Leila Chi­ray­ath Janah is the founder of Sama­source, an award-winning social busi­ness that con­nects peo­ple liv­ing in poverty to microwork — small, computer-based tasks that build skills and gen­er­ate life-changing income. Janah is a fre­quent speaker on social entre­pre­neur­ship and tech­nol­ogy, and her work has been pro­filed by CBS, CNN, NPR, the BBC, The New York Times, and The New Sci­en­tist. She serves on the board of the non-profit Tech­Soup Global and as an advi­sor to mobile shop­ping app Spree­tales. She received the World Tech­nol­ogy Award for Social Entre­pre­neur­ship in 2010, and in 2009 was named one of Fast Company’s Most Inno­v­a­tive Women in Tech.

Prior to Sama­source, Janah was a found­ing Direc­tor of  Incen­tives for Global Health, an ini­tia­tive to increase R&D spend­ing on dis­eases of the poor, and a man­age­ment con­sul­tant at Katzen­bach Part­ners (now Booz & Co.). She has also worked at the World Bank and as a travel writer for Let’s Go in Mozam­bique, Brazil, and Borneo.

Janah was a Vis­it­ing Scholar with the Stan­ford Pro­gram on Global Jus­tice and Aus­tralian National University’s Cen­ter for Applied Phi­los­o­phy and Pub­lic Ethics. She received a BA from Har­vard and lives in San Francisco.

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about Sama­source and what inspired you to start it?

I founded Sama­source in 2008 to reduce poverty among poor women and youth by giv­ing them dig­ni­fied work. Inspired by entre­pre­neurs I had met in Kenya the year before, and by expe­ri­ences I had as a man­age­ment con­sul­tant work­ing in the global ser­vices sec­tor, I engi­neered the idea of send­ing microwork — small, web-based tasks like enhanc­ing or ver­i­fy­ing data, images, and text –to peo­ple who live on less than three dol­lars a day in poor parts of the world. Sama­source employs this work­force in 16 work cen­ters around the world, pro­vid­ing a web plat­form that we built in-house, train­ing for work­ers, and a lot of work qual­ity man­age­ment and feed­back. Our team in San Fran­cisco runs sales, inter­na­tional oper­a­tions, and engi­neer­ing, and oper­ates much like a typ­i­cal startup. To date, Sama­source has pro­vided work to more than 1,500 peo­ple liv­ing in India, Haiti, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa and dis­trib­uted over one mil­lion US dol­lars in worker pay­ments to the field.

I first vis­ited Africa when I was sev­en­teen to vol­un­teer at a school for blind in Ghana. There, I quickly learned that many of the ideas I had about poverty were wrong— I found that peo­ple are poor because they are dis­con­nected from global mar­kets.  In Ghana, this was man­i­fested directly in a lack of good, qual­ity jobs avail­able to bright young peo­ple.  Most of my stu­dents wanted to leave Ghana for no other rea­son than to find decent work.

I believe that the best soci­eties are the ones that pro­mote the hard­est work­ing and bright­est peo­ple.  After Ghana, I felt that my life’s pur­pose was to level the play­ing field for work. I feel that even more strongly now.  I think we have a duty, as peo­ple who live in a rel­a­tively wealthy coun­try, to free up all of this tal­ent wait­ing in the wings and ready to par­tic­i­pate in the global econ­omy. We have to con­nect that tal­ent to gen­uine opportunity.

The idea of Sama­source really came together a few years later in 2007 when I was in Kenya on a safari. I got bored vaca­tion­ing and con­vinced a local busi­ness incu­ba­tor to con­nect me to some local entre­pre­neurs in the emerg­ing tech space in Nairobi. I met almost 50 who were start­ing small com­pa­nies that could do data entry, web min­ing, and other basic tasks. The entre­pre­neurs told me that their great­est chal­lenge was find­ing enough con­tracts for employ­ment.  I asked them how some­one like me might be valu­able to them. “Go out and find us work. You can sell our ser­vices”, they said.

Out­sourc­ing deals are typ­i­cally won on golf courses and in the board­rooms and bars of big Euro­pean and Amer­i­can cities. These Kenyan entre­pre­neurs were totally dis­con­nected from global mar­kets, but will­ing and able to work.

Can you tell us a story of how the Sama­source plat­form was suc­cess­fully used?

In 2009, we began build­ing a deliv­ery cen­ter in Haiti using low-cost net­books and satel­lite con­nec­tiv­ity, on the back of our tech plat­form. Haitians live in a densely pop­u­lated coun­try (10 mil­lion peo­ple on an island smaller than Mary­land), learn French and Eng­lish at school, share a time zone with New York, and live a short, cheap flight away from Miami – all this makes them great can­di­dates for dig­i­tal work. In a region where the chief eco­nomic activ­ity is sub­sis­tence farm­ing and 80% of the pop­u­la­tion lives in poverty, the type of work Sama­source offers could make a dra­matic impact. Fifty-three per­cent of Haitians are lit­er­ate. By the most con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate, that leaves about a mil­lion peo­ple as poten­tial Sama­source workers.

When the coun­try was rocked by a mas­sive earth­quake on Jan­u­ary 12th, 2010, it became clear that Samasource’s work in Haiti would become an impor­tant part of the country’s recon­struc­tion, and we moved ahead with great urgency.  Work­ing with a part­ner on the ground, we main­tained Inter­net con­nec­tiv­ity in Mire­bal­ais and pro­vided microwork oppor­tu­ni­ties to peo­ple who had lost their liveli­hoods. Today, Sama­source has trained forty work­ers in Haiti who now have employ­ment and a grow­ing set of skills. Most impor­tantly, they have hope for the future.

What’s the largest chal­lenge in bring­ing dig­i­tal work to rural com­mu­ni­ties in the devel­op­ing world?

