Water Portfolio manager Yasmina Zaidman and I recently attended the World Bank Development Marketplace conference in Washington DC. Development Marketplace is a competitive grant program of the World Bank that funds innovative, small-scale development projects that deliver results and show potential to be expanded or replicated. The theme for this year was Water, Sanitation and Energy. 118 finalists (out of 2500 applicants) attended, and a final 30 were announced as winners.
This was interesting from an Acumen Fund perspective on a number of levels. First, there is a growing focus on not just great technical ideas, but models for getting those ideas to market in a sustainable way. This was clear in the additional criteria in assessing the applicants, which emphasized business models as much as technical innovation. Second, while the projects varied in terms of their potential to achieve scale and sustainability, they showed a clear trend towards seeing beneficiaries as customers, a critical piece of the Acumen Fund philosophy.
Overall, this was a very useful forum for gauging grassroots innovations, and identifying potential leads - kind of a sneak preview into the ideas that are out there. We are encouraged by the shift we’ve seen over the past few years in donor attitudes toward market-based approaches to solving problems. We will follow up with projects that seem like a good fit for us and watch how they progress.
Y. Zaidman,
Your hard work and dedication to continually expand and grow the efforts of your organization, Acumen Fund giving more and more Philanthropists information about what your work is focused on is encouraging, inspiring, and awesome!
I just wish there were millions more who understood what the solution to World Peace is:
Equal opportunity for all Nations to achieve economic and financial solutions to their own problems, by expanding their businesses to the poor, less than poor, and start moving in a direction that will allow countries to have micro business work for the ‘disenfranchised’ in this world, a vision to work towards, and the finally, economic ‘freedom’, and a hope for a better life for their upcoming generations.
The work of Acumen Fund must be replicated by the thousands in USA to truly effect the change that is so desperately needed. We are a Community, not a group of separate countries….doing their own thing….The world’s continuation will depend on how much we care about our less fortunate
neighbours….someone needs to start the ‘process’ of caring, and working to change the ‘direction’ in which we are going.
I commend you, Acumen Fund, for all you are trying to do!
Reply to M. Renlund-ZaidmanM. Renlund-Zaidman