Acumen Community

We’re pleased to announce that the San Francisco for Acumen Chapter will be having its Wine Tasting Event on 25th March, at the SNOB Wine Bar & Lounge from 6.30pm - 9.30pm.

In preparation for the event, local chapter leaders are gathering on Sunday, 14th March, at 50 Fremont Street for an Event Planning Session from 2pm - 3.30pm. This is an excellent opportunity to get more involved with the Chapter and Acumen Fund’s work, so if you’re interested, don’t hesitate to sign up!

For more event information, please refer to links on the Wine Tasting Event & the Planning Session on our Community website.

In his book Tribes, Seth Godin discusses how change is best effected by a group of like-minded individuals united around a powerful idea. Acumen Fund was founded on such an idea: we believe that Patient Capital has the power to build a world beyond poverty. However, we need your help to realize this vision.

Introducing Acumen Fund’s Online Community – the place online to connect with people from all around the world who are excited about supporting Acumen Fund’s vision and mission. Started in October 2009, the Online Community is integral to Acumen Fund’s Community engagement efforts.

Here’re a few things you can do on with the Online Community:

Connect with over 2,688 members (and counting) from 108 countries, across dozens of interest groups who are passionate about the idea of Patient Capital.

Learn about Acumen Fund and social enterprise through multimedia and discussion forums with Acumen Fund staff.

Contribute to our cause by attending and organizing local events to raise awareness and donations for Acumen Fund.

The Online Community has something for you, regardless of your background:

Students: Learn how you can bring Patient Capital to your campus through our Campuses for Social Enterprise Group and Student Resources page.

Professionals: It doesn’t matter if you’re a banker, policy junkie, advertising guru, or activist. You and your peers can get involved with our work. Join an Official Chapter in New York or San Francisco, or one of our Seed Chapters in London, Dubai, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, or Boston. You can search for other groups based on interest or geography here.

Blue Sweater Fans: The Blue Sweater is the inspiring memoir of Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen Fund’s Founder & CEO. It chronicles her journey from Wall Street to the slums of Africa in an effort to understand global poverty, and tells the story of how Acumen Fund and “Patient Capital” came to be. Our Community site contains a wealth of resources about the book, including the Blue Sweater fan group, reader resources, information about how to help, and how to get the book.

Patient Capital Enthusiasts: If you have the passion & commitment to help support Acumen Fund’s work in some way or form, you can be sure that our staff will invest in supporting you.

Increasingly, we’re seeing the power of communities to contribute to our mission. Last July, the Young Professionals for Acumen New York Chapter (now New York for Acumen) raised $25,000 for Acumen Fund in a single night. This January, residents of local slums in Nairobi, Kenya, organized a “Super Book Club” reading of The Blue Sweater which attracted more than 90 individuals to meet Jacqueline Novogratz in person. All around the world, people are giving their time, money and effort to bring the power of Patient Capital to bear on poverty.

This is our invitation to you to help lead us. Be a part of our Community today.

The San Francisco for Acumen Chapter recently organized a reading of The Blue Sweater at the beautiful University Club in downtown San Francisco.

The event attracted some 35 participants, who got to hear first-hand about how Acumen Fund’s use of patient capital supports social enterprises. The evening started with a casual mixer where participants mingled over drinks and light snacks. Acumen Fund’s very own Brad Presner, and Fellows Jocelyn Wyatt and David Lehr were then on hand to share their experiences. Brad spoke about his experiences traveling with Acumen Fund CEO Jacqueline Novogratz on behalf of Google.org, while Jocelyn and David spoke about their experiences working for Acumen Fund investees Advanced Bio-Extracts & Drishtee.

The group then broke out into more intimate discussion groups to discuss their reading of The Blue Sweater. Community members were able to discuss Acumen Fund’s model of patient capital and how it generates impact with its investees - overall, the sense of excitement was palpable and it was an excellent learning and networking opportunity for like-minded changemakers!

Moving forward, the San Francisco for Acumen Chapter will be organizing monthly events around patient capital and social entrepreneurship. They are looking for individuals who are passionate about patient capital and want to get involved in Acumen’s work - if that sounds like you, then please reach out to the Chapter Leaders at the Acumen Fund Community site.

