I recently received information about an idea competition run by Conscious Lifestyle. Please apply for refer this opportunity to friends.
--------
Get $1,000 for your Socially Innovative Idea

Are you passionate about making the world a better place? Have an idea about how to make your fellow students and your school more socially responsible? Want to turn that idea into a reality?

Conscious Lifestyle is accepting applications for its 2008 venture program.
Submit an application for the chance to win:

* Up to $1,000 in start-up funding
* Web space on consciouslifestyle.org
* Monthly skill-building workshops
* Personalized support
* Access to a network of social entrepreneurs

To learn more and download an application, visit Conscious Lifestyle. Application Deadline: February 15, 2008.

Watching the post-election turmoil unfold in Kenya has been heartbreaking. While I was there, things seemed so hopeful and we were optimistic about peaceful elections. The country was experiencing economic growth and it seemed like things were headed in the right direction.

Over the past week, I've received several updates from friends in Nairobi and wanted to share them here. In no particular order, here they are:
---------
Dear friends,

First of all: I am safe, along with everyone at Acumen Fund and SHF. Thank you for all of your emails over the past few days; it means so much to hear from you and know that you are thinking of Kenya. Read More...

In Tokyo, we visited the famous fish market. This place is wild. As we walked in, we had to dodge small trailer trucks as they drover around the outside of the market picking up and dropping off huge styrofoam coolers of fish and enormous frozen tuna.

This was the largest market I had ever seen and appeared to be pure chaos. How could anyone figure out which of the hundreds of stands to visit? It was incredible to see one of those systems that functions so smoothly with seemingly little formal organization.

The best moment of our visit was when we saw an octopus that had escaped from a tub of water and was trying to escape. We watched in horror as crowds walked by and one person finally stepped on him and he recoiled and started to bleed. This video shows the great escape and if you listen closely, you can hear my colleague say "Excuse me, octopus running away!".

The Washington Post ran a really interesting article recently about blogging in Japan. The Japanese have really taken to blogging and there are currently more blogs in Japanese than English.

I read this article while in Tokyo and was initially surprised. However, after thinking about it for some time it made more sense. While I was there, I saw that the Japanese were more comfortable chatting or texting than talking or calling. They tend toward more formal forms of communication and at times, conversations seem more like monologues than dialogs. All of these things make blogs seems like a suitable form of communication.

The accompanying video is worth watching.

Tokyo

Specialized recently sponsored the Innovate or Die contest, challenging teams to submit designs for a pedal powered device which has a positive impact on the environment. IDEO designers formed a team and prepared this 2-minute video of the Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration System.

This is a bicycle which filters water while you pedal and stores it in a small tank which can be used in the home. Very cool design and nicely-made video for this exciting challenge.

Need a last minute gift for someone you know who wants to make a difference (or someone you want to care about the things you care about)? Check out Good Magazine. 100% of the $20 subscription to Good Magazine goes to a non-profit of your choice.

I'd recommend choosing Acumen Fund as the recipient of your donation.

The level of customer service and general helpfulness we saw in Japan was remarkable. At the central Tokyo train station, my colleagues and I were trying to decipher the signs and figure out where to board our train to Kyoto. A Japanese woman approached us and asked if she could help. I showed her our tickets and she took off toward the gate, signaling for us to follow her. She wanted no money, I expect she just wanted to be helpful and practice her English.

When we arrived in Kyoto, we found a nice restaurant downtown where we were the only tourists. The servers went out of their way to explain the menu to us, suggest things to order, and point out what each item was as they placed it on the table. “This is beer”, they said, each time they put one in front of us.

We had several conversations about why complete strangers were so helpful and never completely figured it out. Are people looking to practice their English? Is it a duty to help others? Is being a nice person just the right thing to do? Whatever it was, it made us feel very welcome and comfortable in Japan and we certainly appreciated the hospitality.

I spent last weekend in Chigasaki, an hour outside of Tokyo, with Miho, the Japanese student who lived with my family for a year my senior year of high school. Over the weekend, we rode bikes around town, ran errands, and threw a sushi party with the neighbors. We caught up, reminisced, laughed, and made comparisons between the U.S. and Japan.

I felt so fortunate to get an insider's perspective on Japanese culture so quickly. The feeling of total acceptance into a foreign culture is difficult to achieve and something that I found difficult to reach in Kenya and India.

I don't believe I was able to find that here because the Japanese are necessarily more open, but because of my long and deep relationship with Miho and her family. It's been 13 years since she lived with us, but she is my sister.

Miho's children (Aqua and Marine) with me

As we were walking from our hotel to the client’s office on Wednesday, my colleague noted that Tokyo has many layers. This, I believe is true both figuratively and literally. On a literal level, newer parts of the city of Tokyo sit above some of the older parts and you find yourself walking up and down steps or steep hills and crossing from the old to the new and back to the old again.

On a figurative level, Tokyo also seems to have many levels. I’ve only been here for a few days and realize that most of those are inaccessible to me. However, some you can see by just walking around.