My vision is that Sama­source oper­ates on a busi­ness model that ben­e­fits both our clients and our work­ers by offer­ing a qual­i­fied dis­trib­uted pool of labor that is well edu­cated, trained and moti­vated.  Because we focus on work that requires some mea­sure of exper­tise and ded­i­ca­tion, our biggest chal­lenges are design­ing the micro tasks smartly and giv­ing peo­ple the right and effec­tive train­ing. We stay on top of this by employ­ing a ded­i­cated work­force man­aged by strong local lead­ers who pro­vide qual­ity con­trol and exten­sive train­ing in local work centers.

One chal­lenge to the work that Sama­source does is the fact that jobs that could be done by work­ers here in the US are being out­sourced to work­ers abroad. How do you respond to indi­vid­u­als that chal­lenge Samasource’s mis­sion on those grounds?

Before going to Africa, I started my career in global jus­tice work­ing on edu­ca­tional equity for the ACLU in Ingle­wood, a neigh­bor­hood close to where I went to high school. There are def­i­nitely impor­tant bat­tles to be fought here in Amer­ica, and we’re actu­ally in the midst of brain­storm­ing ways to bring Samasource’s model to the US.

In terms of our global work, I would respond by say­ing that Sama­source is not dis­plac­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Amer­i­cans, but rather expand­ing what busi­nesses can do with a lim­ited bud­get. Min­i­mum wages in the US start at over $5 per hour, but the work we do tend to be lower-skill tasks that don’t make sense to do at that cost – it would put most of our clients out of busi­ness. Mov­ing this work to lower-cost loca­tions is the only option for our clients to main­tain prices Amer­i­cans can afford. Most of our clients choose Sama­source over other off­shore providers, not Amer­i­can work­ers — given that its already a part of the sup­ply chain, we’re gen­er­ally com­pet­ing with large, for-profit out­sourc­ing firms in big cities in India and China. These firms have gen­er­ated seven bil­lion­aires in the last 20 years. These com­pa­nies don’t recruit mar­gin­al­ized women and youth, and do not guar­an­tee liv­ing wages to their work­ers. Because of their high attri­tion rates, we also tend to out­per­form them on qual­ity. So I think what we do is a win-win for Amer­i­can busi­nesses and for poor women and youth who des­per­ately need a chance.

What’s the vision for Sama­source for the next 5 years?

To date, we have dis­trib­uted over one mil­lion US dol­lars in microwork wages since our found­ing.   We have a global capac­ity of close to 2000 work­ers.  Look­ing to the future, we aim to scale and take work to tens of thou­sands of work­ers in the next five years. Once Sama­source really takes off, I envi­sion build­ing a fam­ily of “Sama” social busi­nesses, all focused on using tech­nol­ogy to drive social change.

How can our read­ers help you push for­ward your mission?

Read­ers can sup­port Samasource’s efforts in Haiti and world­wide by giv­ing work or donat­ing through our web­site. We also accept qual­i­fied vol­un­teers for projects that require a min­i­mum com­mit­ment of a few hours a week. If you’re inter­ested, please email us at info@samasource.org. You can also fol­low us on Twit­ter (@Samasource) and Like us on Face­book (facebook.com/Samasource).

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

Maria Rodale is CEO and Chair­man of Rodale Inc., the world’s lead­ing mul­ti­me­dia com­pany focused on health, well­ness, and the envi­ron­ment and the largest inde­pen­dent book pub­lisher in the USA. Rodale reaches 70 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide through brands such as Pre­ven­tion, Men’s Healthand Organic Gar­den­ing; through books includ­ing The South Beach Dietand Al Gore’s An Incon­ve­nient Truth; and through numer­ous dig­i­tal prop­er­ties. She is found­ing edi­tor of Rodale.com, which fea­tures her blog, Maria’s Farm Coun­try Kitchen.

Rodale is the author of Organic Man­i­festo: How Organic Farm­ing Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe, which cuts through the con­fu­sion and mis­in­for­ma­tion to pro­vide an indis­pens­able look at why chemical-free farm­ing unques­tion­ably holds the key to bet­ter health for our fam­i­lies and the planet.

She has won numer­ous awards, includ­ing the 2004 National Audubon Society’s “Rachel Car­son Award” and the 2007 United Nations Pop­u­la­tion Fund’s “Award for the Health and Dig­nity of Women.” She is a board mem­ber of Bette Midler’s New York Restora­tion Project and co-chair of the Rodale Insti­tute, a non­profit that has been ded­i­cated to pio­neer­ing organic farm­ing through research and out­reach to farm­ers, sci­en­tists, and con­sumers for over sixty years.

You are quoted say­ing, “If you do one thing to change the world go organic.”  Why do you believe that’s the case?

Organic food is health­ier and safer for you and your chil­dren and our environment. We now know that toxic chem­i­cals used in the pro­duc­tion of our food are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing our air, soil, and water and are ulti­mately poi­son­ing our fam­i­lies.  You do not need chem­i­cals to grow food. We have been mis­led into think­ing that adding chem­i­cals is nor­mal, nec­es­sary and that farm­ing with­out them is some­how strange or impos­si­ble. Vir­tu­ally every food in the world has been suc­cess­fully and prof­itably grown organ­i­cally in mod­ern pro­duc­tive and regen­er­a­tive ways.

What’s the biggest les­son you learned from your grand­fa­ther that has served you well as CEO and Chair­man at Rodale?

