What the Future will launch this Saturday, July 31 on CNBC World, and the first episode – aptly named “Choice Not Charity” – features the work of Acumen Fund and of investees Jamii Bora and Ecotact.

The show will air on Saturday at 8:30 pm and again at 11:30 pm EST. (Then again on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. EST). In the US, you can find where to watch here. Elsewhere, please check your local provider for listings for CNBC World.

If you have trouble catching it on TV, video is also available on the What the Future website – watch part 1, part 2 and part 3.

We’d love to hear what you think – please join the discussion on our online community!

It is now July 2010, and I am well into my summer internship at Acumen Fund. Earlier this month, when I read the devastating news about the suicide attack on the shrine of Hazrat Data Gunj Baksh in Lahore, in which nearly 40 people were murdered by suspected Taliban extremism, I was reminded in an extremely graphic way of why I am at Acumen and what I hope to accomplish here. The last two years have been brutal for all Pakistanis and while some of us choose to remain aloof and removed – safe in our houses on the right side of the bridge and behind our guarded enclaves, blaming the unseen hand of an unseen enemy – it was in fact only a matter of time before the inequalities and inequities that we have allowed to fester in our society caught up with us.

The Taliban, extremism, radicalism and terrorism is our wakeup call to a world that is changing, and a call to realize that neither the government alone nor traditional aid will bring about a just and equitable change in Pakistan. It is people like Jawad Aslam, Roshaneh Zafar and Dr. Sono Khangarani who will provide people with decent and dignified alternatives to handouts and begging. Unless people see a decent future for their children and themselves, one in which every citizen can maintain a basic standard of living, educate their children and live in a decent manner, the Taliban will continue to recruit from amongst the disenfranchised masses and provide them with a violent alternative to bring about their vision of equity.

Acumen Fund is the means to such a future – they are working to provide energy, clean water, healthcare, affordable quality housing, and improved farming methods to Pakistan, India and East Africa. They have approved $11.1 million to invest in Pakistan over the past decade in numerous projects that are expected to be self-sustaining and profitable business operations.

Before this summer I was no stranger to Acumen – they recruit regularly at my college campus (LUMS) and I was fascinated by the organization and its approach to ‘solving’ poverty-related issues. However, like many of my peers I put aside my idealism and decided to go the corporate route and to leave social entrepreneurship to the activists and dreamers. After my MBA, I worked at a major multinational in Pakistan and one day in 2007 I received an email from our CSR office which asked for volunteers from marketing, sales and supply chain to work with an Acumen investee – Micro Drip. I jumped at the opportunity and found myself immersed in the problems of selling drip irrigation systems to poor farmers in rural Sindh. To my surprise, I actually found there were many similarities between selling FMCG products to consumers in urban and peri-uran areas and marketing to rural farmers. Consumers, it seemed, wanted the same thing, albeit in different settings. Sales teams, more often than not, also encountered the same hurdles in selling to the BoP that they did to ‘regular consumers’. This was an eye opener and cemented my belief in the power of markets, even in the unlikeliest of settings.

It is this belief and a deep admiration of Acumen Fund’s mission and approach to some of the world’s most intractable problems that brought me here again in 2010. I was studying for an MPA at NYU and I decided to apply to Acumen Fund, my top choice for a summer position. My experience this summer has been nothing short of a revelation – every day at Acumen brings new surprises, challenges and a renewed commitment to their vision. Whether I am performing diligence for a potential investment, digging through data on older deals or consulting with entrepreneurs and colleagues in the country offices, sitting in Monday Morning Meetings or on portfolio calls, I am constantly reminded of why I am here.

Sitting in far away Manhattan, an entire wall covered with pictures of our investments (both active and exited) show our customers: a hopeful old woman, a hard-working man in his yellow turban, and wide-eyed children. These serve as a constant reminder that we must do our best to ensure that our customers get the goods and services they need, and can live with dignity and grace.

Faiza Mawjee is a Summer Associate on the Portfolio team at the New York office. She is an MPA candidate at NYU Wagner School of Public Service, specializing in international development. The Summer Spotlight series features posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.

On August 7th, San Francisco for Acumen (SFfA) is teaming with Nuru Project to host DIGNITY, a photography auction and exhibition benefiting Acumen Fund.  Attendees will have the opportunity to bid on photographs by renowned photographers such as Susan Meiselas/Magnum, Ami Vitale/National Geographic, and Palani Mohan/Reportage by Getty Images.

The night will also feature a special Acumen Fund Fellows Exhibit, as well as a VIP reception with Bay Area Acumen Fund Fellows and Yasmina Zaidman, Acumen Fund’s Director of Communications.  Complimentary wine, appetizers, and music will be provided.

Generous event sponsors include Bi-Rite Market, Rotee, Back to Earth Organic Catering, Humanitas Wine, Bushido Izakaya, Bonhams & Butterfields, Young Women Social Entrepreneurs, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Copy Central.

For the first of an ongoing preview of images, please refer to Nuru Project’s blog.

Purchase tickets today to DIGNITY.

Raghunath Prasad Chauhan is from Tamkua village in one of the most remote corners of Bihar, India. Tamkua, which means “well of darkness,” is one of the first villages that was electrified by Husk Power Systems, a company that provides a very real alternative source of energy in a state that is electricity-starved and one of the poorest in the country.

This is the first time Raghunath is getting electricity. He now has dreams of educating his four children and hopes that his son becomes an engineer and finds a good job. The Tamkua market now comes alive at night and children from villages like Tamkua gather under the lights in ready and study in groups. The incidence of theft and snake bites has also been reduced because the area now has power. This company, that lives by the vision ‘Power to Empower,’ is creating believers out of people who never thought that they would have access to electricity.

Watch the video on Acumen’s website and learn more about Husk Power Systems.

Karthik Chandrasekar is an Acumen Fund Energy Portfolio Manager based out of our Hyderabad office in India. Karthik is always on the move looking for entrepreneurs bringing renewable energy solutions to the poor. Follow him on Twitter – @quickgunmurugun .

