“We engage audiences through all forms of media - and through keynotes at some of the most significant events in the global business calendar.”
Sam Lakha, Manager, Volans Outreach.
Sam Lakha, Manager, Volans Outreach.
Can Cleantech Davids Learn to Love Corporate Goliaths?
11th March, 2010 by John Elkington
My first Fast Company blog, on the Clean & Cool Mission, appears here.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/03/can-cleantech-davids-learn-to-love-corporate-goliaths/.
- John ElkingtonAre CFOs Ready for Integrated Reporting?
8th March, 2010 by John Elkington
An interesting new website was launched at midnight yesterday (or is that today?), focusing on integrated reporting - also a key focus of our ongoing ‘Transparent Economy’ project with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The website’s blog kicks off with an entry I wrote over the weekend on the agenda as we see it. More here.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/03/are-cfos-ready-for-integrated-reporting/.
- John ElkingtonHow Would You Spend $10 Billion?
7th March, 2010 by John Elkington
Bill Gates recently committed $10 billion over the next decade to help develop and distribute vaccines to children in the developing world. So what would you have done with the money? I have been carrying a print-out of this Wall Street Journal online article by Ben Wright and Yasmine Chinwala around in my bag this week - found it fascinating.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/03/how-would-you-spend-10-billion/.
- John ElkingtonSingapore International Foundation launches first-of-its-kind programme for young social entrepreneurs
3rd March, 2010 by Kevin Teo
From the Singapore International Foundation’s website:
Singapore, 3 March 2010… The Singapore International Foundation (SIF), in partnership with Volans Asia, launches today the Young Social Entrepreneurs (YSE) 2010, a unique programme that will allow aspiring youths to pick up the basics of starting up a social enterprise.
From 3 to 7 March, six groups of three to four participants each will take part in an in-residence programme at YWCA Fort Canning Lodge in Singapore. Selected based on business proposals they had submitted, the groups will be coached by established social entrepreneurs and mentors on how to develop business plans, assess their social impact, market their businesses through social media and raise funds.
Ranging from the ages of 18 to 25, the participants are studying or living in Singapore but come from a variety of Asian countries such as China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. This lends the programme its unique cross-cultural element.
“The Young Social Entrepreneurs programme provides these students with the opportunity, not only to interact with and learn from their peers and industry practitioners, but also to understand differing cultural perspectives and thus broaden their world views,” explains Ms Serena Wong, Director of International Networking, SIF.
This programme is another example of how the SIF facilitates the exchange of ideas. Through such people-to-people exchanges, the foundation promotes understanding between Singaporeans and world communities. Other similar SIF programmes include the Young Business Ambassadors, Singapore Internationale and the Distinguished Visitors Programme.
“Through the Young Social Entrepreneurs programme, we also hope to build and foster a regional network of Asian youth interested in the field of social entrepreneurship. This will then help in the development for more of such enterprises in future that benefit more communities in Asia,” adds Ms Wong.
Speaking at the camp is Ms Elim Chew, founder and president of 77th Street. Ms Chew was recently appointed to the SIF Board of Governors. A successful businesswoman herself, youth entrepreneurship is a subject close to Ms Chew’s heart. In addition to chairing or co-chairing several committees targeted at youths, she is also a founding member and director of the Social Innovation Park (SIP). The SIP is a social enterprise incubator that helps create a platform to support the business solutions of social entrepreneurs.
“Youths in Singapore have great ideas and passion for social enterprises but they might not have the knowledge or resources to get their businesses up and running. This programme brings together successful social entrepreneurs to act as mentors to the young participants. The skills that the participants will pick up will help them build sustainable social enterprises. The development of more such businesses in Singapore will lend towards a more vibrant social entrepreneurship climate in Asia,” says Ms Chew.
A key component of the YSE programme requires each business proposal to demonstrate a social impact. Examples of the proposals include an enterprise that provides marketing skills training to basket-weavers in Cambodia, a mushroom cultivation business that uses coffee ground waste and an enterprise that donates a pair of shoes for every pair purchased.
Mr Kevin Teo, founding partner and director of Volans Asia, a London-based company dedicated to the business of social and environmental innovation, has previously managed the East and Southeast Asia portfolio of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
“Social entrepreneurship as a subject matter has captured the hearts and minds of the youth all over Asia. The best ideas and learning come through cross-pollination,” says Mr Teo.
