Articles by Yasmina Zaidman

“Everyone says we should do what we love but doing what you love can be really hard.  Making change in the world is what I love but it won’t be easy.”

~Willa Zhou, Harvard College

They came from India, Kenya, the Dominican Republic, Columbia, and Singapore, from Ohio, California, Florida, Massachusetts, and beyond, in part to learn how they can make a difference.  This was our first cohort of student leaders - a group we see as the sparks that will ignite a network of college students that can help Acumen Fund advance our mission of changing how the world tackles poverty.    

The first part of this journey culminated with a Student Leader’s Workshop held last weekend.  Chosen from a highly competitive group of applicants, each student leader brought diverse experiences to the table: from working with laborers in garbage dumps in Guatemala to distributing bed nets in Ghana. All were hungry to learn how patient capital can be employed to combat poverty. We are honored to have them in our community.

Over the course of a three-day workshop our goal was to share with them our perspective on the social enterprise sector and the role of patient capital, and help them explore their role as leaders that can expand Acumen Fund’s impact in the world by building communities, or “tribes” on their campuses.

Marketing guru and Acumen Fund partner Seth Godin led the first session, discussing the importance of community and leadership.  In addition to addressing the importance of building tribes, an insight he explores at length in his most recent book by the same name, Seth outlined a simple message – DECIDE.  Make a choice about who you are and how you want to lead – then do it.  This call to action set the tone for three days of dialogue, debate and idea-generation.

On Saturday morning, after a late night of teamwork over pizza on Friday, the students presented bold ideas for building awareness and communities around social enterprise. Their ideas included creating an online social enterprise hub aimed at college students, producing a viral video and organizing a conference focused on impact. They each shared concrete individual goals and timelines for things like spreading the word about The Blue Sweater, as well as fundraising and bringing knowledge on Acumen Fund to their networks and campuses.

I was particularly inspired by the students’ desire to understand the range of strategies that can be applied to addressing poverty. Also, in discussing their own approach to leadership, they were honest about their shortcomings, their fears, and their personal contradictions 

As the weekend wrapped up, a commitment was made to moving forward with their proposals. These student leaders are now crisscrossing the globe on their way home, eager to continue what they started, to share their experiences and dedicate themselves to tackling the challenges of poverty.  If these three days are any indicator, patient capital has just gained some powerful allies that will impact our world now and in the future.  We look forward to continuing this journey with them. 

Please feel free to visit their Twibe that they created on Twitter.

“I don’t like the idea of a franchise” he had told me over dinner in Cambridge. “It sounds too much like McDonalds.” I was having dinner with Ron Rivera and discussing his idea for a locally produced clay pot that could remove 98% of pathogenic bacteria from drinking water. His work had caught my attention while I was doing research on potential technologies for the emerging water portfolio at Acumen Fund.

While he was skeptical at the time of the role that a commercial approach could play in improving access to safe drinking water, over the past years, he helped launch 30 factories to produce affordable clay filters in Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Kenya, Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Darfur. Working with Potters for Peace, he was the drive and energy behind an effort that got 300,000 filters to the world’s poorest. According to the New York Times, “He often traveled in the wake of water-related disasters — following floods in Ghana or a tsunami in Sri Lanka — capitalizing on the rush of aid money to establish a locally owned enterprise that would sustain itself long after he left.”

His life was claimed in September by a bout of malaria he contracted in Nigeria while opening his 30th factory. He was 60 years old. His goal was to build 100 factories to produce these simple but effective clay pots and to reach 4 million people with safe water.

While I only met him a few times, Ron Rivera was someone who stood out in my mind as the “real deal,” someone who was driven to make a difference in people’s lives, and who himself was continually learning about how to have a greater impact. He may have been skeptical at first when I suggested he look at these factories like a McDonald’s chain, with standardized designs, manufacturing processes and marketing materials, but he ultimately found his own way to encourage local enterprises to take up this innovative business model. It was an approach that required him to personally connect with, train and inspire local entrepreneurs – work that was undoubtedly rewarding and effective, but that proved incredibly dangerous. His work will fortunately continue to impact people’s lives, as many of his protégés have committed themselves to carrying it forward. My hope is that we honor his life and what he worked for through our efforts to make affordable drinking water solutions available to the billions who need them, and our investments in health enterprises that can make diseases like malaria history.

It has been a busy summer here at the Acumen Fund New York office, where we’ve been working hard to implement website and blog changes that make it easier for our community to access data on and insights from our work.

