The Learning Curve

I use the plural form 'organizations' and 'enterprises' because CDI is going through a transitional stage having created two new social business arms and as of now, I continue to have a foot in all three (including the non-profit). Fortunately, Florencia Estrade, Director of Strategy at CDI, is back from maternal leave and I have some company in the eye of the storm.

I posted earlier about one of these new arms - CDI LAN, a social business that works with cyber cafés turning them into centers for digital inclusion and services with a social impact (e-learning, e-health, e-gov etc). After having labored on the business plan back in November and December, I am happy to announce that we have some interesting partnerships already being tested on the ground and that discussions with social venture capitalists and philanthropists have begun. In addition, we have been able to contract a new CEO, allowing Florencia and myself to focus on raising equity and the 'fun' stuff like share-holder agreements and division of capital.

More exciting for me personally though, is the creation of CDI's other social business, tentatively called CDI Consulting. CDI Consulting (already a few projects deep) will focus on providing consulting services in digital inclusion, social impact and social business models/strategies to businesses as well as non-profits in Brazil and beyond. In addition, it will dedicate a part of its time and/or revenue to work with CDI (NGO), providing support with strategy and PMO-type activities. I will be moving shortly to this new arm dividing my time between external consulting services and the implementation (1 year) and re-construction (5 years) of CDIs strategic plan.

In other words, Florencia and I are looking at some very exciting and intensive months coming our way with the tasks of planning and running CDI Consulting (pretty much a start-up), working as strategy consultants with CDI and continuing to incubate CDI LAN as long as necessary. White hairs coming my way!

Want to learn more or participate? Write me - dhaval.chadha@cdiglobal.org!

My friend Rizwan Tayabali recently posted a short piece about the myth of the Bottom/Base of the Pyramid (BOP). I highly recommend reading this post because it challenges us to think more critically not just about our language and jargon, but our tendencies to over-simplify development both conceptually and in action. Rizwan argues that -

1. The shape is actually not a pyramid if we are to separate the poorest 4 billion into three groups. In this characterization, the lowest income group (<$1 per day) is composed of 1 billion people, the middle group has another 1.5 billion and the higher end of the "pyramid" has 2.5 billion. As such, the market and the "fortune" at the base of the pyramid that everyone is after is much more at the 'Middle of the Michelin Man’ or the ‘Middle of a Weirdly Shaped Top Heavy Ball’ as Rizwan suggests. In fact, is seeking a fortune at any level of income a strategy for development? Should we not be thinking of low-income populations as citizens, producers, suppliers and owners of capital rather than as clients and customers?

2. At the very bottom of the global income pyramid or Michelin man are people that do not provide a sustainable option for any kind of business since they do not have food and shelter, let alone a disposable income.

Rizwan points very succinctly to some key challenges that face our sector -

1. Who are and should we really be helping?
2. To what extent are we taking the easier and more profitable way out with for-profit, triple-bottom-line etc initiatives?
3. In what capacity, if any, should we be trying to engage marginalized populations in the global market? As clients? Customers? Producers? Owners of capital? Entrerepreneurs?
4. Is there a trade-off between scale and impact?
5. Does business jargon over-simplify the complexities and change the terms of how to successfully and sustainably foster development?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this - send me your take on the questions (number them) via twitter! Example - @dhavalchadha 3. Entrepreneurs that create a ripple effect in their communities.

In other news, here is an interesting post from a new intern at UnLtdWorld about getting acquainted with the world of social enterprise.

One of the things that I have been working on in parallel to CDI is organizing TEDx Sudeste - an independently organized TED event in Rio de Janeiro. For those unfamiliar with TED, I highly encourage checking the website out - its an event that has been bringing the best minds and the most innovative ideas to annual conferences in California and Oxford for some 25 years to talk, among other themes, about how Technology, Entertainment and Design are and can be shaping our future. Past speakers include Bill Clinton and Gates among lesser known revolutionaries of our times.

Since last year, TED has been licensing out their brand name for interested parties around the world that want to have their on TED event in their region and agree to follow the relevant rules and guidelines. When a friend of mine told me that his proposal for a multi-year event in Southeast Brazil had been approved, I offered to help out in organizing the event, with a focus on partnerships and curating the event.

In our early meetings we asked, like many have: is TED elitist? We felt that the power of ideas that shape our future is something that should be democratized and began brainstorming about ways to have simul-casts in low-income communities around Brazil. As a continuation of the discussion, we met yesterday with Fred Gelli, one of our confirmed speakers and Founder and CEO of Tátil Design, who provoked us to think harder and I thought I would bring the discussion here to see what other people think.

The TED brand is built on the ability to guarantee a very high-level of intellectual content. While there is a strong emphasis on simplicity, talks can sometimes be hard to follow even for academics and are most often targeted at the great minds that inspire and can be inspired to create a better future. Opening up TED to an very wide audience can lead to a number of issues:

• The potential over-simplification of content and ideas based on a very-wide audience.
• If a talk is extremely difficult to follow (as a result of the complexity of ideas and not jargon) would it make someone to whom access is extended in an effort to democratize content, but who may not follow the talk in its entirety, feel included or excluded?
• That said, a great target audience to which the talks could be brought are universities.

Thoughts, comments, critiques? Write me or post below! dhaval.chadha@cdiglobal.org

Michael Edwards is a writer and activist affiliated with the think tank Demos, the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, and the Brooks World Poverty Institute at Manchester University in the UK. From 1999 to 2008 he was director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Program, and he previously worked for the World Bank, Oxfam, and Save the Children. He is also a very strong critic of the potential for business and the corporate sector to lead to sustainable social change and transformation.

"A new movement is afoot that promises to save the world by applying the magic of the market to the challenges of social change. Its supporters argue that using business principles to solve global problems is far more effective than more traditional approaches. What could be wrong with that? Almost everything, argues former Ford Foundation director Michael Edwards. In this hard-hitting, controversial exposé, he marshals a wealth of evidence to reveal that in reality, a market approach hurts more than it helps. Real change will come when business acts more like civil society, not the other way around.
 
Despite the good intentions and hopeful rhetoric, Edwards shows that there is simply no proof that a business approach is better. Quite the contrary. He cites examples from his many years in the social sector to demonstrate that business by its very nature is not equipped to attack the root causes of major problems like poverty, inequality, violence, and discrimination. Achieving fundamental social transformation requires a different set of operating values—cooperation rather than competition, collective action more than individual effort, and patient, long-term support for systemic solutions over immediate results."

In the coming weeks I hope to engage in a deeper discussion on Edwards' book, a book that seems to strike at the very heart and soul of the social business, social enterprise and Bottom of the Pyramid sectors.

    All I knew about Santa Cruz, Bolivia as I boarded my flight from Buenos Aires was that it is an island of relative prosperity in Bolivia, the second poorest country in Latin America following Haiti. Although I am yet to travel to other parts of the country (today is my third day here), there seems to be much accuracy in that statement. Santa Cruz is also an extremely interesting example of an almost completely informal market. I decided this week that I would write a little bit about what has struck me most.

    I spent my first afternoon walking around the center of town and in about two horus, all I saw were banks, small lawyers' offices, Entel and Tigo (cell phone service providers) and Internet cafés. Stepping into a small gallery, I discovered a world of smuggled Chinese cell-phons and jail-broken iPhones, and Brazilian and Argentine tourists bargaining for prices!

    I am in Bolivia primarily as a tourist but decided to take advantage of my time here to meet with the Chamber of Hidrocarbons to further our talks of expanding CDIs presence in Bolivia. We had a very engaging discussion about the state policy regarding ICT4D, CDIs methodology and the opportune moment to begin our work in Bolivia. We had an excellent lunch (majaritos, chicharron de lagarto and ceviche) before an afternoon city tour. The guide gave me a crash course in Bolivian history and culture and I had the chance to see all the key museums and churches as well as go on a "scenic ride" through the swankiest neighborhoods in Santa Cruz. Of course, I was left asking for more!

    Fortunately, the IT manager from the Chamber offered very kindly to show me the Santa Cruz that tourists do not see - the Santa Cruz that he is excited about and is all that makes him proud to be a Cruzeño.

