Workshop archives for October, 2005

Articles about business, poverty, and innovation in the the Base of the Pyramid (BOP), the 4+ billion people living in the base of the world's economic pyramid. Suggest an article or story.

Finding the Hard Answers - Catalytic Communities Launches Upgraded Site

Posted Fri, 10/21/2005 - 22:17 by Patrick@BRINQ

Catalytic Communities (CatComm), our community partner in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, announced the launch of its new community empowering site www.CatComm.org. CatComm is a huge inspiration for us here at BRINQ, their insights in cultivating and capturing local innovations have been critical to us in our early years and their active work with communities generating solutions has taught us that stronger relationships lead to more viable innovations. In a world of people content with "asking the hard questions", Catalytic Communities is a refreshing example of an organization actually looking for the hard answers.

A Bigga Boda - XAccess' Cycle in Kenya

Posted Tue, 10/04/2005 - 21:54 by Patrick@BRINQ

After five months of intense work in communities in Kenya and Brazil we've got a long backlog of stories to share. Now that we've got a short breather we thought we'd post a few. This one from Kenya came up recently when we were asked via our colleague & mentor Stuart Hart, "Have you heard of these XAccess guys?"

Actually, yes we have!

In June the BoP Protocol team headed out to the shores of Lake Victoria in Kisumu, Kenya to visit with the XAccess and KickStart folks who were modifying an innovative bicycle for the local market. XAccess is the non-profit sister of XtraCycle, maker of the world's first Sport Utility Bicycle, and KickStart, the NGO formerly known as ApproTEC, is a long time provider of enterprise enabling technologies to low-income communities. KickStart is helping XAccess to commercialize its bicycle in Kenya as the "Bigga Boda", an upgrade to the existing "Boda Boda" bicycle taxis, so named from their early days on the border of Kenya and Uganda where the taxi riders cries of "Border! Border!" eventually morphed into the "Boda Boda" of today.

BRINQ Update - New Additions and the BoP Protocol Workshop

Posted Mon, 10/03/2005 - 03:43 by Patrick@BRINQ

We've added a few new sections and pages here at BRINQ.