To the Dominican Republic I Go

Weddings have been missed. Births have been missed. Babies have been conceived that otherwise would not have been. Lifelong friendships have formed. Serendipitous first romantic connections have blossomed in Hyde Park. Lovers have connected via Skype and Gmail video chat.

Yes, there will be a movie. And no, I still do not know how to pronounce that darn volcano’s name. No one does.

UK Airspace Closed Since Thursday

It’s 5pm GMT on Tuesday 20th of April 2010. I’m writing on a Eurostar train from London to Paris that will soon go under the ocean. I’m trying to get back to work at iContact in Durham, NC and to a loving girlfriend Jess in Chapel Hill.

UK airspace has been closed since Thursday mid-day. My flight home on Sunday was canceled. I had been stuck in London for three days, prior to deciding to stop waiting and head south.

A Plan to Escape

By Monday at noon I had a plan. I had booked a Hertz rental car at London Heathrow and would pick up Nathaniel Whittemore of Change.org and two other friends from the Skoll World Forum who were stranded here and drive down for a Friday flight in Madrid. The rental was expensive, but it was something that felt both adventurous and productive, two words that are too rarely aligned.

But then, in the hotel lobby the news came on saying the UK airspace would open. The newsflash scroller said airspace would open at 1800 hours. The lobby erupted with cheers.

My new 42 year old friend, fellow American business-traveler gone-astray Chris, and I jumped in a cab across the street to Heathrow Terminal 3 thinking we might as well go jump in line. He had been stuck since Thursday was trying somehow, someway to meet up with his wife, 9 year old son, and 7 year old daughter who left Boston today for his annual family vacation.

By the time we got back to the hotel with hopes dashed the newsflash scroller had corrected itself, by adding the word ‘tomorrow.’ But alas, there was hope for an opened Heathrow.

So I canceled the rental car and took take my chances staying put. I didn’t really want to learn how to drive on the left side of the road in the UK, anyway. Or for that matter, learn how to drive on the right side of the road in France and Spain with a right-sided steering wheel, regardless of the amount of liability insurance. Back to Plan C it was.

Excitement Until the Fiery Volcano Recast its Ash

After a serendipitous dinner with a new friend and Skoll delegate Darlene from Ikatu, who is setting up for-profit socially responsible businesses in Ghana to scalably employ disadvantaged youth after eighteen years at QVC, I prepared for bed excited at the possibility of going home.

Last night at midnight. I had a confirmed seat on a flight from Heathrow direct to Raleigh leaving tonight (Tuesday) at 8pm and had received the cherished official American Airlines text message telling me so. All was looking promising.

I forwent the mini-van to Madrid option that an entrepreneurial Skoll delegate had arranged to depart from our hotel at 5am and the Skoll Foundation canceled their rented coach service to Madrid intended to rescue their foundation members and stranded guests. All was looking rosy, and most went to bed happy.

But then, around 1am news spread on Twitter via the creatively coined #ashtag hastag that the volcano had started erupting again. By the 3am NATS update suddenly instead of preparing opening up Tuesday the situation was “dynamic and variable” which seemed to be governmental double-speak for “you’re probably screwed.”

And so the volcano started erupting again in the middle of the night, keeping London shut down for the sixth straight day.

Send in the Navy

British airspace, closed since Thursday, did open for a brief respite this morning in the North of the United Kingdom where a few lucky passengers slipped out. Plenty of planes coming from mainland Europe were flying overhead today as UK airspace was open for planes that flew above 20,000 feet. Unfortunately NATS did not allow planes on the ground to take off.

While the British government had sent in the HMS Albion to rescue stranded British tourists, partly due to political pressure stemming from an upcoming election that remains a toss up, they didn’t seem to be able to do much to get folks out of the UK.

The Queen Mary 2 cruise ship back to New York was fully booked up, the trains were full, the ferries were full, and the French train workers were on strike. Wonderful.

And thus I woke up, for the third morning in a row in a hotel adjoining Heathrow, anxiously awaiting news from the London Volcanic Ash Advisory Service (yes, really) and NATS as to whether they would allow London airports to open.

By noon the answer was a clear no.

Decision Time

After receiving the dreaded flight canceled text message, it was decision time.

And so, rather than waiting for an indefinite period of time, at least until Thursday, for a flight from Heathrow, here I am on a Eurostar train to Paris (the coach seats were all taken so here I am in first class anything for the first time in my life and hopefully the last).

Tomorrow, I have a flight booked to the Dominican Republic and then on to Miami Wednesday night and to RDU Thursday. Today, Paris is open. Tomorrow, we shall see. C’est la vie.

If Paris does not work out, then there is always a bus to Madrid. I have a backup refundable flight booked Friday from Madrid direct to Miami. It may prove difficult to get to Madrid from Paris with the French train workers on strike, but I’ll find a way.

I’m currently working on Plan F, hoping it sticks. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Plan F before, for anything.

Plan A: London to Raleigh by plane leaving Sunday

Plan B: London to Raleigh by plane leaving Monday

Plan C: London to Raleigh by plane leaving Tuesday

Plan D: London to Madrid (in rental car) to Raleigh (by plane) via Ecuador and New York, leaving Thursday

Plan E: London to Madrid (in mini-van) to Raleigh (by plane) via Miami, leaving Friday

Plan F: London to Paris (on the Eurostar train) to Raleigh (by plane) via Dominican Republic and Miami, leaving Wednesday

Plan G: London to Paris (on the Eurostar train) to Madrid (by bus) to Raleigh (by plane), via Miami, leaving Friday

Who would have thought going to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic via Paris would ever be the best option home to NC from London?!

I am sharing a Holiday Inn room tonight by Paris Charles de Gaulle airport with my new friend and fellow traveler from Boston, Chris, who is trying his best to get back to his family as soon as he can.

I’m enjoying the adventure and getting lots of work done.

Who We Should Not Forget As We Tell This Story

As the stories of the inconvenienced well-off are told, we musn’t forget those who are truly suffering tonight.

People like me, business travelers with an EA, who can afford hotels, are doing just fine and can relax and enjoy. I am not in the majority, however. Most here are tourists and families who are stuck and cannot easily afford the $2000 or $3000 extra cost per person to get home per person in any reasonable time frame.

I particularly have sympathy in this uniquely ambiguous situation for those who have truly been hurt financially or otherwise by this situation.

From the family sleeping in the Heathrow arrivals section, waiting now six days for their connecting flight, who cannot afford the jacked-up hotel rates (what was once 29 pounds is now 79, what was once 139 pounds is now 200) to the Kenyan farmer who now has nothing but wilted flowers or a rotten crop that must be tossed or turned into cow-feed, families have been economically devastated due to the decision to close the airspace, some say unnecessarily.

There is a tremendous economic story here, and tremendous economic pressure to open up the air.

Further, I hope that the attention this volcanic incident is getting, with  primarily middle-class and weathly Westerners “stranded” in nice hotels and having an extended European vacation (even if it is an expensive and unplanned one), will not detract from the ongoing much greater crisis in Haiti where there are 750,000 real human refugees who still to this day, 100 days on, are lacking shelter, clean water, and medical care.

As this story unfolds, I hope the global media does not lose touch with the much greater human story happening to folks who may not have as much resources. In our story, we should at least arc back to the other major natural activities of 2010 in this watershed year for strange natural behavior.

When You’re Stuck in a Trap Eat Cheese

The best line of the week was from Peter Greenberg at CBS speaking at TEDxVolcano, “When your stuck in a trap, eat the cheese.”

‘Tis the adventure of globalized commerce disrupted by a fiery Mother Nature.

So here I am in France. The train is now temporarily stuck due to a “problem on the tracks.” Perhaps some brie is called for.

UPDATE 12:53am: I made it to the hotel in Paris by the airport. UK airspace opened as of 9:34pm GMT Tuesday. The flight from Paris to the Dominican Republic is looking good for tomorrow. After waiting in line to see if we could get on an earlier flight and the only option being an outrageous $8000 business class ticket to Miami in the morning. We’re getting up at 6:30am to attempt to fly standby on anything to the U.S.

Recap: TEDxVolcano

I’m at The Hub incubator space next to London Kings Cross station this evening. I’m attending a spontaneous entrepreneurial event called TEDxVolcano that has been set up in 24 hours by Nathaniel Whittemore of AssetMap and Change.org with the support of TED, TEDxLondon, Sandbox Network and many others. The wonderful MC was June Cohen of TED Media.

Video of the event is now up at http://ow.ly/1zZOE.

The amazing line up of TEDxVolcano speakers were:

• Larry Brilliant, Skoll Foundation
• Rita King, Dancing Ink
• Chris Fralic, First Round Capital
• Jim Fruchterman, BenetechJim Burke, Participant Media
• Cara Mertes, SunDance Festival
• Sally Osborn, Skoll Foundation
• Matthew Bishop, The Economist, Author of Philanthrocapitalism
• Jim Hornthal, CMEA Capital
• Gary Bolls, Social Capital Markets (SOCAP) Conference
• Peter Greenberg, Travel Correspondent CBS
• Elizabeth Lindsey, Mapping the Human Story
• Jeff Skoll, The Skoll Foundation

Videos shown:

• A Small Act
• Pixels

There were also three wonderful musical performances by Sushella Raman.

