My Talk at Riverbend: Aware, Responsible and Caring Citizens

My son Walker, then 2, in his "one square yard."

"Aware, responsible and caring citizens." Yeah, we can use some of those right about now.

Back in June 2016, a colleague at EY reached out to ask me to speak at Riverbend Environmental Education Center, just outside of Philadelphia. 

I jumped at the chance, in part because I love a stage, but also because Riverbend has an important mission: teaching environmental principles to children...through a direct connection with nature, inspiring respect for our natural world and action as aware, responsible and caring citizens. 

Here is the talk I gave, which included a few poems that I added for color:

I want to share with you three stories tonight, each of which is paired with a poem or part of a poem that illustrates a point I’d like to make about why we are here, why we need to know about this place and others like it, and why we should care. Care not just about Riverbend Environmental Education Center and the people it serves, but why we should care about this big blue marble we inhabit.

There was a popular book a number of years ago called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. For me, I’ve always said all I really needed to know I learned from Gladys Taylor. Gladys was a surrogate Aunt for me, a retired English and Physical Education teacher, who taught me about nature and art and poetry and being active, and also about how to look at the world and begin to make sense of it – years later I realized she was training me to pay attention to the world around me and it has come to inform a lot of what I’ve done in my life and work.

Work that has taken me from the halls of a publishing house to protecting forests, grasslands, rivers, and seascapes with the Nature Conservancy, investing in social entrepreneurs trying to solve the world’s pressing problems, and to helping developing countries provide greater access to electricity that can help improve lives and economies.

I’m not alone in having a pivotal figure in my life that helped me find a path or multiple paths. It could have easily been a parent, teacher or a mentor from another part of my life. But for me, it was a woman who looked after me during my formative years in Rhode Island and summers at her family house in Vermont. I wrote a poem about her influence on me – it’s too long to read here in its entirety, but you can find it in my book, FALLOW FIELD – the poem is called “The Postlude, or How I Became a Poet,” and it opens with this passage, 

I am a child, crawling around in the leaves

With Gladys Taylor while she names the trees,

Parts the grasses, digs into the earth with a gardener’s trowel.

She picks out worms and slugs, millipedes

And springtails, which we see with a “Berlese funnel.”

Busy decomposers working their busy tasks,

Turning waste into energy, leaf litter into soil again.

Gladys names things for me: “That oak,

That maple there, that sassafras, smell its roots.”

“Root beer!” I exclaim,

Her laughter peeling away into the hills. Later,

With Comstock’s Handbook of Nature Study

On the table next to the unending jigsaw puzzle,

Gladys opens to “The Oaks,” reading or reciting:

“The symbol of strength since man first gazed

Upon its noble proportions…” Then she sings Virgil,

         Full in the midst of his own strength he stands

         Stretching his brawny arms and leafy hands,

         His shade protects the plains, his head the hills commands.

Leaves and acorns spread across the table,

Each divided to its source, as if cataloging specimens:

The white and chestnut oaks, red and scarlet,

Every oak in the neighborhood, sketching the leaves,

Tracing and coloring them. Then questions, such questions:

“Where did we see this one growing?” “How tall?”

“Are the branches crooked or straight?”

“Round leaves or pointy?”

And then a game of matching

Acorn to leaf; a most difficult lesson — as difficult

As those jigsaw puzzles for a boy lacking patience

Or attention… 

Now Gladys was a unique person and I, as her protege, was as well. But like I said, each of us can probably think about someone in our lives that had a profound impact on us. It may be one of the things that brought you here, I suppose, because by being here – even if you’re just here for the food – you are showing that you care. By being here you may learn a lesson I hope is not as difficult as matching acorns to their leaves. 

 #

When I had children of my own, I really wanted to impart in them that sense of wonder Gladys had enlivened in me, to pass on her lessons in a way. In my work for many years with The Nature Conservancy, which took me from the Hudson Valley in New York to Alaska, to the desert southwest and the tall grass prairie of Oklahoma, to back here to Pennsylvania, as well as to Indonesia, Ecuador, the islands of the Caribbean, and many other places in between. I was always impressed by the local knowledge, the indigenous knowledge of the people with whom we were working to protect some of the world’s great places.

We’ve all read the reports about nature’s impact on our psyche. We need nature. I need nature, even though I live in a city. As my kids were growing up, I realized that while treks out to the wilderness, camping, hikes in the mountains, etc., were all great experiences for them (and me), it was equally important they learn about the nature in their own backyards, their own city block.

This “one square yard” philosophy, that learning about the nature in one square yard, really learning it and paying attention to the connections between species and the ecosystem as a whole, instills a sense of the importance of our own backyards and, in turn, will help us care about the natural world and our place in it and protecting it.

