May 2007

Last week, Marc Gunther, a senior writer at Fortune magazine, interviewed Jacqueline Novogratz as part of a series of teleconferences for Net Impact, a global network of more than 10,000 MBA students and business people who are interested in using business to improve the world. Marc writes about that interview on his blog, talking about Acumen Fund’s work, including our investments in WaterHealth International and A to Z.

This morning I heard a pitch from a team of designers that included MBAs, electrical engineers and mechanical engineers. Using a customer-centered approach and field research in Nepal, they had designed a prototype for a low-cost incubator for rural Nepal, and were looking for seed financing to complete product development and move towards field testing and roll out.

The exciting thing about this group is not only that they are working on an issue that is relevant to 50,000 babies born prematurely in Nepal every year and over 1.5 million in India, but they are doing it as graduate students in an innovative course at Stanford University. Taught by Professor Jim Patell, “Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability” gives student teams a chance to design products for organizations in the developing world that face pressing design challenges.

These students come from multiple disciplines, including business, engineering, development, and design. What they all have in common is a willingness to get outside of their comfort zone to hone their skills on real-world projects with the potential to have a tremendous impact on the ground.

I’ve recently returned from working in Acumen Fund’s Nairobi office, where I had the opportunity to visit sanitation facilities in low-income communities in Kenya as part of my work. Having never lived or spent time in East Africa, I had never seen life in any of these areas first-hand.  Most Americans never do. 

Knowing this, I felt the need to capture everything I saw in photographs. If there were children playing in a pile of trash, I wanted to capture it. If a woman dumped waste water into the narrow mud street of a densely packed community, I wanted a picture of it. When I visited a clean, high-quality sanitation/ablution facility amidst otherwise dilapidated construction, I wanted to take photos that highlighted the contrast, that demonstrated the potential for lasting change.

My motivations were simple: I wanted to share vivid stories with my friends, relatives, and even colleagues back home in order to raise their awareness of what life is like for 2/3 of the world. This is a critical part of Acumen Fund’s work, because until someone has an understanding of the challenges facing low-income consumers, he or she will not fully appreciate or support Acumen’s efforts to finance social enterprises serving these consumers. Similarly, without evidence of successful business ventures in low-income markets, he or she will not be convinced of their viability.

Acumen Fund partner and board member David Blood and his business partner Al Gore were recently interviewed by the McKinsey Quarterly. Their ideas on sustainability, and markets especially, are very compelling.  I highly recommend that you read this.

Here is a terrific piece from Mario Morino – a kindred spirit of Acumen Fund, given his focus on accountable philanthropy that insists on building institutions and not simply programs. Mario has one of philanthropy’s most honest and self-critical voices around what it takes not only to be an effective philanthropist, but to be an effective problem-solver in general. We have a lot to learn from Mario and the work of Venture Philanthropy Partners, and I personally am honored to know him.

Sometimes you see change in unexpected places, coming from unexpected people.

Meet Frances, a beaming driver for Advanced Bio-Extracts (ABE), a company that works with 7,000+ farmers in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to produce a critical input into cutting-edge malaria treatment therapies, artemisinin. As a driver, Frances has job stability that many in Kenya lack, yet his income is still quite modest and his hours long. Frances lives with his wife and children in Nairobi, but a small, mountainous village two hours outside Nairobi is where he calls “home.” His parents and brother still live in the village and tend to small plots of maize, arrow root and French beans.

Having never farmed for a living, Frances is an unlikely candidate to grow artemisia. But he’s doing it. Frances recently planted 2,000 artemisia seedlings on his family’s land and he returns to his village whenever work permits, usually twice per month, to tend to them.

Great piece in the NY Times on “for benefit corporations,” a movement reflecting the notion of blended value and a look at business as a vehicle for creating a positive social return as well as a financial one. Jay Coen Gilbert, a partner of Acumen Fund, is one of the leaders in this movement that is another positive force in a changing world.

Make sure you read Laurie Garrett’s insightful and provocative speech at the IFC Health Conference in Washington, DC. Laurie not only has a clear and powerful voice but she also refuses to see poor people as passive recipients and focuses on solving problems from the perspective of freeing human energies. She is a great advocate of Acumen Fund’s approach in using markets to address social needs (including public health). Her voice is a needed one.