A friend just emailed me about a very interesting approach to supporting girls in India.  The Indian Postal Service may soon start offering girl child insurance, whereby the girl gets Rs 1 lac ($2,500) at the age of 18 and some kind of conditional cash transfer to the parents for bringing up the girl and delaying marriage till after 18!  I hope this can start reversing some of the incentives for female child infanticide.  Click below to read more:

http://www.hindu.com/2006/12/19/stories/2006121902311100.htm

Things are not always what they seem at first glance.  Just a few days ago, a NASA space craft flew near Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, and discovered spider shaped evidence that past volcanic activity had occurred there.  This is a remarkable finding since it changes the way scientists have perceived the planet previously (thought only to be a cratery and rocky surface with little dynamism).  "We were continually surprised. It was not the planet we expected. It was not (like) the moon," said Sean Solomon of Carnegie Institution of Washington, the mission's lead investigator. "It's a very dynamic planet with an awful lot going on."

This was such a healthy reminder to me that one`s original impressions are sometimes mistaken and it is important to `circle around mysteries many times` to make new discoveries.  Social entrepreneurs are famous for discovering new ways to look at and address a social problem.    

Buuuurrrrrr!!!!!!!

Switzerland has about 1800 glaciers and although at first glance they may appear magnificent, almost all of them are losing ground because of climate change.  If you would have circled around the Aletsch glacier, you might have been lucky enough (or unlucky depending on which view) to catch a glimpse of hundreds of naked bodies recently!  That’s right, this freezing cold striptease orchestrated by artist Spencer Tunick was a part of a Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness of global warming.  They wanted to "establish a symbolic relationship between the vulnerability of the melting glacier and the human body".  According to them, Alpine glaciers have lost about one-third of their length and half their volume over the past 150 years. The Aletsch ice mass has retreated by 115 metres in the last two years alone.    

Yes, in my time I have been known to hang around with trouble makers.  A few weeks ago, I was in Tijuana, Mexico with an inspiring team making trouble for poverty.  There is an amazing Mexican company called Mi Farmacita, lead by Guillermo Krasovsky, which aims to bring affordable health services to low-income communities using an innovative franchise pharmacy model and minute-clinic style doctor`s office.  In Mexico, the poor distribution of generic drugs means that low-income communities often do not have access to affordable medicines for common ills such as flu, allergies, arthritis, and they often wait many weeks to see a doctor if at all.  Mi Farmacita is changing that!  Not only are there now quality health services (doctors ad generic drugs) in these communities, Mi Farmacita outlets also sell services such as purified water, phone services and Internet time.  They now have nearly 80 franchisees throughout Mexico.  The 16 franchises that have been in operation for at least 22 months process about 90 sales transactions daily, or 2,400 monthly, and sales across the franchise’s 57 outlets totaled more than US$2.9 million in 2006.  Their growth potential in phenomenal. 

To learn more about their full model, you can read the WRI case study which is quite comprehensive by clicking here.

Guillermo has an entrepreneurial spirit like no other and his passion for helping low-income people in Mexico radiates in the video below: