Reviews and discussions of books and their lessons for working in the BoP

“All learning integrates thinking and doing. All learning is about how we interact in the world and the types of capacities that develop from our interactions.” - Presence, Peter Senge et al

One of the benefits of working in the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) has been the opportunity to take deep dives into experiences that were once totally foreign to me. Another benefit has been the long travel times between and across continents; plane flights, bus rides, and boat trips where I can immerse myself in books and articles covering a wide range of topics. [It’s a sad fact that in these information-at-the-speed-of-thought days I actually have to be unplugged and forced to sit down before I pick up a good book!] Over the past several years both those benefits have twirled around my head – like a pair of ballroom dancers continuously exchanging leading and following roles. I’ve never had a learning experience like my work in the BoP: this combination of thinking & doing and the knowledge that both have created.

This new section here at BRINQ is to discuss that thinking/doing interaction: interesting books and what implications and lessons they offer for someone working on-the-ground at this particular intersection of business, poverty, and innovation. Most of the time the discussion will be about books read recently, but sometimes it will be about books read long ago that new experiences in the BoP brought back to light. On the surface, not all of the books that will be discussed offer obvious connections to the BoP - and some of the books are old to the world but new to me - but these books and articles have demonstrated their relevance during several years of work with companies and communities in the BoP.

And please, if you have your own knowledge of the books discussed here, or if you have your own experiences working in the BoP, please join the discussion. The goal of this section is to generate dialogue about thinking and doing in the BoP, which would ultimately lead to new learning and action!

Book Reviews to date:

• Preserving the local soil - Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice - Mark J Plotkin - May, 2007

Old BRINQ reviews:

• Why Not? A guide for ingenuity - Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres - March 2005
• Capitalism at the Crossroads - Stuart L. Hart - March 2005
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid - CK Prahalad - February, 2005
• Poor People’s Knowledge - editors J. Michael Finger, Philip Schuler - February, 2005

“Every time a shaman dies, it is as if a library burned down.” - Mark J. Plotkin, PhD

The old caboclo woman stopped abruptly in her explanation of the plant in her hand and stared to the back of our group, at the tall, sun-browned, shirtless man who had just stepped into her garden.  “Ele é índio?” the old midwife asked excitedly, “ele entende muito de plantas, ervas, remédios?!” The newcomer had been just about to snap a photo of the scene but the force of old woman’s reaction startled him into almost dropping his camera. He turned to my girlfriend Amber and I with a confused look, “What did she just say?” 

I chuckled out loud and translated for him while Amber explained to the old woman that no, our friend Kenny was neither a “native” nor from the jungle, that he was originally from Hong Kong and - as an energy trader on Wall Street – Kenny’s particular knowledge of stocks and plants probably wasn’t quite what the old woman was hoping for. The midwife’s mistake was easy enough to understand though: a dark brown, muscular man with long raven-black hair, Kenny looked like a piece of history stepping out of the jungle. In fact, most of the people we had met during our weeklong tour of riverside communities had made the same mistake about Kenny’s heritage.  What surprised me instead about the old midwife’s reaction was that even though practically a medicine woman herself - born and raised in the Amazon - she still seemed desperate to pump an outsider for his knowledge of local plants and medicines.

The entrance to Cachoeira do Aruã [click to enlarge]

That incident took place in Cachoeira do Aruã, a small community by the Arapiuns river, west of Santarem, Brazil. Like most of the river communities in the Brazilian Amazon, Cachoeira’s population consists primarily of caboclo: the Brazilian term for a person of mixed indigenous and European descent.  I later learned that that no truly indigenous cultures are believed to still exist in the Brazilian Amazon. I also learned that as the indigenous populations had slowly disappeared or mixed with European settlers, much of the local knowledge had also disappeared, in particular the cultures’ understanding of local plants and medicines.  Outsiders brought in new knowledge and medicines and the local solutions faded back into the jungle: the knowledge to apply those solutions lost with the culture that had once developed them. All of that explains why the midwife had been so excited to see Kenny: he looked like a link to a culture and knowledge that had been lost.

