Overview
Overview of Powerful Information's Development
Powerful Information ran educational and community support projects in low-income countries for over 25 years before the chartiy rebranded in January 2018. This section explains how Powerful Information came into being, what it did and what it achieved.[1]
Mike Flood set up Powerful Information in early 1990 following a one-month fact-finding trip to Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Ghana. He was surprised and shocked by the lack of good quality environmental information available in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), resource centres and public libraries. He visited dozens of groups and organisations, and also talked with senior civil servants and government officials. Mike found it troubling to compare their situation with his own as an independent freelance consultant — this was a time when few groups in low-income countries possessed computers,  and several years before the use of the internet really took off. Tim Berners Lee only introduced us to the World Wide Web in March 1989.
The Big Idea
The basic idea was to identify and obtain copies of the latest and best environmental literature and provide this free of charge to local activists and resource centres in low-income countries — it would be up to Mike to raise the necessary funds and work out the logistics. Powerful Information was awarded charitable status in September 1992 and became a limited charitable company in April 2002. Its Charitable Objects were to advance the education of the public in relation to the production and use of natural resources and support local initiatives that promote sustainable development and strengthen civil society, and especially the efforts of NGOs and key institutions involved in environmental education, conservation, research and regulation in less-affluent parts of the world.

Early Focus on Specialist Books
In the early years PI used its extensive network of environmental contacts to help build up a ‘must have’ list of environmental publications and make contact with bona fide NGOs and resource centres in more than 20 countries. And it was successful in raising the resources to purchase and send out publications worth over £100,000. One project involved developing a KnowHow Manual and Resource Pack for Environmental NGOs; another, sending over £20,000 worth of specialist books and reports to 12 of the leading forestry research institutes in Eastern Europe.
However, Mike began to question this approach when he found that some activists did not appear to be making use of the material that PI was sending — this was an important early lesson in human psychology. And around the same time he identified a far deeper problem that wasn’t being addressed: many grassroots activists had real difficulty knowing how best to tackle environmental problems effectively. So PI stopped sending out publications and began engaging directly with local partners to design and carry out practical projects in the community. This work gradually broadened out to cover a range of related social and human rights issues. Powerful Information also started taking on volunteers, including interns keen to find out about working in international development.
Switch to Supporting Communities
PI’s new focus involved understanding local needs, locating appropriate information and knowhow, and then facilitating programmes that informed and empowered local people, helping to build social capital, promote social justice and raise awareness. This was not a question of abandoning the environmental focus, rather accepting that most environmental problems are in essence people problems, and that if you educate, inform and engage local people they are more likely to look after their environment better than almost anyone else.
Regional Focus
Eastern Europe:  Powerful Information started its community work in Eastern Europe, and focused primarily on Albania, Lithuania, Moldova and Romania, with initiatives also in Latvia, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. Apart from local capacity-building (common to all projects), our main focus was on environmental education and community development.

The award of a Winston Churchill Travel Fellowship (in 1991) enabled Mike to visit environmental groups in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria — this was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall (Nov.89) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and establishment of a Commonwealth of Independent States (Dec.91). Powerful Information subsequently benefitted from the UK Government's interest in helping these new fragile regimes convert to Western-style democracies through initiatives like Charity KnowHow. We were able to capitalise on this and also win grants from private foundations.
A decade or so later, when a number of our target countries joined the European Union, funding grassroots community projects became more problematic. It was as if joining the EU meant that their social and environmental problems would now be dealt with. But the reality was that in rural areas those with the skills and qualifications moved to the cities leaving behind high levels of unemployment and poor and disabled people struggling to make ends meet. After completing around 40 education projects in the region we had to scale down our programmes and reluctantly withdraw when it became impossible to raise the necessary funds. We completed our last project (in Albania) in 2014.
West Africa:  Our community work in West Africa was carried out mainly in Sierra Leone and Ghana, with various projects in Nigeria, Benin and Senegal — in 2016 we also investigated linking up with disability groups in Zimbabwe. Many Africans struggle to provide shelter, food and clothing for their families, and to pay for their children’s education; and their plight has lately been made worse by increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. Again, the problems are particularly acute in rural areas, where there is extreme poverty and high levels of illiteracy, especially amongst women, with many going hungry between harvests. So this is why in Sierra Leone we chose to run programmes for women, focusing on adult literacy, healthcare, citizenship and livelihoods, and later, gender-based violence (GBV) — we started in 2002, the year a peace treaty was signed bringing to an end a brutal rebel war. We also helped set up programmes for people with disability. And in Ghana, we homed in on subsistence agriculture and pesticide misuse/abuse to help reduce the high rate of poisoning and improve farmer's yields.
We adopted these specific themes following our research into need, and also in response to pleas made to us during monitoring visits — we initiated our disability programme after a blind man approached Mike in Rokonta village where we had a women’s learning circle — Samuel asked for help, and much to Mike’s surprise emailed him one month later! This was the beginning of a decade-long collaboration with Sam and his blind colleagues (Vision for the Blind). We started the GBV work after being lobbied by a young woman, Aminata, who had herself been a victim of violence.
One of our main projects in Ghana arose when an American foundation asked us if we could evaluate a proposal that it had received from the Network of Rice Farming Associations in the Volta Region.
Organisational Development
In 2000 Powerful Information moved its base from Mike’s house to an office in the City Discovery Centre, in Bradwell Abbey, Milton Keynes. By this time the charity had a Board of six and a staff of three, and it was using specialist consultants on a number of projects. We were also managing a small team of volunteers.
Project management took up the major part of our time alongside fund-raising, outreach and mentoring. But despite our efforts, we were unable to attract larger grants for much of the work because of our small size and modest annual turnover — and it wasn’t for lack of trying.[2]  This meant that a great deal of effort had to go into researching and writing funding bids, and also reporting, as funders’ deadlines would come round at different times of the year, often out of phase with natural project cycles.
Much of this work would not have been possible without the sophisticated databases that we developed inhouse to facilitate project management and reporting, and to keep a track of bids and expenditure, and enable us to run quarterly cash flows for PI’s Board.
Outreach:  We set up our first website in 2000 and produced a newsletter for many years (‘Practical Information’); and from 2010 we ran a blog (‘What’s New?’). We joined Facebook in 2011 and posted regular contributions there too. Throughout this period we kept the charity’s overheads to a minimum by careful housekeeping and drawing only modest salaries. This ensured that the bulk of the money that we received from trusts and in public donations was used for project development and implementation.
Our Legacy
Whilst it was operating Powerful Information raised over £1.6 million and resourced and managed over 120 grassroots projects, and we helped build the operational effectiveness of dozens of indigenous groups, including seven that we nurtured into being. With and through local partners we helped build or strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of over 60 not-for-profits in Russia and eight former Eastern Bloc countries — in one 3 year project we helped 10 indigenous NGOs develop new environmental project proposals, and six were successful in obtaining funding (grants totalling $205,000).