Here at Acumen Fund, we often refer to the direct social impact of our investments: number of bednets sold, healthy babies delivered, seeds sown, microfinance loans disbursed, etc.  But there are secondary impacts to Acumen’s investments, too – most notably, employment.

I snapped this photo of a young man, whose name I didn’t catch, taking a quick break at the end of a long day installing a Global Easy Water Products drip irrigation system.  I visited the farm, a 4-hour drive outside Aurangabad, last May, as the thermometer topped 45 degrees Celsius.  Despite the heat, farmers like Ramakrishnan Mahajan must quickly sow their fields and set up their irrigation systems during a short cotton-planting window – which is why he asked his GEWP sales rep to hire a group of six local farmboys to lend a hand.  Each of the boys – including the one pictured here – earned 200 rupees per day over 2 days of work.  For those keeping track at home, that’s about USD $4.50 per worker, per day.

Since 2003, Global Easy Water Products reports that its customers have paid for more than 410,000 man-hours of installation labor.  At rates similar to what Mr. Mahajan paid his crew, that’s more than USD $225,000 of employment income being plowed back into the local economies of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Now if only this worker had a bottle of clean, fresh WaterHealth International branded Dr. Water to cool him down after the work was done…but that’s the subject of another photo for another day.

Rob Katz is a Portfolio Associate at Acumen and co-founder of NextBillion.net.

The Photo of the Week series features images chosen by Acumen Fund staff and community members — favorite photos they’ve taken in the field or pulled from the archive. Look for it every Tuesday.

Alex Sungubi is one of the founding members of the Blue Sweater Book Club in Nairobi. Pictured here, he's walking through Kibera with a donated copy of Seth Godin's book Tribes.

I am currently in Nairobi, Kenya as we work to build what will be the first in a series of leadership development initiatives around the world.  In the next ten years, we plan to invest in thousands of leaders who are building and driving groundbreaking social change initiatives as entrepreneurs and also as intra-preneurs within businesses, public sector organizations, and leading NGOs.  We believe that by connecting and investing in these individuals, we will create an interconnected web of global leaders who share values, are driving change, and have a deep commitment to building a more inclusive economy and social system.   My current trip to Nairobi has been one of listening and learning from Kenyan perspectives on leadership and development so that we build a program that will have real and lasting impact.  The journey has been rich with stories, but I wanted to share one.

Last week I had the opportunity to meet two fantastic individuals who reminded me of the power of the human spirit at work.  The first is Jessica – young, fearless, resourceful, and completely and utterly resilient (my favorite qualities in a social sector leader).  This young woman is a recent graduate of Wesleyan College and is doing some incredible work in Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa, with her partner Kennedy (both Echoing Green Fellows).  They have built an all-girls school in the heart of Kibera and while the school is free, they’ve developed a model that ensures repayment in other ways. The parents must commit 5 weeks of work to the school each year and run services around the school they charge for like: pay per use toilets, a community center, and a health center.

I met Jessica at a fancy shopping mall, which is where I thought we would hold our meeting.  So of course I showed up in white pants, a nice silk shirt, long flowing scarf, gold bangles, and before I know it she whisks me away from the comfort of the mega mall to a nearby mutatu (small local bus transport) which we crammed into for the ride to the slums. As I sat there smushed between two people – body odor filling the bus, only to be over powered by the smell of burning garbage – in an instant I was back in Senegal (where I lived at 20-years-old) taking the local road, the hard road everywhere, at any cost. We exited the mutatu, I looked down at my already dirt and grease stained white pants, and jumped onto the red dusty road that leads into Kibera.  We walked together, followed by groups of shouting kids who were dying to hold my hand, touch my leg, and just be noticed. Honestly, I had almost forgotten what that was like since my last few trips have been focused on meetings with business executives and government leaders.

As we walked down the road, Jessica buzzed with energy to tell me what she was doing, so inspired, proud and accomplished for a young woman.  When we finally arrived at the school, I met Kennedy, one of those people who just radiates energy and wisdom beyond his years. He stood in front of their community site in a rainbow-colored tiedye shirt and jeans, with a huge Kenyan smile. They told their story, and I shared mine, and as Kennedy told me he admired me because I was “way up there” but also “way down here” I sat there thinking, “How can this young man admire me?”

After our conversation, Kennedy walked me down the long winding road out of Kibera.  We passed many men yelling in Swahili, ”Who is the white woman with you?” (Kennedy translated).  He stopped to chat with a man who was making wooden bed frames.  They exchanged greetings and we were off. Kennedy told me how about 4 years ago he had raised 2000 Shillings ($25) and invested it in 20 businesses in Kibera.  For his small investment he asked that the borrowers not pay him back, but instead pay it forward.  The man selling the bed frames was doing quite well and now had the ability to pay it forward and also pay Kennedy back.  I felt a tinge of guilt flow through my body as I thought about the last thing I did with $25.

Kennedy was born in Kibera to a girl of 15; he never knew his father.  At the age of 9 he was living on the streets and was angry at the world, but then at 12 he met a priest who helped to educate him.  Kennedy told me he was determined to learn English so he could speak to the “white people.”  He’s currently in his second year at Wesleyan in Connecticut.

As he shared with me his story, I looked around and was so intensely reminded of the pain and sadness that exists and has existed in the world.  In a world with such injustice, such poverty, how do people not live with constant anger, frustration and sadness?  How can those of us who have been given so much live right next to it and allow it to exist?  I wonder if there ever will be a point when we can find a place where we are all truly given the opportunity to realize our potential as individuals and as a world.  Acknowledgment and forgiveness are such hard things to achieve.

And then there are people like Kennedy and Jessica, who remind us that there is hope and that things can change.  As we work to build this new initiative for Acumen and develop the next generation of leaders around the world, we plan to invest in more individuals that can show the world positive change is not only possible, but it is already happening.

Blair Miller is Talent Manager for Acumen Fund and runs the Acumen Fellows Program. She just returned to New York from three weeks in East Africa where she was working to develop Acumen’s Fellows Program globally.

The Acumen team in India.