“By assembling a group of budding young social entrepreneurs from around Asia, the Young Social Entrepreneurs programme will provide these future leaders with the tools and network to deliver on pattern-changing models that will impact the whole region,” he adds.
Industry practitioners that will be coaching the groups include Mr Bjorn Lee, Chief Executive Officer, JABFISH; Mr Douglas Abrams, Managing Partner, Extream Ventures; Mr Lee Junior, Managing Director, Silver Capital Investment Pte Ltd; Ms Jessica Tan, Partner, McKinsey & Company Singapore; Mr Martin Tan, Executive Director, Halogen Foundation; Ms Nancy Frohman, General Manager, SingHealth Foundation; and Ms Sarah Mavrinac, President, aidha.
Through hands-on workshops, the participants will learn how to assess the feasibility of their business plans, measure social impact and ultimately, raise funds for their enterprises. They will also get lessons on pitching their ideas to potential funders and partners, and being effective leaders and team builders.
In addition, the participants will have a roundtable discussion with Mr Kenny Low, Chief Executive Officer and Principal of O School, a performing arts centre that is also a social enterprise.
At the end of the camp, the six teams will get to pitch their business proposals to a judging panel. The winning team will walk away with a prize of S$3,000.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/03/singapore-international-foundation-launches-first-of-its-kind-programme-for-young-social-entrepreneurs/.
- Kevin TeoBusiness leaders present a vision for a sustainable economy
2nd March, 2010 by Alejandro Litovsky
Last year I was involved in the design of the future scenarios ‘Vision 2050: the New Agenda for Business’, an effort by some of the world’s most influential companies to lay out a pathway for achieving a sustainable world by 2050.
The report suggests that greater sustainability and resource-efficiency will, increasingly, become a precondition for corporate success. “Sustainability will become a key driver for all our investment decisions, said Idar Kreutzer, CEO of Storebrand, a leading Norwegian financial group.
Led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the Vision 2050 project identified the scope of ecological challenges the corporate sector will face in the coming years as well as related opportunity areas – and involved the participation of companies such as Boeing, Syngenta, Weyerhauser, Procter & Gamble, Alcoa, Duke Energy, Toyota and Volkswagen. The Global Footprint Networkcreated a ’scenario calculator’ that helped leaders run the numbers on various ecological scenarios and solutions. We profiled the collaboration of WBCSD and the Global Footprint Network in The Phoenix Economy report as an example of how innovators create innovation ecosystems to accelerate their impact.
The Vision 2050 report lays out must-have conditions for making a sustainable society possible, including:
• A system of market pricing that reflects ecological costs, starting with carbon, water and ecosystem services
• Doubling agricultural output without increasing the amount of land or water used
• Halting deforestation and increasing yields from planted forests
• Halving carbon emissions worldwide by 2050 through a shift to low-carbon energy systems and more energy-efficienct goods and services.
• Providing universal access to low-carbon transportation
New rules for markets will drive innovation and competition in the direction of sustainability and away from resource- and energy-intensive production, the report says. Simply put, the costs of producing highly resource-intensive goods will increase, even as demand for such products falls.
“The radical changes highlighted in Vision 2050 demand a different perspective from business leaders, requiring them to rethink how they operate to stay on-track for a sustainable future,” said Samuel A DiPiazza, Jr., former CEO and Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Read the Vision 2050 report.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/03/vision2050/.
- Alejandro LitovskyGates Switches from Mosquitoes to Fireflies
26th February, 2010 by John Elkington
Was sent a link to Bill Gates’s latest TED talk, on climate and energy, and watched this evening between sessions. This time, instead of releasing mosquitoes into the audience to underscore the threat of mosquito-borne diseases, he opens a jar of fireflies. They don’t get very far, which I hope isn’t a reflection of the prospects for the energy “miracles” Gates calls for - but it’s an impressive presentation nonetheless. And it’s the first time I’ve come across the Terrapower idea.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/02/gates-switches-from-mosquitoes-to-fireflies/.
