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Opportunity Collaboration in Action
Jonathan C. Lewis is founder/CEO of the Opportunity Collaboration, a diverse community of 250 social investors and entrepreneurs who annually attend a strategic offsite on World Poverty Day (every year: October 17) to leverage resources, combine forces, share innovations and operate more effectively. He is also the founder of MicroCredit Enterprises which leverages private capital for microloans. Jonathan is a recipient of the Social Venture Network Innovation Award.
Oct 10, 2009
No Plenary Speeches, No Panels, No Powerpoints.
Filed Under:
The poor don’t need more wonky, talky conferences.
This coming weekend, approximately 270 social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, religious leaders, nonprofit executives, foundation officers and political activists arrive in Ixtapa, Mexico for a 4.5 day business retreat to uncover more efficient and compelling ways of collaborating to reduce poverty. The first annual Opportunity Collaboration commences on International Poverty Eradication Day (October 17, 2009).
The Opportunity Collaboration is a working business meeting of doers, not talkers. Unlike a traditional conference, this meeting features no plenary speeches, no panels, no powerpoints. The only metric is ending the scourge of poverty.
The Opportunity Collaboration is hawkish about social and economic justice. But, lofty ideals are not enough. Wanting to do good is one thing. Doing it effectively is another.
When we waste time, work badly or hold ourselves to lesser standards, it disrespects the people whom we proclaim we help or empower. The poor deserve our best because they certainly have seen our worst.
And, whether nonprofit or for-profit, the poor need our programs to be sustainable. “If you don’t strategically operate like a serious business or corporation, the first thing you learn is that a pauper is a pitiful philanthropist.” (American conductor Quincy Jones)
The poor live and suffer under multidisciplinary burdens, so multidisciplinary solutions are required. Only the ignorant, the lazy or the delusional think otherwise. Institutional silos (such as, entrepreneurs vs. nonprofits, governments vs. foundations, funders vs. grantees) all too often block creative solutions and pragmatic problem-solving.
At the Opportunity Collaboration, the poverty eradication equivalent of fusion cooking will be boiling. Opportunity Collaboration Delegates, individually and collectively, will seek partnerships, alliances and new peer relationships.
Every activist, whether leveraging market forces, governmental power, grassroots action or humanitarian empathy, understands that social change occurs in concert with the people we know and trust. Whatever the reporting metrics, true accountability is people-to-people.
A Delegate, social entrepreneur and friend shares a passage from “On Friendship” by Kahlil Gibran:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
Should not the same be heralded for every social entrepreneur, every nonprofit leader? Shouldn’t we all be friends of the poor?
Oct 03, 2009
Innovation Creates Social Injustice, Yes/No?
Globalization: A Rorschach test word.
Lester Thurow’s Fortune Favors the Bold reports that in 1900, when colonial empires were the norm, the world was much more globalized that it is today. Fifty nations governed the Earth and many of those were independent in name only (think of the Monroe Doctrine for Latin America). Today, almost 200 countries have voices at the U.N.
Then and as now, economic and political power were intertwined. The global market for cotton (primarily from the British Empire) was met by the American South which produced two-thirds of the world’s cotton on the day the Civil War commenced.
Before the American Civil War, Eli Whitney, a social entrepreneur/inventor backed by a venture capitalist, invented the cotton gin which increased cotton production 90-fold. His innovation underpinned the American South’s capacity to meet global demand for cotton, sparked an economic boom that built the good life for southern gentry and locked in slavery until a war ended it. “Slavery was the first significant American public policy that served to protect cotton growers from the perils of operating in a competitive market.” (Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy)
Economic progress and mechanization (yesteryear’s computerization) usually has unintended consequences. The cotton gin extended slavery and created the conditions for a civil war to preserve a nation and to make good on a commitment to civil and economic justice which remains, even today, the American national fault line.
Technology, innovation and labor-saving devices are, of course, prerequisites for progress. But, social entrepreneurs and social philanthropists respond with Pavlovian mindlessness to “innovation” as an unadulterated societal good.
Today, the industrialized world is mostly losing jobs to computers, robots and system efficiencies, not “outsourcing”. Innovation is the job killer. Once upon a time, I handwrote memos on a paper tablet and a secretary typed a rough draft for me. Today, I make my own typos on a laptop. The steno pool was fired.
Globalization: A Rorschach test word which connotes a theory of political and economic change which, in turn, reflects one’s own ideological ideas about power and one’s standing in the world. When you wear a cotton t-shirt, think about it.
Sep 27, 2009
You Care. You Think. And, You Take Action.
Education is expensive and slow to produce results.
“You care. You think. And you take action.” Spoken by great philanthropist? A social change philosopher? A Nobel Peace Laureate?
This touching, thoughtful and urgent call to action comes from a young school boy in Thailand, talking about ending violence against women (UNIFEM Annual Report). Could there be a better mantra for social entrepreneurs?
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. I am so glad that one boy in Thailand is not among them.
Still, social entrepreneurs seeking high impact need to ask: Is education an economic development panacea, as often touted? Not necessarily.
For starters, even a well-educated person in a low or no jobs market is screwed. Indeed, the oft-noted brain drain is essentially refugee immigration of the educated.
Moreover, education is expensive and slow to produce results. A newborn needs good nutrition, housing, medical care, a healthy mom and innate motivation for many years before he or she enters the job market. Add to those inputs, the cost of schools, teachers, books.
And, as every father and mother will privately admit, even the best parental efforts can produce a less than a stellar result.
As America learned in the Great Depression, education alone does not create jobs. But, a vibrant society does not forsake the education of its youth just because they cannot find jobs or matriculate to college or just because rising unemployment statistics may mean more workers are unneeded.
The transmission of knowledge, a well-educated citizenry, the gift of learning are intrinsic societal goods. The value lies in ourselves and, like free speech or human rights, is self-evident.
Ancient Greek, Jewish, Islamic and Christian societies all considered knowledge a divine gift. Indeed, the concept of intellectual property rights was non-existent before the printing press was invented. Knowledge was not for sale and could not be owned.
Education is neither an economic silver bullet nor a poor use of development resources. Quick results? No. Good results? Yes.
Sep 19, 2009
Unreasonably Asking “Why Not?”
American foreign aid is not a matter of pure good global citizenship.
In the 4th Century BC, Aristotle warned us that “poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”. In the subsequent 25 centuries, Humankind has been continually pricked by this truth.
In this Century, newly-minted global citizens are re-learning that the greater good is a matter of self-interest as well as a pressing moral imperative. In urgent tones, book writers and conference speakers tell us that we live in an interdependent world, poverty breeds threats and disease, economic growth underpins poverty eradication, multinational corporations must be partners for poverty reduction, religious devotion must include devotion to the lesser among us, and so on.
Notably, American taxpayer-supported foreign aid is no longer spent as a matter of pure good global citizenship. It is almost unfashionable to advocate for more money for U.S. foreign aid as a national act of compassion, a governmental manifestation of the human spirit and our common humanity. Instead, the pitiful amount spent on foreign assistance is defended as a hard-hearted self-interest, a vital national security interest -- a form of international protection money hedging against “revolution” and global “crime”.
In 2007, American governmental foreign aid was 9% of total economic engagement with developing countries. Private philanthropy accounted for another 16%; remittances from U.S.-based workers to their home countries were 34%; private investment eclipsed all other categories at 41%.
If your mission includes the keywords “hope”, “opportunity” or “economic development”, the importance of the private sector cannot be overlooked.
Pamela Hartigan, Director, Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, prescribes a world of social entrepreneurs who build a political economy of businesses that blend profits and values. She implies that values decision-making should rule profit decision-making. Radically, Nobel Prize Winner Mohammed Yunus’ “Creating A World Without Poverty” advocates for the same basic paradigm shift calling for social businesses which abandon “maximum profit”.
