I am terribly sorry for the lack of updates recently; I am trying to get back into this, but now with school starting up again, it may be a bit difficult. In any case, my past winter vacation was filled with quite some traveling — I returned to Taipei, Taiwan once again for about 10 days to visit family and actually met up with quite a few of my Berkeley friends in Taiwan! The latter half of my break included my visit to New York City.

So it has always been a dream of mine to live and work in NYC after I graduate. Honestly, I think it’s the fact that it’s a large city, and with large cities comes the romanticized view of what life is supposed to be like in a huge city. Anyhow, I hadn’t been back to NYC since fifth grade, which was the first time I visited the east coast. My sister and I went to New York during early January, which is supposedly one of the worst/coldest times to visit, apparently. It was freeeezing cold and I literally felt like I was in a refrigerator whenever I was outside. I wouldn’t say that my visit will deter me from searching for a job there post-graduation, but I think it isn’t a “priority” to find a job and live in NYC after I graduate. Perhaps it’s the freezing weather that is a bit scary for me (seeing as I am a West-Coaster, after all). But, after much reflection, it’s also the fact that NYC may not be the optimal place to find a job in the social entrepreneurship / social enterprise field. SF one of the major hubs for social ventures nowadays, and while I am sure NYC houses some great social enterprises as well, there are just more options in SF. But honestly, who really knows until I start looking for jobs (which will not be until next year anyways) whether or not NYC may or may not be a potential place after all?!

To speak of my future travel plans, I will actually be traveling with two of my best friends to Europe this summer! I am beyond ecstatic, as I have never had a chance to travel with friends (it has always been with family and family-friends, which has also been amazing to have the opportunity to have traveled with them). We will be going to London, Amsterdam, Athens, and Greek islands Ios, Mykonos, and Santorini. I will then be leaving the trip early, and my friends will be journeying onto Rome, which I am terribly jealous that I will be missing but am nevertheless happy beyond belief to have the chance to travel to Europe this summer!

If you have been to any of those places and would like to make suggestions as to what is fun, interesting, and amazing to do, please let me know!

This blog post is part of Akhila’s “Be the change” series and is also posted on her website here. Much thanks to Akhila for hosting this awesome series – I suggest you check out all the other entries! All have great insight
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I’ve been attempting to find time and contribute to this awesome blog series “Be the change” thanks to Akhila, and of course, I am writing this instead of working on a paper that’s due in a few days.

Prior to attending school at UC Berkeley, all I knew was that I was interested in “business” and “changing the world” (or more specifically, I used to say “starting a revolution”). Little did I know that individuals such as Muhammad Yunus were already doing so! My friend introduced me to the concept of “social business” and “social entrepreneurship” around second semester of my freshman year, and that was when it all began.

I embarked on a Google-ing, internet-searching quest to learn more about this concept, and ended up first reading Yunus’ book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. From then on, I’d continue to read articles, books, and scour the Internet for more about social entrepreneurship and social business.

I often stop and reflect on why it is I seem to have this insatiable need and want to help others and improve the lives of the less fortunate. For the most part, I think it’s because I have grown up with so much opportunity laid in front of me, the privilege of living in a nice community and have the comfort and support of my parents. Maybe I was too comfortable that I became uncomfortable with my comfort. Does that make sense?

Perhaps it’s why I want to pursue a career in poverty alleviation through the power of social business and entrepreneurship. I happened to be born into a family that gave me the opportunity to obtain a good education. It was chance that I was born in Taiwan to parents who wanted to pursue a better life in the United States and brought my sister and I here. What about others who live in poverty and are not presented with the opportunity of obtaining an education, of living a privileged life? How is it their fault?

It’s not, and it’s a thought that resounds in me and propels me forward. I joined a student grassroots organization CalPIRG my freshman year, and by the second semester my friend and I started the Hunger and Homelessness Campaign, where we tried to tackle food insecurity in West Oakland. I then proceeded to help plan, in collaboration with two other student groups on campus, a conference on hunger and homelessness in the Bay Area. On the side, I worked with a local homeless shelter to establish and implement recycling and composting programs through another student organization BEACN. These experiences have helped me improve my skills and have provided me more insight in ways of addressing poverty. However, the models and methods of social business and social entrepreneurship are what really motivate me.

I’ve found it difficult to advance much in attempting to be more “in” the field (I am so inspired by social businesses such as the one I interned with this past summer World of Good, and projects such as the Allyu Initiative), because I often find myself constrained in my schoolwork and the fact that I am still in school. I’m often impatient in my demands, and too much of the time I’d rather be out there and immerse myself in a community and area to learn about the issues and critically evaluate ways to tackle them. I have to stop and remind myself that my getting an education is an important aspect: I need to focus on learning as much as I can in school so that I can apply it later on.

In the meantime, I have found the Twitterverse and the blogosphere to be of great company. It’s been absolutely inspiring and just plain awesome to be connected to other Gen Y-ers such as Akhila, Dwight, and Leslie and know that there are so many who are interested in similar topics and care about issues other than the best way to maximize profits and how to make the most money. So, I’d like to conclude by thanking Akhila once again for encouraging others to engage in social change and bringing together awesome individuals in this blog series!

