Articles by Administrator

Last month, Acumen Fund’s Wei-Wei Hsing, the Oliver Wyman Nonprofit Fellow, spoke with member’s of Preston High School’s National Honor Society about the work of Acumen Fund.  Emphasizing the importance of social justice and the efficacy of entrepreneurial approaches to poverty alleviation, Wei-Wei helped the students further understand the idea of patient capital and how it is changing the world.

Having read Acumen CEO Jacqueline Novogratz’s The Blue Sweater  in advance of the visit, the students welcomed Wei-Wei by perfoming a sketch they had written based on the book. Condensing Novogratz’s story into a series of key moments, the skit dramatized many of the book’s most touching and important events. Ending on a direct note, the sketch ends with the on-stage narrator saying:

“The blue sweater is a powerful symbol for the interconnectedness of all of us on the planet.
We believe that Jacqueline is a passionate change agent. By allowing those in poverty to find their own human dignity through playing an active role in their own success, breaks the cycle of poverty.”

Following the students’ performance, Wei-Wei spoke to them about patient capital, the path that led her to Acumen, and about other ways that they can continue to stay involved with Acumen Fund and the social enterprise sector.

Wei-Wei Speaks to Preston High School

As a follow-up to Wei-Wei’s visit, Preston’s religion department, as well as Compassion Connection, it’s service club, plan to begin using The Blue Sweater as part of their curricula.

The following notes were written by Afshan Khan, of UNICEF.

1. The earthquake in Haiti is a double disaster…it is a massive hit on the Haitian people whose history is already too full of hardship. The country was crippled by four hurricanes last year. Access to clean water, sanitation, hospitals, and other infrastructure — roads and communication — was barely functioning to begin with — now, much has been wiped out.

2. Children are the humanitarian priority. Nearly half the population of Haiti is under 18 years of age, 38% are under the age of 14 — making children the first call, for assistance.

3. Life saving supplies, emergency experts, and equipment are arriving — Getting the supplies to those who need them is the key, and the absolute, number one, priority.

4. Aid is getting through - Three UNICEF planeloads have landed in Port au Prince and in Santa Domingo. More are on their way. The road between Santa Domingo and Port au Prince is now useable and today 35 metric tons of UNICEF supplies will travel that road.

5. Clean water is saving lives and preventing disease outbreaks or a second wave of disaster - UNICEF is leading on water distribution. Yesterday, we delivered 250,000 liters of water to 60,000 people. Water tanks are been erected in each zone of the city. Today, 50,000 liters went to 38 distribution points providing drinking water for 80,000 people. Today, we supplied the general hospital in Port au prince with 120,000 liters of bottled water. Repairing the water and sanitation systems is a priority.

6. Providing for children who are lost or have become separated from their families must be a priority - In the middle of the kind of upheaval they are living — it is crucial they be reunited with their families, or with someone they already know. They need to be found, fed and kept safe. We need to find the right combination of providing care and being careful – to make children are properly protected.

7. Schools are closed - And we will re-open them. While that work is going on, UNICEF is bringing in supplies for temporary schooling once “safe spaces” for children are identified. We know only too well that in the chaos of any emergency, one calming factor for children is to re-establish routines…key among them, is the comfort of going back to school — even if it is a makeshift school.

8. This is a complex emergency, and in some ways a unique one - A combination of factors is challenging us: The capital is destroyed and along with it critical emergency services and infrastructure that are needed for relief distribution. The UN and other humanitarian agencies have also been directly and severely affected; loss of staff, loss of family, loss of relatives…and still, to their credit and through their grief, continue to do the work that needs to be done for the children of Haiti.

This year has been a great success for New York for Acumen (NYfA), so it’s time to celebrate, learn more about our community, and plan for the year ahead.

Come join us on Wednesday, December 9 from 6-9pm at the Bubble Lounge for NYfA’s First Annual Holiday Party! The event will include happy hour drink specials, raffle prizes, and the opportunity to speak one-on-one with a member from our leadership team about how you can get more involved with NYfA.

2010 is going to be a very active year, and as a group of talented and passionate New Yorkers dedicated to advancing the mission of Acumen Fund, we are excited about what we can achieve next year.

We are incredibly grateful for your ongoing support and look forward to seeing many of you tomorrow!

Details:

NYfA First Annual Holiday Party
Wednesday, December 9, 6-9pm
The Bubble Lounge (228 West Broadway) - Map
Suggested Donation: $10

Brought to you by The New York for Acumen Fund Leadership Team (Bryan Brady, Mark Disston, Seth Nemeroff, Theos Stamoulis, Wendy Wecksell, and Nina Sharma West)

Malik Sarwar is a long-time Partner of Acumen Fund and is the first formal Acumen Fund Ambassador, a new program being launched for Acumen Fund Partners who will directly support the work of our Business Development team.  Malik and Dubai-based Partner Amjad Ali Khan came to Lahore for a short visit. Below, Malik shares his reflections.

Amjad Ali Khan, the renowned lawyer from Dubai’s Afridi & Angel Law Firm (who has spent 27 years in Dubai after a stint with a white shoe law firm in early 80s), and I went on a 24-hour trip to visit Acumen Fund’s portfolio companies in the Lahore area. The cool and collected Ankur Shah, our organizer, arranged this trip within a matter of weeks by smartly coordinating with Aun Rahman in Pakistan.

