Generating blueEnergy

It was my first time in Kenya and my first time in Africa.  I must thank Ashoka and the Lemelson Foundation for inviting me and giving me this amazing opportunity.

The conference was held at a retreat center outside Nairobi and in attendance were Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows from Uganda, Kenya, India and US/Nicaragua (me).  The objective was to discuss the eco-system of mobile communication technology as it relates to development and to look for potential partnerships between the fellows.

Key topics of discussion included: service provision through SMS such as sharing commodity pricing information amongst local farmers, hardware improvements to make mobile phones more accessible and feature rich, and contract and policy approaches to extend mobile service and share revenue streams.

Most of blueEnergy’s communities on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua do not have cell phone network coverage.  As the conference went on though, I could see many ways that network coverage could help blueEnergy’s projects:  battery charging fees could be paid through SMS, technical trouble-shooting could be done through SMS, and phone ownership could strengthen communities’ adoption of blueEnergy’s charging stations.

One particular case that we discussed was that of M-PESA, a payment service that works on mobile phones.  In Kenya, Paypal does not exist and most people cannot access computers to use the service even if it did exist.  M-PESA fills the gap, allowing people to make payments to other people using SMS texting on their mobile phones.  With the explosion of mobile phone usage in Kenya, the M-PESA service has taken off, although not without major challenges during its launch.

In the two days following the conference, I traveled around inside and outside Nairobi and was amazed to see M-PESA payment centers everywhere, literally everywhere.  I talked to some people and they raved about the service.  They said it has changed “the flow” in communities and made daily transactions much easier.  M-PESA exists wherever the cell phone network exists, whereas banks don’t stray far from major cities.

Kenya was selected for the location of the conference because Kenya is an example of advanced usage of mobile communication technology and the impacts this has on society.  Staying with a friend, I used my first ever wireless USB modems to connect to the internet.  I had seen these advertised in the US, but my first usage came in Kenya.  Go figure.  Kenya understands mobile communication.

Our painter, Julio Godoy, was killed in a car crash in the capital city of Managua last week.  Julio’s landscape paintings of real and imagined future blueEnergy wind turbine installations captured the beauty of the Caribbean Coast and the harmony of renewable energy as sustainable community development.

Julio was a spokesperson for blueEnergy.  He liked to talk about the importance of blueEnergy’s work in helping the people of the Coast while remaining in balance with nature.

Bluefields has lost one of its sons; Julio was young and talented and will be sorely missed. 

Julio will live on through his paintings, which now hang on walls in Washington D.C., Paris, Havana, San Francisco and beyond.

For blueEnergy’s fourth anniversary party, we hosted an art expo of Julio’s work.  See Julio talk about the importance of blueEnergy during the expo in this video [Click on the picture above, Section start 1:54]

I first met David Bornstein in December 2008 in Los Angeles, when I was there to be inducted as an Ashoka Fellow.  I had known about Ashoka ever since the early days of blueEnergy and had been watching it and studying it throughout the years.  Somehow I had never made the time to read David’s book, which is partly a chronicle of Ashoka’s amazing legacy and the story of several of its most storied Fellows.  This book is the perfect example of “important” information that one has to carve out time for from the seemingly endless “urgent” information that demands our attention around the clock.  I’m so happy I finally saw the light.

In the Epilogue, David has some powerful words that resonated with me and my last post:

“... Americans have grown accustomed to images of wars and terrorism; many have become inured to orange-level domestic terrorism alerts.  These are extraordinary times, to be sure.  but even during less remarkable times, the remarkable story on the emerging citizen sector goes untold.  Perhaps it is too scattered to put on a TV screen.  When I turn on the news, however, the absence of this story makes the image of the world that I receive seem like a poorly doctored photograph—like a digital image of a landscape in which half of the trees—the most beautiful ones—have been edited out.  And it makes me wonder: If people got to see the rest of the trees, if they were told about the potent seeds of change that are taking root around the world, would they feel more encouraged?  Would they be more politically engaged?  Would they think differently about their career choices?  Would they be less fearful?  Would they imagine a brighter future for their children?”

“’There is an exciting world behind this terrible world we see’, Vera Cordeiro told me.  ‘People all over the world need to see it—like they need water to drink and air to breathe.’”

“If I learned one thing from writing this book, it is that people who solve problems must somehow first arrive at the belief that they can solve problems.  This belief does not emerge suddenly.  The capacity to cause change grows in an individual over time as small-scale efforts lead gradually to larger ones.  But the process needs a beginning—a story, an example, an early taste of success—something along the way that helps a person form the belief that it is possible to make the world a better place.  Those who act on that belief spread it to others.  They are highly contagious.  Their stories must be told.”

If you have not read this book, read it.  It is inspiring, informational and transformational.  If you think you don’t have time, stop reading the news to make time.  Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Through these readings I started to reflect on the value of the different types of information we are exposed to in our lives and how we have to be weary of the affects of information saturation, where background noise starts to drown out important information.

I had for a long time felt that I ought to be reading more, studying the collective experience and wisdom of the global community.  But there was no time.  Or at least it seemed that way. 