A week after returning from the Amazon, I picked up a copy of ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin’s Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, a book published in 1993 that chronicled Plotkin’s fifteen-year effort to discover and record local medicines in the Amazon. After my own short trip visiting communities there, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice captivated me: the book is a beautifully written account of an outsider’s respectful quest to record an ancient and important local knowledge and culture. To have seen face-to-face what Plotkin had feared - the loss of local and diverse solutions in communities that needed them - gave me a lot to think about in terms of our own business forays into communities and cultures in the Base of the Pyramid. In particular, Plotkin’s story highlights a number of important lessons for people working with communities in the BoP.

Lesson 1: Practice humility

Dr. Richard E. Schultes, Plotkin’s old advisor, gave the following description about his former student:

Because he went there to learn from the Indians, [Mark] was able to collect plants, participate in ceremonies and rituals, and share other experiences as few outsiders have been able to do.  One of Mark’s outstanding qualities as field ethnobotanist is his conviction that among the Indians, he is the student and they are teacher.

Cornell’s Erik Simanis, learning Swahili in the Kibera [click to enlarge]

I find one of the hardest hats to remove while working with communities in the BoP is the hat of an expert. Entering a BoP community can be unsettling and it’s easy to cling to the image of being an expert or a teacher in order to feel more secure. On the flip side, BoP communities are used to outsiders coming in to tell them what to do, and many have learned to give the “best answers” to gain whatever reward outsiders might be offering (grants, loans, jobs, services, etc.). This upper-to-lower dynamic makes it extremely difficult to learn what actually goes on in a community, much less build a new business together.  To overcome this requires us to level the playing field and to engineer humility into our engagements, so that communities can understand that outsiders have strengths and weaknesses just like they do.  And as Plotkin demonstrates, one of the best ways to demonstrate humility is to actually go live with a community. There’s nothing like demonstrating how bad you are at a common local task to show people that you’re human.

As part of the Base of the Pyramid Protocol (BoP), my colleagues and I do homestays with families in the communities that we work with; the resulting trust, respect, and knowledge that blossoms from those homestays is nothing short of incredible.  Given that experience, it has always amazed me how rarely well-meaning outsiders conduct homestays, this despite the huge number of NGOs that already operate in those communities. Instead the message that many NGOs and businesses convey to communities seems to be this, “We’re here to transform you, not be transformed ourselves.” 

Lesson 2: Make it relevant

Teaching about plants in the Shamans and Apprentices program. ©ACT

On the other hand, even while practicing humility it’s important to demonstrate to the community that what you’re doing is relevant to them, that you have knowledge and strengths that can help them (just like they have knowledge and strengths to help you).   To gain the local chiefs’ approval to study with the communities’ shamans, Plotkin had to convince the chiefs that 1) he knew what he was doing, 2) he wasn’t there to exploit them (or to fool around with their women) and 3) his work would create value for the community.  As a result of Plotkin’s work, the Tirio communities of Suriname now have a handbook of their own medicinal plants in the Tirio language (the only other book in Tirio being the Bible).  Plotkin also set up the Shamans and Apprentices program, a program to support and encourage young people to study under the old shamans and carry on their traditions.  Both these acts helped preserve the shamanistic knowledge of the community, which created tremendous value for the community and for Plotkin’s own work as an ethnobotanist. Often it takes time to figure how to best make your work relevant to community, but if you base your work on on what they have and what you have, on what they need and what you need, then you’re much more likely to be relevant. Your chances of success are also much higher if you don’t lock onto a solution before actually spending significant time in a community.

Lesson 3: Open up

Taking part in the local life of a community is a great way to build trust and relationships; it’s also a great way to see things you never would have otherwise.  During his stays in Amazon communities, Plotkin set aside the idea of being a dispassionate observer and tried to participate in local activities and events as much as he could.  Sometimes this meant trying his hand at fishing (using local plant chemicals, bows, and arrows), sometimes this meant snorting the local intoxicant, sometimes this meant partaking in local healing rituals, and often this meant being the brunt of many jokes.  The relationships and knowledge Plotkin gained as a result of his open participation formed the foundation for many of his discoveries of new plants and medicines.  How much you participate as an outsider depends on how much you’re willing to do, but I know from my own experiences that the more that I participate with and open up to a particular community, the more the community opens itself up to me.

