Maura O'Neill2013-05-23T23:37:19-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=maura-oCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Maura O'NeillGood old fashioned elbow grease.Alabanza a Doña Becky: A Tribute to Rebecca Tarbottontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25538462013-01-28T11:05:17-05:002013-03-30T05:12:01-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/In the Heights, I couldn't stop thinking about Rebecca Tarbotton. An environmental activist and executive director of The Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Becky was one of the most courageous, inspirational, effective, and kick-up leaders the world has seen. During In the Heights, the lead character Usanavi reels at the loss of a person who had been the soulful center of his Hispanic neighborhood. He exalts the community to raises their voices and give praise, saying,
"Alabanza mean to raise this thing to God's face and to sing
Quite literally "praise to this"
When she was here, the path was clear
And she was just here
She was just here...."
Becky was just in D.C. last month participating in a High Level Dialogue on eliminating ingredients or packaging that are sourced from tropical rainforests and are present in four key global supply chains. The Consumer Goods Forum -- a group of the largest retailers and manufacturers of consumer goods that includes household brands like Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and General Mills -- had made this commitment and is partnering with civil society and the United States government with USAID as the lead in order to make this happen. We carefully chose who would be the most important leaders that we needed to start this dialogue. In a row house across from the White House, we brought together a small group of global consumer goods industry CEOs, official country representatives from Indonesia, Brazil, UK and Norway, a handful of NGO leaders, as well as high level officials from the US government. We knew Becky had to be there.
While we may not have all always agreed with some of RAN's methods of getting companies to the table, we knew their ground breaking and comprehensive agreement with The Walt Disney Company was exactly the creative collaboration that we wanted as a model. We also knew that Becky Tarbotton was just the kind of leader to help us extend this vision to hundreds of companies and, together with consumers, save many of the world's precious rainforests.
I was excited to have her at the table. There are still too few women leaders invited to forge the way forward and yet we will not get there without their insights and courage. I had been someone who cared about the earth and about the transformation for good that business can effect. I cherished her participation and enthusiastically wanted those of us at the table to honor the role of business in lifting people in the developing world out of extreme poverty while also learning to step more lightly on the earth. I knew she had many of the answers.
Becky died while swimming in Mexico over Christmas. This Saturday in San Francisco, her life and groundbreaking contributions will be celebrated.
These are just some of her attributes that we will hold in our hearts and will place in the center of the negotiating table as we continue her work.
As the forests across the world weep, we raise our praise to Becky and promise that we will make her proud as we work to eliminate rainforest deforestation in the world's supply chains.
From the Amazon to the Congo to Indonesia.
Alabanza, Alabanza a Doña Becky.
Tunamshukuru na tunamsifu Mama Becky.
Kita sangat berterima kasih atas dedikasi beliau. Selamat jalan Ibu Becky.]]>Disruptive Innovation Often Comes From Unexpected Placestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25460442013-01-25T09:00:00-05:002013-03-27T05:12:01-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.
As a mathematician, Max Little hasn't spent most of his career in a doctor's office or a hospital, but with a pad and pencil or behind a laptop. And yet it is he who has crafted a radically lower cost and more ubiquitous method for diagnosing Parkinson's.
Steve Jobs loved music, but hadn't spent his life as a disc jockey. He was not a professional musician or a stereo hardware designer and he didn't focus on music marketing. That is, until he and his team at Apple released the iPod. What Jobs did have was a deep respect for the consumer music experience, and with his knowledge on business and technology, he devised a business model that forever changed the industry and its customers.
Two doctors in Western Australia, far from the center of the world's cutting edge medical research, discovered that most ulcers were caused by bacteria -- not stress or acid as previously assumed -- and that they could easily and quickly be treated. And yet when Drs. Warren and Marshall proposed this idea, they were ridiculed and their research grant proposals uniformly rejected. In the end, they were right and went on to win the 2005 Nobel Prize for their discovery and for bringing permanent relief to millions of sufferers.