- John ElkingtonHow the Boomers Will Pay Back
25th February, 2010 by John Elkington
David Metz, former Chief Scientist at the UK Department of Transport and one of the brains trust we are assembling for our project on ageing, entrepreneurship and sustainability, forwarded me a link to an interesting piece John Lloyd just did in the Financial Times. Far from pessimistic, Lloyd argues that rather than turning into selfish protectors of the status quo, Boomers will seek to repay the surplus they have taken out. “Watch this becoming a large political project of our next decade,” he concludes, “a planned and enabled use of the sap and vigour left in the autumnal generation, so that the younger ones see not a population of the demented, dependent old, but men and women alive and engaged in the possibilities of the world they will leave to their youngers and betters.”
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/02/how-the-boomers-will-pay-back/.
- John ElkingtonGreen Cities Event in San Francisco
24th February, 2010 by John Elkington
The Clean & Cool Mission to San Francisco is going very well, though I’m finding my frequent flights of recent days have hammered whatever it was that I got a week-and-a-half ago down into my lungs. Still, I managed not to collapse into paroxysms of coughing during the Green Cities event last night. Today, the city is cloaked in rain, but I ventured out to have lunch with Jennifer Biringer and Patrin Watanatada of SustainAbility at a nice vegetarian restaurant. This evening: an event at Arup - cities again, I expect, a theme that makes much sense, since that’s where the bulk of us now live, and that innovations tend to evolve not independently but in clusters.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/02/green-cities-event-in-san-francisco/.
- John ElkingtonAllocating Patient Capital
20th February, 2010 by Alejandro Litovsky
The funding options for social innovators is diversifying as investors, from private foundations to venture capitalists, experiment with social impact investing. This area, appealingly re-branded ‘patient capital’, is developing fast, with networks like the Rockefeller Foundation-backed Global Impact Investing Network dedicated to scale the sector.
Among a growing number of funds being created in the impact investing market, the Acumen Fund stands out as one of the pioneering ones. The latest refection by its Founder and CEO, Jacqueline Novogratz, its worthy of sharing broadly, as it touches on key issues to the growth of the sector and the scaling of its impact.
So here it is, reprinted:
“In the first years of Acumen Fund’s existence, the two most challenging questions we faced were “Can this scale?” and “Will you ever exit?” As I wrote in my last letter to you, we’re seeing significant scale in our investments ranging from maternal health, to public toilets and solar energy. Of course, the more we find answers, the deeper our questions become. Regarding scale, we’re now doing more intense dives into understanding the trade-offs. On one hand, how do our investees avoid corruption in partnering with government; and on the other, how do they avoid being pushed to serve a wealthier clientele by more traditional investors focused more on profitability than on serving the poor?
Regarding exits, the news is good. Indeed, we exited two investments this quarter and hope to exit a third in the coming months. Most exciting is Jamii Bora, the affordable housing development outside Nairobi, Kenya, which has fully repaid its $250,000 loan! Three years ago, we lent this money so that Jamii Bora could build a housing development for low-income slum dwellers who had proven their ability to repay, but would never qualify for a traditional bank mortgage. I remember standing on the open land an hour outside Nairobi’s slums, listening to the inimitable Ingrid Munro, Jamii Bora’s founder, laying out her vision: the organization would build 2,000 houses, each equipped with an indoor kitchen and bathroom, a garden and a place for laundry; they would use solar energy, and create an efficient water system so that the water could be treated and recycled; and they would eventually see a town of 12,000 people flourishing.
| Recently, I visited a development with 750 constructed houses along with thriving shops and a full-fledged school. More than 240 families - or about 1,300 individuals - have moved in, and many have painted the trim on their block houses, and planted gardens in backyards. Most thrilling to me was visiting Jane’s home, for I had spent time with her a year ago in her temporary dwelling in the Mathare Valley slum (here’s my TED talk on her journey). Her house was beautiful: trimmed in orange and green with sunflowers touching the roofline, it seemed a palace compared to the shanty where Jane had spent her life. |  Jane’s dream home. |
The most extraordinary moment occurred as we stood in her new indoor bathroom which contained a toilet, sink and shower. “In Mathare,” she said, “the water is dirty and the children are always sick. The little ones especially are always suffering with diarrhea and it is too far to go to the toilets and too dirty and expensive as well. My only option was flying toilets, but the diarrhea could be so bad that the children would soil the floor. But now, the toilet is right here in your house.”