Today, all of us, but especially our children, are consumed by screen time. The average user spends 50 minutes on Facebook a day, according to recent data – and our kids are faced with numerous other social media distractions from Snapchat to Instagram to Periscope, whatever that is. Not to mention Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Angry Birds.

A few years ago, my sons were hooked on a mobile phone game where you rapidly identify corporate logos. I was horrified that they were so good at the game and disappointed I’d apparently failed in my mission to impart Gladys’s lessons. Nothing against corporate logos – some of them are quite good design – but that they could recognize more corporate logos than birds or trees really bugged me.

Yet, one day, walking in Carpenter’s Woods over in Mt. Airy, on the edge of Wissahickon Park with my twins, they got excited about the fallen trees on the forest floor and how they were decomposing. They noted the differences between the bark and the color and the consistency of the “saw dust” as the trees were returned to the Earth. It was a small victory – they still know more corporate logos than birds, I suspect, but what can I do?

I wrote this poem, called "Owl in the Gloaming," after a walk in those woods a couple of years ago that illustrates I’m not immune to apps myself…

 Although real birders frown on it,

I play back songs of birds

trying to lure them out of the wood:

"scree-chee-chee" of song sparrow,

mashing notes of catbird, "what-cheer,

what-cheer, what-cheer" of cardinal.

 

This irritates the birds.

They fly reconnaissance

over my head. Catbird looping

furtive patterns above me,

crossing the path from tree to tree.

 Sparrow chasing catbird,

thinking he's got too close,

although the interloper was me

in the unquiet afternoon 

sloughing into evening.

 Suddenly, a monotonous trill,

tremulous horse-whinny 

of the screech owl--

unmistakable, hideous laughter.

Then, overhead, something large,

gray, all wing beat and bodily hum.

 All other birds go silent, 

in the owl's shadow.

Hidden in the trees, 

his scaly, bark-like feathers,

can't be made out in the gloaming.

 Now there's a distant thrumming,

not from the bird app on my phone.

Rather, from within my chest,

vibrating on this turning earth,

under an owl's wing. 

#

Several years ago now, I was in India, working for Ashoka, which is a kind of social venture capital organization. One of the Ashoka Fellows I visited there was Kalyan Paul, who had started a very successful environmental organization called Grassroots, in the Indian Himalayas. Kalyan introduced me to some of the people from the village of Ranikhet, where he is based, including the Artisan’s Guild, a group men who were building and installing biogas stoves to repurpose cow dung and eliminate charcoal fires inside their houses for cooking.

And I met craftswomen who had created a profitable business making jams and preserves from local fruits, as well as hand-crafted sweaters and other garments for sale in local shops and around the world through online sales. Kalyan and Grassroots had helped set up this economic activity long before they tackled a single “environmental issue,” such as deforestation, erosion, and invasive species.

When I asked Kalyan what made him successful, he said, “I paid attention. I walked around and listened to the people. Their issues were economic and health-related, and I realized that until I helped them address those issues, and set them on a path towards greater self-sufficiency, I was never going to be able to address the environmental problems – the issues were linked.”

Today, I want to share a bit about my work with EY, which happens to be a sponsor of tonight’s event, so I may as well put in a plug for our work – because I think it’s pretty cool.

Electricity is a big issue on the African continent, as it is in many developing continents and countries, especially access, availability, and reliability. Working with a municipal utility in South Africa, our team helped design and implement a pre-paid smart metering program that addresses three problems the utility had: 1.) collecting revenue from their customers – some of whom wouldn’t pay their bills because they didn’t trust the billing systems; 2.) reducing electricity theft, not just in small villages, but in “gated communities” and even some commercial operations; and 3.) attracting investment to allow them to expand their network and improve reliability.

Now we’re looking at taking this same solution and exporting the idea out of Africa to other countries -- to India, Brazil, Mexico -- wherever there are similar problems this idea can address.

Both the Grassroots and EY solutions were about paying attention to what is going on around and creating opportunities out of the situation, which in turn creates greater value for others. Which reminds me of my poem,

“Opportunity,” 

A wasp wrestles all day
with the false freedom
of a window pane.
Scaling the glass, then slipping
down, buzzing the cracked paint
of the old window frame.
As if thrumming wings faster
will pull it closer to the blossom,
just beyond its reach.
So determined in its struggle
to get in, to wrest pollen from
the exotic flower on the other side.
A spider sets its dinner table
in the corner of the pane—

My mother-in-law once commented about that poem, “I’ve witnessed that scene many times…only you noticed the spider in the corner.” I can probably thank my Aunt Gladys for that.