I have joined the Acumen Fund for the summer, based out of the office in India. I have enjoyed my time thus far, looking for opportunities to improve access to clean water and sanitation for the poor. I first became interested in learning more about water while working in the Middle East in 2007. This summer serves as a great opportunity to work with Acumen (an organization I have admired for some time now), gain international and development experience, and delve deeper into a subject that is already dire and likely to become even more so in the years ahead.

Over 1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and over twice that amount have no sanitation facilities, causing the spread of preventable diseases and deaths. In India, only 24% of the population is served by a household water connection and only 45% have access to a toilet, leaving hundreds of millions in need. Our team is looking for sustainable, scalable businesses that show high potential for creating social change in this area.

I have two main projects. The first is to assess the Indian water and sanitation markets and recommend a course of action for Acumen Fund’s Water Portfolio in each sub-sector. The goal of this work is to secure an overview of the segment, evaluate the potential of profit-making models in the sector, and find and analyze pipeline opportunities in each.

The second ongoing project is to conduct due diligence on new investment opportunities—including analyzing business models, building financial projections, assessing risks and devising mitigation strategies alongside the entrepreneurs, and drafting investment memorandums for presentation to the Acumen Fund Investment Committee.

What a wonderful opportunity.

Yael Guez is an Acumen Fund Summer Associate.  In September, she will enter her final year of a concurrent MBA-MPA program between the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Yael has worked in strategy consulting with Bain & Company, in policy at the Reut Institute in Tel Aviv, and in government with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of International Affairs.

I didn’t think about this again until Seth Godin came to speak at the Indian School of Business, two weeks ago, in a fundraising benefit for Acumen Fund.

Prior to the lecture, I’d never heard of Seth Godin before. It was only after I googled his name that I discovered how much I’d really fallen behind on the latest in marketing and sales literature. Seth Godin was a best-selling author, successful entrepreneur and, according to Forbes, some kind of demigod on the Web. He’d been featured not once, but twice, on TED. I was curious to hear what he had to say.

The atmosphere surrounding the Indian School of Business was buzzing in anticipation of the event. The man was well known in this country. We were sitting in the first row of the auditorium when Seth Godin began his talk on leadership, advertising and how ideas spread: Society had moved beyond the age of mass marketing, when companies could effectively barrage our senses with advertisements. In this age of Facebook, iPhones and twitter, the Internet allows us to instantaneously traverse physical boundaries to create our own silos of interest, where we connect with others that share our own values and passions. This is the age of tribes, and in this age, real change happens when we lead and connect people and ideas. It happens when we create networks of interest that, in time, reinforce themselves.

As Seth Godin paced back and forth on stage, encouraging us to tell stories, connect tribes, lead movements and make change, I remembered what Jacqueline said about the role of Acumen Fund in social enterprise. This whole tribe thing was directly related to Acumen Fund and the way it had grown. Here was a company whose investments had yielded great impact on the lives of many people and, in the process, had learned to tell a story like no other. Acumen Fund’s mission connected people across the world who felt the same way about global poverty. It banded together people who desired a refreshing solution. The evidence could be seen in the growing membership of the Acumen community, the budding Blue Sweater book clubs, this very blog. I could understand the link between Acumen Fund and Seth Godin.

The audience at the Indian School of Business seemed to enjoy the lecture. When it ended, there was no shortage in thought-provoking questions—one student asked about the relevance of a Western-centric marketing message in the context of a developing nation such as India. For me, I thought back to that first day. Maybe this is what Jacqueline meant: In order for the idea of patient capital to truly scale, we need to build and reinforce the global community of social enterprise by telling stories of both its successes and failures. If it’s done right, the whole thing becomes a movement.

Ken Lee is a student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs pursuing his Master’s in International Affairs.  This summer, he is working on the energy portfolio in Acumen Fund’s India office.

The Summer Spotlight series features posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.

We’ve just posted a video to Acumen’s website that gives a fantastic glimpse into the types of communities where WaterHealth International (WHI) works — delivering safe, affordable drinking water. We had the opportunity to visit the Nehru Nagar Colony, a rural community situated 40 minutes outside the city of Vijayawada in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. Several women in the community told us that before WaterHealth installed its plant, people collected water from a nearby pond or small “step” wells. Water quality from these sources is very poor; during our visit, we noticed cattle bathing in the nearby pond and a frog swimming in the step well. The water had a murky green tint to it, and tested positive for bacteriological contamination. Not exactly the stuff you’d want in your cup.

By contrast, the water flowing out of WHI’s plant – filtered and disinfected with ultraviolet light – was crystal clear and free of disease-causing microbes. WHI conducts a full battery of chemical and bacteriological tests frequently to ensure this high standard of quality. And on this brutally hot day, the water was also delicious – a key reason why customers choose to buy. Women also mentioned health improvements from using the water and savings on medical costs, which is the real reason WHI does this work.

Check out the video and let us know what you think.

Photo Credit: Susan Meiselas/Magnum

As one of the earliest employees at Acumen Fund, I’ve been involved with a few moves and office redecorations. With our most recent move to Chelsea a few years ago, I selected the collage of photos for the wall of our kitchen. This image from VisionSpring in India is front and center because it’s by far my favorite Acumen Fund photo. I love the vibrant colors and the way in which this woman’s culture and heritage are celebrated in her dress. I’ve traveled quite a bit and am often struck by the beauty of fabrics and the expression of culture, which changes so significantly from one country to the next.

Nadege Joseph is the Administration Manager for Acumen Fund and has been with the organization since 2001.

The Photo of the Week series features images chosen by Acumen Fund staff and community members — favorite photos they’ve taken in the field or pulled from the archive. Look for it every Tuesday.

While working as a consultant in India, Himanshu sits beside a dry water well in rural Maharashtra

Growing up in India, the son of parents who are doctors working at non-profit hospitals, I have been exposed to the social sector and to BoP consumers since childhood. As a child, I remember occasionally accompanying my parents to their hospital during summer vacation and seeing a long queue of BoP patients. Every time I visited, the queue would be at least as long as the last time. In the last few years, while working in the private sector, I had started to wonder if private businesses could somehow provide healthcare facilities to these consumers at affordable prices and shorten the queues that I had grown accustomed to. If the motivation and efficiencies of the for-profit sector could somehow be combined with a social cause, then the impact could be enormous.