Ms. Hartigan writes and talks about the “power of unreasonable people”. She joins the social commentator George Bernard Shaw who noted that “Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?”.
At the Opportunity Collaboration, we are unreasonably asking “Why Not?”
Sep 12, 2009
Imagine a World Without the Social Edge!
Filed Under:
In Conaky, Guinea, the Social Edge does not exist.
Last year, my neighborhood was without electricity for 3 days. No reading at night, no refrigeration (the food spoiled), no phone (after the cellphone battery depleted), no cooking (except in the fireplace), no TV or rented movies, no clean clothes (unless hand washed) and no Internet. Imagine a life without the Social Edge.
Today 1.6 billion people worldwide are without access to modern energy. The Center for Global Development reports that “with a sixth of the world’s population, Africa generates only about 4% of the world’s electricity, three-quarters of which is used by South Africa and northern Africa. In Conakry, Guinea, young men go to the airport every evening to study because it is one of the only places with reliable lighting.”
One billion personal computers are now in use around the world. I wonder what a student crouched over his books in the Conakry airport thinks about educational opportunity. And, needless to say, since travel after dark is especially difficult and dangerous for most poor women, we needn’t even bother to speculate about the views of the girls in the airport study hall because night study for them is pragmatically off limits.
In this pressured moment of scarce resources and mounting impoverishment, energy consumption is a worldwide challenge. For the poor, it is yet another burden in the daily struggle for survival.
2.5 billion people in the developing world rely on biomass (wood, charcoal and animal dung) to cook their daily food. Over 80% of sub-Saharan Africans depend on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China. For a girl under five who is exposed to traditional wood fire smoke inside an enclosed hut, there is a six-fold increase in acute respiratory infections.
In the next 50 years, the Earth’s population will bloat to 11 billion – another 5 billion people. If current economic inequities remain as they are, as many poor people as today’s entire world population will be energy-impoverished by 2060.
At the Opportunity Collaboration, poverty and clean energy will be addressed together. Common sense suggests it, our common future demands it.
Sep 06, 2009
Showering With a Friend for Social Change
“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives”.
326 million trillion gallons of water encircle the globe. We drink it; we farm with it; we wash with it; we pollute it; we go to war over it. And what if we don’t have it?
2.6 billion human beings lack access to sanitation and 1.1 billion endure inadequate access to water (2006 U.N. Human Development Report). What’s that mean? Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
In sub-Saharan Africa the absence of easily available water means women spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water – the equivalent of a full year’s work from the entire workforce of France (U.N. Development Fund for Women). Hauling household water can eat up 20% of a woman’s time and 9% of her caloric intake.
To attack two problems at once, Opportunity Collaboration Delegate IDEO, which specializes in human-centered solutions, invented a bicycle that filters and cleans water as the bicyclist pedals the long distance between her village and a water source.
Water.org, another Opportunity Collaboration Delegate, is pioneering a microfinance-based WaterCredit Initiative to build sustainable water and sanitation systems in local communities. Two-year mini-loans finance wells, water taps, water tanks, and pipes to create reliable, clean potable water for people and crops.
Not surprisingly, people in the developing world pay more for their water and use less of it. Water in a Manila slum or an African village is substantially more expensive than in London or New York.
In the developing world, those lucky enough to live within 1 kilometer of a water source consume around 20 liters per day. In the United Kingdom, the average person uses up 150 liters a day. In the U.S. which has the highest average water usage in the world, 600 liters per person per day.
Perhaps our global neighbors in rural societies can prod us not to take water for granted. A West African proverb teaches us, “Filthy water cannot be washed”; an American Indian adage chides, “The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives”.
Thinking globally, but acting locally, is critical to social change. Get educated at Water.org. Or, shower with a friend.
Aug 29, 2009
Socialized Farming Versus Free Market Poverty
Is it progress if a welfare recipient gets a farm subsidy?