Lesson 4: Preserve the local soil

In the Amazon, thousands of years of accumulated knowledge of local medicines and plants has been lost. The opportunity to use that knowledge to create sustainable economies to conserve and grow the Amazon has disappeared - possibly forever - largely because the glitz of the Western alternative seemed so much brighter than the local solution. Plotkin documents this trend in the communities he visited: as Western missionaries and NGOs came in to teach local communities “better” ways to live, but ultimately made the communities dependent on a system that they had little leverage or strength in. Having traded in a deep expertise in their local knowledge to become novices in Western ones, is it any wonder that some communities feel like they can never catch up?

Plotkin reminds us that to preserve local traditions and solutions (and the Amazon itself), efforts have to be made to both conserve old methods and to make those methods relevant to the modern world. At the end of Tales, Plotkin describes a number of his activities to preserve and promote the local knowledge of shamans in the Amazon.  Although the initial business attempt that came out of Plotkin’s work has since foundered (Shaman Pharmaceuticals, which gave up on commercializing drugs based on Amazon plants due to the difficulty of meeting US FDA demands), his work continues via the Amazon Conservation Team, an organization focused on conservation through partnerships with communities in the Amazon. For companies looking to do business in BoP communities, Plotkin’s experience reminds us to be thoughtful before rushing to replace local solutions with outside ones.  After all, silver bullets rarely work like we expect them to and often kill off the sheep in lieu of the wolf. In contrast, a local solution might form the basis of a future innovation or competitive advantage, but that can only happen if local solutions are encouraged not just to survive, but to blossom and to grow.

Summary: a great read for the Amazon and the BoP

In addition to all the above, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice is just a good read, with beautiful descriptions and historical anecdotes of the Amazon.  Plotkin is quick to point out when he made mistakes with communities, but you also see how quickly he tries to learn and make up for them.  And although the book is now over ten year’s old, his coverage of the history and challenges of the region makes Tales a required reading for anyone looking to work with BoP communities in the Amazon.  And for anyone who’d like to experience living in BoP communities through another person’s eyes - to feel all the tribulations, traumas, and triumphs such work entails – Mark Plotkin’s “Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice” is highly recommended.

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Additional Resources

• Mark J Plotkin, Phd - English Wikipedia entry
• Amazon Conservation Team - working in partnership with indigenous people in conserving biodiversity, health, and culture in tropical America.
• USAID - Hydropower Energizes Remote Village - Cachoeira do Aruã (literally, Waterfall of the Aruã) was the recipient of a USAID energy pilot project. I got to take a tour of their 50-KW energy facilities while I was there.
• Projeto Bagagem - (in Portuguese) - a community- and cultural-exchange-focused tourism project in Brazil, with whom I visited Cachoeira do Aruã and other communities along the Tapajós and Arapiuns rivers.
• Saude e Alegria - (in Portuguese) - a communtity health and happiness NGO based in Santarem, Brazil, also with whom I visited communities in the Amazon.

This article is part of the BRINQ BoP Books Discussions series. Follow the link to read about the series and find other books.

About a year ago Ted London, Director of the Base of the Pyramid research initiative at the William Davidson Institute (WDI), kindly asked me to come out to the University of Michigan Business School to do a guest lecture in his MBA class Business Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid. Ted was previously a professor and Director of the BoP Learning Lab at UNC while I was a student there and we had worked together on project to explore innovative business models for renewable energy technologies in the BoP. During my visit to Michigan - which also included a guest lecture for Mike Gordon’s Social Enterprise: Innovation in the Information Society course - Ted also interviewed me about my experiences working in the BoP and with the BoP Protocol in Kenya.

The interview was part of WDI’s Global Impact Speaker series, which includes interviews with Stuart Hart of Cornell University, Jesse Moore of CARE, Dr. Jordan Kassalow of the Scojo Foundation, Somshankar Das of e4e, and a number of others. I came across the video for the interview recently and you can see the video via the link below.

I also had lunch with a number of students to discuss career options in the BoP and was thrilled to meet up with one of the students several months later in India, where she was working on a BoP initiative of her own!

