Sankalp (English translation: Pledge or Determination) is a South Asia Social Enterprise and Investment Forum with the primary goal of bringing together various stakeholders sharing a common conviction that capital should be invested to create multiple bottom-line returns (financial, social and environmental) and not exclusively financial (profit-maximizing) or social (philanthropic) returns.

Sankalp 2009 is an effort to discover, connect and support the most investible social MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium enterprises) operating in agriculture, energy, education, healthcare and "scalable models".  Organized by the India Development Gateway and sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, Rural Innovations Network, NABARD and Aavishkaar, this promises to be a high-profile forum for the latest generation of base of the pyramid companies in South Asia.

If you have a company that should be considered for the Sankalp Award, or know of one, the deadline for nominations is February 15, 2009.  More information on the awards, process, program, events and sponsors is available on the web site.  We'll be keeping an eye on Sankalp and will look to post updates as we hear them from our friends at the India Development Gateway.

Position: Vice President of Business Development and External Affairs

Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts with travel up to 35 percent of the time

Organization: Root Capital is a nonprofit social investment fund that provides credit and financial education to grassroots organizations—such as farmer and artisan associations as well as private businesses—in developing countries that have socially and environmentally responsible practices.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Root Capital currently has field offices in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Kenya.  By offering loans and financial training to small and growing businesses in rural areas of the developing world, Root Capital aims to fill the "missing middle" of finance—serving organizations caught in the gap between microfinance and traditional banking.  Root Capital’s support enables borrowers to take advantage of good business opportunities and rising demand for their products by providing loans and technical assistance needed to grow operations, invest in infrastructure, or manage cashless periods before harvest time.

Description: Reporting directly to the Founder/CEO, the Vice President will lead the business development and external affairs functions both strategically and operationally.  The Vice President’s specific responsibilities will include fundraising, representing Root Capital externally, developing internal management and information systems to help make Root Capital’s fundraising more effective, broadening its donor and investor base, and increasing revenues.  S/he will manage an eight-member team that includes individual and institutional fundraisers, marketing and communications professionals, and impact assessment staff.  The ideal candidate will be creative and resourceful, with an established reputation in impact investing, social enterprise, international economic development, financial services, and/or corporate social responsibility.

See the attached job description for more details, including information on how to apply.  More information on working with Root Capital can be found on their web site.

We received the following story via e-mail from guest blogger Gretchen Ruethling, a first year Master of Public Administration student focusing on international development at Cornell University. She has worked as a journalist and for an environmental organization and an agricultural research organization in the U.S. and Latin America. She is interested in the private sector's role in development and capacity building among small and medium enterprises.

By Gretchen Ruethling

Entrepreneur and self-described "ideas man" Frank Taylor moved from Cape Town, South Africa to Botswana seeking a challenge, trading game skins and leading archaeology, ethnology and botany exhibitions for a museum in South Africa. "I was living on the smell of an oil rag," Taylor said. "A jack of all trades, master of none."

43 years later, Taylor still lives in Botswana and recently started a natural food products company called WildFoods that he says is the only company in southern Africa to produce dried snacks made from native foods that are grown in the wild including nuts, fruits and melons on a commercial scale.

With a staff of 11 that has no formal training in marketing or management and no financing but plenty of passion and business acumen, Taylor aims to market these products to the country's burgeoning tourism industry to improve the livelihoods of rural communities in Botswana.

For the next week, three students and an applied economics and management professor from Cornell University will be working with Taylor on developing marketing strategies to increase distribution of the company's products locally. Cornell's Emerging Markets program has been organizing such trips for students who are interested in hands on business development experience in southern Africa for the past few years.

Currently, another group of students is working with a chemical inputs company in Kenya on developing strategies to better reach smallholder farmers.

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Editor's note: Guest video blogger Karthik Janakiraman is an Acumen Fund Fellow. This year, Karthik is working with Global Easy Water Products (GEWP), an company in India providing poor farmers with access to affordable micro-drip irrigation solutions. He will develop a production, inventory and logistics plan, while also building and refining GEWP's export strategy.

