Jumo: Now in Beta

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes's online platform, Jumo, is now up and running in beta. 

I blogged about Jumo back in September, when it got a $750,000 grant from Omidyar Network -- it hadn't launched at the time. Now, the new site is open for testing. 

You can sign up using your Facebook username and password -- the site in fact looks like  a facsimile of Facebook, making it very easy/familiar to use, while also capitalizing on existing social connections. When I logged in for instance, after being prompted to pick topics I would be interested in following--health, education, human rights etc., I am then taken to organizations that work in these areas and allowed to follow them.

Barefoot College Trains Low-Income Villagers to be Solar Engineers

A Rajasthan based organization called Barefoot College that trains low-income men and women to be 'solar engineers'  in rural remote and non-electrified villages is making its mark across India, and around the world. 

The  organization, which has been operative in India since 1972, recently trained 6 grandmothers from rural, north western Zambia to assemble and build circuits and solar lanterns, solar lamps, charge controllers, choke coils and transformers, and learn to correctly connect modules, batteries, lamps and charge controllers. Solar engineers at Barefoot College are also trained to install, test, repair and maintain fixed solar lighting units and solar lanterns for a period of at least five years. A rural electrification workshop is also set up, which houses the components and equipment needed for the repair and installation of solar units. 

Philanthropists that Bankroll Social Enterprises

Pierre Omidyar/Wikimedia

On Saturday, Barron's released its list of 'The 25 Best Givers' -- high impact philanthropists who are changing the world through their donations. Many of these consisted of grants to help further educational, health or human rights issues in developing countries. Some of them consisted of funding for social enterprises -- ventures that once lifted off the ground, would be self sustaining.

Here's a look at some notable social enterprises being funded by the men and women who made the list:

Skoll Foundation (Jeff Skoll)

APOPO -- trains rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis. 

Kiva -- online platform for peer to peer microlending

Kickstart -- develops irrigation pumps suitable for steeply sloping land -- they push water uphill as well as pulling it from the source

IDEI-  affordable irrigation products that provide water one drop at a time

Obliterating Hunger: Groasis Waterboxx Grows Plants in the Desert

Pieter Hoff, a tulip grower from Holland, has developed a spectacularly interesting social innovation called the Groasis Waterboxx, which aims to address the difficulties associated with growing trees and plants in arid areas by capturing condensation and rainwater, and transferring this to the plant over a period of time without requiring any groundwater or electricity.

In a presentation he made at PopTech, Hoff describes how the problems of world hunger and global warming can be mitigated through harnessing stretches of desert. “One of six billion people on earth don’t get enough to eat,” he says. “There is a possibility to feed these people.”

After devising his invention in Holland, over a period of 4 years, Hoff tested it in the Sahara desert -- 88 percent of the trees he tried it on lasted. He then decided to market his invention for commercial use – the beginning of his company AquaPro Holland.

The box has a wide double opening, mimics a plants capillary action, by planting two seeds in a box on top of (rather than in a hole in) the soil. The box captures condensation and rain water, and distributes to this to the plant over a much longer period of time – one day or 4 inches of rain can be distributed over a period of one year. By this time, Hoff says, the plant or tree is far more established and is far more likely to be able to take care of itself thereon.

Giant Sniffer Rats Detect Landmines and TB

Image: APOPO

Rats have never been my favorite creatures, but an organization called APOPO that is successfully putting these furry rodents to work on rather noble causes, takes them up a notch or two in my books.

The Belgian-Tanzanian social enterprise trains giant African pouched rats to sniff out landmines and tuberculosis. According to the organizations website, the rats are far more efficient than humans – they can search 100 square metres of suspected land in 20 minutes, and can screen 70 human sputum samples for the TB agent Mycobacterium Tuberculosis, in 20 minutes – both activities that would take deminers and lab technicians two full days. 

The African giant pouched rat is particularly good at detection, as it is light enough to not set off a mine, cheaper than a sniffer dog, easily conditioned and has a heightened sense of smell.

The rats have an impressive track record: they have assessed 38.5 kms of highway in South Mozambique and have detected over a hundred landmines, explosive devices and ammunition. APOPO says the rats have an 87 percent overall accuracy in detecting TB (37 percent for microscopy), and have diagnosed 577 patients missed by microscopy. 

New MicroChip to Allow Paralysed to Move

EPSRC

British engineers have developed a new microchip muscle stimulator implant that will allow paralysed people to exercise their leg muscles.

A project of The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), research is being led by Professor Andreas Demosthenous from University College London. The new chip is expected to work where others have failed, due to its small size – the same as a child’s fingernail. It can be implanted into the spinal canal and incorporates the electrodes and muscle stimulator in one unit.

