Kids And Robots

Posted on 28 October 2010 by Scott Orr

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton backs a probe of human rights violations in Burma. We also have three more reports in our continuing coverage of the U.S. midterm elections, including one on President Obama’s campaign travels. The U.S. and Japan mark a 50 year relationship. The U.S. urges support for the Lebanese government. Obama’s portfolio for his coming trip to India is packed largely with economic issues. Learn how lost early American films turned up in a Russian film archive. You can study anything, virtually. In an international program for journalists, Bob Woodward stresses the importance of facts. Meet American fine-art photographer Peter Steinhauer and his Southeast Asian inspirations. And finally, here’s yet another reason robots are cool.

A Focus on Human Rights in Burma
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton backs an international inquiry into human rights abuses in Burma and pledges U.S. support for efforts to improve the lives of its citizens. Speaking in Hawaii at the beginning of a 13-day visit to the Asia-Pacific region, Clinton, right, promises to “seek accountability for the human rights violations that have occurred in Burma.”

Obama’s Daily Campaigning
President Obama was warmly welcomed to the popular comedy program The Daily Show, but during his lengthy interview with host Jon Stewart it became clear the appearance was very much a campaign stop. With congressional Democrats facing tough challenges in the 2010 midterm elections, the comedy show’s first interview with a sitting U.S. president was another in a series of more than 25 campaign stops for Obama in recent weeks.

The Muslim Vote in America
The week before national midterm elections in the U.S., discussions over Islam’s place in America is prompting American Muslims to make their voices heard through voting. Various Muslim organizations are working to acquaint American Muslims with the voting process and to encourage voter turnout.

America’s Endangered Senators
On Election Day, only 37 U.S. senators will be chosen, but some of those political contests are among the most contentious in the 2010 elections. The 2010 midterm elections include 12 Democrats and 11 Republicans seeking re-election and 14 “open” seats (no incumbent running) that currently are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

The U.S.-Japan Alliance at 50
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara marked the 50^th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan alliance with praise for a relationship “based on deep friendship between our people, on mutual respect, and on common goals and values.” The two met in Honolulu on the first day of Clinton’s seven-nation Asia-Pacific tour.

U.S. Urges Support for Lebanon
The United States urges support for the Lebanese government as it works to reduce the threat posed by instability and conflict, says U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.

Economy Tops Obama India Agenda
Expanding economic ties and growing business relationships between the United States and India will be atop the agenda as President Obama travels to South Asia beginning Nov. 6. Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Mike Froman says India represents “one of the most important emerging economic relationships for the United States, both multilaterally and bilaterally.”

“Lost” Silent Films Found
Some of America’s early film history that was thought to have been lost forever has been recovered. Ten films from Hollywood’s silent film era have been found in Gosfilmofond, the Russian state film archive, restored, copied and presented to the Library of Congress. “This is like finding a lost Picasso,” says Pat Loughney, chief of the library’s $200 million Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation. At left, a still image from the 1922 crime drama Kick In, one of the found films.

Learning Virtually Anything
Salman Khan hopes to make his online classroom “the world’s first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything.” Based in California, the Khan Academy received a $2 million grant from Google to build the software needed to translate its content into the world’s most-spoken languages.

Woodward on Journalism
American investigative journalist Bob Woodward met with some 150 journalists from 125 countries in an interactive session at the U.S. Department of State as part of the Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists, named for the award-winning and pioneering broadcast journalist. Woodward stressed the importance of what he called “neutral fact-getting” and meticulous reporting.

Visions of Vietnam
American Peter Steinhauer is a successful Hong Kong-based fine-art photographer whose work is displayed in museums and galleries worldwide, and also at the U.S. embassies and consulates in Vietnam and Burma. Steinhauer was inspired by a 1993 trip to Vietnam, and his work primarily consists of landscapes and portraits portraying Vietnamese culture.

Robots Draw Kids to Science
Robots that kick soccer balls, solar-powered vehicles and helmets that offer virtual bike rides were some of the attractions at America’s first national science exposition, the grand finale of two weeks of activities intended to motivate more young people to pursue careers in science. The expo drew an estimated half million visitors to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Education Makes Peace More Likely

Posted on 11 May 2010 by guest

Andeisha Farid is is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington recently for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. She is founder of Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, a nonprofit based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Alyse Nelson is president and chief executive of Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nongovernmental organization that trains emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe.

