What We’ll Be Doing in Kenya and Uganda June 25-July 5

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.

MIT IDEAS Competition Slides - The Great Opportunity of Our Generation

I wanted to post my Powerpoint slides from the presentation I gave at MIT for their 2009 IDEAS Competition on Monday night. You can view them on Scribd or below via this blog post.

The topic was “The Great Opportunity of Our Generation”

Some of the formatting is off in Scrib but mostly OK…

MIT IDEAS Social Entrepreneurship Competition, Ryan Allis, The Great Opportunity of Our Generation, May 200…

Here are some notes from the award ceremony following my presentation from Joe Chung. Congratulations to the winners! AquaPort, HeatSource and EGGTech were especially interesting to me.

Opening: Nick Fontaine
Keynote: Ryan Allis

Chancellor introduced
$2.5k IDEAS Award Winners
Aquaport
Oladapo Bakare
Ashley
Mary
Rob
Joonhaeng
Ash
Rebecca
Daniel
(water filtration)

Professor Thomas Byrne introduced
$2.5k winner
Vision Group (seeing machine)
Quinn Smithwick
Brandon Taylor
Yi Fei Wu
(project image directly into eye, bypass distorting part)

Barbara Baker introduced
$5k IDEAS Award winner
sponsored by Baruch Family
Global Citizen Water Initiative
Scott Frank
Stephanie Bachar
(place water in tube for 24 hrs to see if clean)

Allan Powell introduced
$5k IDEAS Award Winner
sponsored by The MIT COOP
BLISS
Saba Gul
Dr. Ishrat Hussain
Nadeem Mazen
Ghanzala Mehmood

Presented by Dean Stephen Lerman
$5k IDEAS Award Winner
sponsored by the office of dean of grad education/Yunus Challenge Winner
EGGTech Blandine Antoine Emmanuel Cassimatis Alla Jezmir
(providing battery for lighting to those in tanzania without electricity)

Yunus Challenge Winner
$7,500 IDEAS Award Winner
Lebone
Alexander Fabry
Aviva Presser
Hugo Van Zuuren
(microbial fuel cell solution for providing electricity)

Presented by Professor Thomas Byrne, MD
$7,500 IDEAS Award Winner
Braille Labeler
Aleksander and Anna Anita Leyfell
Adelaide Calbry-Muzyka
Josh Karges
Karina Pikhart
Maria Prus
Rachel Tatem
(electromechanical braille labeler)

Presented by Professor Michael Cima
Sponsored by the Lemelson - MIT Program
$7,500 IDEAS Award Winner
HeatSource
Amy Qian
Celeste Chudyk
Scot Frank
Allen Lin
Mary Masterman
Catlin Powers
Saad S
(encapsulating solar radiation through textile/material that provides heat during night)

Winner’s Retreat 2 Days at Endicott House

Guest Post - A Day Without Wearing Shoes

Guest Blog Post from Madison Hipp, UNC Student: A Day Without Wearing Shoes

I loved going barefoot as a child. There was something so incredibly freeing about ditching my shoes and giving the tootsies some breathing room, and yet the thought never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t eventually have to put my shoes back on to go to school, church, or the store. When my brother and I rode bikes or played in the woods with the kids next door we didn’t think twice about putting on shoes to protect our feet. And as I grew up, “new” shoes were bought to accommodate my growing feet. My closet was full of shoes and still more I would buy.  So little did I know.

Around the world, millions of children go barefoot all day, every day without choice.

This past Thursday, April 16, TOMS Shoes challenged shoe-wearing individuals around the globe to leave their shoes behind and spend “A Day Without Shoes.” Twenty-four hours make up a day, and being a bit of a literalist, I decided a full day barefoot is exactly what I would do, thus for 24 hours my feet were bare. It was quite the experience—and I got quite a few ‘looks.’

One of Ryan’s friends Blake Mycoskie from Summit ‘08 is the founder TOMS and is the “Chief Shoe Giver.” He began the company in 2006 after a trip to Argentina opened his eyes to the very real need for shoes. Centered around an incredible “One for One” mission, for every pair of TOMS shoes purchased another pair is made to GIVE to a child in need. One for One. I fell in love with the TOMS mission in 2007 after coming across a pair of TOMS in an unknown magazine and immediately wanted a pair for myself. And although I did indeed get a pair for myself, in the end I received so much more. TOMS has sparked a passion in me unlike any other cause before and going barefoot for a day was the very least I could do.