We can be single-focused, like the wasp, beating our heads against the glass until we’re unconscious or we can be patient and attentive like the spider to make things happen when the opportunity presents itself.

In my experience over the years, I’ve seen the environmental movement make progress being more inclusive regarding people and nature, reaching more diverse communities, and beginning to change the face of conservation by giving others the opportunity to be a part of the solutions.

Places like Riverbend help broaden the horizons of children and bring them into an understanding of the natural world around them – whether it is a nature preserve, a city park or their own back yards.

Make no mistake about it, this is important work, as important as big land conservation or global climate agreements, for it is our children, as caring citizens of the world, who will be tomorrow’s stewards of the lands and waters we need to sustain life on Earth.

And this is important because, as Robert Michael Pyle wrote in his book, The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland, “People who care conserve; people who don’t know, don’t care.” 

I don't know if I created any "aware, responsible and caring citizens" that night, but I hope so.

10 Favs; 10 Years: Kalyan Paul and Grassroots, Integrated Solutions in the Indian Himalayas

In recognition of The Green Skeptic's 10th Annivesary, I'm hand-picking ten of my personal favorite posts from the last decade. Here's the first, from 2008, a post about a visit I made to Ashoka-fellow Kalyan Paul in the Indian Himalayas. --SEA


Kalyan and Anita Paul moved to the "hill country" -- Ranikhet is 1829 meters above sea level -- in 1987. Originally from Calcutta, Kalyan met his future wife and partner in social change, Anita, while both studied for a Masters in Social Work at Delhi University.

After facing numerous challenges and frustrations in urban settings and with more traditional development approaches, the Pauls decided to work with mountain communities. "Kalyan always wanted to live and work with hill folks," according to a source familiar with the situation. "Anita, a Himachali who grew up in the plains, egged him on."

Less than 20,000 people live in the area in and around Ranikhet, a high percentage of whom live in small hamlets and rely on natural resources for their livelihoods and sustenance.

"We got a grant from the Ford Foundation to literally just 'walk around,' and that's what we did," Kalyan says. "At first the local people were skeptical; they'd check us out and see what we were doing. When they saw us walking around like them -- and we walked all over, man -- they decided, 'He's probably okay.'"

That walking around gave the Pauls a clear sense of the integrated nature of the issues facing mountain people.

"They live totally off of what nature provides," says Kalyan. "If there's no water, they can't grow their food. If there are no trees, there is no water. It affects everything in their lives and some leave the mountains for more urban areas. That kind of life can be hard, man."

Enter Grassroots, which the Pauls founded in this area 16 years ago. They started by looking for the root causes of the mountain peoples' poverty: their lives and livelihoods are tied to the land and its natural resources.

Those resources have been dwindling as a result of changes to the landscape that started under British rule and continue in the Indian forestry bureau today. Basically, the foresters promoted non-native pine plantations and eucalyptus over native broadleaf deciduous trees.

Sounds like a simple thing, but it had two major impacts: the pines didn't help recharge the water sources, especially after harvesting, and the dead leaf litter was gone, which the farmers spread on their fields. Leaf litter is a natural top-soil maker. In contrast, the more acidic pine needles form a thick mat on the forest floor, preventing rainwater from seeping into the soils.

You can figure out what happened next. The water table, that feeds the springs that nourishes the crops that feed the people, kept dropping. Today, at winter's end, there is very little water in the aquifer and the springs are extremely low.

The Pauls, and the people who work with them, are addressing it by promoting native plant nurseries, replanting saplings from those nurseries, and developing rain water catchments to help regenerate the water supply.

That would be fine as a standard environment project, but Kalyan hasn't stopped there.

Grassroots determined that another factor in the forest decline was the villagers' own needs for firewood used for cooking in their homes. This use was not only denuding the forests, but was having health impacts as well: women cook with open wood fires in their homes (breathing in the smoke all day) and they have to walk farther and farther each day to find firewood, which they carry on their heads.

So, Grassroots introduced biogas stoves to their homes. The villagers now burn the methane generated by animal waste (cow and goat dung -- one thing of which they have plenty!) instead of firewood, and they use the slurry on their fields as an excellent fertilizer.


They also formed an artisan's guild to train local villagers as masons to build these stoves, thereby accomplishing three things in one: reducing forest cutting, improving the health of women, and providing jobs for at least 30 men in the area; at least 50 men have been trained as masons.

The Kumaon Artisans Guild promotes and builds appropriate technologies for rural development, including the biogas wells, twin pit outhouses, and infiltration wells for drinking water. (The infiltration well technology, developed by Dr. Tim Rees, is worth another post of its own.)

Members of the Guild, who are known as "Barefoot Engineers," told me they are now installing 300 biogas units annually, 60 water pumps a year, and 400 toilets.