A couple of years back, I learned about Acumen Fund and its investments in businesses that combine these two motives. I would describe Acumen’s work as ‘Creative Capitalism’ in action. In the first year of my MBA program, I had an opportunity to take a course with that title. In this class we examined social problems and discussed possible market-based solutions. After joining Acumen for the summer, I have had an opportunity to understand and evaluate companies that are in the business of making social impact and money as well. Acumen Fund, by providing capital and by helping organizations scale, is bringing these creative businesses out of classrooms and out of social workers’ imaginations, and into reality, delivering products and services to lower income customers. Husk Power Systems is clearly one example, which started as a venture out of Darden (where I’m at school) and is now an Acumen Fund investee.

I have spent the last few weeks at Acumen Fund evaluating business ventures in the water and sanitation sector. Before joining the organization, I knew that access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities was not available to a large percentage of the population in the developing world. However, after I started evaluating business models and understanding the market, I was startled by the statistics. According the thewaterproject.org, at any time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases, and over one-third of the world’s population have no access to sanitation facilities. In developing countries, about 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions, and one out of every four deaths under the age of five worldwide is due to a water-related disease.

In light of the magnitude of the problem, no one can dispute that there is a need for large-scale spending on water and sanitation interventions. However, it is also important to educate BoP consumers about the importance of these issues. Last year, while travelling through rural India for a consulting project, I interviewed consumers in Maharashtra whose monthly family income was less than $100. A large number of these consumers were spending as much as 5% of their income on cable television, but very few would spend money on building a sanitation facility. The reason they wouldn’t spend their money on water and sanitation was because nobody has made an effort to market them these services and recognize them as customers.  I hope some of the Acumen’s current and potential investees will reach these BoP consumers soon and treat them as valuable, quality customers.

Himanshu Wardhan is an MBA student at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. Before coming to US for his MBA, he worked for a consulting company in India. This summer, he is working on the Water and Sanitation portfolio in Acumen Fund’s New York Office. The Summer Spotlight series features posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.

In March I travelled to Kenya’s beautiful Central Province to establish a sales initiative with the Nyala Dairy Cooperative in Ndaragwa.  Besides the welcome change of climate (I ate dinner in front a roaring fire in order to stay warm) I was thoroughly impressed with Nyala as an organization. Watch this video on Nyala’s impressively efficient operations and learn how D.light partnered with them to market solar lights to dairy farmers across the region.  Enjoy!

This video originally appeared on Acumen Fellow Kevin Martin’s blog. Kevin, a member of the Class of 2010, is working in Tanzania with D.Light.

Meet the new Fellows:

• Bryan Farris, from the United States, is a management consultant for Bain & Company. He received his B.S. in Industrial Engineering & Operations Research from the University of California at Berkeley. He will work in Lahore, Pakistan with Ansaar Management Company, which is a housing development and management company that provides an integrated approach to affordable, quality housing.
• Mario Ferro, of Italy, works with NGOs in the post-earthquake relief effort in Haiti. He is a former management consultant with experience in the internationalization of Italian SMEs in China and received an M.S. in Development Management from the London School of Economics. He will work in Nairobi, Kenya with Ecotact, a company that aims to improve the urban landscape for low-income communities through environmentally responsible projects in sanitation and housing.
• Chikako Fujita, from Japan, worked for SANYO on the company’s enviromental initiatives, and started an NGO’s rural electrification and development initiative in India. She earned an MEM from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She will work in Mumbai, India with 1298 Ambulances, which focuses on providing affordable emergency medical response services.
• Shane Heywood, from Jamaica, has a background in the consumer goods industry as well as microfinance experience in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Shane received joint degree in Business Administration and International Relations from the University of Western Ontario and an M.A. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. He will work in Kitale, Kenya with Western Seed, which develops and distributes high-quality hybrid seeds to improve crop yields for smallholder farmers in East Africa.
• Khuram Hussain, of Pakistan, is a consultant at TechnoServe and formerly worked for Endeavor and JP Morgan. He earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at University of California at Berkeley. He will work in Bihar, India with Husk Power Systems, which uses innovative biomass technology to convert abundant rice husks into energy that provides power to Indian villages.
• Elizabeth Maina, from Kenya, is consultant for different companies in systems and process improvement. She has a BSc. in Information Systems and Technology from the United States International University in Kenya. She will work in Nairobi, Kenya, with Global Easy Water Products, which provides affordable drip irrigation for small-scale farmers.
• Bavidra Mohan, of Sri Lanka/Canada, works as a corporate social responsibility consultant at Ethos JWT.  Bavidra received an Honours Degree in Sociology from Queen’s University, and an MA in Marketing from Kingston University. He will work in Shenzhen, China with D.Light Design, a company that makes low-cost solar lights that provide cleaner, safer, and cheaper lighting to families living at the bottom of the pyramid.
• Wendy Wallace, from the United States, currently works in consulting, and previously served as a field agent in Nairobi, Kenya with Renew Strategies. She has an MPP from Harvard University and a B.S. in Engineering Sciences and Astronautical Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy. She will work in Hyderabad, India with LifeSpring, which is a network of Maternity and Child Healthcare hospitals that provide vital reproductive and pediatric healthcare to low- and lower-middle-income people in urban and peri-urban areas.
• Benje Williams, from the United States, is a management consultant for social enterprises and Fortune 500 corporations, and supported start-up SMEs in Nairobi. Benje holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California at Berkeley. He will work in Lahore, Pakistan with a company that provides access to drinking water for low-income urban customers .
• Brenda Williams, from the United States, is the president and CEO of GlobaLink Consulting, Inc., a private consulting company specializing in business development, microfinance and organizational management services. She earned an M.S. in Organizational Management from the  School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT. She will work in Andhra Pradesh, India with WaterHealth International, which incorporates a cost-effective technology designed for the poor, and an effective approach to social marketing and distribution to increase access to safe, affordable water.

Following eight weeks of training in New York, the Fellows will begin their nine-month field placements with Acumen Fund investees, supporting senior management in tackling critical business issues–market expansion, business plan refinement, supply chain improvements, or even leading a new business initiative.