On the website, it’s now possible to view metrics reported by many of our investees. These investment metrics are fed directly from our Portfolio Data Management System. We are not able to share all the available data, and some of our new investments are still in the process of collecting data, but we are committed to sharing as much information as we can, as often as we can – and this is a step in that direction.

Net Impact held its first conference in Europe last week, achieving a major milestone while paying tribute to the intense interest on the part of European and international MBA students in using business tools to make a positive social impact. The ability of corporations and business tools to drive social change is still a hot topic, and the participants at this conference brought diverse perspectives on the issue and some challenging questions, all related to the conference theme of “Sustainable Prosperity.”

It was my pleasure to be there representing Acumen Fund as I have been a big fan of Net Impact since I revived the Net Impact chapter at Stanford when I was there from 2001-2003. The conference had its own unique flavor, hosted by three institutions from across Europe – the International Organization MBA, a program based at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, The University of Nottingham in the UK, and INSEAD in France. Over 400 participants joined the meeting, bringing an interest in everything from corporate social responsibility, to environmentally sustainable business; socially responsible investing to business at the “base of the pyramid” (BoP). The dedication of the student volunteers managing a dizzying array of panels was readily apparent, and they put together a professional and compelling event.

Though Net Impact began 15 years ago with a focus on how MBAs could make a positive difference within the business world, this conference and other recent Net Impact conferences in the US have clearly demonstrated that working for a socially responsible for-profit company is just one way to make a difference. The Net Impact Europe conference had a much greater showing from international organizations like Global Alliance for Improved Nuitrition (GAIN), CARE International, Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance (AKAM), and the ILO, with fewer corporate titans taking the stage as keynote speakers or panelists than I have seen at other Net Impact conferences. Representatives from Toyota, Microsoft and KPMG were there, however, to share some of their best practices related to social responsibility. At times, though, it seemed like the businesses that were represented were on trial, being challenged as to whether they were doing enough or taking the right approach.

For example, on a panel I joined to discuss innovations for serving BoP markets, the question was asked: Is selling low-cost products to the poor really the same as poverty alleviation? A fair question, though one that suggests a zero-sum-game approach to developing more inclusive markets. In our experience, businesses may fail to reach the neediest through their products, but can still expand access and reduce the burden on governments and aid organizations by allowing them to target their efforts towards the poorest.

IDEO was recently recognized as one of Fast Company’s top five “Fast 50” Most Innovative Companies, alongside Google, Facebook, Apple and GE. We are thrilled to see an organization that has been a valued partner to us for years get this recognition, and not only for its award-winning design work, but also for its proactive stance on having a social impact. Tim Brown, their CEO, was quoted saying “As social issues increasingly become business issues, this will be a critical new direction for design.”

Our work with IDEO has included a collaborative project to bring design innovations to the challenge of water storage and transportation in the developing world. Having worked on a team with IDEO designers, I was struck by the passion and interest across the company in projects that have a potential for social impact. Despite long dusty road trips to remote Rajasthani villages with scarce water supplies, and getting soaked on rainy days in Mumbai slums, interviewing local water consumers, the team at IDEO showed an incredible level of enthusiasm for listening to the needs of consumers whose needs are not being met. This may not have always been the norm for a design company famous for designing the first Apple mouse, and the interiors of jet airplanes, but it is becoming the hallmark for IDEO, which sees addressing developing world issues as core to its culture and its strategy. For the past two years, the Acumen Fellows have benefited from training on design thinking from IDEO, and an IDEO designer joined this year’s cohort and is now working in India with Scojo, one of our investees.

The role of cutting-edge design thinking in solving critical social issues is now being explored by companies like IDEO, and institutions like the Stanford Institute of Design and the IIT Institute of Design, as well as the non-profit Design that Matters. We look forward to seeing more applications of human-centered design to the many solvable problems facing low-income markets around the globe, and congratulate IDEO on its success demonstrating true innovation and leadership.

A social entrepreneur, a woman, is taking shape in the form of a young nurse who, after witnessing the mistreatment of children in an orphanage, begins to teach nurses out of her home. Soon, she moves to a slum, so she can more easily treat families who live nine or ten to a tiny room for diseases that should have disappeared long ago. She scrapes together funds for a small group of nurses to visit the slums alongside her, providing critical basic care.

She gets the attention of a successful businessman, who sees her commitment and effectiveness, and begins to support her, first modestly, and anonymously. But he demands accountability, requesting receipts for all expenses, and going to the slums himself to see the work of the nurses and their impact on the community.