Here are some funny or especially noteworthy quotes:

“Money doesn’t really matter when you’re stuck by a volcano. You could have a private jet, but that just means you’d get to die alone.” – Cara Mertes

“This is the generation that has to decide whether we will actually have a civilization” – Cara Mertes, Sundance

“The name of the volcano Eyjafjallajokull in the local Icelandic dialect actually means Goldman Sachs.” Matt Bishop, Philanthrocapitalism

“It is difficult to have an intelligent debate today on many critical issues like capitalism and on climate change without people immediately taking sides.” – Matt Bishop, Philanthrocapitalism

“Thank you to the British allowing us colonials to stay here for an indefinite period of time.” – Jim Hornthal

“How many people are stranded. You’re screwed. So, what’s the best thing to do when you’re caught in a trap. Eat the cheese!” – Peter Greenberg, CBS Travel Correspondent

“Today in Kenya, 400 tonnes of flour (or flowers?) in Kenya was thrown out because it is rotting. Think about the economic impact.” – Peter Greenberg, CBS Travel Correspondent

“For every day we’re not flying and air cargo is not flying documents aren’t being delivered, produce is not being delivered, medicine and organs aren’t being delivered.” – Peter Greenberg, CBS Travel Correspondent

“Even in the best of times, airlines lie. If they were running the shipping business they would have listed the Titanic as on time.” – Peter Greenberg, CBS Travel Correspondent

“We all have watches, but we have no time.” – Elizabeth Lindsey

“Perhaps this time is essential for you to consider, are you going to upgrade your impact” – Elizabeth Lindsey

“We wanted to keep our friends here after Skoll. Do you know hard it is to fake a volcano. Damn the volcano, let’s have a ball.” – Jeff Skoll, Skoll Foundation

Here was the TED Blog post on the event.

Volcano Causing Entrepreneurs to Be, Well, Entrepreneurial

I’m stuck in London for a few days due to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in Iceland.

I’m looking outside my hotel window at a calm Heathrow airport. It’s filled with parked planes, but nothing and no one is moving. All of the UK and much of European airspace is closed.

Here’s a concerning part–the last time the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted in 1821 the eruption lasted for two years. Oh my! This volcano could affect European air travel for quite some time. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said airlines are losing about £130m per day in revenues.

Fortunately the forecast is calling for a storm toward the end of this week that should make it safe to fly again, at least for a time.

I’ve looked into taking the 7 day Southampton to New York cruise home (people are actually considering this!) or getting a ferry to Bilbao, Spain and then a train to Lisbon, which is currently open for most flights, but it would take at least three days to even get to Lisbon from London at the moment as the ferry services are mostly booked up.

So I’m going to get comfortable and get some work done. It looks like iContact’s European headquarters will be opening tomorrow .

In the meantime I’m attending TEDxVolcano tonight in London which looks fun! A few hundred entrepreneurial attendees of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and OxfordJam remain stranded as volcano refugees–so Nathaniel Whittemore has in 24 hours organized this event to bring us back together in true entrepreneurial fashion.

Also entrepreneurial is a ‘rescue mission’ set up by a local TV host here who is taking Britons stranded in France back to the UK by boat.

Some here are suggesting the UK, French, and US militaries need to get some transatlantic boat services running to get people stranded on both sides of the oceans home and back to work and their families. A lot of people here would take a guaranteed 7 day return at this point.

Anyone have any creative ideas on how to get back to North Carolina?

Social Good With Market Returns at Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

Why I’m At Skoll…

I’m in Oxford, England today for the first full day of the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. I’m making great connections with investors who care about social impact equally to financial returns and learning how iContact can be a more socially responsible enterprise.

Our vision for iContact is to “Build a great global company based in North Carolina for our customers, employees, and community.”

So I’m here to ‘go to school’ for three days on how to truly maximize return for customers, employees, and community so that we can in turn maximize financial results for our shareholders. Fiduciary duty can go along with human social duty!

To me, having a formal CSR program and caring about impact for the customers, employees, and community is just good business sense that in fact maximizes financial return.

Increasing Financial Results By Focusing On Social & Environmental Impact

Personally, I strongly believe, in today’s new world, ensuring your business provides a positive social and environmental impact (or at least not a negative one!) will increase your financial return, not decrease it. I’ve seen this happen with numerous for-profit socially responsible companies like Ben & Jerry’s, The Body Shop, Whole Foods, Burt’s Bees, and Salesforce.com.

How can focusing on social impact improve financial results?

How can focusing on social return improve financial results? In three simple ways.

1. The type of employees who want to work at companies that care–companies that put equal emphasis on profits and purpose–are the most productive and often most aware and intelligent team members.
2. There is a growing movement toward consumers who care. Consumers will have much more brand loyalty to a company that they know cares and makes a positive social impact.
3. When customers become passionate about a brand they talk about it more and more people will write about it.

The Tipping Point

After 30 years of so many in the social enterprise field working towards this, the tipping point has been passed wonderfully and thankfully. As the Dean of the Oxford Said Business School Colin Mayer said last night, the financial crisis has shown that short-term focus on only financial results does not lead to long term success.

Organizations like B-Labs have succeeded in changing public policy toward the benefit of companies who care. Self-interested (”greedy”) business owners who want to make money will now wonderfully benefit financially from implementing a formalized Corporate Social Responsibility program and ensuring they track and social impact and environmental impact.

The invisible hand is now starting to work toward social good with economic growth now that incentives are being realigned properly toward sustainable economic growth. While there is much more path to tread toward truly aligning policy incentives and consumer purchasing behavior toward companies who care–it is happening and the tipping point has passed! Eureka!!

Social Good With Market Returns?

Right now a panel called ‘Social Good With Market Returns’ is about to begin. I’ve been tweeting a lot about the conference via @ryanallis.

The moderator is Herta von Stiegel of Ariya Capital.

The speakers are:

Nick O’Donohoe, Global Head of Research JP Morgan
David Chen, Principle, Equilibrium Capital Group [video]
John McCall MacBain, Founder and Director, McCall MacBain Foundation

Nick from JP Morgan is talking about the Social Finance group at JP Morgan. Nick is not a “normal banker.” They invest in social enterprises that have a double-bottom line (financial and social). This social investing field is also being called “Impact Investing.”

Ensuring Off-Balance Sheet Externalities Are Positive

There is a engaging discussion going on now at the panel around off-balance sheet externalities (positive and negative) of impact (positive or negative). Nick says “every time we make an investment we are creating externalities.” He says these externalities can be positive (jobs) or negative (pollution). He says “for the first time the investment community is measuring the social impact of what they are doing and only investing in companies that create net positive externalities.”

This discussion is at the core of global history of the past 200 years as the ideological battle between communism, socialism, and capitalism has been waged. The new consensus that is emerging here is that what has won (and in fact what must win for the sake of humanity’s ability to continue) is socially responsible capitalism. As John Perkins points out in Hoodwinked, there is nothing inherent in the model of Capitalism and the competitive market economy that require off-balance sheet externalities that destroy the world.

Taking Into Account the Full Cost of Environmental Damage

Now the discussion is revolving around how to adjust public policy to enable the true cost of negative externalities to be accounted for in the financial accounting results. Some are saying the Holy Grail for improving the world through business is to make all investing ‘impact investing’ by taking into account the true cost of environmental resources that are not renewed into Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

“Better accounting for negative externalities is really important” said John McCall MacBain of the McCall MacBain foundation just now on the panel. The discussion is revolving around environmental costs being forced on any organization that destroys a natural resource (public good) that does not replace it sustainably and the impact this would make on ensuring warped incentives are not provided to global financially-focused Boards of Directors.

The discussion has shifted to bringing the silos of philanthropy, impact investing, running non-profits and socially responsible for-profit entrepreneurship.

Borrowing a meme from my friend Judith Cone who worked at the Kauffman Foundation and now works at UNC as a Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, perhaps it is all about where goodness lies. Goodness can be in the heart of the public sector official, for-profit socially responsible entrepreneur, non-profit executive, global multinational Board member, activist, or investor.

Nick O’Donohoe from JPMorgan is speaking about how JP Morgan can access capital high net worth individuals and institutions they work with which want to tap into investment funds specifically set up for investing in companies who put an equal emphasis on social impact as financial results.

Questions & Comments?

What questions are there on this topic of public policy changes and investing in companies that create social good while achieving market returns or above market returns? I’d love to discuss this more!

You can follow tweets from the Forum here.

Microequity at Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

What Comes After Microloans?

As a technology entrepreneur and angel investor in both North Carolina and East Africa, I’ve been thinking about what comes next in microfinance? To me, it’s microequity.

I had a fascinating breakfast this morning here in Oxford on the topic of microequity. The field of microequity is nascent, but rapidly growing. To me microequity is investing small amounts in for-profit socially responsible companies, particularly those in the developing world. I’d consider the core of microequity investment ranges are between $5k and $100k in for-profit socially responsible companies in the developing world.

Microequity investing can fill a tremendous need for capital for SMEs that can help a small business grow when microloan maximums have been reached but an entrepreneur is not yet able to access banks and larger scale institutional investors.

Effectively, microequity can be seen as seed funding and angel funding for companies in the developing world–with the exception that investing $25,000 in an existing company in the developing world really is growth capital rather than seed capital as this amount of capital can go much further and in some cases get a company past cash flow positive.

A Model for Microequity

From my vantage there seems to be a profitable (and hence scalable for greatest social impact) model that is now being developed investing in these microequity capital ranges in many parts of the world and filling the gap that sometimes exists between microloans, banks, non-profit investing funds, and institutional capital while creating tremendous social impact through sustainable job creation and economic development.

Overhead costs, deal selection, accounting transparency, and methods of obtaining the return are perhaps the most challenging obstacles to achieving a market rate of return to the investment. We talked about how all of these challenges can be overcome. There is such a huge gap here that traditional finance has not yet solved and there so many high quality opportunities to invest in while making a tremendous impact.

One suggestion centered around taking a pre-agreed upon percentage of free cash flow (FCF, or effectively net profits) that is pre-agreed upon in advance. Another suggested revolved around tying returns to a revenue multiple since EBITDAs are easier to manipulate by non-audited smaller companies.