The Acumen Fund Fellows Program has also been named as a finalist for the John P. McNulty Prize, an award affiliated with the Aspen Global Leadership Network aimed at recognizing exceptional leadership projects that galvanize efforts to address the foremost social, economic and political challenges of our time. The prize will be awarded November 4, 2010 at the 27th Annual Aspen Institute Awards Dinner.

Blair Miller is Talent Manager for Acumen Fund and runs the Acumen Fellows Program.

I was in Pakistan for the past two weeks conducting training with our local team in Karachi and working with some of our investees. I took this photo during a walk through the narrow lanes of the Old City section of Lahore, Pakistan. I was wandering along just taking in the amazing sights and sounds of the marketplace when I heard a faint electronic sound. In a city with often-inconsistent power, the vaguely familiar sound caught my attention. After a bit of searching I found a worn wooden door partially open.  I was delighted to find a small, dark room filled with four old stand-alone video games (think Pac-man, circa 1984) and a bunch of excited kids yelling, lit only by the light of the games. The boy in the center happened to turn just as I was snapping this picture, flashing a happy smile, that of any child at play. It reminded me of the universality of the need for fun and the pleasure of a few minutes of escape from the pressures of daily life.

Harry Dellane is the Director of Talent for Acumen Fund. While he is based in the New York City office, he spent two weeks at the Pakistan office earlier this month.

The Photo of the Week series features images chosen by Acumen Fund staff and community members — favorite photos they’ve taken in the field or pulled from the archive. Look for it every Tuesday.

Recently, Dan and Jacqueline decided it would be fun to swap short Q&As. Three questions each. You can read the three questions posed by Dan to Jacqueline on the Heath Brothers website here. Below are the three questions posed by Jacqueline to Dan.

What are your thoughts on how Dan and Chip’s’ principles apply to Acumen’s work?

JN: You talk about finding the “bright spots” (identifying the things that seem to be working) as one of the first steps on the road to change.  I imagine that finding these bright spots and interpreting them is sometimes harder than it looks.  For the best organizations you’ve seen, how much is this an analytical versus an intuitive process?

DH: Let me give a bit of backstory on “bright spots” for those who haven’t read Switch. Psychology tells us that we’re wired to look at the negative. When we want change, we tend to obsess about all the problems we’re having and we try to come up with solutions for them. But, in times of change, there may be many things that aren’t working, so that “problem focus” is a recipe for paralysis. Instead, we need to find the bright spots—that is, the early signs that things are working. Once we’ve found the bright spots, we can clone them. For instance, say you’ve got a troubled relationship with your teenager. Rather than obsessing about the difficulties, ask yourself, when was the last time the two of you had a really healthy interaction? That’s your bright spot. What was different about that moment? (Were you talking at a different time of day? Different place? Different conversation topics?) If you can figure out what conditions made your bright spots possible, you can reproduce them.

The same is true for social enterprise. Jerry and Monique Sternin made a career out of solving seemingly intractable problems—child malnutrition in Vietnam, sex trafficking in Indonesia, gang violence in New Jersey—by focusing on the practices that were already working, and then scaling those successes. (Interested readers should check out the Sternins’ essential new book, The Power of Positive Deviance.)

Sometimes you can use data to find bright spots. The Sternins, in particular, made data-gathering a priority. But other times, it’s not possible—it would be difficult, for instance, to collect data on your relationship with your teenager. Whether your process is analytical or intuitive, the important thing is to direct your attention to the things that are already working, in spite of the problems. (For a longer treatment of this issue, here’s an excerpt from Switch about bright spots.)

JN: One of our biggest questions at Acumen Fund is how to switch the thinking in aid from one of giving handouts to creating a mindset of the dignity and capability of every person on earth – no matter what their income.  What might we do better to catalyze that new way of thinking?  What are the things we can do and say to make people resolve to effect changes in ways that matter, ways that, well, stick?

DH: Here’s the problem: I think many of us think of “The Poor” as this homogenous, pitiable group. We imagine them as if cast by Sally Struthers, lying on the side of the road, begging for their next meal, swatting flies away from their faces. What I loved about your book—and also another eye-opening new book, Portfolios of the Poor—is that we get a more 3-D portrait of the poor. We meet people making a dollar or two a day who create strict household budgets, who save money in multiple ways, who take loans from banks and loan out money to neighbors. People with rich, complicated lives. People who are happy. (Do we need people to be miserable to be deserving of our help?)

The poor don’t need our pity, they need our business and our investment and our ideas. They need to be treated as moral equals. I’m actually very optimistic that this message—your message—will stick. One “trait” of an idea that helps it succeed is unexpectedness, and I think there’s plenty that’s unexpected in your message. Many of us have had such a one-dimensional view of the poor for so long that the reality of their experience—and the reality of their needs—will surprise and motivate many people.

JN: We spent so much time – and our educational institutions drill in the notion – working on the Rider (the analytical). At Acumen Fund we talk a lot about “moral imagination” which is the power to see things from another’s perspective and literally to walk a mile in others’ shoes.  How do we all get better at tapping into our Elephants (our emotional selves)?  More specifically, how can we teach others to do this?

DH: When we change, it’s almost always because of a feeling. There’s a spark of emotion—desire or fear or hope—that motivates us to move. We rarely learn our way into change, encountering a set of facts so convincing that we leave our past behaviors behind. Feeling comes first.

John Kotter says that change tends to happen in a three-step pattern: People SEE something that makes them FEEL something that leads them to CHANGE. SEE-FEEL-CHANGE. Here’s what I would challenge Acumen and its brethren to do: Make it possible for us to walk a mile in the shoes of the poor. Not for fundraising purposes or for heartstring-plucking purposes, but for the purpose of “moral imagination,” as you say.

I don’t know what form that could take—audio interviews a la StoryCorps? Videos that show a “day in the life?” Daily journals posted online? Regardless of the format, I think your goal is 100% right: I believe that if we can create empathy for the poor, as they really are—full of dignity and talent and promise but hampered by a shocking lack of opportunities, relative to our own lives—then we can’t help but do something to help them.

