Sam Lakha, Manager, Volans Outreach.
Finance 2.0: The New Infrastructures
The social networking tools of the Web 2.0 meet the banking crisis. Enter a new generation of Internet-based, peer-to-peer finance mechanisms that connect people who want to borrow money with those who want to lend it. Some of these innovations were presented at NESTA’s event ‘WeBank: Can people replace institutions?’
One example is Zopa. It is the world’s first online social finance company. No middlemen, less overheads, better rates for lenders and borrowers, a sense of transactions between ‘real people’, and the possibility of creating trust and shared interests between lenders and borrowers, are among the disruptive benefits that threaten the banking industry.
In 2008, Zopa was voted ‘Most Threatening Non-Bank Competitor‘ by Retail Banker International, a global trade publication that tracks and analyzes the issues facing the global retail financial services industry.
A similar trend as the one discussed at NESTA is also taking shape that is central to the work of Volans. These are the financial platforms emerging to fix a market failure: providing access to poor people that have no place in the financial system, and are therefore likely to remain poor.
Margaret Nanono from Uganda (pictured below) is a borrower in MyC4. She is currently seeking a loan of 750 Euros at a rate of 13% p.a. to be paid back in 9 months. She has a small enterprise that sells fabric. In 2007, she acquired a loan of 1,000 Euros through MyC4, which she used to buy more fabric of various designs and colours. The loan helped her increase her sales, which in turn led to an increase in her monthly net income to 90 Euros.
At the MyC4 platform, so far 12,916 people from 83 countries have invested over 6 million Euros in 3,745 businesses in 7 African countries. Another prominent initiative is Kiva, the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, which is empowering individuals to lend directly to small entrepreneurs in the developing world with the goal of alleviating poverty. But these models not only matter to small entrepreneurs…
Volans is working with SolarAid in exploring the Pathways to Scale of its impact. SolarAid promotes small entrepreneurs to set up small solar businesses in countries such as Tanzania and Malawi, providing the basic materials for them to manufacture products based on Photovoltaic solar cells, such as mobile phone chargers and lanterns, to be sold in the villages where they live.
SolarAid envisions a future where millions of people in Africa - who live at the so-called ‘base of the economic pyramid’ – can become not only consumers, but also producers of renewable energy and green jobs. The success of SolarAid implies the creation of an entire market underpinning a greener economy. The barriers to realizing this vision are typical of ‘nascent markets’: a lack of working capital and the inability of the mainstream financial system to respond to opportunities outside its radar. Volans is working to help connect organizations such as SolarAid with peer-to-peer finance mechanisms, based on their mutual interest in seeing those markets grow and develop.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/finance-20/.
- Alejandro LitovskyCartier’s Women’s Initiative Awards
Don’t know whether anyone in the Volans network would be interested, or eligible, but it may be worth taking a look at this. Created in 2006 by Cartier in partnership with the Women’s Forum, McKinsey and INSEAD management school, the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards are offfered as part of an international business plan competition given annually to five laureates, one per continent. For this third edition, the organisers are looking for innovative women-led business projects in the start-up phase. Apply before February 13, 2009.
Who can apply? Women entrepreneurs of all countries and of all nationalities are invited to apply by presenting a business project yet to be launched or a company less than 3 years old.
What can you win? The prize includes personalized coaching by Cartier, McKinsey & Company and INSEAD, a US$ 20,000 grant as well as an invitation to the 5th Edition of the Women’s Forum Global Meeting in Deauville (France). It also gives access to business networks and brings added media visibility, key success factors when launching a start-up.
How to apply? To apply for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, candidates must complete the application form on http://www.cartierwomensinitiative.com/ before February 13, 2009, 11.59 pm, time zone GMT +1. Forms sent by courier or e-mail are not accepted.
Further information? www.cartierwomensinitiative.com; www.womens-forum.com
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/cartiers-womens-initiative-awards/.
- John Elkington‘The Power of Unreasonable People’ goes foreign
Foreign editions of The Power of Unreasonable People have begun to appear, with copies of the Italian and Japanese versions now displayed in our London office. The Japanese edition has a globe on the front, whereas the Italian version is rather more lively - with a hammer poised above an egg stood on end. We’re still trying to decipher that one.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/the-power-of-unreasonable-people-goes-foreign/.
- John ElkingtonThird Sector and Fifteen
Delightful dinner this evening at Admiralty House, London, hosted by the Office of the Third Sector - with excellent catering by Jamie Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen. In addition to social entrepreneurs I already knew - including Penny Newman (now of Fifteen), Nigel Kershaw of Big Issue Invest, Gib Bulloch of Accenture Development Partners and Reed Paget of Belu Water, I was delighted to meet people like Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa of Catch 22 Magazine and Sam Everington of Bromley By Bow. Many of them were Social Enterprise Ambassadors. Good chat, too, with Campbell Robb, who heads the Office of the Third Sector. Downturn very much in people’s minds, but I found myself thinking of same rooms when occupied by Winston Churchill during WWII and my mood lightened.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/third-sector-and-fifteen/.