Courage, patience and per­sis­tence. He had the courage to come up with ideas and prod­ucts that so many peo­ple in the estab­lish­ment laughed at and made fun of him for. But he knew it was the right thing, and due to his per­sis­tence and patience, was able to change the world for the bet­ter. In 1942 when he launched Organic Gar­den­ing mag­a­zine, peo­ple called him crazy. Now, accord­ing to the new study by Thomp­son Reuters and NPR health, 58% of Amer­i­cans pre­fer organic food. It’s taken a long time, but it’s an amaz­ingly won­der­ful change!

What inspired you to make pro­mot­ing the ben­e­fits of an organic lifestyle your per­sonal mission?

As a mother, an activist, a busi­ness­woman and a vocal friend of the farmer, I’ve seen for myself the ben­e­fits of organic — so it’s easy to make it my per­sonal mis­sion. This is an idea that I have grown up with– the same idea that my grand­fa­ther started Rodale with over 60 years ago. Now is the time to bring the mes­sage to the masses– and sci­ence is on our side. A grow­ing body of sci­en­tific evi­dence sug­gests that toxic chem­i­cals that are being used to grow food are hurt­ing our bod­ies and our planet.  These chem­i­cals are being passed on to the next gen­er­a­tion too. Writ­ing Organic Man­i­festo, and spend­ing time with the farm­ers in the field only reaf­firmed my pur­suit of an organic lifestyle. It’s the right thing to do.

One of the inter­est­ing things that is part of the Rodale Fam­ily is the Rodale Insti­tute, can you tell us about that and about some of the excit­ing things com­ing out of there?

There are so many excit­ing things going on at the Rodale Insti­tute, and I highly sug­gest check­ing out the web­site to find out what work­shops, events, tours and projects we have going on. Recently, we were very excited to open our Water Purifi­ca­tion Eco-Center, an on-site bath­room and waste­water treat­ment sys­tem that that cap­tures rain­wa­ter and uses it sev­eral times before return­ing it to the soil as clean water. Con­structed wet­lands are a little-known, yet incred­i­bly effi­cient way to deal with all those things we flush down our pipes. Less in your face than a com­post­ing toi­let, this method for sewage treat­ment cycles nutri­ents and water through the land­scape to cre­ate greater fer­til­ity, eco­log­i­cal vibrancy, and cleaner groundwater.

We are also spear­head­ing pro­grams to raise funds for causes that pow­er­fully align with Rodale Institute’s goals.  In the U.S., we need to be find­ing, edu­cat­ing and sup­port­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of organic farm­ers, so we are elated to be start­ing Your 2 Cents, a pro­gram that unites pro­duc­ers, con­sumers, researchers and edu­ca­tors to reach that goal. The pro­gram is designed to raise funds to sup­port stu­dent schol­ar­ships for sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture degrees, mil­i­tary vet­er­ans estab­lish­ing careers in organic farm­ing, and new organic farm­ers while estab­lish­ing research grants for farm­ers in the Your 2 Cents net­work. Our inau­gural pro­gram part­ner Uncle Matt’s Organic, a com­pany that offers organic cit­rus juice and pro­duce, is kick­ing off sup­port by donat­ing two cents per case good of their organic juice sold to the fund.

What are some con­crete actions our read­ers can do today to help push towards a health­ier and greener life?

The first thing peo­ple need to know and believe when pur­su­ing a health­ier, greener life is that they are NOT pow­er­less– this is the main point I wanted peo­ple to take away from my book.  The most pow­er­ful thing we can do for the health of our fam­i­lies and our planet is not just to choose organic (though that is very impor­tant) – but also to go out and demand organic as well. This can be as sim­ple as a con­ver­sa­tion with your local grocer.

If I am shop­ping for milk or eggs– or any­thing really– and organic options are not avail­able, I always ask why not?  As con­sumers we always have the power to vote with our dol­lars; if we buy fac­tory farmed meat– peo­ple will con­tinue to pro­duce it.

A huge piece of this is also edu­ca­tion– edu­ca­tion of our friends and neigh­bors, our chil­dren and our­selves. We need to arm our­selves to be bet­ter, savvier shop­pers, and to under­stand labels and lan­guage. Over time, com­pa­nies can really change lan­guage to make it mis­lead­ing. For exam­ple, “con­ven­tional” pro­duce should not equate to nor­mal– it means it was grown using chemicals!

Any part­ing words?

Liv­ing an organic lifestyle is fun, reward­ing, and can truly be acces­si­ble to fam­i­lies of dif­fer­ent sizes on vary­ing budgets.  Small steps are key. It can be started just by buy­ing organic beans and grains in bulk, or by select­ing just a few organic “no-compromise” items to switch into your diet. But once you start, you won’t want to go back. You’ll be amazed at how your health and hap­pi­ness change by liv­ing organically.

My blog, Maria’s Farm Coun­try Kitchen, is where I work to share the plea­sures of sim­ple, deli­cious organic liv­ing. Recipes needn’t be elab­o­rate– but they can incor­po­rate great things you can grow in your own back­yard. I am a mom, so I know that the best recipes are often the people-pleasers– and it is a great bonus when they are easy, organic and good for you.

Sum­mer is tomato sea­son, so recently I have been shar­ing some of my favorite tomato tips and recipes – per­fect for last minute enter­tain­ing or as a sim­ple snack. A new, instant clas­sic at my house this sum­mer is Toma­quet– Cata­lan tomato bread. I really rec­om­mend giv­ing it a try: Toma­quet recipe, Recipe page

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

Dara O’Rourke is the co-founder and Chief Sus­tain­abil­ity Offi­cer of GoodGuide and an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Envi­ron­men­tal and Labor Pol­icy at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. Dara has spent the last 20 years research­ing the envi­ron­men­tal, labor, and health impacts of global pro­duc­tion sys­tems. Dara’s work has been fea­tured in The New York Times, The Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune, The Boston Globe, The Los Ange­les Times, The Econ­o­mist, Busi­ness Week, Newsweek, Time, CBS, ABC, NPR, and even O — the Oprah Mag­a­zine. Dara has served as a con­sul­tant to the World Bank, the United Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme, the Otr­ga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nomic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment, and a wide range of non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions. He was pre­vi­ously a pro­fes­sor at MIT. Dara holds an MS and Ph.D. from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley and a BS from MIT.