Gynocare Fistula Center

In March, I had the opportunity to make a two-day field visit to Kenya’s second largest health sector hub – Eldoret – with my friend and colleague, Rob Katz. The purpose of our visit was simple – to map out the local healthcare provider landscape: identifying key players and the systemic issues in developing models to serve the poor. Of course, we hoped to uncover another entrepreneur or two brave enough to tackle these issues in a way that reflected our Acumen Fund mission – delivering services to the poor with integrity, dignity, and quality.

In theory, investing in sustainable and scalable enterprises as a means of delivering social impact seems straightforward enough. However, the reality of Acumen’s mission for the past 9 years – learned over countless due diligence trips and new field visits like this one – is that finding these pioneering enterprises within our parameters is a challenge. Furthermore, there are so many ways to approach these challenges, and Acumen Fund cannot support them all. Along the journey, we often find opportunities that don’t quite fit our investment criteria, but are ones we wish we could help because of their noble missions and the leaders behind them. In Eldoret, we came across one such opportunity in the form of Dr. Hillary Mabeya and the Gynocare Fistula Center.

After starting his medical career in Nairobi as an obstetrician and gynecologist, Dr. Mabeya first began visiting rural regions of the country as a member of AMREF’s Flying Doctor program. During these missions, he became increasingly aware of the plight of gynecologic fistula patients. These patients were often either young female victims of sexual abuse or obstructed labor survivors, who now faced daily physical difficulties in the most routine of tasks. In addition, once victimized, they could not marry and faced social ostracization, as well as the economic challenges of supporting themselves. Soon, Dr. Mabeya began increasing his tours of the region to serve these patients specifically – all operations and services were voluntary and free of charge.

Ultimately, Dr. Mabeya moved his family from Nairobi to Eldoret to be closer to these regions, to set up a higher quality, affordable facility – the Gynocare Fistula Center. In addition to all surgical and gynecological services offered at his clinic, there is also counseling, education, trainings, and other programs to support socio-economic development of women. Though currently a standalone clinic with limited facilities, he hoped to be able grow and eventually, expand across the region.

Dr. Mabeya had the character of all that we hope for in our entrepreneurs. He was extremely intelligent, compassionate, and dedicated to delivering help to those who needed it the most. Most importantly, he was invested in creating a better quality of life for them, beyond just a one-time operation. His commitment could not have been clearer. In the post-election violence of 2008 – he was one of the few doctors to remain open and operational, often conducting surgeries free of charge despite threats to his own life. He teared up as he told us that as a father of three daughters, he just wanted to ensure daughters like his own were taken care of, and given a means to support themselves to thrive and be economically independent.

Through his clinic, Dr. Mabeya is trying to make a scalable, and sustainable social impact. But in the time since he has opened the center, he has been struggling to cover his costs. His staff is often paid through his supplementary salary at the government teaching hospital, and the counselor at the center is actually an unpaid Mrs. Mabeya. With low price points, he is serving the poorest of the poor, but future projections don’t look promising, and surgeries are often done free of charge. Despite knowing his business is bleeding, he is committed to trying to make it work by stretching his personal finances as far as possible.

So while the Gynocare Center had the right mission, it had neither the margin nor as yet, as a small standalone private enterprise, the mandate for an Acumen investment.

This is the messy reality and challenge of investing in social enterprises. There are a committed few, those who seek to serve the greatest needs and beyond. But doing so in a financially-viable and sustainable manner is the hurdle. So while we may not be able to support Dr. Mabeya and his Gynocare Center as an investment, we wholeheartedly support his mission, and everything that he represents.

Manasa Tanuku just finished an internship for Acumen’s East Africa office, working specifically on the Health Portfolio. Prior to Acumen, Manasa was in M&A investing banking and holds a BSc in Finance and International Business from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

When we started Acumen’s San Francisco chapter last fall, we knew we wanted to do something that had a distinctly Northern Californian flavor. So we took a page from Silicon Valley’s tech community and held a pitch night last month where five emerging social enterprises gave their best business plan presentations to a panel of Bay Area venture capitalists and veteran entrepreneurs like Premal Shah of Kiva.

More than 200 people came to see entrepreneurs like Shah and Leila Janah of Samasource share the lessons they learned from building their nonprofits from the ground-up.

Whether facing cost constraints, building a new brand in an unknown market or creating traction in an online marketplace, all of the speakers shared a common commitment to approaching long-standing problems with innovative technology solutions. It was an incredible opportunity to hear from individuals who are so boldly championing social enterprise as a solution to the economic and social disparities endemic to global poverty.

The second half of the event was dedicated to showcasing some of the pioneering social entrepreneurship happening in the Bay Area through a VC panel and social entrepreneur pitch session.  After sharing her experience working with D.light in India as a 2009 Acumen Fund Fellow, Heidi Krauel graciously moderated the VC panel and pitch session. Each social entrepreneur was given five minutes to pitch their business models to the VC panel and then responded to five minutes of Q&A from the panelists.  The social entrepreneurs’ pitches – spanning businesses in microfinance, water, cleantech, international development and web – underscored the incredible level of commitment it takes to launch a social enterprise.  Their excitement and dedication was truly inspiring. We hope the critical questioning from VC panelists Wes Selke of Good Capital, Beaudean Seil of Hunstman Gay Capital Impact and Esther Park of RSF Social Finance, will help them refine their business models as they work to build their organizations.

We partnered with Hub Bay Area and SOCAP10 at the Hub’s new downtown SoMa location. Just a few hours before the event, the Hub was still buzzing with activity with members dispersed throughout the 8600 sq. ft. of communal workspace. But, by 6 p.m. the Hub’s staff had expertly transformed the interior from a sea of modular work islands, designed to foster radical collaboration and idea flow, into an event space soon to be filled with 200 attendees. The wine was flowing courtesy of our sponsors Y&B Wines and The Bubble Lounge.

Following the pitches, we were thrilled to be approached by other social entrepreneurs interested in similar events in the future. For us, this was a true measure of the event’s success.  We hope Social Enterprise from Scratch is just the beginning of SF for Acumen’s potential to serve as a resource and inspiration for our community.