I walk to work each day, 40 minutes each way.  I quickly realized that audio books were a way for me to increase my “reading”.  I signed up for an online audio book service (audible.com for anyone interested) and started going through an amazing amount of books.  It was invigorating.  But there are limits – only the most popular, mainstream books make it into audio format, so many of the books I wanted to read on social entrepreneurship were not available.

Then I listened to an audio book I picked up called the “4-hour Workweek”.  Most of the lessons don’t apply to me, but I had skimmed it in a bookstore and thought it might provide a few nuggets of wisdom.  One was to stop reading the news.  I had already gone through news-diets before and had found them quite refreshing.  But now I had a reason to go on the news-diet, to create time to read about solutions and inspiring works; do it to create time for important learning.

On the diet, I actively avert my eyes as I walk by news stands.  I don’t want to engage, to have my mind wander and get distracted by problems that I cannot do anything about.  I want to save my energy and focus for where I can have an impact. I cringe when I am stuck somewhere where the TV is turned to Fox News or some other “news” show and I am forced to listen.  With a critical ear I confirm that 95% of it is fear mongering, worthless, and focused on problems, with little real attention to solutions.  It’s all graphics, fast paced, with no substance what-so-ever.  It’s the same 12 stories told over and over again.

A low-news diet is not the same as a low-information diet, not in the least.  A low-news diet is not a disdain for information and knowledge, but a desire to reduce the low-value noise and move to focus on inspiration and solutions.

At the Skoll World Forum, John Wood’s (of Room to Read) advice to social entrepreneurs was, “READ READ READ READ READ.”  I’m glad I’ve finally figured out how to get on this path even with my busy schedule.

And I’m not worried, anytime something important does come up in the news, people tell me about it.  Being informed about current events has some value, to be certain, but for the time being, freeing up this time to learn and grow is proving to be a positive trade-off.

In case you’re interested, here’s my recent list of “self-help” books, as my wife calls them:

Recently Read/Listened To:
7 Habits of Highly Effective People
First Things First
4-Hour Workweek
Gaviotas
Blink
Tipping Point
The World is Flat
Barrack, Inc.
Mountains Beyond Mountains

In Progress:
How to Change the World
Uncharitable
Nudge

Next:
Forces for Good
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World
The Power of Unreasonable People
FORGE’s Project Development/Management Manual
Carnivore’s Dilemma

Saturday, April 25th – Audit Report

“En nuestra opinión,  los estados financieros adjuntos presentan razonablemente respecto a todo lo importante, la posición financiera de blueEnergy Nicaragua, al 31 de Diciembre del 2007 y 2008, los resultados de sus operaciones por el período terminado en esa fecha, de acuerdo con Normas Internacionales de Información Financiera.” 

And with this one very long sentence, which loosly translated says, “In our opinion, the financial statements presented for 2007 and 2008 are materially correct and meet international standards”, it was over.  We had succeeded in clearing the major hurdle of taking our accounting system from the stone ages to “meeting international standards”.  This says something about blueEnergy’s evolution, especially if you keep in mind the complexities of blueEnergy’s situation: large percentage cash transactions (not by choice!), difficulties in acquiring documentation at the edge of the world, multi-lingual operations (Spanish, English and French), multi-currency (Cordobas, Dollars and Euros), multi-national (Nicaragua Segment and US Segment), donor fund tracking requirements, etc.

blueEnergy began a major effort in June 2008 to compile and prepare its accounting data, and to get current with its filing obligations.  In October 2008 we underwent an operational audit in Nicaragua to help us identify where our deficiencies were.  From October on, we worked diligently to implement the auditors recommendations for internal controls, all the while strengthening our data foundation.  Much of what was implemented was needed to enable blueEnergy to grow, and therefore was a good investment.  But other things, whether it be archaic Nicaraguan laws or shifting auditor requirements, ended up requiring a significant effort to overcome.  Much of this time was a waste from the organization’s perspective as it added no long-term value.

The audit process was an amazing learning experience.  Being our first time through it, we didn’t know what to expect.  When contracted, the auditing firm was willing to give blueEnergy a significant discount because of our social mission, but in hind sight, accepting this was a mistake.  As time went on, it became clear that we were not working with their best people and given the complexity of blueEnergy’s situation and that it was our first time through, we needed experts to guide the process.  We kept hitting brick walls where they couldn’t explain the requirements clearly, we would deliver information in our format that they would struggle to understand, and we would have to walk through it with them, line by line to explain.  Sometimes we’d have to repeat this process two... three... four... even five times.  In the end, it took Guillaume Craig, Director of blueEnergy Nicaragua, to work with them for three days straight, in there offices in Managua, to get over the communication/comprehension hump.  I would dial in for video conferencing while Guillaume would be the physical presence to facilitate communication and understanding.  We learned a valuable lesson – that we have to improve how we communicate, both orally but also how we format written documentation, to explain very complex things more simply, more clearly.  We have to get better at tailoring our communication to improve understanding by specific audiences.

