| A Technological Assist |
|
|
| August 2007 | |
|
Seema is only one cog in a 65,000-lender wheel known as
Kiva.org, which allows regular folks with even just $25 to spare and the desire
to help to sit a few mouse clicks away from seeing a baker in The investment, for which she’ll get the principal sum back without any interest, may make economists frown, but for Seema, the returns are more emotional than financial. It’s this faith in human compassion that drove Kiva co-founder and CEO Matt Flannery and President Premal Shah to quit their respective jobs at TiVo Inc and Paypal, an eBay company, and push forth the non-profit Web site that acts as a liaison between small-time entrepreneurs in remote parts of the globe and lenders who may never meet them, but who are assured of getting their money back, usually within a year. It’s also this faith that’s attracting the Web 2.0 generation to look beyond becoming the next YouTube gazillionaires. Many are now, instead, compelled to leverage technology to help communities in need. “This is what the Internet is about. You see sites like
Craigslist, eBay and MySpace creating a powerful online community,” says Shah
on a recent evening call. It’s 10:45 p.m. and he’s driving home after a long
work day that included a wannabe ice cream seller in
“We’ve created something meaningful that will outlive us,” he says. “How else would you explain borrowers avoiding lending rates from 18 to 80 percent and investors feeling like they made a difference without charity?” It also helps that companies like Google, YouTube and PayPal pitch in with soft donations to such ventures, such as free advertising banners that help sites get visibility and/or free online transactions. Serendipity also played its part. Even as Shah had this
concept running in his brain since an introspective trip to A similar calling prompted Netika Raval to quit her corporate career. A volunteer by heart (she’s been with the non-profit Asha for Education for 12 years), the turning point for Raval came on a six-month journey across India, where she lived on less than $2 a day. “I felt connected to real human beings. Their everyday struggles have informed what I’m now doing in the education sector,” she says. As a fellow at the Digital Vision Program at Project Director Stuart Gannes says the impetus was that while technology solutions are difficult to create, when they do come up, they are easy to replicate at little additional cost. Gannes says when the program started with the help of the Reuters Foundation, the term social entrepreneurship didn’t exist. “We used the word ‘innovation’ initially, but now it’s quite the catchphrase.” The term really caught on when the Nobel Peace Prize
committee gave the nod in 2006 to Professor Muhammad Yunus of the pioneering
Grameen Bank, which provides credit to the poor in rural Gannes says project implementation is just as important as conceptualization. In Raval’s case, she had never designed a game before. That’s where the fellowship helped. Students from a human computer interaction class volunteered to design an interface. They tackled the challenge of customizing the interface for multiple users, since the reality in India is that at least 10 to 15 students share one computer at a time. She then explored the gaming content, which includes a math question on how many hectares of water India gets annually. “So these children could learn percentages and ratios, while also learning about the country’s water supply,” Raval explains. She recently returned from India after completing two pilot projects based on feedback from the end users – the students. “I’m not sitting here in a vacuum developing something that may not be practical,” Raval insists. Their enthusiasm to learn was heartening, she says. “I asked them if we show you something on a computer would it be easier? They instantly said yes!” Raval has also developed partnerships with the Indian state of Gujarat and will push for water testing through schools, which will be conducted by the students, and with the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) on the use of its empowering fictional character, Meena, as a change agent in society. “Meena will be like a regular child faced with different situations,” Raval says. “She can make mistakes, but that’s OK.” The water data collected will be used in a for-profit business model and sold. Raval is pleased with no longer working for a pure-profit firm. “What I do now isn’t pure academics either, but at least a middle niche,” she says. Nipun Mehta was also seeking balance, not satisfied with his place in the world of “dotcom greed.” In April 1999, a casual discussion on the topic at his parents’ home prompted a bunch of them to do “something.” Not knowing where to start, they landed at a homeless shelter in San Jose, Calif. “We had no idea how to help, so we just told them we’d like to do something,” recalls the UC Berkeley graduate in computer science and philosophy. They built a Web site for the shelter and eventually the non-profit CharityFocus was formed, focusing on custom solutions for other non-profits. They have theme-based, people-driven portals, such as one on kindness, in which people share inspirational stories, get ideas and share cards on a pay-it-forward basis. One person receives a card from a loved one and most likely does the same for someone else, Mehta says. He adds that the idea of actually doing something good without expectation was so counterculture at the time that even the media, including CNN, lapped it up. “People were saying you could be making money, what’s wrong with you? But we felt giving is our return on investment,” Mehta says. The key, he feels, is to understand the needs of others by experiencing it closely. Like Raval, he and his wife, Guri, decided to test their philanthropic convictions by living, much like a third of the world, on a dollar a day. “You can do that within your comfort zone, but can you do it without, in areas where you don’t speak the language or where you don’t know where to get your next meal or shelter?” Mehta asks. In 2005, a 600-mile walking journey with Guri turned out to be a “mind-bending” experience. “When you receive generosity from people who have nothing that really changes your world view” Mehta says. The self-proclaimed philosopher believes that Web 2.0 is democratizing everything, from CDs to iTunes and movies to YouTube clips. “We’re all interconnected and interdependent, and generosity rules.” Giving a nod to the Kiva model, Mehta says it’s best to get rid of the giver and receiver functions. “We have to create many-to-many networks.” That’s what Edgardo Herbosa, the 42-year-old founder of b2bpricenow.com, and also a Digital Vision fellow, has done. The Manila resident’s award-winning e-marketplace for the agriculture and fisheries sector is endorsed by the Philippine government. “My project is abling financial services so that we can support the world’s poor. It’s like an eBay as we remove middlemen and bring cooperatives directly in touch with buyers like teacher’s canteens or army cooperatives,” he explains. There are currently $3 billion worth of products posted on b2bpricenow.com. Herbosa was selected into the program to replicate what he has done in the Philippines to other developing countries, such as China and India. “The challenge, as a social entrepreneur, is to come up with a business model that is a win-win for the government, the co-op and for the individual.” The challenge, as Brij Kothari attests, is also to attract funding for such unconventional projects. A 2004 Digital Vision fellow and an adjunct professor at India’s Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, Kothari launched a literacy project, PlanetRead, in 1996, based on the concept of same language sub-titling. Kothari put lyrics of Bollywood songs on TV as an experiment. The positive reading results among early literates or those who barely knew how to write their name in their native language cemented Kothari’s belief in the idea. Since then it has been implemented in regional language song and dance programs in Gujarat and even on the popular national song-based show “Chitrahaar”. Eventually, he would like to see the content on the Internet and on cell phones and iPods as a for-profit model as well. And while he has got some advertising support from Google, Kothari says not all potential backers initially understand his idea as there’s no precedent anywhere in the world. He hopes new research will help him avoid such barriers in the near future. Seema, meanwhile, is busy tearing down more walls as she chooses her 16th “business partner” through Kiva. She does, however, have one regret. “I kept kicking myself for not choosing her project,” she says of a woman in Africa who was seeking funding for a peanut butter manufacturing business. “I so totally love peanut butter!” she rues. And that’s all it would have taken for her to decide where to put her money. From one woman to another – for the love of peanuts. |
Seema Shah’s $1,000 portfolio leans heavily toward 
In April 2007, Kiva, which has been experiencing 7 percent
growth per month, racked up $1.7 million in loans, and with 65,000 “social
investors” and the support of 54 microfinance institutions tracking the
borrowers, Shah says their total track record now stands near $6 million raised
for more than 10,000 projects. But he’s most proud of a different figure, their
95 percent repayment rate.