Personally, my interest is in helping small, high potential companies based in the developing world owned primarily by local entrepreneurs access the mentorship and financial resources they need to grow into the future leading companies in their respective countries and eventually take their firms public on regional stock exchanges when run. It will likely take a couple decades to bring together the educational (human capital), governmental, and infrastructural resources needed to help small companies run by smart ambitious local entrepreneurs thrive–but the trend toward local entrepreneurial-led (often ICT-related) economic growth is already happening in Kampala, Kigali, Dar es Salaam, and Nairobi and so many other emerging markets globally from what I’ve seen.

To me, small business growth is the key to sustainably growing an economy and effectively increasing per capita incomes (otherwise known as reducing the number of people in urban and rural areas in poverty) and I believe through the right local trust networks for deal flow and local entrepreneurial support and mentorship models it is quite possible to achieve very strong returns investing today in high-potential for-profit socially responsible companies in the developing world.

Not Replacing NGOs, Non-Profits, and Public Sector

Investing in for-profit socially responsible companies in the developing world does not replace the need for a strong effective transparent public sector and does not replace the need for investments from non-profit organizations and NGOs.

Rather, it is additive to creating sustainable bottom-up economic development that creates local constituent-based growth in a way that reduces inequality of opportunity–and it happens to be where I think I can add value with my background as a venture-backed technology entrepreneur at some point.

Creating a venture capital fund that puts social return equal to financial return is something I hope to focus on someday down the road and create a scalable model that provides market-rate returns (15-20% per annum) investing in high-growth entrepreneurial ventures in the developing world run by local entrepreneurs (likely in the energy, solar, water, agricultural, low-cost medical device, software, and Internet fields).

Microequity Breakfast This Morning at Skoll

The microequity breakfast attendees this morning were:

Forrest Metz, Dev Equity, based in Oxford
Ryan Allis, iContact, based in North Carolina USA
Allan Barkat, Dualis, based in Israel
Naoko Felder-Kuzu, Socential, based in Zurich
Ron Boehm, Boehm Gladen Foundation, based in California, USA
Rob Pettit, Sumaria, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

We chatted about a number of social venture funds investing in equity in the developing world such as GrowFin, BusinessPartners, TBL Mirror Fund, InReturn, ManoCap, and Jicana.

We had a great discussion around the technical structure around how to achieve market-based returns investing in for-profit socially responsible companies in the developing world.

We also talked about networks of socially responsible investors including Social Venture Network, Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs, and the Global Impact Investing Network and marketplaces for entrepreneurs in the developing world raising capital like BidNetwork and NeXii.

Questions & Comments?

What questions are there on this topic of microequity and investing in companies that create social good while achieving market returns or above market returns? I’d love to discuss this more!

How I Aligned What I Love With What I Do & Scaled Myself

This post will require a certain degree of vulnerability. Sometimes we build a hard shell around us when we’re going through difficult times. This is a story of personal growth.

A year ago I was sitting late at night in my Durham office at iContact wondering if I’d become a corporate sellout.

Was I trading in some of my most productive years of life to build a company I was no longer passionate about?

I had gone from being an entrepreneur to a manager. I was 24 and we had 150 employees and $20M in sales. I was dealing with purchase order forms and paid time off policies. We had achieved all the goals we had ever set out for ourselves. Where was the entrepreneurial passion?

We had gone from #20 to #2 in the market in five years and I had no idea how we’d get to #1. I thought it might be the time to start thinking about finding my replacement.

Even though we were still growing very quickly, we weren’t quite growing at the same percentages as we were before and for the first time in our company’s history we were going to have a year in which we would not double sales.

My confidence was wavering. I had made some big mistakes:

• I had waited too long to launch a stock option plan for the whole company.
• I hadn’t hired a CMO soon enough.
• I hadn’t built the right ecosystem of mentors that could help me get to the next level as a CEO.
• I had focused too much on the surrogate-family side of our culture and not enough on the performance-focused side that was needed.
• I hadn’t created values that people believed in and used every day. I could recall just four of our ten values without looking.
• I had waited too long to start a formal manager training program.
• I hadn’t truly aligned my passion for social responsibility into the ethos of the corporation.
• I hadn’t created any effective mechanism for communicating strategic direction to the company and we had a lot of confusion as to what our focus was and operating choices were being made with different assumptions as to direction.

And these were just the mistakes I knew about!

Was I Right for the Job?

As I sat there in May 2009 I wrote in my journal “I’m not sure I’m the right person anymore to lead the company into this next stage of growth. We need to make some changes to keep the growth and hit our goals. Scary to think about. Terrible to have lost some of my confidence.” I wrote an email to our CFO on May 20th thinking about succession planning for me.

I wasn’t sure whether we should try to get acquired or keep the faith that we’d get to the $60M-$70M in annual revenue needed to go public and stay on track for the 2012 IPO. At certain points I lost the faith.

Finally in July we got the CMO we wanted. And things were looking way up by the end of the summer when we got an investment term sheet with a nine figure PMV. Wow!

But then came October. In the same week my business partner got cancer (he is now doing well!), my mom started having worsening chronic arm pain (she is now doing better), and a company that was looking to acquire us told us they weren’t going forward. I guess they say that difficult times are the foundry from which greatness is cast. But it’s sure not fun being the molten iron!

Through that baptismal fire I came to a critical understanding of self and what I needed to do to align what I love with what I do–something I’ve been preaching atop the mountain for five years in speeches but only half-heartedly living. It helped me discover my authentic self. It helped me find my Csikszentmihalyian flow.

Motivated More Than Ever

So I sit here tonight in my home in Chapel Hill motivated more than ever. iContact is now at a $34M revenue run-rate and growing that by more than $1M each month. We will hire more than 50 new team members in 2010. We had our first ever post-investment EBITDA positive month in December(!!!). We’re well on our way to fulfilling our dream of “building a great sustainable company in NC for our customers, employees, and community.” And we’ve got a plan to go from #2 to #1. We have a plan to win.

I no longer question whether I’m a corporate sellout putting in my time. I’m aligned, I’m focused. I’m learning. I’m surrounded by amazing people every day who know how to do what they do so much better than I ever could.

What I Changed?

So what did I do? Three things (and I’m still working on fully implementing them)…

1. I worked to align my long term life mission with what I do everyday today. My life mission, the one that’s been on my bedroom wall since May 2007, is to “be a leader of our generation as we work to end extreme poverty in our lifetimes.” While I was learning a lot about leadership and management and being paid to do it, I was somewhat unclear how building a SaaS company aligned fully with a passionate desire to end extreme poverty in the developing world over the next fifty years. The incessant question in my head was whether I’d be better off finding my replacement and either applying to the Kennedy School of Government or moving to Africa to invest in entrepreneurs there. I learned a lot about the integrated 1/1/1 corporate philanthropy model of Salesforce.com and wanted to see if we could do that at iContact. On January 8th, 2010 we launched an expanded CSR model, what we call the 4-1s Corporate Social Responsibility Model, at iContact in which we take 1% of equity, 1% of product, 1% of employee time, and 1% of payroll and invest it in local and global non-profit organizations. Since we’ve expanded this CSR program I’ve been able to see the tangible and immediate connection between my passion for social responsibility and what I do going to work every day. In 2009 iContact contributed $109,000 to 63 different 501(c)(3)s and in 2010 we’ll reach $150,000. But it’s not just money anymore. Now, each of our employees has the opportunity to be paid to take 1% of their time (2.5 days off from work) each year to do community service during business hours, which we’re tracking through VolunteerForce. While we’ve got lots of work to do to improve it, the model has real impact and tangible value for us and the community and it’s significantly helped me to a much greater degree see the meaning behind what we do everyday. I love it!
2. We changed our company values at iContact. I realized in July of last year that we had ten “Corporate Values” but I could only remember four without reading the sheet. At an EO entrepreneurial exec ed program at MIT in June I learned you should never have more values than you can remember and that to be worthy of being a company value you’d have to be willing to let someone go if they didn’t live up to it. Our values fit neither requirement. In December at our two day Senior Leadership Team (SLT) offsite in Chapel Hill we came up with WOWME. WOWME stands for 1) Wow the Customer 2) Operate with Urgency 3) Without Mediocrity 4) Make a Positive Wake and 5) Engage as an Owner. We launched these values last month at iContact and now every SLT member knows them by heart and we’re working toward all managers using them during every performance and coaching discussion. We will hire and fire by these values, live up to them, and hold each other accountable to them. They’ve even inspired me to pick up my game and get it in gear. I love it!
3. I let go of control. The best thing I’ve ever done for the growth of iContact is let go of control (and I’m still working on this skill). We have a six person Senior Leadership Team at iContact that can all do their jobs much much better than I can. We now have a thirteen person Leadership Team underneath them all of whom have more business experience than I do. When I realized that my job was not to ensure they did their jobs the right way but rather to enable them to do their jobs and hold them accountable for the results, my world shifted. I’m still learning in this area, but this single realization is enabling me to scale. I now focus on 1) people 2) strategy 3) culture 4) investment. Each time we get to a new stage in our company’s growth ($100k, $1M, $5M, $10M, $25M) I have to reinvent myself and my job description. I love it!