Agricultural is the largest employer in the developing world, but farmers are the poorest of the poor. Of the world’s hungry people, half are small-scale farming families (Our Day to End Poverty).
Of 525 million farms worldwide, 85% are under five acres; 445 million truly small farmers (Out of Poverty). Perhaps at odds with our mental picture of a solitary male tilling the soil or tending a goat herd, the U.N. Development Fund for Women reports that sub-Saharan Africa women contribute 60-80% of the agricultural work. In Asia, typically females do half the farming.
If you want to gag on your next meal, chew on the fact that large-scale American farmers annually get agricultural welfare payments of $80 billion. The same amount of money would fund all cancer research for the next decade or buy healthcare every year for nearly 2 out of 3 senior citizens.
The Polish essayist Stanislaw Lec once asked, “Is it progress if a cannibal eats with a knife and fork?” Americans might ask, “Is it progress if a welfare recipient gets a farm subsidy?”
American farms employ only 2% of the total workforce and generate a bit under 3% of GDP. Nonetheless, American farmers dominate 50% of the U.S. Senate, as noted by economist Lester Thurow in Fortune Favors the Bold, because demographically 25 rural states with 50 Senators have a combined population of less than urbanized California with only 2 Senators.
As Big American Agricultural farms its subsidies and milks its political connections, it competes with un-subsidized, free market small farmers in the developing world. Rural poor farmers might be more efficient and more productive, but that doesn’t matter because their governments can’t afford to put them on the dole.
Ironically, impoverished farmers in the developing world have one clear competitive advantage. Their labor rates average five to ten cents an hour (Out of Poverty). At that wage scale, the choices are ugly: forgoing needed medicine; no shoes for your school-age children; skipping the purchase of seeds for next year’s crops; slaughtering your kids’ only milk source.
What is the difference between spreading fertilizer and spreading political bullshit? For American farmers, not much. For the poor, another day of poverty farming.
Aug 22, 2009
Why Not a Humanitarian Military Invasion?
Let’s shoot our way to economic and social justice.
Private aid – foundations, mostly – sent $3.3 billion to developing countries in 2007. 50% of all foundation international grants went to health care. 25% was for economic development. 9% was disaster and refugee assistance.
All in all, are we getting our money’s worth for this largesse? We ask for two reasons. One, as social entrepreneurs, we care about effective, high-impact strategies for poverty reduction. Two, as taxpayers, we are all de facto partners in every foundation grant, in every philanthropist’s donation and in every dead donor’s bequest.
The economic development business metric which is the most frequently ignored by social entrepreneurs, not to mention philanthropists and social investors, is: How will success be disseminated to policymakers and, thus, have a societal-wide impact?
Paul Collier’s plain-speaking book and blog The Bottom Billion is replete with memorable phrases. My two favorites:
(a) “A ghetto of misery” to describe “how people live, or rather die”. For the underclass, the average life expectancy is 50 years. Fourteen percent of kids die before their fifth birthday.
(b) “A headless heart” to describe “development buzz” that leads to simple solutions for complex problems. Collier should know; he was the World Bank’s Research Director and now runs Oxford University’s Center for the Study of African Economies.
Collier prescribes mission focus: “…redefine the development problem as being about the bottom billion, the ones that are stuck in poverty”. Bucking the fashionable pro-private sector rhetoric of our time, for the most desperately, desperately poor countries he advocates government-based solutions, such as preferential trade policies, tougher anti-corruption laws and even humanitarian military actions. You might want to re-read that. Yes, government guns to stimulate private sector butter which is about as non-private sector as you can get.
Collier recoils at the notion of more misspent foreign aid. Nor does he romanticize the poor-are-always-right approach. And, by omission, he implies poverty in some basket-case countries is simply too big, too complex, too pervasive for boutique private sector social entrepreneurs.
These challenges to the social entrepreneur’s credo will be aired at the Opportunity Collaboration. If your mission is poverty alleviation and your margin is measured by social change, join us.