I’m excited to be participating in Blog Action Day 2009!

Climate change and global warming are terms we are all familiar with and have heard a million times by now. While most of us know that climate change will affect all of us, what we don’t always talk about is how climate change will hit hardest those who are poorest.

The Millenium Development Goal #7 is addressing environmental sustainability, and makes a connection between global warming and poverty reduction:

Reducing poverty and achieving sustained development must be done in conjunction with a healthy planet. The Millennium Goals recognize that environmental sustainability is part of global economic and social well-being. Unfortunately exploitation of natural resources such as forests, land, water, and fisheries-often by the powerful few-have caused alarming changes in our natural world in recent decades, often harming the most vulnerable people in the world who depend on natural resources for their livelihood. [Source: End Poverty 2015]

It’s not surprising to me that climate change will affect the most those at the bottom of the pyramid. Not only will price increases (in the case of drought –> less grains / food –> increase in food prices, etc.) impact the most those with lower incomes, climate events such as droughts, heat waves, and storms will hit — literally — those who are the poorest. Those that live in areas that lack the infrastructure that could withstand severe weather conditions will undoubtedly face the impacts of storms and hurricanes. Farmers whose crops fail due to drought will have to find another way to sustain themselves and their families. The list goes on.

But instead of highlighting all the problems that climate change causes, it’s even more important to think about solutions — more specifically, the role social entrepreneurship could play in addressing global warming.  In reading C.K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, I came across a case study about a company that does just that.

Prahalad sheds light on the work of a rural energy finance company E+C0. E+Co found the connection between energy and poverty: one reason people cannot escape poverty is due to the lack of access to modern energy (mostly electricity) that allows them to be more productive. E+Co conducted a study and realized that the demand for electricity at the bottom of the pyramid exists, and that there is “potential for widescale adoption of renewable energy technologies” because the majority of costs for renewable energy is up front, while “fuel” costs (wind, solar, etc.) are essentially free (Prahalad 140).

E+Co’s mission was:

the provision of clean, modern energy to the world’s poor via locally developed, market-based solutions

E+Co emphasizes “energy through enterprise”; they seek entrepreneurs in developing markets to develop products and services that will meet the energy needs in the local communities. E+Co invests in these entrepreneurs or companies, one of them being Tecnosol, a company that “sells and installs distributed solar PV, wind, and hydroelectric power systems to mostly rural unelectrified populations throughout [Nicaragua]” (Prahalad 144) and has installed over 3,500 PV systems, 20 wind systems, and also some hydroelectric systems (145).

Here, we see a pretty interesting partnership being forged between a company (E+Co) that is the investor and local entrepreneurs and companies that serve its communities and target a need (energy – clean energy).

Another example of a successful partnership working towards sustainability is one I’ve highlighted in my research paper on social entrepreneurship I wrote over the summer.

A successful three-way alliance between entrepreneurial BOP business WasteConcern, large fertilizer company Map Agro, and the Bangladeshi government solved a waste buildup problem in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In short, WasteConcern identified the market opportunity to convert the majority of the waste generated – food – into compost for rural agriculture businesses to use as organic fertilizer to produce more food, generating a mutually beneficial and sustainable cycle. In order to implement the project, Waste Concern approached Map Agro, the largest fertilizer company in Bangladesh that had the resources and capital to transform and produce the organic compost.

In both of these examples, we see a partnership being forged through a market-based approach that BOP businesses to address a particular need within the communities.

I am personally really excited by success stories such as these, and I think it’s really important to remember that while global warming statistics and the situation in general is dire and sometimes seems hopeless, that is just more reason we cannot give up. Taking a social entrepreneurial approach to climate change is one that I am particularly interested in, although it is most definitely not the only solution!

Personally, I often feel like I don’t do enough in attempting to address climate change. I have made adjustments in my lifestyle to be more sustainable, and am (and have been) involved in student organizations that work towards sustainability. But I never feel like it’s enough. And while it is true that “something is better than nothing,” that’s not good enough for me. We should all be looking to be more sustainable in our lives and be more aware of the impact we have on our planet. Wherever we are now in individual progress now, it’s awesome, but that should not be the stopping point. I am going to make more of an effort to be more environmentally-friendly in my lifestyle, and strive even more towards sustainability in whatever I do.

Today, I’m starting off by this Blog Action ’09 post on climate change. Tomorrow, it will be something else–OK, I’ll be on my way to LA for the weekend..but carpooling with two other friends!

What are you going to do to make your lifestyle more sustainable? How are you going to address global warming today? Comment and let’s share ideas!

I’ve posted this idea on both Futureshifters and UnLtdWorld to generate some discussion about this topic, and would like to continue the conversation further. So, I’m going to post this on my blog and elaborate a bit more…

First off, I was reading an article: “What Microloans Miss” from The New Yorker from March 2008. In essence, the article explained a bit about the trend of microloans:

The innovation—​microfinance—​involves making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, usually in developing countries…Even ordinary Americans can now get in on the act, at sites like Kiva.org, where you can make a microloan yourself.