In a recent article for India’s Business Standard, former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India Gurcharan Das articulated a forceful critique of the corporate social resposibility (CSR) movement.  The following response from Acumen CIO Brian Trelstad takes issue with several of Das’s central premises, arguing that in fact CSR has the potential to benefit both the companies that practice it and the communities that it can positively impact.

Das’s article cites the foundational critique of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from Milton Friedman, but it also overlooks the potential for CSR to be strategic as a value driver for companies. It is true that many CSR efforts are not strategic, that they in fact represent a thin veneer of “green wash” or philanthropy, and are staffed by people with few resources and little authority to actually get things done.

These efforts waste the time and resources of the companies and the nonprofits who indulge them in thinking that they are going to get value from a “strategic partnership” (I have been involved in more than a few of those discussions in my tenure at Acumen Fund, but won’t name names). But even these largely shallow CSR efforts, ones that build brand and communicate a message to loyal customers or inspire employees to work harder, longer or smarter can have a real return for the company. (And Das somehow conflates corporate philanthropy with CSR, by citing the Ambani’s building hospital. We can debate whether philanthropy is an effective tactic for a CSR strategy). But many CSR initiatives nowadays, including those that are looking at “BOP markets” are about exploring new markets, new products and new strategies for business growth and will have a significant impact on a company’s value over time.

The challenge is figuring out the difference. Not too different than the old marketing saying: “The good news is that I know that half of our marketing spending is really effective. the bad news is that I don’t know which half.” The same could be said for R&D. So if everything a company has to do has a narrow linear link to near term shareholder value creation, you would see CSR and marketing and R&D budgets shrink. and even CEO compensation would be cut to the barest of bones (yes, there is no link between what a company pays its CEO and shareholder value, so I would love Gucharan Das’ perspective on that point as well).

So it is true, many CSR efforts might not actually be strategic, or they might be very poorly executed. But I think that the notion that companies shouldn’t indulge in anything noncore to the business is a fallacy. CSR is here to stay whether Das likes it or not.

Shital’s family emigrated from India when she was only four years old, but her heart and soul still remain there. She went on to graduate from Northwestern University and returned to India as an Indicorps fellow. She completed her Master of Public Administration from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, specializing in International Development. She is currently an intern at Acumen Fund’s India office, working with the Agriculture and Health portfolios.

Cross Posted on ThinkChange India

Day One: Laying the Groundwork

In a gathering of practitioners and investors, the Khemka Forum kicked off at the India School of Business in Hyderabad.  The day’s activities ranged from plenaries to sector working group lunches to track breakouts.  Social entrepreneurs converged to discuss the state of their field, lessons learnt, ideas for collaboration, and the way forward.

As Don Mohanlal, CEO of Khemka Foundation, quoted, “the best time to begin a long journey was 10 years ago. The next best time is today.” In the long journey to create a complete social entrepreneurship ecosystem in India, the Khemka Forum aimed to kick off a constructive conversation on action-oriented, short-term ideas that Indian social entrepreneurs could take as the work toward the longer term goal.

Working Scale Issues: “Fingers Burnt, Lessons Learnt”

Healthy debate and discussion around scale indicated that even the most successful social enterprises in India are grappling with this issue. Manish Sabharwal, Co-Founder of TeamLease, mentioned that entrepreneurs can create two types of organizations – a baby or a dwarf – one that starts small and gets much bigger, or one that will remain small. He identified various factors that influence scale, including opportunity, team, organizational design, strategy, and risk.  Pawan Patil, CEO of the Global Partnership for Youth Investment, talked about creating an enabling environment and busting myths.  Dr. Patil focused largely on creating jobs, especially for the growing youth population, as a necessary step toward achieving scale.  Nachiket Mor, President of ICICI Foundation, emphasized starting from the ground, building up, and then replicating.

SCALERS

In a session on “SCALERS – Driving Social Impact,” Matthew Nash, Managing Director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University, discussed a new model for talking about scale.  SCALERS stands for Staffing, Communicating, Alliance-building, Lobbying, Earnings generation, Replicating, and Stimulating market forces.  Parag Gupta, Founder of Waste Bank, presented a case study on SELCO (TC-I previously interviewed Harish Hande here) using the SCALERS model and identified the enterprise’s accomplishments and challenges.