Andeisha Farid

Andeisha Farid:
The war is all I have known: I was born in war, and I have lived my entire life in war. I want it to stop. Through education – at a fraction of the cost of war and rebuilding – we can eradicate the soil that feeds hatred and oppression in Afghanistan.

As a child in a refugee camp in Pakistan, I was inspired by fellow Afghans who believed in education as the path to peace, democracy and well-being of our devastated country. Soon I was teaching and caring for other refugee children in a place I would call (for lack of better words) an orphanage. It was more than that – a family, home, and meeting place where Hezara learned to love Pashtun, and Tajik learned to love Nuristani. Most children were orphans or lived in such such devastating conditions that we could call them orphans.

Since those days, I founded a formal organization in Afghanistan called Afghan Child Education and Care Organization. The organization has added other orphanages and requires each under its umbrella to harbor children from all corners of the country. Children’s families, or surviving custodial guardians, have to accept our basic mission of equality, tolerance, and a liberal arts education. Because ideology has brought misery to Afghanistan, we ban promotion of religious or political dogmas.

When I moved to Kabul with my family and we opened three orphanages in the city, we were noticed by international media. This led to support for the organization and recognition for myself. Coupled with forces for positive change within Afghanistan, international support has made it possible to bring the total number of orphanages to 10, including two in Pakistan.

But with 1.3 million orphans in the country, there remain tremendous needs and challenges. Most of our children are connected to their native villages, where people hope they will return one day as a midwife, engineer or teacher, and where we hope they will bring the values they live by. If other educators stick to these values, we can reach the point at which no violence or suppression will overpower the force of freedom.

Alyse Nelson

Alyse Nelson:
Andeisha’s devotion to her cause really strikes you when you meet her in person. She tells you about life as a child in the refugee camps of Iran and Pakistan, where all she had to hold on to was a dream about one day returning home to Afghanistan. When she finally did return, the place from her dreams was nowhere to be found. For example, girls were restricted from going to school and were often abused or trafficked.

But conditions that would leave others to despair led Andeisha to a simple and powerful vision — education would transform Afghanistan.

Vital Voices recently recognized Andeisha for her commitment to build a more prosperous and tolerant Afghanistan by investing in the education of her country’s orphans. At a time when the challenges are perhaps greater than ever before, she has grown more determined to create a space for freedom and development, where girls and boys of every ethnic group learn tolerance and respect.

Andeisha knows that education has the power to release a child from oppression and inspire progress within entire communities. Like any force for change, education expands its reach when it’s shared. When we invest in the promise of one child, that child learns his or her worth and wants to give another the same chance to develop.

A Woman’s Power Fuels an Electrical Company

Posted on 1 May 2010 by guest

Masooma Habibi is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington this week for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship. Habibi is a co-founder of Check Up Co., an electrical engineering consulting business in Afghanistan. She shares managing the business with two other executives.

Kenneth P. Morse is founding managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. He also teaches at ESADE business school in Spain and the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Masooma Habibi

Masooma Habibi:
My family lived in a refugee camp in Iran when I was born. My father earned only little, so my mother, I and all my brothers and sisters wove carpets to survive. Our hands cracked and bled from the work.

When we returned to Afghanistan in 2008, I had hoped to study at university, but had to postpone my plans to help support my family. Yet, as a woman, I couldn’t get a job in the traditional community of Herat, where we settled. It wasn’t because of Islam – I am a Muslim – but because men look down upon women.

When all doors shut for me, Allah helped me.

From Herat, I went to Kabul and learned from people there of an international business-plan competition. The experience gave me self-confidence that many Afghan women, who are frequently ridiculed, lack.

I knew that no electrical power was a major issue in the country, so with my two brothers I started a firm providing consulting services in electrical engineering. It is called Check Up Company. Check Up provides consulting services to large customers, including international companies, and employs 22 people. We haven’t broken even yet, but eventually we want to be the Number 1 power company in Afghanistan and create more jobs.