    He picked me up at the Hotel at 8pm and the first place we went to was a part of Santa Cruz that is home to almost all the Universities. We saw the expansive public university and the numerous new private universities that have sprung up in the recent years and provide a university level education at USD120 a month.

The theme of the night was economic development with a special focus on how clusters of commercial activity were springing up around certain types of institutions. These included the numerous Internet cafés, photocopy services and pirated software (Autocad latest version for USD 2.00) around the universities; haircutters and private schools around the markets and bus terminal; and of course, hamburger stands everywhere.

I also learnt that every Thursday, there is a 1km stretch of an avenue selling second-hand clothing brought from the United States and you can find everything from American Apparel to Armani suits for less than USD 20. Then there is the chop-shop industry for cars. I had noticed that there were almost no new cars in Santa Cruz. My guide addressed my confusion by explaining how the majority of the cars are bought on eBay and brought (for once, legally) across the border, refurbished and then sold here. It takes less than 24 hours to turn a right-hand drive car into a left-hand drive and refurbishing the entire interior of a car costs less than USD 100.

The next thing that caught my attention was the number of restaurants that specialize in chicken - grilled, roasted and fried. And that all of them are run by Chinese immigrants. I am still to understand how this phenomenon emerged but I have seen at least one hundred (not a hyperbole)!

This post is already quite long so I am going to skip what I have learnt (especially because I am just beginning to skim the surface) about Bolivian culture, history, politics and diversity, but am excited and very happy to share thoughts about those and learn more. - dhavalchadha@gmail.com

One final thought - my first impressions about the prevelance and interest in information and communications technologies and relatively low costs leaves me wondering if Santa Cruz might become to Santiago de Chile and Montevideo what Bangalore is to San Francisco.

A colleague and friend recently passed on a great article on the past, present and near future of the use of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D).

Source: The ICT4D 2.0 Manifesto

We have seen a paradigm shift away from the telecenter model in most parts of the world, to a more mobile-center approach, also known as Mobile Web for Development (MW4D). A very interesting discussion, some amazing tips and some of the key experts in the field including Ken Banks, Stephane Boyera and Vijay Pratap Singht Aditya comment on SMS4D on Ashoka Changemakers' site which also provides the Social Changemaking with Mobile Phones group replete with a quick start guide. Another amazing resource of course, is the W3C's Wiki on MW4D and CDI is excited about being one of the first two strategic partners of the World Wide Web Foundation (press release here).

This shift comes mainly as a result of the ability of mobile phones to break barriers of access: through their widespread reach and connectivity; and of relevance: by empowering end-users to create content thereby truly democratizing the WWW. Most telecenter models around the world in contrast lacked relevance and proved financially unsustainable owing to lack of demand for the given services, high overheads, poor management and a host of other problems.

Does this spell the end of the role of public access spaces in development especially as these movements are accompanied by falling prices of individual computers? I would argue that this is not at all the case and invite you to join the discussion -

1. Most telecenter experiments were rural and dealt with a very specific target audience within the development space.
2. Public access spaces include cyber cafés - one of the largest motors of digital inclusion and the democratization of access, these cafés are also typically financially self-sustainable.
3. Quality education leading to systemic change is difficult to deliver on mobile phones.
4. Public access spaces share public transport's green value and claims to sustainability - every computer has multiple users instead of vice versa.

As the adoption of mobile phone technology for development soars, we face the significant danger of abandoning innovation in how to leverage computers and public access centers for development. Write to me! at dhaval.chadha@cdi.org.br

Without naming names, it is clear that many corporates, MNCs and more recently MFIs and banks have made millions doing business at the BOP more because if the potential to profit than out of any social commitment or with any social conscience. We must be careful to not allow ill-intentioned loan-shark or other exploitative models masquerade as social enterprises solely through the appropriation of the term BOP. The BOP is a purely descriptive term about the target audience (suppliers or consumers) of a business and if at all, it carries the baggage of social hierarchy.

With more and more MBA students going down the social entrepreneurship path, one is forced to wonder why its taken so long to get the mainstream involved in creating a better world; and take note of the conspicuous overlap of this occurrence with the global realization that profit and social impact may not be mutually inclusive. In other words, it is no surprise that scores of people the world over are delighted that they can continue to rake in millions while also being able to sleep well at night (not directed at the cases in the article from the WSJ linked above).

Going one step further, we also need to be very careful about when and how we use the term social enterprise: many enterprises have a significantly greater commitment to investors or share-holders than to their so-called beneficiaries and may not have any kind of long-term social impact.

A final thought
Most economists and businessmen today would argue that we live in times of wealth creation: economics is not a zero-sum game and businesses and fiscal policy will solve poverty through a trickle-down effect even though the middle and top of the pyramid will grow first and faster. Unfortunately, politics, power, voice and inequality are zero-sum and widening monetary gaps are bound to affect all of these. Finally, here is an inspiring Ted talk I saw the other day called Navigating our Global Future.

What is the BOP?
The BOP refers simply to the lowest-income group of people around the world. Bottom, because its the lowest-income group, and pyramid because with grossly unequal income distribution, this is the largest group and the top of the pyramid the smallest. About 3.7 billion people constitute the BOP, often defined by the income limit of $2 a day, with 60% of them living in India and China.

Why BOP?
The term Bottom of the Pyramid has come under some criticism for being overly hierarchic and causes a lot of people to immediately have a negative reaction. Some prefer the term "Base of the Pyramid" because it connotes the idea of being the foundation that supports the middle and the top of the pyramid. Either way, the term has currency today because of its use in the private sector and the approximation of the same with social enterprise. In addition, there seems to be a lack of a less problematic and functional term (as far as political correctness goes) given that some of our other choices are marginalized, impoverished, poor, excluded etc.

Why is it important?
CK Prahalad and Stuart Hart first wrote about the Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid focusing heavily on the unexplored spending capacity of the BOP and how it is a huge potential market for multinational companies (annual income of US$ 2.3 trillion a year as per Figure 1). While this is definitely true, what I find even more interesting is the inherent synergy of the potential business opportunity and the potential social impact of certain market based solutions at the BOP. As Figure 2 shows, people earning up to $1 day do not have enough money for discretionary spending and the income group that earns between $1 and $2 a day can only spend 16% of its income on non-essential products and services.

In other words, for the most part, the products and services that have the best chances of performing well in these income groups will be life-enhancing and essential products and services! Commercial and market forces have been slow to adapt to this need and potential owing to higher risks and lower margins among other reasons but it seems to be an excellent opportunity to innovate and scale.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms, suggestions? Write me @ dhaval.chadha@cdi.org.br or leave a post here!

Figure 1

Figure 2

Sources: Next Billions report by BCG and WEF and Monitor report - Emerging Markets, Emerging Models
 

Following two years of studying how and where the Base of the Pyramid access the Internet, we had some interesting findings. In Brazil, 48% of people with access to the Internet access through cyber cafés (also known as LAN Houses). For the lower middle-class and the poor, that number is as high as almost 80%. Yet, less than 16% of these establishments are legal and the average life-span of the business is about 18 months. A combination of reasons including strict legislation, narrow range of offerings and poor financial planning have contributed to this situation.

Following my posts about Web 2.0, I have received some requests for help with building institutional websites for organizations. While my professional focus is not marketing and communications, I have worked closely with our team on managing the website project. We have been through a number of service providers and here is the simple summary of our cumulative knowledge on the steps involved in building a great website for your organization!

The first step for an organization is to write a brief. This involves developing a really clear understanding of a number of different things -
 

• The strategic and communication objectives of the organization: your website is nothing more than a tool to achieve bigger objectives and goals. You might find that of all the objectives you have from a marketing and communications perspective, a website is only able to help you achieve a few and that sometimes you are better of flyering on a college campus or in a shopping mall.
• Your target audiences: Think about all the different types of people that might access your website. What do you want them to know? What do you want them to do? What do you need to show and tell them to seduce them?
• Content and functionalities: Collect all the content and list all the functionalities
• The tone/image/colors based on the brand guidelines: This affects the identity of your site and thereby, of your organization.       

After this, you need to find a web-development company that is a compromise between your dreams and your pocket.