In addition, Grassroots has organized a women's cooperative, called Umang, which means "inner strength" or "self-confidence." Umang now comprises a network of 2000 women spread over hundreds of villages and governed by reps from participating women’s "self-help" groups, with day-to-day functions managed by a group of women from the surrounding area.

Umang’s work includes savings and credit, but also enterprise development. They produce knitwear worth more than Rs.1.5 million each year, about a third of which accrues to the women as wages, according to sources familiar with the situation.

In addition, the Umang women engage in food processing, producing about 10 tons of product annually, especially pickled condiments made from local produce such as chilies, ginger, and garlic, along with fruit preserves and jams. (Their plum chutney is fantastic!) Umang also has an apiculture program that produces about 3 tons of honey every year.

To better understand the impact watershed-wide, Grassroots, together with UNESCO, is conducting a study of the hydrology of the Gagas River Basin, which covers 500 square kilometers and includes 360 villages.

Faisal K. Zaidi, a Post Doctoral Researcher in Hydrogeology who works with UNESCO in New Delhi, on the study says that the Gargas has been included in UNESCO's Hydrology for Environment, Life, and Policy (HELP) program. HELP, according to its website, "is creating a new approach to integrated catchment management through the creation of a framework for water law and policy experts, water resource managers and water scientists to work together on water-related problems."

Zaidi says that by the end of the monsoon season this year, likely around September, they should have the first water budget for the Gagas River Basin, based upon the data collected from this study. To date, they have set up rainfall and stream flow monitoring stations in almost 20 locations, and at least a half-dozen weather monitoring stations in the basin.


The true innovation in Kalyan Paul's work is the holistic approach to the root problems. I have seen plenty of economic development and environmental projects that are limited in their scope. Most projects, indeed most organizations attack one problem, and not always the root of a problem. It's often an either/or dilemma: either economic development or conservation; either livelihood or watershed protection. The Grassroots approach is integrated, holistic and more effective as a result.

Not bad for a guy who started out "walking around" 20 years ago.

Changemakers Rural Solutions Winners: Women, Water, Traditional Farming Methods

The Ashoka's Changemakers community has selected three winners in its global search for innovative solutions to rural development and sustainable agricultural issues. Earlier this month I wrote about the ten finalists.

The winners, one each from India, Uganda and Brazil, cover traditional farming methods, female farmer empowerment, and integrated farming for small farms.

In Uganda, Dr. Mwalimu Musheshe helps smallholder farmers share and benefit from traditional farming methods through the Uganda Rural development and Training Programme.

Property rights and land ownership is something we take for granted in the west. Farmers across rural developing nations, however, farmers, especially women farmers, have little or no access to such ownership, which negatively affects their ability to pursue their livelihoods, feed their families, and send their kids to school. Now an Indian organization known as SRREOSHI puts land into the hands of groups of women farmers in West Bengal, a positive step to protecting women's rights and giving them control over the land they are cultivating.

The third winner is Agência Mandalla DHSA of Brazil, which promotes an integrated farming system employing the latest appropriate technologies and farming methods to small farm plots in both rural and urban areas.

Support from competition sponsors the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides each of the winners with a $5,000 prize and collaborative support to expand their work in rural agriculture and development. The Gates Foundation's Agricultural Development Program has a larger partnership with Ashoka to find the best innovations in rural development and agriculture.

"Being recognized among the most innovative solutions for rural communities is a pretty big achievement for us," said Tarcio Handel da Silva, Executive Director of Agência Mandalla DHSA. "It has maximized our motivation to keep replicating our work in knowledge and social change."


(Disclosure: The author was part of the team that developed the partnership between Ashoka and the Gates Foundation for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa and India.)

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Culitvating Innovation: Vote for Best Rural Solutions on Changemakers

Ashoka's Changemakers announced the top ten finalists in their "Cultivating Innovation, Solutions for Rural Communities" competition.

In February, Changemakers launched a global search for innovative solutions to often complex issues facing rural development and sustainable agriculture, from food security to sustainably scaling-up production.

Sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the competition uncovered 455 ideas from around the globe. The judges have settled on ten finalists and now it is up to you and the Changemakers community to vote to select three winners. But hurry: the voting closes on July 8th.

