Author Archives: microfinance

Changing mindsets… importing innovative models made by emerging and developing economies

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Just back from the “Partnering for Global Impact” a two day forum by EBD Group in Lugano. Key areas covered were agriculture, education, healthcare housing, financial services and water.This forum facilitates outcomes in impact investing and philanthropy through one to one meetings alongside great keynote addresses (such as Sir Ronald Cohen) and panel discussions. It was a well organized event with very good content and great for networking.
Having attended numerous events on impact investment and philanthropy and having been fortunate to learn from outstanding social enterprises over the past 10 years I believe that one new topic should be added to these events.
These great forums such as Skoll World Forum, SOCAP, TBLI and PGI are playing a critical role in helping to solve the most serious problems we face through bringing together ideas, people, capital and promoting the more efficient use of resources. Find sustainable solutions which are working in emerging economies and scaling it. Funding and capacity building to be provided by impact investors, philanthropists and development finance institutions. It’s great but maybe we could do even better.
One different angle should be added. What could WE in the developed world learn and import from the emerging market innovative models that have been successful? Who has developed or is developing low cost high quality services in education, financial services and healthcare? There are successful education models developed in Latin America that could be used for low income communities in the USA. Perhaps vocational school systems or microfranchising business models that could be useful in reducing youth unemployment in The European Union? The increasing applications of mobile technology for payment systems in Kenya? There is so much innovation happening in emerging economies and we should be pragmatic and maybe a bit humble and change our mindsets to search and learn from the best available solution.
I talked about this idea to some veterans in this field, Suzanne Biegel from Catalyst at Large and ClearlySo, Jed Emerson of ImpactAssets and Blended Value and to Hans Wahl of INSEAD and they all thought it made sense! This topic is worthwhile to dig in further and much more research is needed I hope it will be included in future forums.

UK government leads G8 efforts to grow the market for impact investments

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UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced the launch of the Social Stock Exchange (SSE), a tax break consultation for social investors and £250m to help communities buy and support local businesses at the Social Impact Investment Conference on June 6th ahead of the G8 summit. The G8 leaders are embracing the promise of impact investments. The U.S. Small Business Administration is nearly doubling the amount it will put into impact investment funds, to $150 million from $80 million. An open letter from the industry which was published in last weekend’s Financial Times, applauded the PM and the G8 leaders “for their proactive step to embrace the promise of impact investing as an important complement to exsisting efforts by the public and non-profit sectors”. The open letter was signed by over 90 leading voices from finance and civil society – including JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Big Society Capital, KPMG, responsAbility, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Omidyar Network. Another step towards mainstreaming impact investments!

Social Progress Index- going beyond GDP

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A new benchmark to measure the wellbeing and success of countries, the Social Progress Index (SPI), was launched at the 10th Skoll World Forum (April 10-12). This initiative was launched by the Social Progress Imperative and Harvard Business School Prof. Michael Porter (who co-created the business concept of “creating shared value”). This new measure aims to provide a more holistic measurement compared to the one dimensional GDP per capita to assess the progress and standing of countries which shall be useful to policy makers as well as corporations. The SPI measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens by using indicators in the areas of basic human needs (nutrition, water, air, medical care, sanitation, shelter, personal safety), foundations of wellbeing (access to basic knowledge, access to information, health and wellness, ecosystem sustainability), and opportunity (personal rights, access to higher education, personal freedom of choice, equity and inclusion).