Amjad and I were under strict instructions to read up on Acumen Fund in Pakistan before we landed. Afraid we might flunk a test, we frantically memorized key facts on all the companies. Unsurprisingly, our flight was fashionably late and by the time we arrived at our hotel, all the restaurants were closed. Luckily, we were able to get some Pakistani-Chinese food and, accompanied by Noor Ullah, plunged into a discussion on social entrepreneurship in Pakistan. We flaunted our deep knowledge of Acumen Fund, and the portfolio companies, and were careful to throw out terms like KKB4, MFI and incremental development.

Retiring at midnight, we reconvened early the next morning and began the fun part: taking pictures as we got a bird’s eye view of Acumen Fund’s high quality social entrepreneurs, their patient capital support and the generous TLC to help them blossom.

We headed for Kashf Foundation headquarters to meet with Khalid Kabir, CFO of Kashf Microfinance Bank. Off to a quick start, KMB already has 25,000 depositors and are on a rapid growth trajectory by providing loans of 25-100,000 Rupees ($300-1,200) to the lower-income communities that the mega-banks typically overlook and the money-lenders typically fleece. KMB is building on Kashf Foundation’s 300,000 customer base and is beginning to offer a full suite of financial services. We bump into the new CEO of Kashf and upon our insistence, he poses for a picture with us. Even though he was startled by our “ambush,” he was pleased to chat in the hallway.

We visited the Kashf Bank branch. This picture has the security guard stripped of his rifle, which I am holding (after he took out the cartridges), and shows the one female loan officer, who was easily the most enthusiastic of the five loan officers we met. Most importantly, it shows two clients in shalwaar kameez, who were proud to share how they paid off their 50,000 Rupee loan on time and were careful to insert a plea for a larger credit line to expand their business. The bank manager in the center was a confident, enthusiastic leader who clearly enjoys his role. Ever observant Aun noticed the vault was visible from the street and recommended that they cover it with a banner, just in case.

Driving an hour out of Lahore towards Kala Shah Kaku, we veered off the main road and drove a mile on the dirt road to reach a thriving low-income housing project called Khuda Ki Basti 4, meaning ‘God’s Own Village. Just before we entered, Aun pointed out the fields where many years ago, he and Jacqueline were caught in crossfire between villagers and some robbers as they waded for 10 minutes through knee deep water to reach the site. Now, electricity poles march overhead and a fresh road smoothly leads our vehicle to the verdant location of the project office.

We visted a few houses with Amjad, the bearded marketing head of AMC and a US graduate, whose last job was as an investment banker in Washington DC. He enthusiastically spoke about how his job was truly meaningful compared to what he was doing in the states. Unfortunately his family doesn’t see it the same way and he often finds himself defending the urgency of providing low-cost housing in a sustainable manner.

We are struck by the cleanliness of the housing clusters, the joy on the children’s faces, and the satisfaction of community members as they expanded their newly acquired homes. There are green fields at the center of the community which will have a park to match Central Park in NYC, as well as a DIL school. Khuda ki Basti’s success has been in delivering housing for less than 250,000 Rupees ($3000) while ensuring the community really takes ownership of their plots rather than sell them to speculators.

We meet community members. To the far right is the fourth person to buy a plot and build a house at KKB-4 and is now an inspiring salesman for the project. He was giving a tour to the gentleman in yellow who didn’t seem totally convinced whether he wanted to move from the city. I decided to try my sales pitch by reminding him that right behind us is only the second Central Park in the world and that his kids will get a quality education. When he quickly retorted he was single and had no kids, I reminded him that he will have kids inshallah and this would be the best place for them to get an education and play in the Park. The jury is out whether I helped close the deal or scare the man away for good.

I am standing with none other than Jawad Aslam, the CEO of AMC, Khuda ki Basti’s developer, who returned from the US to build his own house (seen behind) on the site. He refused my offer of buying his house at any price. I guess some people just can’t be bought. Jawad was hosting the CEO of Arabtec Pakistan. When Amjad asked his impression of the project, he paused before responding “You can’t argue with success”.

Kudos to Jawad, a former Acumen Fund Fellow and current Acumen Fund investee, for his vision and determination to make this project happen and to Acumen Fund for supporting him through this long drawn process of no bribe business set-up. The humming residential community in the middle of lush green fields, along with the water, electricity and transport infrastructure, was a phenomenal sight. That the developer will make money on the project is testament to Acumen Fund’s ability to find amazing entrepreneurs.

The last picture is my favorite. While we strive all year-round to make money and afford a week’s vacation on the beach, soaking ourselves in the water and thinking we are God’s chosen beings, the water buffalo gets it right from the start. While we sweat in 100 degree weather, they cool down in their favorite pristine muddy water pool. What joy it is to be alive. To be a water buffalo, very heaven!

As we wound down, Amjad and I were convinced of three things: 1) There is such a thing as a 24-hour trip that gives enough flavor of the power of Acumen Fund’s vision of finding the best entrepreneurs and helping them grow and succeed. 2) Equally important was the opportunity to have deep, practical discussions with Aun, Ankur and the entrepreneurs in the field. Their enthusiasm was dangerously infectious and truly uplifting. 3) Led by the incisive Ankur and the ever-practical Aun, we discussed concrete next steps for the short to medium term. I volunteered Amjad’s home in Dubai to host an event for potential partners and the ever-positive Amjad willingly agreed. Onwards to a successful Q4 as an Acumen Fund Ambassador - including a 48-hour trip to visit the Karachi companies!

photo by Sophie Forbes, 2009 Acumen Fund Fellow, India

Acumen Fund’s 2009 class of Fellows has returned from their time with investees, with stories, photos and video that they’re excited to share with the community.