What is the GoodGuide and what inspired you to start it?

GoodGuide pro­vides infor­ma­tion about the health, envi­ron­men­tal and social per­for­mance of prod­ucts and companies. Our mis­sion is to help con­sumers make pur­chas­ing deci­sions that reflect their per­sonal values. We believe that bet­ter infor­ma­tion can trans­form the mar­ket­place: as more con­sumers buy bet­ter prod­ucts, retail­ers and man­u­fac­tur­ers will face incen­tives to make prod­ucts that are safe, envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able and pro­duced using eth­i­cal sourc­ing of raw mate­ri­als and labor. GoodGuide’s sci­ence team – com­prised of chemists, tox­i­col­o­gists, nutri­tion­ists, soci­ol­o­gists, and life­cy­cle assess­ment experts – has rated over 120,000 con­sumer prod­ucts on their health, envi­ron­men­tal and social performance.

The idea for GoodGuide came about while I was putting sun­screen on my then 3-year-old daughter’s face. I started won­der­ing about the ingre­di­ents in her sun­screen, so I went back to cam­pus at UC Berke­ley, where I teach, did some research, and found out that the sun­screen con­tained traces of poten­tially toxic chem­i­cals. I then researched the rest of my daughter’s stuff and found that her sham­poo, her favorite toys, and even her fur­ni­ture con­tained ingre­di­ents with poten­tial health haz­ards. This sur­prised and angered me. I real­ized that even though I have a Ph.D., and study prod­ucts and sup­ply chains full-time, I knew almost noth­ing about the prod­ucts I was bring­ing into my own house. This moti­vated me to cre­ate GoodGuide, to give con­sumers the infor­ma­tion they need to make bet­ter deci­sions about which prod­ucts best match their health, envi­ron­men­tal, and eth­i­cal concerns.

How do you deter­mine a good or bad product?

GoodGuide’s rat­ing com­bines prod­uct– and company-level infor­ma­tion to char­ac­ter­ize a product’s health, envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts. We rate prod­ucts and com­pa­nies on a scale of 0 to 10. A score of 10 means the prod­uct or com­pany per­forms very well rel­a­tive to other prod­ucts in a cat­e­gory. A score of 0 means the prod­uct or com­pany per­forms very poorly.

GoodGuide’s rat­ing is com­piled from three sub-scores address­ing Health, Envi­ron­ment and Soci­ety. Each of these sub-scores are based on an analy­sis of a set of indi­ca­tors that GoodGuide has deter­mined are the best-available mea­sures of per­for­mance in these areas. Our Health score char­ac­ter­izes the poten­tial impact that use of a prod­uct may have on a person’s health. Our Envi­ron­ment score char­ac­ter­izes the poten­tial adverse envi­ron­men­tal impact asso­ci­ated with the man­u­fac­ture, sale, use and dis­posal of a product. Our Social score char­ac­ter­izes the social impact asso­ci­ated with the man­u­fac­ture and sale of a prod­uct.  You can learn more about our rat­ings method­ol­ogy at:http://www.goodguide.com/about/ratings

One obsta­cle in effec­tively rank­ing prod­ucts is ingre­di­ent trans­parency on the part of com­pa­nies.  Has this been a big chal­lenge to grow­ing the GoodGuide, and what do you think indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions can do to increase the level of ingre­di­ent trans­parency of companies?

This has been a huge issue for GoodGuide. One of our mid-term goals is to incen­tivize firms to dis­close the crit­i­cal facts about their prod­ucts and sup­ply chains that mat­ter most sci­en­tif­i­cally (from a life-cycle per­spec­tive) and that mat­ter most to consumers.

We have actu­ally seen very pos­i­tive move­ment in this regard since we first launched. For exam­ple, back in the fall of 2008, the com­pa­nies that pro­duced house­hold chem­i­cals (such as clean­ers, laun­dry deter­gent, dish­wash­ing soap, etc.) by and large did not dis­close the ingre­di­ents in their prod­ucts. In our first rat­ing of this cat­e­gory, we had to cre­ate a “trans­parency score” and we dinged com­pa­nies that wouldn’t tell their cus­tomers what chem­i­cals were actu­ally in their prod­ucts. After six months of back-and-forth with these com­pa­nies (they didn’t like being dinged for non-transparency), and great work by a net­work of NGOs and con­sumers, vir­tu­ally all of the major brands now dis­close their ingre­di­ents “vol­un­tar­ily” even though it is not required by law. GoodGuide’s users played an impor­tant role in moti­vat­ing com­pa­nies to be more transparent.

I believe indi­vid­ual con­sumers absolutely have an oppor­tu­nity to moti­vate brands and retail­ers to be more trans­par­ent. Insti­tu­tional pur­chasers have an even big­ger oppor­tu­nity – and respon­si­bil­ity – to pro­mote prod­uct and sup­ply chain transparency.

If some­one were plan­ning to build a con­sumer prod­uct today, what are some basic guid­ing prin­ci­ples they should consider?

