One of the most exciting movements I’ve seen recently in the social enterprise world is the development of Affordable Private Schools. Approximately 100 million children in the developing world are attending ultra low-cost private schools (generally less than $10/month in school fees). Their parents (typically low or working class, living at the base of the pyramid) choose to invest their limited income in their children's education and realize that the affordable private schools tend to offer a far superior education to the local public schools.

As entrepreneurs in South Asia, Africa, and elsewhere begin to recognize the opportunities for them to both make a profit and make a contribution to society, an entire ecosystem is being built around this movement. Gray Matters Capital has really taken the lead in creating this – having developed the community site Enterprising Schools, developed a program in Hyderabad to create a ratings system for affordable private school, and provided funding for the Indian School Finance Company to provide low-interest loans to entrepreneurs to support expansion efforts.

IDEO is now launching an open innovation platform – OpenIDEO – and one of the first two challenges is related to designing tools and services for these affordable private schools. We’re now in the inspiration phase, collecting examples of interesting product, service, and systems innovations in education that will then spark ideas for new ideas in the concepting phase. Check out the new site and please contribute your comments and ideas to grow and support this movement!

For the past week, I've been reflecting on and telling stories about my trip to Nairobi. It was one that really moved me and left me with both a sense of optimism and a realization about how much more needs to change.

The Blue Sweater book group event in Kibera, where Jacqueline Novogratz spoke to 100 people from five slums surrounding Nairobi, was especially moving. The young men from the slums who organized the event couldn't have been prouder and did am amazing job showing all of us their great leadership capabilities. Several women asked some of the toughest and heartfelt questions I had heard. "How do you balance serving your community and serving your family?" "How can I lead when I'm poor young mother who has nothing." "My women's group has failed so many times now, how can we have the strength to continue." It was wonderful to see that after the event, the audience members were connecting with each other and making suggestions of microfinance institutions, training courses, and schools to one another. The overwhelming message was "Don't wait for handouts - take the first steps to take control of your life. All of us are leaders and we need perseverance to fail, learn, and eventually succeed."

We left the event feeling inspired but with a sense of sadness. We are so privileged to spend an evening in Kibera and then be able to drive away, back to our five star hotels and fancy dinners. There continues to be so much tribal tension and violence that is pulling these communities apart and they are allowing themselves to destroy the very things that are built for the public good in the name of these differences. Corruption permeates the society so deeply and without an ability to pay a bribe, one may not even be able to attend university.

My trip ended on a very hopeful note, with the four organizations the Ripple Effect team worked with over the past four months presenting their water pilots. The groups were so proud of what they've accomplished in such a short time and really owned their projects and the design thinking process. The two NGOs were convinced of the benefits of developing sustainable business models and the two private companies were deeply committed to serving the poor.

I returned to San Francisco excited by the work I had seen and the stories I had heard from such strong individuals. I also returned with a pragmatic view of all the hard work that needs to be done and a renewed commitment to doing all I can to make that happen.

Whenever I'm asked my impressions about India, one of the things I always remark on is the sense of optimism that permeates the culture. I love hearing people talk about how their lives, the lives of their neighbors, and the state of the entire country is improving year after year. They believe their ventures will scale and they see the movement of social enterprise taking off all around them.

In the past, I've had a harder time finding that same optimism in Kenya. Especially since the elections, people have seemed skeptical of lasting change. They saw that in a few days, so much progress could be destroyed.

I've been thrilled to spend time this week with four amazing organizations - groups piloting projects to increase access to clean drinking water in low-income communities. When talking about their projects, they speak with such conviction and hope about the impact their work will have.

Umande Trust and Maji na Ufanisi are community based organizations working in the informal settlements. They are deeply embedded with the community members and are working with them to start businesses to sell and deliver water. The communities have been integral in the design of the pilots and are now owning them and taking them on as their own. They are excited both to serve their communities and to have an additional source of income. They see these pilot sites as just the first in a larger initiative.

PureFlow and Kentainers are private-sector companies that make water filters and storage tanks, respectively. They are both developing water kiosks in peri-urban areas to sell bottled water quality branded drinking water for a fraction of the price. They are run by ambitious entrepreneurs, for whom scale is a given. They believe they can both serve low-income markets and make a profit, and won't stop working until they do.

The progress these organizations have made in the past four months (from initial conception of the idea through the pilot phase) is incredible. They're moving fast, proving their models, and truly serving the needs of their customers. And, they are right to be optimistic about what the future will bring.

I arrived in Nairobi last night after two and a half years. As I entered the airport, an overwhelming sense of familiarity overcame me. The air was cool and fresh and a group of women were singing welcome songs in Swahili to a group of passengers they were meeting.

I had a friendly taxi driver who took me quickly to the hotel. I realized I had snapped back to Nairobi mode when I immediately put on my seat belt (so cops don't pull you over and demand a bribe) and locked both back seat doors.

