Yaks for development? Withhold judgment and read on – this BOP project has legs (4, in fact). NextBillion ally Carol Chyau doesn’t think yak jokes are funny – with a partner, she’s behind the newly-formed Yashmere and Cheese for Change for-profit social enterprises. The Harvard Crimson reports:

...they want to use innovative business solutions to tackle development challenges. To improve living standards in rural communities in western China, they have launched a non-governmental organization, Ventures in Development, with two for-profit subsidiaries designed to leverage one of the region’s most abundant local resources—13 million Tibetan yaks.

Ventures in Development will work with 4,000 Chinese families implementing base of the pyramid strategies in rural China. One of the for-profit enterprises will market yak down fiber to the international knitter’s market – a BOP cashmere (yashmere) of sorts. The other, meanwhile, will turn yak milk into gourmet cheese. Chyau and her business partner, Marie So, have dubbed that enterprise “Cheese for Change.”

The BBC reported last week about a new device being marketed to purify water in developing countries. The LifeStraw looks like a large plastic flute, and contains internal filters that remove bacteria from the water as it is drunk. The device is priced at around $3.50, and is designed to purify 700 liters over the course of six months to a year.

In spite of its initial cost ($3.50 is still expensive to someone making $1 a day), the device is still a welcome addition to other water purifying devices now coming to market. Apparently, not everyone agrees. The BBC article included a critique of the device by Paul Hetherington, a spokesman for UK charity WaterAid.

“The problem is that many people live very far away from their water, often walking a total of 20km or more carrying a weight of 25 kilos. The LifeStraw isn't going to prevent that long journey, even if it does improve the water they drink. ” He continued, ”It only costs a charity like WaterAid £15 per person to provide them with water, sanitation and hygiene education, which, provided there is decent water resource management in the country, will last them a lifetime. At that rate, $3.50 is expensive.”

Comments like this increasingly frustrate me, and I’ve seen them made repeatedly by sector-specific non-profits who believe that it’s pointless to try and solve one problem if efforts are not simultaneously made to solve another. It’s unfortunate that some organizations think that their solutions are the best and others should be disregarded, but that is precisely where development through enterprise adds value: it’s not an either/or proposition.