Overall, the process was exhausing and resource intensive, but blueEnergy now finds itself in a much stronger position to grow and take on larger projects.

Saturday, May 9th – Alianza Project

I checked blueEnergy’s bank account and saw the funds post.  After over 2 years of trying to get reimbursed for project work done in 2006, we had finally succeeded.  The project was our second institutional funding and was during blueEnergy’s infancy.  We did everything in our power to understand the funder’s requirements, but they were constantly shifting and never communicated.  Without strong systems on our side, it was nearly impossible to meet their dynamic demands.  We hired in two people to help compile the data needed, but our invoices were rejected over and over.  They would say, “Internet receipts not accepted”, “taxi driver’s signature missing”, etc.  Then they changed the project dates.  Then they changed what were considered “allowable” expenses.  On and on.  It was the most frustrating process I have ever been involved in my entire life.  The fact that we had this money tied up for over 2 years created serious cash flow problems, not to mention morale problems, so it was not a victimless crime.

Both efforts consumed so much of my time for so long.  I wanted to scream when I heard the good news, both times, but I was too tired – not necessarily physically tired (although I was that too), but mentally tired.  Somewhere I think I am still numb.  Extremely elated but numb, if that makes sense.

There was/is such a disconnect between my internal elation and the mild “congratulations” offered up by others.  I was so deeply involved with both efforts and so drained by them, but to outsiders they seem like mundane activities, yes worthy of a “congratulations” but not worth screaming about.  I can understand that.  But from where I sit, I’d like to scream. 

Now, finally, I am free to move on.

But the paradigm of restricted grant funding goes counter to this separation concept.

In order to receive the funding, the organization must submit a plan, typically consisting of a narrative description, an action plan complete with timeline and milestones, and a budget.  The budgets and timelines vary in the level of detail required.  All of this seems reasonable as part of the preparation process and doesn’t generate any inconsistencies.

Where the trouble lies is in how the relationship is structured post-approval.  Typically what occurs, is the organization is held accountable to a greater or lesser extent, to the plan and budget submitted originally.  There is often a method to request changes, but it can be burdensome.  More importantly, having to return to the funder to request changes, sometimes at a great level of detail, is inconsistent with the governance / management paradigm.  Having to call the grantor to ask if you can buy a hammer instead of the screw driver that was listed in the budget, undercuts management in a way that you would never want to see a Board of Directors do.  Management has the best perspective to know how resources can best be applied, in an ever-changing reality, to reach the milestones.  Shackling them with an approval process in such a dynamic environment reduces their ability to mitigate risks and seize opportunities that appear and disappear on a short time-scale.

In my mind, it comes down to trust.  Grantors want a high level of control post-approval because they consciously or subconsciously don’t trust that the organization can manage its resources to deliver the agreed upon milestones.  I’ll be the first to admit that in its early days, blueEnergy wasn’t always a shinning beacon of professional project management and that funders could have had legimate concerns about blueEnergy’s ability to deliver.

But it seems to me that the better approach is to do more due diligence up front and get to know the grantee a little bit better.  If they are trustworthy and have the capacity to deliver, then give them freedom to manage and hold them to the milestones only.  If they are trustworthy and do good work, but don’t have the capacity, help them build capacity to deliver.  It’s money that would be spent correcting problems later, so better to invest it up front.  If they aren’t trustworthy, don’t fund them.

Ashoka,  Draper Richards and the Skoll Foundation set the example for the incredible impact taking this approach can have.

No roads means getting everywhere by boat, and often on the open sea.  In a small fiberglass boat, it is an experience, every time.  Usually, when you get your destination, you’ve been riding big waves for several hours and getting pounded by a storm.  Typically your legs are numb and your body is sore, as if you’ve been bull riding.  It is not mundane.  This “reality”, that you can’t easily get from place to place, significantly alters everything we do.  It changes our entire strategy for how we engage communities and modifies our technical thinking as well. 

Other characteristics, such as “multi-ethnic”, “low formal education levels”, “low economic activity levels”, “harsh environment: heat, humidity, salinity, hurricanes”, “low population density”, each have similar ramifications.  It’s hard enough to wrap your head around the impact of any one of these, but put them all together and you are talking about another planet.  Hearing that and truly understanding it are two different things.  You have to live it.

All these “realities” of where we work, make working very difficult.  It’s the Catch-22 of development – it’s hard to do development where there is no development.  That’s why people haven’t been going there to do development.  But blueEnergy is there.  We made a conscious decision to work where it is hard to work.

Hard to work there most often means more expensive to work there.  That is definitely true in our case.  What is very tiring for me is people who don’t get this and insist on hitting us over the head with the “marginal cost” yardstick.  “It costs $2 for blueEnergy to deliver its widget to A, but it costs $1 for Org X to deliver its widget to B (in a completely different context).  Since scenario 2 costs less dollars per impact, it is better and the right choice.”