Before joining Acumen Fund, Karthik was a Senior Engineering Manager at Applied Materials in Santa Clara, California, responsible for new product development. He has been awarded five patents in the area of semiconductor design. Karthik holds a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Video blog by Karthik Janakiraman

During my first week in Aurangabad, I went to the agricultural fields and met a few customers of GEWP. One of them in particular, stood out. This short video captures my thoughts and impressions on that meeting.



This post first appeared on the Acumen Fund Fellows blog.

Following is the second of a Two-Part Series written by guest blogger Ryan Gunderson after a recent trip to rural Zambia.

Ryan is a business professional with Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company.  He earned a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He writes about sustainable, scalable solutions to end global poverty on his blog Riches For Good and is actively pursuing his goal to help 1 million people out of poverty during his lifetime.

By Ryan Gunderson

I met Blessings and Francis in October 2008 when I visited the church they both attend in Lusaka, Zambia.  Although some 90 people were in attendance, Blessings and Francis stood out to me for the obvious reason that they were the only two speakers in the main meeting that day. Before Sunday school I introduced myself to all who were present, and I told them I was traveling with a non-governmental organization (NGO) and would be visiting rural farmers in Zambia to help them increase their incomes. 

Intrigued by the purpose of my trip, Francis invited me to his house after church, and I gladly accepted.  Blessings separately invited me to his house; the three of us traveled to Francis' house, where we spoke for about an hour.  I'm pictured below with Blessings (suit) and Francis, and several members of Francis' family.

I shared my goal to help 1 million people out of poverty and asked Blessings and Francis for any suggestions.  They each shared their opinion that many people have ideas for small businesses, but they lack startup capital. 

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Following is the first of a Two-Part Series written by guest blogger Ryan Gunderson after a recent trip to rural Zambia.

Ryan is a business professional with Medtronic, the world's leading medical technology company.  He earned a bachelor's degree from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. He writes about sustainable, scalable solutions to end global poverty on his blog Riches For Good and is actively pursuing his goal to help 1 million people out of poverty during his lifetime.

By Ryan Gunderson

Mr. Hakawale is a farmer who lives along the banks of the Magoye River with his family in rural Zambia.  Up until 1997, he cultivated a small plot of land, watering his crops by hand with a bucket.  When I visited Mr. Hakawale in October 2008 as a guest on IDE's annual board trip, he gave us all a great history lesson of irrigation on his farm, starting by holding up a rusted out metal bucket he used years ago, shown in the picture below.

In 1997, Mr. Hakawale met a representative of IDE (short for International Development Enterprises), a Colorado-based non-profit that has been helping rural farmers in the developing world to increase their incomes since the 1980s.

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The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is launching a new project called "Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Global Agriculture." With the help of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the project aims to document evidence on what works in agriculture—what sorts of policies, programs, and investments in agricultural development have substantially reduced hunger and poverty.

They are inviting nominations highlighting interventions that have had a significant impact on food security, including those that have empowered women and vulnerable groups to improve their livelihoods. The nomination deadline is December 31.

For more information click here.

Guest blogger Bree Olivari is a second-year MBA candidate at Thunderbird Global School of Management and is a leader of the Net Impact chapter. At Thunderbird, Bree integrates her interest in sustainable business with her degree in supply chain leadership. Her projects include mapping best practices of supplier codes of ethics, organizing Thunderbird's Sustainable Innovation Summit and greening procurement practices on campus.

During a recent internship Bree helped design the distribution of micronutrient sachets to undernourished children in Mexico.

By Bree Olivari

As I bit into an apple provided in my Net Impact lunch box, my mind wandered to the farm it came from and how this juicy treat related to a growing and global food crisis. It is expected that such a thought cross my mind especially since the details from the session I attended at the Net Impact National Conference hours earlier entitled "The Global Food Crisis: Business-Led Solutions to Alleviate Food Insecurity and Malnutrition" were still fresh.

Back to my thoughts of the apple farm. Much unlike the farms described in the session, which the world's poorest communities depend on, the apple farm probably uses technology developed over the past fifty years, can afford to use fertilizer and may even receive a subsidy from the US government. Furthermore, the apple farmer clearly has access to a reliable transportation infrastructure which affords her access to markets where she can make well-informed decisions on price and value for the customer.  