1. Information Architecture - the conceptual organization structure/model of all the content and information in your site.
2. Wireframe - A visual guide that shows the layout of the website and also of individual webpages.
3. Design - aesthetic, strategic, usability design. As an end-result, you have a bunch of images.
4. Development - Turning the images into webpages and linking them to create your website.
5. Navigability test and modifications
6. Upload content
7. Full test and modifications
8. Launch!

Perhaps one of the most promising contributions for many has been the ability to involve the private sector in a deeper as well as broader dimension. Venture philanthropy (@acumenfund), philanthrocapitalism, social capital markets, standardized metrics (IRIS, GIIRS etc) are recent and very exciting developments. That said, there is much confusion in the space and a lot of thinking, reflection and clarification is needed. This week I try to raise some important issues surrounding the involvement of the private sector and hybrid investors in social enterprise and social business:
 

1. Michael Edwards started one of the most interesting debates on the subject of philanthrocapitalism in the blogosphere, arguing that we should be more weary of these developments and the true impact that they are having.
    
2. Investors and philanthropists should be very careful about what their objectives are and what kinds of metrics they look for to make an investment. It seems very clear in a simple thought experiment that certain types of products and services in the social and citizen sector better lend themselves to profitable models than others. It would follow that investor portfolios in which a financial return on investment is important should focus on those types of social investments that are able to generate revenues, whereas pure philanthropists should try to attend to the needs of initiatives that will always depend on charitable donations.
   
   On the one hand, we have examples such as micro-credit and innovative products that greatly improve quality and/or lower the cost of essentials. Based on a combination of factors including necessity, disposable income, ROI etc, the end-user him/herself is the principal source of revenue and there is an inherent potential for profitability. In these cases, sustainability is very closely related to scale and with a lean and effective model, you get a successful Bottom of the Pyramid social enterprise or business that is able to deliver to a wide gamut of investors ranging from patient venture philanthropists, to traditional equity and angel investors and maybe even shareholders. (Some further reading: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid or the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group's study on the BOP, Wharton article on profitability of microcredit).
   
   On the other hand, there are development challenges that will never be solved by business models that depend on bottom-up revenue or self-sustainability. Here, there might be a very high cost involved (medical research and development for example) that can never be borne by the target audience and are only conceivable when there are significant subsidies from philanthropists, governments and corporates.
    
3. Paul Hudnut who teaches at CSU's graduate degree program in Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise questions whether "standardized, improved metrics help bring new capital to the field and fertilze more and better ventures?" There are a number of things that are completely intangible in social impact. Hudnut asserts that since "[social] entrepreneurs build value that cannot be measured with financial tools alone, investors/donors have resorted to a plethora of self-set goals." Is it possible to quantify a personal transformation that saw a man with a 28 year prison sentence become an Ashoka fellow? Is it possible to quantify the effect that Professor Yunus has had in inspiring and thereby creating an entire industry of micro-credit institutions worldwide?

Looking forward to comments and discussions! Please join in!

Don't miss this live discussion on Thursday October 8th, noon EST about breaking in to the non-profit sector!

http://ow.ly/t1zr 

Best wishes!

 A couple of weeks ago I started writing about social media and how non-profits need to get with it. I first made, and attempted to defend, the claim which I repeat once again, that the use/problem/challenge/opportunity (marketing and communications, fundraising, community building, credibility) should precede the solution/tool/software/interface (facebook, orkut, myspace, twitter etc). I then went on to give a quick overview of some of the most commonly used social media tools out there.

 Last week I took an example from CDI's experience to make the point that in the adoption of social media, the use/problem/challenge/opportunity (marketing and communications, fundraising, community building, credibility) should precede the solution/tool/software/interface (facebook, orkut, myspace, twitter etc). Some important questions that need to be asked (and answered to the best degree possible) are - What am I trying to achieve? Who is my audience? What tools do they use, i.e., where are they? What kind of investment does this require? What kind of human resources do I need?

The buzz around social media applications like twitter and facebook reflects the value these tools have created for users the world over and the need for nonprofits to dedicate time and resources to the adoption of these tools is very apparent. Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to try to defend the following claims about social media and their adoption in social enterprise.