I am a firm believer in organizational efficiency – that organizations must strive to lower their cost per impact, to get the most out of their resources.  But that is a comparison within the same context.   Comparing across contexts, especially when they are not well understood is counter-productive.  The unserved are very often more costly to serve due to their circumstances; in fact that is why the government and private enterprise have failed to serve them.  If we allow the marginal cost mentality to dominate the discussion, then these people will remain unserved forever.

Marginal cost has a place in the discussion, but it’s not a silver bullet, and the implications of relying too heavily on it should be carefully considered.

As time goes on, the mundane becomes mundane and cracks start to show from financial resource strain.  Maybe you relied on the generosity of others for a bit too long.  Now that you’ve immersed yourself in the details, the goals ahead and the road to get there are a bit foggier.  Many of your assumptions have been challenged, many of which you didn’t even know you were making.

The constant workflow and resulting long hours have slowly but surely pushed other things you valued in your life out of your life.  It’s a bit lonelier than before.  The personal vision you had for yourself within your organization has changed beyond recognition.  For me, I started blueEnergy because I wanted to build wind turbines and help people.  Nice, simple, clear vision – and naive.  Right from the get go, you move to fill the most needed roles in the organization, most often the least glamorous ones;  The ones you can’t recruit volunteers to fill, at least not reliably.  For me, I got to build very few wind turbines before I was swept up in the all the other necessary activities.

Everyone wants to feel that their work has meaning - That the hours and energy they commit will have a positive impact on those they serve.  When you’re not paid or are paid far below “market value” and work extra long hours, this need to feel that you are having an impact naturally grows stronger.

You reach a point where just “doing good” isn’t good enough.  You want to have an impact and you need to know that the resources you are mobilizing – human, financial, and more – will be put to good use.  It’s not just about you and your needs now.  You’ve built an organization and others are relying on you to make this assessment on their behalf as well. 

How do you “know” that the actions you engage in will lead to your desired result.  What assumptions lie buried beneath your thinking, and those of your team, that could be flat our wrong and derail you along the way.  What pre-conditions must exist in order for your assumptions, and the cause-and-effect you are relying on to hold true.

But wait, what is the true desired result?  Ah... back to the drawing board.  You may have know it and lost it, or known it and changed it, or never really known it, or perhaps as your team has grown it has evolved and taken on a life of its own without an conscious reflection.

It’s time to (re)define your ultimate goal, the change you seek, and lay out the road map of how you’re going to get there.  You need it for yourself and you owe it to those who support you.  It gives meaning and guidance to your work and the work of your team and can instill a sense of tranquility, knowing that everything you do, yes even the boring and mundane tasks, are in support of a very worthy goal.  Your “Theory of Change” they call it.

The most interesting panel discussion I attended was entitled “Lessons Learned in Social Entrepreneurship”.  It was a frank discussion about successes and failures from some highly respected, successful social entrepreneurs.  I was drawn to the panel because often times what I need the most is validation from my peers (albeit much more accomplished peers) that I am not totally crazy.  Sometimes I don’t need a new method or a piece of advice – I just want to hear from someone like me that they made silly mistakes, pushed on, and were able to have an impact.  That gives me hope that I am on the right path and reaffirms my decision to veer off the traditional career path into this intriguing world of social entrepreneurship.

The panel was made up of John Wood (Founder of Room to Read, organization that builds schools and fills them with books around the world), Chetna Gala Sinha (Founder of a rural bank for women in India that helps women achieve financial self-sufficiency), John Brauer (Serial entrepreneur that has created businesses to employ and empower the disabled), Ann MacDougal (facilitator)

From Mr. Brauer, I heard (paraphrasing and interpreting):
• Don’t assume your people have the ability to get the job done; be realistic about your capacity
• Don’t be so blinded by your planning that you can’t see opportunity right in front of you
• Even when it’s heart-breaking, stay true to building a real business model that will be sustainable; losing discipline will lead to even more heart-break when things fail
• Sometimes you have to retreat, regroup, and replan, before you can expand
• Always hard to find balance but family comes first
• Succession planning is critical for long-term sustainability
• Having a funding reserve is critical for long-term sustainability
• Keep your passion and share your failures – all boats rise when the tide comes in

From Mrs. Gala Sinha, I heard (paraphrasing and interpreting):
• Rely on your teammates and your beneficiaries for strength and confidence.  Rural women know what they want – listen to them.
• Design your product for your beneficiaries; don’t assume traditional product offerings are suitable
• “the problem is I went the bankers to learn banking”, ie. don’t assume that traditional approaches are what you need.
• Focus on empowering rural women – they are trustworthy and invest in the home, education and health
• Succession planning is critical and promoting from within is preferrable
• Don’t get lost in “funder speak”.  Speak to your beneficiaries.
• Scaling is chic and good, but it’s not everything and it takes time.  You have to invest in the necessary capacity and get involved in many things to make your idea work – you must be patient in this process.
• Focus on the quality of your product