This isn't a coincidence. If innovation in America is to reverse the "death march" that Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and first investor in Facebook, believes that we are on then we need to understand where truly disruptive innovation comes from. And it is not found in the usual places nor sourced in the typical way.
In trying to solve a problem, we default to the set of knowledge and experience each one of us has. New or novel ideas or approaches are not readily considered. - Maura O'Neill
Why isn't it found in the usual way? Because we are often too narrow minded to see or pursue the faster, better, and cheaper alternative. Why is that, given that the financial and fame returns can be so enormous? It turns out that our brains are hard-wired for narrow-mindedness.
What do I mean by hard-wired? Every day, we are bombarded with thousands of visual and auditory inputs per minute. As I sit at my desk I have photos hanging on the wall, a window which looks out over the building across the street, a white board with a list of urgent items, a desk cluttered with computers, water glasses, papers and books. There is a TV tuned to a key U.S. Senate Foreign Relations committee hearing and I can hear the din of my colleagues' conversations. And I haven't even moved.
With the advent of technology that connects us to everyone and everything all the time, it is only getting worse. So our brains have evolved to dump most of what we see, quickly categorize the rest, and file it all away in our long term memory using our brain's equivalent of the Dewey Decimal system.
Why did we evolve this way? For survival. From our Cro-Magnon ancestors until now, we immediately need to figure out whether something in front of us is friendly or could harm us. That is why most of the processing in our eyes and our brains is done in fractions of a second -- fast and frugal so we can assess the threat. Our brains are clever. They have custom designed a search and retrieval system for each of us that is not dissimilar to how Google or Bing work. This system is based on what we have learned (our equivalent of web pages) and how often we have experienced it (the frequency of how often those pages are viewed). The more we see, hear, touch or smell something, the more hard-wired in our brain it becomes.
This kills innovation. In trying to solve a problem, we default to the set of knowledge and experience each one of us has. New or novel ideas or approaches are not readily considered. Our world-class higher education system too often reinforces that approach. In order to earn a Ph.D. or get tenure, you must discover something that hasn't been discovered before. People think many of the big ideas have been discovered -- gravity, shape of the earth, DNA or that the next big idea will take decades to figure out.
Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species 28 years after he began his historic voyage... but our well-meaning advisors point us in the direction of greater and greater specialty so we can finish in 3-7 years rather than 28. Discovering more about something we already know a lot about becomes the typical approach. This happens all the time in both business and government. Looking for incremental improvements has become the focus thanks to the relentless pressure of quarterly earnings or two-year election cycles.
At USAID, we develop methods to specifically source and scale innovations that achieve faster, cheaper and more durable health, food, and economic prosperity without long-term donor support. We aren't doing it alone. USAID knows that partnerships with businesses, non-profits, other donors, and local institutions that mashes up our different skills and assets is the key to accelerating progress.
Want to find the next disruptive technology or approach as Max Little appears to have done? Become a voracious reader of a wide variety of disciplines, including fiction. And create teams like the one Max is on that have much more diverse skill sets and experiences. We have barely begun to discover the big ideas. We are counting on you for the next one.]]>Coding for Hunger: Not Development as Usualtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24114542013-01-04T18:12:31-05:002013-03-06T05:12:01-05:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/
There was one huge risk: the seeds contained potentially lethal pesticides intended to encourage higher yields. As countless mothers have done, she tested the seeds on herself. Barbara and her siblings watched fearfully as their mother ate a handful. Would she die, become ill, or just be fine?
Even if eating the seeds led to survival, there would be no crops to harvest in six months. Would they starve later? Years after this harrowing experience, Barbara palpably captured this moment in her book, Change Me into Zeus's Daughter.
In Alabama that night, nobody got sick. But we must do better by our neighbors in the U.S. and globally.
One billion people suffer from chronic hunger and face terrible choices daily. A billion is a hard number to grasp, but imagine if every man, woman and child in the largest cities in the U.S. -- including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle and Atlanta -- would never get enough to eat or have a chance to thrive.
