The article I wrote for the GKP publication “Beyond Tunis” is finally out. Kund Florian, the editor, did a great job at integrating some really cool design elements into the article. Here’s a copy from the actual magazine. The online version should be available soon! Click on the following link to download the printable version:

Design thinking for development (D4D)

I spent my whole last week in Chiba, Japan attending a meeting on skills development and employment of young people organised by the ILO in collaboration with UNESCO. Chiba is a well organised small town built on reclaimed land about 40 minutes by train from Tokyo.

The meeting was a great opportunity to interact with some interesting people and learn about new issues on employment. The highlight of the event was meeting with Ali Khan – a young social entrepreneur from Pakistan. His organisation, PNYS, seeds social programs in the marginalised communities (tribes) of Pakistan. His work focuses mainly on empowering young women to become more educated and start their own social programs in these communities.

Over the 3 days, we got to talking about the issues surrounding our work, focusing on how little resources is available for the high-impact on-the-ground work. Specifically, we were talking about the misallocation of resources by the development community to low impact work. More resources should be made available to social entrepreneurs who need to deliver high-quality services to communities at the bottom of the pyramid. In order for social entrepreneurs to deliver high-quality service they need to build organisational capacity and this can only happen with significant amount of funds.

At every point of the coversation we reached a dead end in terms of finding solutions; finally I just had to ask him – “How do you keep persevering when all the odds are against you?”

He answered with two simple words – “Emotional income!”. Ali adds ” You can’t put into words the sense of satisfaction you get when you see the lives of the people you work with changed forever.”

I believe Ali’s work is crucial – particularly because he is empowering young women in Pakistan – a country where women play a marginal role in society and as individuals they do not receive the necessary education and support.

This is also a good example of what good design, animation and communications can do to highlight issues in development which are generally presented in a very dull and linear manner.

The emergence of social venture funds in an ever changing world has revolutionized the type of support available to nonprofit organizations. Although very little consensus has been built around the primary functions of social venture funds, at their core these funds aim to apply investment management practices (typical of venture capital and private equity firms) to build the capacity of nonprofit organizations to obtain greater returns on their investment – whether social, environmental and financial in a blended value approach.

The need for highly-engaged support mechanisms (social venture funds) for nonprofit organizations, particularly those lead by youth is crucial because of the culture of dysfunction that permeates through most organizations. The dysfunction exists through a range of critical elements – strategic planning, staffing, training, management, financing, and performance measurement – that success in delivering high-quality solutions becomes highly improbable.

Existing social venture funds commonly define themselves as “a multi-donor fund specifically created to address social issues that utilizes venture capital practices to maximize investor value and impact”. In the article “Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists”, the authors Christine Letts, William Ryan, and Allen Grossman identify six points that distinguish social venture fund practices from those in more traditional grant-making:

1. Risk
• VC firms take risk and are rewarded accordingly. Rather than being avoided, risk is managed.
• Foundations avoid risk because they are not rewarded one way or the other for taking risk. Accordingly, foundations compromise the likelihood of measurable return.

2. Performance Measures
• VC firms focus on performance measures that will lead to long-term growth.
• Foundations focus on short-term program outcomes and avoid the question of long-term consequences.

3. Closeness of Relationship
• VC firms are comfortable with close working relationships with investees. They are involved in deal flow, CEO selection, strategic planning, etc.
• Foundations tend to keep their distance in their relationship with grantees. In addition, they tend to be totally uninvolved in operations.

4. Amount of Funding
• VC firms fund few deals but they put enough money in chosen deals to make a difference. They will also help with subsequent funding needs.
• Foundations fund a small part of each deal. They tend to undercapitalize and seldom help with subsequent funding needs.

5. Length of Relationship
• VC firms will stay involved over a number of years, and this is known to all participants.
• Foundations seldom stay involved for more than two or three years.

6. Exit Strategy
• VC firms have an exit strategy identified at the point of entry. Often the exit is made possible by another VC firm.
• Foundations rarely have an exit strategy.

By identifying the common venture capital techniques that funds might use to maximize investment value, including long-term investment, funding for capacity building, the establishment of evaluation metrics and strong criteria for investment, it is hoped to encourage a new perspective in social investing where investors have a sense that they have a stake in their investments and are closely engaged in the growth of the organizations. Very simply, if the investor has serious expectations about achieving measurable outcomes, be they social or economic, their commitment will be increased – they will involve themselves when necessary so that success might be attained.

I wrote an article on social entrepreneurship two years ago. It’s a shame I didn’t think of sharing it here:

Can social entrepreneurship ever be cool?

Here’s a new and interesting idea in WiFi technology – fon. The following post is from boinboing.net:

Fon, a new Spanish company, is offering to build a service based on P2P principles for people to be able to access the Internet through other people connection using wireless networking.

The system is based on 2 categories of users;
– Bill who resell their connection to other members of the service
– Linus who offer to share for free and in exchange can benefit from roaming on the whole network.

The whole transaction is managed by the company (Fon)