And here are some other life changes that are less critical to helping me align what I do with what I love, but are still fun to share…

1. I made an equity investment in an African company. On January 4th I became a 10% owner of Village Energy Ltd. of Kampala Uganda. For four years I’ve been personally making contributions to non-profit organizations focused on ending global poverty. My philosophy has changed on economic development over the past year. Today I believe that while effectively monitored bilateral aid is an important component of ending extreme poverty and emergency humanitarian aid is morally and critically necessary in many locations, an investment in a local entrepreneur in Africa will have much greater long term impact in terms of job creation, tax revenue base, and constituent-focused democratic institution building. I was very excited to invest in Village Energy which is bringing a $60 solar panel powered LED lighting solution to rural village homes through a microfinance and franchise distribution model for $3-$4 per month per home. The product is a substitute good for kerosene which often costs $5 to $6 per month, causes lung inhalation problems and often burns down the thatch houses. I hope this $15,000 investment turns out to have much greater social impact than a $15,000 contribution. There is SO much opportunity to invest in Africa and so many entrepreneurs and companies poised for growth. And there is a huge gap between the countless MFIs that loan out $50 to $1000 and the Acumen Fund which invests $50k to $250k. Ten years from now I dream of running a socially responsible venture capital firm on the African continent. The challenge will be finding a scalable model of investing $5000 to $50,000 at a time. I think it can be done. I know the pipeline is there.
2. We started a new entrepreneurial division of Virante. Virante is a 11 person company downstairs in the iContact building that I started as “Virante Design & Development” in 2000 that is now run by CEO Malcolm Young. I won’t say much about this early stage effort now because the team is still acquiring all the related domain names and IP, but it’s a socially responsible ecommerce play that I’m extremely excited about. Fortunately we’ve already got the team to make it happen and it won’t take much time. With the help of the Virante team and a 17 year old intern Aneesh that comes in each Wednesday they’re making it happen. Here I must quote my new New York friend Kim Scheinberg, “Starting a company is like having a baby. By far the most enjoyable part is the idea conception phase.”
3. I followed my passion for writing and started the next book. This post is the beginning of book #2. My plan–one 5 page blog post per week that by the end of 2010 will be a ready to become a book. The title–”Dare Mighty Things: How Entrepreneurs & Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing the World.”

I have had two wristbands on my wrist since November. The first one says “Make Poverty History.” The second, “$100M in 2012.”

Thank you to everyone who has supported me through this endeavor and to all who are with us in this journey.

Here we go…

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Thoughts, comments, suggestions??? Feedback is the breakfast of champions!

Message at Jaycees Ten Outstanding Young Americans

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Tonight I’m in Orlando with Jess for the U.S. Junior Chamber (Jaycees) Ten Outstanding Young Americans (TOYA) Banquet. I was very proud to be one of the recipients, along with nine amazing individuals with whom I’m honored to be associated.

The speeches tonight that the winners gave were truly inspirational. I had the opportunity to give a four minute speech to the U.S Jaycees in the room and I wanted to post the text of the speech here.

TOYA Speech

Thank you for this award and honor. Thank you to my lovely girlfriend Jess for joining me tonight. Thank you to Peter Ansbacher and the NC Jaycees for nominating me.

What I love about Jaycees is that it is an international organization of young folks in our generation passionate about service who want to change the world.

When I came into this room tonight the second sentence of the Jaycees Creed on the back of the program caught my eye. It says “The brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations.” Grab your program and read it with me now. “The brotherhood of man transcends the sovereignty of nations.” This sentence spoke to my heart. It is with this inspiration that I speak tonight.

I am an entrepreneur and social entrepreneur. The phrase social entrepreneur may be new to some. To me, it is someone who rearranges resources to improve the world. In this sense, all of you are social entrepreneurs. My friends, there are some truly great leaders of our generation in this room tonight, not only the award winners but all of you as Jaycees. You may be one of these leaders. Tonight I’d like to speak directly to those in this room who are the leaders of our generation. I’d like to share a great challenge that our generation faces that is especially dear to my heart.

Let me start by sharing two facts that strike me. One from the World Bank and one from UNICEF.

First, 2.56 billion people, that’s 40% of humanity, people just like you and I, live on under $2 per day, PPP adjusted (1). That’s half a latte at Starbucks. Imagine living on $2 per day. Second, on average 24,956 children under five die each day in the developing world (2). This doesn’t have to happen. As we sit here at this wonderful banquet and nice hotel in Orlando, we must remember that so many do not have the opportunity we have been given.

We are all social entrepreneurs and we have the opportunity to reshape our world. For the first time in human history we have the resources and communication technology necessary to end extreme poverty and hunger in our lifetime. There is no way we will have true global security until all of us have access to education and opportunity, starting from the simple principle that all lives have equal value.

I look forward to spending the next five decades working with many of you to change the world. We are all social entrepreneurs. We are all leaders. So let’s use our leadership capacities to build something greater than ourselves.

This is our calling. This is our opportunity. It is our time. Thank you!

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Here are the bios for the winners from the Jaycees website:

Ryan Allis, 25, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ryan is co-founder and CEO of iContact, the leading provider of e-mail marketing tools for small to mid-sized businesses. He started iContact at the age of 18 and has built iContact into a company with more than 180 employees and 50,000 customers. An active board member of Nourish International and with his own non-profit foundation, The Humanity Campaign Inc., Ryan’s goal is to reduce poverty and hunger and increase access to education, healthcare, technology, and entrepreneurial opportunities worldwide.

Lt Colonel Steven Matthew Beasley, 37, Rapid City, South Dakota. Currently serving as Commander of the 34th Bomb Squadron and B-1 Instructor Pilot at Ellsworth Air Force Base, his military career has included designing training routes for stealth fighters in preparations for Operation Desert Strike to serving as a B-1 pilot over Afghanistan. His commitment to volunteerism at orphanages in Djibouti, Africa and through organizations such as Habitat for Humanity has inspired those around him.

Jacqueline Baly Chaumette, 40, Sugar Land, Texas. Councilmember for the city of Sugar Land and President and CEO of BalyProjects, LLC. Through her company, Chaumette is currently working on replacing aging local school district buses with clean-fuel buses. On City Council, she is the only woman, only black person, and youngest person on the city council, where she helps oversee the city’s policies and budget. Her work with the city of Sugar Land has involved planning Town Square, the city’s new downtown.

Lieutenant Colonel Troy Edward Dunn, 37, Washington, D.C. Currently, Dunn is the Commander, 11th Mission Support Squadron, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington D.C. where he has administrative command authority over 48,000 Airmen in 95 countries and 34 states, including 9,400 Airmen in the National Capital Region. As Air Staff Branch Chief and Air Force Crisis Action Team Leader, Dunn was the Air Force’s number-one authority on personnel readiness and deployments. Father of two autistic sons, Dunn has launched the Heart of Autism Project to provide a closer look into this national issue through a documentary, series of interviews with professional organizations, and personal accounts of families sharing their story.

Kathryn Cunningham Hall, 23, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founder of Power Up Gambia, an organization formed to provide the necessary funds to purchase a solar powered electrical system for Sulayman Junkung General Hospital (SJGH) in The Gambia, West Africa. Hall is now working on her second project, providing power to a sister clinic of SJGH. Power Up Gambia is dedicated to providing reliable electricity and water to healthcare facilities in The Gambia through solar energy to make primary and lifesaving healthcare available to Gambian citizens.

Cameron Johnson, 24, Roanoke, Virginia. Currently President and CEO of Cameron Johnson Inc., by the age of 21, Johnson had started 12 profitable Internet companies and had been the youngest American appointed to the board of a Tokyo-based company at the age of 15. Consultant to several Fortune 500 companies, Johnson is a frequent speaker and an author, and volunteers his time focusing on promoting financial literacy among young people in America.

Atif M. Moon, 24, Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Born with cancer that left him wheelchair bound, Moon is a nationally ranked Wheelchair Tennis player. He works for Bertech Industries, an Electronic Distribution company. Moon will be pursuing a Masters degree in Sport Management in Spring 2010. He has co-founded the Center for Global Understanding (CFGU), a non-advocacy, non-religious organization to encourage the Muslim American youth to participate in civic engagement and is a role model through his example of living a full life with a disability.

Gary C. Norman, 35, Baltimore, Maryland. Founding principle of Norman Access and Conflict Resolution Consultants Group, Norman provides a range of legal and non-legal services extending to pro bono and professional-related activities. Serving as Chair of the Animal Law Section of the Maryland State Bar Association, Norman is also leading the planning for the first-ever MSBA animal law symposium. He is immediate past president of the Maryland Area Guide Dog Users, Inc., and is a well-published author and noted speaker.

Michael Richard Simmel, 31, Allendale, New Jersey. A professional show basketball player with the Harlem Wizards Basketball team, Simmel is a featured performer and performs in front of millions of people all across North America. He is one of 3,000,000 Americans living with epilepsy and is also one of 2,500,000 affected with bipolar disorder. Constantly donating his time and talents encouraging and advocating for people, especially children, who have other disabilities in addition to epilepsy, Simmel has his own non-profit organization, The Bounce Out the Stigma Project, to help empower young people and educate the public.

Robert J. Witte, 41, Plano, Texas. Partner with the law firm Strasburger & Price, LLP, Witte combines his expertise in business litigation with his leadership in actively mentoring young lawyers. He is a noted author and speaker, and has led countless humanitarian efforts and record-setting philanthropic initiatives for organizations including the Dallas Summer Musicals, the Dallas Heart Ball, the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas, and the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Sources for statistics used:

1 – 2008 World Development Indicators: Poverty Data Supplement, World Bank

From p. 10: “…the number of people living on less than $2.00 a day has remained nearly constant at 2.5 billion. From Table 3: “People living on less than 2005 PPP $2.00 a day (millions), 2005 – 2.564″

2 – UNICEF State of the World’s Children, 2009

From p. 121, Statistical Tables, Table 1 Basic Indicators, Summary Indicators, Developing Countries “Annual Number of Under 5 Deaths (Thousands), 2007 – 9109″ To arrive at 24,956 deaths of children under five per day I took 9,109,000 total deaths per year for children under 5 in developing countries and divided by 365.