If you’re in the NYC area, please join us tomorrow (Tuesday, September 22) for our first Fellows Media Mixer and Photo Auction event. There will be a photo auction, video screenings, DJ, and both the 2009 and newly arrived 2010 Fellows classes will be there in full force.

Can’t attend?  Not to worry: you can participate in the photo auction online in advance of the event. Photos for bidding are being added daily to that site, and some gems will be available only online!

Tuesday, September 22
6:00 – 11:00pm

Location:
The Bubble Lounge
228 West Broadway
Tribeca, NYC

Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Ticket price includes one drink. Purchase at: http://bubblelounge.com/new-york/events/ (We suggest buying your tickets in advance as space is limited and we may not be able to accommodate everyone at the door).

All ticket sales, online auction, and live auction proceeds and a portion of bar proceeds go to benefit Acumen Fund.

Arvind Gopal is a Columbia Business School student working with the East Africa Agriculture Portfolio Team this summer. At Columbia, he has focused on international development. He is currently VP of Investments for Microlumbia, a student-run fund focused on making debt investments in microfinance organizations. Additionally, he provided consulting advice to Broad Cove Partners, a Boston-based social venture fund, on a potential investment opportunity in a Liberian mortgage finance business. Prior to business school, Arvind held various positions in the U.S. and Singapore. He worked in New York in investment banking at Bear Stearns, before moving to Lightyear Capital, a private equity firm focused on the financial services sector. In Singapore he worked at Argus Software, a real estate software provider, guiding their business development in Asia.

I have spent the past few weeks researching the agriculture market in Kenya with the objective of identifying sustainable business models that could help the country’s ~6 million smallholder farmers and their families (~30m people), most of whom live in extreme or near extreme poverty. One of the largest bottlenecks in the agriculture supply chain is access to credit. A survey conducted in 2007 by the Tegemeo Research Institute of Agriculture Policy and Development revealed that only 30% of the country’s smallholder farmers have access to any kind of credit. After several visits to farmers across the country, I began to understand this reality. Formal financial institutions are between 30 km and 50 km away from the farms and in many cases, will not lend to the farmers I interviewed. As a result, the majority of these farmers receive credit through either input providers (fertilizer and seed companies) or informal groups. The credit available through these channels is usually small and short term and limits farmers’ investments in the essential ingredients needed to increase their productivity. Based on this information, I decided to take a deeper look on why microfinance institutions have had such a limited impact in the agriculture sector. I found some interesting data points, both from a global and East Africa perspective.

Microfinance has received a lot of attention over the past few years and rightfully so. Since Muhammad Yunus started the Grameen Bank in 1976, microfinance has helped millions of people access credit across the developing world. In 2006 alone, over 100 million micro-borrowers accessed about US$25 billion in loans (Deutsche Bank Microfinance Report, December 2007). The industry has even shown surprising resilience to the global financial crisis, which has brought down some the world’s largest financial institutions.

While the success of microfinance is undisputable, a huge funding gap remains and the market is still substantially underserved (market demand is estimated at over 1 billion borrowers world wide). A part of this gap will be filled with the growth of the current microfinance model, but we will also need new innovative approaches in order to provide access to rest of the BoP. The dominant microfinance models of today depend on small, short-term and high interest rate loans to assure strong repayments and cover operating costs. Some key success factors for this model include higher population densities and portfolio diversification. In contrast, much of today’s poor lives in rural areas and relies mostly on agriculture to generate income. These borrowers typically need larger loans with longer durations that coincide with crop cycles. Additionally, the returns generated by farmers are lower than that of micro-enterprises, and high interest rates of 2% to 4% per month erode farmers’ incomes, causing them to become trapped in poverty. These loans are inherently riskier to microfinance institutions because they are longer in duration, sensitive to weather conditions and international food prices, and limit loan diversification. Considerable agriculture expertise is needed to due-diligence loan applicants, monitor existing loans and train farmers on best practices including negotiating input prices and finding markets for their products.

In Kenya, the microfinance model has been very successful in urban areas – enough so that commercial banks are now reentering the high-end of the microfinance market as they recognize the income-generating potential and stability of this group. However, only 0.8% of smallholder farmers have access to credit through microfinance institutions — surprisingly, more farmers access credit through commercial banks (about 1%) than microfinance institutions. Equity Bank, a Kenyan commercial bank focused on the lower-income population, has made some inroads in rural areas through innovative approaches like mobile banking that have reduced the costs of conducting business in sparsely populated areas and allowed it to disburse longer-term loans at 1% monthly interest rates. However, most of their loans target rural enterprises and not farmers. Almost all the farmers, research analysts and MFI consultants I spoke with agreed that a better system has to be developed in order to reach the majority of small farmers.

Microfinance organizations, commercial banks, government organizations and NGOs in Kenya have all spent considerable time trying to develop a model that effectively targets the agriculture sector. As a result, a few innovative approaches that have focused on asset leasing and microfinance linkages with other parts of the agriculture value chain such as input providers and distributors of agriculture products have emerged in recent years. While these strategies are still in their early stages, the models are likely to address the limitations of today’s microfinance institutions and could provide future investment opportunities for Acumen Fund and others in this space.