Similarly, Professor Madhukar Shukla of XLRI Jamshedpur presented a case study on Nidan (founded by Arbind Singh, Khemka’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2008).  Since Nidan focuses on a completely different sector – organizing marginalized workers – and operates as a nonprofit, the two organizations had very different outcomes on the SCALERS model.  The model provided a good basis to talk about the various factors involved in scaling up and strategic steps for moving forward.

Sector Working Groups

I sat in on the sector working group focusing on rural innovations, led by Prema Gopalan of Swayam Sikshan Prayog.  Other working groups included health, education, renewable energy, and youth entrepreneurship.  The rural innovations group identified major barriers – from knowledge management to product design to innovative financing.  From there, the conversation shifted to collaborations and action steps, especially on ways that practitioners could connect more deeply and consistently.  We will all have to stay tuned to see what these working group discussions will eventually produce…

Alternative Talent Pools

Finally, I attended the track organized by Dasra on Building Alternative Talent Pool.  In a panel facilitated by Dasra Managing Partner Neera Nundy, Manish Sabharwal (again of TeamLease), Deep Joshi (Co-Founder of Pradan), and Prashant Bhaskar (Head of PLUG HR) discussed the ways in which they attracted, retained, and built the capacity of talent for organizations.  A lively discussion around how social enterprises should hire and train employees ensued, with Mr. Sabharwal reminding the audience that the role of the employer is not to manufacture employees, while Mr. Joshi explained his desire to treat each person in the organization as a changemaker or social entrepreneur.  A lot of the discussion linked back to public policy and the existing inequality of opportunity, as well as the need to reform current skill development and vocational training programs.  Finally, participants worked through the importance of organizational culture, citing personal examples of how to make sure a certain culture permeates from the top to the bottom of an enterprise.

Day 2: Moving into Action

While Day 1 of the Khemka Forum on Social Entrepreneurship focused on plenaries and making connections within sectors, Day 2 moved into smaller groups, deeper conversations, and creating plans for bridging gaps.

Measuring Impact

In the track on Performance Metrics, Matthew Nash of Duke University provided a thorough overview of the key trends in social impact measurement.  He discussed many trends, including the experimentation with tools and techniques, movement toward common metrics, emphasis on data quality, program evaluation through randomized design, and building robust performance management systems.  Mr. Nash also made the important point that outcomes do not equal impact, and that impact is actually the outcome minus what would happen in absence of the program.  Organizations often confuse this, thereby inflating the actual impact of their work.

Anant Kumar, CEO of LifeSpring Hospitals, which offer low-cost, high quality maternal and child care, spoke on the enterprise perspective of tracking metrics.  One of the key points he made was the value of democratizing data – basically, data needs to be present up, down, and across an organization so that it cannot be manipulated or modified.

Acumen Fund India’s Energy Portfolio Manager Katie Hill spoke on the social investor viewpoint.  She pointed out that the real challenge is that metrics must be understandable, inexpensive, and useful. You can read more directly from Katie in the Acumen Fund blog post on metrics.  Finally, IFMR’s Centre for Microfinance Executive Director Justin Oliver wrapped up the panel by elaborating on what gets measured, how it gets measured, and how to interpret the data.

Participants, while eager to learn how to incorporate good data gathering into their organization, also discussed the difficulties around funding data collection and being able to measure data accurately.  A general agreement on the value of data and metrics, however, pointed the way forward for experimental systems and reminded everyone the importance of starting small, but starting somewhere.

Consultancy Clinics

One of the more unique aspects of this forum were the consultancy clinics, which focused on law & social entrepreneurship, effective stakeholder communication, getting investment ready, and new forms of knowledge creation.  Matthew Nash led a dynamic consultancy clinic on knowledge creation, which I attended with the interest of understanding how TC-I could continue to serve as a platform for newly created knowledge.  The small group consisted of both academics and practitioners, allowing both sides to voice their perspectives and then discuss how to bridge existing gaps.  Mr. Nash started with the basic question of what action research agenda is needed to advance the field of social entrepreneurship in India.  While case study development is common, practitioners were concerned about the lack of usefulness for their organizations, as well as the large amount of time needed to share this knowledge.  The group discussed how to create collaborative research, use online networking forums, and engage students via practicums or internships.  As time spilled over into lunch, the clinic participants formulated a plan on how to move forward after the forum and ensure continued dialogue on this important issue.

