In the past week, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing two great and inspirational speakers. First, I went to the Center for Spirituality & Healing sponsored event at the University of Minnesota featuring Van Jones. Van is known for his crusading to use the new green economy to raise this nation’s poor citizens. However, in the talk he gave last Thursday, he talked less about installing solar panels and more about integration- of green movements and community development efforts and of personal development and societal advancement. He’s an engaging speaker and I highly recommend you go hear him if you get a chance. On a local note, he stated that Minnesota is one of just a handful of states poised to really demonstrate that green jobs can help communities.
A day later I attended the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. While there were many interesting speakers and topics, the crowd favorite was clearly John Francis, also known as the Planetwalker. Inspired by seeing an oil spill in San Francisco, Mr. Francis gave up motorized transportation for 22 years and walked all over this country and many others, playing the banjo as he went. He also gave up speaking during 17 years of that time. Along the way he got a Phd and became an expert on oil spills. His message was very personal, but he stressed that if you are on the right path there are forces out there that will help you along.
Both of these gentlemen have books available if you want to learn more:
Last week my friend and Carlson School of Management colleague Dan Kaskubar and I joined forces to form a consulting partnership. Dan and I are both rather obsessed with social enterprise, mission-based for-profits, earned-income non-profits, and all sorts of other ways to use business to add social value. Dan brings non-profit experience and has lived in Africa. I bring corporate experience and have lived in India. We think it’s a great partnership.
Mere days after we decided to work together, we’ve secured our first paying clients. While I’m very excited, it does launch me into a whole new set of challenges like keeping track of time, saving for taxes, keeping each other updated, and, of course, what to call our company. We are open to suggestions (feel free to add them in comments here) and have only 2 days left until our (self-imposed) deadline for the best name ever.
Here is Dan and I with one of our favorite people, Mary Jo Kochendorfer, who is the Microfinance Alliance creator and is currently at the Grameen Foundation.
For those of you in the Minneapolis area, there is a Minnebar tonight at 7PM at Intermedia Arts. Minnebar is the Minneapolis version of Barcamp, which is an international organization that brings together technology start-ups for demos, support, and networking. It’s free and generally pretty interesting. For more information, check out their Google groups page.
I have also had several requests for a little more info on that $3,000 I received from Innocentive. The challenge I won was posted by Innocentive (normally challenges are posted by companies like Proctor & Gamble and Eli Lilly) for new ideas for their website. It was pretty straightforward, but I did spend a good amount of time organizing my thoughts and creating small mockups of web pages. Apparently they liked it!
I have always been a fan of Innocentive, but they just keep getting better.
Innocentive is a open innovation marketplace where seekers (often large corporations like Eli Lilly and Proctor & Gamble) post challenges with monetary awards. For instance, seekers are currently looking for technology to preserve bread texture ($40,000), a grain moisture/ wetness sensor system ($20,000), and an outdoor mobile wireless network ($25,000).
The innovation model is interesting enough for these science and technology applications, but Innocentive has recently embraced the non-profit and social innovation crowd (see this article in Fast Company). For instance, the Rockefeller Foundation supports a whole list of challenges related to development for poor and vulnerable populations. Last fall a 31-year-old Texan won $20,000 for his idea for a solar-powered router. The seeking organization, ASSET, breaks the cycle of the sex industry by providing training for children of sex workers and girls rescued from trafficking in India. The training focuses on technology and computer skills, but unreliable electricity in some areas makes operations difficult. The solar-powered router will provide more hours for training.
Full disclosure: I also love Innocentive because I recently participated in my first challenge and won $3,000!
Today was my last day at GreenMango and this is my last night in Hyderabad. It’s been an amazing experience and the staff of GreenMango has been absolutely awesome. I took a lot of pictures with people of the past few days, which will help me to remember them, but to be honest I could never forget this experience. Sharing food at lunchtime; taking timelapse videos that catch coworkers skipping English class; learning that Praveena is actually quite a tomboy, Neha quite the rebel, and Uma quite the joker; practicing my poor Telugu; making plans for the trick chair with Khadeer; seeing all the ladies top the sales performance; reaching 15,000 forms; coffee 5 times a day from Lakshmi; 2nd breakfast; Hyderabad 10K; deciding whether my toy auto driver is drunk or just on bad roads; everything. Everyone wants me to come back to go to the Hyderabad 10K next November. We’ll see…..