At the beginning, we didn’t have money and were hampered by Afghani businessmen who didn’t want to work with me. But I have a strong will to achieve something better for myself, my community and my country. Today I am 23 and co-run Check Up with three male executives. I study international trade at the Dunya Institute of Higher Education. I run a nonprofit called My Hope, which aims to create jobs for 1,000 women in the provinces and help their children in the process.

My dream is to see fewer children with hands bleeding from weaving.

Whether Pulling Rickshaws or Flying Airplanes, Employees Matter

Posted on 28 April 2010 by guest

Irfan Alam is one of many entrepreneurs in Washington for the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, held April 26-27. Alam founded the SammaaN Foundation to modernize the rickshaw-pulling sector in Bihar. He manages 100,000 rickshaw operators and has implemented innovations such as advertising, first aid,and offering passengers newspapers and water.

Joe Harris is senior labor counsel for Southwest Airlines in Dallas, Texas. In 2009, Southwest was ranked 7th in FORTUNE magazine’s ranking of the 50 Most Admired Companies in the World and 1st in a ranking of the 50 best U.S. places to work by Glassdoor.com, a website that gathers its information from employees.

Irfan Alam

Irfan Alam:
SammaaN Foundation gives a new face to the unorganized workers who form nearly 93 percent of the workforce in India. One part of the group is made up of the 10 million cycle rickshaws and push cart operators. They are mostly laborers from Bihar, UP and West Bengal who migrate to bigger cities such as Delhi, Patna, Lucknow during the off-peak agricultural season. Typically, rickshaw pullers fall between 14 years old and 60 years old. While I consider them exploited, many make a lucrative living, despite a lack of skills.

I see exploitation because a puller has to pay a significant sum to hire a rickshaw from a contractor and then looks after maintenance himself. If the rickshaw gets stolen, he has to pay for it or work as a bonded laborer until the value is recovered. After a hard day’s work, operators have no place to rest; many spend their nights in the open, where they are easy victims of criminals. Being uneducated, they often become alcohol or drug addicts, making it impossible for them to break the poverty cycle.

At SammaaN, we give them dignity by encouraging rickshaw pulling as a trade/ job and not as desperate substitute work. We register them so they receive all the benefits mandated by law. They receive cycle rickshaws, uniforms and identity cards. We created lighter models of cycle rickshaws that are much easier and have operator-friendly features. Moreover, there is insurance coverage for the pullers as well as those traveling on these rickshaws.

We have incorporated the SammaaN Sabha (gathering) to increase awareness among our operators about social issues as well as to create belongingness. Held every Sunday at our rickshaw yards, it allows discussion about issues such as alcoholism or drug abuse.

We introduced microloans and are starting initiatives for family members — education programs for children and training for wives. We are also planning low cost homes for our operators.

SammaaN earns its revenue mainly through advertisements placed on the rickshaws.

Joe Harris

Joe Harris:
In the airline business, and I would assume in the rickshaw business, frontline employees are out there on their own every day, taking care of customers and making a myriad of decisions that affect the operation of the business and the customer experience.

It is refreshing to learn of an enterprise that seeks to improve the economic and social well-being of the people whose labor is essential to the success of its business. Indeed, some of the activities undertaken by SammaaN are those typically reserved to philanthropic, religious or civic organizations.

But the business of a business is to make a profit, right? Is it possible then for a business to be profitable and also be so committed to the well-being of its employees?

In a customer-service business, it is not only possible, it is advantageous. There is a direct correlation between the return rate of customers and the type of service provided by a customer-service employee. The theory is simple. If employees are happy and motivated, they will treat customers well. If customers are treated well, they will return. If customers are treated badly, they will be inclined to take their business elsewhere. This is true whether they are flying in an airplane across the USA or being pedaled through 5 blocks of Delhi.

Employees should take pride in their jobs. They should be “engaged.”

Frontline employees who feel good about themselves and their jobs feel empowered to make right decisions and act in ways beneficial to customers and to the success of the business. By promoting the dignity of the vocation and by seeking to improve the economic and social well-being of these individuals, SammaaN is not only performing a laudable public service, it is also building a foundation for a profitable business.

