Nexus
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Monday, Feb. 25, 2013
Come hear GSBI Online alumni Gemma Bulos with the Global Women's Water Initiative speak about "Maximizing Potential through Entrepreneurship and Education" at The Stanford Association for International Development's.
Where: Stanford University
When: Sat. March 2nd
Sign Up: http://bit.ly/WeEVD8
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Friday, Dec. 14, 2012
Earlier this week the Center was delighted to host a holiday reception to celebrate the accomplishments of the last year, like the graduation of several GSBI Online cohorts, and the first year of our GSB Fellowship program.
The main event of the evening was John Kohler's presentation of his new research proposal for a demand-dividend investment vehicle for impact investing.
The Demand-Dividend project work will include final financing model design, a regression analysis on existing enterprises, and the creation of flexible term sheets. The Argidius grant will fund the field-oriented phase - preparing to test the new financing model with between four and six enterprises beginning in early 2013. Planning and initial diligence visits will occur in the autumn of this year.
Two years ago we launched a dedicated Impact Capital initiative with the aim of preparing social enterprises to move beyond philanthropic grants to attract private investment capital. Early work culminated with the release of a white paper, Coordinating Impact Capital in the summer of 2011.
You can read more about the demand-dividend project in our press release.
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Tuesday, Apr. 10, 2012
This post is a preview of tonight's panel discussion co-sponsored with the SCU Alumni Association and Career Center. You can find event information here.
Social Entrepreneurs apply the principles of entrepreneurship to create social change. They think innovatively about how to improve health, increase access to technology and education, refine agricultural or building practices, or utilize sustainable energy.
Tonight’s panelists offer a diverse range of perspectives on the world of social entrepreneurship. The groups operate in different sectors, different countries and with different business models. The speakers themselves hold different positions within these groups, and come from very different backgrounds, including finance, engineering, and program development.
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Andy Lieberman- CSTS: Online Program Director
The mission of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society (CSTS) is to promote the use of science and technology to benefit underserved communities worldwide, primarily by working with socially-minded entrepreneurs. The Center implements its mission through its signature program, the Global Social Benefit Incubator, the Frugal Innovation Lab, and its numerous educational and public engagement activities.
Andy Lieberman manages the GSBI Online program, the Clean Energy Sector program, the Tech Awards laureate programming, and the CSTS social enterprise metrics database. He uses his background in technology, education and international development to help social enterprises increase their reach and impact. He has received awards from the United Nation’s World Summit on Information and Society and The Tech Awards, and also participated in the Global Social Benefit Incubator.
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Ellen Metzger - Village Enterprise: Operations Supervisor
Village Enterprise helps equip those in a cycle of poverty with the tools they need to start an income generating business. Their programming focuses on helping these entrepreneurs throughout the whole process to build long-lasting businesses: they provide a start-up grant, ongoing training and mentoring, and a business savings program.
Ellen Metzger is the Operations Supervisor at Village Enterprise. She comes from a background in Finance and Accounting, with a particular interest in development and micro-finance
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Gemma Bulos - Global Woman’s Water Initiative: Director
GWWI trains women in Africa to become community leaders for safe, clean water. They provide technical training on how to build simple water harvesting, treatment and toilet technologies, as well as the tools to educate their communities about safe water practices.
Gemma Bulos is one of the co-founders of GWWI. Her background includes developing innovative programming for income generating projects, participating in the creation of several successful NGOs, and extensive travel. Before becoming Director at GWWI, Gemma was the Founder/Executive Directer of A Single Drop (USA) and Founding Director of a Single Drop for Safe water in the Philippines. She has been recognized nationally and internationally for her social entrepreneurship work, and her integration of technology in social change.
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Jacob Schultz - Kiva: Fellows Program Manager
Kiva believes that everyone--even those in most remote locations--should have the power to create opportunity for themselves and others. Kiva uses the internet and their network of micro-finance institution partners to connect lenders and entrepreneurs worldwide. The Kiva Fellows are the volunteers who collect the stories, photos, and updates from the entrepreneurs, bringing their stories to life for lenders, while simultaneously providing invaluable information to the local micro-finance institutions.
Jacob Schultz is the Fellows Program Manager.
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Marc Krizack - Whirlwind Wheelchair International
Whirlwind Wheelchair International is a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities in the developing world while also promoting sustainable local economic development in the process. They are committed to building all-purpose wheelchairs that are durable and locally repairable, making them truly useful to riders in the developing-world.
Marc Krizack, Director of Operations, helped establish Russia’s first independent living center, first university level disabled students program and first university level orientation and mobility (for blind people) teacher preparation program.