She then demonstrated the ease of using a toilet and flushing waste away. Nothing has ever reminded me of the indignity of defecating in bags and then throwing the waste on rooftops like the sight of Jane and her new toilet. More than 1.5 billion people have no access to good sanitation. It needn’t be that way.
Never before have I understood in a spiritual sense the potential of patient capital. Capital can be used to draw us close or to distance us from one another. Traditional societies that forbid usury want to ensure the group stays together and supports one another. The sub-prime debt phenomenon, on the other hand, is a powerful example of using capital in a way that distances. Wall Street investors had no stake in whether homeowners repaid their mortgages as they thought they were “safe” up to a certain default rate. Borrowers had no relationship with a traditional banker. The system was bankrupt of values and accountability.
In an increasingly interdependent world, we must think of ourselves as a single tribe. In a world with so much excess wealth on one hand and poverty on the other, we need a new asset class. Patient capital is money invested not for undue profit but to support opportunities for disadvantaged communities. Money earned is used to invest in others and not for personal gain; and investors provide management support for the sake of the others’ success. In return, the investee is accountable to repay as a member of that same community.
Patient capital can be a cornerstone of a new social contract and a more nuanced type of capitalism for our 21st century world. Acumen invested a quarter million dollars in an organization focused on slum dwellers to build an affordable housing development – an investment banks would not make. Today, a hopeful, diverse community exists. Jamii Bora has repaid Acumen, and we can now invest in other organizations focused on bringing life sustaining services to the poor. Finally, Jane’s joy in what she has herself accomplished is a joy shared by every Partner and team member of Acumen. She did it herself, of course, but it was the brilliant vision and execution of Jamii Bora and the patient capital financing from Acumen and others that enabled her to realize her dream.
The week in Kenya was one of the most extraordinary I’ve experienced: I’ve detailed it in a fairly long journal. Ecotact toilets now serve nearly 15,000 people a day; Insta is producing more than 15 million packets of protein-fortified porridge and is on its way to creating a retail market; and we are engaging in an exciting new agricultural investment focused on hybrid seed production and distribution.
| Finally, on a personal level, thanks to Acumen Fellow Suraj Sudakhar, over 90 people in the Kenyan slums have joined seven self-organized book clubs to read The Blue Sweater, (which comes out in paperback today)! He and seven young men from the slums organized a gathering for nearly 100 people in Kibera to discuss the ideas in the book while I was there (an event I recount in the Huffington Post.) The quality of the questions was incredible. People asked about balancing family and leadership, about financing existing projects, and about what individuals there could do to help bridge the gap between rich and poor. It was truly one of the most moving evenings of my life and I thank every one of those young men for giving so much of themselves to make it happen. | 
Nearly 100 participants turned out for |
It has taken me a few weeks to understand what happened that night. First, I was struck by the generosity and organizational efficiency of the young men who encouraged people to come from five different slums, some of them traveling more than 90 minutes on buses. Second, though everyone spoke about the corruption and challenges to those living in the slums, no one put themselves into the category of being “poor.” Rather, they hungered for what they could do to overcome challenges and help others as well. Ultimately, the individuals in that room seemed to transcend a feeling of Us and Them, and moved to a place of We. It is on this shared sense that I feel an ever-deepening commitment to this work and everything that it promises.
It will take each and every one of us, rich and poor alike, to build the world we dare to imagine. But that night in the Kibera slum, for one powerful moment, I got a glimpse of what is truly possible.
I wish all of you everything that the world has to offer.
Jacqueline Novogratz
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/02/allocating-patient-capital/.
- Alejandro LitovskyA Social Enterprise ‘Square Mile’ for London?
18th February, 2010 by John Elkington
Was very interested to see the proposal that “a social enterprise ’square mile’, similar to London’s Canary Wharf business district, should be created as part of the 2012 Olympic legacy.” According to socialenterpriselove.com, the idea was suggested by Mark Sesnan, who heads one of the UK biggest social enterprises, leisure company GLL.
It chimes with our thinking around mapping and co-evolving a London Sustainability Cluster in the build-up to 2012. To date, we have had behind-the-scenes conversations with the likes of SustainAbility (which will be 25 in 2012), Futerra and the Carbon Disclosure Project, but it looks as though we need to open out the conversation.
The address for this blog entry is: http://www.volans.com/2010/02/a-social-enterprise-square-mile-for-london/.
- John Elkington