In Afghanistan, a Secret Startup Blooms

Posted on 26 April 2010 by guest

Kamela Sediqi is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship from countries with sizeable Muslim populations, April 26-27. Sediqi is founder and head of Kaweyan Business Development Services, a consulting firm in Afghanistan.

Michael Ducker is a market development specialist at J.E. Austin Associates, a business consulting firm that focuses on helping developing economies.

Kamela Sediqi

Kamela Sediqi:
During the Taliban era, to support my family, I started in secret a tailoring business, which at its peak provided income for more than 100 women. Later, I worked on different business projects with international development groups. When the Taliban regime fell, I started a construction company and enrolled into business management programs run by international organizations, such as Thunderbird University and Bpeace. With the knowledge gained from these programs, I started Kaweyan Business Development Services (Kaweyan BDS).

I started Kaweyan BDS, a consulting firm, in 2004 with one laptop and a slow Internet connection. Today, the firm employs 10 full-time workers and six part-timers in well equipped offices in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif.

I believe that private initiative can improve lives of both men and women in my country. Entrepreneurs here can use their skills and hard work to support their families and their communities. Those who become entrepreneurs also are more likely to afford investment in their children’s education, which means the next generation – both boys and girls – will have a wider range of career choices.

My firm teaches business skills to Afghans interested in starting their own companies. In 2009, working with international aid and development groups as well as the Afghan government, it ran training projects and hosted business events in nine provinces. In the same year, my firm was one of three Afghan companies selected to enter into a partnership with the World Bank’s IFC designed to run “Business Edge” in Afghanistan, an interactive learning program that aims to help managers improve their business and managerial skills. By participating in this program, we hope to grow our client base and expand entrepreneurship culture in the country.

My goal is to make Kaweyan BDS Afghanistan’s leading business development consultancy, with offices all around the country and the region. This is my contribution toward efforts to build a brighter future for my country and for the next generation of Afghanis.

Michael Ducker

Michael Ducker:
Ms. Sediki is what we call in the U.S. a serial entrepreneur, always able to find business opportunities even in the most difficult environment.

Kaweyan BDS has changed quite of bit over the last seven years, starting from general business training in areas like accounting and business planning and later focusing more on specific needs of entrepreneurs like how to fill out an application for a bank loan or how to implement World GAP standards, which certify agricultural products, so you can export your vegetables to Europe.

It is a joy to see catalysts like Kaweyan BDS supporting entrepreneurs to grow and create more jobs.

I think Ms. Sediki may get even more business by creating services that address entrepreneurship’s biggest constraints. A way to do this is to focus on a specific, large industry in Afghanistan, for example marble and granitite, and work on developing training on important issues like the use of proper cutting techniques.

Kaweyan BDS also might want to focus on helping to break down cultural barriers for entrepreneurs. From my experience of working with entrepreneurs in Pakistan, I know they have to deal with many cultural constraints. This might be that small- and medium-size business owners only do business with people of their own ethnic group or the inability of a young entrepreneur to get financing or enter into new markets.

One way to start breaking down these barriers is to facilitate contacts between different groups and bring them together based on business needs. For example, why not create an “angel network” through which successful Afghan businessmen offer small investment and advice to young entrepreneurs? This would be a great way for established businessmen to find higher return for their investment money and at the same time give young entrepreneurs what they need to grow.

In Kazakhstan, in Search of Workers, Financing, Attitude

Posted on 23 April 2010 by guest

Nurlan Kapparov is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship from countries with sizeable Muslim populations, April 26-27. Kapparov founded electronics distributor Accept Corporation in Kazakhstan in 1990, when he was still a student, and served as president until 1997. Today he is chairman of Lancaster Group.

Shahid Ansari is provost and dean of faculty at Babson College. He specializes in behavioral and cultural aspects of management accounting, strategy, control, and change management.

Nurlan Kapparov

Nurlan Kapparov:
The biggest challenge I see is the lack of professional human resources. We struggle to find the right people to move on with different projects.

