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.
Sitting here in my hotel in Lusaka, Zambia after a week of inspiration, learning more about IDE‘s work at one of our more developed African country programs.
There is so much to report.. I don’t even know where to start.
On Saturday I arrived and immediately was transported to the Henry Tayali art center, where I met with some Zambian artists to procure some artwork for IDE’s exhibit in Denver at the 910 Arts Gallery on Santa Fe, “Art of Dirt“. Memories of my NYC art consulting/art dealing & appraising career in the late 90′s, I listened to stories of inspiration and creativity by these amazing artists. I will be posting some photos of the artwork once our art auction site is live in a few weeks.
On Monday, my colleague and I visited the Zambia headquarters and formally met the staff, comprised of irrigation experts, agriculture experts, farm business advisors, monitoring and evaluation staff, and consultants who make up the incredible country program where 16,000 farmers lives will be impacted this year. This entire operation is set up to teach rural poor farmers how to install and use irrigation equipment, how to grow the highest value crops for the most amount of income, pest management, fertilizer application, and seed procurement. IDE uses the most thorough and integrated approach to educating these farmers to increase their income.
I visited countless farmers who have gone from tiny plots with no irrigation to much larger plots in one year. One farmer, Jordan, is in the beginning phases of his training with IDE and went from making 700,000 kwacha a year (about $140) to $1200 a year in ONE GROWING CYCLE.
Lloyd, another farmer who has been working with IDE for about 3 years, started with a small plot, and purchased a treadle pump, then added drip irrigation, then a motorized pump and is now the lead farmer in his 35 farmer group. All of his 5 children go to school, and 2 have graduated high school and are looking to go to college. He has increased his income FIVE TIMES over in those 3 years.
IDE is to micro-irrigation and farm business advising as Grameen Bank is to micro-credit.
The impact is astounding.
Not only does IDE help increase the yield of the crops with these farmers, but we also help them get access to markets. Brokering deals with seed companies, supermarkets for local produce, farmers markets, and more. I could just see the entrepreneurial spirit bursting out of these farmers who wanted to get bigger and bigger as they saw the power of this type of knowledge and training, and access to agricultural input products, and saw how they could make money by pooling their yield to sell to larger and larger food companies and organizations.
IDE unleashes the entrepreneurial spirit of the rural poor… and helps them become serious commercial smallholder farmers who hold the key to global food security.
Only 10% of the ‘irrigatable land’ in Zambia is being utilized. Supermarkets and food brokers are ordering food from South Africa. Not necessary. The entire country’s economy could potentially be transformed if we are able to scale in Zambia. Focus on Scaling Market Access, Replicate that in 12 country programs, scale globally.
That’s the power of IDE’s potential.
When I get home, watch out for a fundraising whirlwind to make this happen! If this inspires you as it has me, contact me and let’s get you involved with this incredible work, however you want to contribute!
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…