1. The use/problem/challenge/opportunity (marketing and communications, fundraising, community building, credibility) precedes the solution/tool/software/interface (facebook, orkut, myspace, twitter).
2. Quick overview of some of the tools and what they can be used for.
3. Great examples to learn from. Eg- How Nonprofits can use Social Media (some of the links here are no longer live).
4. Many of the people that understand this space and are very fluent Internet users are young people, ie, people that grew up digital, and offer a great opportunity to nonprofits to build and and implement a web 2.0 strategy.

This week, I start with claim number 1, using an example from my own experience..

1. The use/problem/challenge/opportunity (marketing and communications, fundraising, community building, credibility) precedes the solution/tool/software/interface (facebook, orkut, myspace, twitter).

Rather than thinking about what the different tools out there are and how one might use them, a much more useful strategy is to try to identify the key challenges and opportunities faced by an organization, and then appropriate the right tools in the relevant ways. At CDI, we faced an interesting challenge that we decided to tackle through the use of social media within our organization. Daily, we were faced with questions like - where are our 1.25 million graduates today? What can they learn from each other? How can we continue to be relevant to them? We were -

• Losing track of alumni and relevance in their lives
• Experiencing a lack of communication and interaction within the CDI alumni and student network
• Not hearing changemaker stories with high inspirational value and a strong need to be recognized
• Lacking a common forum to post information for our students and alumni

Given the limited reach of twitter and facebook in Brazil (and Portuguese), and the fact that we had a very specific target audience to work with, we decided that we needed to build our own social network that would unite users around issues central to their lives. We hoped that the network effect for a work and transformation based network would be different from that of regular networks and so far, the results have been promising. The technology that we chose is a free (with premium services) Open ID website called Ning that is fairly easy and flexible and I would recommend taking a closer look at!

More to come.. Join the discussion!

The great thing about bringing new revenue to a non-profit is that it is tough for people to complain about it. As long as you seek supervision while doing it and do it legally :) it is very likely that your help will be welcome. Of course, there are a lot of other things you can do too that few non-profits would complain about. What is common to a lot of them is that you add value to existing operations instead of drawing resources away from them.

1. Small non-profits and social enterprises do not always have strong research divisions.

For each area within a non-profit, there is always something to be gained by looking at how other organizations work. If you find yourself working for a Marketing and Communications division, then go talk to an ad or PR agency and find out how they write briefs and manage campaigns. If you are in involved with pedagogy or measuring impact, look at your peer non-profits and the leading non-profits in the world - are you teaching the same things? Is your impact greater? How do other organizations fundraise? How do they audit? How do they scale? What have they learnt? A look at the private sector can be extremely beneficial. To get the kind of information you are looking for, of course, the Internet is a great place to start. You can always ask to meet with people too - many people in the private sector would love to feel that their expertise is having a social impact!

2. Any raw data (interviews, statistics etc) you can bring from the field is always useful too. Top management teams can usually use some help in reaching out to more people that their non-profit reaches. If you are able to create an efficient line of communication, that could be very helpful.

3. Read, read, read! There are great books and limitless articles, journals, forums etc online that not everyone gets the time to look at. Not only will this help you bring great existing ideas to your workplace, you will be inspired to brainstorm and forced to learn a lot!

Are things that you have done at your non-profit that have proven extremely beneficial? Are there other things that young social entrepreneurs could do for your non-profit that you need someone passionate and energetic for? Share!

1. Get involved and let your leaders trust you - One of the most valuable parts of my experience at CDI, i.e. my close involvement that I have had with the top leadership including Rodrigo Baggio, has not been purely co-incidental. Ask to participate in meetings and projects that you find interesting - start by listening and learning. Then try contributing just the single best idea or comment you may have during a two-hour meeting. From then on, you begin to earn trust and credibility.

Last September, I timed a personal trip that I had to make to New York with the Clinton Global Initiative, offering to help Rodrigo and Florencia (Director of Strategy) out at the event since I was going to be around anyway and it was too expensive for CDI to pay for more people to fly out there. I ended up attending a lot of meetings with him, many of which later turned into partnerships. Given my early involvement, I became responsible for some of our most exciting projects this way.

2. Test your skills and build confidence in low-pressure situations or ones that you are comfortable in - you are less likely to worry about failure.