What’s new in crowdfunding, crowdinvesting

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Crowdfunding platforms are continuing to be launched and according to industry sources there are more than 500 platforms. Of the 4 types of crowdfunding sites (donation-based, reward-based, loan based and equity based) this year we are likely to see a surge of equity based crowdfunding sites (in particular in the USA) that would allow for investment in startups. This is due to the passage of the JOBS Act last year that includes the Crowdfund Act. A recent article titled Crowdfunding Clean Energy by David Bornstein gives an excellent insight on the recent trends in this area. In addition to Solar Mosaic described in this article there are several new green crowdfunding sites that look appealing. Impact Crowd, Abundance Generation, OnGreen

Learning Creative Learning a live/online course of MIT Media Lab

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I am taking part in this experimental course Learning Creative Learning offered by MIT Media Lab. It is awesome that nowadays one can learn from wherever one is (as long as one has internet connection) an amazing number of different courses and many of these are for free. It is the start of the democratization of education. The MOOC (massive open online courses) revolution is certainly changing the way we learn and interact with the teachers and classmates and the way schools and universities operate. For anyone interested in seeing what kind of courses one can apply checkout Coursera you will find over 300 courses online by top universities around the world.

Update: Solar electrification of Kandwi, Zanzibar by Barefoot solar engineers

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fatima_patima.JPG Last August I accompanied Bunker Roy of Barefoot College to Zanzibar where he was selecting grandmothers in the village of Kandwi who would be travelling to India to be trained as solar engineers.(see entry)
This project named “Women Empowerment Project” was supported by Giving Women. Just 12 months later, the women solar engineers are installing the solar panels and LED lights for 100 houses in Kandwi. It is remarkable to see the changes in these women too. It is impressive that the whole project cycle from visiting the village, selecting the grandmothers, getting the village approval, preparing them to go to Tilonia for training, the 6 month training, getting back and preparing the maintenance workshop, getting the solar equipment out of customs and solar electrifying the village houses all this has been achieved in 12 months!
Congratulations to Fatima, Patima and Mwashamba the three solar barefoot enginners, the villagers of Kandwi, Barefoot College and Giving Women for their great work! (video showing the installation, courtesy of Kathrin Legg)

A must see video from the Skoll World Forum 2012

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This year’s Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship was titled FLUX: Seizing momentum and driving change. This forum continues to be one of the best venues to meet up, update, share, collaborate and form new partnerships between all the players, social enterprises, private sector and public sector. One of my favourites talks at this year’s Skoll Forum was Hans Rowling’s presentation on the future of world population.

Book Tips: 2 books I enjoyed reading in 2011

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2011 …a busy year and one that went by so quickly… I managed to read a few books finally in the second week of December.
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Most fun and inspiring read was Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. The 570 page biography is a page turner and a must-read. The subject matter of course is fascinating, a genius, a powerful and intense individual with many contradictions that transformed 7 industries (personal computer, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing, retail stores) with his passion and pursuit for making great products and making a great company that would last. And it is beautifully written.
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Another book which is a useful read for people interested in social entrepreneurship, the future of capitalism and how the silos are breaking between the business and the social world is Sir Richard Branson’s latest book “Screw Business as Usual” I enjoyed reading the second half as it iillustrates many examples of how some of the large global corporations/brands are starting to shift/experiment ways for “doing well and doing good”. I find it powerful that this call for change is coming from one of the world’s famous and admired business leaders.

sosense.org – where philanthropy meets entrepreneurship

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We (Socential Ltd.) are happy to announce the launch of sosense.org. Our new platform sosense.org is dedicated to support high impact social enterprises operating both on a global scale, mainly in developing countries, as well as those operating in Switzerland. We strive to make it simple for social investors and donors to search, select and support these enterprises. Our aim is to facilitate collective impact.
We feature outstanding social enterprises that are working efficiently and effectively in solving some of the major social and environmental issues that we face today. Take a look at VisionSpring, Tostan, International Bridges to Justice, Riders for Health, Gram Vikas, Landesa to name a few. You can see the short video on their pages to get an overview of these inspiring organizations.
We realized during our pilot phase that supporting the social enterprises makes much more sense and creates a larger and long lasting impact than trying to dedicate to funding independent projects. www.sosense.org is a brand and it is owned and managed by Socential Ltd.
We still have a lot to improve on a number of fronts. It is work in progress which shall improve and we look forward to your collaboration and feedback!
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