Soil-transmitted parasites are the leading cause of disease around the world. In Ethiopia alone, where the soil is full of silica-rich volcanic particles, a disease by the name of Podoconiosis (Podo) affects nearly 1 million people with over 11 million more susceptible to contracting the disease. Massive swelling and ulcers on the lower extremities cause sever pain and deformities, ultimately preventing those affected from moving freely, going to school, or holding a job. Often times these individuals are shunned by their families and left to fend for themselves. Sadly, Podo is 100% preventable by simply wearing shoes.

Shoes protect feet from cuts and sores, from disease and infections. Shoes also enable children to attend school where they are often dress-code requirements. Shoes are so simple and yet so powerful.

Shoes can change lives; they changed mine.

TOMS’ core “One for One” principle defies traditional business practices where the pursuit of financial wealth and power are often central.

The power of the TOMS mission does not reside solely in its giving away of shoes, but perhaps even more so in what is given along with each pair. By providing shoes for their soles, TOMS is touching the souls of children around the world and reminding them of their immense value as human beings.

For eighteen months I have looked at six pairs of shoes from Africa. Not one single pair is fashionable by typical American standards, in fact quite the opposite. Three pairs are haphazardly untied and two are without shoelaces entirely; they are worn, torn, scuffed, and coated in a film of brown dust, and they are beautiful. Twelve little feet are the focal point of the screen saver on my computer and together they form one of my most treasured images. Crammed together on a wooden bench, in a crowded school chapel one glorious afternoon in Kenya, the six pairs of shoes belong to six of the precious children who changed my life.

This screen saver, these six pairs of shoes, remind me daily what it means to live.

I have a dream of one day returning to the Kenyan school yard where I experienced life to the fullest, and take with me 400 pairs of a certain shoe I have come to love.

As I spent the day up-close and personal with the rocks and dirt of Mother Nature, rode on public buses, and traversed the UNC campus, my bare feet were a constant reminder of the power in a pair of shoes. I haven’t had a day quite so good in a very long time.

So now, I’m applying for an internship with TOMS this summer, and this blog post is the least I could do to show them I would love to work with them. Check out TOMS online at www.tomsshoes.com.

Malaria Kills - Send a Net, Save a Life, Go to Africa

Dare Mighty Things Blog Readers–

I am in a Social Media Giving Contest to see who can generate the most unique contributions by this Sunday April 12 at 8pm ET to Nothing But Nets, a campaign to eliminate malaria in developing countries. So far I have 7 unique contributors and if I can get it above 50 I’d be in the lead. I think I might have a good chance with this blog post and announcing it at The Public Policy Forum Meetup tomorrow night at our house to get in the front.

Would you contribute ten bucks at https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=183&fundraiser_id=1604&m=38d81d22?

If I get the most unique contributions by Sunday night at 8pm ET I will win a trip to Africa with Nothing But Nets and the UN Foundation to distribute the nets. Wouldn’t that be awesome!

You can win a trip to Africa too. One contributor will be selected at random to receive an all-expense paid trip to Africa to distribute the malaria nets later in 2009 with the UN Foundation. A $10 donation will provide an insecticide treated malaria net that lasts five years that two children can sleep under.

It’s not about how much we raise, but how many unique individuals I can convince to give. Malaria infects more than 500 million people a year and kills more than a million. One person dies about every 30 seconds from malaria.

This contest is part of The Summit Series, an event I was at last weekend in Aspen. All proceeds of the contest benefit the Nothing But Nets Campaign of the UN Foundation.

Nothing But Nets is a global, grassroots campaign to save lives by preventing malaria, a leading killer of children in Africa. Inspired by sports columnist Rick Reilly, tens of thousands of people have joined the campaign that was created by the United Nations Foundation in 2006. Founding campaign partners include the National Basketball Association’s NBA Cares, the people of The United Methodist Church, and Sports Illustrated. It costs just $10 to provide a long-lasting insecticide-treated bed net to prevent this deadly disease. To date, Nothing But Nets has raised more than $25 million and distributed over 2.5 million nets to children and families in Africa.

All contributions are secure and tax deductible and are run through the Nothing But Nets Cause on Facebook. Thank you so much for your help!

The link to make a contribution is https://www.causes.com/fb/donations/new?cause_id=183&fundraiser_id=1604&m=38d81d22

Thank you so much for your help!

Sincerely,
Ryan Allis

Inside The White House Friday…

On Sunday March 1 I got a voicemail. The call was from Elliott Bisnow. It said, “Come to The White House on Friday.”

Background on The Summit Series

I’ve written about Elliott before. He’s 23 and somehow, with an excellent team, has put together The Summit Series, designed to bring together the top entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and innovators under 40 in the world. The group started in April 2008 in Utah wanting to bring together cool people. The purpose has evolved and strengthened as the group as grown.