Aug 16, 2009
Onward, Opportunity Soldiers!
Filed Under:
I am unambiguously not a religious person, but...
Canada is headquarters of …“an association of compassionate business women and men who invest in the lives of families living in poverty around the world. We are committed...business owners, executives and leaders (who) integrate their life values with business in practical ways to help the poor.” (organizational website, excerpted). Talk about blended value investing.
From the same association comes a superlative magazine about social entrepreneurs. Called The Marketplace, it is published by the Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA). On every cover: “Where Christian faith gets down to business”.
For myself, I am unambiguously not a religious person. If it has vibrant stained glass windows, I do admit enjoying the occasional European cathedral, but I don’t think that counts. I read The Marketplace because every article is about a soulful, committed businessperson who has infused his or her enterprise with social values.
In fact, one suspects that the popularized phrases “blended value” or “triple bottom line” are meaningless to MEDA’s social activism. Where there is no distinction between how one makes a living and how one lives his or her life, investments don’t need blending because values are all there is.
Many high-impact anti-poverty crusaders advance towards economic justice as a religious calling or based on a spiritual rootedness in a common humanity:
MEDA Investments Inc President Gerhard Pries is an Opportunity Collaboration Delegate (workshop title: “Please Hold My Hand: Private Sector Investors Want to Change the World, But We're Scared as Hell.”). Another faith-motivated Delegate is Brian T. Fikkert, Director, Chalmers Center for Economic Development (Covenant College) which “helps churches to help the poor to help themselves”.
Cheri Huber, Founder, Living Compassion Zen Monastery Peace Center, Donna Katzin, Executive Director, Shared Interest and a Board member of Jewish Funds for Justice, Robert Gailey, Director, Center for International Development, Point Loma Nazarene University, Peter Greer, President, Hope International, Beth Fletcher Walden, Vice President, Trinity Church Wall Street, are also Delegates.
The American poet W.H. Auden once opined, “We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.”
At the Opportunity Collaboration, everyone, saint and sinner, of faith and no faith, every ideology and every credo is welcome. Onward, Opportunity Soldiers.
Aug 08, 2009
Healthcare Rationing: What Price Is A Life?
Was Dick Cheney's quadruple bypass surgery worth the money?
In the United States healthcare reform is policy wonk talk for changing up the way Americans ration health. Conservatives criticize change in the healthcare status quo as “rationing”. Liberals blithely promise reform will not include “rationing”. Both are fibbing.
Rationing healthcare is what health systems do. No scheme, no government, no insurer, no individual (save perhaps the über-rich) has unlimited money to buy all the healthcare everyone wants.
In America, we ration healthcare by place of employment. If you have a steady job with a large employer, you probably have decent health insurance. If you are self-employed, maybe not.
Vice President Dick Cheney suffered four heart attacks beginning at age 37. Thanks to American socialized medicine for elected officials, Cheney has been cared for at the very best taxpayer-subsidized hospitals. His is a life worth saving.
If Cheney were a poor, young, Latina private housekeeper, most likely he would not have had health insurance when he needed it. And, it is damn certain he would not have gotten any preventive checkups in, no doubt, a “secure, undisclosed location”.
If Mr. Cheney were born in the developing world, he might well have died in infancy. Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, Vice President, The Carter Center, writes, “Children born in most advanced industrialized countries…experience infant mortality rates of 10 per 1,000 live births…and can expect to live an average of more than 70 years. Children born in developing countries…face infant mortality rates of 150 or higher (with) a life expectancy of 50 years or less.”
The cure for measles, a highly contagious disease, has been in use for over 30 years. As a result, measles has been wiped out in the developing world. In poorer countries, measles still infects 30 million people annually, mostly kids.
Would you deny the Vice President, a former heavy smoker, his quadruple bypass surgery (estimated cost: $45,000.00) to pay for inoculating 180,000 children against measles (estimated cost: 25 cents per child)? That is reality of global healthcare rationing.
