I was recently invited (with full sponsorship from UN Habitat) to speak on a panel at Stockholm World Water Week. This is the world’s largest annual water conference and I was there to discuss the value of market-based approaches to water and sanitation funding for small towns. The planners of the session wanted to foster a debate and encouraged speakers to take on their opposing roles in earnest. Goaded on by facilitator Dominic Waughrey of the World Economic Forum, we each took polarized positions and provided concrete examples of failures and opportunities of the various forms of financing. With a little humor and expert facilitation, each of us went further than we may have planned in pointing out the inconsistencies and gaps in each others’ arguments. (more…)
Archive for August, 2006
Acumen Fund at Stockholm World Water Week
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006Franchises, Minipreneurs and Social Enterprise
Monday, August 28th, 2006What do Anil Kumar Taka, a Drishtee Kiosk Operator at the Jawahar Nagar village in the district of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, India, and Stephen Holt, CEO of Movie Magic and an Iowa-based eBay entrepreneur, have in common?
Whether you call it the arrival of Business 2.0 or credit the technology revolution, it’s clear that cutting-edge companies the world over now provide platforms to empower their clients rather than delivering end-to-end solutions. eBay provides an automated and efficient platform for product distribution, leaving it to their enterprising customers to decide what product mix to sell and how to price it. Drishtee.com provides a turn-key package for offering residents of an Indian panchayat - a cluster of 5 villages – a mix of education, e-government, health, agriculture and leisure services delivered over a PC-based network. (more…)
Conserving water, one small-scale farmer at a time
Friday, August 25th, 2006A New York Times article this week highlights the concerning scarcity of water that the world faces, noting water conservation strategies in agriculture as an innovative solution. Acumen Fund investment, IDE India, is focused one exactly this issue, developing useful and affordable water storage and irrigation technologies for small-scale farmers. We believe that organizations such as IDE India will help to minimize the adverse impacts of these increasing water deficits on low-income populations.
IAVI: accelerating the search for an HIV/AIDS vaccine
Friday, August 25th, 2006
Acumen Fund Advisory Council Member, Dr. Seth Berkley is President and founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). IAVI is a global non-profit organization focused on accelerating the search for a vaccine to prevent HIV infection and AIDS. Their biennial flagship publication, AIDS Vaccine Blueprint 2006: Actions to Strengthen Global Research and Development, was released last week at the XIV International AIDS Conference in Toronto. We are proud to know Seth and his team.
Calling for creative partnerships
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
Acumen Fund and IDEO have developed a partnership over the last two years to explore how Acumen Fund’s focus on using entrepreneurial approaches to address the problems of poverty, coupled with IDEO’s human-centered approach to design, could create synergy and help both organizations achieve their broader goals.
Earlier this month, Acumen Fund and IDEO met with Jennifer Davis of Stanford University and Ranjiv Khush of the Aquaya Institute, experts bringing extensive experience working on issues of water and sanitation internationally. This was a unique group – bringing together Acumen Fund’s knowledge of water-related BOP market business opportunities, the creativity of IDEO’s idea workshop and the deep sector knowledge of water experts.
A pervasive challenge Acumen Fund has seen with both our current and potential water investments is how to assure safe drinking water for low-income consumers, who collect water from centralized sources, like wells, standpipes, handpumps, and water treatment systems. We saw this as an opportunity to pool the talents of the group to develop design innovations that could have an impact in the water sector. (more…)