Social entrepreneurship

It has been a while, but now I plan to write at least once a week.

I was just looking at the 'Ashoka' organization. This is a place for social entrepreneurs. They help social entrepreneurs by providing them resources to get an initiative going as well as by supporting them financially. The people in this organization must be stellar entrepreneurs who want to change the world for the better. Upon looking at the definition of ‘Junior-level entrepreneur’ - "As a junior entrepreneur, you have just finished university, and you have a track record of starting ventures and a commitment to social change" - I do not think I fit the bill yet! Those who make innovative contributions to society are often granted the privilege of being an Ashoka fellow as long as they apply for a fellowship. This is very beneficial to social entrepreneurs who are in most cases heading an initiative without enough financial resources to expand faster.

Another organization that provides financial and professional resources to social entrepreneurs is 'Echoing Green'. Both of these organizations have been around since the 1980s and have extremely mature infrastructures. Other organizations that I found are Avina Foundation, Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, Social Venture Partners, New Profit, Inc., New Schools Venture Fund and Omidyar Network. Its definitely worth checking out what they have to offer and what the fellows/partners of these organizations are currently doing. Innovate, help, expand!

Simple solutions to save the poor

Here is an article that found online that highlights the impact of a simple solution on the lives of thousands of people in need:

Ray Avery's voice is hoarse. He's spent the past day yelling instructions on a building site, and there's not a lot of shout left.

The 57-year-old Aucklander is in Nepal with Medicine Mondiale, the non-profit organisation he founded to address some of the world's most pressing problems.

Working with the Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital, he is building a centre of excellence for cancer treatment in Nepal to give the thousands of Nepalese cancer sufferers who currently have no access to free treatment a far greater chance of survival.

It is just one of the projects Medicine Mondiale has on the go, and one of them has been nominated for the Saatchi & Saatchi Changing Ideas Award.

Medicine Mondiale's Acuset IV Flow Controller allows a simpler, cheaper alternative to the tricky and ineffective IV flow devices that result in the deaths of countless people in the developing world each year, either through the under-administration or over-administration of medicines.

Mr Avery was determined that no more people should die simply because they had no way of controlling the flow of crucial intravenous drugs into their bodies.

Now, the man who started life in the orphanages and streets of London is being recognised for attempting to make a significant difference to the world.

"I suppose I had quite a high chance of being a social reject, and it's nice to come out of that and be nominated for an international award," he says. "It just meant thinking of how to use our skills to make a difference in the world."

Mr Avery, a pharmaceutical scientist by trade, spent many years working for the Fred Hollows Foundation, which works to eradicate blindness in some of the world's poorest countries, and established Medicine Mondiale to develop broader technologies that would help to improve the lot of the world's poorest people.

That has included two state-of-the art intraocular lens laboratories in Eritrea and in Nepal to reduce the number of people going blind because of the high costs and low availability of intraocular lenses.

Medicine Mondiale has also developed a range of nutritional products for babies, to treat dehydration and malnutrition on a global scale and address the most common cause of infant death in the Third World.

The low-cost infant incubator is also intended to improve infant mortality by reducing the number of babies who die from low birth weight or infections.

Mr Avery says he set out to examine the root causes of some of the world's most common problems, such as infant mortality and the inefficient use of medication, and he is frustrated by the lack of global progress made on some of those issues.

"Science has largely abandoned the developing world and doesn't apply the technology that is needed. No NGOs are developing things or looking for solutions," he says.

"They spend so much money doing surveys and telling us what the problems are, and that money could be much better used actually going out there and fixing things.

"We haven't got these cheap, elegant solutions for every problem, but with this one we think we can improve medical care at every hospital worldwide."

Often, solving the problems of under-privileged masses does not lie in the lack of funding for them, but in the lack of solutions available. The money spent on technology is not exactly placed in the right sectors for a worldwide impact. How much is the world going to improve with a million-dollar research project on cosmetic surgery for noses? Often, the justification for placing billions of dollars in research for defense purposes, is that lot of the technology that we use nowadays have spun off their projects. A very popular example of this is the internet itself.