I remembered a few things that I love about Kenya this morning as I had breakfast and made my way to the Acumen Fund office.
- Delicious fresh juices and fruit - apple ginger, passion, watermelon, orange, and papaya, all available at breakfast. And, plenty of fresh, local tropical fruit.
- Friendly service - Taxi drivers, hotel workers, receptionists - all incredibly friendly chatting in a combination of Swahili (which I'm struggling to remember) and English. "Hello, Madam, did you have a nice sleep? Will you go to take your breakfast now? Let me send the lift for you."
- Slower pace - I learned years ago that you can either get frustrated by things taking so long or you can slow down yourself and match the pace. I choose to do the latter, which feels much better.

In conversation with Sangeeta today, I realized how much better I understand Indian than Kenya. Despite having lived in the two places for the same amount of time, I've developed a deeper cultural understanding of India over the years. It's hard to get beneath the surface here, but am hoping I'll have some chances to over the next few days.

This blog post was written for an posted on NextBillion about a panel at the Social Capital Markets conference.

Kevin Jones brought together an interesting group of speakers to the Disruptive Innovation panel on the first day of SOCAP 09 -- people who at first glance, would have a hard time finding common themes between them. Kevin started off by saying it was up to us to figure out why he had selected these individuals (Sangeeta Chowdhry from Acumen Fund, Sally Madsen from IDEO, Lucky Gunasekara from Frontline SMS and Mark Beckford from NComputing) to speak together.

Sangeeta and Sally spoke about the Ripple Effect project, a collaboration between Acumen Fund and IDEO to increase access to drinking water by seeding innovation in India and Kenya. Lucky shared stories about Frontline SMS's software for healthcare delivery and Mark spoke about multi-user, low-cost PCs. It was an interesting mix because Frontline SMS and NComputing are social enterprises that have developed
technology-based solutions, IDEO is an innovation and design consulting firm that is doing work in BoP markets, and Acumen Fund is a non-profit venture fund that invests in social enterprises.

A few themes quickly appeared as the speakers began sharing their stories. The first was that the "disruptive innovation" was not the product that each designed. In the case of the Ripple Effect project, the innovation was the new model for partnerships - a project funded by Gates Foundation, run by Acumen Fund and IDEO, and working with 20 local water organizations in India and Kenya. Frontline SMS is building a network
of volunteers working with health clinics throughout the developing world to prototype the technology and provide feedback to the organization. NComputing's innovation was to leverage public education challenges to spread the use of the device. In all cases, the design of the product alone was not enough - the business model, distribution
networking, and marketing strategy were all necessary to enable scale.

A second theme was the importance of building and working with an ecosystem. In the case of Ripple Effect, this meant working with the water sectors in India and Kenya. In addition to the 20+ local social enterprises and NGOs the Acumen and IDEO teams worked with, they brought in many additional water, microfinance, and design experts to contribute to the project. Frontline SMS began their pilot six months ago with 85 health workers and have already scaled to 1000 worldwide - they have attracted the imagination of their volunteers and have gotten them excited about supporting the movement of bringing healthcare information to rural communities via SMS. Finally,
NComputing, also in its early days has already reached 15% penetration in U.S. schools.

The third thread that appeared again and again during the panel was the importance of knowing your customer and designing affordable and appropriate solutions based on those real human needs. Sally spoke about IDEO's Human Centered Design process and how it could be applied to designing any innovative product, service,
or program. Lucky and Mark also spoke about how the technologies they designed met the needs of the people they are working with and attributed their success to both the design of the product as well as the design of the system around it.

The panel closed with a great quote from Lucky, "You have to get your hands dirty on the ground to be able to really understand your customers' needs."

This blog post was written for and posted on GOOD.

As a design and innovation consultancy built on the notion of putting people at the center of the design process, taking a human-centered approach to evaluation is critical for IDEO. We saw a great example of this when we spent time with IDE in Ethiopia, where Monitoring and Evaluation specialists spend time walking the fields with farmers and connect their personal stories to the data about them.

When evaluating the effectiveness of a program, quantitative data alone does not convey enough meaning, and typically leaves us with many questions. Numbers are, of course, necessary, but shouldn’t be relied on alone. Statistics should be complemented by deep stories of the impacts on an individual, family, or a community, and we should spend as much time thinking about how to effectively craft these stories as we do focusing on how to present the numbers.

Putting people at the center of evaluation means connecting with them on a personal level. We do this by spending time with people in the field—observing them at their homes or while doing their jobs. We build trust in the communities by working with local partners and even doing homestays in rural villages. As we get to know people, we gather richer and richer stories about their lives. And as we test prototypes of various innovations, we look to understand how it actually changes people’s lives.