Today, the purpose of The Summit Series is to bring future global leaders together to figure out how to make the world better. They’ve brought together people like Jessica Jackley, co-founder of Kiva, Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water, Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, co-founders of environmentally-friendly soap maker Method, and Blake Mycoskie, CEO of TOM’s Shoes, who has given away tens of thousands of shoes to children in developing countries.

They’re working to build a community of the most influential young entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and innovators to make a positive impact. It’s the Clinton Global Initiative, Davos, and TED for Generation Y.

At the next Summit Series in April in Aspen, the focus is on philanthropy. They’ll be bringing in Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen (inventor of the LifeStraw) and Elizabeth Gore from Nothing But Nets, Lauren Bush from Feed Projects which sells bags that enable a contribution to feed a child for a year, Bobby Bailey from Invisible Children which works with child soldiers in Uganda, and Ethan Zohn from Grassroots Soccer, who took his $1 million from winning Survivor:Africa to set up soccer leagues in Africa that enable children there to get tested for HIV/AIDS.

In just one year, The Summit Series has grown through hustle, hard work, and word of month to 120 members, including some of the most well-known and respected ‘under-40′ entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs in the world.

This brings us to three weeks ago.

How The Meeting Transpired

On February 22, Elliott met David Washington and Yosi Sergant (the guy who launched the iconic HOPE poster) from the White House Office of Public Liaison at a DC event. Elliot told David and Yosi about Summit Series. They were interested in getting the message out on the Obama Administration’s efforts on job creation, the economy, energy, health care, transparency, and new media and building relationships over time with the attendees.

So it happened. David and Yosi told Elliot to find 30 people from Summit Series to come to a meeting at The White House on March 6th.

When someone calls to tell you to come to a meeting at The White House, you go. The White House has a “strong gravitational pull” as David Sutphen of Brunswick Group put it on Friday morning. And so I went.

Friday At The White House

So on Friday morning I flew to D.C. After getting a last minute haircut at an ‘old-school barbershop’ on 15th and H and running into my NASA-friend Stephanie Fibbs on the walk back, the Summit group met at 12pm at the Hay Adams Hotel for a reception.

At the reception I had a chance to meet Jake Nickell from Threadless, Evan Williams with Twitter, Mark Ecko from Ecko, Michael Chasen from Blackboard, and investor Chris Sacca from Lowercase Capital and reconnect with Tony Hsieh from Zappos, Aaron Patzer from Mint.com, Ben Kauffman from Kluster, and Josh Abramson from College Humor.

Lunch followed. At the table was Jessica Jackley from Kiva, Aaron from Mint, Ivanka Trump and her fiance Jared Kushner of the New York Observer, Catherine Levene of Daily Candy, and David Sutphen of Brunswick Group.

Setting Expectations

Prior to heading to The White House, David Sutphen and Phillipe Lanier of Eastbanc set expectations. We were not there to add on to the endless to-do list of the Administration. We were there to understand what was currently being done, ask questions, and build a long term relationship.

We heard that the Administration members we were about to meet were “drinking from a firehose” currently. They explained that we not there to give lots of ideas, but rather to learn what was happening so that we could be the entrepreneurial implementers and doers in our own communities working toward addressing critical needs. It wasn’t just about one day, but an ongoing relationship that started that day.

They shared that the Obama Administration saw us as one medium to communicate what they were working on to others via new media and as one filter of constituent thoughts and suggestions. With the CEOs of web firms Twitter, Zappos, iContact, Threadless, Mint, and Blackboard in the room we could certainly do that. They wanted to build a long term relationship with us and authentically wanted our contribution and ideas–just not all at once and in a usable ’summarized, bulletted form.’

So we walked over. We got our security passes at The Eisenhower Building and then went inside. We went up three floors and down a hallway to a room with thirty chairs and a table.

The Agenda from The Meeting

The meetings during the 90 minute session went as follows:

2:00pm - David Washington, Ph.D - Assoc. Director of the White House Office of Public Liaison and Michael Strautmanis - Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison

2:15pm - Jason Furman - Deputy Director of the National Economic Council

2:30pm - Martha Coven, Special Assistant to the President for Mobility and Opportunity; Greg Nelson, White House Office of Public Liaison; and Heather Zichal, White House Office of Energy and Climate Change

2:50pm to 3:30pm - Macon Phillips, Director of New Media

Notes from The White House Meeting

Here are my rough notes from each session. All quotes are paraphrased and could be incorrectly attributed in some cases due to my sub-par note taking system

David Washington

• We want to know your ideas on how we can make government more transparent.
• We want examples of how the stimulus is helping–anecdotes and stories that you see.
• Our focus is creating jobs–but we need your help in doing this.