WDI Links:

• Donohue Delivers BoP Career Advice (Article)
• Ted London (Director of Base of the Pyramid at WDI) talks to Patrick Donohue of BRINQ (Video)
  (Windows Media format)
  

The interview is a little under an hour.

-Patrick

Everyone knows what it’s like… you’ve got stack of postcards, a head full of great experiences and even with all your best intentions, you just get too caught up in what you’re doing to write it all down and pop them in the mail. Well writing posts can be the same way, so here’s a belated summary of the last six months in India and Brazil. India and the BoP Protocol In April, my colleague Erik Simanis (of Cornell) and I headed out to India to guide the Solae Company in its implementation of the Base of the Pyramid Protocol. The initiative is being run by Enterprise for a Sustainable World (for whom I’m a senior consultant) and Cornell University’s SGE (with Stu Hart, Duncan Duke, et al.) The project is in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India and we are conducting implementations of the Protocol in two different sites, the Indiramma Nagar slums of Hyderabad and in villages in the Parvathagiri mandal of Warangal District. The initial phase of the implementation involved a seven member team and was conducted over a 16 week period from April 16 to July 30, 2006, which included an 11 week in-field immersion period and a 5 week data gathering and business concept development period. This is the second implementation of the BoP Protocol, the first being the 2005 pilot with SC Johnson in Kenya (also involving me, Erik, and others from Cornell). Highlights of the India immersion include: weeks of 45+ degree C weather followed by weeks of monsoon rains; working with close to 100 different community members (90% women) across the two sites; a week-long homestay with a generous Muslim family (of 8) in their one room house in the Indiramma Nagar slum cluster; weeks living in Parvathagiri village and dining on spicy local cuisine (lots of burning ears and teary eyes); eating a lifetime’s worth of rice and then a lifetime’s more; learning to eat rice, dal, curry, and all sorts of sloppy tasty things with my right hand; playing homemade games with the kids (which I always lost) and cruising around (by rickshaw, car, or foot) with the local youths; teaching English idioms to a generous and self-taught Muslim youth and friend; running 15 Participatory Rural Appraisal sessions, 17 entrepreneurship and business development workshops, and dozens of meetings and interviews with community groups; mangling both Hindi and Telegu - Urdu too; attending both Hindu and Muslim weddings; discovering ancient temples, trees that ooze the local brew (toddy), and the simple yet engrossing joy of lightbulbs, insect hatches, and hungry geckos; being irate at controlling husbands, furious with self-appointed elites, frustrated by saviour-type mentalities, and humbled by too-wise children; “mexican” mariachi bands singing Simon & Garfunkel, Donald Duck ventriloquists at the Buddha, karaoke dancing, and daytime coffee shops that are more like night clubs… recognizing what a local weirdo I am for not getting any of it; being simultaneously overwhelmed and awed by the sheer press of India’s culture and populace, catching a glimpse of the weight of a world full with people. These projects are intense, no two ways about it, but they’re transformational too. My thanks to Padma, Ravi, Shweta, Sonika, Paul, Srini, Murali, Nanda, Padmaja, Indira, Klavathi, Muneer and so many more who made the project a success and at times a true joy. And of course to Erik, who’s not only the brains behind the Protocol, but its driving energy as well… the man doesn’t need sleep. Finally, I will always remember the final night in the home of Sheik Baba and Sultana, when I had just presented my host family with a few packs of crayons and coloring books. An early monsoon rain had come and the alleys in the slum were flooded, water was leaking through the corrugated steel roof, yet everyone in the family was coloring - father, mother, grandmother, sons, daughters and nieces - everyone was intent, everyone was smiling. It was beautiful. The Protocol work with Solae in India is continuing, with several business concepts having come out of the immersion. Erik has already returned once to India and I’ll be going back in December, while a team on the ground is being assembled to pilot the businesses. Brazil e BRINQ I’ve been back in Rio de Janeiro since August and although I continue to assist the Protocol projects in India, my focus is turning once more back to Brazil. I have been working as a Development Advisor for Catalytic Communities (of whom much has been written on this site) while also pitching proposals for the BoP Protocol to companies here in Brazil. BRINQ as a business concept, to assist and support local innovators of toys and play, is still being thought through, but little practically is being done as I focus on other opportunies. However BRINQ as a place to share stories and promote local stories is still very much alive. Look for more of that to come from the BRINQ Workshop once again - there is a backlog of stories from India and elsewhere. In late January I’ll be going on a trip to the Amazon with Projeto Bagagem visiting communities along the river over a week-long tour. Since I first started in this line of work, I’ve always dreamed of visiting the Amazon and getting to know more of the communities in the interior of Brazil. Realizing a dream is a beautiful thing. I’m so lucky to get to do what I do. -Patrick A few links: Project Brief on the Solae BoP Protocol implementation India photosets on Flickr BoP Protocol in India Set 1 BoP Protocol in India Set 2 BoP Protocol in India Set 3 BoP Protocol in India Set 4