Here are the finalists:

Demonstrating technologies that work in transforming rural agriculture for sustainable development	Uganda Rural development and Training Programme, URDT	Uganda
Social Security for Rural populations through sustainable and interdependent livelihoods	Organisation for Awareness of Integrated Social Security (OASiS)	India
Building the movement for women’s land rights	SRREOSHI	India
Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program (IPM CRSP)	IPM CRSP(Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program)	Bangladesh
Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO): promoting rural livelihoods around a business partnership to achieve conservation	Wildlife Conservation Society	Zambia
Ensuring Food Security to small farmers through their own agri business company RUDI	SEWA Gram Mahila Haat	India
FONDO DE APOYO ALIMENTARIO	ECOSTA YUTU CUII	Mexico
Weaving Sustainability - Tramando sustentabilidade	Cooperativa central justa trama	Brazil
Mandalla’s Integrated Production System	Agência Mandalla DHSA	Brazil
Business School for Rural Women	The Mann Deshi Foundation	India

Vote here: Changemakers Cultivating Innovation (Note: you must join the Changemakers community to vote.)

Changemakers is a community of action where participants helped develop and refine and select solutions through a collaborative competition model.

(Disclosure: The author was part of the team that developed the partnership between Ashoka and the Gates Foundation for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship to Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa and India.)

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Changemakers Launches Competition for Agricultural Innovations

Ashoka's Changemakers announced the launch of "Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities," a new global, online competition to seek out the most innovative solutions in farming and rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and around the world.

The competition is funded as part of a grant awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Using the Changemakers' open-source online platform, the competition will be open to anyone striving to stimulate rural development and agriculture.

Today, three quarters of the world’s poorest people —- the one billion who live on $1 a day or less —- live in rural areas, and most rely on agriculture for their food and income. Many small farmers cannot grow enough food to sell or even eat. Innovative solutions such as those Ashoka is seeking offer hundreds of millions of the people the opportunity to overcome hunger and poverty.

Over the next two months, you and others from around the world can nominate people who are coming up with innovative solutions in farming and rural communities. You can also submit your own project.

Changemakers has a unique, open-source model where members of the community comment on and evaluate the initiatives entered in the competition. Entrants and nominators both can network with each other, as well as with media, academics, and thought leaders.

An expert panel of judges will narrow the entry pool to 10 to 15 finalists. Then the global Changemakers community will vote for three winners, who will each receive a USD $5000 award from Changemakers to fund their initiatives.

The distinguished panel features Roy Steiner, Senior Program Officer for Agricultural Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gene Kahn, Global Sustainability Officer for General Mills, Beatrice Gakuba, CEO of Rwanda Flora, Suzana Padua, Founder of the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute of Ecological Research), and Raj Patel, activist and author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System.

"The Changemakers community is an open, online forum for anyone who is passionate about social change to participate in a vibrant exchange of ideas and friendship," says Charlie Brown, Changemakers Executive Director. "This competition is the opportunity to expand our reach even further, into the rural areas of Africa and India, to work with those innovators who may or may not have online access."

Innovation can come from anywhere, according to Changemakers. They cite people like C.K. "Bablu" Ganguly, an Ashoka Fellow whose innovations have regenerated farmland and created jobs via organic farming and marketing cooperatives in southern India.

Or, people like Adrian Mukhebi, another Ashoka fellow who created a virtual trading floor via radio and SMS messaging to link thousands of farmers and buyers and sellers in Kenya. Ganguly and Mukhebi’s work not only helped to revitalize the local farming economies but also directly met many of their communities' education and health needs, in addition to empowering local women to actively participate in farming and business development.

The online competition will showcase innovative solutions, encouraging members to comment, network, and assist one another in making a difference. Nominations and submissions are welcomed until May 13.

For more information and to enter or nominate, check out: "Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities"

(Disclosure: The author was formerly VP of Global Development for Ashoka and part of the team that developed the partnership with Gates Foundation of which this competition is a part.)

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Career-Man vs. Entrepreneur-Man, a personal dilemma

Image via Wikipedia Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

Okay, that's a bit dramatic. But, really, it is the first day of the next phase on my path, which I see as more of a bend in the boardwalk than a fork in the trail.

My path began in publishing. I worked as a scout for an international agency and as an editor at Viking/Penguin, but prior to that I founded Rockstop! Magazine, back in the early 80s.

I have always started things. As a media entrepreneur, I was one of the founders of the web-based literary journal Ducky Magazine and founded this web log in 2004.

But for the past 16 years I have been basically a company man, most of that time with The Nature Conservancy, where I held various management positions and, most recently, with Ashoka, the global association of leading social entrepreneurs.

Part of what attracted me to Ashoka was the opportunity to meet social entrepreneurs around the world who were developing business models -- some non-profit and some for-profit -- with the goal of changing the world, flipping a system, or addressing a market failure.

What interested Ashoka in me was my combination of expertise and entrepreneurship. Well, the entrepreneurial itch overtook me recently and I've now left Ashoka to scratch it.

I'm developing a green energy investing platform to reduce the barriers to entry for small retail investors who want to catch the wave of the new green economy. It's in the very nascent stages and probably too premature to talk about, which is both exciting and daunting.