From Mr. Wood, I heard (paraphrasing and interpreting):
• Worst thing is poverty of opportunity
• Education is the issue that affects all issues; if we don’t get that right, there is no hope
• Don’t kid yourself with a 5% overhead rate; you need to make “serious adult investments” to grow
• Stare your data in the face and be honest about what it is telling you
• Resist the temptation to do everything for everybody; ideas are a dime a dozen and while motivation is good, don’t listed to everyone’s suggestions.  “You don’t call the CEO of British Airways and tell him he should get into the car business because it’s a good business, but in social sector everyone has advice for you,”
• Focus like a laser beam on your key programs
• Temptation is to stomp on accelerator, but that brings up issues of organization capacity, quality, monitoring, supervision; we have to move fast because the need is so vast, but we have to build something that works.
• Move as much decision making authority to the local level as possible - empower national directors to run their business.
• When I hear “I want to volunteer”, I hear “I want to fundraise”; build global network of volunteer fundraisers and unleash their creativity while giving them a backbone of systems and standardization.
• Can’t lead a revolution from behind a desk; revolution requires the leader to be out there, which requires personal sacrifice
• Those who fail spend too much time talking about the problem; need to lead with solution... describe problem quickly but get to solution and talk about results.
• You need crisp messaging and focus
• READ READ READ READ READ
• You have to ask for order if you’re in sales

After breakfast I attended two great panel discussions, one on how to effectively work with governments and the other on community development.  Both panels were well attended and engaging.  Presenters discussed their work for 15 minutes and then it was turned over for audience discussion.  I was truly impressed with the quality of the presentations and the visible passion of the presenters.  That is something that has impressed me throughout the forum – I haven’t seen one example of PowerPoint poisoning.  The presenters know their material like no other and they are engaging with it.  The discussions amongst the presenters and between the presenters and the audience were also of high quality, which is not something I can say about many other conferences I have attended.

In the evening, the main event of the entire forum took place from the Sheldonian Theatre – the honoring of the 2009 class of Skoll fellows.  An amazing group of people very deserving of this moment of recognition.  In the social entrepreneurship sector, one is always pushing the envelope and stretching while fighting the good fight.  That gets exhausting and can be very lonely at times.  Events like this that focus on the accomplishments of social entrepreneurs and takes a moment to celebrate their work is a refreshing break from the daily struggle in the field.

The awards ceremony was a powerful event, with presentations by Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, Jeff Skoll, Founder and Chairman of the Skoll Foundation, and Dr. R.K Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  As each of the Skoll fellows took the stage, they discussed their work briefly, giving the audience a strong image of the mosaic of all they are engaged in. 

To wrap up, there was a musical performance by KT Tunstall, an incredible lyricist, singer and guitar player.  The event was very well orchestrated and inspiring.  Hours of discussions followed at the reception after the awards ceremony, which then spilled out into local restaurants and bars and continued long into the night.

Yesterday was the start of the open delegate program.  I was fortunate to make my way into the morning session, which was primarily for Skoll Fellows, to hear world-renowned sustainable development and corporate social responsibility expert, John Elkington, founding director of Volans Ventures and SustainAbility, speak.  John’s topic was the paradigm shift of the total rebirth of the global economy as it enters a destructive phase now to emerge in some years, reborn – something he refers to as the Phoenix Economy.  The tone of the presentation and subsequent discussion was somber but hopeful.  A full recognition of the deep crisis we truly find ourselves in worldwide, but hopeful that with our collective efforts we can create a new reality to live in.

John’s view is that the crisis we face now will not resolve itself quickly.  That we’re in this for probably 5 – 8 years and that we need to be creative and aggressive in developing adaptive strategies to cope with the shifting landscape.  There is an upside to the crisis however, in that it has forced the status quo to re-examine itself and to question some of its most deeply help fundamental assumptions.  There is an opportunity now to change course and to stop scaling strategies that are fundamentally unsustainable.

The official opening ceremony took place at the Sheldonian Theatre, a historic architectural marvel at Oxford, used by the school as the ceremonial location to confer honorary degrees.  The walls of the building screamed history and Kenneth Brecher, Executive Director of the Sundance Institute brought it alive with his inspired storytelling.  The opening ceremony also included an opening music act, a speech by Jeff Skoll and several other inspired presentations.

I then joined a couple hundred of my colleagues for dinner at Kebler College, in a scene straight out of Harry Potter.  The day was an exciting start to this amazing event.  There is a burning sense of purpose and drive here that is truly inspiring and energizing.  It all comes down to the people, and today I had the chance to run into some old friends and make many new ones: Matt Flannery, Premal Shah and Bennet Grassano of Kiva.org; Rebecca Onie of Project HEALTH; Jim Koch of the Global Social Benefit Incubator; Graham Macmillan and Jordan Kassalow or VisionSpring; Antoine Horellou of La Voute Noubienne; Vicky Colbert de Arboleda of Fundación Escuela Nueva; Andreas Schweitzer of Borawind; Laura Vais of the Skoll Foundation; Teresa Peters of Kickstand Consulting; and Kamakcya Singh of Oxford Business School, among many others. 

The 2009 Skoll World Forum is off to a great start.

