I’ve been working at iDE for nearly 2 years, but the moment that changed my life—the moment when I truly experienced the impact of our work first-hand—was the day I met Anita Mwembe in Zambia…
Back in 2007, Anita and her family were living in a thatched roof hut on a small plot of land. She was making only $1-2 per day by selling packets of sugar and chickens outside the front of her hut. After becoming an iDE entrepreneur, she learned farming practices and invested in a drip irrigation system, which now allowed her to grow year round and sell crops for a better return.
Today, Anita is a full-scale entrepreneur. Not only has she quadrupled her income in only 5 years, but she’s also started a seed collective, purchased a car to get products to market more quickly, and even setup a women’s micro-lending network to support others in her community grow their businesses. But most important of all, is what this has provided…
Anita can now afford to send all of her children to school, she has built her family a new brick home, and she is even giving back to her community.
In short, through working with iDE, Anita’s entrepreneurial spirit has been unleashed. Her dreams are flourishing.
Since my trip to Zambia, I have traveled to Bangladesh and Cambodia also and I continue to be incredibly inspired and touched by the sparkle in the eyes of the people we work with – those who have invested in their future and with iDE’s partnership, brought themselves and their families out of poverty.
Please join me in spreading the word and help me reach my personal goal of $10,000 this holiday season. Our board is matching up to $50K dollar for dollar, so your investment is doubled.
It would be the greatest gift I’ve ever received if I reach my goal – which means we can help 500 individuals out of poverty.
As I stepped out of the taxi in front of the Skylight SoHo in NYC last Thursday, I took a deep breath. I was about to walk in to the celebration of Acumen Fund‘s 10 year anniversary.
During my time at Acumen Fund in 2004 and 2005, we were a start-up. 6 years later, we’re a global phenomenon.
I say “we” – because once you become part of the Acumen Fund community, you are always family. There’s something really deep that connects people that come in contact with Acumen Fund. I think its a sense of real commitment to people. To the world. To innovate new ways that can change lives. To unrest and unwillingness to let people flounder while others flourish. To recruiting the best and brightest minds in the world to this cause, and unrelentingly pursuing solutions that work. To knowing that we are all one and we are all connected, and there’s nothing we should stop at to give people the opportunity to change their own lives. When you feel that, along with others, it’s unstoppable and the constraints of time and space don’t apply.
I now live in Boulder, CO. Acumen Fund is based in NYC, where I lived for 10 years. I moved here to pursue a more balanced lifestyle, and still, I can’t rest until I find more like-minded people who care about the world in this way. I have found it in Boulder. There are so many conscious, loving people here. It’s why I am so passionate about my work with iDE which is headquartered outside of Denver – its the same story. I learned about iDE when I was at Acumen – because Acumen invested in iDE’s India program. I have been using the story of micro-drip irrigation for years when people ask me what social enterprise is.
Somehow, the stars aligned so that I happened to live in Colorado when iDE was hiring for the exact same position I was doing at Acumen Fund. I’ve been at iDE since February 2010 and have had the pleasure of visiting Zambia, Cambodia and Bangladesh to meet our customers.
My heart explodes with hope for humanity when I see the work that Acumen and iDE do.
I digress.
The celebration was spectacular. There were 450 people. Each person got a gorgeous scarf as they walked in. Many people, including myself, were dressed in South Asian garb. (I was wearing a Bangladeshi dress that I had made when I was there in February. I knew this would be the perfect place for it)
The energy was connected and loving and celebratory. During the cocktail hour, a flash mob assembled to dance Bollywood style in the middle of the crowd. A spoken word poet named Sarah K inspired us with her words about being a teacher in New York. Aaron Neville performed his beautiful songs. There was an engaging 7 minute video about Acumen told by the community. And Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen’s visionary, brilliant, open-hearted CEO and founder, gave an inspiring 30 minute speech about where Acumen’s been and where they are going. They have ambitious goals: to double their portfolio to $150 million in 15 countries by 2015, while also expanding their leadership programs to include 400 leaders and 40 chapters with the goal of serving 150 million individuals.
Here’s the flash mob of dancers, made up of staff, board members and donors:
Here’s the 7 minute video during the program:
One of the main things that struck me was the humility. The truth about failures was not hidden, and there was a real effort to make everyone feel a part of this community. Even the fact that Jacqueline, my old boss, said she was proud of ME. Here’s this incredibly successful woman who inspired me to do what I do now, and still has time to be humble and give so many compliments to others. Here’s a great pic I had to share, because it shows the joy in our faces:
I was so proud to have been part of this incredible organization in its start-up days, and to see it flourishing now. I’m honored to have shared this incredible night with this inspiring global community, which came from 20 countries around the world to be there. There were Indians, Pakistanis, and Saudi Arabians all dancing together like family, and there was Jacqueline, heart exploding with joy at what’s possible.
This summer, I was asked to do a 14 minute “TED” style talk at Harvard’s Igniting Innovation Summit on October 1 by the enterprising undergraduate chair, Kara Kubarych. Earlier this year, I had conducted a guest lecture in David Ager’s Social Entrepreneurship class about iDE, and Kara had been moved by our work.
The theme of the summit was ‘movement’ and ‘action’, so I was asked to speak about bold actions for social change.
As I prepared in the weeks prior and thought about what I wanted to talk about, it came to me. I want to talk about a different way of being in the world. A different way of being in business. To not accept the status quo of conformity and actually operate in business from a heart-led place. To me, it means operating from a place of fearlessness, open-heartedness, and authenticity. What would it look like if everyone operated that way? If all business owners and leaders operated that way?
