Image from Projeto BIRA

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a strong desire to travel all over Brazil, to get to know its diverse realities firsthand. When I’d travel with my parents, my eyes fixated on the landscape passing by, and I’d imagine myself visiting each little house on the side of the highway. I’d invent names and destinies for those kids with barefoot bodies whose eyes gazed into the wind, and for those old folks with crooked canes who spent hours on crooked benches in the shade of jacaranda trees . . . The childhoods and games in each place I passed were what always attracted me the most.”
- Renata Meirelles, How it all Began, Projeto BIRA (Brincadeiras Infantis da Região Amazônica or Children’s Games in the Amazon Region)

A few years ago - when I was getting started with BRINQ - I was thrilled to come across the work of Renata Meirelles and David Reeks, a Brazilian American couple that was working hard to document and share the toys and games of the Brazilian Amazon. Their stories of what they discovered and shared were truly inspirational and I had hoped to meet up with them on one of their trips back to the U.S. Unfortunately the timing didn’t work out and I have since moved on to other projects, leaving my task of building a global toy chest sadly neglected. However a recent discussion on the Omidyar Network about recycled crafts and toys sent me looking for David and Renata’s work once again and I was delighted to see what they’ve been doing in all this time.

BRINQ - A juggling workshop in Urucureá, Amazônia

Just how have they been keeping busy? Two short films, a number of film festival appearances and awards, dozens of presentations about Amazonian toys and play to school children in both the Brazil and the U.S., media coverage, a new website, return trips to the Amazon, and even a new documentary in the works.

Since I first discovered Projeto BIRA, I have been lucky to have made my own short trip to the Brazilian Amazon, where I was able to experience a few of the games and toys children play with in a few riverside communities, as well as sharing a few play activities of our own… some successfully, some not so successfully: FYI, embarrassment is when you can’t remember how a game of duck duck goose ends. However, Renata and David spent more than 8 months visiting 16 communities in the Amazon - playing the whole way - and the depth of their work is at a whole other level: truly inspirational.

• Visit the Projecto BIRA website at http://projetobira.com
• Watch a short video of Projeto BIRA’s work

Previous story (2005): A Playful Exchange - O Projeto BIRA

A few years ago I was swept up in a wave six-degrees-of-separation invitations from the professional networking site Linked In, most of the invitations coming from old b-school classmates at UNC.  As a good little networking MBA, I sent out as many invitations as I could too, feeling a certain thrill in seeing the breadth of my professional and social network. However after that initial rush I pretty much forgot all about it.  “Who actually uses this thing?” I remember thinking.

Then a week ago I got another invitation from an old colleague of mine at Rockwell International who wanted to reconnect and to share the news that a patent application of ours had finally been accepted (I have two patents in my name, officially making me an “inventor”, albeit the kind that doesn’t make any money for his inventions).  This old colleague wrote, “I always wondered what happened to you after you went back to school, sounds like you’re doing some interesting things!”

Those words sent me back into the Linked In universe, searching for other old colleagues that I had missed.  And after the excitement of reaching out to old acquaintances had passed, I decided to go poking around my Linked In network. It didn’t take long before I started looking for other people who also worked in the Base of the Pyramid. About 65 connections came up, interestingly enough most of them at 2 least degrees away or more: meaning I have few direct connections working in my own field.  

However, I was thrilled to find so many interesting people working in the BoP. Five year ago when I started working on BoP projects with Stu Hart and crew it was hard to find anyone that knew anything about it, but today there are numerous consulting organizations, start-ups, corporations and universities employing people to focus on the BoP. I even found a life coach! Many of these positions have been created in the last year or so, and it’s nice to see so many people branching out on there own.

Beyond the link I have listed some of the interesting people and organizations I found on my BoP traipse through Linked In. If you’re already a Linked In member, try clicking on the “badge” in the top right of this article and seeing which “Base of the Pyramid” folk are in your own network. To make future searches for BoP compatriots on Linked In easier, I’ve also asked Linked In to create a BoP Group for professionals working in the BoP. Stay tuned for the launch of that group (you can always join the BoP Working Group on Yahoo in the meanwhile).

Patrick

(more…)

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.

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!]

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

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.

See the full Catalytic Communities Press Release

Frustrated with the poverty-stricken conditions in which the children of her community, Acarí, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro lived, Ivanilde Araújo Pinto began sharing her knowledge with them beneath a tree in the community. A piece of wood served as a blackboard and a chunk of charcoal as chalk. This was 20 years ago. Today the Little School of Love operates out of a community church and is proud of its notable accomplishment: not one of its kids, after 20 years of service by Ms. Pinto (50 children per year have been served), has returned to the streets.