Building an ecosystem

At the beginning of this event, speakers placed emphasis on building an ecosystem for social entrepreneurs in India.  The Khemka Forum was a bold attempt to convene the right players to do just that.  As a starting point, it was great to see the enthusiasm and seriousness with which participants approached this task.  Discussion and action will continue well beyond the Forum, and I’m hopeful in witnessing the creation of a more enabling environment for social entrepreneurs in India.  At the end of the day, there are investors, entrepreneurs, academics, donors, and the wider community who want to see innovative, market based solutions make a deep impact on India’s social issues.  With the efforts of all these stakeholders, and a concerted effort to bring others into the fray (from government to lawyers to media), the Khemka Forum is indeed a catalyst for accelerating the business of social change.

Julia is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, researching the evolution of global biotech/pharma business models serving Base of Pyramid (BoP) markets. She believes in the power of science and technology coupled with patient capital to solve global health challenges.

I first heard about Acumen Fund through TED Talks. I am an avid TED fan and one day clicked on a patient capital icon and discovered Jacqueline’s TED talks. Her talks are truly inspiring and I felt her points resonated with my own beliefs about the need for market-based solutions to alleviating poverty.

I believe in the development goal of wealth creation over poverty reduction. Given economic freedom, individuals in developing countries can choose solutions that are tailored to their needs, their environment, their goals and their dreams.

Hailing from Vancouver, Canada, I used to throw themed annual fundraisers as a fun way to tell friends about the causes I am passionate about and to shed light on different global issues. Having moved to UK for graduate studies, I thought the tradition should continue in London.

Along with a Canadian friend, Sue I Ong, we decided to throw a Fundraiser themed “Business for Tomorrow”. We brainstormed for a charity to support – children, health, education, housing, which worthy cause should we choose? After watching the Acumen videos together on YouTube, we decided to fundraise for Acumen Fund – a charity that invests in ALL those areas and continuously makes a difference utilizing sustainable capital.

Before going too far, I called Acumen to double check if it was okay to throw a fundraiser for Acumen. That was how I got in touch with Jo-Ann Tan, global coordinator for Acumen Chapters.

After speaking with Jo-Ann, she connected us with others who had expressed interest in a London chapter. And just like that the London Supports Acumen Group! was established. That was in October 2009 and within one month of starting, we have held two events. The core London Supports Acumen! team members are: Stephanie Kogan, Sue I Ong, Rajni Chandrasekhar, Aisha Mansur and Jay Barrymore. Along with our wonderful volunteers South Side Jazz Band (the “Band”), Sarah Pooler (our guest live artist), Shilpi Mahindroo (photographer), Joanne Cheung (graphic designer) – we owe our sincere thanks. This event could not have happened without their help. Together, we raised just under £1000 contribution from across the pond.

Above all, “Business for Tomorrow” was a fantastic way to introduce Acumen Fund to the London community. We had over a hundred guests throughout the night, with a mixture from London, Cambridge, Oxford (including Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) and professionals working in the City.  We also had spotlight breaks with two-minute introduction from social entrepreneurs representing Kiva and Aptivate.

Acumen Fund is not as well known in the UK as it is in North America. The spotlight breaks, videos and short Acumen presentation by the London Supports Acumen! team generated a lot of discussion. The conversations around the cosy venue held an aura of excited buzz, where knowledge was gained and ideas were shared.

If you would like to join the London Supports Acumen! Group to continue the conversation online with the global Acumen community please join here.

Sara is currently a senior at Brown concentrating in COE (Commerce, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship). She is originally from Bogota, Colombia. This past summer she participated in Acumen Fund’s Student Leader’s Workshop for Undergraduates. Sara is also the Director of the Client Services Team and a Loan Officer at the Capital Good Fund.

I was lucky enough to attend Harvard University’s 2007 Commencement ceremony and listen to Bill Gates’ stirring speech. While I found the speech inspiring and fascinating in many ways, I was really struck by one part in particular. Gates said:

“I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.”

This past summer, I had the chance to participate in Acumen Fund’s first Student Leaders workshop for Undegraduates. I left the workshop inspired, with a lot of caring, awareness, and passion – but still uncertain how to turn this caring into action. A lot of ideas were floating around amongst the student leaders; to sell bag tags, sell blue sweaters, and to coordinate amongst ourselves to create a movement out of these ideas. But complexity blocked these initiatives from actually happening.