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Mathias Craig - blueEnergy Group: Executive Director
blueEnergy Group uses four distinct but complementary programs that aim to provide access to power, water, and other services in the most challenging contexts. Their Holistic Community Development Program coordinates partnerships between communities, the government, education and the public and private sectors to identify and address needs in individual areas; the Global Leadership Program gives individuals the tools they need to implement their own social entrepreneurship goals; the Renovables Program is working on developing Nicaragua’s abundant renewable energy potential; and their WindEmpowerment program is a global association working for locally built wind turbines.
Mathias Craig is the Executive Director of blueEnergy. He founded the group in 2003 and has a background of over seven years of experience working with wind energy. He has also spent time living in Latin America, and obtained degrees in both Civil and Environmental Engineering. At blueEnergy he contributes administrative, programmatic and fundraising leadership.
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Michael Chertock - Digital Divide Data: Chief Development Officer
Digital Divide Data increases the value of data by making it more easily available to all by transferring it online, on mobile devices, and in information systems. Moreover, DDD recruits highschool students trapped in a cycle of poverty, providing opportunity through training, employment, and schooling. By doing so, they simultaneously build human resources and management capacities, fueling the economy in the communities that DDD serves.
A co-founder and former Board Chair, Michael is Chief Development Officer for DDD. He has an extensive background in both development and philanthropy, serving as the Program Officer in the Global Development in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; as a consultant in philanthropy and international development for private foundations and donors; acting as the co-founder and Managing Director of Global Catalyst Foundation; managing the philanthropy arm of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm; and helping to start Schools Online.
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Sam Baker -Not For Sale: Business Development
Not for Sale combines technology, intellectual capital, abolitionist groups, and a growing network of individuals to create a comprehensive response to human trafficking and slavery. Not For Sale spreads knowledge and inspires action by creating tools that can be used by a wide variety of groups--students, businesses, individuals--to donate their skills to the cause.
Sam guides the expansion of Not For Sale's social enterprise initiatives, which focus on empowering survivors of trafficking and at-risk communities. With a business education and experience as an entrepreneur in Central America, Sam enjoys working through the daily challenges of integrating social impact and business. Whether in the garment industry in Cambodia or indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon, Not For Sale's business team is dedicated to modeling businesses that encourage economic freedom over dependence.
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Whitfeild Fowler - Driptech Inc.: Director of Engineering
Driptech is an international water technologies company. Their mission is to alleviate poverty by creating affordable, water efficient irrigation solutions for small-plot farmers in developing nations. With this technology, priced 50% lower that the nearest competition, the small-plot farmers can increase their yields 20-50%, with while decreasing labor and expenditures.
As the Engineering Manager at Driptech, Whit leads the engineering and product development efforts there. In addition, he is a visiting lecturer in the subject of Design For Manufacturability for Stanford University's Mechanical Engineering department and for Keio University's Graduate School of System Design and Management (in Japan). Prior to his present positions, Whit worked in jobs involving mechanical engineering or reliability for several other organizations on the west coast and in the midwest including Velkess, SunPower, Bloom Energy, GE Infrastructure - Aviation, GE Healthcare, and Logic Product Development. He completed a Ph.D. (2009) and M.S. (2005) in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford.
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Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011
Kiva.org is the fruit of a philosopher who asked a practical question: what could I do to help very poor people improve their lives? Matt Flannery visited Africa and discovered that a very small amount of money could help people in big ways, and that people in existing communities of trust would ensure that a loan was repaid. With some friends and family members, Matt started making a few loans. Kiva.org is now one of the most visible micro-lending institutions in America. Matt visited Santa Clara on November 9, and told stories of how this came about.
Every time I hear news about the big banks, the ones too big to fail, I get a bit more cynical. The enormous salaries to men whose banks’ bad behavior brought the American economy to its knees, credit default swaps so complex their inventors could not understand them, secret loans made by the feds to banks, government bailouts used to fund lobbyists to fend of regulation...these stories prompt in me a question: is the whole banking industry a parasite on society? The occupy movement does have a point here.
Starting a bank was the farthest thing from Matt Flannery’s mind, but he found, as I have, that one cannot foster human flourishing for poor people without providing them access to some capital. Matt was a computer programmer at TiVo with a Masters degree in philosophy, so he came to banking through a nonconventional path. He didn’t get into this line of work to make money, but rather, to alleviate poverty. Perhaps it was the ethicist in him that perceived economic options where others saw nothing but risky loans. In the Ugandans he met he found people alive with hopes and dreams, and he activated his networks back in America to partner with them. To accommodate the compassion of micro-loaners like you and me, he created a website to share the stories of people who needed credit, and Kiva.org was born.