Ms. Pinto’s example is not uncommon. Thousands of other community-driven efforts are succeeding in addressing local challenges in Rio de Janeiro and across the world. "These amazing people are out there and no one knows about them. As a result, they get very little support and have a hard time maintaining their efforts," explains Theresa Williamson, Executive Director of Catalytic Communities, "And the work of people like Ms. Pinto, if publicized, can inspire innumerable others to develop projects to better their own communities."

For this reason, since 2000, Williamson has been developing Catalytic Communities (CatComm), a not-for-profit to bring visibility to initiatives like Ms. Pinto’s and many others, around the world. Today CatComm is announcing the launch of its upgraded Website, www.catcomm.org, where visitors can consult, include, or search projects like the Little School of Love in its Community Solutions Database (CSD), which now features over 100 projects from 8 countries on 5 continents.

Catalytic Communities has also issued a fund raising challenge to its network of partners, volunteers and supporters.

"CatComm does all this with very little. Supporters have often told us it is one of the most efficient social investments around," CatComm Founder and Executive Director Theresa Williamson proudly announces. "In fact," she challenges, "if everyone who reads this line visits our Website and donates $10, then asks a friend to do the same, our 2006 budget would be cared for. That’s all it will take to empower and inspire hundreds of community solutions across the world in 2006."

We wish Catalytic Communities the best of luck! If you’re interested in supporting them you can click on the buttom to the right.

For more coverage of Catalytic Communities see:

• BRINQ - Side Effects - A Day in the Community
• BRINQ - Learning to Swim - Back in Brazil

 

For those of you looking for more tales from Patrick’s time working on the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot in Kenya, we’d be remiss in not pointing you to the writings of our colleague Justin De Koszmovszky. Justin is a 2nd Year MBA student at Cornell’s Johnson School of Management, President of the Cornell’s Net Impact chapter, a Park Leadership Fellow, and an all around brilliant & great guy. Justin is part of the BoP Protocol Pilot team in Kenya and spent most of his time in country actually in the country, out on the fields and farms of Nyota and Molo. As you can see from the sample below, Justin’s writings and insights are beautiful, touching, and really make his experience in Kenya come alive. Highly recommended.

“The first night there, still sharing it all with Tatiana, we had stood in Mama Jane’s (MJ) bare yard, wet toothbrushes in hand, minty mouths agape, eyes loosing focus, drowning in belittled amazement. With our headlamps off, the night sky rushed in and swallowed us. We had dove into the darkest ocean, the darkest blue-green ink of velvet light-absorbing depth, and were now amidst the phosphorescent plankton. Stars swam, floated, ebbed above and around us blocked only by this mound of rock, this Earth, and a few long-legged, fuzzy-topped trees. If we had taken a big enough step, we could have left Earth in a stride and been entangled in the dew-spangled cobweb of the Universe.

We could have reached up and taken hold of the Milky-Way, our fingers pressing into its fresh mozzarella pallor and firmness, and pulled ourselves up into the sky. My instinct towards order and identification was humbled and frustrated by not just the enormity and multiplicity of the stellar sea but how can you identify and quantify froth on waves as you bounce and plunge among them. Constellations were there, no doubt, but they too had been swallowed by the fathomless sky. Tatiana and I climbed out, clamoring up the rocky bank off our reality, our hair wet and bodies dripping stars, necks, bodies and minds tiredly aware of their relativity on this stage. Stepping under the corrugated steel I glanced back to watch the Milky Wave crest, fall, slap on the gentle black beach of Nyota night.”

Read more of Justin’s time in Kenya at Travelpod.com

The World Resources Institute has officially launched NextBillion.net, an online community focused on the intersection of business, innovation and poverty. We were lucky enough to get an early look at NextBillion, and WRI was kind enough to quote our impressions in their press release. See for yourself! New WRI Blog Targets ‘Next Billion’ Consumers Dollars WASHINGTON, May 27, 2006 - The World Resources Institute has launched an interactive blog focusing on business’s role in eradicating world poverty. The organization hopes to position its new “NextBillion.net — Development through Enterprise” blog as “the world’s premiere online water cooler and conference room” for socially responsible business development. Previously, there have been e-mail lists for such business developers, but NextBillion.net allows development and poverty reduction to reach a new level by offering a bottom-up educational resource and threaded-discussion tool for everyone from multinational executives to small-business entrepreneurs. Representatives of companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Pitney Bowes, DuPont and SC Johnson (as well as many innovative individuals) have already begun posting comments and discussions on the blog. For instance, noted author Stuart Hart posted exclusive content this week detailing issues highlighted in his new book, Capitalism at the Crossroads: The Unlimited Business Opportunities in Solving the World’s Most Difficult Problems. Additionally, with today’s official launch, NextBillion.net’s creators expect to quickly establish the site as the top news feed and content resource for corporations, foundations, the business-school community, poverty NGOs, development organizations, and many others. (more…)