Emily Smith is a second year MBA student at the Haas School of Business, interested in using social enterprise solutions to address poverty on a global scale. After receiving her degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, Emily worked as a corporate consultant in New York City. She then spent time consulting with a nonprofit organization in Africa, where she discovered her passion for international development. After her time in Africa, Emily came to Haas to study market based approaches to poverty alleviation. Emily is President of Global Initiatives at Haas and head of Marketing for the Global Social Venture Competition. In addition, Emily has worked for a number of social enterprises in industries including microfinance, international health and fair trade.

Jacqueline Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, and Tim Brown, CEO of renowned innovation and design firm IDEO, are old friends with a world-changing business partnership. Last week at the University of California at Berkeley, they united on stage for the first time to discuss human-centered poverty alleviation.  Another close friend (and Acumen Fund board member), Stuart Davidson of Labrador Ventures, moderated the discussion. The intimate and engaging conversation addressed the intersection between design and development, which has made a partnership between two seemingly different organizations so profoundly impactful.

Jacqueline and Tim’s friendship began at a TED conference, where Jacqueline was discussing water issues in the developing world, and IDEO had just recently been involved in a design project with KickStart aimed at increasing access to water. They immediately realized that they were both working towards a very similar goal: helping people innovate in order to grow. Jacqueline explained that “we were putting ourselves in other people’s shoes to better understand what they want, and that’s design thinking; that was a whole new lexicon for Acumen Fund.”

According to Tim, IDEO’s questioning process is about “drilling down and spending enough time to get beneath the surface. Making people notice things they might not have noticed themselves.” The challenge with bringing this method into development is being aware of cultural context. For that reason, he emphasized the importance of getting design thinking out into the world.

To support this effort, IDEO has developed an incredible guide, called the Human Centered Design Toolkit, to help organizations and entrepreneurs use design thinking in their work with impoverished communities. The aim, as Tim explained, is for people in need to be co-collaborators, for design thinking to be a co-owned process. This approach, in these extreme markets, will lead to innovations never dreamed of in the developed world.

Stuart brought up a common question in discussions about social entrepreneurship and innovation: how does this scale? “It’s not about the insight scaling, it’s about the ideas scaling,” Tim explained. The process is about getting ideas; then you develop the ideas which are truly scalable. Jacqueline noted that many top down approaches are scalable in theory, but they don’t work effectively and lose traction quickly if locals are not involved from the start.

The discussion shifted to how the language of the industry has changed over time. In Jacqueline’s opinion, “language precedes change.” She recalled that eight years ago, when Acumen Fund started, she had to argue with individuals who refused to be called “investors” because they weren’t getting any financial return. Now the concept of social return on investment is becoming widely accepted. The lexicon of the industry is shifting and acknowledging the power of an investment-oriented approach.

At the core of the investment approach is a full respect for all human beings, a sentiment that continually surfaced throughout the conversation. Market-based approaches aim to treat people as consumers, who despite their income level, desire all the things we desire. Jacqueline explained that instead of telling people what they “should” do, it’s about asking what people want as consumers and truly listening. In forcing accountability and investing in growth, we are able to actionably demonstrate a belief that all people are capable of achieving success.

The sessions closing sentiment related to each firms contribution to change in the developing world. Tim explained IDEO is about enabling choice; creating new choices that didn’t exist, so that people can make them if they desire. At the core of what both firms seek to produce, Jacqueline concluded, “real dignity ultimately comes from choice and opportunity.”

The event was hosted by Global Initiatives, a student run organization at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, focused on exploring market-based approaches to international development. The discussion was part of a Haas class called Market Based Approaches to Poverty Alleviation taught by former Acumen Fund Fellows Jocelyn Wyatt and David Lehr. Not your average business school course, this is one of the many opportunities offered by Haas, bringing innovative market-based approaches to students with a passion for social change.

The event was sponsored by The Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

Editor’s note: Video of the event can be seen on YouTube.

Bekezela Ncube is a Summer Portfolio Associate in the East Africa office of  Acumen Fund. She is pursuing a joint MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to graduate school, Beke was a Senior Regional Analyst at the Clinton Foundation on the Laboratory Services Team where she provided technical assistance on developing HIV lab systems to governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Before that, Beke worked in Finance Consulting at CRA International and in Equity Research at Sanford Bernstein, where she covered large-cap banks and consumer finance companies.  She holds a BA with honors in Economics from Harvard University.

The abject and glacial dismay brought on by a 6am alarm clock going off is possibly the Worst Feeling in the World. Waking to that feeling, I reach for that mysterious store of resilience known as “the will to get out of bed,” I shower through a fog of denial, anger and sleepy disbelief. It’s only when I brush my teeth and the shock of raw Listerine hits my mouth cavity that I am sledge-hammered awake by the force of Tartar Control.

Today is the day of my first outreach observation, and I curse my self-crafted Workplan, where I eagerly detailed to my supervisor how I would try to understand the market for mobile eye care services partly by observing eye camps. This morning, I am joining the PCEA Kikuyu Hospital outreach team as they travel about 30 kilometers off-site to examine patients without the money or ability to travel to the hospital. They will deliver eye care, orthopedic, and diabetic diagnoses to a community that has been prepared in advance for their visit. While the Kikuyu mobile eye care team’s mission is mainly to find and remove cataracts, I am there to research the potential for camps targeting Diabetic Retinopathy, a disease that can result in severe vision loss or even blindness.

