully-customized digital safety and security program of 8 to 14 months in duration. This program provides important and life-saving work for human rights organizations that often deal with very sensitive information.

All Eyes on the Amazon

During its 2017 Goed Geld Gala the Dutch Postcode Lottery awarded its prestigious Dream Fund to Hivos and Greenpeace to support their unique attempt to deal a serious blow to the drivers of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Together with indigenous communities, a broad coalition of eleven organizations is investigating and documenting forest destruction, combining the latest technological developments with the age-old knowledge of the forest’s inhabitants. The coalition’s specialized support backs local communities in their fight to preserve their forests, using lawsuits, lobbying, and local and international campaigns to hold perpetrators accountable and protect some eight million hectares of intact forest landscape.

Hivos and Greenpeace developed All Eyes on the Amazon with no fewer than nine indigenous, environmental and human rights organizations. All coalition members knew that protecting eight million hectares of rainforest would not be their only challenge. Another one was how to cooperate effectively with so many different partners. A good example of this was the two-day partners meeting held in November 2017. Instead of flying in some 30 people from all over the world, which is not only expensive but also environmentally unfriendly, the coalition chose to meet online in five locations: Washington, Amsterdam, São Paulo, Lyon and Peru. Given the different time zones, the three different languages spoken, and the additional break-out sessions in separate rooms, it was most definitely a logistical nightmare. But the joint experience of trying to understand one another, translating for colleagues, crying out for a break, giggling over technical failures – and most of all being extremely committed to making it work – created a strong bond.