"The work has the potential to stimulate more muscle groups than is currently possible with existing technology because a number of these devices can be implanted into the spinal canal", said Professor Andreas Demosthenous in a written statement. "Stimulation of more muscle groups means users can perform enough movement to carry out controlled exercise such as cycling or rowing."

Named the Active Book, due to its shape, the device will be available for pilot studies sometime next year. It could also be used to stimulate nerve endings, helping with bowel capacity and incontinence. 

Are Skyscrapers the Farmlands of the Future?

Design by Olive Foster

Massive skyscrapers are more commonly associated with exacerbating, rather than mitigating, global warming. But if Dr. Dickson Despommier--author of The Vertical Farm, and professor of environmental sciences and microbiology at Columbia University--has any say in the matter, skyscrapers could play a big role in not just helping the environment, but also alleviating hunger. 

The main idea behind vertical farming is that fruit and crops will be grown hydroponically—nutrient rich water replaces the need for soil—in high-rise buildings. Planting, monitoring growth and harvesting would all take place within the building, and the cultivation process would employ what Despommier calls “close-loop agricultural technologies”: all water and nutrients are recycled substantially reducing runoff. 

According to Despommier, the benefits of vertical farming are manifold. Transportation and energy costs would reduce dramatically, since consumers would be located near by. Large tracts of land taken over for cultivation could be returned to their natural state, reducing carbon dioxide levels. Ancillary industries would burgeon around skyscrapers that specialized in one crop. Growing crops in a controlled environment would facilitate healthier, organic produce. Hunger would reduce: a 30-storey tower could feed upto 50,000 people.

“The biggest social benefit is that everybody gets fed healthy, clean food,” says Despommier. “The world would be a much better place if we had vertical farms.”

For-Profit Uses Carbon Credits to Provide Free Water Purification Systems

Image: Saabira Chaudhuri 

A for-profit social enterprise that provides free water purification systems to the poor in developing countries, is using carbon credits to finance its business.

New York Times contributor Tina Rosenberg has written a blog post about how Vestergaard Frandsen, the producers of LifeStraw (I’ve profiled them before for this blog and for Fast Company) – a portable water purification device that filters bacteria and contaminants from water, to make it potable. The company also produces a larger, fixed version of the device, called LifeStraw Family, which they plan on distributing for free in the developing world.

Vestergaard Frandsen plans to adopt a carbon credit model, by which it earns credits for preventing the boiling of water (which can be very damaging for the environment) . Polluters will then buy these credits, providing a sustainable source of income for the company. 

“The company is on the way to getting approval from one of the carbon credit markets for the LifeStraw Family, and expects to win it in February,” writes Rosenberg. “Approval will provide a way for Vestergaard Frandsen to recoup its $24 million initial investment and to turn the product into a sustainable business ─ at no cost to users.”

Why Thomas Friedman's Protectionist Column on Innovation is Wrong

Earlier this month, the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman wrote a column about Indian startups called Do Believe the Hype. 

Friedman takes a rather extreme view of the burgeoning of India’s startups – calling this movement “scary” and “depending on your perspective…a sign of the apocalypse.”

I find this protectionist sort of viewpoint strange. Don’t social innovations, like mobile banking which enables people in rural or otherwise off-the-grid type areas access to institutionalized forms of savings and transfer of funds, benefit us all? If I can save more, transfer money more easily, become richer, and make my business more efficient, that’s good for GDP and the economy as a whole – domestic and global – as innovations can, and will, be exported.

500 Million to Use Mobile Health Apps by 2015

Mobile health applications could be the next big market for social entrepreneurs. While mhealth has been touted as a potentially billion dollar industry for some time now, a new report attempts to analyze the mhealth application market in particular.


 According to the Mobile Health Market Report 2010-2015, released in time for the DC based mhealth summit, which finished yesterday, 500 million of a total of 1.4 billion smart phone users will be using mobile health applications by 2015.


“Our findings indicate that the long-expected mobile revolution in healthcare is set to happen. Both healthcare providers and consumers are embracing smartphones as a means to improving healthcare,” said Ralf-Gordon Jahns, Head of Research at research2guidance, the company that issued the report.

Interview with Charles Fishman: Message in a Bottle

Image credit: Verne Equinox

The Writer

Charles Fishman has been a full-time reporter for Fast Company magazine since 1996. He is currently on leave, writing a new book, ‘The Big Thirst,’ which will be published next March.

An award-winning investigative journalist, Fishman is also the author of the ‘Wal-mart Effect,’ which appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Business Week, and was rated one of The Economist’s best books of 2006.