Join SF for Acumen and Nuru Project for DIGNITY, a photo auction and exhibit benefitting Acumen Fund. The event will be held on Saturday, August 7th at Gallery 16 in San Francisco, and will feature 30 prints by renowned photographers for auction.  All tickets include open wine/beer bar and hors d’oeuvres, and proceeds from the event will support Acumen Fund. Register here.

Mediha Abdulhay and Kim-Mai Cutler are co-leaders of the SF for Acumen chapter. They organized the Social Enterprise from Scratch event at Hub SoMa in San Francisco in June 2010. Learn more about SF for Acumen on our Community site.

Academically and professionally, I am interested in private sector development in emerging markets. Acumen Fund’s unique investment approach – its efforts to promote sustainable business models that serve the bottom of the social and economic pyramid – attracted me to the organization.  I have spent the past few weeks at Acumen Fund evaluating business ventures in India’s agriculture sector.  In particular, I am evaluating companies in the dairy sector and businesses that use mobile phone technology to provide information to farmers.

Two weeks ago, I spent four days working with an entrepreneur in the dairy sector and visiting the rural villages where he planned to establish a milk procurement network.  Although India is the world leader in absolute milk production, generating approximately 100 million metric tons/year, the country’s agriculture sector is inefficient and undeveloped.  India’s agriculture sector employs over 50% of the workforce, yet agriculture and livestock account for only 20% of its GDP.  The agriculture sector employs a disproportionate number of the poor; there are 260 million smallholder farmers living on less than one dollar a day.  Two main reasons for this lack of productivity are the size of the unorganized sector and the dearth of private firms operating in the organized sector.  The unorganized sector is large, accounting for approximately 70% of all milk production.  Meanwhile, the organized dairy market is currently dominated by large state-sponsored cooperatives, which were originally formed in the 1970s under the World Bank’s Operation Flood program to ensure adequate domestic supply of dairy products.

The organized sector’s low penetration and failure to provide consistent extension services negatively impact farmers’ productivity and income.  This void creates an opportunity for middle-men who purchase milk from farmers at irregular intervals, use opaque pricing, and have inefficient procurement networks, all of which decrease quality and discourage farmers from producing more milk.  Without proper procurement networks and extension services, farmers do not view milk production as a profitable activity.  They typically resort to subsistence farming, which generates lower, less consistent seasonal income and is directly tied to the amount of land farmers own.  Consequently, there are opportunities for firms to establish sustainable sourcing networks in rural areas, which would increase farmers’ productivity and income.

Last Sunday, I woke up at 4:30 AM to observe and interview farmers at a vegetable market in Hyderabad and at farms outside of the city who were using a cell phone application to obtain pricing information and connecting with buyers.  The goal of the technology is to balance supply and demand and boost farmers’ incomes.  Many markets do not operate efficiently because of imperfect information.  Prices signal to both buyers and sellers the value each attributes to a good.  Without access to correct pricing, farmers lose potential income by selling their goods below market price.   Even before dawn, the market was chaotic.  Farmers and buyers congregated between piles of chile peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants, shouting out prices and talking about the harvests.   It was fascinating to see farmers use the application in person and learn about their frustrations.  The visit underscored the difficulty for businesses in not only creating products that serve the bottom of the pyramid, but also developing sustainable revenue models.

Jason Ballet is a joint MA/MBA student at SAIS/Johns Hopkins and Columbia Business School.  This summer, he is working on the agriculture portfolio in Acumen Fund’s India office. The Summer Spotlight series features posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.

AyurVAID / AyurSEVA Hospitals is a chain of Ayurveda hospitals with a reach across the four southern states in India.  Through a new health checkup camp initiative, recently launched in partnership with a Bangalore-based NGO, I interact nonverbally everyday with hundreds of people from BoP populations; almost all the people we consult with at the camps speak Kannada, Tamil, Urdu or Hindi, and I speak English and Japanese.

Every other day we go to different low-income areas and set up a camp for the day. Surrounded by a variety of aromas, noises and straying animals, the staff members of our partner NGO quietly register unorganized laborers for a small fee and give them access to bank accounts and insurance products under a scorching sun.  Registered members enjoy the immediate benefit of our health checkup screening.  Many bring self-prescribed tablets and ask doctors’ opinions for the first time.  Some bring lab results and clinical documentation, seeking  further advice.  A variety of health complaints and medical histories are assessed through detailed consultations conducted by our doctors.

I communicate with those patients by sharing the stories with the doctors, managing their clinical data, and observing their candid reactions to our onsite medicine sales and marketing pitch.  I hear their stories of resilience in a simple but hard life.  I see a high prevalence of tubectomy and anemia amongst the women, and undernourishment amongst the male construction workers.

Recently, we started selling medicines at the campsites in small packets containing a week-long dosage.  Although many expected the distribution of free medicine, we sell these products for a small fee as we are not solely a charitable hospital.  I see big smiles in the faces of patients, nonetheless, and the medicines are selling well.  I hear them saying, “I just wanted to try this. After all, the doctor listened to me for 10 minutes and it costs me only three cups of tea.”

Sometimes we can help but other times we cannot.   We categorize the patients into three risk levels and give priority to those who are at high risk.  Often, though, I feel helpless to the high-risk patients because there is still no system to support them—they are not insured and treatment costs are too high even at our AyurSEVA Hospitals.  Some take on debt to afford their treatments, but this is where I think AyurSEVA needs to develop an innovative health insurance product.  We are working hard to connect our camp activities to our hospital system for higher impact, scale and sustainability.  It takes time, though.

As for now, we are busy hearing the stories of masons, housekeepers and vendors on busy colorful alleys in Bangalore.

Satoko Okamoto is a 2010 Acumen Fellow working with AyurVAID Hospitals in Bangalore.

When you manage large volumes of photographs, terms like provenance, metadata, and image resolution become common and everyday. Where was an image taken, when, and by whom? What is its subject? Who owns the image, and where can it legally be reproduced? What resolution does it have, and what is its DPI and color depth?