Michael Strautmanis

• Some of the stimulus may work. Some may not. We’re here for solutions not banter.
• When I met Michelle Robinson, she treated me as if I had value.
• President Obama challenged us to make government more transparent.
• From transparency comes legitimacy.
• The OMB is more transparent now. Longer explanations. Posting on Recovery.gov.
• As entrepreneurs, I want you to think creatively about the world of making the world a better place for our children.
• Only way to fix economy is to get on a sustainable path with fiscal responsibility.
• We have to create dynamism and energy. It takes heart.
• Other generations have had other challenges. Together we can meet these challenges.
• We are partners for creating a sustainable future.
• In response to question from Chris Sacca on will Obama start Twittering again: That is up to the Secret Service.

Jason Furman

• We’re working on unfreezing credit, bringing down the cost of health care, energy independence, the climate, education, and fiscal sustainability.
• In response to question on budget deficit from Aaron Patzer of Mint: Right now a fear is deflation. A deflationary spiral is the biggest nightmare for economists. The amount we’re borrowing today is small in comparison to our GDP and needed. Our economy can afford the deficit. We have a path to cut the [annual] deficit by 50% in 5 years. People are lending to the U.S. cheaply at 2.5%.
• We have 12.5M unemployed. Some banks may have negative net worth. Housing was overpriced.

Martha Coven

• We are working on creating green jobs.
• I want the best ideas from the private and social sector to bubble up to Federal Policy making.

Heather Zichal

• In response to question on solar power and home owners selling energy back to grid: We will think about homeowners selling electricity back to the grid.
• We are focused on energy and climate change.
• Administration making a commitment to CAFE standards and reducing dependency on foreign oil
• Cap and trade revenues to start in 2012 according to budget

Greg Nelson

• As business leaders you have a chance to redefine what the role of a business leader is.

Macon Phillips

• Creator of change.gov, whitehouse.gov, and recovery.gov
• We want to work with you on creating a PSA 2.0
• I love free dissemination
• We’ve made time for this because we want you to be empowered.
• Wants abilities to get mass response, but with usable outcomes. 8,000 comments can be unusable sometimes.

What They Asked of Us

Overall, I was very glad to participate. Each of the 30 attendees has been asked to do the following:

1. Act as a filter/community ambassador for the best ideas/suggestions/thoughts on what we can do on the economy, budget, energy, healthcare, education, and new media. Get feedback from your community and send the best to us from time-to-time in summarized, bulleted form.
2. Send any examples/anecdotes/stories that we hear of due to investments from the Stimulus making a positive impact in your community.
3. Send any ideas/suggestions/thoughts on how to make government more transparent and open.

Finally, they asked us to go back to our communities and work entrepreneurially to create positive change, address social needs, and create jobs. They said we must create a true partnership between the public, private, and non-profit sector for it to work.

My Thoughts on The Meeting

I very much appreciated the meeting. It was done with good intentions, and not as a media stunt. They shared with us what they were working on and how we could be part of it to increase the chance of success.

It was clear how smart, busy, and focused these people were. They were glad to meet us and we were certainly glad to meet them. They could be us and we could be them.

They gave us their direct email addresses and encouraged us to act as a filter for them for them on the best ideas. Finally, they invited us to build a long term relationship and explained that as we built trust over time, our influence as a group would grow.

After the Meeting

After the meeting, we all went to a local restaurant to discuss what we had experienced. We broke out into four groups to talk about our ideas and begin to refine them. The groups were:

1. Economy and the stimulus
2. Education and job creation
3. New media and transparency
4. Energy and the environment

I led the group on the economy and the stimulus. I’ll be writing up my notes and posting them soon.

Where It Goes from Here

So we’ve been asked to be one informal filter (of many) for these individuals in the Administration and Office of Public Liaison and help ensure they’re getting the best ideas from the best people filtered to them every few months in summarized form.

I’ll be holding an Entrepreneur & Social Entrepreneur Meetup at my house in Chapel Hill on Friday March 20th at 8pm at which I’ll present what we’ve been asked to do and start the discussion with the group.

We’ll likely hold a separate meetup (date TBA) in early April to discuss and debate ideas and policy proposals on the topics of: economy, budget, energy, healthcare, education, transparency, and new media. We’ll then filter the ideas and present a summarized form to our new contacts in the Obama Administration.

If you have any ideas or thoughts please post them below via the comment section.

The Tweets From The Meeting

Since Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter with 231,000 followers, Tony Hsieh of Zappos with 197,000 followers, and Chris Sacca with 132,000 followers were with us, we may have been in the most tweeted meeting at The White House in the history of the world.

