March 2006

The recent Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City was of a grand scale, with more than 10,000 participants from around the world, ranging from NGO’s and government agencies to large corporations and academics. Some common themes around the sustainability of water solutions were apparent. There was an increased focus on the need for complete and reliable management of water and sanitation projects, including both education and marketing to end consumers and ongoing maintenance and water quality testing. Many of the sessions and Acumen Fund’s own discussions revolved around the current shortfalls in these areas that result from the current “build and move on” model that many governments and NGOs have adopted.

Jacqueline Novogratz recently spent 10 days in Africa visiting current and potential Acumen Fund investments. We will be posting excerpts from her journal of the trip. The complete journal can be found here.

Our hosts from Pamoja Trust come right at 3:00, as promised. Pamoja is a nonprofit housing advocacy group that works with coalitions of community organizations that organize residents in large savings and loans programs to create access and, ultimately, title to secure housing and land. Jane Weru, a human rights lawyer turned housing advocate, arrives wearing a bright orange silk shirt and a deep green shawl with a turquoise necklace around her neck. With her is an improbably tall man named Joseph whose role I can’t discern, and finally, a short woman named Anna who will be showing us her new home.

How to protect themselves from unforeseen circumstances is a major challenge to the poor in building assets and wealth. Acumen Fund has been exploring health insurance products, which are critical given that health costs can eat up more than 30% of an average person’s income in the developing world. Our investee, Kashf already provides - indeed, insists that its borrowers take life and disaster insurance as part of their lending contracts. The UN World Food Program (WFP) has announced an insurance program for humanitarian emergencies that would enable poor farmers some degree of protection in situations of drought and other natural disasters. Key to how the program functions is not only who pays and on what basis risk is calculated and priced, but also how quickly farmers can be reimbursed for losses. Quick response is one of the main concerns of relief organizations, which must move within the first 24 hours of disaster for maximum effectiveness. However, this is a separate need from reimbursing farmers themselves for longer-term rehabilitation of their farms and main sources of income.

Acumen Fund is very interested in identifying the best and most effective market-driven systems for insuring the very poor in large numbers and over a significant period of time.

As we become a single world, how all countries integrate diverse communities becomes vital to our collective success. It is heartbreaking to see negative perceptions of Muslims rising in the U.S. as we also see negative perceptions of Americans in the Muslim world. Leadership is needed on all sides to point to what unites us rather than what divides us. In Pakistan, Acumen Fund’s work illuminates the potential to work across borders and get concrete, measurable things accomplished together. Supporting effective solutions to poverty, focusing on stronger media communications that highlight what is working in the Muslim world, and insisting on greater partnership - and dialogue - are small but necessary steps toward knowing one another. And that is where change - and dignity - must start.

Mary Robinson is a good friend to Acumen Fund and an inspiration for all of us. This article underlines not only her undying determination to effect change in the world but the power of individuals to change the world. It seems people the world over - in technology, media, finance - are seeing the potential for their individual actions to have significant impact in ways never before believed. This is contributing to a wave of talented people getting more involved in development. Mary Robinson has been working in this are for decades and this article is a testament to what sets her apart as an example - her humility and willingness to listen, her willingness to take moral stands and and the use herself to convene, to push, to cajole, to inspire. Here’s to you, Mary.

The Council on Foreign Relations just published an insightful report on Africa: “More than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa”, the result of an independent task force chaired by Christine Todd Whitman and Anthony Lake. The report (available in PDF or hard copy) reminds us that 2005 was the year for Africa, although we missed the point. “The point that was missing,” the report states, “amid the music, the communiques and the commitments - is that Africa is becoming steadily more central to the United States and to the rest of the world in ways that transcend humanitarian interests.” Africa is increasingly strategic to the U.S. - and the rest of the world - as a source of energy (in the next decade, Africa could provide as much oil to the U.S. as the Middle East). China sees the value of Africa and is making significant investment in the continent, and the rest of the world should pay attention. Africa, increasingly connected to the world, can teach a lot about the spread - and, hopefully, control - of HIV/AIDS so that Asia and Russia can learn from its lessons. The continent is a base for terrorism and a concern in terms of social stability, both of which affect the rest of the world in ways like never before. One response is to invest in growth, in the power of entrepreneurs. This is touched upon with a good example of the work of TechnoServe, and we could use even more examples of what works. There are not only strategic national security issues at hand for the U.S. but real investment opportunities and good news from the continent.

How does the direct sales model of Tupperware connect to building sustainable business models for the poor? Acumen Fund and our investees are using variations of this in the sale of anti-malarial bednets and low-cost glasses. Tupperware has been the inspiration. The brilliance of the Tupperware model is in tapping into women’s social networks, which allows the company to surmount challenges associated with the lack of infrastructure, takes advantage of women’s social organization and can build significant self-esteem. In the U.S., this model has also generated significant wealth for millions of women. When thinking about distribution channels, we need to find the best examples of how this model has been adapted most effectively to deliver critical goods and services to the poor. Hindustan Lever’s Shakti model is one such example. Which others have gone fully to scale (for Acumen Fund, that means at least a million people served)?

There seems to be growing excitement about Acumen Fund’s model, as evidenced by our recently announced Fellows Program, which has attracted applicants from all over the world, from New York to Uzbekistan.

This interest has also been made clear on our visits to universities. I recently participated in a Business Sustainability Conference at Dartmouth’s Tuck Business School. The prop plane to Manchester and the drive through snowfall were made worthwhile by the enthusiasm of the students, who peppered me with great questions.

The conference’s intent was to “discuss the important role that business leaders can play in creating a more sustainable world.” People are increasingly buying into the idea of the positive social change that the private sector is uniquely positioned to catalyze. The morning keynote was delivered by Andy Ruben of Walmart’s strategy department, who was quite convincing in his quick survey of the waste, fossil fuel burning and expense that the retail behemoth can cut from the world by making as small a change as reducing packaging of one toy by a mere 3 inches.

Check out Hans Rosling’s gapminder.org. Hans’ mission is to unlock the data held up in the halls of the UN and make it available and accessible. The technology is incredible - it allows for a more nuanced approach to seeing and understanding problems so that we move away from regionalizing problems (”Africa is starving”) and toward contextualization (part of Africa are starving and parts are wealthy). The software enables a visualization of changes among countries and groups over time. To watch countries move along a graph over thirty years (health on the x axis, income on the y axis) is to watch choices in public policy and the effect of AIDS and disease over time. Connecting gapminder.org to a major search engine could revolutionize the way we access, present and understand data. Acumen Fund needs to leverage the platform to better present stories and to make better decisions around how and why we build different business models for varying groups of individuals.

Our friend Robert Tolmach, founder of Glasses for Humanity, is looking for a Project Manager for Nonprofit Relations for WellGood LLC, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits fulfill their missions. If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, you can find the job posting here.

At TED, Robert Wright, the author of Non-Zero, spoke eloquently about the increasing moral dimension of history. With the increasing growth in complexity of social organization comes a deeper correlation of our fortunes. What happens in Iraq and in Gaza means more when there are super-empowered individuals with the technological power to create havoc across national borders in ways never before seen. Indeed, this downside correlation of fortune means we have to look more seriously and carefully at the growing lethality of hatred.

Wright argues that the world needs a major round of moral progress. We have to find ways to better understand one another’s humanity. Acumen Fund’s approach of working across borders and boundaries to solve concrete problems insists on beginning with an understanding of who people are, and more specifically, who the poor are as consumers. It means caring about their preferences, their aspirations, their humanity. Celebrating real successes - commercial successes - is also part of building a greater sense of dignity not only among the poor but for the wealthy as well. At least it is a start.

We recently closed the application process for the Acumen Fund Fellows Program, and our initial count shows more than 600 applicants to the program, far exceeding expectations. A preliminary analysis (of about half the applicants) lifted some interesting statistics about the diversity and range of applications:

* More than 52 countries are represented in the applications we’ve received.
* The leading nations are: United States, with 28% of the applicants, India with 14%, United Kingdom with 14% and Pakistan with 10.5%.
* All continents are represented, and countries are wide-ranging, including Gambia, Philippines, Moldova, Argentina, Costa Rica, Congo and the Czech Republic.
* Of the U.S. applicants, while New York represents the largest share (30%), representation is wide, with Kentucky, Arizona and Georgia all making a showing.

Needless to say, this will be a very competitive process, and we will have to make a lot of hard decisions to narrow our field down to a final cohort of 10 fellows. (We will keep you posted on the process.) But overall, the numbers are a testament to the extreme interest in this kind of work and to the promise of these smart, inspired individuals.