Eventually, he helps her scale her solution based on the clear evidence he sees of her accountability, efficiency, and results.  He donates large sums of his own money, investing as he would in a business venture, based on performance and track record. To many, putting such sums into an organization run by a woman, a social worker, would seem ludicrous, but he is only focused on results, and the potential upside of this particular investment. This all happened over a hundred years ago.

Water Advocates, an organization dedicated to increasing American support for worldwide access to safe, affordable and sustainable supplies of drinking water and adequate sanitation, recently announced a decision by Congress to support the appropriation of $300 million to implement the Water for the Poor Act. This press release points out that the appropriations bill still needs to be signed by the President, but if passed, this funding would represent discreet new dollars to address the critical global issue of lack of access to safe water and adequate sanitation.

This past Friday and Saturday, over 1,700 MBAs, corporate social responsibility professionals and non-profit leaders gathered in Nashville, Tennessee, at Vanderbilt University’s Owen business school for the annual Net Impact Conference. Since the 90’s, Net Impact has grown its network of MBA students interested in using their business skills to effect change, or as Ian V. Rowe of MTV and a Harvard MBA, said on his panel on malaria, “using our superpowers for good.”

Though in the opening keynote, Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, admitted he was pessimistic about the fate of the global environment, most speakers who followed exhibited a tremendous degree of optimism about the possibility of making a positive difference. It’s hard not to be optimistic when surrounded by so many talented students of business who are set on doing something with their careers that goes beyond making money.

This past Thursday and Friday I joined the Global Water Challenge for a learning forum on Innovative Financing for Water and Sanitation. The Global Water Challenge (GWC) is a committed group of leading organizations that have joined forces to catalyze change in the water and sanitation sector with members from non-profit organizations, foundations, academia and major corporations, including Coca-Cola, Dow and Cargill.  (The local NBC station did a short piece on the meeting - you can see it here.)

Partnership sounds great, I think we can all agree, but what does it really mean? With water being one of the most complex and politicized development issues, how feasible is it that distinct groups across sectors could sit in a room together and find meaningful ways to collaborate? My first question would be, can we even agree on anything? Despite these questions, Acumen Fund recently joined the GWC to do our own part in this effort to “join forces.” This was made easier by the fact that we had already been working closely with the GWC and several members. What I discovered through the course of this two-day meeting was that partnership, for this group, was not just a pretty word. �

This piece in The Huffington Post by Marc Gunther highlights a really exciting trend in the water sector around the convergence of business and provision of safe water. This is an issue we have been working on since 2003, and we have been excited to partner with many of the organizations he cites, including the Global Water Challenge, WaterHealth International, and the Coca-Cola Company.

Gunther addresses what has been a controversial polemic between water as a resource versus water as a human right and makes the argument that treating water as a resource for those who can afford to pay will make it more readily accessible to those who can’t. He brings up some great points, and I wanted to add some of our reflections on the true cost of water faced by those who are often qualified as too poor to pay.

It might be possible that a government would cross-subsidize water, charging wealthier customers more and poorer customers less, but this is different from charging nothing at all. There are a few problems with any system, public or private, that provides water for free to a large segment of the population: First it eliminates the interest of entrepreneurs, distributors, innovators and investors to find cheaper and more reliable ways to make water available to those who need it most.

WaterHealth International (WHI) has been named on the “Ten to Watch” list of companies in The Clean Tech Revolution, a new book released by Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The book features clean technologies that can impact global development, fuel costs, security and climate change, among others. We are delighted to see WaterHealth International featured not only because we see WHI as an innovator in the water industry, but also because they are demonstrating the potential for new technologies to benefit low income consumers that have been excluded from the benefits of innovation in the past.

The economic incentives to reduce the costs of fuel, or mitigate costly climate changes, are understandable motivations for technology innovation. But it is only logical that clean technologies that create more sustainable access to sustainable and affordable services such as safe water, clean energy, and fuel efficient transportation, would hold the most value for those that live at the base of the economic pyramid (the BOP). A convergence between Cleantech, design for the BOP, and social investing could be the right combination to assure that development in emerging economies is inclusive and environmentally sustainable.

In the book, authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify ten companies in each of eight clean-technology industry sectors that bear watching for growth and industry influence in the near to mid-term. WHI has been included in the “Ten to Watch” list for the chapter titled “Water Filtration: Turning Oceans, Wastewater, and Other Untapped Sources Into Pure Water.”

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.