The post-meeting Tweets were positive.

@ev wrote: “Lessons from today: Obama’s team: smart and committed. Learned a lot and was inspired.” and

@saaca wrote: “The folks from the White House are sharp. Obama made it cool once again for awesome people to serve in government.”

@tomsshoes wrote: “Just left the meeting - pretty inspirational. The administration really does want our input, each gave their personal email addresses and encouraged dialogue.

Feedback from Readers and Friends Prior to the Meeting

I was amazed at the response I got by soliciting feedback prior to and during the meeting on Facebook and Twitter. More comments flowed in than I’ve ever gotten before on a status update or Tweet.

I asked on Thursday night via Facebook and Twitter, “meeting at White House Friday to discuss ways to improve economy. Any suggestions?” I got 29 responses. Note that you’ll have to be my Facebook friend or in the UNC or Raleigh-Durham network to read them I believe.

I also asked on Friday, “just challenged by the Obama Administration to provide idea on how to make govt more transparent and open. Ideas?” I got 17 responses.

Photos from The Day

Here’s a photo of the front of the brochure for the day:

And here is Jeff Rosenthal and I with Jessica Jackley of Kiva inside the Einsenhower Building.

Comments Sought

What are your thoughts/ideas/policy proposals in the areas of economy, budget, energy, healthcare, education, transparency, and new media? Post and get the discussion going…

StartingBloc Presentation: A Vision for the World in 50 Years

The last two Saturday mornings of my life have been spent on Powerpoint. But it was worth it.

So I’m standing in front of 150 social entrepreneurial peers at Yale on Saturday, attempting to set the scene for why I think we can actually end poverty, hunger, genocide, warfare, and preventable disease in our lifetimes.

First, I start with the challenges.

This is a continuation of the last post “The Great Challenge of our Generation.” The material comes from my StartingBloc presentation on Saturday, “The Immense Opportunity our Generation Has.”

First, let me take a step back and take a shot at some of the major the causes of this economic decline. Some of these causes may be controversial or debatable, but it’s a stab.

The Major Causes of the Economic Decline

1. De-regulation of financial industry in 1999 (Glass-Steagall)
2. Low interest rates to stem 2001-2002 recession
3. Easy credit to unqualified home buyers from 2002-2007
4. Lack of consumer savings in the U.S.
5. Over-leveraging of trading accounts
6. Over-derivitization of securities, de-linked from their underlying assets (CDOs, credit swaps, MBSs)
7. The collapse of key counterparties to risk

And the resulting effects of the declines…

The Effects of the Economic Decline

Mar 2008 - Forced Sale of Bear Sterns to JP Morgan
Jul 2008 - IndyMac Bank collapses
Sep 2008 - Bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG, Forced Sale of Merrill Lynch and Wachovia, Collapse of Lehman Brothers
Oct 2008 - $700 billion U.S. government TARP
Feb 2009 - Unemployment rises to 7.6%, over 3.6 million jobs lost, DJIA down 50% from Oct 2007 peak, $787 billion U.S. government stimulus package

I showed graphs showing of the rise in collateralized debt obligations…

the decline in NASDAQ to levels not seen since 1998…

the decline of the DJIA to the lowest levels since 1996…

the decline of the Brazil-Russia-India-China ETF down 61.47% since June 2008…

the rise in unemployment to the highest level since 1992…

the rise in U.S. foreclosures…

and the drop in IPO pricings, down 84% in 2008…

Finally, I listed the key global challenges we currently have:

Key Global Challenges

1. Extreme hunger and food distribution
2. Water sanitation and distribution
3. An $11 trillion U.S. government debt and unfunded liabilities in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
4. Lack of access to childhood education
5. Infant mortality, Malaria, measles, TB, diarrhea, HIV/AIDS
6. Human rights violations and sex trafficking
7. Climate change causing increasing temperatures
8. Nuclear proliferation
9. Major conflicts in Congo, Palestine, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq
10. Lack of transparent leadership in Zimbabwe, N. Korea, Somalia

And the wonderful graphic I showed next to illustrate just how scary these challenges are…

Yes, this baby has good reason to cry.

And to transition to the section on opportunities I started by showing…

I showed the DJIA over a 40 year period to show a longer term perspective…

I showed the DJIA from 1969 to 1982 to show another 13 year period that was flat…

Then showed what happened to the DJIA in the thirteen year period from 1982 to 1995 (from 900 to 4700)…

And showed Yale Economics Professor Robert Schiller’s P/E10 ratio that shows Price to Earnings ratio over a 10 year period to give a longer term perspecitve, showing that the P/E10 today is 13.38 down from 43 in May 2000.