900,000 poor children are annually sentenced to death because measles inoculations are unavailable (rationed?). Would you spend a quarter to save a child’s life?
Aug 01, 2009
Throwing Away Bad Ideas
Filed Under:
Collaboration Can Be Counter Intuitive. Ask John Wayne.
Collaboration is a powerful business tool. Silicon Valley is a demonstration of the business power of collaboration. So is Hollywood, and the Italian fashion industry, and the Hartford-centered insurance sector. In the art world consider Paris in the 20th Century or the New York’s theatre district today. And, as Keith Sawyer’s book Group Genius reminds us, “all science is collaborative”.
Collaboration can be counter-intuitive. The concept of the lone inventor, the unaided and pioneering entrepreneur and the solitary corporate chieftain wrestling with a thorny decision is well-embedded in modern business mythology. John Wayne-like business leaders trail blaze!
But, in truth, ideas are born of the input of many. Indeed, the Opportunity Collaboration itself emerged from a series of consultations and conversations in late 2008. A big shout out to Delegates Shari Berenbach (workshop: “Making Sense of the Social Capital Markets…Moving Past Rhetoric to Reality”), Bonny Meyer (workshop: “NoEgo.Org”) and Chip Raymond (workshop: “Successfully Learning from Our Failures”) for midwifing the Opportunity Collaboration. From each, I have learned and been inspired.
Group Genuis records Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling as saying, “I am constantly asked by students how I get good ideas. My answer is simple: First, have a lot of ideas. Then, throw away the bad ones.”
At the Opportunity Collaboration, Delegates will be generating “a lot of ideas” and “throwing away the bad ones”. Real world case studies, exemplary projects, social investments, etc. which have achieved “proof of concept” will be showcased. Tough performance and impact questions will be asked and answered.
It has never been more urgent for the leaders of organizations combating the scourge of poverty to uncover new ways to work together. Delegates are gathering to forge new partnerships, share knowledge, collaborate for sustainable poverty alleviation and think outside traditional policy silos.
The Opportunity Collaboration is a platform predicated on the powerful idea that out of fragmentation can come collaboration, from diversity can come unity and from cross-fertilization can come innovation. It draws its power from the conviction that people of good will forge their own solutions, directions and alliances and will uncover new ways to combine and leverage resources.
Jul 25, 2009
Even a Little Dog Can Piss on a Big Building
Filed Under:
“Even a little dog can piss on a big building.” So said American populist Jim Hightower who reminds us all that you don’t get a pass on social change. Everyone can play a role. No matter how big the social problem, we all have the option to piss on it.
If you want a big problem to tackle, try poverty.
Think about kids. A third of the world’s population is comprised of children living in the developing world. Of these 2 billion children, 640 million are without adequate shelter (1 in 3), 400 million are without access to safe water (1 in 5) and 270 million are without health services (1 in 7). Globally, more children die of malaria – a preventable disease -- than HIV-AIDS.
For the social entrepreneur, the plight of every single child in poverty is a painful disgrace and a pressing opportunity.
Entrepreneurial leadership is less about the perfect, pre-determined answer and more about taking action. It is about experimentation and hands-on trial and error. It presumes failure on the road to success.
In juxtaposition, all too often nonprofit donors and foundation grantors fear failure, preferring mock metrics of success. The self-congratulatory report becomes the beloved endpoint.
As a result, organizations are rewarded for avoiding risk, burying mistakes and overpromising future successes. The organizational status quo is validated and enshrined to benefactors. Progress against poverty suffers.
My favorite author, George Bernard Shaw, wrote about “the life force” -- the heart, the soul and the backbone of every social entrepreneur. With that spirit firmly embraced, the Opportunity Collaboration gathers on World Poverty Day to push back the scourge of poverty.
Shaw said about himself, “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community…and it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live…Life is no brief candle to me.”
Be an entrepreneur for economic justice. Light a candle. And, if you can’t find a match, try pissing.