We have a very high literacy rate in Kazakhstan, and our population in general is very well educated, because we came out of the strong Soviet education system.

But in the business life, we have a different system. There are not so many local entrepreneurs who speak English, who have a business education, who understand the importance of working transparently and are efficient.

That’s why we invite a lot of ex-pats to work with our country. We would like to rely on our local human resources, but people want more pay than what they can deliver in work. You can get much better, higher-level professionals from outside – people ready to work on less than what our local people want to earn.

Another thing with which we are struggling is the lack of funding [bank financing]. Funding became extremely expensive in the last two years. Our banks have raised interest rates dramatically, to 14, 15 percent per annum. Normal projects cannot survive. The government is encouraging entrepreneurs to participate in the diversification of our economy, but with expensive funding, it is going to be difficult.

Many people are scared of the entrepreneurs; they would rather stay with companies that take care of them. If you have the entrepreneurial spirit inside yourself, you might try to start a business. Many times it will not be successful in the beginning. But small achievements will start to create confidence.

My advice is to be careful with people and build trust in people slowly. Don’t believe that because you’re exceptional, you will get this opportunity or deal or customer.

Another lesson I have learned and could pass on is this: If you have negotiations and you are stuck, try to make the pie bigger so there’s food enough for everybody.

Shahid Ansari

Shahid Ansari:
You focus fairly heavily on the lack of funding and the lack of financial resources. Financial resources are merely one of several things an entrepreneurial ecosystem needs. You need a support system where entrepreneurs can link with each other, a system of “angel investors” to bypass the system of structured finance, a network of education and training materials that cut across from grade school to adults running small and medium enterprises.

The other idea you’re talking about is a cultural idea: attitudes toward risk and failure. The key here is to understand that the traditional notion of an entrepreneur as a “swashbuckling risk-taker” is not correct. Entrepreneurs are actually quite risk averse. They tend to make their decisions based on how much they can afford to lose rather than how much they stand to gain.

One has to make it safe for entrepreneurs to fail. We train our students to start a business and close it down within the first year of college. They learn very quickly that entrepreneurship is about acceptance of failure. They learn to redefine “failure” as “learning opportunities.” They pick up and move on. It’s not always about finding an opportunity but making an opportunity.

Particularly in Muslim countries, the historical context of Islamic entrepreneurship was rooted in trading and caravans. People went and traded goods and distributed profits. If they failed in this venture they never came back because they had let down investors. That’s why a lot of cultures, particularly in Islamic countries, do not separate the failure of a venture from the failure of an individual. The phrase “serial entrepreneurship” doesn’t enter into their lexicon. In the U.S., we understand that individual ventures an entrepreneur may undertake may fail, but that doesn’t mean the failure of the individual.

Mentor, Mentee Change Society Through Business

Posted on 21 April 2010 by guest

New Enterprise is pairing entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26 & 27 with American business experts. But these delegates, from Bangladash and Pakistan, have lots in common. In fact one mentored the other; we decided to put them together — no American this time.

Professor Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh is founder and director of Grameen Bank, chairman of the Yunus Centre, and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

Roshaneh Zafar is founder and director of Kashf Foundation, a microfinance institution in Pakistan. The organization has grown from 15 female clients in 1996 to 301,000 today and is the first microfinance institution in Pakistan to achieve financial self-sufficiency.

Muhammad Yunus

Professor Muhammad Yunus:
In the mid-seventies, I was back in newborn Bangladesh, and out of frustration with the terrible economic situation in my country, I decided to see if I could make myself useful to one poor person a day in the village next door to the university campus where I was teaching. Since I did not have a road-map or a mentor, I had to fall back on my basic instinct to do that. I stubbornly went out to find my own way. Luckily, at the end, I found it. That was microcredit, Grameen Bank, and most recently, “social business.”

The social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal. It is a business where an investor aims to help others without taking any financial gain himself. At the same time, the social business generates enough income to cover its own costs. Any surplus is invested in expansion of the business or for increased benefits to society. Take a look around you; there is no dearth of problems in this world.