I would think about four or five big issues. First, a prod­uct needs to be designed with the full life-cycle impacts of the prod­uct in mind – from raw mate­ri­als used, to man­u­fac­tur­ing, to use, to end-of-life. With this life-cycle per­spec­tive, a prod­uct should be designed to min­i­mize the most impor­tant impacts. Com­pa­nies should focus on the hot spots in their prod­uct sup­ply chain, not periph­eral issues (that often lead green mar­ket­ing): avoid toxic chem­i­cals, reduce mate­ri­als use, make sure a prod­uct is recy­clable, etc. We also rec­om­mend com­pa­nies design their prod­ucts and processes for trans­parency. Con­sumers increas­ingly want to know the full story behind a prod­uct and sup­ply chain. Finally, I think com­pa­nies can really ben­e­fit from design­ing in feed­back and learn­ing. Com­pa­nies should include their cus­tomers in the prod­uct cycle, get them think­ing about their impacts, and learn from them.

What’s the vision for GoodGuide?  How can our read­ers help you push for­ward your mission?

GoodGuide.com is still in its early days. We see a tra­jec­tory — in the not-too-distant future — of fully per­son­al­ized, local­ized tools that empower con­sumers to shop their val­ues when­ever and wher­ever they shop. I believe in the next two to three years, peo­ple will be able to walk into any retailer, or land on any e-commerce site, and get instant advice on the prod­ucts that best match their own val­ues. We see long-term poten­tial to really cut through mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing to pro­vide con­sumers with exactly the infor­ma­tion they need to make the best pos­si­ble deci­sions, and ulti­mately to not only sup­port a more trans­par­ent mar­ket­place, but also a more sus­tain­able one.

Care2 read­ers are obvi­ously at the fore­front of “con­scious con­sumers.” We would love for Care2 read­ers to try out our web­site, our mobile apps, and our newest tool – the Trans­parency Tool­bar, and tell us how we can make these tools even more use­ful and empowering.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

Ger­ald Richards is the Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of 826 National. With twenty years of man­age­ment and devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence at national non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the Net­work for Teach­ing Entre­pre­neur­ship where he served as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Bay Area office, Ger­ald is a respected trainer and sought after speaker on top­ics of youth and edu­ca­tion access. He is inter­viewed reg­u­larly on these top­ics and has appeared on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams, CNN’s Ander­son Cooper’s 360, and The Michael Eric Dyson Show, as well as in arti­cles in pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The San Fran­cisco Exam­iner and Inc. Mag­a­zine. He has also served as an edu­ca­tion expert for national mar­ket­ing cam­paigns pro­mot­ing cre­ativ­ity in and out­side the class­room. In 2008, he was named one of 101 African-American Cham­pi­ons for Youth in the Bay Area.

For those who are not famil­iar with 826 National, can you tell us a bit about what you do?

826 National is the umbrella orga­ni­za­tion for a net­work of eight non­profit writ­ing, tutor­ing, and pub­lish­ing cen­ters. We work with under-served youth, ages 6 to 18, and believe that fun and learn­ing go hand in hand. Each of our 826 chap­ters offers stu­dents oppor­tu­ni­ties to explore their cre­ativ­ity and improve their writ­ing skills, while oper­at­ing from behind a unique and quirky store­front— in San Fran­cisco it’s the Pirate Store, in Boston you’ll find the Greater Boston Big­foot Research Insti­tute, and so on. These whim­si­cal store­fronts help bridge the gap between stu­dents and the larger com­mu­nity— draw­ing in vol­un­teers and donors. Here at 826 National our job is to pro­vide our chap­ters with strate­gic lead­er­ship, admin­is­tra­tive sup­port, pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, and other resources, so that they can con­tinue to pro­vide free stu­dent pro­gram­ming nationwide.

What do you think has been the most impor­tant part of 826’s edu­ca­tion model thus far that other youth edu­ca­tion orga­ni­za­tions could adopt?

We have an incred­i­ble pool of ded­i­cated vol­un­teers who show up every day in astound­ing num­bers to sup­port our stu­dents and staff. Nation­wide, we engage over 5,000 indi­vid­u­als from all backgrounds—writers, teach­ers, artists, and other pro­fes­sions. Whether it’s dur­ing after-school tutor­ing, a work­shop, or an in-school projects, stu­dents work in small groups with vol­un­teers and often receive one-on-one atten­tion. Hav­ing the sup­port of these tal­ented vol­un­teers allows our chap­ters to focus their atten­tion on stu­dent pro­gram­ming. Project-based learn­ing is another impor­tant com­po­nent of 826’s model and a cru­cial part of help­ing young peo­ple learn. For exam­ple, we engage entire class­rooms in long-term writ­ing projects, which result in nation­ally pub­lished col­lec­tions of stu­dent work. We believe that one-on-one or small group atten­tion and the con­sis­tent pub­lish­ing of stu­dent work are two of the key fac­tors that make our model so successful.

Sto­ry­telling is a cru­cial part to the suc­cess of any orga­ni­za­tion, how does 826 tell its story? How can other orga­ni­za­tions bet­ter inte­grate story telling?

826 is cer­tainly full of sto­ries! We often focus on the sto­ries of our students—of their immense and inspir­ing suc­cesses. The sto­ries our stu­dents tell, and the effect that shar­ing those sto­ries has on their lives, helps us describe the mis­sion of the orga­ni­za­tion and its impact in each of our com­mu­ni­ties. I think that when orga­ni­za­tions focus on the effects of their work for their con­stituents, they are ahead of the curve. And the more exam­ples or exhibits of their work that can be offered, the better.

I noticed 826 also started a project called Schol­ar­Match, a ser­vice that con­nects col­lege bound schol­ars with donors who want to sup­port them. What inspired this idea and why did it make sense to launch the site?