I'll do my best to post updates from the Forum although I imagine it will be hard to pry myself away from all the fascinating discussions that surely lie ahead.  Just looking at the speaker list and the session topics has got my brain whipped into a frenzy.  So many people I want to talk to - to learn from their experiences.  That's it for now, have to run off to the airport...

After a two-week delay in hearing from the auditors, we got word last weekend that they were lost and wanting to take the easy way out by saying they couldn’t issue an opinion on blueEnergy.  This was a dramatic departure from the tone of the previous 3 weeks where it was just a question of making a couple adjustments for them to be able to arrive at an opinion.  Bad communication on their part has been endemic in this relationship.

I moved in to high gear to respond.  After nearly 4 weeks of intensive audit work and over 6 months of preparation, I was not about to take this news laying down.  I launched in head first, Sunday afternoon.  Honing in on the details, I addressed each of their objection point-by-point, with the support of our 5-person team in Nicaragua.  I didn’t emerged until Wednesday.  Nearly three full days of productive work lost.  I ask myself, “When is enough enough?  When can we stop trying to prove that we are honest and working hard to help people and get back to helping people?”

We want to be transparent.  As my friend Matt said at a presentation the GSBI in August, numbers unconfirmed by a third party are worthless.  I couldn’t agree more.  That’s why we took the offensive and went out of our way to consult with outside experts to evaluate our internal numbers and processes.  And why we have worked tirelessly to make all improvements and adjustments necessary.

We approached this entire process with the utmost honesty and openness.  Where we had failings, we explained it up front in a memo of disclosure.  Where adjustments were needed, we committed six people full-time to make them in a timely fashion.  I think the fact is that the auditors don’t have the technical skills and the perspective to understand the complexity of blueEnergy and are struggling to suggest the adjustment we ought to make.

I sincerely hope that my efforts this week will be enough to bring this process to a close.  We have done all in our power to address this situation in an open way, and we have made dramatic improvements. I hope our efforts are recognized with a positive verdict. 

As for the 2006 project money we are still trying to collect, it is a saga too long to explain in this post.  Suffice it to say that it was project work we completed in 2006 based on a pledge for reimbursement that we have yet to be paid for.  We had to front the money and executed the project successfully in good faith and have been fighting since early 2007 to get paid back.  $26,000 is what lies in the balance, which for a small organization like blueEnergy is HUGE.  This has paralyzed our cash flow and therefore, our operations.  This last week we had the opportunity to meet the “funders” face-to-face in Managua and discuss the situation as well as submit, in-person, our final report taking all of their comments into account.  I sincerely hope this is the last ridiculous hoop we have to jump through to receive payment for what we earned 2 years ago.

These two white whales keep me up at night and keep me from working on what is truly important – creating a strong, direct impact for our beneficiaries. I sincerely hope we have slain these two white whales so that we can move on and get back to the important work at hand.

The audit was a requirement of one of our funders and had jolted the organization from its infancy into early adult-hood.  Keep in mind that blueEnergy operates at the edge of the world, in an environment I often liken to the Wild West of the 1850's.  Business is done in cash, computer receipts don't exist and documentation often comes in the form of a crumpled up, water damaged, hand-scribbled piece of scrap paper with illegible writing... in Spanish.  The prospect of an audit was a rude awakening.  There was to be a new sheriff in town.

blueEnergy was born out of a passion to make a social impact.  Like most start-up social ventures, we started thin in the administrative arena, to say the least.  Not that we didn't value administration - in the early days, that was a huge part of my focus.  I'm a data guy and it's natural for me to track data.  I developed spreadsheets to track expenses, spreadsheets to track donations, and tools for reporting the wind data we were collecting.  But many of the tools I developed languished, unused.  Volunteers would come through our doors and re-invent the tools I had created, only to see them languish as well.  In hindsight, I can clearly see the problem – we were missing two of the key ingredients for successful implementation, financial resources and the right, complete team.  We hadn’t invested enough in making the ground fertile so that ideas could grow from paper into real life.

During the audit preparation I saw templates and tools being developed that were eerily similar to the ones I had developed back in 2004.  The difference was that now the ground was fertile, now the tools were falling into capable hands with an ability to execute.  It was a new day.

I won’t bore you with the mundane details of the complexity of a Nicaraguan audit, suffice it to say that we have estimated that we spent 7,000 person•hours in 2008 strengthening our accounting system and financial controls in preparation.  A significant portion of the audit requirements were positive changes that blueEnergy should be doing anyways to comply with best practices.  Among them, a majority were things that need to be in place in order for blueEnergy to scale.  From that perspective, the audit was good for blueEnergy, it was just a tough pill to swallow all at once.

I traveled to Nicaragua for the audit, arriving two days late after fighting off an illness that nearly knocked me off before the audit got its fair chance.  It was a grueling week, but I was proud of the blueEnergy team.  Everyone gave their all and you could see the growth all around, with people’s perceptions and skills broadening on a daily basis.  We now wait for the official report, but I’m pleased to say that I am still alive and blueEnergy is stronger than ever.