And showed the 13.38 P/E10 lower than the long term average since 1881 of 16.84 indicating it may be a good time to buy.

And showed that only 23.5% of the world population (only 1.5B people so far) have access to the Internet today and that this percentage is rapidly expanding, which may provide a great coming power from a connected humanity that can communicate…

Showed that infant mortality has been cut in half in the last 45 years via the chart from Bill Gates’ annual letter…

Talked about the old model of government-to-government bi-lateral aid…

And shared three case studies of non-profits that are following a new model of aid, Aid 2.0, that could make a huge impact…

And finally listed all the great entrepreneurial opportunities there are in the world that entrepreneurs can work to solve–all of which could generate a billion dollar business…

Key Global Entrepreneurial Opportunities

1. Agricultural production yields
2. Food distribution and logistics
3. Water collection, sanitation and distribution
4. Wireless electricity distribution
5. Wireless mesh broadband networks
6. Ending conflict through trust and communication
7. Leadership transparency consulting
8. Improved education and reform
9. Improved preventative health care and reform
10. Clean tech/alternative fuel (the coming Green Revolution)

And finally ended with…

Perhaps, it’s time to invest long in our futures.

A Vision for the World

So, with these great challenges and opportunities in mind, I’d like to work with each and every one of you over the next fifty years to shape a world that addresses the great inequities of opportunity in the world all based on the principle that all human lives have equal value. A world in which…

1. There is no killing of humans on a mass scale (genocide or warfare)
2. All humans have access to the basic human needs of clean water, nutritious food, shelter, and primary education
3. We end preventable diseases like malaria, TB, and measles
4. We are environmentally sustainable

Is this possible?

Some may laugh.

But there’s no legitimate reason why humans have to kill thousands, tens of thousands of humans on a mass scale. Especially not in an age of increased communication and hopefully increased trust. Is there?

There’s no legitimate reason why if we have the logistical ability to get a package to Shanghai by the morning that we can’t create a system that enables basic, inexpensive food to be produced and distributed to starving children in the developing world, especially not in an age of increased grain yields. Is there?

There is no legitimate reason why preventable diseases can’t be prevented in the next 50 years. By definition. Is there?

And there is no legitimate reason why we cannot find alternative energies to fossil fuels that don’t destroy the world. Is there? We already have them. They’re just a bit more expensive per KWh than fossil fuels. This price doesn’t include the true cost of the externalities caused by the fossil fuels currently being paid by society. As Tom Friedman talks about in Hot, Flat, and Crowded, once we scale the usage of alternative energies, their price per KWh will quickly come down to be sustainable from an economic and environmental standpoint.

We’ve had bigger challenges before. In 1962 in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1943 in the midst of World War II. In 1930 in the middle of the Great Depression when unemployment was at 25%. These are challenges our generation can overcome if we make the right sacrifices and investments in education, infrastructure, leadership, and sustainability.

People laughed at Edison when he said he had a device that recorded sound.

People laughed at Marconi when he claimed had a device that wirelessly transmitted sound.

People laughed at Yunus when he said he could lend to poor women with no assets.

Your thoughts? Is this world possible?

The Great Challenge of Our Generation

I write as my roommates watch the sci-fi movie Anti-Body through the amazing new Xbox/Netflix partnership in a cold and icy Chapel Hill…

This weekend I had the opportunity to speak at StartingBloc’s Greater New York Institute for Social Innovation at Yale University in New Haven. I had the chance to speak after Tom Szaky, the 27 year old CEO of TerraCycle, who is good work on upcycling waste into usable products.

In attendance were 150 of the smartest, most ambitious, and most caring individuals I’ve met, all from age 19 to 30. 25% were undergrads, 25% were grad students, and 50% were young professionals from firms like Goldman, JP Morgan, Acumen, Ashoka, McKinsey. They were all social entrepreneurs or future social entrepreneurs. If you’re under 30 and interested in social responsibility you should apply for their future Institutes in New York, Boston, or London.

StartingBloc has now reached 1000 fellows who have gone through their program. I first met their founder, the 27 year-old ebullient Kenyan Jo Opot last May in New York. She and their Director of Programs Taryn Miller-Stevens are examples of committed, driven, caring world changers.

I challenged the group to over the next 50 years, work together to create a world in which…

1. There is no killing of humans on a mass scale (genocide or warfare);
2. All humans have access to the basic human needs of clean water, nutritious food, shelter, and primary education;
3. We end preventable diseases like malaria, TB, and measles; and
4. We are environmentally sustainable

This challenge was based on the key simple principle from the Gates Foundation that all lives have equal value. I first shared the great challenges we face in the world including the most difficult economic news we’ve seen in our lifetimes, then the great opportunities (subsequent post on these coming soon) to frame the debate.