I’ve often said that one of the greatest joys of my work is the exceptional people that I get to meet and to develop friendships with. Whether or not it’s Salim Mohamed and Sammy Gitau in Kenya, Murali Ramisetti in India, or Theresa Williamson in Brazil, I have been blessed to know so many people who are busy painting their visions of a better world into reality. So I’ve often wondered, “What it would be like to just go on a pilgramige to find and learn from such people?”

Well Exceptional Lives, the blog of Dublin, Ireland’s Clare Mulvany, is chronicling such a journey.

Clare describes her trip:

I am currently embarking on a ten month journey around the globe to interview ‘people who change our world’ about their life stories. I’ll be meeting ’social entrepreneurs’ working in a range of fields from education to business, dedicating their lives to making the world a better place for us all to live in. Nairobi is the first port of call, and from there I’ll travel overland to Capetown. It is then on to India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa and the USA.

Clare’s journey has taken her to many of the places where I’ve lived and worked on BoP projects, and she beautifully describes her encounters with social entrepreneurs through both written word and photography. Clare just finished the latest leg of her trip - 7 weeks traveling through India - and she summarizes the experience in her latest post:

Seven weeks in India. Seven weeks of what?

Of colour, lots of it. Colour as iridescent saris blaze around every street corner. Then the glossy black and yellow of taxis and the glaring orange of festival flowers. The piquant green of tea plantations. The lush green of coconut plantations. The lazy green of cardamom trees. The black of a girl’s oiled hair, the black of men’s moustaches, the pupils of eyes (you staring at them, them staring at you). The chorus of colour as Diwali swings into fare; fireworks painting the sky like a circus. The pink of pickle. The night blue of night trains. The bright light of bright days.

Seven weeks of bright, busy days.

There’s a lot of great material on Exceptional Lives, so much more than I’ve had the time to go through, but Clare’s stories and pictures are certainly worth immersing yourself in. After all, every exceptional life we touch makes our own more exceptional. As for me personally, it’s always inspiring to see someone put into words what you yourself have experienced but have been unable to express.

I’ve laughed. I’ve cried. I’ve been exhausted. I’ve been exhilarated. I’ve been learning. I’ve been trying to make sense of it all.

Travel does this to you. It enriches as it shakes. Perceptions start to shift and alter. You start to shift and alter. You take a step and the world unfolds with colour and learning. You take a step and the world takes the next ten.

The world? Well, it’s the people you meet along the way who point you in the right direction. Or a book you read which clarifies a point. Or a film you see which sparks a train of new thought. Or that kid you play football with. Or that mother you make eye contact with. Or that beggar you pass on the street.

Seven weeks. I know. I can hardly believe how much can be packed in. A lot has happened, and there is still a lot more to come.

I am thankful. I am lucky. I am learning.

I’ll share a couple of quick anecdotes that Clare’s stories bring to mind. The first is simply something a young man in Kibera (Nairobi’s largest slum) once said while we were living there, "To me you are like birds, you can land and then fly away when you want. But we are stuck in the mud." The second is from a homestay I did in the Indiramma Nagar slums of Hyderabad, India. I distinctly recall the moment when I - a supposed veteran of homestays in villages and slums - finally opened myself up to the poor Muslim family that had been hosting me… it was like the sun had risen, how much more I could see when I finally let them see me!