This form of economics has nothing to do with the predatory or parasitic practices that foster cynicism. Instead, it’s based on mutuality through the international sharing of stories. Micro-loaners here in America learn about the needs of the poor, working so hard -- but unable to escape the traps of poverty without credit--in poorer countries over there. By exchanging stories, Kiva.org fosters practical compassion. People do want to make a difference, and by making a micro-loan, they can. Kiva.org facilitates this exchange.
Matt clearly loves what he does, and he has apparently found his life’s work. He used his computer programming skills to help countless people. From another perspective, his is a very old solution. In response to interest rates of >40% during the late Middle Ages, members of my religious order, the Franciscans, devised and launched local credit unions to provide loans at a fraction of this rate. These were the forerunners of the modern banking system....and this from a religious order that takes its vow of poverty quite seriously!
Fostering practical justice means understanding the economic reality of people who are poor, and just might be able to make it out of their poverty trap with a loan. Cynicism of American banking may be warranted, and the occupy movement may decry greed, but understanding how well conceived economic interventions based on solidarity can make a huge difference in the lives of others seems highly appropriate for a Catholic university that prides itself on teaching conscience. It is my hope that the Global Social Benefit Fellowship can help some Santa Clara students learn this.
Keith Douglass Warner OFM is a Franciscan Friar and the CSTS director of education.
Watch the Video of Matt's Kiva talk from November 9th, here.
Posted by Keith Douglass Warner OFM |
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Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011
The Tech Awards Nexus Conference brought together a diverse, passionate group from the social enterprise (SE) community. The annual conference is always uplifting, and this year’s theme of successful social entrepreneurship made it even more so. But, that doesn’t mean that we got a sugar-coated view of easy it is to build an organization that positively impacts the lives of thousands or millions of people. The rock stars of the SE world we heard from spoke from the heart and the brain, and they told us how messy it can be.
My current focus is on enabling CSTS to help more entrepreneurs help more people, so I was listening for insight on mentoring and capacity building that we can provide to help SEs scale their impact.
My main takeaway from the day was a reaffirmation that the social entrepreneurship movement is reaching a certain level of maturity and credibility, and that we have enough collective experience to learn from each other. Most of us in this space learn the most from practical examples and guidelines, which was the hallmark of the day. The quotes that resonated the most with me were:
- If your users are not your customers, then your users are part of your products and you are selling them to your customers. -- Joel Selanikio, DataDyne
- Our disruptive technology is communication—listening first, giving voice to others, letting people take action. We come in to each country with a beginner’s mind and give people the chance to take action. -- Ronni Goldfarb, EqualAccess
- Don’t underestimate the power of unleashing youth to work on real-life problems – Lisa Jobson, iEARN
- People make incredibly important decisions based on guesses if they don’t have access to information. – Kristine Pearson, Lifeline Energy
- Corporations aren’t yet organized to work with the social enterprise space, so you end up going around with the corporate social responsibility division to the emerging markets to the foundation to who knows where else. – Al Hammond, Ashoka
And, as in any good conversation about social entrepreneurship these days, the speakers proudly discussed their failures as an indispensable element of their success. Joel told this story:
We started charging our users for Episurveyor out of financial necessity, but once we did, it aligned us with our customers’ needs, which made us stronger. The failure is that it took us seven years to figure that out.
Radha Basu from Anudip summed up the discussion on failure with her usual exuberance by stating simply that “bruises and scars build character. You pick yourself up and go forward.”
To do this requires mental flexibility, accompanied by the willingness and ability to adapt. On this point, Joel Selanikio popped open his laptop and quoted Marie Curie: “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Tech Awards Nexus conference without this year’s laureates sharing their innovations to benefit humanity. At every break, the laureates positioned themselves at their showcase booths and passionately described and demoed their work. We see the tremendous potential in each of these 15 innovators and hope that the Tech Awards can be as pivotal for their organizations as it was for Kristine, who told us that, “without The Tech Awards, we would have gone under. Instead, we brought in Vodaphone and other new donors, and we went on to distribute 215,000 radios and touch the lives of 12 million people.”
The problems we are working to solve are daunting, and we have a long way to go. But, in the words of John Kohler, “everyone in the room has their heart in the right place. That will let us go more quickly.”
After spending the day with such a thoughtful, committed, and sincere group of people, I am more committed than ever to going the distance. Are you?
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