- John ElkingtonAnother Trailblazer - Institute of Green Professionals
IGP 2009
As the fields opened out by pioneering social and environmental entrepreneurs begin to mainstream, we will see a secondary wave of professionalisation. Although I have tended to shy away from the conventional professional institutes in these fields, because they often struck me as pursuing the narrow self-interests of particular groups of professionals or as being obsessed with strapping letters after people’s names, I do see a growing need to network across the diverse disciplines and fields that social entrepreneurship, human rights, cleantech, sustainable development and so on now embrace.
Which is a key reason I was happy to accept this week the Honorary Fellowship offered by the Institute of Green Professionals, based in the USA. As background, IGP is “an independent, professional, education, credentialing, research and philanthropic “social enterprise” organization for sustainable development professionals and academics. Multi-disciplinary in its scope, the Institute of Green Professionals is the only credentialing and ethics code-based global organization that brings together individuals and organizations from diverse areas of sustainable development expertise. The IGP specialties currently include accounting, appraisal, architecture, engineering, land planning, landscape architecture, real property valuation, law, including participants in CSR capacities.”
What caught my interest, though, was IGP’s Mission Statement, which referenced the thinking of both Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson and economist Brian Milani. Professor Wilson noted that: “A balanced perspective cannot be acquired by studying disciplines in pieces but through pursuit of the consilience among them.” As IGP points out, the term ‘consilience’ was used in Wilson’s 1998 book of the same name, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, and means “the joining together of knowledge and information across disciplines to create a unified framework of understanding.”
Milani applied this concept to participants in the transition to a Green economy when he said: “The environmental movement in particular should put more emphasis on establishing an educational network that both formalizes its educational tasks and systematizes connections with the rest of the community.”
These are sentiments, ambitions and pursuits that I wholly buy into.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/another-trailblazer-institute-of-green-professionals/.
- John ElkingtonIntelligent Optimists
My profile of Albina Ruiz Rios of Ciudad Saludable, Peru, appears in the January-February issue of Ode Magazine.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/intelligent-optimists/.
- John ElkingtonUK Minister with taste for SROI
Kevin Brennan, the UK Minister for the Third Sector, illustrates the trend for politicians to pay more attention to social enterprise. The UK is estimated to have 55,000 social enterprises, employing 650,000 people and contributing £8.4 billion to the economy annually. In an interview with The Times yesterday, he spoke of the need for “lift-off finance” as the gap in the market for the funding of social enterprise and discussed his enthusiasm for Social Return on Investment (SROI). He also mentioned the Unclaimed Assets Bill, which could help bridge the gap. The idea here is that banks would release unclaimed assets to fund social projects, while protecting the owner’s rights.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/uk-minister-with-taste-for-sroi/.
- John ElkingtonMaking Decent Profits Decently: The Changing Culture of MBAs
In her final post for Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership, Pamela reflects about her underlying motivations for taking on the role of Director for the Skoll Centre at Oxford. It all began when she started to realize the potential of business school platforms towards new market creation…
To read more click here
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/making-decent-profits-decently-the-changing-culture-of-mbas/.
- Smita SircarComments Off
Lien Centre announces i3 Challenge
The Lien Centre for Social Innovation is offering S$1 million for innovative ideas that can be implemented to create positive social impact. This is a three-stage competition process which begins with the submission of a 2-page idea proposal by 31 March 2009.
Full details are available at the Lien Centre website.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/lien-centre-announces-i3-challenge/.
- Kevin TeoThe Upside of a Downturn
In the two weeks since the launch of the Volans survey on ‘Social Entrepreneurship in a Downturn’, we had already received about 70 responses by year’s end, plus many notes of thanks from leading social entrepreneurs for this initiative - which they see as very timely. The survey is still ongoing - and social or environmental entrepreneurs not already contacted are invited to complete it by clicking here. The final report will be produced for the Skoll World Forum but we want to present here some of the initial findings.
The survey results indicate most of the social entrepreneurs have been affected by the economic downturn in some way or other, but only 10% of the respondents say that they have been severely affected. About 50% of the respondents thought that the downturn would last between 1.5 to 3 years and so the efforts towards gearing their organisations for the change have already been set in motion. Headline results will be released in early February, with the full results available in time for the Skoll World Forum in late March.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2009/01/the-upside-of-a-downturn/.
- Smita Sircar