Clare Mulvany’s journey therefore reminds me that our ability to pass through so many lives is an incredible freedom that comes with great responsibility, not only a responsibility to pay respect and to bear witness, but a responsibility to touch and be touched. She seems to be doing that quite well.

I am thankful. I am lucky. I am learning.

Words worth repeating. Here’s to all of us touching more exceptional lives.

-Patrick

Links:

• Exceptional Lives
• Clare Mulvany’s photo stream on Flickr.com

Much thanks to Jean Russel for introducing me to Clare’s journey.

By Patrick Donohue, August 2005 “In Nairobi, stay away from the shanty towns, especially at night.” The door closes, Kibera opens, and East Africa’s largest shantytown swallows us into the night. It’s dark near Edwin’s place, a sight sapping blackness that is darker with the knowledge of the trenches and trips that lie ahead, a misstep can send you rolling down make shift steps to soak in the flowing runoff, Kibera’s sewage system. Edwin can see well enough in the dark and navigates the pitfalls without hesitation; I make a joke about mzungu eyes and then switch on my torch. I notice as we walk that the only other people using torches are the mzee, the old men or women. We walk through small alleys and walkways, passing row after row of mud houses with radios blaring, stray light seeping through cracks around the doors and below the roofs. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m walking across somebody’s front porch but I soon realize that’s exactly what we’re doing. The passing people are dark African shadows; it’s a surreal experience and I fancifully imagine that I can slip by without notice, achieving that anonymity I find impossible during the day. A mzungu in the dark, does he finally become a mtu, a person? To the young children I’m just a another mzungu, a white person, but the kids old enough to have seen kung-fu movies will shout out “Chinese”, “Jackie Chan”, or that distinctive “hi-ya” cry, matched with chopping hands and a comically fierce look. Onush, my colleague Erik’s host, later tells me that the children are probably afraid of me, fearing that I’ll open up some karate on them if they’re not careful. My fleeting hopes that my sun-browning skin will help me escape notice are dashed when I learn that some older Kenyans think I might be Indian, the much maligned minority of Kenya, disliked because they’re said to run all the businesses and pay Kenyans little. It’s too hard to stop and explain that I represent the Vietnamese-Irish people, a difficult mixture to appreciate in a land where your tribe is supposed to explain so much about you. For all that I wear my winter hat - not so much for the cool night, which for the bundled-up Kenyans is a biting cold - no, I wear my winter hat to hide my hair, too long to ever be mistaken as Kenyan. I think it might be working, the children aren’t shouting their mzungu bird call, their sing-song “how are you?”, and there are no sudden looks; but perhaps the night just offers a different pace and people keep their notice to themselves. Edwin jokes that people are probably too surprised to say anything. What would a mzungu be doing in Kibera after dark?

* * *

[Download the full “Kibera Nights” (PDF) here]

The above is the beginning of a story I wrote almost a year ago, about the time I spent living and working in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi Kenya that is considered by some to be one of the world’s most dangerous slums. I was there as part of the BoP Protocol pilot test in Kenya. Kibera is the slum that Fernando Meirelles’ film the The Constant Gardner is set in and also was featured in Sarah McLachlan’s video World on Fire. Enjoy! - Patrick

This weekend I’m heading out to join another Base of the Pyramid Protocol project, the second ever actually, this time working with the Solae Company in India. You may recall that the first implementation of the BoP Protocol was last year with SC Johnson in Kenya, of which you can see many past articles here on BRINQ.com. The Solae Protocol project is via a partnership between Solae, Cornell University, and Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW). ESW has hired me to join up with Protocol co-director Erik Simanis and BoP consultant Tatiana Thieme (both who I worked with on the Kenya Protocol pilot) to facilitate Solae’s implementation in low income communities in Mumbai and Hyderabad. This will be my first trip to India, and besides being personally excited for the experience, I believe the project will be a great boon for the continuing development of the Protocol. Not only are the target region and sponsoring company quite different than the last time around, but the structure of the project itself is an evolution of what we did in Kenya… most significant is the inclusion of local professionals and students on the core Protocol team. I’ll be reporting from the field every chance I get, both here and on other upcoming sites I’ll be listing links to. And of course, I’ll always be on the look out for cool innovations and toys too! Additional links:

• BoP-Protocol.org - the re-launched home for the Base of the Pyramid Protocol and the group that created it.
• e4sw.org - the home of Enterprise for a Sustainable World.
• The Solae Company - Solae is a soy and nutrition company (now majority-owned by DuPont)
• How we’re involved - how BRINQ.com is (and is not) involved in the BoP Protocol
• Little Toys - don’t forget our tribute to Arvind Gupta in India, the magic man who teaches kids to turn trash into toys!

Things have been pretty quiet around the BRINQ Workshop, only a few posts in the last six months, so what have we been up to? Well, besides trying to get things started in Brazil again, I’ve been doing a lot of work for other folks, most particularly Enterprise for a Sustainable World (ESW), a new organization started up by Cornell University professor and Sustainability guru Stuart Hart, whose book “Capitalism at the Crossroads” we covered here before. Stuart Hart was an old professor of mine at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School (before he headed north to Ithaca) and along with CK Prahalad is one the founders of business strategy in the Base of the Pyramid. Stu’s approach to the BoP is one of deep listening and participation; he advocates that by looking beyond poor communities as just places to “sell more stuff” companies will gain access to greater benefits: disruptive innovation, strong market relationships, better reputations, and yes, market growth. Stu is also one of the people who invited me to particpate in the Base of the Pyramid Protocol pilot in Kenya… and of course to hire me to work at ESW and to join the new Protocol team in India. I’ve also been working with Stu & co. designing the web sites for ESW and the BoP Protocol, in addition to a Drupal-based project management site to support Protocol teams in the field. You can also browse a web-version of the BoP Protocol, previously only available as a PDF. Check them out!

BoP-Protocol.org	e4sw.org

[For the technically inclined, BRINQ.com has also switched hosting providers (twice) and the Workshop has been upgraded to Wordpress 2.0!]

To the casual observer, it may seem like we haven’t doing much with toys lately here at BRINQ! However, though we HAVE been pretty busy, we’ve had our eyes at everywhere for new toys and innovations at all things play. Everywhere being Brazil, Kenya, the U.S., and of course the Internet.

Here are a few of the toys we’ve come across in the Base of the Pyramid.

	Toys Cars Kids love cars, and they love to play with model cars the world over. Most of the cars we saw were made with scavenged metal wire for the frame, rubber bands for the joints, and cut up sandals for the wheels. A long metal rod with a steering wheel on the end (attached to an axel on the front wheels) allows kids to race their cars around the streets, including lots of popular makes and models: Corvettes, Land Rovers, Jeep, VW Bugs and more. See also the Gallery at Stome.net, Jungle Photos, StreetPlay.com for more.
	Animated wireframe figures We came across wireframe push toys on our first trip out to the Rift Valley in Kenya, then later encountered them throughout Kibera and the other slums of Nairobi. Similar to the wireframe care except with moving parts, rotating wheels on the bottom cause the figure on top to move, a bird to flap its wings, and man to ride its horse. Often the wire would be wrapped in bright thread to give the figure a costume. Check out a number of these toys at ToyResearch on Blogspot.
	BottleCap Toys We ecountered lots of bottlecaps during our time in Kenya, especially the days we spent sorting trash with the Kibera Youth Self Help Group. We also came across a few bottlecap toys, some fishing line or wire and you can make snakes, action figures, and more. Check out FolkArtPlus and WorldPlay.org for more examples.
	Soccer/Football Soccer is one of the most loved sports in the Base of the Pyramid. Every kid dreams of being the next Pele or David Beckham, drafted to play for their favorite English Premier League team like Manchester United or Arsenal. Soccer balls are expensive though, so most kids have come up with an ingenious solution using a commonly donated item… condoms! Wrap a blown up condom in a plastic bag and lots of string, and you’re on your way to the Premiere league! Check out the film “The Ball” at DayZero.co.za
	Anything with a wheel An old bicycle inner tube, a barrel wheel, or even a wheel off a car… if it’s round and rollable kids will play with it! Often we’d see kids in Kenya running behind a rolling tire, pushing it along with a tap of a stick while being chased by other kids. An easy to make toy and mobile too.