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) occurs when abnormal new blood vessels grow on the surface of the retina and, because their walls are thin and fragile, burst and leak blood. It is the leaking of the blood vessels that causes blindness. Vision loss, however, is preventable by a simple procedure that uses a laser to burn off the proliferated blood vessels. Unfortunately, many patients seek care only when retinopathy is advanced and it is too late to operate.

The extent of DR in Kenya is not well-known, but the eye doctors at Kikuyu are alarmed at the number of patients with DR who come to their facilities. Dr Kibata, one of the specialists working with PCEA, is particularly keen to raise public awareness of the disease and find patients before the disease advances beyond his ability to help. On the day of my early start, I have to make a 35 kilometer trip to Kikuyu so that I can join their outreach team.

After a remarkably traffic-free drive of 45 minutes, I arrive at 7:55am at Kikuyu for my strict 8am appointment time. I make a phone call. The 6am despair again slides down my throat and settles in my small intestine when my contact, Macharia, drops it to me that he’ll be with me “in 20 minutes.”

20 minutes?!

As every living human knows, the insane alchemy of time-before-10am means that Mr. Macharia has deprived me of the equivalent of 2 hours prep / dream / shower time. I swallow. I forgive him. Magnanimously. When Macharia shows up 35 minutes later, he tells me he was up all night taking a sick colleague to the hospital. Ok.

Like scavenger hunters, we assemble the team piece-by-piece, picking up some from the Eye Care Unit (Margaret and Faith), others from Rehab (Jackie and Edward), and a lone ranger from Diabetes (Jane). Macharia is clearly their leader and cheer-leader, energizing us all like a vocal Red Bull. More motivational than Caesar, he rallies us to throw off grumpy sleepiness and get excited about finding cataracts.

Our destination is Renguti Women’s Guild Dispensary, a church organization affiliated with the Presbyterian hospital we are driving from. When we pull into the (wrong) gate, we are met with the sight of clusters of mostly women sitting on the grass, indifferent to the tender morning sun as only people who live near the Equator can be. Faces expressionless, they have mastered the infinite patience that the Hollywood Martial Arts Disciple climbs arduous mountains to achieve. Even after we keep them waiting while our hosts welcome us with compulsory morning tea, there are no clucks of indignation or a sense of “hurry-up.”

Eventually, after a prayer-service-cum-educational-talk during which I admire Jane’s exhortative charisma, camp stations are set up. I lurk as others work and try to be helpful (I am not). Ridiculous surfer sunglasses already give me up as an outsider, but nothing makes me more self-conscious than not being able to understand the rapid Kikuyu tumbling over rolling tongues around me. Stripped of the ability to understand human speech, I have become truly stupid. An ancient lady with a mature cataract sits down next to me as I perch on a bench next to Jane’s Diabetes station. Her only recompense for her relentless attempt to talk to me is an ever-more-desperate blank grin. I am a deaf-mute maniac. I start taking notes at a feverish pace, and find any excuse I can to snap photographs of the professionals at work.

At lunch time there is no break to eat, but I do need to use the toilet. It’s a long drop. I’m grateful that after the deed there is a tap of running water for washing hands. The little girl that shows me (village idiot) how to turn it on and off is rewarded with a toffee. The other kid that shows up as I fish around in my bag is rewarded for her opportunism and great sense of timing.

The orthopedic exam room is a genteel place, detached from the congregation of the diabetic and eye exam hall. Nestled here in case any patient needs privacy as their bones are poked and prodded, the sanctuary of Jackie and Edwards’s orthopedic exam room is appropriately housed in the church vestry. My fairy grandmother shows up again assertively stomping her foot at James to demonstrate her pains. He gently folds back her skirt hem to reveal her strong legs, unmarred by unsightly veins or spots. When she goes to Jackie for her prescribed creams, she looks at me repeatedly. Jackie is too kind to tell me what she is saying. I scribble at my note pad.

At about 3pm, all patients have been seen and camp supplies are packed away. As we munch on a well-deserved bag of banana chips, a solitary late-comer sidles up to Macharia, complaining of pain in his leg. Edward gamely unpacks his box of creams and makes gentle ministrations of the offending limb while the rest of us pile into the van, jokingly threatening to leave him behind. When he’s done, we tally the day’s work. In 4 hours, the mobile camp has seen over 100 different patients, and dispensed dozens of medications. Itchy eyes have been soothed, painful muscles relieved, and even cataract surgeries booked. Although I had nothing to do with any of it, it was a privilege to watch Macharia and his team in action. At the end of it all, I’m glad I got out of bed today.

Deepna Nandiga is currently a Business Development intern in Acumen Fund’s office in Hyderabad. She recently finished a masters degree in Anthropology from Columbia University, with a concentration in International Development. Previously, she worked with Accenture as a Business Consultant and also worked with Relief International, a humanitarian aid and development organization where her work was focused mainly on planning programs in public health, women’s education and microcredit in Darfur, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. Prior to joining Acumen Fund, she worked for six months with Bhumi, a growing social enterprise with initiatives that target underprivileged communities in Hyderabad.

Rather recently, I found myself as guest in the home of Srinivas Yadav, a small holding sweet-orange farmer living in the Nalgonda District of Andhra Pradesh, an area located on the outskirts of Hyderabad. We ate rice and chicken curry off banana leafs on the floor of his home at lunchtime, which was truly royal treatment. Serving meat as part of a meal is quite an expensive undertaking for farmers like Srinivas, despite owning a substantial portion of land and receiving crop yields of up to ten tons per acre in good months.