Yesterday I celebrated Eid (2nd Eid, really, but I’m not going to pretend like I understand the Muslim festival calendar) with my friend Neha and her family. It was not a very big affair, but I did have biryani and a lot of sweets. We also went to Golconda Fort, a famous tourist spot in our town of Hyderabad, because Neha lives right next to it. It was once the domain of some king or prince and now is a big, cool area to take a break from the city and surround yourself with space and green. Other than repeatedly being asked if people can take pictures with me, it was a nice afternoon outing. When we returned to Neha’s, her sisters did Mehendi (henna) on my hands as a part of the celebration. Neha has completed college and works at GreenMango with me. Her sisters (who look like twins but are not) are pursuing engineering and biology degrees. Despite the fact that their father passed on (making Neha the sole income-earner at 20 years old), their mother insists the girls keep going to school. Neha’s mom is my hero for the week.
Today I walked part of the Hyderabad 10K with my coworkers, mostly just to promote our company. It started with a group warmup and a live band, followed by the start of the race. There were serious runners vying for serious prize money, but most people saw it as something fun to do on a Sunday. Like many participants, we had no intention of completing the race. I think we maybe completed 2K and in that distance I saw participants buying and eating ice cream and stopping for chai. During and afterwards, the band played patriotic songs and the crowd danced and drank water and tried to get noticed by the camera for the big screen. As a white girl with a clearly Indian company, I stood out a little. I was interviewed by 2 local news stations (I don’t have a TV so I don’t know if I actually got air time). Hopefully it’s all good press for GreenMango. It was sure fun for those of us who turned out.
Other parts of the race were pretty much the same as what I’ve seen in the US. There is a lot of corporate sponsorship and corporate groups running together. This particular event was the first major public event in Hyderabad since the recent events in Mumbai, so there were moments of silence and words of support for everyone there. I was impressed that the event had a large turnout despite the Mumbai attacks.
Last week I attended the Microfinance India Summit in Delhi. It was nice to focus on microfinance for a few days, since my day-to-day work doesn’t really involve it, but more than anything it was great to catch up with the original leader of Team Awesome (the Microfinance Alliance), Mary Jo. She is working at the Grameen Foundation in D.C. and we met up at the conference. I attended their panel on social performance measurement, which was interesting. I also attended sessions on Technology and Value Chains in Livelihoods. Overall, I came away with the sense that 1) the profit-motive vs. social motive debate continues, 2) there is a need for significant regulatory reform in this realm in India, and 3) there is a lot of interesting work going on.
Outside of the conference, I didn’t get a chance for much touring. I booked a bed & breakfast online with no down-payment, so I showed up in Delhi ready for it to be awful or not reserved for me. It turns out Vandana’s B&B is just lovely. I stayed in one of the 3 guest rooms in her home in the park-filled Safdarjung Enclave. She even got worried and called one night when I hadn’t been home all day and it was rather late- very sweet. On the downside, everything you read about Delhi scams seems to be true. For instance, I never succeeded in getting to the Dilli Haat shopping area because the rikshaw drivers all wanted to take me to some place they know of, which is actually an overpriced tourist trap where they get a commission for bringing you. But that’s really the only lame thing I endured.
In the past week, I’ve had the pleasure of hearing two great and inspirational speakers. First, I went to the Center for Spirituality & Healing sponsored event at the University of Minnesota featuring Van Jones. Van is known for his crusading to use the new green economy to raise this nation’s poor citizens. However, in the talk he gave last Thursday, he talked less about installing solar panels and more about integration- of green movements and community development efforts and of personal development and societal advancement. He’s an engaging speaker and I highly recommend you go hear him if you get a chance. On a local note, he stated that Minnesota is one of just a handful of states poised to really demonstrate that green jobs can help communities.
Northfield, MN. While there were many interesting speakers and topics, the crowd favorite was clearly John Francis, also known as the Planetwalker. Inspired by seeing an oil spill in San Francisco, Mr. Francis gave up motorized transportation for 22 years and walked all over this country and many others, playing the banjo as he went. He also gave up speaking during 17 years of that time. Along the way he got a Phd and became an expert on oil spills. His message was very personal, but he stressed that if you are on the right path there are forces out there that will help you along.