"Stuart Hart was there at the beginning. Years ago when the term ’sustainability’ had not yet reached business schools, Stuart Hart stood as a beacon in the umbrage. It is clear commerce is the engine of change, design the first signal of intention, and global capitalism is at the crossroads. Stuart Hart is there again; this time lighting up the intersection."
- William McDonough, Co-author of Cradle to Cradle

Three years ago, a group of MBA prospects visited the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. We were wined & dined and offered full rides and stipends, incentives to reject offers at higher ranked business schools and earn our MBAs at Kenan-Flagler instead. The admission staff knew they had to be convincing, so they brought out the big guns. We were introduced to Stu Hart.

Naturally, we decided Carolina was a fine place to be.

At BRINQ, both Sheri Willoughby and I attribute working with Stu Hart as defining moments in our careers. Sheri, a chemist and environmental specialist from Florida, and I, a computer scientist and technologist from California, had returned to school to answer the question "How can we make companies more environmentally friendly?" However to our great fortune, Stu Hart took us in hand and convinced us to go "beyond greening", that the real opportunity for sustainability was not in better ways to comply (reducing liability and cost) but in creating new strategic business opportunities (increasing revenues and markets): "What radical new business opportunities are available for a sustainable company?"

Hart writes in his acclaimed new book, Capitalism at the Crossroads:

By moving beyond greening, companies hope not only to address mounting social and environmental concerns, but also to build the foundation for innovation and growth in the coming decades. In so doing they would outperform their competitors in today’s businesses, but even more importantly, outrun them to tomorrow’s technologies and markets. In short, sustainable global enterprises would create competitively superior strategies that simultaneously move us more rapidly toward a sustainable world.

Rather than seeking incremental improvements to what already exists, moving beyond greening often means pursuing innovations that may make obsolete what currently constitutes the company’s core business—it is an inherently disruptive act.

(more…)

In our research and discussions we’ve come across a number of wonderful websites and blogs on sustainability and the Base of the Pyramid (BOP). We’d like to share them with you. We’ll keep updating this list as we continue to discover more of this fantastic work!

• WorldChanging: A NewWorld is Here - One of the best all around blogs on the web, in their own words "A group weblog discussing and analyzing tools, ideas, models, and technologies for building a better future."
• NextBillion.net - by the World Resources Institute, an online community and news site to identify and discuss sustainable business models that address the needs of the world’s poorest citizens
• IFTF’s Future Now - IFTF’s Future Now draws research and forecasting at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto, CA think tank specializing in the future of technology, health, and organizational change.
• ThinkCycle: Open Collaborative Design - ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges facing underserved communities and the environment.
• The Timbuktu Chronicles - Emeka Okafor is a consultant and entrepreneur with a background in Finance and Information Technology who lives in New York City. His interests include sustainable technologies in the developing world and paradigm breaking technologies in general. His blog, Timbuktu Chronicles seeks to spur dialogue in areas of entrepreneurship, technology and the scientific method as it impacts Africa.
• WorldIsGreen.com - All things green!
• Enviropundit - articles on green buildings, green energy, and more.
• Alternative Energy Blog - articles on alternative, distributed, and green energy news and technologies
• Slashdot: News for Nerds - the uber technology news site, not specific to sustainability or the BOP, but at times discusses potential world changing technologies.
• Base of the Pryamid Resource Center - a blog started up by Thunderbird MBA student Matt Berg, the site was created “to help serve as a resource for the those intersted in serving the base of the pyramid”.

Favorite Community Organizations we know personally

• Catalytic Communities - providing space to document and share community solutions around the world, creating a global network of community leaders and solutions. CatComm provides both physical space (the Casa do Gestor Catalisador in Rio de Janeiro) and virtual spaces (http://www.CatComm.org/) and is based in Washington, D.C. and Rio de Janeiro.
• Carolina for Kibera - an NGO and community based organization in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, one of Africa’s, if not the world’s, largest slums. CFK provides programs to work with youths in Kibera, reducing ethnic conflict, and inspiring youth based solutions and change. CFK is run out of the University of North Carolina but is based locally in Nairobi, Kenya. CFK was the home for our work on the Base of the Pyramid Protocol Pilot.
• Favelarte - a project by Brazilian photographer Maur√≠cio Hora, incredible windows into the world of Rio de Janeiro and the city’s favelas.