What Jess, Bob, and I Did in Africa

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July 5th, 12pm – I’m looking out the Virgin Atlantic airplane window at Mt. Kenya as we end our twelve day trip to Kenya and Uganda. We’ve begun the twenty-eight hour journey home. East Africa is a beautiful region with substantial economic opportunity, and very worthy of a visit. This was my second trip to Uganda, but first to Kenya.

What Drew Us In

We went to learn. We went to visit some of the non-profits The Humanity Campaign has worked with in the past and those we are considering supporting in the future. We came back changed permanently having seen the juxtaposition of the beautiful rising Africa against the constant suffering of unlistened to and forgotten millions of people just like you and I. In the developing world, 2.6 billion people live under $2 per day (PPP adjusted) according to the World Bank and 49,300 people die each and every day needlessly from preventable disease and starvation according to the WHO.

Some of The Stories That Sear Themselves Into Your Memory

For just a second, imagine 139 girls from your local elementary school have been kidnapped by an armed rebel group and taken to a jungle 400 miles away. One hundred and nine of them are negotiated to be returned but 30 of them stay and are raped, abused, and are forced to be sex slaves for as long as thirteen years. Six of these thirty girls are killed attempting to escape. Imagine hiding in a snake-infested ceiling drop at your high school to avoid being kidnapped by the LRA. Imagine being 17 and living in a slum in Africa with over 1 million residents. Both your parents died of AIDS, then your grandfather was killed, then your pastor who took you in abused you. Now you’re on your own, struggling everyday to survive. These are just some of the life altering stories I’ve heard over the last twelve days.

Day By Day, What We Did

Bob Phoenix, Jess Shorland, and I left the iContact parking lot at 4:30pm on Wednesday June 24. We drove over to Raleigh-Durham International Airport for our flight to London. We arrived in Heathrow Airport on Thursday morning, took the Heathrow Express to Paddington, took the Underground to Waterloo, and were on the London Eye by 10:30am in good tourist form. In our twelve hour layover in London we rode the Eye, took photos on the lions at Trafalgar Square, ate Bangers and Mash at The Clarence, saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham, and visited the London office of Credit Suisse in Canary Wharf to visit some of Bob’s co-workers.

We departed from Heathrow that Thursday night and arrived the next morning in Nairobi. After filling out our Kenya arrival cards and swine flu papers, we made it through immigration in about an hour. Three $25 Kenyan Visas later, we picked up our luggage at baggage claim and excitedly met Mary Muhara from Africa Rising at international arrivals. We had checked into the Bush House and Camp in the South C district, which had a reasonable rate of 4600 Kenyan Shillings for a double room with an en suite bathroom (and hot showers). We left our bags and proceeded with Mary to begin what we we really there for–to visit the non-profits we were working with and learn as much as we could about extreme poverty, hunger, basic healthcare, and conflict resolution.

We visited Nairobi, Kampala, Lira, Gulu, and Mityana over the twelve days. We were there to visit the organizations that The Humanity Campaign has contributed to in the past and to scope out new organizations to invest in the the future. We were also there to learn–to venture another foot into the water of exploring what it will actually take to end extreme poverty and hunger in our lifetime. Jess’ focus was to learn about conflict resolution.

During the trip we visited nineteen social entrepreneurial organizations all told (some non-profit, some for-profit) in Kenya and Uganda. We visited seven schools, four community non-profits, three local businesses who had received microloans, two microlending institutions, one hospital, one clinic, and one technology incubator.

Our itinerary was as follows:

Day One – Fly from Raleigh to London
Day Two – In London, Fly from London to Nairobi
Day Three, Nairobi – Africa Rising, TULIP
Day Four, Nairobi – Carolina for Kibera, Trash Clean Up, Soccer Tournament Fun Day
Day Five, Nairobi – Fly to Entebbe Uganda, Car ride to Kampala to home of Louis Ntale
Day Six, Kampala, Lira, Gulu- Concerned Parents Association, Community Microlending to Young Mothers Program
Day Seven, Gulu – Invisible Children Uganda / St. Joseph’s High School, Gulu High School, MEND
Day Eight, Kampala – Bus from Gulu to Kampala, Appfrica meeting in Kampala
Day Nine, Mityana – Mityana Hospital, Mityana Secondary School, Affinet, Naama Millennium Primary School, Santa Maria Medical Clinic
Day Ten, Kampala – Faula Uganda / Opportunity International
Day Eleven, Entebbe – Bob and Ryan Flight from Entebbe to Nairobi, Jess gets picked up by Juma to go to WOMEDA in Karagwe, Tanzania
Day Twelve – Fly from Nairobi to London to New York to Raleigh

Where We Spent Our Time

Here is a report on each of the organizations we visited with while in Uganda and Kenya the past twelve days.

AFRICA RISING

Africa Rising is a non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina that currently supports organizations in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. The organization retains a representative in East Africa named Mary Muhara, a Kenyan residing in Nairobi. Mary’s job is to vet potential non-profit organizations for the group to contribute to and to follow-up with those currently in the Africa Rising network. Mary was very kind to take us around Nairobi on our first day to show us TULIP and a Beacon of Hope store.

TULIP GIRLS CENTRE

The first organization we visited with Mary was TULIP Girls Centre. TULIP is an organization that Africa Rising supports today. TULIP was founded by Mary Munyi. Mary started by taking in five disadvantaged girls from the community around here. Today, TULIP is a private school for sixty disadvantaged girls aged 13 to 16 (form 2, 3, and 4) located just outside of the Korogocho slum, the second largest slum in Nairobi after Kibera and the most dangerous.

We met with Nicera Muriithi the Program Manager. Nicera explained that their operating budget was $30,000 per year. We learned that their teachers were paid approximately $125 per month.

When we asked why we should support a private school in the area Nicera explained that the government had not built a primary school in the area because it was a poor area and that there was no public school nearby. Nicera explained that her biggest need was to get more land so she could expand the school. She indicated it would cost $25,000 to purchase the one acre of land. She also requested textbooks and a computer so she can train the students in typing.

We had a chance to speak with the students. When we asked what they wanted to be in the future, they named lawyer, doctor, preacher, and politician. The reality was however that all these professions required a college degree and that these girls would not be able to afford to attend university.

CAROLINA FOR KIBERA

On Sunday June 28 at 8am we showed up at the office of Carolina for Kibera (CFK). CFK has a girls center, clinic, waster management program, and youth soccer program.CFK was founded in 2001 by Rye Barcott, a friend of mine and fellow Tar Heel. Rye was a U.S. Marine Officer for five years who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rye just finished a MBA at Harvard Business School and a MPA at the Kennedy School of Government.

Kibera is in Nairobi and with 1 million residents, it is the largest slum in Africa. That day in Kibera, Jess, Bob and I walked about 30 minutes to the soccer field with a couple interns from Duke and UNC and some visiting Muzungus (white people) from Vancouver. We grabbed rakes and helped remove trash from the street and sewers in Kibera as part of CFK’s ‘fun day’ in which kids did a couple hours of community service cleaning up the area and then participated in a soccer tournament.

It was an eye opening and life altering experience walking through the dirt paths of Kibera and raking clothes, water bottles, shoes, fruit, corn, and litter out of open drainage ditches filled with brown water and human excrement as part of a team of perhaps 200 that went out in the community to clean up. I had seen rural poverty in Africa before, but this urban poverty was different. The community seemed vibrant, entrepreneurial, alive, musical. Dozens of stray dogs and chickens roamed. The small one-room houses in which 6-8 slept were made of mud with a tin roof. Yet we knew we wouldn’t be safe by ourselves, especially after dark. The lack of sanitation was very visible.

Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia on Kibera, “Kibera is heavily polluted by soot, dust, and other wastes. Open sewage routes, in addition to the common use of Flying toilets, also contribute to contamination of the slum with human and animal feces. The combination of poor nutrition and lack of sanitation accounts for many illnesses. Not only are death by disease and conflict common inside this slum, but it is estimated that 1/5 of the 2.2 million Kenyans living with HIV live in Kibera.”

Kibera was the center of many of the riots and killing that occurred following the contested Kenyan election in December 2007.

At 11:30 that morning we had to leave the soccer field and walk the 30 minutes back to the CFK office. We couldn’t find anyone who was willing to walk with us and were told we should not walk alone due to safety (and we didn’t remember the route). We finally found a wonderful 17 year old young lady to show us the way back. She was the 17 I spoke of earlier in this post whose parents had died of AIDS. She moved in with her grandfather but he shortly passed. She then moved in with her pastor, but he abused her. She was effectively alone struggling to survive and all she wanted was a small place of her own. Stories like this were all too commonly heard.

It was a life changing experience to spend four hours in Kibera, and I know I’ll return. I have a very high level of respect for everyone at Carolina for Kibera. I’d love to work to start a similar program in Korogocho, a slightly smaller but more dangerous slum in Nairobi.

Here’s a video of me dancing with the children in Kibera before a Carolina for Kibera soccer match:

CONCERNED PARENTS ASSOCIATION

After taking the Post Uganda bus to the Kamdini depot, we were picked up by Richard from Concerned Parents Association, another organization that Africa Rising currently contributes to. We met with Anthony, the Interim Executive Director of CPA. CPA started in 1996 after 139 girls aged six and seven were abducted from a local school by the LRA. Of the 139 that were taken, 109 were returned quickly in negotiations, but 30 remained. Since 1996, 24 of the 30 remaining abductee girls have returns. The other six were killed while attempting to escape. The girls today are all 19 or 20 years old. In March 2009, the last surviving girl returned. To give some perspective, in order to escape successfully each girl had to walk for one month, often alone, in the jungle of Northwest Uganda or the Garamba Forest.CPA helps these returnee abductees with counseling. Almost all of the 24 returnees girls brought with them babies. They had been made wives or sex slaves of the LRA while the bush (forest). These babies were called ‘Bush Babies’ by the local community, and often discriminated against. Today, the LRA still has over 3,000 women and child that they have abducted. July 2006 was the last abduction in Uganda. However, today the LRA is abducting children in the Congo and most recently massacred 600 over the Christmas 2008 holiday in the DRC. The people in Lira still fear the LRA returning to Acholiland (Northern Uganda) according to Anthony.