Technology and business have recently brought dramatic global improvements in areas like health and agricultural productivity. Through social media, we can harness crowd-sourced wisdom and rapid diffusion networks to imagine a day in our lifetime where families everywhere can take pride in the accomplishments of their healthy children.
What are we seeing in this tech cauldron that's knocking our socks off? Kat Townsend, a Special Assistant for Engagement at USAID, worked with The Chicago Council to choose six examples using big data, videos and randomized control trials to reduce hunger. USAID showcased these examples at a Council event on food security at the G8 to demonstrate how low-cost technologies can accelerate and scale food security.
I'm especially excited about Digital Green, founded by young Indian entrepreneur Rikin Gandhi. Digital Green enables local farmers make short videos giving specific advice on many topics, with viewers rating videos just as we push 'Like' on Facebook. Farmers now watch nearly 2,500 relevant videos -- which average 11,000 viewers per video -- on their cellphones. Talk about a social diffusion network!
In September, USAID together with Nathaniel Manning -- a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow from technology superstar Ushahidi -- ran a weekend Hackathon for Hunger. Global teams of brilliant data geeks pounded out code on big data sets to solve hunger challenges. Palantir used data compiled by the Grameen Foundation on crop blights, soil, and farmer feedback to generate a real-time heat map that helps farmers identify where crop infestations are happening. Farmers also receive warning messages about looming crop diseases and where they may strike, giving farmers the chance to harvest early. PinApple's website helps farmers can input their location for suggestions on the best crops to plant-based on elevation, soil PH, and annual rainfall.
We can't solve food security by the mere push of a button from a programmer in Maputo or a policymaker in Bangladesh. What technology can do is bring information and tools to farmers, processors and consumers in remote corners of the world. Data point by data point, we're reaching those who need it most... one video and SMS at a time.
Tell us what other technologies or social media techniques you're seeing that could defeat hunger. Disagree if you have your reasons. We all have much to learn from one another.
Leave your thoughts here or continue the conversation on Twitter. Join me @MauraAtUSAID and follow Bertini and Glickman @GlobalAgDev; USAID @usaid; USAID's Feed the Future Initiative @FeedtheFuture; Ushahidi @Ushahidi; Project Open Data @ProjectOpenData; Palantir Technologies @palatir; PinApple @PinApple, Kat Townsend @DiploKat; and Nat Manning @NatManning.]]>The Next Mobile Revolution: Boosting Women's Entrepreneurship Via Mobile Moneytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23213262012-12-18T07:25:01-05:002013-02-17T05:12:01-05:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/
Thanks to her friend's suggestion one day, Marion latched onto an idea of selling pre-paid mobile airtime to financially support her parents and four siblings with whom she lives. She started working at a small restaurant as a server, in order to save enough money to break into the business. Marion saved and saved, and began to sell airtime in bits and pieces. Yet by the time she turned 22 and made the decision to do it full-time, she was 70,000 Tanzanian shillings (US$43) short of the 100,000 TZS (US$62) required to finance the initial capital. Marion had nowhere to turn to make up the difference. And now this shortage of cash is keeping her from pursuing what should be a tangible dream - to become an entrepreneur and move into her own home.
Fortunately, new opportunities are emerging that address Marion's challenge.
Mobile technology continues to be an enormous growth industry in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately 3.5million jobs can be attributed to the mobile industry according to GSMA. With the surge in mobile connections around the world, there is rightly a great deal of interest in using the technology to maximize development outcomes. This includes the delivery of key information and health services, the use of mobile money for those who are unbanked, and the ability to establish social and business networks without having to travel great distances. For women like Marion, this is an enticing pairing of potential long-term employment and enhanced livelihood.