Site visits are a great stepping stone to business meetings. They present an opportunity to learn how to speak about your social enterprise in an environment where you have visual and emotional props, and that is usually low-pressure, less formal and more formulaic. In addition, visits are a great opportunity to learn more about the reality in the field and to create a mental list of anecdotes. Taking university students and professors on visits, be they from the city that you are based in or international, is a great way to start. These are people that we are used to interacting with and that we understand well.

@ Seasoned Entrepreneurs

Talented young people are often very passionate, energetic and fast learners.

Young social entrepreneurs can help you broaden your sales capacity and open doors to new opportunities. Work with them on presenting your enterprise's work and they can be a huge resource in terms of spreading the word and showing your amazing work to more people including potential partners, media etc.

Thoughts? Similar experiences? Other tips? Agree? Disagree? Let me know!

Fundraising is one of the biggest challenges faced by most social entrepreneurs and non-profits, be it to continue operations, to deepen impact or to scale up. So unfortunately, most non-profits often do not have the resources to hire everyone that they would like, and definitely not to actively recruit for openings. This means that they may not post jobs to their websites and that it is usually hard to break-in to the sector.

But in fact, the challenge of fundraising is something that you can use to your advantage. If you are confident that you will cost the non-profit less than what you can raise, you are very tangibly a net-benefit! Once you have spent some time at the non-profit, you will probably see your role changing or evolving, but this is a great way to start. Based on my experiences and of people around me, here are some tips and ideas. Please write back with other tips and ideas! If you have any questions, comments or feelings, please join the discussion.

1. Take initiative:

• Volunteer for as long as you can. This is an opportunity to show that you are a worthy investment and to understand how things work. Of course, not everyone has the resources to volunteer but there are ways to get around that. You can start working part-time first. Volunteer for a few hours a week over the course of some time or full-time for a shorter period, say 2 months. 
• Raise money to pay for a year's worth of work (ie, your salary) at a non-profit. Submit a proposal to the non-profit and to donors (company, individual, foundation...) showing where you will add value and why you are worth hiring.

2. Think global:

• Take advantage of the fact that you speak English and look for social enterprises where they need people with your language and writing skills. 
• It is cheaper to live abroad.
• It is usually easier to get field experience too.

3. Don't be shy to tap into your networks:

• Your school, university - bring more volunteers, thereby doubling or tripling your value.
• Your friends, family, former company as possible sources of funding.

4. Look for good mentors:

• You will learn a lot and they will know how best to use your skills. Good places to start? Well.. Ashoka, Skoll and Schwab fellows!

Raised in a condo across the street from one of the largest slums in Asia, I grew up wondering why my football team-mates went home to a very different reality than mine. Youth, innocence and privilege kept me from understanding the complexity of the situation until much later. My high school brought me in contact with an inspiring group of individuals from around the world that asked many of the right questions about what was wrong in the world. Harvard  too brought me in contact with a very inspiring group of individuals from many parts of the world that had all the right answers, but in my opinion, to many of the wrong questions.

Continuously challenged to defend my world-view against my peers I found myself deeply engaged in high theory and ideology, until I travelled to Brazil for the first time in 2007. Faced with new images and cries of suffering that I was not sufficiently desensitized to (as at home in India), I became acutely aware that I needed to act. I decided to write my senior thesis about social movements in Brazil and it was one of my thesis readers that first told me about CDI.

In my time in Rio, I have been involved in projects ranging from fundraising (raised about US$350,000), to forging and managing partnerships, producing videos, working on our web 2.0 and new media strategy and many business relationships. I attended the Clinton Global Initiative and the regional World Economic Forum, and am now working mostly on innovation, strategy and international expansion. All this in less than 1 year!

As we move towards becoming an Everyone a Changemaker TM world, talented youth and young entrepreneurs have a very relevant role in the social entrepreneurship sector. The Learning Curve will provide an insider's look on being young in the social entrepreneurship sector. This is a space for to share and hear from members, job-seekers and potential young entrepreneurs that scour SocialEdge, as well as with leading social enterpreneurs about where and how you can make use of young talent.

1. Why are young social entrepreneurs and new talent important? Where do they add value and how can I use them to the best of their capabilities?
2. How do I get in, How do I stay in? Where am I adding value? What is my contribution? What are my expectations?