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Guest blogger Matt Austin is a second-year MBA student at Thunderbird School of Global Management focusing on the intersection of international development, entrepreneurship and venture capital. He spent this past summer advising a group of Endeavor High Impact Entrepreneurs in Turkey on their capital raising and expansion efforts.

Prior to Thunderbird, Matt was a private equity and M&A attorney for nearly seven years. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Iowa with a degree in Economics.

By Matt Austin

The buzz surrounding social enterprise in international development circles has been loud and growing louder.  Hybrid business models that blend private sector and non-profit approaches are becoming increasingly prevalent.  Development NGOs, multilateral institutions and government agencies are all looking for ways to incorporate more private sector approaches into their programs.  In response to this trend and growing demand from socially-minded students, business schools are adding many social entrepreneurship and BoP-focused courses. 

At the Net Impact Conference, a whole series of panels focused solely on social entrepreneurship and innovation.  The kick-off panel for this track asked an important question:  how much of this buzz surrounding the benefits and value of social enterprise is just hype and how much is reality?

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Chip Ransler is the co-founder of Husk Power Systems (HPS), a for-profit company that cost-effectively converts rice husks into electricity. HPS utilizes a proprietary technology to run 35-100 kilowatt mini power plants, delivering pay-for-use electricity to un-electrified villages in India's "Rice Belt." HPS' five pilot projects have become operationally profitable within six months, delivering sustainable, environmentally-friendly, low-cost energy that is dramatically improving the lives of rural Indians.

Chip is also a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow.  We sat down this week at the conference for an interview.  For more context on Husk Power Systems, check out their profiles in Virginia Business (Chip and his business partner, Manoj Sinha, are MBA candidates at the University of Virginia) and Rediff.com.

Rob Katz, NextBillion.net: Tell me briefly – what is Husk Power Systems?

Chip Ransler, Husk Power Systems: Husk Power Systems is a rural electrification company.  We go where the inputs are cheap and where electricity is most needed and valued.  In practice, that means rural villages – places where 3 or 4 thousand people live.  Our systems are truly community based – we don’t have to truck in wires from all over the place.  It’s a relatively small, off-grid system.  There are 350 million people in India without power living in small villages; and those communities harvest 92 million tons of rice harvested every year – we’re meeting the need and using the best, local materials.  Also, this is not a dream – we’re in 5 villages, power 12,000 people’s homes. Our goal is to build 100 as quickly as we can – then scale our model throughout the developing world.

NextBillion.net: Tell me about rice husk – what is it, how much is there, where do you find them?  What do farmers do with them now?

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Paul Polak is wearing a sweater vest.  This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s met him or seen him speak.  The man loves sweaters – cardigans, sweater vests, pullovers.  Hell, in Camden today – with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees in the midday sun – Paul’s sweater makes a lot of sense.  But despite his grandfatherly image, Paul is a truly a young, tireless innovator and entrepreneur at heart.  

Polak is the founder of the non-profit International Development Enterprises (IDE) and the author of Out of Poverty (review here).  He is dedicated to developing practical solutions that attack poverty at its roots. For the past 25 years, Paul has worked with thousands of farmers in countries around the world to help design and produce low–cost, income–generating products that have already moved 17 million people out of poverty.

His goal - like Bunker Roy's - is to create a franchise of barefoot, women microentrepreneurs based on the ruthless pursuit of affordability. Polak suggests that a company could set up a water kiosk where entrepreneurs could sell water at an affordable price, profitably.  (Sounds familiar!)

He starts his presentation with some seemingly random facts – 200 million Americans have hemorrhoids; men talk on cell phones 16 percent more than women do.  His point: we know everything we need to know (and more) about affluent consumers.  But we know next to nothing about the other 90 percent of the world's customers.

Serving these customers means re-thinking business.  But it also means re-thinking development.  To do so, Polak has based his work on what he calls the three great poverty eradication myths:

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