When we worked with VisionSpring to design eye “camps” for children in rural India, we created a number of different procedures. We observed children as they went through the eye testing process, and talked with them about how to improve it. A few children started crying as soon as they sat down to get their eyes checked, because the pressure of the equipment on their faces was too great when the test was conducted by an adult. However, when they were given the opportunity to test the eyes of their classmates, the same children were confident and excited. The feedback they sought from children and teachers (including the personal stories about the children who got glasses and were now able to succeed in school) allowed VisionSpring to continue to conduct the eye camps, with better results.

So now we put these questions to you: How have you put people at the center of evaluation? How have you reconciled raw data with human stories? What strategies have you used to measure impact beyond quantitative analysis? Can you think of any realms—education, the prison system come to mind—where evaluation could stand to be less number-centric?

We just launched the 2nd Edition of the HCD Toolkit which was developed for non-profits and social enterprises worldwide. The HCD Toolkit and Field Guide lay out the IDEO process for design and innovation and help organizations better understand the needs of their customers and develop innovative products and services to meet those needs.

We'd love to hear stories about how people are using the HCD Toolkit so please let me know if you have any feedback.

If you prefer, you can also purchase the printed versions from Blurb.

I've not been such a good blogger recently, which I do apologize for. Instead, though, I've been on Twitter and linking to lots of great blog posts, job announcements, articles, and events. Please follow me there at jocelynw.

I'll continue to blog from time to time, but you can expect more on Twitter from now on.

Google and Grameen Foundation's App Lab are doing great work understanding user needs and designing SMS products for the Ugandan market. These videos on the design process and the services offered are great examples of user-centered design.

Skoll Foundation is looking for a summer intern. More information here.

Prison Entrepreneurship Program - website

Our client is a pioneering, Texas-based non-profit 501(c)(3)
organization, which works to unite executives and prison inmates
through entrepreneurial passion, education and mentoring. The program
engages the nation's top business and academic talent to
constructively redirect inmates' energies by equipping them with
values-based entrepreneurial training - enabling them to productively
re-enter society. The thesis behind this organization is that many
inmates are proven entrepreneurs, and that their entrepreneurial
endeavors landed them in prison. In three years since inception, the
program has a CAGR of over 150%, and has generated numerous
entrepreneurial success stories, having assisted participants in
starting over 50 businesses. The program has produced the nation's
leading results in the prison rehabilitation industry, including
dramatically reducing return-to-prison rates - participant
return-to-prison rates are less than 10%, compared to over 50% for the
national average. The program has recruited 1,000+ senior level
executives and venture capital/private equity professionals, who serve
as inmates' mentors and business plan judges. Additionally, the
program has established affiliations with 24 top-tier MBA programs,
including Harvard and Stanford, whose 450+ students serve as weekly
advisors for the inmates' business plans. The program's innovative
work has won several awards, and has received coverage on NBC Nightly
News and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street
Journal and Entrepreneur Magazine. Read More...

French Speaking Summer Internship
Contact Ray Victurine to apply rvicturine@wcs.org

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a not for Profit organization based at the Bronx Zoo in New York city, is recruiting a short term business intern/consultant to help develop a business plan for the Virunga National Park. Virunga Park is Africa’s oldest and one of it’s most biodiverse parks, established in 1925, but to date it has never had a management plan. Read More...

I read a really interesting article recently about the rise in design as a desirable career path. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Businesswoman from City Journal does a really good job explaining that design has become much broader than just functionality and aesthetics of tangible objects and has developed as a way to solve problems.

There does seem to be a growing excitement to be a designer or work for a design firm and this article articulates that surge quite well.

Two Acumen fellows have recently posted short videos from Pakistan. Both have really hopeful messages about people and really remind us to see the good in things.

An interview with Jawad Aslam about his experiences with low-cost housing in Lahore.

Joel Montgomery's photo montage - Faces of Pakistan.

The IDEO team spent two days last week with Naandi Foundation designing appropriate water vessels for use at the community treatment plants. The current vessels are 20 liter plastic containers which are well-designed for men to carry on bicycles or motorcycles or for stacking in the back of a delivery truck. Unfortunately, these containers are generally too heavy for women to carry and are not designed to be held on the hip or the head, which are the preferred modes for women.

During our time with Naandi Foundation, we spent time with the team to try to understand the concerns with the existing vessels (designed like gasoline cans). After a quick brainstorm, we designed several concepts which we brought to the field for user feedback. While the sketches were certainly a useful way to explain concepts, it wasn’t until we returned to the office and began to prototype 3D concepts that we fully understood what we were working with.

One of the first things we did when we began prototyping was to fill a 12 liter and 20 liter container with water to get a better sense of the weight. The IDEO, Acumen, and Naandi team members then tried lifting and carrying each of the containers - laughing as the water sloshed onto our clothes and onto the floor. By feeling the weight of the vessels filled with water, we were able to design more appropriate solutions to carry water and by building 3D prototypes and observing them in use, we were able to make modifications to the design to make them more user-friendly and comfortable. The next step is to design slightly higher resolution prototypes and seek more diverse and extensive customer feedback on them.

Read more about the Ripple Effect project.