Archive for Clinton Global Initiative

This is the first in a series of six posts related to Affordable Private Schools. Every other week, we will be posting a new article on one aspect of the movement to give the poor a better education through entrepreneur-led schools in developing countries.

Yesterday, at the Clinton Global Initiative, there was a fascinating discussion on the pressing need to tackle youth unemployment on a global scale. Why? There are nearly 1.2 billion people on our planet between the ages of 15 and 25—the largest youth demographic in human history. About 90% of this group lives in the developing world and faces significant barriers to economic success.

What does this mean? We need to create over a billion jobs over the next decade—and we’re going to have to get creative about it.

As we’ve learned by watching the impact of the recession in the US, jobs don’t just materialize out of thin air. Job creation requires both a top-down policy effort, and a bottom-up focus on education. It requires long-term planning and forward thinking.

When we say that education is a key component, it’s important to realize that we don’t just mean putting kids in school. That’s the first step, of course. But, there’s much more to it than that.

First, there’s school quality. Take India for example. A remarkable 95% of primary school-age children are already in school. Half the battle has been won—the students are enrolled and going to school. What’s the problem then? According to a recent op-ed by author and commentator Gurcharan Das, one in four government primary teachers is illegally absent on any day and one in four who is present is not teaching. Part of these dismal stats is due to low teacher pay. The other reason is simply a lack of oversight. In a country as big as India, and in countries as rural as Kenya or Nigeria, this  is the time to to put the power into the hands of the people instead of depending on government to educate the masses—because that’s not necessarily working.

» Continue reading “1 Billion Idle Minds or 1 Billion Opportunities?”

Beyond Profit is reporting from the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City this week.

Thirty years ago, if you asked development experts how to move people out of poverty, they would tell you, “Invest in agriculture.” Today, if you asked development experts how to move people out of poverty, they would tell you, “Invest in agriculture.” The problem, according to Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, who spoke at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, is we haven’t done it to the extent that we should have. And, he says, USAID is as guilty as anyone. As a result, many African countries are falling behind, food inflation has been hitting developing countries in extreme ways, and more people are sliding back into poverty.

Why is agriculture development so important? By investing in agriculture, you can improve a country’s agricultural productivity, and in so doing, move many people up and out into new jobs. Not to mention, agricultural efficiency means lower food prices—and when you only have a dollar or two each day to make ends meet, and food makes up the majority of your expenses, lowering the cost of food allows for dramatic gains in family income. In fact, agricultural development is 3-4 times more effective in boosting an economy than GDP.

» Continue reading “Seeding Progress in Developing Countries”

Beyond Profit is reporting from the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City this week.

Okay. Cookstoves are not sexy. Talking about cookstoves is not sexy. Writing about them is not sexy. But, maybe, just maybe, it will be now, with the launch of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves at the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday by US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Yesterday, during the announcement, we were pointedly reminded by Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, that women all over the world are still cooking in the 21^st century as they did in the 1st. “This,” Jackson said, “is the ultimate environmental justice issue.”

Why is this such a big issue? Try this. Next time you’re making dinner, do it over a stove that produces noxious fumes that make your eyes water and your throat burn. And then do it every day, maybe twice a day for the rest of your days, and see if you think it’s an issue. If that doesn’t convince you, consider the numbers; 2 million people die each year because of exposure to unsafe cook stoves. » Continue reading “All Hail the Clean Cookstove!”

Hello from New York!  As we write, Beyond Profit is crammed into a press box surrounded by reporters from Croatia, Bahrain, Mexico and a guy from “right down the street” in order to provide coverage of the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative. This is our second year attending, and we come because it’s a great way to find out the latest in social innovation and development and to hear about what companies are doing to make an impact (or in some cases, to do less harm).

A few things we’re excited to report on today: Matthew Bishop from the Economist with Rajiv Shah at USAID on Economic Empowerment. Anticipating a great discussion on Women’s Economic Empowerment with a focus on property rights and microcredit….speakers include Tim Hanstad of RDI, James Mwangi of Equity Bank in Kenya, Dina Powell from Goldman Sachs and 10,000 Women, and Roshaneh Zafar from Kashf Foundation in Pakistan. And, high on the list is the face-off—okay, perhaps an “intellectual meeting of the minds” is more appropriate—between Vikram Akula and Muhammad Yunus this afternoon in the panel, Profiting from the Poor? Microfinance IPOs.

So, that’s where we’ll be today. Stay with us! And follow us on twitter @beyondprofit–look for the hashtag #cgi2010!  If you’re here, come find us! We’d love to meet up.

So as promised in our earlier post, we wanted to share an update on the Global Impact Investing Network which President Clinton announced at the last plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative.  The new network will create:

• The GIIN Investors Council:  this multi-stakeholder council will provide leadership, disseminate the latest research and support the creation of an industry infrastructure.
• Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS):  This set of standards will address the lack of transparency and credibility that keeps the industry from growing by creating common metrics for social and environmental impacts.

President Clinton spoke about it off the cuff, endorsing it in his drawl, giving it a uniquely Clintonesque vote of confidence: “This is one of those deals where nobody knows if it will work, but if it does it will change the future.  I feel the same way about this network as I do about climate change, if we can make this economically viable it will change everything.  This is of enormous significance and I really like it.”