Focus on a social issue. Build a social business around it.
I encourage today’s young people to take a pledge that they will never enter a/the job market to seek jobs from anybody. They’ll be job-givers, not job seekers. Every single human being is capable of changing the world. It can start as a tiny little action. Even the biggest problem can be cracked by a small well-designed intervention. That’s where you and your creativity come in. You are born in the age of ideas.

You will take your grandchildren to the poverty museums that you helped create. [Poverty will be history.]

Yunus and Zafar

Roshaneh Zafar:
Dr. Yunus told me 15 years ago, “Roshaneh if you make a mistake and you don’t succeed, just tell the world it was Dr. Yunus’s fault.” I reckon if Dr. Yunus had not given me the confidence, I would have never had the courage!

I often remember Dr. Muhammad Yunus’ words that if we were to wait for the ideal circumstances we would never bring about change. When one is in the business of transforming lives our greatest challenge relates to changing mindsets.

Low-income households and particularly women are often cowed down by daily survival. Our biggest challenge at Kashf Foundation has been to instill a belief that tomorrow will be different, that poor families too can hope and plan for a better future. Women at first resist taking loans and investing in their businesses, after years or perhaps centuries of patriarchal thinking. Yet once they get convinced of the idea of microfinance, women are unstoppable.

The next challenge for the microfinance industry is to embrace responsible finance. Many markets in the world are now reaching maturation while economic circumstances for the bottom of the pyramid have become extremely straitened. Against this backdrop, microfinance institutions need to practice truth in lending and establish a sound eco-system for the sector as a whole.

The most rewarding part of my work is seeing real-life changes. Only a few weeks ago I was visiting a long-time client in Kasur whose name is Baji Sharifan. Six years ago, Sharifan bought a small spindle machine second hand for U.S. $150. Now she has four such spindles working simultaneously, with 10 women packaging the thread. Her husband, Masood, left his job as a small time-clerk to work for her.

I was lucky for I had a range of teachers – my father who taught me about social justice; Dr. Yunus, who taught me that poverty is created by institutions and that the poor are not poor not because they are inherently weak;, my board members, who have guided me throughout the careening turns as we grew our institutions; and my clients, who have taught me to laugh even in the worst of situations. I have learnt from so many people to learn from my successes and, most important, from my mistakes.

Building Low-cost Housing and Communities in Pakistan, India

Posted on 19 April 2010 by guest

New Enterprise is pairing entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26 & 27 with American business experts. But these delegates, from Pakistan and India, have things in common. We decided to put them together — no American this time.

Abdul Jawad Aslam is the founder of Ansaar Management Co. (AMC), a commercial, low-cost housing development and management company aiming to address Pakistan’s housing shortfall of 7 million units.

Based in India, Anamitra Deb is a core member of Monitor Inclusive Markets, the Monitor Group’s practice that focuses on market-based approaches to improving the lives of lower-income people.

Abdul Jawad Aslam

Abdul Jawad Aslam:
When assessing low-income housing proposals, we need to consider four basic parameters:
1) do the lower income people end up in the homes or do speculators seize the opportunity for investment?
2) is there a mechanism to avoid becoming a “ghetto” where drugs, prostitution, crime, illiteracy, teenage pregnancy and the like are the norm?
3) can it successfully attract private sector investment and truly scale?
4) is it affordable for the lower income segments?

The AMC model successfully addresses all four. AMC synthesizes the concept of homeowners associations from the developed world with the tried and tested principles of community development and establishes a strong presence in the community for five years. During this formative stage, AMC empowers the community to organize and take ownership of its own affairs.

For instance, we opted to build only one mosque even though there are three or four different Muslim sects in the community. Initially, sectarian issues escalated to physical violence — something very common in the country. However, after four months of our concerted efforts, the same folks that were swinging cricket bats at each other are now praying together with a new level of cooperation.

Three weeks ago, community leaders called a meeting in the mosque after the evening prayer, with me as a facilitator, because a community member had come under a serious accusation. Over forty members of all sects deliberated for two hours and came to a rational resolution without any physical violence, without cursing, and without even raising their voices. The power and potential of the average “Joe-Muslim” was evident.