In Russia we brought together key people involved in environmental policy-making and campaigning to share information on improving public education programmes; and we worked with women farmers in Lithuania to help 15 disadvantaged communities design and implement 34 local projects to improve water and healthcare services. This helped build social capital and directly benefitted 700 individuals — over 2,000 villagers attended our seminars, workshops and public meetings.
One novel project in Albania investigated lead recycling and heavy metal contamination; another demonstrated how medicinal herbs could be cultivated successfully, helping change public attitudes to uncontrolled wild collection, which had done so much to damage biodiversity after controls were relaxed when Dictator Enver Hoxha’s died. We also trained over 300 school teachers and supported 80 student environmental projects — 12 in Romania went on to win regional or national prizes. These are just a few of the projects that we ran in the region with and through local partners.
In Sierra Leone we set up and supported more than 40 village learning circles and provided non-formal basic education for over 4,000 women and teenage girls; and we provided skills-training for 165 blind adults — including developing a novel, low-cost computing course and training 35 blind professionals; and we contributed to the introduction of inclusive education in mainstream schools by training 24 teachers in Special Educational Needs and setting up two visual impairment units. We also supported a small NGO which helped and advised over 50 women and girls who had suffered serious sexual assault or domestic violence and took a number of the perpetrators to court.
In Ghana, we partnered NETRICE and empowered 1,025 subsistence farmers in the Volta Region with the knowledge and skills to protect themselves from poisoning, increase yields and reduce their environmental footprint through integrated pest management (IPM).
Our colleagues spoke with some 14,000 high school students (and 550 teachers) to warn them of the dangers from pesticides — in some schools we found 30-40% of students involved in spraying; and we catalogued over 170 victims of pesticide poisoning in 45 villages, including some 35 suspected deaths. We also lobbied over 60 local stakeholders to put pressure on the government to implement its regulations and legislation on pesticides and crack down on widespread abuse.
Of course, none of these achievements would have been possible without our partnership with local groups who supervised and managed projects on the ground (a total of around 40 partners over the years): they spoke local languages, understood people’s mentality, politics and culture, and had the trust and respect of local people. We found this way of working to be highly effective, enabling us to get to the parts that much larger organisations often failed to reach.
The Work Goes On
In December 2017 Mike retired from Powerful Informationand the charity's Board appointed PI’s Financial Director, Jill Chinn, as Executive Officer. PI rebranded as Grassroots Action  and is continuing the work — there’s no shortage of things that need to be done in this increasingly polarised and troubled world.
Captions
a)   One of the better resourced NGO Resource Centres that we found in Africa -- this one is in Cotonous, Benin and run by OBEPAB.
b)    Scene from one of the workshops that we ran with community groups in Lithuania to explore the different organisational and political routes that could be used to help resolve local problems. This one was held in Kelme. It was organised by consultant, Jim, with Rasa (Local Initiative), both standing.
c)   One of Education for Women's Learning Circle in Makump Doron (in Bombali).
d)  Powerful Information Board meeting (in April 2017) with trustees Debbie, Tom, Susan, Kirsty, Shona and Robin, and PI's Finance Director, Jill Chinn (right).
e)   PI Database interface on our local area network, which provided instant access to our data.
f)    Petrit & Naim (Rural Association Support Programme), Destan (Kukes Farmers’ Federation) and Kirsty (PI) looking at herb seedlings in the nursery in Pobreg Village, Terthore Commune in the north east of Albania.
g)   NETRICE's team addressing an enormous assembly of students (over 420) at Worawora Senior High School.

Footnotes
1   This page is available as a flier.
2   See ‘Alternative Funding Strategies’, a paper we prepared in 2009 for Andrew Mitchell, when he was shadow Minister for International Development.
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