The announcement is a model of the partners CGI can inspire to sit around one table:

• Rockefeller Foundation committed $2.5 million
• J.P. Morgan added $750,000 to encourage other investors to join in
• USAID committed $1 million towards the IRIS initiative

The list of founding members reads like a ‘who’s who’ of venture philanthropy, including:

Acumen Fund, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Calvert Foundation, Capricorn Investment Group, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Equilibrium Capital, Generation Investment Management, Gray Ghost Ventures, IGNIA, J.P. Morgan, Lundin for Africa, Lunt Family Office, Omidyar Network, Prudential, The Rockefeller Foundation, Root Capital, Shorebank/NCIF, Trans-Century, Triodos Investment Management, and Wolfensohn & Company.

Emily Davila, our Beyond Profit Guest Blogger, reports from the Clinton Global Initiative.

Part of the fun of being a part of a cutting edge sector is defining the terms for what we are doing as we do it!  This morning’s CGI session on “deepening financial inclusion” created some new terms and deleted some common ones:

Ones you can delete from your vocabulary:

Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid –  Sorry guys, there is no fortune here.  Building up services for the bottom billion will take a lot of work over a long time and subsidies will be necessary.   We need to be honest about the work ahead of us.  We need to name the partners that need to work together.  For instance, the government’s

social ministry needs to talk to its financial ministry when they are doing cash transfers to the ultra poor.  And the NGOs who can implement financial literacy programs need to talk to the banks that can invest in them.  By the way– this fortune will be measured by more than the money in the bank.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) – There is a big difference between a small micro-entrepreneur – say a food stand employing three people in rural Kenya — and medium enterprise like a factory employing 200 people in a peri-urban area.   While both need greater access to capitol, lumping them together isn’t helping anyone.  However: “community banking is ideal place to make funding available to both,” said Mary Houghton, President, Shore Bank Corporation.

Social Entrepreneurship —  “We need to erase dichotomy between where we make our money and where we do good. There is going to come a day is where every business entrepreneur should be social entrepreneur…” ironically this was said by Sally Osberg, President of the Skoll Foundation,  a funder of social entrepreneurs.

Here’s a word combo to add:

Pathological Collaboration:  This one is about getting everyone to work together – banks to fund organizations that can do the deep hard work of reaching the bottom billion, governments who can reinforce
with policies.   It was coined by my new favorite public speaker William Foote, the CEO of Root Capital. “We need to create a social movement for finance like the civil rights movement that has the vision to unlock financial for one billion people.  We need to think seriously about legislation that reinvents foreign assistant, not dead aid but vitally live aid.  We need pathological collaboration.” President Clinton repeated the phrase in his closing remarks, so I think its safe to say we just coined a new term!

Emily Davila, our Beyond Profit Guest Blogger, reports from the Clinton Global Initiative.

By choosing ‘investing in women and girls’ as the topic for his opening plenary, President Clinton sent a message that women were at the center of his agenda.

The panel embodied the CGI spirit of broad and innovative coalitions, with speakers from the government, private sector, and women’s organizations.

Two CEOs sat on the stage: Rex Tillerson of Exxon Mobile and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs.  They were joined by Melanne Verveer, the US ambassador for global women’s issues, Zainab Salbi, Women for Women International and Edna Adan, the founder of a maternity hospital in Somaliland.  Twelve new commitments for women in girls were announced at the session including training in entrepreneurship and financial literacy and access to low-cost technology.

On one hand, the unprecedented high-level private sector participation means that the women’s agenda has gone mainstream; real change will not happen if only women are talking to each other. On the other hand, the panel would not have succeeded if it hadn’t had two women from the trenches who could keep the discussion grounded in the life and death realities many women face.

But when the discussion turned to his corporate philosophy for focusing on women, Tillerson said that for empowering women, “money is not the issue”.  Easy for him to say as CEO of the world’s second largest company.

Zainab Salbi was quick to disagree, arguing that it is absolutely about increasing resources and  political commitments for women and girls.

Tillerson tried to backtrack, clarifying his remarks by saying it was about education, training, and staff capacity, not just pouring money into a problem.

Still, it was a reminder that even though they may be sitting on the same stage, the reality of a woman’s organization and Exxon Mobile are quite far apart.  While it is “not about the money” for Exxon, it is all about the money for thousands of women’s organizations like Salbi’s and Adan’s that are struggling to help women every day survive childbirth and rebuild their lives from war.

But the question seemed to open a door, and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs reframed the question, asking: are we making all the investments that we can make in women and girls? are we at capacity?

I think the answer is a resounding no.   Stay tuned for more updates from CGI.

Emily Davila, our Beyond Profit Guest Blogger, reports from the Clinton Global Initiative.

Is it possible to be an expert in innovation?

If so, Ashoka, the leading organization for social entrepreneurs, is an expert. Founder Bill Drayton defines innovation as a combination of change making, empathy, teamwork, and leadership.

Drayton believes that the world is currently going through a breakthrough – from being run by just a few people, to a world that is being run by teams of teams.

John Kao, the founder of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, believes that innovation cannot be learned, instead it is a
combination of factors that all have to be woven together. He thinks of innovation as a ”property of society, as a set of muscles or capabilities to drive progress.”

It seems the discussion becomes, not what is innovation, but how can we build infrastructures of innovation?   Here’s the criteria I heard from various speakers at Clinton Global Initiative:

• technology
• globalization & interconnectedness
• universities, research, subsidies and venture capitol,
• rotating leadership and teams,
• multi-disciplinary and horizontal approaches,
• policies that support for small and medium businesses,
• coalitions of private sectors, NGOs, government
• crowd-sourcing, user-generated and design thinking