Daunting because the "Career-Man" in me is struggling mightily with this new phase, with his alter ego "Entrepreneur-Man."

You see, I've always created things on the side. Now I'm starting from scratch and spending more time on it than just nights and weekends.

Career-Man excels at crafting a vision, building teams, and management, and he's a pretty good at marketing and raising money. Entrepreneur-Man loves starting things.

But this start-up stuff has got Career-Man all tied up in knots. He's used to having the framework in which to operate, while Entrepreneur-Man likes to build an entirely new framework. Therein lays the struggle.

I tweeted about this earlier today, which generated a few comments from followers and friends.

One wrote, "As a note of encouragement, a job is one thing, your work is another. Now you simply have more ability to focus your energies without navigating so many distractions."

Another wrote, "When you figure out how to keep Career-Man at bay, let me know!"

And finally, another friend was reminded of one excellent line in an otherwise forgettable Tommy Lee Jones-Cate Blanchett film, "The Missing."

In the film, Blanchett plays a young woman alone in the wilderness, who must reunite with her estranged father (Jones) to track the mystical, psychopathic killer known as Chidin (Eric Schweig). Chidin and his brutal pack of army deserters have kidnapped a collection of teenage girls, and have taken Maggie's daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) as their most recent prize.

My friend wrote, Jones' "nemesis says something like, 'The wolf and the good dog within you fight. I wonder which one will win.'"

To which Jones replies, "Whichever one I feed the most."

I must keep feeding the Entrepreneur-Man, because a job is one thing, and my work is something completely different. No doubt the path will be bumpy, but the rewards will be the journey.

Clean Tech: Unlocking the New Green Economy

"How do we begin reorganizing the industrial economy?" Umair Haque asked in his Edge Economy essay "A Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution."

Haque answers his own question: "By using markets, networks, and communities to alter the way resources are managed: to weave a fabric of incentives for sustainable growth and authentic value creation into the economy – a new economic fabric that's meaningful to people."

I've been thinking a lot about this call to action while developing my new idea to "organize" (to use Haque's term) the green energy financing space. And I've been wrestling with the following questions (among others):

What would it take to infuse new DNA into the way green energy is financed?

Can we redraw the boundaries of value creation in the 21st century?

Can we expand the access to participation in this space?

Can we create a company that is based on the values of integrity, openness, transparency, and "a fierce embrace of what's good" (as Haque writes elsewhere)?

Can we create a company that develops incentives for people to reorganize and manage resources in a way that reduces the barriers to entry for most people?

I'm becoming obsessed by these questions and am trying to create a response to Umair's challenge.

I hope that what I'm working on with a few very smart people will help reduce or eliminate the "clear, durable, structural barriers to efficiency and productivity" in this space.

The pursuit of answers to these questions is one of the reasons I'm leaving Ashoka at the end of this month. I need to focus my time and energy on trying to explode the boundaries of value creation and unlock the new green economy.

Call me a fool, wish me luck – or come along for the ride.

Changemakers: Vote for Winners in Geotourism Challenge

As previously mentioned on this blog, Ashoka's Changemakers and National Geographic (link) have teamed up for a competition they call The Geotourism Challenge: Celebrating Places/Changing Lives.

A panel of judges, including Keith Bellows, VP of National Geographic Society and Editor-in-Chief NG Traveler; Susan Berresford, Past President of The Ford Foundation; Leonard Cordiner, CEO of whl travel; and Nachiket Mor, President of ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth, has picked a handful -- 3 handfuls actually -- of finalists from among the 323 entries submitted from 84 countries. Now it's up to the changemaking (kingmaking?) public to decide the winners.

To vote, click over to Geotourism Challenge and vote for your favorite.

But hurry: Voting ends June 11 at 6PM EST.

For the complete list of entires, visit Changemakers.

And the nominees are:

Exotica Cottages, Dominica
Rios Tropicales Lodge, Costa Rica
Tourism Board Bhutan, Bhutan
Crete's Culinary Sanctuaries, Greece
Canopus Maldives - MPO for WHL in Maldives
Blue Ventures Conservation, Madagascar
Eco-Health Farms, Latvia
Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, India
Wildlife Conservation Society, Gabon
3 Sisters Adventure Trekking, Nepal
Evason Phuket & Six Senses Spa, Thailand
CC Africa, South Africa
Great Baikal Trail, Russia
Chumba Island Coral Park, Ltd., Tanzania

[Disclosure: The author is a vice president with Ashoka, but does not work directly for Changemakers or National Geographic, although he has friends at both organizations and admires their work.]