I was flanked on either side by a senior professor from the Hyderabad Agriculture University, two government officials who work on subsidy schemes for farmers and a director of Safal, an organization that tries to provide a direct link between fruit and vegetable growers and consumers set up jointly by the Indian government and Mother Dairy Ltd. The purpose of the visit was for Acumen Fund to better understand the problems Indian farmers face and to look for opportunities for innovation in the highly inefficient producer-to-consumer agricultural supply chain. At one point in conversation with the professor from the Agriculture University, he mentioned the recently proposed government Right to Food Act. On further inquiry, he said, “Yes, in your country you have rights like the right to free speech and the right to bear arms and in our country we have the right to food for every person.” His words made a strong impact on me. The thought of having to guarantee something so basic to human survival and something I take for granted on a daily basis shifted my paradigms of freedom and human rights. Like many other experiences during my time here in India, it was quite the reality check.

Unlike the Constitution of the United States that protects mainly the infringement of civil rights, since its conception in 1950, the Indian Constitution ensures socio-economic freedoms as well. This is for good reason; the 2006 National Family Health Survey showed that the child under-nutrition rate in India is 46%, almost double that of sub-Saharan Africa, which is economically poorer than India (Source: India Development Blog) The Right to Food Act, which is currently under debate in the Indian Congress is the latest iteration of the government’s legislative attempt to end hunger.

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi has made a strong pitch for providing the 35 kg of cereals at Rs.3 a kg that has been proposed under the new Act each month to the poor. The Food Security Act has also received a thumbs-up from Nobel Laureate and economist Amartya Sen, famous for his human-development centered approach to solving problems of poverty. The current debate focuses on the terms of the Act and on defining the threshold of the below poverty line (BPL) population. By one committee estimation, 77% of the Indian population or 836 million people are not able to spend more than Rs. 20 a day, which will not buy more than two square meals per day. (Source: Deccan Chronicle). Ironically, often those facing hunger are the farmers themselves. Lately, every news report I watch mentions the dire state of farmers due to the unusually dry weather of the last few months over the Indian plains. I’ve learned however, that weather is not the only limiting factor in farmers’ inability to provide for themselves. An estimated 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh over the last 15 years.

India’s hunger problem more than anything else, lies in inefficient distribution. In fact, India is the third largest agriculture producer in the world, following China and the United States. As I witnessed at Srinivas Yadav’s farm, lack of access to markets, transport inability, a lack of cold storage options and a number of other reasons relating to supply chain inefficiencies are to blame.

In spite of these bleak statistics, the day’s conversations on the farm left me feeling optimistic. It was an example of the times I get most excited about my work here. Acumen Fund is finding innovative market solutions in places where government policy and humanitarian aid falter. I was reminded of Acumen Fund’s unique place in not only encouraging creative new business models, but also in impacting legislative and human rights imperatives in meaningful ways. My belief in the need for Acumen Fund’s work (and for smart solutions in sectors like agriculture and nutrition) in countries like India was re-affirmed. It’s heartening to be a part of an organization like this that is working to fill this vital gap.

Chris Bennett is a rising senior at Stanford University, majoring in Earth Systems, an interdisciplinary environmental studies program. Chris has previously interned with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, researched renewable energy and economic development in India, and studied tropical ecology in Australia. Chris is excited by new approaches to solving global problems, traveling, and documentary video. Feel free to contact him at cbennett10@gmail.com

Imagine that it’s the year 2020. Billions of dollars in aid and charity are no longer needed in the developing world. Instead, local businesses have flourished over the last ten years in places like sub-Saharan Africa, creating wealth and possibility for those previously left behind. Businesses in areas like agriculture, information technology and health services transform the lives of those who previously lacked access to proper healthcare and quality education. It’s an exciting prospect that begs a simple question: how do we get there? Acumen Fund’s work in empowering transformative businesses to solve poverty is groundbreaking, but they can’t do it alone. Acumen has started the conversation, but students and young professionals will be important allies in extending this work to new places and driving change towards this vision for the future.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Acumen Fund’s inaugural Student Leader Workshop two months ago, an exciting step towards building this alliance. I came to the workshop with high expectations, but the experience was far more exciting than I could have imagined. I attribute this to the power of the community I was introduced to over those three days, both within Acumen Fund and the students I met from around the world. What I was fortunate enough to experience was an intellectually rich and yet action-oriented discussion in which we decided to roll up our sleeves and walk the talk.

Leadership on the campus level can sometimes come off as little more than an exercise in resume building or staying busy. That notion was strongly challenged by my three days at the Acumen Fund office. In our first session at the workshop, Seth Godin made the case for action by arguing that the only thing holding us back from transformative action is our inability to decide to do so (I highly recommend watching his talk). The extraordinary thing about the workshop is that I decided, and I’m confident the other 16 students in attendance did as well.

The workshop acted as a spark for exciting change, both personally and among the community of leaders we formed. The experience solidified my decision to pursue a career with impact. This summer, I’m in Washington, DC, interning with Ashoka’s University Program as well as engaging in social media work for a small non-profit called the Solar Electric Light Fund. Some of my more adventurous fellow student leaders are now working with or starting social enterprises around the world, from Argentina to India. We are excited to bring new ideas and methods of solving old problems back to school in the fall.

