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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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Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011
Whirlwind Wheelchair International has been awarded a $1.7 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for a 2 1/2-year project to set up 7 sustainable Wheelchair Provision and Assembly Centers (WPAC) in developing countries around the world. Whirlwind is a non-profit social business based at San Francisco State University. Whirlwind was a Tech Museum Laureate in 2004 and Whirlwind’s Executive Director Marc Krizack was a member of the 2006 Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI) class.
The USAID award is significant in two respects. First, it gives Whirlwind the capital to expand its franchise network of wheelchair manufacturers to include distributors. By combining the benefits of large scale manufacturing with local provision, Whirlwind ensures high volumes of high quality, low cost wheelchairs that can be properly provided to the beneficiaries in accordance with World Health Organization guidelines. In many locations, the WPACs are expected to become the nucleus of a permanent rehabilitation infrastructure around which other services and programs can be built and monitored.
Second, the grant represents a milestone in Whirlwind’s own organizational development. Most non-profits are forced to shape their activities in accordance with the funder’s goals. Given the limited funding for international disability projects, for example, many organizations have to shoehorn disability projects into programs that have other goals such as development of civil society, promotion of democracy, rule of law, and conflict resolution, to name just a few. Since adopting a social entrepreneurial model in 2006, this is the first grant that Whirlwind has sought in which what Whirlwind proposed to do was exactly what Whirlwind wanted to do and had already started to do. As such, it represents a significant maturation in the organization’s journey from traditional non-profit to innovative social business.
The WPACs will result in increased sales and income for Whirlwind as well as extending the benefits of Whirlwind’s unique and in-demand active use RoughRider® wheelchair to many more people around the world. Each WPAC will make it possible to fill orders of less than a full container of wheelchairs, which is too expensive when fully assembled chairs are shipped from a distant factory. Each WPAC will be able to develop its own local market, especially in advocating for and competing for government tender offers. And many WPACs will have their own international donors and supporters who Whirlwind could not approach but from whom they can request funding to purchase the Whirlwind chairs they assemble and provide.
The USAID award dovetails nicely with Whirlwind’s other income generation effort to sell its flagship product, the RoughRider® wheelchair, in the United States, for which Whirlwind received FDA approval this past January. The wheelchairs will be sold as part of a Buy One/Give One program. For each wheelchair purchased for $800, Whirlwind will donate an identical chair to someone in the developing world. Through this program, Whirlwind hopes to attract and recruit brand advocates among wheelchair riders in the U.S. and Canada who can extend Whirlwind’s reach into every state and province, raising awareness of Whirlwind’s program. All funds generated from the sale of wheelchairs will be used to promote Whirlwind’s non-profit mission in the developing world.
The USAID grant will also allow Whirlwind to set up a U.S. Distribution Center in the San Francisco Bay Area, which will start by providing 3 jobs. The Center will serve U.S. purchasers and provide a reshipment point for nonprofits that ship chairs directly from the U.S. to other countries, and for individual travelers from the U.S. wishing to take a wheelchair to someone in the developing world.
Whirlwind is setting up a business advisory committee (BAC) to help review business plans submitted by applicants seeking to host a WPAC. Anyone interested in volunteering to sit on the BAC should contact Whirlwind Marketing Director Keoke King at keoke@whirlwindwheelchair.org.
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Marc Krizack is the Executive Director of Whirlwind Wheelchair, a non-profit social enterprise dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities in the developing world while also promoting sustainable local development.
Posted by Guest Blog: Marc Krizack |
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Friday, Nov. 4, 2011
By Andy Lieberman
Posted: 11/02/2011 08:00:00 PM PDT
This week the world hits 7 billion in population, just 12 years after we reached 6 billion.
Virtually all of these new billion live at the so-called Base of the Pyramid -- that segment of humanity that, by virtue of economic and political circumstance, struggles to meet basic food, water and energy needs on incomes of around $2 a day.
Here at the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, we are confronting this problem every day and have come to the conclusion that the old ways of meeting the needs of this new billion -- and the next and the next -- will not be met with methods that have attempted to serve the underserved in our old world of 6 billion. Instead, we believe that the needs will be met with something many consider counterintuitive: social entrepreneurs selling -- not giving away -- vital products and thriving on unusual business and financing models.