Today the Concerned Parents Association is focused on improving children’s rights and fighting/reporting rape and domestic violence in their tribe of Lango around Lira, a city of 62,000 people. They have sixty employees and work with over sixty parent groups at schools in the area. They amazingly operate on an annual budget of $350,000 per year. They currently receive funding from Save The Children Uganda, The Mennonite Central Church, the Christian Aid, UNICEF, and the European Union, –although the EU funding is likely to run out in October. They do and can give out condoms in their area as part of their reproductive health and family planning efforts even though they are funded by some Christian organizations. They have four offices including the main headquarters in Lira and branches in Gulu, Kitgum, and Oyam.

Anthony noted that while most of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps have dissipated in Lira and Gulu, there are still people in IDP camps in Kitgum, due to concern about the return of the LRA and an especially ruthless Ugandan tribe of cattle-raiders, the Karamajong.

We asked why Anthony chose to be involved in CPA. Anthony himself was almost abducted by the LRA. He told us that the LRA once attacked his school in 1995 when he was 17. In order to avoid being abducted, he hid in a snake infested ceiling drop.

Anthony indicated that CPA’s needed include additional assistance with report writing and documenting in English and funding.

LIRA GIRL MOTHERS MICROFINANCE PROGRAM

After visiting with Anthony at the Concerned Parents Association, we were taken to visit one of the programs that CPA supports, the Lira Girl Mothers Microfinance Program (LGMMP). We met with two advisers and eleven young single mothers, who seemed to range in age from about 15 to about 24. We met with them sitting in blue plastic chairs under a tree outside of a primary school about 2km away from the center of Lira.One of the things that struck me immediately was how softly these women spoke. One could literally not hear them from eight feet away. Even their advisers and our female guide from CPA spoke extremely softly. I found it challenging to decide whether to ask them to speak louder and risk offending them. Eventually I did. The women mostly spoke Luo and not English, so our guide translated for us.

The LGMMP had twenty-eight girl mothers involved in its programming and eight advisors. They sang a song for us at the beginning with the lyrics, ‘we will never forget you, please don’t forget us.’ They were involved in five different types of microbusinesses that they had been trained to start. Initially they were given $75 each to start their businesses (as a grant not a loan). They used $17 of this to purchase ‘trading licenses’ so they could start their business legally, so they were left with $58 to begin.

They had started a grinding business, a distillery, a sewing company, a charcoal company, and a bakery. They indicated their biggest challenges were:

1. Transporting of their goods to the market
2. The expense of trading licenses ($17)
3. The fluctuating price of food
4. Finding space for their businesses and paying rent
5. Inability to sell their whole product before it goes stale

As an example of their issue with transport costs, the mother running the charcoal business would pay 10,000 UGX ( ~$5) for her charcoal bushels at wholesale, then pay 4500 UGX (~$2.25) and then be able to sell her charcoal 15,000 to 20,000 UGX ($$7.50 to $10). On a bad day she would work all day to make $0.25. On a good day she might make $2.50, depending on the retail price she could negotiate.

When they had the opportunity to ask us questions, their first question was whether we would be able to help financially support them so they could expand the program to other young mothers in the area. They indicated their morale was low as they had held meetings with potential donors before but hadn’t yet received any outside support. They also requested assistance in finishing their formal education.

Their biggest business needs was capital–particularly a grinding machine ($35) and a sewing machine ($75). In the four months the program had been operational, the twenty-eight women had successfully been able to save 800,000 UGX ($200).

I found myself struggling whether to attempt to give the ladies helpful business advice based on my experience (group supplies together in one shipment to reduce transport costs, use savings to reinvest in capital now rather than later, etc.). With Bob as an investment banker from Credit Suisse and me an entrepreneur we naturally wanted to. Yet at the same time we recognized we knew so little about their businesses and environment.

We ended up choosing to use questions to inquire why they were or weren’t doing certain things. They had good answers. We asked why they didn’t use these savings to invest in the capital necessary to reduce their renting costs and earn a higher profit. They responded that they had committed to saving for one year or until they got to 5,000,000 UGX ($2,500), whichever was first. Once they reached this mark they would consider whether to use their savings to allow other mothers into the program and/or invest in necessary machinery.

Overall the ninety minute meeting gave us a fairly good understanding of the business and personal challenges these women faced and left with an appreciation of the work that CPA was doing and an even greater respect for organizations like Opportunity International and FAULA who follow a slightly different model of providing small loans instead of small grants. It is truly amazing what $75 can do, whether as a loan or grant. It can give a woman her freedom.

INVISIBLE CHILDREN UGANDA

I first heard about Invisible Children in the summer of 2008 while visiting Uganda. I learned much more about IC while meeting their co-founder Bobby Bailey and CEO Ben Keesey at The Summit Series event in Aspen in April. Invisible Children began in 2003 as a documentary after three young filmmakers from Southern California visited Gulu. They rather courageously filmed and released a documentary about what was happening in Gulu in 2003 (children being abducted, attacks by the LRA, children being forced to walk miles every night to find a safe place to sleep).Today, the Gulu region and the Acholiland region of Northern Uganda is peaceful and relatively safe (and very worth visiting!). However, Joseph Kony and the LRA have moved on to the Garamba Forest in Northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and continue their abductions and raids into Sudan, East Congo, and the Central African Republic. Since 2003, Invisible Children has produced six additional short videos telling the challenging stories of individuals there around Gulu. In 2005 IC registered as a U.S. non-profit organization and in 2007 they registered as an NGO in Uganda. They work primarily in Gulu, Pader, Amulu, and a bit in Kitgum.

In the United States, Invisible Children raises money, mostly through high school and college students, to fund both their on the ground efforts in Uganda and to fund legislative lobbying events and rallies (to encourage the U.S. Congress and State Department to work with Uganda, the DRC, and the ICC to pursue and capture Kony and stop his abductions and mass killings.

In 2008, Invisible Children had an overall annual budget of $7M, of which approximately $2M went to fund projects on the ground in Northern Uganda around Gulu.

Jess, Bob, and I arrived at the Gulu office of Invisible Children Uganda at 9am on June 30th. We met first with Erika who worked in communications. Erika was extremely nice and helpful and share a lot with us about IC Uganda.

In Uganda, Invisible Children has three on the ground programs. These are

1. Economic Development Iniatives (EDIs) including:

1. Bracelet Making – IC started out their EDI programs by hiring 182 bracelet makers to produce bracelets that would be included in the Invisible Children DVD packs. They now have a surplus of bracelets, so have transitioned this individuals to a training program on income generation.
2. Savings & Investment Program – These 182 individuals are now part of a savings and investment program which provides a six to eight month curriculum on income generation
3. MEND – A new for-profit arm of Invisible Children that produces messenger bags and purses with the brand MEND from a nice factory near Gulu that we visited under the director of a talented and energetic designer named Marie. MEND started with 10 women and now has 13. Almost all of them are former abductees.
4. Cotton – A program to provide organic cotton to Bono’s wife’s organization Eden, to help assist people in moving out of the IDP camps and back to their ancestral homelands.

2. Visible Child Scholarship Program (VCSP)

1. Secondary Scholarship Program – Provides scholarships to 650 secondary school students in and around Gulu and Pader
2. University Scholarship Program – Provides scholarships to 59 university students in Uganda and 1 who earned a full-ride to Boise State University in Idaho
3. Mentorship Program – Providing 24 mentors to local students

3. Schools for Schools (S4S) –

• A program through which schools in the United States support a school in Northern Uganda. IC provides assistance to ten schools in the area.
• They work to rehabilitate structures and classrooms, install running water and water tanks, add toilets, and put in computer labs.
• We visited St. Jospeh’s College (A High School), Gulu High Schools, and another primary school which I cannot recall the name of to see the work that Schools for Schools had accomplished.

Meeting with Jolly, Country Director for Invisible Children Uganda

After meeting with Erika outside under a thatched reception area, we went inside to speak with Jolly Okot, the Country Director for Invisible Children Uganda. Jolly indicated that the LRA was abducting children as a human shield. She indicated many in the LRA had been brainwashed to believe that Kony had spiritual powers. Today, she said, the LRA was abducting many more children in the DRC, Central African Republic, and Sudan. Jolly spoke of the political discussions between the DRC and Uganda about allowing Ugandan forces into the Congo to go after Kony. She indicated that Kony was being supported by President Bashir of Sudan, who also has an ICC warrant out for his arrest.

The other major NGOs I saw represented in Gulu were World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, African Revival, UN, UNICEF, and UNHCR.

APPFRICA

Appfrica (on Twitter at @appfrica) is an technology entrepreneurship incubator and custom software development firm run by Jonathan Gosier, an American living permanently in Kampala with clients including Google and the Grammeen Bank. Jonathan currently has 8 programmers. He pays $900 per month for an internet connection of 192 kpbs, equivalent to DSL and about 1/10th the speed of cable broadband we get in the U.S. for $40/month. He spoke to us about the EACOSS, EASSY, SEACOM, and O3B (by Google) initiatives to bring faster broadband access to Africa. Jonathan was a big believer in making change through business. He felt there was a wealth of programming talent (especially with Python, Ruby, Symbian, Java, and C+) but a lack of opportunity in Kampala.