Despite the gains mobile telecommunications have had on national economies, there continues to be significant gaps in how much individuals have benefited economically from mobile services and applications. This includes the extent to which women have been able to participate in the retail channels of mobile network operators, beyond the sale of top-up cards and accessories that fetch little profit. These retail chains are not only where basic mobile necessities such as airtime and SIM cards are sold and marketed, but they also serve as the frontlines of the rapidly-growing mobile financial services industry. This ballooning sector includes mobile payments and savings, insurance purchases and conditional cash transfers, services that are traditionally unavailable for the unbanked - particularly women. The business of selling mobile products and services can be an important income stream but, in most markets, women are not participating on par with their male counterparts.
This leaves Marion and her female counterparts at a distinct and, frankly, unnecessary disadvantage.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, in partnership with leading mobile operator Millicom (Tigo), have joined forces on an innovative project to correct this trend and maximise mobile financial service opportunities for women entrepreneurs and their communities throughout Tanzania, Rwanda and Ghana. This public-private partnership will showcase a sustainable and scalable approach to increasing the number of women entrepreneurs working as mobile money agents in the retail networks of mobile operators.
The 18-month partnership will work to address two key challenges that exist throughout the three countries - broad levels of financial exclusion amongst the general population, and lower levels of women's participation in mobile retail chains. Both challenges impact Marion's ability to afford the cost of school, yet the potential mobile solutions broaden her access to financial, health and social services. In becoming a mobile money agent, Marion and other women can begin to redress sub-Saharan Africa's high rates of unbanked - only 12% of the region's adult population has access to any form of formalized banking. They do this by bringing in new mobile money clients and keeping them on-board, largely because of the trustworthiness and relationship-building that women provide.
Together with leading local micro-finance institutions, the project will be working with over 4,000 women to not only increase their income as they conduct mobile money transactions but also improve their financial literacy, business acumen and access to capital - a critical component to business growth that has hampered Marion from launching into it full-time - so that they may establish and expand their own businesses.
Through a series of reduced interest loans and locally-tailored business training, the participating women will receive support that has been elusive to-date in mobile money services, thereby improving their capability, confidence and capital. There are benefits for mobile operators as well when they include women in mobile value chains, as recent research from the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women has confirmed.
It will also have multiplying effects for their families and communities at-large. With this higher-value income stream, thousands of women will have additional funds necessary to invest in their own families, whether that means sending their children to school or paying for medical care or household items. On a larger scale, this improved income might be reinvested in expanding businesses where women can hire additional employees, creating job opportunities for their communities and contributing meaningfully to the local economy. As part of this project, the partners will be assessing the extent to which this is a successful model for mobile operators around the world to replicate, in order to expand mobile money operations and financial inclusion for the unbanked.
This is a new business model that, if proven successful, will achieve positive development outcomes for Marion and her female compatriots, and increased revenue for mobile operators. It applies the best components of both the public and private sectors for enhancing economic growth and equitable participation. For USAID and the Cherie Blair Foundation, we believe that women need increased opportunities in proven growth industries, so that we are not making stand-alone investments. Consider the opportunity that awaits Marion if she can channel income from her mobile money business into a formal education, not just for herself but for her family. This is an opportunity we cannot afford to let pass.
As such, we are tremendously excited to announce this ground-breaking partnership and, together, shape the next mobile revolution - with Marion alongside - in key emerging markets in Africa. We look forward to sharing the project's progress in the coming year.
This article was originally published by Devex Impact, a global initiative of Devex and USAID, that focuses on the intersection of business and global development and connects companies, organizations and professionals to the practical information they need to make an impact.]]>Hacking for Hunger? There's An App for That!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19703882012-10-16T13:02:13-04:002012-12-16T05:12:02-05:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/
Fast forward a decade -- that's five or more lifetimes in technology -- and think about the opportunities the net and mobile phones present. Besides groceries, this technology has the potential to help farmers in developing countries decide what crops to plant, when to plant, and when to harvest. Keeping more people from going to bed hungry each night and preventing kids' growth stunted forever because of lack of critical nutrients. Smart apps could help entrepreneurs to identify simple ways to fill nutritional gaps using basic foods, much like we did in adding Vitamin D to milk in this country. And it can help governments better understand the opportunities for policy improvements that could lead to long term food production yields.