The 140 entrepreneurs we have trained over nine years demonstrate the range of problems that can be addressed through social entrepreneurship. One example, Solar Sister, is a nonprofit organization eradicating energy poverty in Africa by dispensing solar lamps and other clean-energy products using an Avon-style direct-sale distribution network of women entrepreneurs. This network takes advantage of the fact that African women control the family's kerosene budget and uses women-to-women social relationships to allow them to replace polluting, dangerous kerosene lamps with solar lamps.
The entrepreneurs admitted into our programs understand local needs and identify or develop appropriate solutions. A recent IFC and World Bank study, Lighting Africa, concluded that current solar lighting technologies can pay for themselves in as little as eight months. With technological improvements, increased production and the rising cost of kerosene, the payback period could go down to as little as two months by 2015.
We believe that the old ways of serving the Base of the Pyramid, international aid programs and charities, have not had the impact that was hoped for and will fall even further behind with rapid population growth and the increasing speed of innovation. Those mechanisms will continue to play an important role in addressing many issues in education, human rights and other areas that cannot be readily solved with market-based solutions. However, with $5 trillion of purchasing power, according to research done by the World Resources Institute, the Base of the Pyramid can indeed finance much of their own development.
Even with such compelling payoffs for the consumers upon switching from kerosene to solar lamps, there are numerous challenges to reaching all 1.5 billion people living off the grid. Solar Sister has 130 entrepreneurs in its network today and, through the training and mentoring we provided, has developed a plan to reach 2,500 entrepreneurs, providing clean energy to 2.5 million Africans by 2015.
It will take many more Solar Sisters to turn the tide on the energy problem. Yet, because the data show that it is a critical need that can be met with money people are already spending, the United Nations has declared 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All, entrusting entities including ours to form a practitioner network and share what works.
Looking across the entrepreneurs we have trained and the 74 million people whose lives they have touched, we predict the next billion will buy clean water from a local kiosk instead of waiting for an aid agency to drill a well, they will use solar lamps and cellphone chargers instead of wondering when the electric grid will reach their village, and they will thank the local entrepreneurs who serve them.
ANDY LIEBERMAN is GSBI online program manager at Santa Clara University's Center for Science, Technology, and Society, which for the past decade has trained over 120 social entrepreneurs through the Global Social Benefit Incubator. He wrote this for the Mercury News.
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Wednesday, Jul. 20, 2011
In this Xconomy piece, our Executive Director, Thane Kreiner argues “yes”. Based on the work featured in our recently released report Coordinating Impact Capital, A New Approach to Investing in Small and Growing Businesses he argues that a more “venture capital” type approach to funding social entrepreneurs would increase efficiency for both the entrepreneur (whose time is best spent building their enterprise rather than fundraising) and the investors (who struggle with issues like investing in companies located half a world away).
The study, which the Center for Science, Technology, and Society undertook with generous support from the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, asked 45 impact investors over six months to share with us their investment methods, profit expectations, geographic focus, due-diligence practices, and other factors. Our goal was to unearth some knowledge that could catalyze a more coordinated, venture-capital-style system for social-venture startups.
To learn more about the study, Coordinating Impact Capital, A New Approach to Investing in Small and Growing Businesses attend the unveiling of the study: July 26 from 4 to 6:30 p.m. at Santa Clara University’s Arts & Sciences Building, Wiegand Room, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, Calif. 95053. Register here
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Friday, Jun. 10, 2011
Mother Earth (GSBI Alumni '08) announced the launch of its in house brand of healthy, organic, chemical-free range of food products named EARTH FOOD. This initiative is launched in association with Sahaja Samrudha, Karnataka’s first farmer producer company. EARTH FOOD launches today, June 10, at the Mother Earth Store, Domlur, Bangalore. In addition, Mother Earth offers fashionable choices in garments and accessories that are natural and stylish as well as sustainable and fair for gifts and home décor that keep India’s green hand skills alive.
Find out more about Mother Earth: http://motherearth.co.in/earthhome
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