Anamitra Deb

Anamitra Deb:
It is rewarding to hear about the success of your program for low-cost housing development in Pakistan, and even more so to read about your initiatives to foster good management practices and community empowerment in the face of sectarian differences.

I smiled when I read about your four assessment parameters. Here in India — which suffers (like Pakistan) from a drastic shortage of quality, affordable housing and housing finance for low-income urban customers — we use very similar criteria. We take as our starting point your last two criteria: the commercial viability/social impact of the model and whether the solution will reach the target customers.

We have been working to “make the market” for affordable, commercially viable housing in urban India. We have identified commercially viable, innovative solutions to serve the urban poor, raised awareness and intervened to address key ecosystem gaps. Two and a half years later — having received “end-to-end handholding” services — small and large developers are starting to supply affordable housing and dedicated low-income housing finance companies are starting to finance these urban poor customers.

These efforts parallel many public-sector, non market-based housing projects (in slum rehabilitation in Mumbai, for example) which have had issues of the sort you raise. To ensure that the market-led models we are promoting avoid similar problems, we have just embarked on a multi-year initiative to identify and address the unintended consequences of providing low-income housing, through better education, intelligent management models and innovative stakeholder actions.

My one point of feedback about your community management model would be that it requires an investment of your time and skills, which may restrict scalability. It would be prudent to train your staff with the necessary skills in community empowerment, management and conflict resolution to ensure that your facilitator efforts are sustainable at scale.

I wish you all the very best!

Teaching Children and Their Teachers in India

Posted on 15 April 2010 by guest

Shaheen Mistri is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26-27 from countries with large Muslim populations. She is founder of Akanksha Foundation and Teach for India, nonprofits dedicated to educating less privileged children in India.

Wendy Kopp is founder and chief executive of Teach for America, a nonprofit that recruits and trains recent college graduates to teach in U.S. urban and rural schools.

Shaheen Mistri

Shaheen Mistri:
Through Akanksha and Teach for India we work to eliminate inequity in education in India. Initially, on my part, it was an attempt to learn about myself by teaching children. But the work has outgrown my or anyone’s personal intentions.

Our belief is that every child must have an excellent education to develop his or her potential fully. With this vision in mind, we run after-school centers and schools, and are building a movement of leaders for educational reform.

Not everything has worked out as I expected. But I’ve chosen to focus on the positive and inspiring and on people who want to learn and do something. It has given me a lot of energy and confidence in myself. Having dealt with difficulties, I’ve found out that addressing something bad with something good is much more effective than addressing something bad with another bad.

Our commitment to equal opportunities for all in education is accompanied by a commitment to personal transformation. We believe that you need to change yourself to bring about an external change. This message – that each of us must work to change from within to become the best human being he or she can be – I would like to bring to the upcoming summit on entrepreneurship.

We face tremendous challenges both in India and around the world. Yet, if we can both maximize our potential and create a social ecosystem around us that fosters children’s development and education, our nation and our world will be as we wish it to be.

[See also an article profiling Shaheen Mistri and her presentation on YouTube.]

Wendy Kopp

Wendy Kopp:
When I first met Shaheen in my office in New York, she explained how her experience founding and leading Akanksha had inspired her vision for Teach for India. The new group would enable her to address the main obstacle to Akanksha’s growth – the limited availability of talented people willing and able to teach India’s disadvantaged children. Shaheen was so passionate and so compelling that I flew out to see her in India just a few months later.

I still remember vividly the first week I spent in Mumbai with her in 2007. Most memorable was an Akanksha classroom, where children from Mumbai’s slums were learning with as much focus and energy as those in U.S. urban and rural communities, when given a chance. Shaheen’s belief in the children and love for them came through so powerfully throughout my visit that there was no doubt in my mind that she would lead a powerful movement through Teach for India.

Initially, I was doubtful that Teach for America’s model would prove applicable to the challenges of India. I expected it to be rendered unworkable by the differences in culture and economic conditions. Yet at every turn, I was struck by the similarities – some college students responding with excitement to an opportunity to work with poor kids, and many being indifferent; some school principals expressing a deep belief in their students’ abilities, and others apparently not recognizing that their students could achieve at high levels, despite the challenges of poverty; many business and government officials supporting the Teach for India idea in principle, but doubtful whether the brightest college graduates – future leaders – would join the movement. Eventually, we found quite a few extremely supportive allies in all circles.