This brought me back to Bill Gates’ speech. Complexity had made it hard for the student leaders to mark a path of action, and consequently made it hard for our caring to matter. But as Gates said, “To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact.”

With this in mind, I set out to turn caring, awareness, and passion into action.

Problem: With schoolwork and other commitments, I didn’t have the time to set up a full-fledged fundraising initiative for Acumen Fund. So how could I use my skills, passions, and networks to create awareness of Acumen Fund’s mission on the Brown University campus?

Solution: Find an easy, logical way to appeal to a broad audience, sensitize them to the problem of poverty, engage them in a cause, and simultaneously raise money. This is when I asked myself: what do college students like to do?

They like to party.

So I thought I could take advantage of this and extract a philanthropic “pleasure tax” for partying. While it may seem strange to bring the two emotionally polar opposites together, I thought that by “Partying to End Poverty” we could use the things we love – music and dance – against the things we hate – poverty – to create a sense of global unity.

So I met with a couple of venues in Providence and ultimately decided on the State Lounge, as they did not charge a fee for using the venue. And I got Nico Jaar, a famous DJ, to agree to provide music with no charge.

But there were always a lot of parties going on around campus, so I had to figure out how I could encourage people to pay $20 to attend a party when there are a handful of fraternity parties that were free of charge?

To solve this problem, I decided to add a free drink to the ticket (what magical things a drink can do for a college student), to make the dress code semi-formal, and to undertake extensive marketing about the Acumen Model.

I set up a Firstgiving page one month before the event with the goal of raising $1,000 in 24 hours. I went all over campus, announced the event in big lectures, dormitory halls, on Facebook, and Twitter, even just running into people.

I also sent out an email that said:

“…It all started back home in Alexandria, Virginia, with the blue sweater, a special gift that quickly became her prized possession—until the day she outgrew it and gave it away to Goodwill. Eleven years later in Africa, during a morning run, she spotted a young boy wearing what looked like the same sweater. She approached the boy, asked to see his sweater, and found her name still written there on the tag inside. That her garment had made it all the way to Kigali, Rwanda, was ample evidence of the way we are all connected…

In 2001, Jacqueline Novogratz started Acumen Fund, a non-profit organization that is revolutionizing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in transformative businesses that serve the poor.

From Alexandria, Virginia to Kigali, Rwanda, we now bring her story to Providence, RI and invite you to celebrate her story and Party to end Poverty.

Date: Saturday, November 7th

Place: State Lounge (located Behind Olives)

Admission: $20 cover (includes free drink) + any charitable donation

Music by Nico Jaar

*100% of proceeds donated to Acumen Fund

Because you rarely get the chance to drink with dignity, don’t miss this opportunity - DRINK WITH DIGNITY, and buy your ticket today. ”

The key was to create a sense of immediacy. People wanted to contribute to this. And the early donors were constantly checking the webpage to see how close I was to my goal – because they felt as though they were for promoting the party a couple of weeks later.

Once this foundation was set, I recruited about 20 friends and asked for their help in marketing the event. Initially many people were reluctant to spend $20 on a ticket, even though it was for a good cause. This is why I spent a lot of time individually encouraging people to attend, explaining why Acumen Fund is not just another non-profit organization, but is actually revolutionizing the way the world tackles poverty. I decided to call the event “The Blue Sweater Party” because I knew this would cause everyone to ask: why The Blue Sweater? These were exactly the kinds of conversations we wanted to trigger.

Impact: Delicious food, great drinks, upbeat entertainment, and an energetic and positive atmosphere could be felt throughout the crowd. $3,000 was raised for Acumen Fund but more importantly; over 120 students became engaged in the fight against poverty. Every minute of time or penny donated to this cause means that somewhere, someone’s life has improved. It is our responsibility as students and as future leaders to take action and allow organizations such as Acumen Fund to disseminate their powerful message in order to continue to do the work that they do. This event proved to me that the fight against poverty can be brought to the dance floor and that if we set ourselves to achieve something, we can block complexity and turn caring into action.