We love a good idea when we see it, especially when it’s just like one of our own! Check out World Play, a non-profit founded to share the diversity of toys and play among communities throughout the world. Sound familiar?

See more at www.WorldPlay.org

WorldPlay is a nonprofit corporation supported by a coalition of organizations whose main goal is to celebrate the creativity of children through the toys they invent. It is our aim to promote a better understanding among children of the diverse cultures throughout the world, using creativity and play. WorldPlay presents an outstanding collection of toys created and designed by children throughout the world. Through various media, a book, a video, a newsletter, traveling exhibits, and through this site, we wish to expose others to the creativity of children around the globe through their hand made toys. By spreading the knowledge of these various toys, our goal is to promote an understanding of different cultures from around the world through the toys that children make and play. No matter the economic status, education, or physical abilities, a child’s creativity is universal. We fervently hope that through play, children will gain respect for each other.

Don’t forget to check out World Play’s library of toy designs, complete with directions on how you can make them yourselves!

Another story about one of the BoP Protocol Pilot’s most important partners: Carolina for Kibera (CFK) last week was honored as one of Time Magazine’s “Heroes of Global Health” and Acting President Kim Chapman was featured at the Global Health Conference in New York. CFK is an incredible community-based organization in Kibera: one of the world’s largest slums on the outskirts of Nairobi Kenya. The organization’s programs target issues of ethnic violence, health care, safe spaces for girls, and environmental sanitation and income generation. All their work follows a common theme of participatory development and the organization’s operations in Kenya are run by Kiberans. CFK and its staff were critical to the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot in Kenya and the resulting pilot venture between SC Johnson and the local community groups continues to be advised by CFK staff. Congratulations to everyone at CFK and keep up the great work! Carolina for Kibera Resources:

• Carolina for Kibera - web site at the University of North Carolina
• Interview with Kim Chapman - the News & Observer
• Heroes of the 2005 Global Health Summit - including Kim Chapman and Carolina for Kibera
• BRINQ Photos from Kenya & Kibera - including many photos of Carolina for Kibera staff, activities, and partners
• Base of the Samosa - an article on BRINQ.com and the World Resources NextBillion.net about the BoP and CFK

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.

The lead designer for XAccess in Kisumu was none other than Ed Lucero, legendary kayaker and the world record holder for the longest vertical drop in a kayak (a jaw- and stomach-dropping 106 ft over Canada’s Alexandra Falls). Ed also happens to be an incredibly talented product designer and he described to us how the XAccess kit attaches to existing bicycles, creating a larger, more rugged space for heavier cargo of all sorts while still fitting into Kenya’s existing bicycle landscape and servicescape. Ed is designing a kit which Kenya’s bicycle fundi (craftsmen and repairmen) can use to attach the XAccess frame to local bicycles. The XAccess frame is made from locally available parts and can be modified for various types of bikes.

To cap off our visit, Ed and a colleague took us on a ride around Lake Victoria, where we became the envy of all the local bicycle taxi and cargo operators. “You want to be popular?” Ed said, “just ride one of these bikes around Kisumu and you’re sure to meet lots of new friends.” Common questions we were asked on our ride were “How soon can I get one?” Soon, the program is currently in a test market phase to produce and sell 50-100 bike kits. “How much will it cost?” Not sure, perhaps 3000-4000 Ksh ($40 - $50 US). “How many people can it carry?” Three on a downhill or a straightaway, and uphill depends on the size of your calves, though three people would be tough and heavy cargo like us wazungu, Westerners, could be even tougher.

After days of riding from site to site in the KickStart van, the leisurely pace of a bicycle was a delightful reminder of how much you miss when you just motor through. And fittingly enough when our van’s tires blew out the next day on the potholed roads out of Kisumu, how did we get to the local repairman?

On the back of a bicycle of course!

Click here for more on the XAccess project in Kenya.

Also see: Bambucicletas and Other Cycles of Innovation for past BRINQ coverage.