MITYANA HOSPITAL
On Thursday July 2 we had the chance to visit Mityana, a town about an hour to the West of Kampala. We visited five organizations that day, the first being the Mityana Hospital.The hospital was built in 1947 and serves the 288,000 people who live in the district and many from surrounding areas. It has 6 doctors, 100 beds and 4 wards: maternity, male, female, and children. It has an HIV/AIDS clinic that serves 4,000 regular patients with the help of Population Services Internatational. It also has an x-ray lab and a dental office.

Funding from the hospital comes from the government, with some additional funds coming from NGOs. According to their Director, their biggest needs are surgical and diagnostic equipment and an ambulance. They have an operating budget of 23,000,000 UGX per month ($11,500).

MITYANA SECONDARY SCHOOL

Mityana Secondary School is one of two high schools that iContact and The Humanity Campaign have started a scholarship program for. I visited the school for the second time on this trip and had a chance to speak to their entrepreneurship class. Their principal indicated their biggest challenges are parents paying school fees, orphan students, and transportation.They indicated building additional dorms for some of the students would be very helpful to the children without parents and those for whom the school is a many miles away. One of their biggest needs is getting internet access to their computer lab, which is currently outside of their budget.

The school has 1,350 students and 70 staff members. The government pays the teacher’s salaries and parents pay school fees, which are 468,000 UGX ($234) per year normally and 900,000 UGX ($450) per year for students who live at the school.

AFFINET

AFFINET stands for the African Friends in Need Network. It is the second school that the iContact/Humanity Campaign scholarship program will be benefiting. It is a vocational school in Mityana, Uganda. It was started in 2000. It has a strong social justice mission. It provides classes on sewing, fashion design, carpentry, and home economics. It has 111 students and focuses its efforts on girls who have been left behind. It has had 195 graduates so far since the first class graduated in 2004.Over lunch with the Bishop, we learned that AFFINET would like to start classes in bricklaying, IT, and livestock. They need computers, sewing machines, and funds to complete their bathroom and ceiling in the girls dorms.

NAAMA MILLENNIUM PRIMARY SCHOOL
Namma Millennium Primary School was founded in 2000 by Dr. Christopher Kigongo, a Ugandan who now works at Duke University. I’ve worked with Christopher over the past year to set up a scholarship program for students at the school that is providing funds for students who attend Naama Millennium Primary School in Mityana, Uganda to continue on to secondary school at either AFFINET or Mityana Secondary School.I first visited Naama in 2008 and fell in love with the children. Last year, they danced and drummed. This year, students from Duke had developed a play on nutrition and hygiene that the students performed for us, followed by the amazing popping and locking hip hop dancing of a five year old boy (followed by Bob, Jess, and I doing a dance for them).

In 2008, a number of students from Nourish International worked at the school to put in cement floors, windows, doors, and a rainwater harvesting system. The improvements were very visible this year.

SANTA MARIA MEDICAL CLINIC

Our final stop in Mityana was the Santa Maria Medical Clinic. The Clinic is a for-profit private business, started and run by Dr. Paul Mugambe. The clinic today sees 60 patients per day. They provide more available and better care than Mityana Hospital according to Dr. Mugambe. They most commonly treat malaria, respiratory issues, diarrheah, and HIV/AIDS. They have 30 beds today.The clinic’s biggest challenges are people who need care but cannot afford it and thus do not pay their bills, high taxes, and a lack of surgical room. The clinic charges 60,000 UGX ($30) for a normal baby delivery and 300,000 UGX ($150) for a c-section delivery. Dr. Mugambe would like to expand the clinic but is currently renting so cannot make additions to the property. He is looking to get a loan of 75,000,000 UGX ($37,500) to purchase the property, but loan interest rates are currently too high at 20%.

FAULA / OPPORTUNITY INTERNATIONAL

On our final day in Kampala on July 3 we visited with FAULA and Opportunity International in Kampala. Both are microfinance organizations that are working together in Uganda. Jess, Bob, and I had the chance to meet with the CEO of Opportunity International Uganda.They have 200 staff members in the country, nine branches, and a $6 million microloan portfolio. Their average client takes out a loan of $150 and makes repayments weekly. They have a 2.4% default rate. They work through a group system in which a group of at least ten takes out a loan together (the peer pressure and accountability provides higher repayment rates). Once an individual pays back their group loan they can obtain a larger individual loan.

Opportunity prices their loans at 3% per month interest (compounding to be equivalent to 43.5% per year). While this is high, they indicated that the return from the use of their capital that is otherwise unavailable is much higher. They’ve developed an impressive, sustainable model.

We visited three of Opportunity International’s clients in Kampala, the owners of a banana stand, a metalworking shop, and a small conveyance store.

Opportunity International also has a partnership with Compassion International in Uganda.

WOMEDA
After Bob and I left to go back home, Jess was picked up by Juma Masisi who runs WOMEDA in Karagwe, Tanzania. Jess has been at WOMEDA for a few days now. She is studying conflict resolution and women’s rights there.WOMEDA stands for WOMen Emancipation and Development Agency. According to their web site, WOMEDA “promotes the status of marginalized groups by creating and strengthening equal opportunities for women, men, and children through the provision of socioeconomic, legal, and human rights activities in order to attain sustainable development.”

We are hoping that Mary Muhara from Africa Rising will have a chance to visit WOMEDA in the coming days and consider supporting the organization.

Overall we very much enjoyed our time in Kenya and Uganda. I wanted to especially thank Louis Ntale and Rebbecca Ntale who allowed us to stay at their house for three nights and their son Kenneth Ntale for driving us in Uganda. Thanks to all for reading. Comments are very welcome!

Here are additional photos from the trip (I’ll have many more as soon as I get the camera I left in Kampala back in the mail. Thanks Kenneth!)

Investigating Gender Inequality in Tanzania

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A Post by Guest Writer Jess Shorland

I have just returned from visiting Tanzania. I was there from July 5th through July 12th. On this, my second trip to Karagwe, Tanzania, I had only one week to learn as much as I possibly could about local conflict – the reasons behind it, who was often involved, and possible solutions.

Thanks mostly to Juma Masisi, Director of WOMEDA (the Women’s Emancipation and Development Agency), I managed to talk with over thirty women, all of whom shared their amazing stories with me. The women’s experiences all demonstrated the seemingly archaic gender gap that remains not only in the town of Karagwe, but in many villages across the globe.

So I began my work to speak with these women connected to WOMEDA in this small rural village in Tanzania.

In front of a clay brick house, kneeling on mats woven by the calloused hands of the women sitting opposite me, I began with my own story of how my rights had been violated when I was 17 years old.

I had hopes that being open and candid with the women would bridge some of the cultural gaps and language barriers that I thought could prevent the comfort that fosters honesty. With repetitive “Poles” (which means sorry in Swahili) as Juma translated, the women grew more serious. After I explained my experiences and how they influenced my interest in gender inequality, I asked them if they would share their stories with me. One by one, the women elaborated on their struggles.

The Women’s Stories

Zainabu, 28, has a family of eight children, three wives and one husband. When she married her husband, she had no idea that he would eventually take two other wives, and that one of those wives would live with them in the house that she built. “I thought he would at least ask me, or even tell me, but it was very abrupt,” she said. She explained expressionlessly that she still loves him, but would have never married him had she known that this was his intention.

She finds it painful and difficult to share her husband and no longer wishes to have sex with him. But if she refuses, she faces a high risk of being beaten or kicked out of her house. And she fears leaving him because her husband will keep her children, who are a source of labor and potential income (especially female children because of the dowry system still in place). Looking down at her clasped hands, she said that she could never bear to leave her children.

What she did not know is that under Tanzanian law, children younger than seven are usually left in the mother’s custody, and children older than seven are given the right to make the decision themselves. Because of the lack of information and awareness of these laws, Zainabu thought that she had no other options. For her, it was either deal with it or leave her children. She also has the right to legally object to the second wife staying in her house and could take action to secure her property rights. She made eye contact with Juma as he explained, and inquired further of how she could do this.

Zainabu is but one example of a woman who feels badly about her relationship and the way she is treated, but who does not know that there are legal institutions that can emancipate her from these human rights violations.

The cognitive dissonance created by the feeling that what’s happening to her is wrong and believing that she has no other options creates an internal conflict with which she continuously struggles.

But herein arises another obstacle: in order to take legal action, you have to first get to the court. And you have to have enough funds to carry on with the proceedings.

Take, for instance, the case of a young woman who was raped in the village of Kjungangoma, Tanzania. It is about 30 kilometers from the nearest court.

This woman moved to Bukoba (bordering Lake Victoria) for her own safety. An elder woman in the village decided to seek justice and attempted to continue with legal proceedings. Transportation to town and back by taxi costs about 5,000 Tanzanian shillings, or about $2.00 USD. So the elderhad to walk the 30 kilometers to the court.

The Tanzanian government is supposed to pay these transportation expenses, as well as lawyer fees and court costs. Unfortunately, by the time paperwork is shuffled around, reimbursement is often pushed aside. So, unless a Tanzanian can afford the upfront costs of taking a case to court, both in time and money, he or she is still left without the proper means to seek justice.

This issue now leads me to the story of Methodia, a woman who was born at the time of World War I (she is about 90 years old now). When her only son passed away, she took in his many children. Later, her grandsons soon chased her out of her own house to take over her farm. She went to the magistrate to file a legal complaint, but her grandchildren had already bribed him. He told her there was nothing he could do.

Methodia now lives with her granddaughter, although this is culturally considered shameful. She wants to continue fighting for what is rightfully hers, but fears that if she reclaims the house, her grandsons will kill her in just a matter of months. In broken Swahili while looking down at her feet, she quietly said, “I may be old, but I still matter.”

