This is like discovering a treasure - that's what you get when you watch TEDTalks :).
Watch this jaw-dropping presentation by the brilliant Hans Rosling at TED and then enjoy a better understanding of how the world has been developing at www.gapminder.org.
Make sure to check out the Human Development Trends 2005 interactive presentation, and explore the world through their amazing trendalizer.
An Indian social entrepreneur funded by US philanthropists to help Kenyan famers with the assitance of a Chinese and an Egyptian. I knew nothing about non-profit work before this summer and I am also sure there is much more to learn, but at least I believe I came a step closer.
Vipani, indian for "marketplace, is still a small non-for profit startup which until recently was a one man show. It's driven by the strong vision of its founder, Thomas. His vision is to re-establish trust between different players in the small farmers world by creating a trusted marketplace.
I enjoyed the many discussion I had with Thomas about the logic of his model and his takes about many of the other approaches to helping farmers, he's quite critical of most of them! Although he's not a sophisticated business person and I have some take about some of his strategies, he's definitely a man of high intellect and is a strongly opinionated person. I think i am also learning a lot from observing the founder-funder dynamics - especially how things get harder when funders try to micro manage.
I went to the countryside several times, except for the spectacular nature in some of the valleys, the farmers and unit managers aren't very different from their Egyptian counterparts in terms of standard of living or sophistication. Julius, Samuel, and Elizabeth, the Vipani Unite managers, remind me of salesmen i used to train while implementing SalesBuzz at different CPG companies.
I have two more weeks, my main task is to make sure the new process we designed is in place and maybe have some supporting excel worksheets. So far we did some re-organizational changes and are trying to restructure the pricing model agriculture experts are using to charge farmers.
The experience also goes beyond Vipani. Vipani itself is located inside the famous Kickstart. Kickstart's management are extremely friendly which gives me a chance to get some insights about their operations from time to time. Moreover, Kenya seems to be the land of NGO's. Whenever you meet anyone you end-up listening to some story about some non-for profit.
I'm thankful to God for having this experience. I'll have to buy lunch for Jeff, my classmate, for making the introduction when we go back to school.
4 weeks working with Vipani to support farmers in Nairobi Kenya. Yes, believe it or not this is part of my summer. Wouldn't have thought of it in my wildest dreams before coming to the business school.
Vipani is a small startup which makes it even challenging. I don't know anything more right now, but i am so excited about it. It was very easy to get this. As part of the GMIX program at the GSB, they go and source different opportunities for students, and then post them to us. I only applied to this one and i got it after a week. I was also influenced by Jeff, who is one of my classmates, had been to Africa several times before working in development projects, and is providing consultancy to this company.
That was the main question behind our Macro Economics class today. The direct take away was that in the short term poor countries benefit from globalization.
This result is based on the notion of comparative advantage. If the poor country is twice as productive producing product A relative to B, but rich country is three times as productive producing product A relative to B, then the poor country should produce B and rich country should produce A. They both end up with greater output and hence are better off.
However if the growth rate of productivity of A is higher than growth rate of productivity of B then the poor country is worse off on the long term and ends up slowing the growth rate of their potential output.
So the key thing is what is the level of technology involved in the jobs of poor countries relative to rich ones. If poor countries are getting more into relatively low technology jobs the gap will increase and globalization might slow their economic growth.
Someone asked me yesterday what's was an unexpected thing i experienced so far at Stanford. After some thought, i figured out that the most unexpected thing was the growing interest in social entrepreneurship and int' development.
First, the portion of those interested is unexpectedly high considering the primary focus of a business school. I would argue that at least 50 people in class have serious interest, many of which already have relevant experience. 
Second, there many organizations out there that are combing creativity, entrepreneurship to eliminating poverty. A company like kiva.org has tapped into a previously non-accessible market of micro donors that now relate directly to the recipients of their donations across the globe. Acumen fund is trying to use relatively low philanthropic capital to invest in startups that
bring innovative solutions to problems facing people at the bottom of the pyramid in poor countries in South East Asia and East Africa.
Third, the business school itself has programs, clubs, and courses tailored to meet this growing interest. There is the Public Management Program under which there are so many socially orietened clubs. There are also courses like "Social Entrepreneurship", "Strategy for non-profits", and "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability". The latter focuses on innovative designs of affordable solutions for under developed countries.
This has had a big effect on the way i think. Before coming i thought public work is something i mate do late in my career. But now as appears from many of my previous posts, it's consuming a bigger portion of my thought.
Fact 1: More than 5.6 million children die of malnutrition each year in developing countries.
Fact 2: More than $50 billion are spent on Coke & Pepsi each year.
According to the UNICEF, The world produces enough food to feed every man, woman and child on earth. Hunger and malnutrition therefore are not due to lack of food alone, but are also the consequences of poverty, inequality and misplaced priorities.
For some reason, this doesn't make me feel good about what i am doing.
While considering an internship offer from one of the big Internet companies, i strangely find myself contemplating on a completely different endeavor; What about working on helping the poor of East Africa. What a jump?!
While thinking about getting an internship as a product or marketing manager at companies like Yahoo!, Google, and Amazon, I am find myself thinking what about going to Kenya or Tanzania and working with a company like One Acre or Acumen Fund that aim at eliminating poverty at these places.
The question that i am finding hard to answer is; where can i have the most meaningful impact on people's lives. Should i work directly on the problems of the poor by joining int' development organizations, or will I have more impact by leading hugely successful yet socially responsible for profit businesses?
Something to think about for the next few weeks.
