Social Catalysts

Anaemedia

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:20:00 +0000

Recently, I came across an interesting initiative to make health monitoring equipment for the grassroots market. Here are some excerpts from their website:

...

"There is therefore an unmet clinical need of an affordable, robust, portable, non-invasive and easy to use instrument to detect and importantly, MONITOR anaemia. To make a real difference, such an instrument must find its way to the grassroots, into the hands of the 3,24,000 strong Aanganwadis , the primordial health care unit of Rural India"

...

"AnaeMedia is a socio-technological initiative. We have developed a prick-less anaemia scanner that can measure HB levels and help diagnose anaemia by referring to an accompanying simple chart. It is designed for use by low-skilled village health workers, rugged and dust-proof to last in the countryside, and equipped with a rechargeable battery and hand crank mechanism for operation in areas with infrequent electric supply."

Social Enterprise & Investment Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 06:16:00 +0000

Last date for enterprise nominations: 15th February, 2009

Sankalp (English: Pledge or Determination) is conceived as a South Asia Social Enterprise and Investment Forum with the primary goal of bringing together various stakeholders sharing a common conviction that capital should be invested to create multiple bottom-line returns (financial, social and environmental) and not exclusively financial (profit-maximizing) or social (philanthropic) returns.

Sankalp 2009 along with partners such as The Rockefeller Foundation, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) and the Rural Innovation Network (RIN) is the region's first investment forum for emerging enterprises as well as ideas that aim to solve pressing issues of the day in a sustainable and profitable manner. Sankalp is an initiative of IDG (India Development Gateway).

Sankalp 2009 is an effort to discover, connect and support the most investible social MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium enterprises) operating in high impact sectors such as:

Agriculture and Rural Innovations
Education for all
Clean tech and Energy
Healthcare Inclusion
Highly Scalable Social Models

The event will represent the culmination of months of nation-wide search to recognize the most Emerging models & High Impact Social Enterprises.

"Why are you doing this?"

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 10:34:00 +0000

A close friend of mine has this very interesting process of getting first year students and offering them internships during winter vacations. This is a short 25-30 day period wherein they get to do something hands-on while he gets some ideas executed through them.

Of course, it has reaped excellent rewards in the past with the CURE video being one of the successes. This year again we met some fresh faces with the gleam, enthusiasm and dreams of the college youth. When we were done discussing the ideas and plans, they asked us a very pertinent question -- "Why are you doing this?"

The question may have been a simple, logical and finite one but the series of questions that it started inside me were endless...

... I really wanted to say that this is what I would want to do throughout life... and it is a lot of
the other stuff that I do that should be the object of this particular question...

... Ideas, thoughts and experiments is what help us learn... and this is a way of experimentation...

... It is giving importance to the part inside me which always wanted to teach... always wanted to part of the academia... this is a small way to keep in touch with it and keep the fire raging....

Interesting day... nice kids... a lot of questions... :-)

Shocking...

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Fri, 02 May 2008 11:10:00 +0000

I was reading this article in Down To Earth a few days ago and found out that -- doctors treating victims did not know the exact composition of the gas that was leaked on Dec 03, 1984.... is when more than 20,000 people died... 3800 of them immediately... (Source)

This shocked me beyond my wits... how can a company cite "trade secrets" and shy away from its responsibilities... what was the government doing? How could Union Carbide even make such a statement and get away with it? How could they even think that they could get away by making such a statement?

Shocking... this is the real world that we need to deal with... no theories work... this is the "big bad" world... The Bhopal Gas Tragedy and Union Carbide were social catalysts too... and very strong ones at that... man-made... lakhs are still facing the consequences more than 23 years after it happened...

... But they were catalysts which we would never want to emulated... catalysts which we would not bless.... but catalysts from which we could learn a lot...

There is a saying in Sanskrit which translates to "Pray to the demons first... so that they do not spoil your work..."... lets pray to them, so that we do not have such tragedies in future...

Exceptionally Inspiring...

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:56:00 +0000

A friend sent me a wonderful article today morning... The following quote from it is exceptionally inspiring...

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans, that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that never otherwise would have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now."

- Goethe

Ideas to Execution through Sacrifice...

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 05:09:00 +0000

The road to success has many hurdles, they say. It should be clear to anyone having tried to do something on their own that most of these hurdles cannot be solved through money or time alone... they need something deeper and more profound... sacirifices...

The path from ideas to execution goes through sacrifices. As I discussed in my previous post -- sustainability is not just about being economically or environmentally sustainable. It is about being able to sustain through the seemingly endless sacrifices that one has to make to achieve the vision and goal at hand...

I read this article today morning. Moses touches a very deep issue.

""However, at the end of the day, the project didn't launch because no one from the management team wanted to move full-time to the region to live among the people the NGO wanted to serve. In other words, no one wanted to do the heavy lifting of starting a BoP venture. The management team thought, incorrectly, that it could simply manage the venture from the States – parachuting in and out of the region multiple times a year. There were a variety of reasons for this approach: family, comfort, lifestyle, and finances – to name a few.

The idea was great, but the commitment wasn't there to make it a reality.

...
...

Success at the BoP has its costs. The challenge to many of us, myself included, is whether we are committed and willing to give up many of our comforts in order to live with the very people we are trying to empower.""

We all want to be in our comfort zones and help the world around us. Of course, it seems stupid to endanger ourselves in the quest to help others... maybe, we, who live in the comforts find it hard to give them up because we are afraid of the unknown... maybe we are just plain lazy... or maybe since we do not get any direct benefits from these initiatives, we do not want to sacrifice... maybe it is all for name/fame/money... maybe I am being too emotional and it is just a one-off case Moses quoted...

Would someone who directly benefits from such ideas be willing to sacrifice more than anyone who does not see direct benefits accruing? Maybe... would someone experienced help me understand this?