I wanted to gain some insight and inspiration from other business leaders in Colorado where I live. The perfect opportunities presented themselves right as I needed them as I flowed through meetings in Boulder, and in the form of a w1sd0m gathering in downtown Boulder, CO. I grabbed my iPhone, launched the video camera, and started asking the question without them knowing what I was going to ask. The responses I got astounded me. I just had to include them in my talk. These leaders are successes in the fields of social enterprise, renewable energy, green/fair trade products, philanthropy, and asset management. My brilliant volunteer intern, Jenny Wardell, created an amazing video from these compiled clips to include in my talk. I thought you’d enjoy seeing the incredible consciousness and leadership in this field exploding in Colorado.
Now, I ask you, the reader of this blog – no matter what you do, please consider this question, and please post your answer. I want to hear from you!
IDE, w1sd0m, Skoll World Forum, Oxford Jam, TedXVolcano..
WOW! I don’t know how it happened, but somehow life has conspired to effect collaboration on a global scale. Ride-sharing, couch-surfing, new communities and networks forming … its mind-boggling and unimaginably inspiring. Last week, Oxford UK became the nexus of global social entrepreneurialism – launching a phenomenon (with a little help from a volcano in Iceland) that feels as if it has irrevocably altered the landscape for social entrepreneurs, their projects, and the people they exist to serve.
I came to Oxford During the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship on behalf of IDE – (International Development Enterprises), a 28 year old organization founded by Paul Polak. I was to meet the international board and discuss how IDE could achieve greater scale and impact by helping more people at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) sustainably increase their income . We stayed at Corpus Christi college and enjoyed gorgeous days and intensive discussions with great minds. I managed to make it to OxfordJam for a breakfast about online collaboration platforms for Impact Investing – I could only stay for an hour, yet even in that brief period met an incredible group of people open to innovation and collaboration on a scale I’ve never before experienced.
The volcano had already erupted, but nobody paid it any mind till the conferences were over and we realized that we were stuck. So back to London we all went..
… and so now, a new community is being born that is coming together in an even deeper way.
Saturday there was a great Kiva event where people shared Kiva trivia, their own business ideas, and trains and bus trips to the south of France and other places were arranged.
Here’s a little video clip of Matt Flannery, Kiva C0-Founder, and Premal Shah, President:
After this fun trivia contest, Matt & Premal asked if anyone had an emerging company and would like to talk about it. I stood up and introduced w1sd0m, an emerging network that I’m helping to build as core team, that helps social & sustainable enterprises like IDE (For which it’s already opened a lot of doors) find the intellectual, human, social & financial capital they need.
Sunday was the first ever “TedXVolcano” organized by Nathanial Whittemore, Evan Grant & June Cohen. In 36 hoursthese rockstars brought together TED, TEDxLondon, The Hub, Sandbox Network, Newspepper.com, & Robert Leslie along with Skoll World Forum Speakers and other great minds such as Matthew Bishop, Jim Hornthal, Gary Bolles, Peter Greenberg, Elizabeth Lindsey and musician Shesheela Raman.. Click here for the story of how they did it..
One of my favorite moments was when Jeff Skoll read his volcano poem:
This is an ode to the volcano
That sent our travel plans into the draino
I’m not really one to complaino
But this all hurts my little braino
Madrid, Casablanca, Amsterdam, Rejkavik on cruiseships
The trains will fail
All the escape routes that we planned
Are blocked by nature or by man
We heard the French trains may soon be striking
At this rate we’ll all be biking
With our luck we’ll all be struck by lightning!
This is all rather frightening
So better we all meet at TED
That is what I should have said
So thank you June and thank you all
Damn the volcano, let’s have a ball
Presented at TEDXVolcano, London, 4/19/2010
Monday afternoon, Suzanne Biegel, social venture investor and “catalyst at large” (i love her title!) and Dr. Audrey Selian of Rianta Capital organized some action-takers from the Friday OxfordJam breakfast who have built collaboration and connection platforms for impact investors and social entrepreneurs. Socential, Artha, ClearlySo, Nexii, Sasix, Gexsi along with w1sd0m were there to talk about ways to collaborate in an efficient way and eliminate waste of resources for entrepreneurs, and the networks themselves.
Another networking event after this meeting led to even more fascinating conversations over dinner with Jill Finlayson & Jason Clark of SocialEdge, Lora O’Connor of Citizenglobal.com, Cathy Clark who runs the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) program at Duke, Suzanne Biegel, Sean Holt, David Green (Solar World for All), and others.
Waking up this morning I’m slammed with all of the ideas, people, and inspiration swirling in my head. I don’t even need coffee!
As much as being ‘stranded’ in London would be viewed by many as disastrous, the remarkable thing about this exceptional group of people is that, when faced with no other options, they simply turned lemons into lemonade. For the past ten days, due in no small part to the intercession of the very earth so many are working to save, some of the most brilliant minds and open hearts in the world have come together to talk, to dance, to celebrate – and most importantly of all, to find new ways of working together (as the Buddhists would say) in service to all beings.
I’m grateful and honored and humbled to have been invited to engage with these people, at this time, in this way.
I’ve been working at iDE for nearly 2 years, but the moment that changed my life—the moment when I truly experienced the impact of our work first-hand—was the day I met Anita Mwembe in Zambia…