Fishman grew up in Miami, Florida, and graduated with a BA from Harvard University in 1983. 

The Story

In July 2007, Fast Company magazine published an article by Charles Fishman called ‘Message in a Bottle,’ which looked at the economics and psychology behind what Fishman describes as “an unlikely business boom.” 

The article describes how bottled water, a formerly virtually nonexistent business, has become an “indispensable prop” for America: a transformation largely fueled by marketing and branding, which drive home ideas about the convenience, taste and health benefits of bottled water.

The Relevance of the NGO for Social Entrepreneurs

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Vladimir Delagneau, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nicaragua based clean energy company Tecnosolucion, has written a blog post on the World Economic Forum’s website about the importance of NGOs in actualizing (social) business ideas in rural areas.

Delagneau, who has been named 2010’s Regional Social Entrepreneur of the Year in Latin America, emphasizes how NGOs can essentially broker alliances with local third parties who might otherwise be reluctant to adopt a new technology, regardless of how tried and tested this may be in other regions. 

“Often, when one embarks on an entrepreneurial endeavour, one thinks about the market opportunity (meeting the needs of a certain group of people) in constructing a business model that is functional and operational, while taking into account the financing needs of the business. However, in rural business activities, the alliances (that businesses form) with third parties are vitally important,” he writes. 

To me, Delagneau’s post embodies a crucial idea: partnerships between outsider companies and indigenous communities or businesses, established with the help of a credible, local body are an effective way to scale a social enterprise, while simultaneously staying both relevant and accountable to the needs of the community one is penetrating. An NGO, that might not have the funds or know how to conceive of and incubate technological solutions on its own could be an invaluable partner in actualizing a social enterprise, particularly one that involves outsider technology and ideas.

Gates Grants: Combating Malaria through Light, Drug Resistance through Gold

Image credit: James Gathany

The Gates Foundation has announced the second round’s winners of its Gates Grand Challenges Exploration Project, which aims to incubate projects that adopt innovative approaches to solving global health problems. 

 Nine projects have been awarded $1 million. Here’s the Gates Foundation’s description of a few of these:

• Dr. Mark Davis from Stanford University is working to create a new method to quantify and profile cellular immune responses to vaccinations, specifically for the influenza and rotavirus vaccines, to improve effectiveness;
• Dr. Dan Feldheim at the University of Colorado is exploring how small molecule-coated gold nanocrystals could be tailored to circumvent many viral and bacterial evolutionary drug resistance mechanisms;

A Crisis in MicroFinance?

Image credit: Brett Epic/Wikimedia 

A new Wall Street Journal article says that India’s microfinance industry is in “major crisis,” as usurious interest rates spur borrowers to default on loans on a mass scale, while the government raises regulatory barriers to MFIs. 

While the mass defaults are largely confined to the state of Andhra Pradesh, home to India’s biggest microlending firms, the Journal portends a ripple effect: “what happens there is frequently a bellwether for microlending in India, and programs around the world.”

The Journal has played the devil’s advocate with regard to microfinance in India for some time now, with coverage that has highlighted the possibility of a lending bubble, and questions whether microfinance is in fact a sustainable mechanism for poverty alleviation. This particular article is far more dramatic however, highlighting the fact that the current microlending system is in fact corrupt, and that that the industry as it currently stands is not sustainable. 

The aim of microlending, in its ideal form, is to provide those who fall outside the traditional banking sector with easy access to small amounts of money at fair interest rates. The underlying rationale is that MFIs will be a significant poverty alleviation tool by providing people with the funds to start their own small businesses, and in time generate a sustainable stream of revenue.

The problem is that, in reality, not everyone is in a position to start a business – most of the time microfinance loans are used to say buy food, pay school fees, or pay off other loans. Not a bad thing in and of itself since these are all of course essential. But the money disappears. The criticism has been that borrowers are then encouraged to take more and more loans to keep paying off previous loans, until they’re caught in giant spider web of debt – which is what the increasing number of suicides in Andhra Pradesh has been pegged to.

Harvard's David Gergen Highlights Policy Barriers to Social Entrepreneurship

Earlier this month, NYU’s Reynold’s Program in Social Entreprenurship kicked off its speaker series for the Fall, with a conversation between Catherine Reynolds, who heads a foundation that finances American college students, and David Gergen, a senior political analyst for CNN, a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a board member of Teach for America.

The panelists raised several interesting points. While Reynolds highlighted public private partnerships as one valuable way to scale up a project, Gergen pointed out that “the relationship with the government comes fraught with problems.”