This issue of corruption runs rampant in many developing countries, but especially in places where the legal system is not closely monitored. Marginalized women seeking their legal rights face an enormous risk of being stopped in their tracks by this very obstacle. The legal process cannot work in places wheremoney becomes more important than justice because basic human needs are not met

Abusing women’s property rights has been a major issue in many of the cases I heard. There is Gertrude, whose husband sold their profitable farm and house to be with another woman, leaving her with literally nothing. And there is Benidette, whose husband left her and took the doors, windows and tin roofing with him. Or how about Zamda, Pascazia and Zainabu who are forced to live with their husbands’ other wives in the homes that they built.

If property rights can be restored and protected, marginalized people will have a sense of ownership and space to better build their economic opportunities. The importance of property rights in terms of conflict resolution and development cannot be stressed enough.

I wanted to get to more sensitive topics with these women. I felt uneasy at first. I knew I had to just dive in and hope that they would share their very private lives with me.

One of the most powerful and insightful moments during my trip happened at the end of a discussion with 25 women. I asked them, “How many of you have sex with your husband?” As Juma translated, the women were obviously caught off guard. I asked again. This time, seven women raised their hands.

“How many of you don’t have sex?” – Only three hands raised, with a little laughter in the background.

“How many of you want and enjoy having sex?”

Silence fell upon that room, the only sound coming from the tarp that covered it. All the women were quiet, and every hand was down.

The explanations that followed told of husbands coming home drunk and abruptly climbing on top of their wives, forcing them to have sex. Another explained that she felt badly to share her husband with one, two and even three other wives–or any number of unidentified mistresses for that matter. Marital rape was obviously present. Women feared that if they tried to stop their husbands, they would be kicked out or beaten.

The Youth’s Stories

I looked to the youth next, hoping for a new informed generation that could show a ray of hope for the future of human rights. I spoke with two groups of secondary school students, ranging in age from 15-22 years. At Ruminyika Secondary, about fifty students began talking with me, and after some time of asking clichéd, obvious questions, they began to reveal their own curiosities. Their questions were inquisitive, touched with a brutal honesty that only increased my respect and appreciation for them.

The discussion was intense as we talked about everything from birth control pills to female genital mutilation to relationship advice. I turned the conversation toward gender roles and asked if the boys ever hit their girlfriends. The boys all laughed and gave each other high fives. A spokesman for the boys explained that it was a common practice to “show her that you love her,” especially if she shows interest in another man. “You have to keep your girl, so you hit her,” the boy said. The girls remained silent, which made understanding their emotions difficult. I could only sit in awe of what I was hearing from such young boys. It was a reminder that children imitate their surroundings, and that many of these teenagers were preparing to lead the same life as previous generations, breeding more of the same gender inequalities. At that moment, I felt helpless–that there was nothing I could do.
Juma and I explained to the group that under Tanzanian law, it is illegal to physically harm someone. Then, a boy shared a disturbing story of rape. He told of his experience of “almost rape” – stopped only by an unexpected car horn that gave the girl time to get away. “I know it is illegal, but I wanted to do it for the sake of doing it. I wanted to accomplish my mission,” he said, almost proudly. Laughter roared from the crowd of about 100 students accompanied by my complete and utter bewilderment. Can universal human rights actually exist in a world of such cycles of violence?

The Future Potential

In the midst of these horrifying abuses of human rights that taint the youth, I found cases that reaffirmed my hope for inherent justice for the equality of all human lives. Take the example of Julianna. After her husband died in 1989 she started her own business, put all four of her children through school and now has her own house and small farm. She has no doubt faced many hardships. She is still not able to access all the opportunities she deserves, but proudly she stated, “No one can mess with my rights now.”

And then there is Godsen, who after my discussion at a secondary school, stood up in front of his classmates and sang a poem he had written about eliminating HIV and AIDS. When his classmates stood up and threw their hands in the air filling the half-finished hall with praising cheer, I remembered that these inequalities in basic human rights are not inevitable. These inequalities have been created by man and can be eliminated by man. Progress is no doubt being made, but much more change is needed.

As Juma and I drove away from the secondary schools on my last day in Karagwe, I noticed a beautiful river at the bottom of a lush valley, overshadowed only by steep hills. I commented to Juma how breathtaking the scenery was, to which he replied, “That is the river that borders Rwanda. In 1994, thousands of Rwandan bodies floated down that river.”

And so, in a new age of globalization, a society teeters between vestiges of past ideals and practices and the crest of social and economic development. Karagwe is filled with amazing people doing amazing things and the amount of opportunity to innovate in the face of crisis seems unlimited. At the same time, the information and social gender gap in this region breeds local conflicts that can, if no action is taken, quickly escalate to a national and even international scale. We must bridge that bloody river, for it is much too easy and foreseeable to resort to violence if economic development, access to information and legal resources are not invested in. We cannot afford to forget that above all, we are one human race, and when working together toward a shared goal, our capabilities are immeasurable.

About The Author:
Jess is a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, studying Peace, War & Defense. She is the founder and Executive Director of Uncharted Magazine and the creator of Poor Student No More, where she blogs about her journey to get out of student debt.

What We’ll Be Doing in Kenya and Uganda June 25

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From June 25th through July 5th I’ll be in Kenya and Uganda with Jess Shorland and Bob Phoenix. The purpose of our trip is to:

1. Visit the non-profits that The Humanity Campaign and iContact have provided funds to in order to see and document how they are using the funds and to learn about their operations and needs;
2. Find additional qualified non-profits for The Humanity Campaign to invest in;
3. Find companies with unique innovative appropriate technologies that address local social needs and for-profit companies with a social mission to invest in;
4. Learn as much as we can about conflict resolution, IDP camps, food and water distribution, rural health care provision, and rural primary and secondary education; and
5. Dance, dance, and dance some more like Matt from Where The Hell is Matt!

On our first day in Nairobi we’ll be meeting with Amon Anderson from the Acumen Fund and Mary Muhara from Africa Rising. Amon is a friend of mine from back when we went to UNC together and from when he was in charge of the entrepreneurship minor at UNC. Mary is the in-country local representative for Africa Rising who vets the non-profits that Africa Rising contributes to. Mary will be taking us to visit TULIP Nairobi a program supported by AR. TULIP “strives to deliver hope for girls subjected to poverty and its vices: teenage pregnancies, HIV/AIDS, drugs, crime, and prostitution.”

On day two in Nairobi we’ll be visiting with Carolina for Kibera. CFK works in Kibera, a slum in North Nairobi to “promote youth leadership and ethnic and gender cooperation in Kibera through sports, young women’s empowerment, and community development.” CFK was started in 2001 by a UNC students Kim Chapman and Rye Barcott. Rye has since completed five years of service as an officer in the Marines and completed a MBA/MPA joint degree from HBS and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which is what I’d love to be doing in a few years. They operate a soccer league, medical clinic (Tabitha Clinic), and a reproductive health and women’s rights center (Binti Pamoja). I’m so excited to be seeing their operation first hand.

On day three, we’ll be flying from Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport to Entebbe, Uganda. We’ll stay the night in Kampala with our friend Louis Ntale, the brother-in-law of Duke’s Christopher Kigongo, and then wake up early to catch the five or six hour Posta Uganda bus from Kampala to Gulu and traverse once again the adventurous roads of rural Uganda.

Upon arriving in Gulu we’ll be meeting up with Andrew Morgan of Invisible Children. Over the past year I have been studying the conflict between the LRA, led by Joseph Kony, and the Ugandan army known as the Ugandan People’s Defence Force and formerly known as the National Resistance Army.

Invisible Children (IC) is working to put an end to the conflict, which has died down considerably in Northern Uganda but spread to the Central African Republic and the Northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, near the Garamba Forest. IC also working to re-integrate and educate former LRA child soldiers in the surrounding region’s Internally Displaced Person’s camps and to lobby the U.S. government to put State Department resources into ending the conflict. I had the chance to spend a couple days with their CEO Ben Keesey and co-founder Bobby Bailey while at The Summit Series trip in Aspen in April. They’ve put out a series of very well done DVD documentaries explaining the conflict and highlighting the stories of particular child soldiers. I’m very excited to see the IC operation while in Gulu.

After a day with IC, we’ll be visiting the Concerned Parents Association, another organization supported by Africa Rising, which mobilises parents of abducted children toward the objectives of:

1. Immediate and unconditional release of all abducted children
2. Peaceful resolution of the conflicts
3. Creation of an awareness of the plight of children in conflict

After three days in Gulu, we’ll head back down to Kampala on July 1st, visit with Opportunity International Kampala and then Jonathan Gozier of Appfrica, and stay the night again with Louis. On Thursday, July 2nd we’ll have one free day and either head to the Kampala Hospital, do a follow-up visit with the the Kyetume health clinic an hour away in Nkokonjeru, or head over to Jinja to see the source of the Nile.

On Friday we’ll head over to Mityana, Uganda to visit the Naama Millennium School and get an update on the scholarship program that iContact and The Humanity Campaign have funded that will be helping students at Naama attend secondary school. We’ll also be visiting a team from Duke and Nourish International. Naama serves 321 students, 113 of which have lost one or both parents. It was a true joy last year visiting Naama and seeing the school children dance!

After visiting Naama we’ll visit the Mityana Secondary School. One of my favorite memories from the visit last June was sitting in on an entrepreneurship class and seeing first hand the drive in the students to excel.

On our final day, Bob and I will head back to Kampala to fly to Nairobi and then back to RDU through Heathrow and JFK to be back in time for work on Monday morning July 6. Jess will continue on and head down to Karagwe, Tanzania to work with Juma Masisi at WOMEDA, a women’s rights organization.

I look forward to blogging about our experiences! Stay tuned.

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