So, can we actually end genocide, warfare, starvation, and preventable disease in our lifetimes?

And can we actually provide accessible clean water, food, shelter, and primary education to every human in our lifetimes?

Your thoughts?

This is India

It’s hard to believe what I have just seen.

I just rode in the back seat of a car on the way to visit one of our customers here in New Delhi.

I imagined India to be a developed country. Not quite first world, but getting there. A growth engine. An economic tiger. A land of IT companies, call centers, temples, and the Taj Majal. Nothing like the Kampala or Addis I saw last July.

The India I just saw out my window is much more reminiscent of the India of Slumdog Millionaire. An India of complex disparities and inequities.

As I sit here in some Western hotel, protected by no less than eight members of the Delhi police and four contract security guards scanning every vehicle and person that enters, outside my window five minutes away is a village of tents outside the fortified and reinforced U.S. Embassy.

Past India Gate, Parliament, the Generals’ name plated and gated houses, and the embassies, another five minutes and past a thousand green and yellow three-wheeled rickshaws, there are orphans playing in the dirt underneath highway overpasses, beautifully dressed middle-aged female street beggers pounding on your window saying “20 Rupee”, “20 Rupee” and a team of road entrepreneurs that will stop at nothing to sell you a suction-cupped window tinter.

Three people would cram onto a motorcycle. Five women would fit in a rickshaw built for two.

I counted four men peeing in on the roadside, on a 30 minute ride. Almost as many as the six cows I counted or the eight stray dogs.

Horns blared. Children rummaged in the litter. Cars merged. Cricket was played at the Officers’ Club. Goats and cows blended. The homeless slept in plain sight. And then in the middle of it all, a new Subway line and children exiting their school at 12:30pm walking home in their perfectly buttoned blue uniforms and ties.

The disparities, inequities, and the potential. A place of spiritual connection. A growth engine of 7%, 1.1 billion humans. Millions of entrepreneurs.

This is India. Day 1. Off to meeting #3.

Namasté.

LocalTechWire Article on Nourish International Wine Tasting

WRAL’s LocalTechWire ran a nice article today promoting the Nourish International “World Wines & Global Poverty” fundraiser. The Nourish International Event is Friday night (tonight) at 8pm with speaker Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational.

If you’re in the Triangle, you should come!

Here’s an excerpt from the LTW article…

Nourishing Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship is Appetizing Goal for iContact CEOby Rick Smith

Durham, N.C. — Nourish International, a growing network of college students and entrepreneurs devoted to what they call “sustainable development,” has become a passion for Ryan Allis, chief executive officer of fast-growing e-mail marketing firm iContact.

Allis is one of many young tech executives who have embraced the concept of ‘giving back” to the world in which they live rather than take for personal gain. And Friday night at UNC-Chapel Hill, Allis will be among the hosts for a “World Wines and Global Poverty” fund-raiser.

To give back has been a calling for Allis, co-founder of Durham-based iContact, since his days as a youth. He and Aaron Houghton, iContact’s co-founder and chairman, launched the company as friends and students at UNC-CH. They recently were honored as entrepreneurs of the year by Ernst & Young, and their firm has won numerous awards while establishing an international customer base.

Allis and Houghton share a commitment to philanthropic efforts as well. And Allis told Local Tech Wire in an interview that Nourish strikes him as an especially appealing cause.

“Nourish International teaches entrepreneurship to college students who raise money through ventures to contribute and then visit social entrepreneurial projects that work to reduce hunger and poverty in the developing world,” he said “It’s a unique and effective model that Nourish is perfecting and then scaling to have a global impact. They need a bit of initial support in order to ’start-up’ so many chapters at once until the point where the chapters are profitable. They have chapters at 23 college campuses now–and it all started right here in Chapel Hill!”

Duke professor Dan Ariely, who wrote the New York Times best-seller “Predictably Irrational,” is the guest speaker at Friday’s event, which starts at 8 p.m. in the FedEx Global Center.

LTW asked Allis why he chose to be socially active as an entrepreneur.

“I grew up the son of two social entrepreneurs–an Episcopalian priest and a social worker,” he explained. “I was taught from a young age to care about helping others.

“When I was 17, I took a high school economics class from a teacher by the name of Robert Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher taught from a human and sociological perspective. Instead of focusing on teaching curves and math he often taught economics using stories. I learned from him that year that there were 2.7 billion human beings living on under $2 per day and that 49,000 people died needlessly each and every day from preventable diseases and starvation. Learning these facts got me on the path toward wanting to focus my life on addressing these issues.