While there are many modern, glass skyscrapers like I envisioned when I thought of Tokyo, these will sit next to the few remaining pre-war buildings or will loom over the low-lying neighborhoods filled with small, traditional wooden houses.

Walking through a neighborhood of restaurants last night, we passed neon-lit restaurants alongside beautifully decorated restaurants with curtains covering the small doorways. In Tokyo, the old and the new, the traditional and the modern sit side by side.

As always, Good Magazine, put out another great issue. This one is the high tech/low tech issue and includes a great section on Amy Smith and the MIT d-lab. The article highlights some of the products Amy and her students have designed and shows their value-add to people in the developing world. These include a screenless hammermill to make flour, a low-cost water test, and alternative charcoal made from sugarcane waste.

These are inexpensive solutions and use locally-available materials. My question is, why aren’t we seeing these innovations spread? I expect the problem here is not that these products aren’t desirable or that the technology doesn’t work. The problem here is that there’s no business behind them. With no marketing or distribution strategy, these things will likely stay in the villages where the students designed them.

As Jordan Kassalow said to me at Acumen Fund's investor gathering, “The developing world doesn’t just need invention, it needs innovation.” We need to start focusing our efforts on how to get these low-cost, locally-appropriate solutions out to the people who need them. And, I believe, private distribution networks are the way to do that.

Last week I attended Acumen Fund’s annual investor gathering in New York. The day of events was inspiring and it was exciting to see how much Acumen Fund had grown in the past year.

Acumen Fund has now approved 29 investments for social enterprises in India, Pakistan, and East Africa that provide goods and services related to health, housing, water, and energy to people making less than $3/day. This equates to $27 million in investments under management, with a goal to grow to $100 million within the next five years. Most impressively, Acumen Fund has managed to raise $48 million in 2007 – a staggering number for such a small organization.

One of the things that stood out to me this year was a move towards including discussions about policy. We heard from Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland about how to connect human rights and economic development and how to support political leaders to make real change.

The panel, “Pakistan – peace, prosperity, and drip irrigation” was especially interesting as we heard from a Pakistani entrepreneur and Acumen’s Country Director for Pakistan talk about how in the long-term, peace will come to Pakistan when the poor have economic opportunity and are empowered.

In her closing remarks, Jacqueline Novogratz reiterated the “need for a policy dialog.” While my work and the work of Acumen Fund will likely continue to focus on markets and supporting businesses to create social change, it’s important to think about how we can work with governments, as their support is clearly necessarily and they truly do have the ability to make widespread and long-lasting change.

As we, Americans, celebrate Thanksgiving this week, this poem is a good reminder to all of us to appreciate what we have and not focus so much on what we don't.

The Necessary Brevity of Pleasures
Samuel Hazo

Prolonged, they slacken into pain
or sadness in accordance with the law
of apples.

One apple satisfies.
Two apples cloy.
Three apples
glut.

Call it a tug-of-war between enough and more
than enough, between sufficiency
and greed, between the stay-at-homers
and globe-trotting see-the-worlders. Read More...

The Purpose Prize provides five awards of $100,000 each to people over 60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges. It’s for those with the passion and experience to discover new opportunities, create new programs, and make lasting change.

Nominations will be accepted until March 1, 2008.

Recently I participated in the BoP Learning Lab at Cornell University. The Learning Lab, chaired by Stu Hart, brings together companies and non-profits interested in working at the Base of the Pyramid. Attendees included IBM, SC Johnson, dob Foundation, Sesame Street, Oxfam, and IDEO.

Stu and the team at Cornell are thinking about co-creation and BoP 2.0. I agree with this approach of encouraging companies to work closely with local communities to design new technologies and new business models to support them. Let’s not take our existing technologies and try to make them fit someplace else. Let’s start with identifying wants and needs and then work together to make something that’s good for everyone.

Stu mentioned the need to “approach this work with humility.” I couldn’t agree with that more and believe we need to stop thinking of ourselves as experts ready to deliver solutions to the poor. We need to learn how to listen better and move to a place of believing we have something to learn from people living in the slums of Nairobi or the villages in Andhra Pradesh.

The first BID network business plan competition in Kenya announced the winners recently and I was thrilled to find out that Ecosandals was among them. I’ve written about Ecosandals from Nairobi – it is a small social enterprise which trains shantytown dwellers to become sandalmakers and makes the shoes from locally-available, recycled materials.

The BID network received 1,000 business plans this year from Kenyan entrepreneurs. It’s fantastic that they were able to fund 5, but we also need to think about the other 995, many of which have great ideas, but lack access to start-up capital.

There’s a huge demand for capital and managerial support for small companies and social enterprises. There’s also an outpouring of interest and contributions in terms of time and money in social enterprise. But, currently, there isn’t enough matching of the two. We need to be thinking about how to connect the talent and resources that I see so much of everyday with the organizations who could really use our support.