When you’ve worked as a photographer, single photographs make you wonder about the world swirling around that fraction of a second’s click of the shutter (or, image sensor, in the case of digital photography) — how did the photographer meet this person, and how long did they spend together? Did the photographer catch a natural moment in time, or was the photo posed — was this a single lucky frame, or one of many attempts? What did the person in the photo do for lunch that day, and where did they sleep that night — and will they be back to this same spot tomorrow?

A single photograph tells so many stories, and working with images exposes you to those invisible to the naked eye. Internally embedded within the file itself there’s an entire world of digital information about how the photo was created and how it can be used; and when you’ve taken images, as so many of us have now, you start to wonder about the dynamic world behind the static image. When film editors go to the movies, they can’t help but see the cuts and fades, the artifice created through editing; the same happens to photographers, from amateurs to professionals, with photographic images.

Despite all this, there still exists an essential storytelling quality of every image, beyond the metadata and even backstory — created solely through quality of light, composition, iconic reference, and projected meaning. A single image can incite a revolt, reunite a family, or remind its viewers of our common humanity, just through what you think you know by looking at it. And this storytelling ability of photographs remains perhaps their greatest strength.

This summer at Acumen Fund, we’re asking the team to select photos that they’ve connected to in some way — whether because of where it was taken and when, or by whom; because of what they know about the world surrounding this millisecond in time; or, because they like the way the image is composed, and subject, captured. This will be a regular feature, called Photo of the Week, and check this space for future selections from Acumen’s community!

Being new to Acumen, as I am, I have a relatively limited knowledge of the people and work that many of our images represent, and I’m only just getting to know the stories of how these images were created. But I’m lucky to have such a rich pool of images recording Acumen’s investments, events, and community members to choose from.

I chose this image at the top of this post because it reminds me of a very simple way the impact of our investments can be measured – in a farmer’s pride in his crops. Micro Drip, working in Pakistan’s Tharparkar Desert, can help make this delicate moment possible through drip irrigation, and its attendant growth and savings; Micro Drip shared this photo with us.  I love the way the frame is filled by his healthy crop of plants, focusing our attention on him; the uniform colors, set off by his red pen; his delicate touch of the fruits of his labor, which I can almost feel in my own hands; and I love how I can read the happy expression on his face even with the dark exposure and oblique angle – or, at least, I think I can.

Looking forward to the photos other members of the Acumen team highlight in the coming weeks!

And if you want to get in deep with photographs and their meaning, check out Errol Morris’s writings in the NYTimes.

Lucy Lindsey is a Summer Associate working for the Communications team in the New York office at Acumen Fund. The Summer Spotlight series features posts by Acumen Fund Summer Associates from around the world.

Greetings from Tokyo. I’m an editor at Eiji Press, a Japanese publishing company with a focus on social change. We released the Japanese edition of Jacqueline’s Novogratz’s book, The Blue Sweater, on February 2, 2010. Since then, we have received a wonderful response to the book and we believe that it will add momentum to the burgeoning social entrepreneurship movement in Japan.

In February 2009, Nana Watanabe, one of the most influential catalysts for the social entrepreneurship movement in Japan, sent me an email: “Jacqueline Novogratz is going to release a book in the US,” she said. I was excited because I had read about Jacqueline and Acumen Fund in Nana’s book, Changemakers: Social Entrepreneurs are Changing the World, so I asked the US publisher to send me a copy. It was one of the greatest books I’d ever read. We decided to buy the translation rights right away.

However, there were some concerns about the book. Generally, it is difficult to sell longer books like The Blue Sweater in Japan (the Japanese edition has 400 pages), and readers tend to choose books with clear titles, through which they can easily imagine the contents of the book.  “The Blue Sweater” – what is the book about?  Someone kindly advised me that it wouldn’t sell well with such a vague title.

But we believed in the power of The Blue Sweater. I asked a few authoritative figures to read the book and to write reviews in advance. Masahisa Kogure, a famous social entrepreneur in Japan, sent us a wonderful comment praising the book as a ‘must read’ for everyone conscious about our world. Mami Arai of Sanseido Bookstore said, “This book is really eye-opening, awaking us to sense of sympathy for this interdependent world. The Blue Sweater will change our future gently, steadily and extensively.” Our sales staff brought these reviews and a galley proof to many bookstores. “Please read this. You will understand the power of this book,” they said.

On the release date, The Blue Sweater was displayed at the front of many bookstores among many thinner and lower-priced bestsellers. After two weeks, the book was ranked in the top ten bestsellers in major book stores in Tokyo. Some newspapers, including Nikkei, also wrote great reviews. It didn’t take long for us to decide to do a second printing.

But the story had only just begun. Jacqueline visited Japan in April following our invitations. Tokyo Foundation and Japan Society organized a series of seminars featuring Jacqueline in Tokyo. They also gave Eiji Press a chance to organize an event on base-of-the-pyramid development in collaboration with The Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry (METI). The event was a great success and we received a lot of positive feedback.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t meet Jacqueline because I had to attend the London Book Fair that was held at the same time. However, I saw the impact of her visit. On many blogs and on Twitter, readers wrote about the book and recommended it strongly. Some magazines, newspapers and TVs contacted us to report on the book events. Readers sent us emails filled with delighted words. All of the book events featuring the author were filled to capacity.

The Blue Sweater is still selling well in Japan – we are currently considering a 4th printing. A circle of support has emerged among readers and a sense of cooperation has been growing among many people. Today in Japan, poverty is discussed more openly, and we hear more young people talking about what they can do to solve the problem, in part, thanks to The Blue Sweater.

The Blue Sweater is Jacqueline’s story, but it is not just one person’s story. It is also the story of the many people who appeared in the book, and it is becoming the story of the readers. As her blue sweater brought Jacqueline a great journey in life, the book itself has become a blue sweater for many readers. I hope it will spread all over the world.

Tatsunari Takano is editor of The Blue Sweater at Eiji Press in Japan. If you’re based in Japan and would like to get involved, a group of volunteers in Japan will be hosting a Blue Sweater book discussion in Japanese on July 9th in Tokyo. Please visit the event website for more details.