That's why the U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Food Security Open Data Challenge earlier this year. We wanted to encourage and support entrepreneurs from around the world in developing these kinds of apps. While we knew that there were programmers out there with the technical skill to build such apps, we also realized that USAID's food security experts could help point them to some great open-source datasets to use in building their apps.
The use of open data is key. Open data can help keep the price of the final products more affordable while still bringing together large quantities of diverse data. In fact, the Food Security Open Data Challenge is just the latest demonstration of USAID's participation in the U.S. government's Open Data Initiative, an effort to make government information more widely available, accessible and citizen-friendly, whether through mobile phone apps or other tools.
Think about what has happened since the U.S. government released its GPS data. Last year alone, $90 billion of economic activity was unleashed as a result. Think about all the ways we use GPS -- cars, phones, maps. All the new companies that were birthed as a result. Our hope is that by working to release or get released as much Ag data as possible, a similar private sector and jobs explosion in the marketplace here and abroad can happen.
We start with an Ideation Jams, or brainstorming sessions. What is there and what could people do with it? USAID held its first hackathon, reaching out to people from the world to devote a weekend to writing code non stop. We called it USAID's Hacking for Hunger, an online and in-person mashup of volunteer programmers, designers, storytellers and development experts, Hacking for Hunger brought together participants from five countries working around the clock the weekend of September 14-16.
The final results were impressive. They included:
• A website by Sonjara, that links the importance of nutrition to local farming practices. Partnering with the Helen Keller Foundation, they built a recommendation tool using weather, soil, and nutrition open data sets that suggest plants to farm which can provide the nutrients known to be lacking in local communities.
• A tool jointly developed by the Grameen Foundation and Palantir Technologies that analyzes data such as farmer feedback, weather, soil, and market prices to give real-time disease alerts and make suggestions for farming best practices in Uganda.
• PineApple Project, an app originally launched during the NASA Space Apps Challenge, took a great next leap. It can help rural farmers and policy makersdecide what crops to plant and where to plant them. Thanks to Hacking for Hunger, PineApple Project was able to refine and expand its food and farming database with open data sets such as weather, soil PH levels, location data, and market prices of crops.
Yet as great as all of these apps are, none alone will be a magic bullet that solves the world's food security issues. Just like the app I used to order groceries did not itself put food on our table, the power of these apps -- and the Food Security Open Data Challenge overall -- is their ability to share knowledge, help people make decisions, and bring people together for a common cause. It's a great start and hope more will join. Hacking for Hunger -- we are sparking the imagination and entrepreneurial talent of the world to use the new mobile and computing technology to solve one of the world's most devastating problems.
The opinions and views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of the U.S Agency for International Development.]]>Having It All Starts With Defining 'ALL'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16238892012-06-25T15:29:08-04:002012-08-25T05:12:04-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/a very thought-provoking and deeply personal piece on whether women can have it all. We got to wake up with her at 4:20 a.m. on Monday to catch the train to DC and as we listened to her cell phone ring with trouble at home while she was trying to modernize foreign policy. Our heart ached along with hers. Anne-Marie's willingness to share her struggles and bare her family's story makes the conversation about women having it all palpable. In case you don't know, her policy contribution was enormous.
But what is 'ALL' anyways? And who's 'ALL' is it?
I agree with Lisa Belkin that Slaughter's article should be one of the most widely talked about pieces. It continues the conversation that Lisa started in her New York Times Magazine article, "The Opt-Out Revolution." Sylvia Hewlett brought a similar issue up in one of her first books, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest For Children a decade ago. Parts of both of those arguments made me mad and also made be think. Both of these women have continued to write and help everyone understand what's at stake. I am pleased Sheryl Sandberg has raised the issue of ambition with younger women.