Schol­ar­Match was started by our co-founder Dave Eggers and inspired by the schol­ar­ship pro­gram we had devel­oped at our flag­ship site, 826 Valen­cia. We could only give out a few schol­ar­ships per year, but there were so many other stu­dents who needed help fund­ing their col­lege edu­ca­tion. Schol­ar­Match was cre­ated to allow stu­dents to share their sto­ries and dreams for col­lege online and give donors the oppor­tu­nity to fund stu­dents whose sto­ries res­onated with them. We pride our­selves in con­nect­ing stu­dents with donors and mak­ing col­lege pos­si­ble. We’ve also found that Schol­ar­Match donors appre­ci­ate get­ting to know and stay con­nected with the stu­dents they help through­out their col­lege careers.

How can our read­er­ship help push for­ward your mission?

Get involved! You can either vol­un­teer at an 826 chap­ter in your city or help us raise funds. Vol­un­teers and donors are what keep our orga­ni­za­tion going strong. Or, if read­ers are more inter­ested in start­ing their own non­profit, they should attend one of our 826 National 101 Sem­i­nars where we dis­cuss ways to nur­ture and develop a suc­cess­ful nonprofit.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

Ben Pow­ell is Man­ag­ing Part­ner at Agora Part­ner­ships.  Ben became con­vinced of the power of small busi­ness to trans­form poor com­mu­ni­ties in Mex­ico, where he co-founded City­Golf Puebla, a minia­ture golf course and fam­ily recre­ation cen­ter.  After work­ing as a Pres­i­den­tial Man­age­ment Fel­low at the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get, he left to attend busi­ness school and launch Agora Part­ner­ships. Since grad­u­at­ing in 2005, Ben has been named a Draper Richards Kaplan Foun­da­tion Entre­pre­neur, a BMW Foun­da­tion Young Leader, and an Ashoka Fel­low. He was a Social Ven­ture Net­work Inno­va­tion Award hon­oree in 2009 and named one of the top 40 under 40 devel­op­ment lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton, DC in 2010. He has an MBA from Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, where we was awarded the inau­gural alumni social inno­va­tion award, and an MSFS with dis­tinc­tion from George­town Uni­ver­sity. Ben has a BA with high hon­ors from Haver­ford Col­lege, where he co-founded Tres Nacos Que­sadil­las Deliv­ery and the Lighted Fools improv troupe.  A native of Cam­bridge, Mass., Ben lives in Wash­ing­ton, DC with his wife and three children.

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about what Agora Part­ner­ships does, and what inspired you to start it?

We are a non profit orga­ni­za­tion that iden­ti­fies the best invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate social impact in Cen­tral Amer­ica and Mex­ico. Our goal is to build a com­mu­nity of investors and entre­pre­neurs who want to use busi­ness to solve humanity’s tough­est prob­lems like extreme poverty, inequal­ity, and cli­mate change. We really believe that to build a more sus­tain­able world we need to find the entre­pre­neurs oper­at­ing in very poor areas who have both the val­ues and the man­age­ment skills to turn a vision for change into reality.

The way we work is to iden­tify the very best small busi­ness entre­pre­neurs defined as hav­ing the most poten­tial to cre­ate pos­i­tive impact in the world.  There’s a broad range of back­grounds, one entre­pre­neur – she makes children’s cloth­ing – got her first loan from a micro­fi­nance bank for $100 and now has 50 employ­ees, another – who has cre­ated a wooden toy com­pany, used to work on Wall Street. What they have in com­mon is com­mit­ment to prac­tic­ing a bet­ter, more sus­tain­able kind of busi­ness focused on prof­its, planet and people.

Our job is to accel­er­ate their impact and we do this by giv­ing them lead­er­ship train­ing, build­ing a com­mu­nity around them, help­ing them learn the lan­guage of ven­ture cap­i­tal, and then con­nect­ing them to men­tors, sup­port­ers, and investors. When they get cap­i­tal and grow, they cre­ate social impact more effi­ciently than any other kind of pro­gram because they are a prof­itable business.

When I was younger I launched a minia­ture golf course in Puebla, Mex­ico. It is still run­ning today and it taught me that the best way to fight poverty in the devel­op­ing world is through entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion. One of our employ­ees, Mari­bel, is a sin­gle mom and she got a gov­ern­ment loan that allowed her to buy her own apart­ment – which to her sym­bol­ized inde­pen­dence. When I saw the impact on her life, how crit­i­cal a job in the for­mal econ­omy is,  I real­ized I was mak­ing more of a dif­fer­ence in the world with the Minigolf course than at my day job at the White House Bud­get Office, so I quit to go back to school and start Agora. We have an equa­tion that informs our work: human poten­tial + cap­i­tal = impact.  We need to level the play­ing field for entre­pre­neurs who believe in sus­tain­able cap­i­tal­ism. Doing so gives you the best bang for your buck in fight­ing global poverty.

Can you tell us about one of the entre­pre­neurs you have invested in and how things have changed for them.

I love Maria Pacheco from Guatemala. She runs an incred­i­ble com­pany called Kiej de los Bosques that through its Wakami brand is trans­form­ing the tired hand­i­crafts mar­ket into some­thing really excit­ing. She is pas­sion­ate about giv­ing rural Guatemalan women a chance to access global mar­kets. She does this through Wakami’s prod­ucts which are imbued with strong sto­ries about how we are all con­nected together. I can’t think of a com­pany that is more ded­i­cated to their pro­duc­ers than Maria’s. Fifty per­cent of Guatemalan chil­dren are mal­nour­ished so Wakami mea­sures the height and weight of the kids of their pro­duc­ers to track impact and ensure the income they help gen­er­ate trans­lates into real impact. We helped them with their finances and con­nected them with a num­ber of investors who are get­ting ready to invest.

Maybe more impor­tantly, we’ve cre­ated a com­mu­nity so peo­ple like Maria don’t have to feel alone. She was just at the SoCap con­fer­ence in San Fran­cisco and she was the only non-American to be selected to speak on the main stage. Her pitch was incred­i­ble and left the room breath­less. Peo­ple like Maria who have the com­mit­ment and drive to make a dif­fer­ence need to be sur­faced and sup­ported. That’s what moti­vates our work.