I recently had the opportunity to participate in the Clean Water Solutions for the Developing World Roundtable held last month at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Hosted by the Sustainable Products and Solutions Program at Haas’ Center for Responsible Business and the GWC (Global Water Challenge), the two-day event was funded by Dow Chemical Company Foundation as the first of its World Challenges Roundtable series.

The event included over forty representatives present – from NGOS, social enterprises, and corporations, to new technology developers – all working to bring clean water to the more than a billion people who currently lack access. While a large array of models and strategies were addressed, participants were all focused on finding action-oriented approaches to marrying treatment technologies with sustainable business models.

Listening to the presentations and interacting with other participants, I was struck by the real desire many had to partner, to pool their respective strengths to make clean water available on a massive scale and in a sustainable way. But while there was this real interest in building partnerships to bring safe drinking water to those at the base of the pyramid, many agreed that it remains unclear how we can move from effective social and technological innovations operating on a small scale to large-scale commercial endeavors. Many spoke of a gap, or disconnect, between great ideas, and the support they need to scale.

I made the case for Patient Capital, a brand of investment that takes into account the long time horizons and significant non-financial support needed to help innovative businesses scale in difficult markets. Patient Capital can, in many cases, serve as the bridge between the early years of an innovative business model’s ramp up, and later stages when a business is established enough to attract commercial capital or grow through its own revenues. This is an approach with which Acumen Fund has made major strides – not only with water, but also with health, agriculture, and housing. As we find in our work throughout the world, so often the problems associated with bringing water to the poor rest on inadequate or poorly maintained infrastructure, and a generalized lack of accountability that traditional aid in this field fosters. By partnering with local entrepreneurs and businesses, such as WHI who were also represented at the event, we’ve found that Patient Capital works.

As a next step, GWC participants agreed they would find ways to work together more proactively, and we saw several exciting potential partnerships emerge between investors and entrepreneurs. We also agreed to gather again in twelve to eighteen months, to share the lessons that come out of these creative partnerships.

As part of its ongoing series of informal chats, New York for Acumen Fund (NYfA) recently welcomed to our group Melissa Richer, founder of the Ayllu initiative. Envisioned as a series of small gatherings to discuss and highlight specific approaches to tackling global poverty, the series provides participants the opportunity to engage directly with thought leaders, innovators, and practitioners in the field of social entrepreneurship.

Melissa gave an overview of the history of the Ayllu Initiative, its model, and the ways in which it aims to achieve its goals. Ayllu, she explained, will serve as a link between social enterprises in the process of scaling through franchising and micro-finance institutions looking to add “micro-franchising” to their portfolios. By aggregating market-based solutions to poverty amelioration, Ayllu is working to innovate in the new field of microfranchising. And Melissa hopes that Ayllu’s development of a simple, replicable model will enable it to bring microfranchising and social enterprises into large-scale bottom of the pyramid financial services efforts. By sharing best practices that can be used by MFIs, impact investors, NGOs, and social enterprises, Ayllu expects to be a leader in a field that it is itself helping to create.

Melissa spoke with us about how she plans on carving out a space for microfranchising in the world of social entrepreneurship. Clearly her plan for Allyu is ambitious, but armed with a solid foundation and an optimal network of institutional supporters (including Ashoka and Alianca Empreendedora) she is already on the path to realizing her aims. But she also shared some of the difficulties she’s encountered running a start-up; touching on problems familiar to many in this field, such as lack of capital, under-staffing, and the persistent stress put on the founder to realize their original vision.

As is always the case at these events, the audience was able to actively engage both with Melissa and each other, in the process gaining purchase on microfranchising, a very recent and in certain ways complicated innovation. The group was also encouraged to discuss their own personal ventures, to share the trials and joys that come with starting your own enterprise. One audience member, a representative of Starting Bloc, encouraged the group to consider becoming a Starting Bloc Fellow, an opportunity that has many benefits for those starting their own ventures. Melissa was a warm and fascinating speaker and we thank her for taking the time out to reach out to New York for Acumen Fund. And we’re very much looking forward to upcoming events this year and next.

Click HERE for more information about New York for Acumen Fund.

Seth Nemeroff serves on the leadership team for New York for Acumen (NYfA), Acumen Fund’s first official volunteer chapter. Seth has put his experiences as an equities and commodities trader to good use at a number of non-profit organizations and he’s currently shifting his focus to more socially-minded ventures.