As a result of our Student Leader’s workshop, we’ve proposed developing an Acumen product, which we hope to sell on campuses to raise funds and awareness for Acumen’s efforts to shift the conversation on global poverty. One of the potential ideas is for an Acumen bag tag for a luggage piece, backpack or purse. We hope this would spark conversations, whether on campus or in an airport, and demonstrate the interconnectedness of our world. Stay tuned!

In addition, we’re creating a network of students interested in making the same decision that we made. To do so, we are putting together a collaborative video that will demonstrate our generation’s global interconnectedness and interest in confronting the challenges of poverty. Check out The Poverty Message on Facebook to learn more!

We realize that this movement will need more than a small group of students creating a video and raising funds. We’ll need teams of students and young people on college campuses across the country, ready to help change the way our generation confronts poverty. In addition to Facebook, we also invite you to join our online communities on LinkedIn and Ning. We’re looking forward to starting the conversation! The task before us is huge, but so are the possibilities. In the words of Victor Hugo: “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.”

Lorrayne Ward is starting her second year of an MPP/MBA joint degree at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School. Prior to graduate school, Lorrayne worked at the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and McKinsey & Company.

For most of us, a mosquito bite is an itchy annoyance – a small price to pay in exchange for warm weather and lazy days outside. But in much of the world, a mosquito bite can be a life-or-death issue. For the hundreds of millions of people living in malaria endemic areas, fighting mosquitoes, and the deadly parasites they carry, is a daily struggle. Controlling malaria isn’t rocket science, and for the price of a sandwich in New York City you can equip a family with an effective set of tools for preventing and treating malaria: a long-lasting insecticide-treated bed net (LLIN) and artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACTs), a drug used for the treatment of malaria. Both of these products only came to market a few years ago, as a result of focused efforts and collaboration by various public and private sector organizations.

Acumen Fund had a significant role to play in scaling up the global production of LLINs, through its investment in A-Z Textile Mills in Tanzania. It helped to broker a technology transfer partnership between chemical giant Sumitomo, who had developed an innovative way to weave durable polyethylene fibers with a time-release insecticide, and A-Z, who transformed itself from a producer of simple bednets to more complex, higher-value LLINs. A-Z is now one of the largest global manufacturers of LLINs, and one of the single biggest employers in Tanzania.

Voila, Acumen Fund’s appetite for malaria investment was born! The A-Z investment was followed by a deal with Bio-Extracts EPZ in Kenya, the only African manufacturer of the active ingredient in ACTs; and DART, a new joint venture between Vestergaard-Frandsen, Richard Allan and the Acumen Fund to develop and market an insecticide-treated wall lining.

But since Acumen’s original loan to A-Z, the malaria space has changed dramatically. Global funding for malaria has increased exponentially, to over a billion dollars per year. Coverage of key methods to prevent and treat malaria has also grown substantially. Challenging these positive developments are looming threats like the parasite’s growing resistance to the active ingredients in LLINs and ACTs, the economic crisis curtailing donor outlays, and climate change making more areas of the world potentially susceptible to malaria.

So, Acumen Fund asked itself what role its “patient capital” approach could play in the marketplace for malaria products and services. That’s where I came in, since I had some background in malaria through my pre-Acumen Fund experiences. “Think big,” said Chief Investment Officer Brian Trelstad when asking me to conduct this market review. “Leave no stone unturned – there have to be innovative opportunities out there that would benefit from our capital and management assistance.”

With those words in mind, I started my analysis. What companies, big and small, are active now in the market? What are the major gaps? How could small and medium enterprises like those that Acumen Fund supports be better represented in this space? What new innovations could change the market? I asked over 30 leading stakeholders in the malaria world these and many other questions. I expected a wide range of responses, but with very few exceptions, I was surprised by the experts’ consensus, and the resulting short list of potential opportunities for Acumen Fund investment.

After presenting my findings to the team, there was nothing patient about moving from proposal to action. The Acumen team has already set about to perform preliminary due diligence on some interesting companies as well as explore ways to leverage our connections in the international policy and funding worlds to raise the profile of several innovative small and medium enterprises.

Personally, it was exciting to see my summer’s worth of work being so enthusiastically embraced and translating into concrete actions. For me, it represented Acumen Fund’s modus operandi at its best – sourcing ideas from an eclectic base, thinking creatively about how to best apply its resources towards resolving an issue of global social importance, and moving swiftly to capitalize on opportunities.  Hopefully, through the actions of Acumen Fund and all the other stakeholders striving in this space, the millions around the world currently suffering from malaria can have the luxury of someday writing off a mosquito bite as just a pesky side effect of an otherwise perfect summer day.

Mike McCreless is currently serving as a summer associate on the Portfolio team.  He is a joint-degree student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School’s MPA-ID program. He has worked as a consultant for Monitor Company in New York, Madrid, Paris and Morocco, and as a Research Associate for Professor Michael Porter at Harvard Business School, where he wrote case studies and research notes about economic development in Rwanda, foreign aid and other topics.

A couple of years ago, Larry Summers gave a guest lecture at a class I was taking on international development. He delivered a fascinating 20-minute lecture as if reading it from a transcript in his mind’s eye, and then took questions for an hour. I asked him why foreign aid had delivered so much less ‘development,’ by any definition, than expected, and what should we be doing with our time and money instead?

