In Africa, Microbes for Off-the-Grid Electricity

Dirt = electricity.

That’s the premise behind microbial fuel cells, which harnesses the naturally occurring bugs in soil, manure and waste water to generate very small currents.  For a long time, it was thought that the amounts of energy generated were too low to be of any practical use.  But a new start-up in Cambridge MA – Lebônê Solutions, is taking microbial electricity to rural African villages with no electric grid and plenty of (read: mobile phone) battery powered electronics.

The technology is very cheap, easy to scale, and completely self-sustaining after the initial investment.  What a great application of technology to a developing country, especially given the prevalence of mobile technology in those areas!  Click here to read the MIT Technology Review article.

The role of design and social impact

Another fantastic round of speakers at our weekly seminar series – Market-based Approaches for Reducing Poverty. This time the speakers were our very own senior lecturers: Jocelyn Wyatt of IDEO’s Design for Social Impact and David Lehr of Mercy Corp’s Social Innovation team.  While Jocelyn and David have done a great job facilitating dialogue with other speakers during class, it was really interesting getting to hear about their own experiences and background.

Jocelyn, and her colleague Sally Madsen, kicked off the session with an introduction to IDEO’s design approach and how it can be applied to achieve social impact in developing countries.   Development is a topic we’ve heard about many times before, but this time Jocelyn and Sally emphasized a different perspective -a bottoms up approach, talking directly to the people being affected, and coming in with no preconceptions but an open mind and a willingness to listen.  The ideas weren’t necessarily revolutionary, but sparked the “a hah!” and “well, of course that makes sense” moments of insight several times throughout the presentation.  A couple of examples:

• Place individual behavior in the broader context (e.g. don’t ignore the role that culture plays, as illustrated by Yang Liu’s East vs. West)
• Realize that design trade-offs are necessary for different audiences (For example, both IDE and KickStart have irrigation pumps. IDE pumps are made out of bamboo and are affordably priced to the mass market. In contrast, KickStart has a more reliable, but expensive metal pump.  Both products serve the same need, but with completely different business models).
• Understand that owning a business is risky and most entrepreneurs in developing countries would prefer a more steady source of income if given a viable alternative

Social Impact Week at Haas

Don’t miss the events this week for Social Impact week at Haas.  Global Initiatives is co-sponsoring the session on Monday afternoon and Thursday afternoon keynote!  We look forward to seeing you there!

Financing challenges for social enterprises

Great article in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Starting Up: Funding Your Social Venture” that reports on the difficulty of financing non-profit social enterprises and giving a basic introduction to different funding options.  The organization it highlights, Vision Spring, is one that we’ve been discussing quite often in our Enterprising Solutions class.  Check it out.

Global Initiatives Info Session

Global Initiatives had our info session today along with Net Impact, BERC, GSVC and the Education Leadership Clubs.

We had a great turnout and we are all very excited about the possibilities for this year. A big thank you for all the graduate students from programs across Berkeley that came to join us for the info session!!

I have posted our slides from the info session below. Please check them out.

If you want to get involved in Global Initiatives, here’s some key next steps!

1. Email Megan Ryskamp or send us your email address and we’ll add you to our list

2. Write a $20 check to Global Initiatives and put it in Megan’s mailbox in the MBA student lounge (just off the Bank of America Forum)

3. Join us for our first club meeting on September 17th at 4pm.  The purpose of this meeting is two-fold.

- Get-to-know each other and meet the 2nd year leadership team.  We’ll also go into more detail about the planned fall events.

- Get-in-the-know what’s happening on campus and in the bay area with regards to international business and development.  We’ll review a list of relevant UC Berkeley and Bay Area email listserves, UC Berkeley faculty and classes, UC Berkeley centers and upcoming events.  That way you’ll be up-to-speed and dialed-in asap.

4. If you want to start to meet others wanting to discuss global issues, come to the Faculty Club for breakfast next Thursday morning (Sept. 18th) at 8am. Please email Roxanne if you’re interested in attending.

We’re looking forward to a great year!
- Megan and Roxanne

All of the slides

School Feeding in Ghana!

This summer, I worked with the Ghanaian government on their school feeding program as part of Haas’ International Business Development (IBD) course. The Ghana School Feeding Program is an amazing program that provides lunches to over 975 primary schools in Ghana to over 400,000 students. By 2010, it is projected that the program will serve 2,900 schools and approximately 1.04 million primary school children.

The program was launched in 2005 with the goal of contributing to poverty reduction and increased food security in Ghana. The three key objectives of the program are to 1) reduce hunger and malnutrition by providing all primary and kindergarten students in beneficiary schools a nutritious meal each school day 2) increase school enrollment, attendance, and retention and 3) boost domestic food production by sourcing GSFP meals locally, and providing a sustainable market for local food producers in the community. These objectives align closely with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) surrounding hunger, poverty, and primary education.