Social Entrpreneurs: NY Times' David Brooks on Why Social Entrepreneurs Matter

David Brooks has an Op-ed in today's New York Times on social entrepreneurs. He points to why this emerging approach, which mixes venture capital with doing good, is important and argues for investment in the sector.

Worth a look: http://tinyurl.com/3crxjz


(Disclosure: The author of this blog is a vice president with Ashoka; Brooks mentions Ashoka and several Ashoka Fellows)

The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, a Review

Social entrepreneurs. They have been variously defined as people with game-changing models to address the world's most pressing social problems or individuals who address market failures by using new business models to affect change globally by acting locally. Or just crazy people.

Whatever your definition, social entrepreneurs can be pretty unreasonable people: tenacious, stubborn, and focused on pursuing their ideas to the fullest.

Judging by The Power of Unreasonable People, the new book by SustainAbility's John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan, until recently managing director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which takes its title from a quote by George Bernard Shaw, there are plenty of them out there ready to take on the world or at least disrupt its equilibrium.

Jean-Baptiste Say, author of A Treatise on Political Economy (1803), is credited with coining the term "entrepreneur" as someone who "shifts economic resources out of an area of lower production into an area of higher yield and production."

Add the word "social" and you have someone applying that same principle to the concerns of civil society. Wherever there is a market failure that leads to a social or environmental ill, you're likely to find a social entrepreneur coming up with a solution.

Whether you're talking about Takao Furuno, whose ducks are used to protect rice crops; Fabio Rosa, who has pioneered systems to electrify rural Brazil; or Wangari Maathai, founder of Kenya's Green Belt Movement, who aims "to plant trees to provide sustainable sources of firewood and halt soil erosion," you're talking about people who will not rest until their idea is realized and the world is changed as a result.

These "unreasonable people" are making steady progress not by, "giving a man a fish or even teaching him to fish," to paraphrase Ashoka's founder Bill Drayton, who is credited with coining the term social entrepreneur, "but by revolutionizing the fishing industry."

As such, according to Elkington and Hartigan, social entrepreneurs are "highly sensitive barometers for detecting market risks and opportunities." The authors suggest it's an important reason that global corporations are scouting for high-impact social entrepreneurs.

But how to find them and where?

The social entrepreneurs I know say, "You know one when you see one." After my recent trip to India, where I met half a dozen or so in as many days, I kind of understand what they mean.

Elkington and Hartigan offer "Ten Characteristics of Successful Social Entrepreneurs" that may help to call them out, including "Try to shrug off the constraints of ideology or discipline"; "Identify and apply practical solutions to social problems, combining innovation, resourcefulness, and opportunity"; "Show a dogged determination that pushes them to take risks that others wouldn't dare"; and "Display a healthy impatience (e.g. they don't do well in bureaucracies...)." Describe anyone you know?

They also offer a useful framework of three models for the types of organizations social entrepreneurs set up: leveraged non-profit ventures, hybrids, and social business ventures, which try to put some parameters around some of the more classic types of ventures.

To date, most of the social entrepreneur ventures with which I am familiar are of the leveraged non-profit variety. But issues of sustainability and technological innovation seem poised to demand alternative approaches.

Much of this important book draws on the stories of social entrepreneurs from around the globe who are focusing on social value creation. And this is a good and useful thing. Where the authors stray a bit too far afield, in my view, is when they erect too large a tent.

While I appreciate GE's ecoimagination as great market innovation, it seems clear that a large multinational corporation such as GE can hardly be described as a social entrepreneur, even if they ditch the company's Six Sigma culture. Even with the disruptive nature of GE's marketing and product development, most social entrepreneurs would chafe at the bonds of their corporate culture.

Shedding light on social entrepreneurs who are bringing solutions and innovations to the "epochal challenges" we face is a timely exercise. David Bornstein did it well with How to Change the World, and Elkington and Hartigan have complemented that earlier work in the field.

The bottom line is: we need more celebrants of such agents of change and perhaps even need to cultivate the art of being unreasonable. For if Shaw was right that "all progress depends upon the unreasonable man," then we are at risk if we do not call them out and give them the resources they need. It may just save our assets.


(Disclosure: The author is a vice president of Ashoka, which seeks, invests in, and supports social entrepreneurs around the world.)

Social Entrepreneurs: Goonj, "One Person's Rags Are Another's Riches"

"What are the three basic human needs?" asks Anshu Gupta, an Ashoka Fellow and founder of Goonj. "Food, clothing, and shelter. Everyone talks about hunger and homelessness, but we don't talk about the second basic need."

Indeed, argues Gupta, the only time people think about clothing for the poor is after a natural disaster or when some charity has a clothing drive.