“Over the past six years reading books like “The End of Poverty,” “The White Man’s Burden,” “Commonwealth,” “Confessions of An Economic Hitman,” “The Bottom Billion,” “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” and “Banker to The Poor” helped me learn more.

“The passing of Eve Carson in March, who was Co-Chair of Nourish International and such an amazing social entrepreneur to-be, caused me to further examine what I wanted to accomplish during my time here.

“Traveling to Uganda and Ethiopia in July cemented this lifelong focus on social entrepreneurship and making a positive impact in the area of education, healthcare, nutrition, clean water, human rights, and the environment. I am a firm believer that all companies must be socially responsible if we are going to create a sustainable world in which we can all prosper.

“With 3,000 children dying each day from a disease as preventable as malaria it’s hard not to wake up and realize we must work together as one. There is plenty of food in the world to feed everyone, yet more than 800 million people are chronically hungry due to lack of availability of food with adequate nutritious content. It just doesn’t make sense for such a problem (entrepreneurs see problems as opportunities) to exist in world of extravagance, waste, and overconsumption we live in.”

Allis’ service to Nourish International includes acting as its board chairman. He also sits on the board of Leadership Triangle, the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, and the Council for Entrepreneurial Development.

Read the full article and Q&A at Local Tech Wire

View the Nourish Documentary Video

OptInNow.org - Opportunity International’s New Kiva-Like Site

This is something really cool.

I had coffee this evening at the HW55 Starbucks in Durham with Sam Serio from Opportunity International. Opportunity International is a Christian microfinance organization that’s been around since 1971.

Opportunity International has launched a site called OptInNow.org. OptinNow allows you to make small loans directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Comparison to Kiva

OptInNow is similar to Kiva, with the exception that the loans made are contributions to Opportunity International and are re-loaned over and over again to entrepreneurs with microenterprises in developing countries instead of paid back directly to the lender. Another difference is that Opportunity International has a Christian affiliation whereas Kiva does not.

OptInNow.org is in the early stages, so the site does not yet have as extensive inventory of loans and projects as Kiva, but does allow loans to be made to entrepreneurs in Kenya, Ghana, the Philippines, and Mexico with many more to come soon.

Props to the folks at Opportunity International for creating a well-designed usable interactive site that will get a lot more visibility and unique donors for their organization.

Aid 2.0

As opposed to the old-school ‘top-down’ Easterly-criticized bi-lateral government-to-government aid model where funds were given to oft-unelected semi-corrupt dictators for cold-war geopolitical reasons that indebted the populace without providing much benefit to them while sometimes forcing the funds to be used to pay Western contractors (okay I’m being a bit harsh here but do read Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and Stiglitz’ Globalization and Its Discontents), OptInNow’s model is from the grassroots–from the bottom-up. It gives small amounts of funds that can make a world of good directly to the local entrepreneurs who know how to best use them. It’s market-based aid versus the top-down centrally controlled aid of the past.

Who Is It Run By?

Opportunity International is currently run by CEO Christopher Crane, an entrepreneur, YPO member, and Harvard MBA who took commercial real estate information provider COMPS InfoSystems to 450 employees and took it public in May 1999 before being acquired by CoStar (NASDAQ:CSGP) in February 2000. I haven’t met Christopher yet but look forward to meeting him soon.

Here’s a video about OptInNow. Spread the word!

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About Opportunity International

Opportunity International, the largest not-for-profit microfinance organization in the world. OI began in 1971 and specializes in working with the poorest of the working poor, those who make less than $2 a day. OI has 1.2 million active loan clients in 28 countries and 85% of their clients are women. Here are some key facts.

Opportunity International 2007 Highlights
Current loan clients worldwide:	1,121,786
Value of current loan portfolio worldwide:	$500,891,820
Number of loans made in 2007:	1,772,139
Value of loans made in 2007:	$702,278,911
Average loan size:	$227 (excluding Eastern Europe)
Average first Trust Group loan:	$162 (excluding Eastern Europe)
Loans to women:	84.13%
Loan repayment rate:	98.5%
Source: http://videos.opportunity.org/website/media-center/Opportunity_International_Fact_Sheet.pdf

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About OptInNow
Our mission is simple. We’re working to end global poverty. Faster. How? By providing those who live in chronic poverty with one vital thing they need to transform their lives: Opportunity. Along the way we hope to transform additional lives, like yours. That’s why we’ve made it so simple for good people everywhere to come together, to fund small loans, to witness big and lasting impact, and to truly change the world. That’s what we’re really about. We’re about every land becoming a land of opportunity. And with your help we’ll get there.

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