All this is not just about money or charity. Many of the initiatives and ideas that we can think about, do not and cannot succeed with a hands-off, top-down approach. We need to get our hands and maybe our clothes dirty as well... this is a fight against poverty and disease... this is a fight against the ills of the world... we want to create a better world to live in... do we think that these evils will give in easily?

Sustainability...

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:17:00 +0000

"Sustainable" enterprises is a widely used term today in social entrepreneurship circles. This usage often refers to sustainability in the economic and/or environmental sense.

However, if one looks at an enterprise in totality, sustainability refers not only to the economic and environmental footprint of the organisation but also encompasses internal factors, staff livelihoods & family lives, satisfaction of all stakeholders & mission statement...

An initiative/organisation/enterprise can be termed sustainable only when it has the ability and potential to move ahead in its mission without adversely affecting any of its stakeholders. This does not mean that there should be no challenges, that there will be no hardships...

What this means is that all stakeholders must be prepared to face adversity... without getting negatively affected deeply from inside... without getting bogged down... this is what leaders say when they refer to the 'sacrifices made along the way'... And it is this where a lot of startups fail at... the sacrifices to be made become so huge that the original human hope gives way to surrender and withdrawal...

e.g.
An idea may be economically viable, environmentally sound but may require the employees to invest all of their savings without any income for years to come... 99 times of out of 100, such a venture will fail... it will not be sustainable.

Or, lets say that an organisation fulfills the aspirations of its stakeholders but cannot remain true to its mission... in this case, one way for the organisation to survive will be to change its mission statement thereby signalling the 'death' of the original vision. The organisation may come up very well and serve the modified mission statement (that is what learnings are all about!) but the original vision would have proven to be unsustainable.

In other words, sustainability also includes the overall mission statement coupled with the sacrifices to made by the people involved along with economic, environmental and other factors...

So, when someone says that the venture became unsuccessful or disbanded, what it means is that it became unsustainable in the circumstances they faced... and it could have been any of the above which cracked... not just the economics...

We need "creative capitalists" - Bill Gates

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 17:50:00 +0000

At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Bill Gates spoke about the need for the evolution of capitalist forces to focus on poverty alleviation, WSJ reports

""We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well"
....
Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. "Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don't fully benefit from market forces," "

On the face of it, a statement seems blasphemous but then again, capitalism and free enterprise has given birth to the spirit of entrepreneurship which has led to economic development of a significant population of the planet. Capitalism, of course has its shortcomings and if applied as is to poverty alleviation, may fail miserably or may create havoc.

It is the spirit of capitalism that needs to be preserved and the motives modified to include the larger good of the society along with economic incentive.

"Mr. Gates was emphatic that he's not calling for a fundamental change in how capitalism works. He cited Adam Smith, whose treatise, "The Wealth of Nations," lays out the rationale for the self-interest that drives capitalism and companies like Microsoft. That shouldn't change, "one iota," Mr. Gates said.

But there's more to Adam Smith, he added. "This was written before 'Wealth of Nations,'" Mr. Gates said, flipping through a copy of Adam Smith's 1759 book, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments." It argues that humans gain pleasure from taking an interest in the "fortunes of others.""

Of course, Prof. Yunus is the pioneer of this thought and has on several occasions (1, 2) spoken about the need for a separate stock exchange for socially-aware economic enterprises. It is, however, interesting to note that someone with Gates's background voices similar thoughts...

Engineers for Social Impact

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 17:23:00 +0000

I came across this interesting initiative.

"'Engineers for Social Impact' is a unique fellowship program to connect the best engineering talent to the most credible social enterprises that drive market-based solutions to development in India."

The idea in itself holds a lot of value. Expose college students to organisations working on grassroot initiatives in a sustainable way. The participating organisations are well positioned and should provide a good exposure to the selected students.

My only crib why limit to a select few elite engineering colleges? I guess the practical execution aspects would have played a role here.

In every case, a very good start indeed... Best of Luck!

Social Catalysts...

noreply@blogger.com (Mohit Garg) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:32:00 +0000

social : adjective -- relating to society, its organization, or hierarchy
catalyst : noun -- a person or thing that precipitates an event

"The only thing eternal is change", thus speaketh the learned seers. Changes there have been... I have been witness to some of these changes over my lifetime...

... I have changed -- physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually...

... The world has changed... some say that it has flattened...

... The environment (both in the climatic sense and the sense of our surroundings) has changed...

... The power (both in terms of the political power and energy security) equations in the world have changed...

... The society has changed... some say it has progressed... others say that it has regressed... few are non-committal... the rest do not care -- their lives have not changed...

... It will be hard to find things which have not changed significantly in my lifetime... maybe human traits of love, affection have not changed... maybe they too have evolved...

In any case, this is not to count the things that have changed and those which have not... neither do I intend to discuss the sanctity of what the seers' had said. Here, I am trying to understand the methodology of change... what causes change and how does it operate.

Change can be...
constructive or destructive,
momentary or everlasting,
through evolution or through revolution,
sudden or gradual,
...
...

Change can be caused by...
external factors or internal factors,
struggling with the situation or submitting to the situation,
me or the world around me,
collective action or individual brilliance,
...
...

Whatever the change, the cause of the change is the will power of the agent behind it. We all want the world to change for the better... we hope that things will improve... that our next generation will live in a more comfortable place... and for this, we need to support the positive and constructive change happening around us...

This is a place to discuss about changes taking place in the social structures in the world, specifically India... we will talk about how to speed up the positive aspects of this change... how to catalyse them, the challenges, the opportunities and learn...

In short... we intend to understand the social catalysts in the system...

Social catalysts are agents...
agents of ... change...
agents of societal change...