Jul 18, 2009
Perhaps All Women Should Wear the Bullet Proof Vests One of Them Invented
Women and girls will be a major focus of the Opportunity Collaboration
The inventor of the laser printer? A woman. The windshield wiper? A woman. The bullet proof vest? A woman.
Less admirably, women perform 66% of the world’s work and produce 50% of the world’s food, but earn a meager 10% of the income (and own just 1% of the property). As a matter of social values, economic justice and common sense, it is hard to explain why the smartest, hardest working mother in the poorest country on the face of the Earth and the female CEO of an electronic flea market aren't both compensated equitably for their societal contribution.
The devastating, daily impact of poverty on women? 60% of all unpaid family workers globally are women. 57% of children not in school are girls. One in three women and girls are victimized by gender-based violence. Every minute, a woman somewhere needlessly dies in pregnancy or childbirth. Of the adults worldwide who cannot read, two-thirds of them are women. 70% of the world’s poor are women.
No wonder then that a central focus of the Opportunity Collaboration is women and girls. Funders and practitioners alike are converging on World Poverty Day in Ixtapa, Mexico, to foster and promote the pivotal role of women in economic development, both internationally and in the United States.
Delegates will join presentations by Global Fund for Women Founder Anne Firth Murray on “Women's Health & Human Rights: Poverty Can Work for Me”, Count Me In CEO Nell Merino on “Rosie the Riveter, Meet Elaine the Entrepreneur”, Foundation for Women CEO Deborah Lindholm on “The First Female President of an African Nation – The End of Patriarchy”, Womens Donor Network Board Member Nancy Harris Dalwin on “Post-Katrina Collaboration Lessons”, New Philanthropy Advisors Partner Sara S. Hall on “High Engagement Women’s Philanthropy”, and WorldPulse Magazine CEO Jensine M. Larson on “Using Social Media to Connect and Empower Women Worldwide”.
For inspiration from entrepreneurial women around the globe, award-winning photojournalist Paola Gianturco will narrate an exhibition of her work from “Women Who Light the Dark”. Come share this special moment at the Opportunity Collaboration.
Jul 13, 2009
We Are What We Do
This year, around the world 100 million MORE people are hungry. They consume less than 1800 calories per day. The total is now over 1 billion hungry people, up 11% from last year.
Civilization, if it can be called that, seems to create poverty and disadvantage as fast as it builds prosperity and opportunity. It is easy to become disheartened and self-questioning.
The Opportunity Collaboration, set for World Poverty Day on October 17, 2009, in Ixtapa, Mexico, will bring together the doers who are fighting the scourge of poverty. From social investor to nonprofit leader, from philanthropist to social entrepreneur, we need fulcrums of hope – levers to make change.
As a matter of conscience and common sense, we are compelled to ask, what is worth doing? As the website says, we are what we do.
In the community of entrepreneurial global citizens, the most effective intervention, the most impactful approach and the most efficient way to use resources is an active debate. Some favor scaled governmental solutions; others prefer smaller, targeted nonprofit solutions; others demand self-sustaining, even profitable, private sector solutions.
For my part, I like them all. With equal enthusiasm, I take advantage of privately-sold fire insurance, expect rapid, efficient service from tax-supported government fire departments and hope that my neighbors learn from nonprofit, community-based fire safety programs.
A world of poverty is not news. 2.6 billion people lack a toilet, outhouse, pigsty or even an open drainage ditch for sanitation, a euphemism for keeping excrement out of the human water supply. We each have our own disturbing image of poverty. Mine is a woman who rises in the dark for some measure of privacy while she completes this basic bodily function.
The “sadness numbers” are numbing. Billions in poverty, 27 million in slavery, a landmine kills or mains a person every hour…
The poor do not wait. Join us at the Opportunity Collaboration. Be a doer, not a talker.
Teofilo Tijerina
We specifically focus on venture development in economically distressed areas. At the moment, we have a domestic focus, but we want to do more work internationally.
look forward to meeting everyone at the event.