However, microloans do not always guarantee success, and they also do not necessarily improve the economic well-being of developing countries. As Surowiecki puts it,

The idealized view of microfinance is that budding entrepreneurs use the loans to start and grow businesses—expanding operations, boosting inventory, and so on. The reality is more complicated. Microloans are often used to “smooth consumption”—tiding a borrower over in times of crisis… It’s less common to find them used to fund major business expansions or to hire new employees. In part, this is because the loans can be very small—frequently as little as fifty or a hundred dollars—and generally come with very high interest rates, often above thirty or forty per cent. But it’s also because most microbusinesses aren’t looking to take on more workers. The vast majority have only one paid employee: the owner.

Furthermore, there is a conception out there that all individuals in developing countries can (and want to be, but lack the opportunity to) be an entrepreneur. While this is true for those seeking the microloans,this is not the case for all others:

[I]n any successful economy most people aren’t entrepreneurs—they make a living by working for someone else. Just fourteen per cent of Americans, for instance, are running (or trying to run) their own business. That percentage is much higher in developing countries—in Peru, it’s almost forty per cent. That’s not because Peruvians are more entrepreneurial. It’s because they don’t have other options.

The article continues to discuss the need for small-to-medium-sized businesses to find a source of funding and investments (versus microloans to microbusinesses) in developing countries. While this is also an important issue to discuss, I’d like to touch upon microloans the are ‘helping’ entrepreneurs.

A concern I have with all microlending institutions and websites (such as Kiva.org, etc.) is that it seems, based on my research, that there isn’t really any follow-up. What I mean by this is, are the entrepreneurs who have received these loans, paid them back, truly benefiting from these loans? We make the logical assumption that seeing as they have paid back their loans, that they are better off. But is that true? (Of course, user-based microlending sites’ main mission is to raise funds for microloans to entrepreneurs, and something such as the “follow-up” I am proposing may be out of the scope of these organizations’ mission.)

Microbusinesses and entrepreneurs in developing countries are often very focused — rightfully so — on very local endeavors, such as increasing the size of a shop, or finding funding to raise more farm animals. But there seems to be a lack of a medium that helps them expand and grow their businesses. The closest I’ve found to something like this is Endeavor.org that offers “high impact entrepreneurial consulting” to entrepreneurs in developing countries. The website includes much more detail on their selection criteria, but in essence it looks like Endeavor selects entrepreneurs based on:

• entrepreneurial initiative
• business innovation
• value and ethics
• role model potential
• development impact
• fit with Endeavor

But to get back to the entrepreneurs who have received microloans in the past (such as through Kiva.org, UnitedProsperity.org, Wokai.org, Microplace.com, etc.), is there a way to help those entrepreneurs to expand their businesses? Of course, several implications come with this, including whether or not it is “our” place to “help” them expand the businesses that they operate, regional conflicts, competition, etc. However, what about just creating an online platform that features these microfinance-d entrepreneurs with their products or services?

Some more details on my idea:

Like Craigslist, this online marketplace would be geographically specialized, and could connect either locals to different business’ products, or even those from abroad (i.e. in the US) to buy a local business’ products.

Of course, there would be tons of logistical details to work out, such as:

• Would the website provide the transaction, or just connect the two people?
• Would this be a nonprofit, or how could we make it a for-profit social business?
• How would we get these listings? An idea is to partner with microfinance organizations
• How would this website be differentiated from the microfinance organizations that already LIST their entrepreneurs they’re financing? My answer to this would be that THIS website would feature businesses that already got off the ground, VIA the microfinance loans that they’d already PAID OFF.
• How could we bridge the connection between someone from, i.e. the US, to the business in the developing country, via shipping?

From posting it online, I’ve received responses including one from Kevin, who commented:

I think this idea might work within a partnership framework meaning leveraging existing platforms whether it’s the two above, ebay, craigslist, local and global MFI’s, to create a unique value to these already proven entrepreneurs as well as these partnering institutions. I think connecting these proven entrepreneurs’ goods to the global marketplace is a valuable service but I think is not so much if you can create a unique tool or platform to do so, but whether or not you can find the right institutions that already exists to create a network that leverages each others partners strength.

Alastair also brought up a similar point in regards to partnerships:

As I understand it, this marketplace would have some sort of seal of approval – businesses listed on the site are recommended, on the basis that they must do what they say on the tin because they’ve paid back their financing. The question is how you build that brand, why do people trust you?

One approach would be to piggy back on the current work in the UK around social enterprise branding (see here: view link). Is there something similar in the USA?
Even if the enterprises you’re listing aren’t in the UK we could still hold them to similar standards.
Most of the MFIs won’t be recognised by most businesses so I perhaps think the real opportunity lies in partnering with a household name (like google).

Those have been insightful responses, but I’d love to get more discussion going on this topic. Please comment and let me know what you think!