Okay, not really.
But I did go to a four-hour workshop this morning conducted by the Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth (CCEW) at the University of Oklahoma. Jeff Moore, CCEW's Executive Director, supervised the workshop ably assisted by Laura Brunson (pictured here) of the WaTER Center, Madison Blocker, and Samantha (Sam) Toth.
So what did we do? We learned that social entrepreneurship ('SE' to the cognoscenti) is the use of business principles to solve social issues. I view it as 'altruistic capitalism'.
In my group were two other people: Mr. A.N. Singh (India) and Mr. P.K. Wilbert (Sri Lanka). They both worked in the area of community water supply, something that interests me, so we chose that as our 'problem' - specifically focusing on the use of water quality test kits that could be used by Indian villagers to test their water for pathogens (via detection of chlorine residuals, an indirect approach). This is the issue that Singh is currently grappling with in his state.
After some discussion and much guidance from Moore, Blocker, and Brunson we came up with a model we thought was doable. The Indian state government already provides the kits. We thought about creating an organization or using the village committee to train a tester, who would then go around and test the villagers' water sources. Twenty percent of the samples would be duplicates and submitted to the state lab for checking. The villagers would pay $0.10 per household per month to support the tester, who would receive an income of about $300/month. We wrestled with the problem of further incentivizin g the tester. Could the tester expand his/her service area to make more money/ If so, what would prevent him/her from taking short cuts to cover the expanded area? Singh noted that the government assigns a junior engineer to each village water committee and we agreed that this person could provide oversight.
Suggestions were then made that the tester, during the rounds could carry annoucnements, advertisements, etc., to make additional money. We even included a partnership with a university to develop an improved test.
Want to see our business plan? It's below (we wrote it on the wall):
Makes a lot of sense, right? Feel free to adopt it yourselves!
By the way, Ben Fawcett's group came up with a really shitty idea. Go figure!
Seriously, though, I got a lot out of the workshop, Very worthwhile.
I actually made a suggestion the CCEW folks had not thought of: create online content (courses, webinars, etc.) and charge a fee. I was surprised when they said they had not thought of that.
En route to the airport Laurra Olmsted and I thought about how some of this material might apply to Hydrogeologists Without Borders so that we could create wealth to subsidze our charitable activities. I also want to apply some things I learned to my foundation.
Time to hit the skies and go home. Gotta read some David Bornstein!
What's that about knowing enough to be dangerous?
“I’m encouraging young people to become social business entrepreneurs and contribute to the world, rather than just making money. Making money is no fun. Contributing to and changing the world is a lot more fun.” -Muhammad Yunus
Sounds like the sort of job that could be incorporated into Bunker Roy's Barefoot College work in India. They've got the programs and people in place so if this approach has merit, it could possibly be deployed sooner, rather than later.: http://www.barefootcollege.org/
Posted by: Cathy | Thursday, 27 October 2011 at 11:31 AM