Most of all, I hope The Atlantic article spurs thousands of conversations -- with women and their boyfriends, with women and their girlfriends, with executives and their management teams, with entrepreneurs or wanna be business owners, with women and their sons and daughters, with academic deans and their tenure committees and among couples.
Here is where I think the conversation must start: We each must start by doing some soul searching about what the 'ALL' is that we are talking about. And I believe it must be a profoundly personal decision, not an irresponsible or selfish one. Not an answer that wins us awards or the adulation of the media, our family or the people we work with. Those things may come, but if that is why we are primarily doing it, then I know it will be fleeting. We only need to read the news or talk to our neighbors to see the fallout that occurs when fame, fortune or a medal-seeking addiction becomes the centerpiece of our ambition, rather than a soulful pursuit of what gives us the greatest joy.
What I do know is that we need a basket of 'ALL' that we are proud of, that encompasses the life and set of experiences that we want. That makes us jump out of bed in the morning, electrifies our special gifts and even soothes our soul during the lonely and dark moments that always accompany this journey. And one that is filled with grace and gratitude, for if we forget those then we will never understand what joy really is.
The definition of 'ALL' will be a different one for each of us -- as it should be. We just need to know that it will come with its own set of requirements and trade-offs. We can't wish those all away. Anne-Marie underscored how tough some of those can be.
I am not encouraging women to limit their ambitions. I think going for it 'ALL' makes for an incredibly interesting and fun life. And yes, do we need to make some changes in the workplace and in our home so that everyone has a fair chance at having their version of 'ALL?' Absolutely. We still have way too much race, gender, age and cultural bias that we don't even realize. University of Washington Tony Greenwald and Harvard's Mahzarin Banaji's groundbreaking work on unconscious bias is so eye-opening. Over 14 million people have taken one of their free tests to see how much we are walking around with.
Too few women in the world have the chances that Anne-Marie and I have had in our life. And all of us need to work hard to create a more free and just world that allows everyone to contribute. Great ideas come from all places. I know that the most vexing problems in the world today can be solved if we empower more people -- men and women. Look what crowd sourcing has already brought us -- new breakthroughs. New leaders.
In A Strange Stirring , Stephanie Coontz reports on two interesting developments. The first is that housework is still not being shared equitably by husbands and wives but it's getting better -- at least in the U.S.. The second is that women still have to publish more papers to get tenure. There is much at home, in our workplace, in our university and our government that we, as women, must do.
Like Ann-Marie, I made sacrifices when I went to Washington, leaving behind a husband and house in Seattle for an amazing set of public service opportunities four years ago. My kids were grown but they each bounced back for an extended stay on my couch in DC or our home in Seattle. You never stop being a mom, and seeing my husband only every three weeks after a very long plane ride never gets easier. When my beloved mother is raced to the hospital too often by 911, I wondered about my choices. There are no easy answers.
I am also mindful of the other side of the trade-off -- what we get when we give something up. To play a key role in re-imaging foreign assistance, developing ways to drive faster, broader and more lasting results that do not depend on USG support forever is a privilege for me. President Obama has pushed us to create the conditions where foreign aid is no longer needed through broad economic growth. Secretary Clinton knew how powerfully public-private partnerships could accelerate outcomes and USAID Administrator Shah drove innovative change faster than any previous Administrator had.
As Anne-Marie did, we all have to periodically take stock of the career, life and love choices that are before us. Nothing is static. We are always getting more input. How are we doing? Are we still loving what we are doing? How are our kids doing? What about our health? Oh yeah, when do we fit that in?
The one thing I know is that the 'ALL' will change and should change overtime. It will move up and it will move down. We will throw out some of the elements in our ALL basket and we will add new ones. Stay tuned as surprising opportunities will also emerge if we hold tight onto our integrity along the way and know what brings us joy.
There will undoubtedly be disappointments -- stumbles and even failures along the way. Lord knows, I am driven to have the fullest life and it has come with its share of bloody noses. Life doesn't spare any of us. There are no do-overs with our kids and we can only hope that they will grow with our stumbles as well.