My hat goes off to Alex Pederson, CFO of blueEnergy International for developing and executing our audit prep strategy.  Alex joined the organization a little over a year ago and has been working overtime for the last 8 months to get blueEnergy’s accounting and finance systems up to speed.  His tireless dedication and vision have made blueEnergy stronger at its core and created a foundation to build on for the future.  I am eternally grateful.

For those of you not familiar with Ashoka and its fellowship program, I recommend you check them out.  In one sentence, Ashoka supports Changemakers around the globe that are working to build a better world.

I started approaching Ashoka a long time ago.  I have known about them for years but wanted to wait until we had something to show for all our efforts.  Ashoka is famous for their long vetting process, but I'm glad I stuck with it.

While the fellowship is technically under my name, it is really a team effort and the recognition belongs to blueEnergy as a whole.  In particular I feel that I share this award with my brother Guillaume Craig, Director of blueEnergy Nicaragua.

blueEnergy is a nonprofit organization improving the quality of life of people in isolated regions of the developing world using an eco-system level approach with an emphasis on hybrid wind and solar renewable energy service solutions. To ensure long-term operation and maintenance of its solutions, blueEnergy leverages international support to develop needed infrastructure and human capacity and empowers local people by making them central figures in the design, construction and implementation of the energy systems and other solutions. Ultimately, blueEnergy creates long-term value by linking its sustainable energy services to life-improving energy uses such as clean light, water treatment, medicine storage, and ice making for the fishing industry.
 
It is widely accepted that access to electricity and other modern energy sources is a necessary condition for modern development. But in many parts of the world, energy services are not available. On the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, more than 75% of the population does not have access to energy, and without energy they are left isolated and literally in the dark.

Without energy, they are locked out of modern education, health and communication services, all of which are key building blocks for self-determined economic development.
 
blueEnergy’s energy solution addresses a critical need in a challenging context best characterized as isolated (no roads and rugged terrain), multi-ethnic (world views can differ dramatically from one village to the next), lacking formal education (people often cannot read or write), and having a destructive natural environment (heat, humidity, and salinity constantly degrade infrastructure and lightning and hurricanes can wipe away ones work in an instant).
 
blueEnergy delivers its energy system in remote communities using hybrid wind and solar technology. blueEnergy manufactures its wind turbines locally to build the capacity and infrastructure needed to sustain the energy systems beyond installation as well as to create local jobs where they are desperately needed.  The energy systems act as community battery charging stations that power schools, community centers and health clinics and charge private home batteries that are brought to the center. The fees collected from private battery charging are invested into a community energy fund that covers operation and maintenance costs. The home energy end-use systems are privately owned and are financed through a local micro-finance partner and Kiva.org.
 
This innovative approach is needed because top-down energy development isn’t working for the world’s isolated poor. In general, central governments in poor countries don’t have the resources to deliver energy services to all citizens using the standard method of grid extension, private companies are un-attracted by the market, and the population doesn’t have the technical capacity to operate and maintain a high-tech, foreign energy system. 
 
But blueEnergy is more than an energy company. blueEnergy views energy service from a holistic perspective where energy is part of an integrated approach that must be used to achieve successful results and have a positive social impact.  Issues such as extensive community participation, intensive and ongoing capacity building, appropriate financing mechanisms and linking energy to productive uses are critical components of this eco-system approach.
 
A complete eco-system level solution is complex and resource intensive, but necessary for success.  blueEnergy’s long-term goal is to focus on energy solutions within a network of partners working together to deliver a total solution. However, blueEnergy works at the edge of the world, where there is a tremendous mismatch between the complexity of the problems faced and the capacity of the local population and partner institutions. The implication is that blueEnergy must facilitate other elements of the total solution while strengthening existing partnerships and building new ones to reach its long-term energy-focus objective. blueEnergy achieves this by leveraging international and national partnerships to attract high-caliber volunteers, employees and consultants from around the world to the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. blueEnergy then fosters a participatory environment where experts, local technicians, and community members work together to share knowledge and experience, thereby improving the capabilities of the local population and partner institutions, as well as its own internal operating capacity.

In this context, blueEnergy's holistic approach delivers the lowest life-cycle cost energy solution and links it to improvements in the quality of life of its beneficiaries.

Last year, blueEnergy was selected as one of 25 Tech Award Laureates in the category of Economic Development.  blueEnergy was humbled by being selected as the winner of the Tech Award cash prize in this category in 2007.  This year I returned as an invited speaker and was surprised and pleased to learn that I was speaking just before Bill Drayton, founder and CEO of Ashoka.  I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Bill after the presentations.  Later on in the evening Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace prize winner for his work with the Grameen Bank, was presented with the Global Humanitarian Award at the Tech Awards gala.  After the ceremony I was fortunate to have a chance to meet Dr. Yunus and explain how blueEnergy works with Kiva and a local microfinance organization, ADEPHCA, to use microfinance to bring electricity in to the homes of families in remote villages on the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.