In the mid 1950s, Chinua Achebe, then a mid level employee of the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS), began work on an epic and in many ways unprecedented novel, the story of several generations of Nigerian men. The idea for the work, which would later be condensed into the single, sharply propulsive narrative of the noble though hubristic Okonkwo, came to Achebe while still enrolled at the University of Ibadan. Then pursuing a degree in English literature as part of that school’s first class of students, Achebe had been chosen for admission to the new institution based on the exceptional leadership qualities he had exhibited as a young man. Ibadan would become a hub of West African intellectual life after independence, but was established to “form” or produce the rising generation of Nigerian leaders. Under late British rule, these emerging local “leaders” were meant to serve largely as collaborators under the subordinated rule of a colony.

With a curriculum based heavily on the English canon – from Shakespeare to Milton to Conrad– Achebe, though an exceptionally able student, began to find himself troubled by many of his readings and the assignments he was obliged to produce on them. With scant mention of African histories or cultural forms, and with what few representations of Africans he encountered of a largely regressive nature – savages such as Caliban at best – the pre-independence image of Africa and its peoples that the young Achebe encountered in his courses insulted both his pride as an African and his emerging artistic vision. Where, he wondered, were the African protagonists? Why was he being educated exclusively through the stories of precisely those who had subordinated the communities of which he was part? Was there any reason that the novel as a form could not articulate the story of a Nigerian, or articulate a vision of Africa’s future? On the eve of Africa’s independence, Achebe realized that emerging nations such as Nigeria would need written versions of its own stories and new stories to educate its coming citizens.

Even from that young age, Achebe’s understanding of art was predicated on a progressive relationship to society, and he believed even then that the role of an author was akin to that of the teacher: to instruct and develop the moral character and worldly knowledge of emerging publics. At that startlingly young age, though, Achebe understood a key difference between teachers and writers: while teachers were responsible for educating their students through a variety of means – from lectures, to tests, to recitation periods – the exclusive tool available to the literary author was storytelling. What Achebe believed while beginning the novel – a belief that would become a hallmark of his critical writings and his literary practice – was that sharp storytelling combined with innovative ideas carries the potential to change the world.

Several years later and after several administrative hiccups (the sole manuscript at one point losing a year in the unhurried hands of a London- based typing service) the streamlined story of Okonkwo become Things Fall Apart. Then and now the novel represents an innovation based on an adaptation of existing tradition, in this case the novel. Published in 1958, the novel would eventually sell over eight million copies worldwide, and make Achebe a lion of global literary culture. Not only did the success of Achebe’s work facilitate the establishing of the institutions most responsible for the development of African writing in English – publishing houses and distribution networks – but it also serves as a perennial and indigenous cornerstone of a whole new kind of literature. It remains the first text in most if not all African studies curricula.

I was strongly reminded of the history of this novel’s birth as I listened to Fred Swaniker describe his experiences developing the African Leadership Academy during his recent visit to Acumen’s New York offices. A graduate of both Macalester College and Stanford Business School, Fred first had the idea for the ALA while working as a consultant at McKinsey’s Nigerian office, just prior to beginning his graduate work at Stanford.

Astonished to find so many wealthy Nigerians sending their children to expensive foreign boarding schools, many of them costing upwards of $40,000, Swaniker wondered why it was that no viable alternative existed anywhere on the African continent. As he recently recalled for Junior Kanu of Solving Africa , Swaniker began asking himself,

Why are we spending so much money to educate kids outside of Africa? Why don’t we have a school on par with the best in the world right here? It would be a cheaper alternative… [and because]… these kids were leaving at such an early age, they would never come back to Africa. And if they came back, how useful would they be to the continent?

In addition to this “lack,” there were two other conditions facing the continent that convinced Fred that an elite school based in Africa was not only a good but also a necessary idea. The first reason is the so-called “brain-drain,” alluded to in the quote above. Throughout the continent, the smartest, best- educated African youth have been fleeing to Europe and the United States in startling numbers, often pursuing lucrative careers thought to be unavailable in Africa. This kind of corporate diaspora, a path that Fred himself initially followed to McKinsey, often winds up a self-perpetuating cycle, with new African businesses and firms being built outside the continent, with foreign capital and foreign profits.