He talked about the hazards of entering the public realm. In particular, he said that policy barriers, involving foreign ventures, tax and other regulations are hindering social entrepreneurship ventures from achieving scale.

MIT's D-Lab to Host Rickshaw Bank Founder

Image credit: Steve Evans

For the next two weeks, MIT’s D-Lab will be hosting Dr Pradip Sarmah, a veterinarian by profession, who has collaborated with the Indian Institute of Technology in Guwahati to design lighter, larger and more stable rickshaws in India.

Rickshaws are a common means of transportation in Indian cities such as New Delhi and Calcutta. Most rickshaw pullers pay rental fees that make it impossible for them to save enough to buy their own rickshaws. The vehicles are also not covered under insurance, leaving the pullers liable for any damages.

Sarmah has partnered with the Centre for Rural Development to approach insurance companies and banks to create the Rickshaw Bank, providing rickshaw pullers with social security and financing options. 

While Sarmah’s model is not based on charity—the rickshaw pullers pay Rs. 25 (about 50 cents) a day as rent, which allow them to become the owner of the rickshaws over a period of 15-18 months—the Rickshaw Bank is a non-profit.

Some Waters Taste Better Than Others – Or Do They

Abstract

The object of my experiment was to measure whether prior ideas about what a particular sample of water would taste like would affect the way people perceived the water they were drinking. I measured this by polling two different groups--one of whom knew what they were drinking and the other who did not—and asking them which water they preferred. I hypothesized that people who knew they were drinking Fiji water (a water with more luxurious brand associations) would prefer this to either Poland Spring (a more commonly sold brand of bottled water that does not have such luxurious associations) or tap water, and that people who knew they were drinking tap water would dislike this more than either Fiji or Poland Spring. My conclusions about Fiji proved largely correct, while those about tap water did not. 

Gates Foundation Earmarks $20 Million for Education Technology

Image credit: Gates Foundation

The Gates Foundation is offering $20 million in grants to individuals and institutions who are harnessing or developing innovative technologies to make students more successful.

In a blog post, Bill Gates introduces the Next Generation Learning Challenge, a project that aims to “accelerate the integration of technology in ways that substantially improve learning.”

The program will provide grants and gather evidence about effective educational practices in order to facilitate the development and implementation of affordable, high-quality tools in order to meet the needs of students within the budgetary confines of today’s education system. 

The first round of grants is focused on technology that can aid post secondary students complete college. Grants will be given in waves of 6-12 months, with each period focusing on a different topic area.

On Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Economic Growth and Democracy

Image credit: Aruinathan

The Economist, has posted a video interview with Vijay Govindarajan, the founding director of Tuck’s Center for Global Leadership, in which Govindarajan explains the concept of “frugal innovation” – the idea that while historically multinationals would innovate in rich countries like the US and sell to the developing world, in recent times this trend has reversed. 

“Frual innovation is where we innovate in poor countries and bring those products to rich countries,” says Govindarajan, citing GE’S low cost ultrasound machine, developed in Asia and now sold in the US.

According to Govindarajan, the idea of frugal innovation encompasses innovations that facilitate 300-400 percent decreases in the price point, rather than simply 30-40 percent decreases.

While conceiving of an innovation is important, Govindarajan emphasizes this is just "one percent" of the battle – the remainder falling to execution, which most companies tackle badly. 

He goes on to cite companies like Kodak, Sears and Microsoft as all having failed at executing innovation – whether this be in commercializing the digital camera, mass discount retail, or the ebook.

The most interesting part of the interview comes towards the end, when Govindarajan responds to a question about whether India could ever overtake China’s economic growth.

Microfinance – Profiteering, Bubbles and Poverty Alleviation

David Roodman, of the Center for Global Development, has written a post offering his thoughts on the microfinance ownership/business model debate between Muhammud Yunus, founder of the famed Bangladesh based Grameen Bank, and Vikram Akula founder of India based SKS Microfinance, which took place at the New York based Clinton Global Initiative Conference last month. 

The gist of the Yunus-Akula disagreement is that Yunus is critical of SKS’s business model.  He described its IPO as “Pushing microfinance in the loansharking direction. It’s not mission drift. It’s endangering the whole mission.”

Akula advocates that the best way to scale up operations is by going to the money markets. Yunus says that in doing so, one is giving ownership of the institution to people other than the customers, hence raising the possibility that the owners will not act in the best interests of this group.  

He says that Grameen, unlike SKS, is owned by its borrowers, and hence profit goes back to them. It is comprised of local savings – something Akula points out that SKS cannot do because the Indian government does not allow it.