And what happens to those clothes? Typically, if they are not shipped right away, they are stockpiled for future disasters. Many times without quality control: resulting in torn or soiled clothing or single shoes from a pair being distributed. The usefulness is questionable.

Gupta wanted to change all that.

"Clothing is a symbol of dignity," he says, without a trace of sentimentality. "We're not promoting charity; we are adding value and professionalizing the collection of discarded materials."

Through Goonj, which means "echo," Gupta started a "clothes for work" initiative, designed to help poor people earn their clothes in exchange for work cleaning up and taking care of their villages. "This takes the charity out of it," Gupta shares. "They earn their clothes and help improve their surroundings at the same time."

Goonj is run like a business, a social business, and one gets the impression Anshu Gupta could easily be running a large manufacturing or distribution center in the private sector if he wasn't possessed by an idea that clothes are a basic human need that all need access to.

The journey starts at one of over 30 collection centers in India's major cities, where volunteers and employees of Goonj sort and process the materials and package it in jute bags, which are all coded according to contents and entered into their database.

It's a sophisticated process. One of the centers, in a series of warehouse-like buildings in a modest neighborhood in New Delhi, was a hub of activity on the day we visited. Women were sorting the incoming clothing according to whether it's a male or female garment, color, size, and condition. Other women were sewing articles of clothing in need of repair; if it's beyond repair, it will be used for something else.

Two women are sorting through a recently obtained bag of clothes, blue shirts, blouses, pants, and skirts.

"They are putting together school uniforms," Gupta says. "Of course they may be slightly mismatched, but the schools where this is going otherwise wouldn't have a uniform, the kids may not even have clothes to wear to school."

Goonj is having an impact on dignity, but also on health.

Gupta cites villages in Rajasthan, which is one of the areas on their distribution network. Rajasthan is mostly desert, and most people don't think of desert people needing warm clothes or blankets.


But temperatures drop precipitously at night and if you barely have clothes to cover your body, it can be a night of agony. Goonj is making sure that blankets and clothing get to those who need it.


Clothes are only an entry point for Anshu Gupta and Goonj. And one of their newest innovations is having tremendous impact on the health of poor women.

Sanitary napkins are ubiquitous in the west; a disposable product that most people take for granted. But countless women in rural villages use dirty, useless cloth during their five days of menses, leading to infection and disease. Gupta speaks of one woman who used a piece of an old blouse and died of tetanus because she was unaware there was a sharp metal hook inside.

Through its initiative "Not Just a Piece of Cloth," Goonj has developed a cloth sanitary napkin product made from selected scraps of cloth from the sorting process (25 percent of the cloth they receive is unusable as a garment, but can serve other purposes).

They provide clean cloth napkins to rural women and women living in slums and campaign in rural and urban India to generate awareness of the need for cleanliness in the monthly cycle.

Awareness-building is a big part of what Goonj does, especially where waste is concerned. And as India's economy accelerates so does consumerism and increased wastage. Goonj is concerned that the next generation of Indians understand the connection between consumerism, waste, and poverty.

So they have developed a program called School-to-School (S2S), Winner of an Ashoka's Changemakers Innovation Award, to turn the wastage of urban school children into a resource for thousands of rural and slum schools. It also serves the dual purpose of sensitizing urban students and their parents about the needs of the less fortunate.

"The urban kid has a fight with his parents between a Pokémon bag and a Spiderman bag," Gupta says. "They have no idea what it's like to fight for a bed."

Goonj's target is to support 30,000 children initially by channeling material like used books, uniforms, shoes, school bags, and even furniture to the rural and slum schools.

And each year, Goonj hosts an event called "Pratibimb," bringing together urban and rural school children and teachers from across the country who would otherwise never know each other.

Goonj sends out over 20,000 kgs of material every month in 19 Indian states. Their small staff is augmented by over 300 volunteers and a distributions network of over 100 grassroots organizations, Ashoka Fellows, social activists, and even units of Indian army in rural India.

Recycling is not a new phenomenon, even in India. Indeed, Anshu Gupta says that almost everything in India gets recycled, with the exception of food waste and some plastics. The true innovation here is in the distribution of the materials.


Goonj has figured out an elegant solution to ensure that materials get to those who need them all year-round, rather than waiting for disaster to strike.

In the end, Anshu Gupta and Goonj are proving the old adage that "one person's rags can indeed be someone else's riches."

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Postscript: At the India NGO Awards tonight, in New Delhi, Goonj was awarded the India NGO of the Year Award for 2007, sponsored by the Resource Alliance and the Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation. It is another in a string of recognitions that this organization has garnered.

(Disclosure: The author is a vice president of Ashoka, which selected Anshu Gupta as an Ashoka Fellow in 2004, preceding the author's employment.)