Fred also identified early on the centrality of leadership in both those African nations that were flourishing and those that were locked in alternating cycles of kleptocracy and dependence on foreign aid. In one case, exceptional leadership had worked to build central institutions, self-perpetuating infrastructure, and sustainable industry, in the other corrupt, factionalizing rule had lined the pockets of small elites while impinging the development of nations. A continent rich in resources and industriousness, leadership and its follies have been at the heart of persistent problems facing Africa. As Fred puts it, again in the interview from earlier this year:

The countries I’d lived in that I saw things were working, like Botswana, you could see that it was the leadership at the root cause of it. And no place shows you the impact of leadership in Africa [more] than Nigeria. People think what we need in Africa is resources, it’s not resources, the world keeps giving us more aid, that’s not what’s going to change Africa, we have all the resources we need… They have all these natural resources… time and time again, we find that our leaders have held us back.

Like Chinua Achebe and Fred Swaniker, leaders can also drive nations forward, helping them reach their potential. It is this brand of leadership that Acumen Fund seeks in its Fellows, and why Swaniker was an ideal speaker to include in their training. With funding from family, friends, Stanford classmates, and others, by the time he was a year out of school, much of the initial work had been realized. Last year, with the arrival of their first class of students, the two-year ALA began educating the future leaders of Africa. Its curriculum based on the best practices of global entrepreneurship yet grounded in the history of Africa, and its wildly variegated cultures, ALA is teaching its exceptional pupils how to be both global and continental leaders and how to be historically-conscious Africans. Needless to say, holding a central place in the African Studies section of its three-pronged curriculum (the other two being leadership and entrepreneurship) is Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

We are excited to announce the launch of our new online Community and would like to invite you to join us!

As part of the community, you will find more ways to get involved with Acumen Fund than ever before. In the past six months, we have seen so many individuals step up and do more:

• Volunteer groups have formed around the world in New York, San Francisco, London and Dubai.
• Individuals are raising money for Acumen Fund by running races, climbing mountains or by simply sharing their excitement about our work.
• Not to mention, the successful Dignity Benefit that was organized entirely by volunteers in  New York City

Connect with other Acumen Fund supporters and share in our exciting journey to create a world where dignity, not dependence, is the norm.  We’ve only just begun, and with your help, we can do so much more.

How you can get involved:

• Join our community
• Raise funds for Acumen
• Host a book discussion
• Tell a friend

We look forward to seeing you online!

Today is Blog Action Day, an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. This year’s issue is climate change.

Climate change – important topic. Glad to see that we are now all looking ahead and considering how our actions will permanently impact climate, how we will impact the lives of our children and grandchildren. And if we act now and cut back it is not too late to make a difference for them.

But what about the poor? The developing countries? Sure, they benefit if we save the planet, but is it fair that we are asking them to also cut back with us to help solve the climate problem? After all they don’t have a teenager with a Camaro to give up, or a roadtrip in a Winnebago to trade in. And they are now paying $4/gallon for gasoline because the rich countries used most if it up when nobody was looking!

If we want the billions of poor along, we have to help. We talk about carbon credits for developing countries to ease the transition. We have to make this real - and easy. We talk about using modern cleantech solutions that will create new and affordable energy for the world’s poor – but we have to make this accessible AND affordable. We have to help build businesses to deliver these solutions. This will be hard, it will take a long time, and we might not get rich doing it. But that is what it will take.

We’re seeing potential to bring real cleantech solutions to the developing world through our energy portfolio at Acumen Fund. High-efficiency LED lights powered by solar panels, small hydro to drive village electrification, bioenergy from agricultural waste residues are examples of initiatives that we have supported. These solutions can make a difference – both to address local poverty AND to save the global environment.

One of those solutions, Acumen Fund investee D.Light Design, is a nominee for the 2009 People’s Design Award for its newest product, a super cheap solar lantern that provides an affordable and clean replacement for kerosene lighting in rural India and Africa.

As part of National Design Week, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is sponsoring the competition in which good design is chosen by the public.

Want to help? Please vote for D.light here and spread the word to your networks and friends. You have until October 20 at 6:00 p.m. EST to vote. The winner will be announced live at the National Design Awards gala in New York City on October 22.