He took a long pause, staring into space, and then said slowly that that was perhaps the most profound question in economics, causing me simultaneously to swell with pride and recoil at my own pretentiousness. He listed several of the standard arguments for aid’s ineffectiveness, but what really stuck with me was his contention that advances in technology, not foreign aid, would do most to eradicate poverty in the long run.

Well, that made sense, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it. It was not as if I had a stockpile of socially valuable technological innovations saved up for just such an occasion. I was a white twenty-something from the American ‘burbs, with no technological expertise and limited experience in Africa, but enough experience with the foreign aid system to give me misgivings about a career with the big multilaterals.

I didn’t have any technological innovations, but I did have ideas about how to make the foreign aid system more effective. Before enrolling in grad school, I spent time in Rwanda, researching economic development and in particular, the efforts of aid agencies on the ground. As I traveled around the country and met its people, I was astonished at the level of deprivation that they endured despite the vast inflows of aid. It appeared that aid had delivered surprisingly little ‘development,’ though of course the counterfactual might have been much worse. Moreover, the academic and popular press was awash with possibilities to improve the management practices of aid agencies. I hoped that better measurement of project outcomes, and alignment of organizational structures and staff incentives with those outcomes, would help donors and recipients alike get more out of the $100 billion spent on aid every year.

I am in a three-year program in which students work in internship programs during the two intervening summers. Last summer, I had the opportunity to test some of these ideas during an internship at a large aid institution. My role was to help design the next version of an internal system to track project outcomes. I worked with project managers to understand how they select projects, manage them over time, and measure their impact. I tried to assess the potential for better management practices at U.S. headquarters to improve results on the ground in Africa.

I also tried to understand the culture of the organization and how I might fit in. I tried to understand managers’ jobs, how they spent their time day-to-day, and more importantly, how they felt about their jobs. What did their work mean to them? Did they feel like they were making a difference? Did they believe that somewhere out there, in some forgotten urban slum or rural village, someone’s life was improved, their burdens eased by the work we did behind our desks in the U.S.?

During these conversations, I was often reminded of a quote from Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis’ memoir of his time on Wall Street during the 1980s: “Goodness was not taken into account on the trading floor. It was neither rewarded nor punished. It just was. Or it wasn’t.” On a trading floor, this is as it should be, but I did not expect it to be as true of aid institutions in 2008 as it was of Salomon Brothers in 1987.

Many of the managers I spoke to care deeply about development, and think critically and often about whether their work actually helps anyone. Others wish they worked at a purely commercial enterprise, where they would not have to be bothered by concerns about social impact. To some, a job in the foreign aid system simply meant a comfortable life in the U.S. and enhanced status in the socio-political elite of their home country. Most staff simply assume that what they do helps people, without really checking to make sure. Their hearts are in the right place, and they have faith in the system to direct their efforts toward socially valuable ends. In fairness, it is extraordinarily difficult to know whether one’s activities in U.S. headquarters actually help anybody on the ground. I was nevertheless taken aback at how little people cared to find out.

I realized that my ideas about reforming management practices at aid agencies were a technocratic solution to a cultural problem. Managerial fixes such as systems to track results and incentive plans aligned with results help on the margins, but do not directly address the fundamental cultural issues that constrain the effectiveness of foreign aid.

For my second summer internship, I focused on smaller organizations that I believed shared my values, and my interest in experimenting with new modes of foreign assistance. To make a long story short, this June I found myself at Acumen Fund. The fourth day of my internship was “World Metrics Day,” declared as such by Acumen Fund and its partners to celebrate the progress they have made in measuring the social impacts of their investments. As we sat down to a World Metrics Day teleconference, Acumen Fund Chief Investment Officer Brian Trelstad turned to me. “World Metrics Day! What better way to inaugurate your first week!” He stared at me expectantly. I wasn’t used to this level of excitement about measuring social impact. I stared dumbly back, trying to figure out if he was joking or not, if I should laugh or nod. He has a wry sense of humor, but he wasn’t joking. The man really cares to know whether what he does actually helps anybody. It was going to be a different kind of summer.

I have spent half of my time working on a deal to use innovative biomass technology to electrify rural off-grid villages in India, and half of my time thinking about how to integrate the many approaches Acumen takes to measuring the social impacts of its investment. The biomass project has vividly demonstrated the potential for innovation to create tremendous social impact. This social impact may be difficult to measure, but Acumen Fund’s investment in impact measurement also demonstrates that an organization that truly wants to measure its impact can find a way to do so.

In the end, Larry Summers was right. My quest for an organization that was serious about high-efficiency social impact led me to an organization that invests in innovations—innovations not only in technology, but also in distribution and delivery of essential products and services to the poor.

On the surface it may seem like Acumen Fund, and venture philanthropy in general, seems to just be the hot new thing these days. They blog, and tweet, and use fancy words like ‘philanthro-capitalism.’ They are undoubtedly in fashion. That’s great, because it gets new people excited about the work they do. But look past all that. Acumen Fund could fall out of fashion tomorrow—no more headlines, no more keynote speeches—and what would be left is a handful of people who actually care whether what they do is valuable. Not to the blogosphere and the editors of The Economist, but to poor people in India, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. That is my experience of Acumen Fund this summer: a small group of people who are in it for the right reasons, a handful of villages in India that have access to clean electricity for the first time (and the prospect of bringing electricity to many more), and all for much less than it would have cost my former employer to accomplish the same. The fashion may fade, but the impact will remain.