We were pleased to see that Sumitomo recently received two awards for its innovative Olyset net, one from the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose and another from the Asahi Shimbun in Japan. Olyset is the brand name for the long-lasting insecticide-treated bednet – the technology whose transfer Acumen Fund helped facilitate to its investment in the A to Z factory in Tanzania.

We have been delighted by the response to our call to build our second class of Fellows. We received 466 applications from an extraordinary pool of candidates from 57 countries:

• 35% from the US
• 21% from Africa (with Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda representing the majority)
• 13% from Europe (mostly from the UK and France)
• 12% from Pakistan
• 8% from India
• 4% from Australia and Canada
• 3% from other Asian countries (even Micronesia)
• 3% from Mexico and South America
• 1% from the Middle East

We are immensely impressed with the experience, talent and enthusiasm of the young talented professionals who are seeking to strengthen business skills while making a real contribution to social change in the world. The outpouring of interest in the program is evidence of an unleashing of pragmatic idealism in the world. There is much to be done, and it is only be harnessing the energy of the next generation will we be able to accomplish our goals.

Specifically, these individuals have accomplished wonderful things in a variety of sectors and countries – from using “ginger” as the one word to describe them or working with a janitor to accomplishing his dream, each of these individuals has the moral imagination to help our investees succeed and become the leadership of our sector.

We are looking forward to learning more about them through the upcoming interviews and dinners and are looking forward to announcing our class in April.

This article in the LA Times a few weeks ago gives an overview of venture philanthropy that highlights the work of our partner Jeff Skoll and the Skoll Foundation, Generation Investment Management (which was founded and run by Acumen Fund board member David Blood), and Jed Emerson, who advises Acumen Fund on metrics. The community of individuals and organizations focused on market-oriented approaches to change is growing and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

Jacqueline Novogratz was recently in India along with Acumen Fund’s board, where they witnessed some of the developments in the Acumen Fund portfolio and pipeline. You can read about the learnings that are coming out of our work in India in the journal that Jacqueline kept.

Acumen Fund investee Tralance Addy was featured recently in Business 2.0 for WaterHealth International’s efforts to tackle one of humanity’s biggest problems. And in a terrific piece in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof discusses the importance of social entrepreneurs and pays tribute to investee Roshaneh Zafar of Kashf.  It is exciting to see this growing level of interest in these entrepreneurial approaches to social change.

(For NYTimes non-subscribers, the Kristof column can also be found here.)

There’s been a fair bit of coverage of Acumen Fund in the media over the past week. In print, a nice profile of us appeared in the Financial Times. On the radio, NPR’s “From Scratch” program featured an interview with Jacqueline Novogratz. And online, the WorldChanging blog wrote about our strategic partnership to address issues of water scarcity (which we discussed in a post this past August).