The following day there was an all-day conference at Santa Clara University hosted by the Center for Science, Technology and Society (CSTS).  The conference gave the 25 Tech Award Laureates for 2008 the chance to present their work to the public and featured presentations and discussions on social entrepreneurship and technology for development.  I participated in a lively panel discussion on the Global Social Benefit Incubator (GSBI), which is run by the Center for Science, Technology and Society.

The two days of events were incredibly fruitful and inspiring.  Thanks to the Tech Awards and the GSBI for giving me the opportunity to participate this year.

Hugh runs his own show at Scoraig Wind Electric.  He's been building small wind turbines for 30 years and has a tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience with small wind turbines, a notoriously finicky species.  Wind power is tricky - no amount of slick marketing from the world's leading small wind turbine producers can change this.  People are looking for simple, plug-and-play solutions and the marketing folks are more then happy to play on this desire by advertising small "no maintenance", "install on your roof" wind turbine solutions that can "free you from grid power".  But the wind is fierce and the dynamics involved are sneaky, and small wind turbines don't produce large amounts of power.  Hugh is the first person to tell you this.  But he will also tell you that if you do a good job and manage to harness the power in the wind, there is almost nothing more satisfying in the world.

The primary objective of Hugh's visit was to have him increase our technical team's understanding of small wind turbines.  Check.

The secondary objective of Hugh's visit was to continue to evolve our wind turbine design to increase reliability (among other factors).  Result - the bluePiggott (below), who's body is based on the blueDiamond design created with Otherpower.com but who's alternator and other small parts are Hugh-designed.  Check.

Finally, we wanted to use Hugh's visit as an excuse to invite other leading renewable energy groups from other parts of Nicaragua to come to Bluefields for a week-long sharing of knowledge and experience and a practical "how to build a wind turbine" workshop.  Attending the conference / workshop were representatives of the UNI (National Technical University), La Salle (Technical school in Leon), ATDER-BL, SuniSolar, Hivos, and INATEC central. Getting these major institutions to come to the remote, isolated Caribbean side of Nicaragua was a major achievement for blueEnergy and reflects blueEnergy's growing influence in Nicaragua.  Check.

Hugh's visit was a great success and very inspirational.  Hugh if you read this - thank you for all you've done to help blueEnergy get to where it is. 

You can read Hugh's report of his visit here.  If you want to learn how to build wind turbines from scratch, I recommend you sign up for one of his fantastic workshops.

I am back down in Nicaragua for the second time in two months.  The organization is coming into its own through an intensive process of human resource needs evaluation, restructuring and development of both soft and hard infrastructure.  Lining up all existing resources in a defined strategic direction is challenging to say the least – but the effort is already showing payoffs.  Members of our now large team of 30 on the ground in Nicaragua are operating in more clearly defined roles and with a clearer vision of blueEnergy’s mission.  Not to say it’s all worked out, far from it, but the process has begun and can be trusted to take us to where we want and need to be.

This trip has been very special for me.  First, my wife Lorelei accompanied me on the first 5 days of trip – making her first visit to Nicaragua.  Since the launching of the organization in 2003, Lorelei has born the title of “Princess of blueEnergy” and she has supported the organization in every way imaginable, from afar.  She is an attorney in San Francisco and her long hours in the office and the courtroom have made blueEnergy possible.  The trade off is that she gets very little time off and getting to our remote location is no easy task.  For Lorelei this short visit was an opportunity to put faces to all the names she’s heard about for a long time and to see with her own eyes what blueEnergy has become.  For me her visit was a very special time and I hope I can get her back down again soon.

The second major thing happening on this trip is that we are hosting Hugh Piggott, the original designer of the wind turbine blueEnergy uses.  Hugh has been an inspiration to me since before the birth of blueEnergy and has contributed in countless ways to the organization through his knowledge sharing, training, and general insights.  It took many years to coordinate this visit and now Hugh is here for three weeks for a mixture of staff training, a semi-public conference/workshop, public events and cultural tours, of course!

Hugh and Lorelei in Nicaragua.

Business wisdom tells us to focus – do one thing and do it extremely well.  But this rests on the assumption that one is surrounded by a well-oiled business environment, where you can focus on your widget and integrate it into the already existing logisitcs, financial, human resource, and physical infrastructure landscape.  However, in barren landscapes, where there are few if any partners available, one doesn’t have the luxury of merely focusing on one thing.  Rather, one has to develop a holistic solution, an eco-system if you will, that is able to create sustainable solutions.  This is not a violation of the focus mantra, but it does have implications, namely that you can’t do eco-system, holistic solutions for everyone.  You have to focus somewhere and if you have a broad product/service offering, then you have to be focused in your customer/beneficiary base.

We have learned in our 4 years of operations in Nicaragua that we need to be far more selective of our early customers to help ensure early success that we can build on.  The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua where we operate is rugged, multi-lingual and multi-cultural.  Each community has its own characteristics and world visions, and they differ dramatically.  There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution out here.  More then ever now I can see the need for us to focus on one or maybe two subsets of this population in the beginning so that we can learn about their needs in depth and mature our service offering.  With a strong success story there, we can then move on to other customers.