How do you select who is accepted into the pro­gram?

We look at the per­son, the busi­ness model and social impact, in that order. The per­son is by far the most impor­tant thing we look for. With­out an eth­i­cal, pas­sion­ate, com­mit­ted entre­pre­neur, noth­ing else really mat­ters. We want peo­ple who are fired up to make a big dif­fer­ence in their com­mu­ni­ties, and maybe the world, and who have vision and matu­rity to build teams and grow a busi­ness. What they need is access to oppor­tu­nity.  We look at the busi­ness model with an investor’s eye – if it makes no busi­ness sense, no mat­ter the poten­tial impact, we can’t sup­port it. It needs to be viable.  A good busi­ness idea that serves a real need is key. Third, we look at social impact. A great entre­pre­neur with a good idea that cre­ates clear social impact and that har­nesses mar­ket forces – that’s a win­ner for us.

Agora was founded on the prin­ci­ple that  “untapped human poten­tial is the great­est resource for cre­at­ing a bet­ter world” What things do you believe are needed to help unleash that latent potential?

Our expe­ri­ence is there are 3 key fac­tors that help unleash poten­tial. The first is access to human capital, to men­tors, to knowl­edge, to busi­ness acu­men. The sec­ond is access to social cap­i­tal: net­works of trust, vis­i­bil­ity, and access to peo­ple like care2 read­ers who believe in sup­port­ing entre­pre­neurs from very poor parts of the world who are doing their part to build a bet­ter world. And finally, access to finan­cial cap­i­tal is obvi­ously crit­i­cal. These entre­pre­neurs need investors who believe in them and who want their money to cre­ate impact. They espe­cially need early stage investors who are will­ing to take risk and who real­ize that invest­ing in good entre­pre­neurs could cre­ate more impact than a char­i­ta­ble dona­tion.  Typ­i­cally, early stage entre­pre­neurs need all three types of cap­i­tal to succeed.

How can our gen­eral read­er­ship push for­ward your mission?

Well, we are try­ing to bring the val­ues of a com­mu­nity like Care2 to the poor­est com­mu­ni­ties in our hemi­sphere out­side of Haiti. You can help us by just get­ting informed about the power of start-ups to cre­ate jobs and pro­vide prod­ucts like bam­boo hous­ing or solar lights that peo­ple really need. You can check out our blog and Face­book page and fol­low us on Twit­ter. Learn about the entre­pre­neurs and give us feed­back if you think they are really improv­ing the world through their business.

The world of impact invest­ing is still very small and we need more peo­ple to real­ize there is no bet­ter way to make a dif­fer­ence in global poverty than to invest your time, net­works, or money to help an entre­pre­neur build a good, viable busi­ness in a very poor com­mu­nity. It’s sim­ply the best bang for your buck out there.

Finally, we are look­ing to find men­tors, donors, investors, and oth­ers who want to engage with us to build a sus­tain­able cap­i­tal move­ment that crosses bor­ders. Appli­ca­tions are also open for the next Accel­er­a­tor class and we’d love you read­ers to for­ward the announce­ment (in Eng­lish or Span­ish) to their net­works to make sure this oppor­tu­nity reaches the most peo­ple in the region.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

Kohl Cre­celius is the CEO & Co-founder of Kro­chet Kids

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about what Kro­chet Kids does, and what inspired you to start it?

Kro­chet Kids intl. is a cause-driven acces­sories brand that is work­ing to erad­i­cate poverty through sus­tain­able eco­nomic devel­op­ment pro­grams and unique, one-of-a-kind prod­ucts. We are cur­rently work­ing in North­ern Uganda and Peru to ful­fill our mis­sion state­ment – to empower peo­ple to rise above poverty.  Our work was inspired by our desire to see peo­ple liv­ing in devel­op­ing nations empow­ered and their dig­nity restored, while uti­liz­ing this odd skill that had, crocheting.

Why did you guys decide to be a non-profit?

From the very incep­tion of this idea we wanted it to be clear what our inten­tions were, which were to care for and make an impact in impov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties around the globe.  To this day, our bot­tom line is not in the profit we gen­er­ate but in the suc­cesses of our ben­e­fi­cia­ries and how they are learn­ing and car­ing for their fam­i­lies.  We wanted to be trans­par­ent in such a way that would instill con­fi­dence in our sup­port­ers and those that wanted to pur­chase our products.

Can you tell us about the pro­grams you have on the ground in Uganda?

The pro­grams that we have in Uganda, and those that we are start­ing in Peru, are built upon a model of “holis­tic care”.  That is to say, we pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for our ben­e­fi­cia­ries to grow and enrich their lives in every way.  It starts first and fore­most with a fair and con­sis­tent income earned through their work cre­at­ing prod­ucts.  For many of them this is the first con­sis­tent income they have ever had.  The goals for our pro­gram go far beyond a job and incor­po­rate tools and resources for them to truly be empow­ered.  We have a team of men­tors (1 men­tor has a group of 20 ben­e­fi­cia­ries) who over­see and direct edu­ca­tion on a vari­ety of top­ics to help the ladies under­stand ways to use their income and plan for the future.  Ulti­mately, the men­tors help the women plan for future careers and jobs that they can hold com­pletely sov­er­eign of Kro­chet Kids intl. that our locally sus­tain­able within their econ­omy.  Our pro­gram is to last 3–5 years to facil­i­tate this process and each women’s indi­vid­ual empow­er­ment and longterm livelihood.

What’s the biggest chal­lenge in run­ning Kro­chet Kids?

We started the orga­ni­za­tion while we were in col­lege, so aside from other small entre­pre­neur­ial endeav­ors like a snow shov­el­ing busi­ness, we are learn­ing a lot as we go.  We are faced with the chal­lenges of grow­ing our orga­ni­za­tion in a smart and focused way on all fronts, includ­ing not only the busi­ness of sell­ing hats, but the bal­ance between scal­ing our oper­a­tions while holis­ti­cally car­ing for every indi­vid­ual that is a part of our pro­grams in Uganda in Peru.  We are for­tu­nate to have trusted staff and knowl­edge­able advi­sors — here at home and abroad — that have helped guide us along the way.  Yet we are com­mit­ted to being a learn­ing organization.

How did the part­ner­ship with Vol­com come about and what have you learned that other non prof­its can adapt to their part­ner­ships with big­ger corporations?

As a brand we have always made an effort to set our­selves up to part­ner and col­lab­o­rate with peo­ple we respect in order to push for­ward and involve oth­ers in mak­ing a true impact on devel­op­ing nations.  We became friends with the staff at Vol­com and were able to cre­ate a fun part­ner­ship that does exactly that.  I think one of the biggest things we have learned as a non-profit is how much we have to offer.  It’s easy for us, as non-profits, to think we have lit­tle to offer, but this is a lie.  The inten­tion­al­ity and authen­tic­ity that hap­pens within our work is some­thing that cor­po­ra­tions really want to be a part of, or can have a hard time doing on their own.  Know that you are valu­able and have much to offer.

How can our gen­eral read­er­ship help you push for­ward your mission?

“Buy a hat. Change a life.”  That’s the most direct way for peo­ple to get involved and help spread the story of our work.  More­over, if you own one of our hats you can go online and thank the lady that made it at http://www.krochetkids.org/projects/ladies/.  In this way you can not only sup­port our work, but you can directly encour­age the woman who made it.  Words are pow­er­ful, and let us not for­get that.  You can also check out this video that show­cases the cer­e­mony we had at our com­pound in North­ern Uganda, where we pre­sented the THANK YOU notes you all have writ­ten to the lady that made your hat.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Care2. 

The Trail­blaz­ers for Good Q&A Series sits down with the most world shak­ing indi­vid­u­als lead­ing the move­ment to align impact, profit and pur­pose.  Here we pick the brains of top social entre­pre­neurs to learn first hand from their stun­ning accom­plish­ments, utter fail­ures, and stiff chal­lenges in lead­ing the rev­o­lu­tion of doing well by doing good.  Join us as we explore the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness that dri­ves and inspires these individuals

Josh Nes­bit is the Co-Founder and CEO of Medic Mobile.

Can you tell us a lit­tle bit about Medic Mobile and what inspired you to start it?

When I met Dick­son Mtanga in rural Malawi in 2007, he was walk­ing 35 miles to a hos­pi­tal every week to hand-deliver updates on patients liv­ing with HIV in his vil­lage. As a com­mu­nity health worker, he had received some train­ing and was respon­si­ble for car­ing for his com­mu­nity. He was com­mit­ted to his work, but the real­ity was that he was dis­con­nected from the hos­pi­tal and its resources.

This is where we started our work in 2008 — at St. Gabriel’s Hos­pi­tal in Malawi, where patients were walk­ing or oxcart­ing 60 miles or more to access doc­tors. Dick­son and 100 of his fel­low com­mu­nity health work­ers used mobile phones and sim­ple text mes­sag­ing to con­nect to the hos­pi­tal; they tracked new symp­toms and dou­bled the num­ber of patients being treated for tuber­cu­lo­sis in just six months. They also saved thou­sands of hours of travel and work time, and the hos­pi­tal began respond­ing to emergencies.

Medic Mobile is a non­profit tech­nol­ogy com­pany that cre­ates con­nected and coor­di­nated health sys­tems that save more lives. We’ve cre­ated a num­ber of mobile tech­nolo­gies that health work­ers and patients need, includ­ing easy-to-use med­ical record sys­tems and mobile SIM appli­ca­tions. We now work with more than 30 part­ners in 15 coun­tries to improve how health­care is deliv­ered in extremely low-resource settings.

Can you give us an exam­ple of how your mobile tech­nol­ogy tools are being used in low resource areas?

We used text mes­sag­ing for emer­gency response at a much greater scale dur­ing the 4636 project after the 2010 earth­quake in Haiti. Work­ing with a num­ber of part­ners, we set up a text mes­sage sys­tem allow­ing any­one in Haiti to text in their need and loca­tion. Every mes­sage was mapped, trans­lated, and turned into a report for first respon­ders and aid orga­ni­za­tions on the ground.

What other orga­ni­za­tions or ideas in health tech­nol­ogy for global devel­op­ment excite you the most?

There’s a lot to be excited about. Global Cycle Solu­tions and Tough­Stuff are inno­vat­ing quickly in the energy space, cre­at­ing low-cost solar pan­els and bicy­cle charg­ers… access to power is crucial.

I also think that low-cost diag­nos­tics have a lot of poten­tial — the LUCAS imag­ing tech­nique being devel­oped at UCLA is set to rev­o­lu­tion­ize test­ing for HIV, TB, CD4, and more. Diagnostic lab-in-backpacks from the Beyond Tra­di­tional Bor­ders team at Rice Uni­ver­sity pack­age mul­ti­ple inno­va­tions, which is a badly needed approach.

How can our read­ers help you push for­ward your mission?

Hope Phones is a great way to engage your fam­ily, com­mu­nity, or com­pany and con­tribute to global health efforts. If you do donate or start a drive, we’d love to hear from you in the com­ments here, on Face­book, or via Twit­ter!

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.

Orig­i­nally posted on Care2.