This response was so similar to the one I received when I set out to start Teach for America in 1989!

In the summer of 2009, I met Teach for India’s 90 inaugural fellows. I was inspired by their thoughtfulness, their energy, and their passion. Standing in the back of their classrooms in Mumbai and Pune, I saw them changing their students’ trajectories and reflected on how different their own trajectories would be as well as a result of this experience. They would certainly be fighting for their students for the rest of their lives.

Shaheen has inspired a movement that I believe will play a catalytic role in transforming the India’s educational system in a way that provides opportunities for all of its children.

A Change in Plans Creates a Change Agent

Posted on 9 April 2010 by guest

Junaid Iqbal is one of many entrepreneurs coming to the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship April 26-27, 2010, from countries with sizeable Muslim populations. He heads BMA Financial, a financial products distributor. Educated at University of Michigan, he worked for American Electric Power before returning to Pakistan to anchor a stock market show on Geo TV, work for the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan and host CNBC‘s Power Lunch.

Liesl Riddle is a professor at George Washington University and co-director of the GW Diaspora Research Program . She has written extensively about diasporas and international entrepreneurship.

Junaid Iqbal

Junaid Iqbal:
I always wanted to come to Pakistan and do something for my country, but I never thought it would happen this way. I was living the normal American life: you go to work, you go out with your buddies, you take a couple of trips to Vegas or Miami. My job was at American Electric Power.

But my mother wrote: “This new TV channel is really revolutionizing Pakistan. You’d be amazing [working there.]”

I wrote back: “Are you out of your mind?” But when I returned to Karachi to renew my visa, I met a guy from Geo TV and we clicked. That Sunday night, my first TV show went on air.

I was still an AEP employee waiting for my visa. The show really picked up over a few months, with some of the biggest players coming on. The CEO said: “We want you to start a full-time, daily live stock market show.” It was a big challenge. He pulled out, “your country needs you.”

I went back to the U.S., took care of stuff there and resigned. Almost everyone in my family, other than my mom and my brother, thought I had gone mad. I’m leaving this cushy job in the U.S. as an energy trader and I’m going to: a) come back to Pakistan and b) join the media.

Nature gives you those opportunities. It was the greatest decision I ever made. Then, I wrote a business plan to introduce the one-stop model of buying mutual funds from just one company.

There is a big spirit of entrepreneurship in Pakistan because we have a very strong family support system. My father is an entrepreneur. My grandfather was an entrepreneur. I took a risk, have equity in a business, but in my father’s eyes, he doesn’t consider me to be an entrepreneur.

Liesl Riddle

Liesl Riddle:
You are the perfect example of the power of diaspora “institutional change agents”: migrants who bring new ideas and new ways of doing things to their countries of origin and thereby contribute to global development. Stories like yours inspire me to study the amazing phenomenon of diasporans and the transformative impact that their actions have on the economies and societies of their birth.

Today, approximately 3 percent of the world’s population (more than 150 million people) is made up of migrants.

Innovations in transportation and communications now allow migrants to psychologically and physically connect with their countries of origin in ways that were unimaginable in the past. Global media provide migrants with a constant stream of information about their origin countries. Diaspora-oriented Facebook groups and other social network communities offer migrants interactions with each other and individuals in their country of origin.

Some migrants return home permanently, but many more “circular migrate,” traveling back and forth between their country of residence and country of origin.

For many diasporans, the experiences and opportunities they are exposed to abroad inspire them to contribute to their countries of origin. You are an example of a diasporan who returned to radically transform an existing industry — in this case, media and financial literacy. By asking different questions and taking a different perspective, you have contributed to the quality and nature of business information in Pakistan.

You can tell your father that you are not only an entrepreneur but a change agent, and I am sure there are many investors in Pakistan who would agree with me!

On behalf of the GW Center for International Business Education and Research and the GW Diaspora Research Program, I invite you to come to our campus in Washington to share your experience with our students!

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