To be honest, all I take from it is that large sums of money aid in research and development. If the projects were targeted at humanitarian and social initiatives, I think we would be much closer to solving the problems of hunger, poverty and disease.

There are research projects in universities around the world that address this problem. One of them is 'TechBridgeWorld' which was spawned at Carnegie Mellon University. They have a few projects that address the need for education in developing countries, and they strongly push for technological solutions for the poor and needy. Here is a link to their website: TechBridgeWorld .

Other simple solutions I have across are with respect to farming. Drip irrigation techniques, using a bicycle for rice threshing and water pumping, and food fortification methods are among those I found. So, DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE IMPACT OF A SIMPLE SOLUTION - it could be the key to someone else's happiness.

Games for change

I was thinking of ways in which one can spread awareness of humanitarian disasters to the general public through the web and one idea kept stabbing at me: online games. Of course, this avenue has been explored by many people. In this post, I want to inform you of the games I came across that made the headlines.

First off, the popular 'game' on http://www.freerice.com in which 20 grains of rice are donated through the UN World Food Program for every time a word's synonym is chosen correctly. I am not here to discuss the logistics behind this or to argue as to whether the game IS helping solve world hunger. In an idealistic situation, this game hits two birds with one stone: gives food to the starving, and improves the vocabulary of the more privileged masses.

Who made this site? John Breen, a computer programmer from Indiana. He has also created three other websites : www.thehungersite.com, www.therainforestsite.com, and www.poverty.com.

Also, check out this website - http://www.3rdworldfarmer.com/ . Here, you can play an online game that simulates the daily hardships of a farmer in third-world countries. It is definitely educational as it gives the player an idea of the difficult situations these farmers have to face.

Finally, there is FOOD-FORCE : http://www.food-force.com/. This game makes the player plan against natural disaster situations for a village/community.

Hope this was interesting. More later.

Food scarcity? Really?

There are tons of articles out there that highlight the problem of food scarcity in the world. Well, there are some who would refute that. Has the human population grown so humongous, that the world's food resources are not enough for us? Or does the problem lie in the unequal distribution of these valuable grains of life?

But, why would rational beings like us make a decision to leave millions starving? Such is the influence of market forces in our present day society. There is food abundance, waste of agricultural resources and less concentration on the areas that need basic foods. The reason is : monetary gain from the food industry does not tie in with societal gain.

Go ahead and take a look at these webpages :
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/Myth_FoodScarcity.html
http://www.psrast.org/nowohu.htm
http://www.foodfirst.org/node/239

These pages contain almost the same content. I think it would be foolish to assume that those who are living in developed countries, and even the richer section of developing countries, do not indulge in gluttony and over-consumption. The imbalance in developing countries is evident in the following article by the Food and Agriculture Organization: http://www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/obesity/obes1.htm

What we can do is to look at ways of improving food distribution in our local area, and also figure out means to make this process marketable.

More later. All posts are welcome!

The purpose of this blog

Hello,

This blog has been set up in order to exchange thoughts and ideas on topics that would help the community. Yes, this is pretty vague and there are several directions this could take. It could be on curriculum for schools or even innovate ideas for biomedical applications. To make it just a bit more specific, I would like to concentrate on the following areas: children in need, education of the masses, health and hygiene, food for the starving.

Many of us are trying to figure out what to do with our lives, and more importantly, are not yet DOING anything to help the community. Therefore, there are three steps to go through :
1) Acquire knowledge on the area you want to contribute in
2) Come up with innovative ideas on how to make YOUR contribution to society
3) Figure out how to implement your idea
This is, of course, just a general template on how to go about it. If there are other ways, enlighten me!

I am really eager to talk to those who have similar motives as I do, and also to those who already are acting on their ideas. So, please put forward any thoughts to help those who read this blog help themselves.