While the program has been extremely successful, there are some operational areas that need attention. Our project was threefold, and involved sizing the market created by the feeding program for food staples such as maize, cassava and rice; optimizing meals given price trends and nutritional content; and identifying points in the value chain where small farmers can capture more of the market. We worked with the Ghanaian government and a number of international development organizations including the UNDP, WFP, IFCD, Technoserve to identify trends and opportunities for local farmers to be more involved in the school feeding program.

The experience was awesome. Not only because we were able to provide a valuable analysis, but also because I was able to work closely with two other MBA students in an environment which was extremely challenging!

First day of class beating my expectations

Day 1 of the new GIH Speaker Series – “Market-Based Solutions to Poverty”…how can any MBA—especially a Haas MBA—not be interested in this class given the title? Well, if the first class was any indication, it’s not going to disappoint.

This class, which was bursting at the seams, was the brainchild of my good friend Roxanne Miller, who didn’t join us for the kickoff as she was trekking around somewhere in Africa. She’s, you know, cool like that. But we were joined by two international development gurus – David Lehr, who will be running the actual course, and guest speaker George Scharffenberger, who heads the Richard C. Blum Center at Haas and as such has purview over all things international development at the school.

Lehr, who has spent time with Acumen Fund and is now with MercyCorps, expertly and passionately set the stage for the course and shared his overarching views on development. He then turned over the reins to Scharffenberger, who stole the show with his remarkably entertaining survey of the major modes of development and schools of thought over the last half-century.

It was an atypically hot late August afternoon in Berkeley – and the overflowing room of mostly first- and second-year full-time MBAs was noticeably engrossed as George walked us through the field to which he’s dedicated his life—and thus has an incredible knowledge base in—in a single hour. As someone getting increasingly interested in international development despite having no real experience in it per se, I found it to be a fascinating (and informative) look back. George drove home the point that, while prevailing development approaches have evolved over the years (and many efforts have been largely futile), it’s incumbent on us – the next generation of change agents – to really understand the history of development and what has and hasn’t worked. There are lessons to be learned from successes and failures, and we can’t (and shouldn’t) be reinventing the wheel.

That seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I was sold.

And George was a special treat for me given the crazy connections my family has to him – which he (uneasily for me) chose to mention at the very outset of his talk. My dad worked with him for years at an NGO outside of D.C. called Volunteers in Technical Assistance, and my stepmom was in the Peace Corps with him in Senegal!

Small world. Even when your workplace is literally, well…the world!

I felt the stares of my classmates bear down on me when he mentioned this, expecting me to be some kind of expert in the subject matter, which, again, I am not, but it was no big deal. I, like all of them and like my dad, stepmom, George and David, am all about playing my part in alleviating poverty and improving people’s lives. We were all bound by that shared interest and passion, and the excitement and connection in the room was palpable.

I’m super pumped for the rest of the class. The speakers and readings lined up seem well-thought-out and credible, and I can’t wait to dive deep into this newfound interest of mine. The class certainly got off to the best start imaginable – the stuffy room and lack of seats notwithstanding.

-Omar Garriott, 2nd Year Full-Time MBA

See the World – Visit London

After finishing up an exciting International Business Development assignment in El Salvador, and heading home for a few days to do laundry, I boarded a plane once again and headed off to London for my summer internship. As someone who has always done work centered around emerging markets with no prior experience in Europe, I didn’t know quite what to expect when joining the general leadership/corporate strategy summer program at British Telecommunications (BT). As it turns out, my work was far more international than I could have expected. In fact, during the first few weeks, I had a difficult time keeping my colleagues’ countries straight: the Russian going to school at INSEAD in Singapore, the HBS Israeli paired on a project with the American at IESE in Spain, the Indian at Chicago GSB or the Spaniard at Stanford. Not only were the 21 summer interns incredibly diverse, but the full-time team was as well.

This made for an incredibly interesting work environment as this team of diverse MBAs tackled many of the problems that BT faces from its legacy as a company (and previously a government institution) that has been around for over one hundred years. Although the work was intense, I didn’t miss the opportunity to hang out with this global group in a less formal setting. In fact, my favorite Friday tradition in London became traveling with my coworkers to the far extremes of the city (Whitechapel, Eastham, Westham, Southall) to sample some of the finest Indian food I have ever had.

London itself is an incredible city that is both an exciting place to live, and an international travel hub. The cuisine, the museum art, the cultural shows, and the diversity of its people have all contributed to London’s identity as a truly global city. How appropriate that on one of my last tube journeys I should see the following advertisement that so aptly describes my summer: “see the world – visit london”