We must carry our own basket of 'ALL' and make sure it is ours. We are the only one that can look in the mirror and answer the question, 'was it worth it?'
But that is why if we are really clear on what matters and laser focused we can come as close to 'having it all' as one life can give us. Now go fill up your dance card.
The opinions and views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of the U.S Agency for International Development.]]>The Hunt for Impact Investmentstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14571152012-04-30T00:00:18-04:002012-06-29T05:12:01-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/
It is no different in the developing world. After JP Morgan estimated in 2010 that the potential capital market for impact investing -- enterprises that would deliver positive social impact -- was between $400 billion and $1 trillion, many investors began to believe they could do well by doing good. The hunt for those fish was on.
Impact investors surged forward with capital, ready to support the pioneering entrepreneurs creating fortunes and development gains at the base of the pyramid (BoP). They cast their nets wide hoping to scoop up some great deals. But it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a shortage of enterprises that can deliver both the social and the financial returns the investors seek. Today, here's where we stand: a boatload of capital, but too few investment-grade deals. While capacity may follow capital, it can't do it alone.
This week, more than 250 high-level investors, business executives, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and academics are convening in Washington to ask the important question: how can public and private actors work together to unleash the potential of the impact economy?
Last week, Monitor and Acumen Fund shed light on this problem in a Gates Foundation-funded report "From Blueprint to Scale: The Case for Philanthropy in Impact Investing." The report breaks down the pipeline problem into three constraints investors are currently facing: especially modest margins, long times to scale, and high risk of impact ventures.
The report called for a solution that we at USAID have helped pioneer: putting grant dollars in trailblazing social enterprises to get the good deals flowing. Without initial support from government to test and scale their work, the report argues that, "much impact capital will continue to sit on the sidelines or be deployed in sub-optimal opportunities for impact, and fail to achieve its potential in driving powerful new market-based solutions for the problems of poverty."
We have an opportunity too great to be missed. So, to help impact investors identify winners, USAID, in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, Prudential Financial and Deloitte, launched a Global Impact Investing Rating System (GIIRS). The rating system measures the social and environmental impacts of companies and funds, to provide a credible, independent evaluation of impact, as S&P does for credit risk. In just six months, 53 funds with $1.9 billion in assets under management have joined to invest in GIIRS-rated enterprises.
In July 2010, USAID announced the Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) to do precisely what Monitor calls for. DIV is a special USAID mechanism that directly sources and scales a growing portfolio of cutting edge "impact enterprises" -- market-based social enterprises that have the potential to provide financial returns and yield positive social and economic return.
DIV welcomes private companies, entrepreneurs, and social enterprises to apply to DIV for any of the three stages of DIV grant funding: (i) up to $100,000 to pilot a new business model or product; (ii) up to $1 million to do a larger stage market test and prove a business model; and (iii) up to $15 million to scale big -- most often, to multiple countries. From the very beginning, DIV plans to exit, much like DFID exited after early stage grant support to M-PESA, the very successful mobile banking program in Kenya.
DIV's niche of providing direct grant (and early stage) support to impact enterprises to help them prove their business model and scale fills an important gap for the impact economy sector, and helps build the pipeline of viable enterprises that can attract investment capital. Examples from the DIV portfolio highlight the kinds of investments the program is making in impact enterprises that can feed directly into the impact investment pipeline.
With $300,000 of Stage 2 support, private company Mera Gao Micro Grid Power (MGP) will construct and operate 40 new village-level micro grids, and provide its customers with light sources and mobile charging stations. MGP will also evaluate its impact on school enrollment, health, and household income. In 2010, the total number of India's unelectrified households stood at 61 million. Off-grid demand continues to be unmet by modern power services; and communities resort to low quality sources of energy such as kerosene, wood, diesel, candles, and disposable batteries. MGP provides its customers with more than 10 times the amount of light from kerosene. The project will reach 4,000 new customers and 20,000 new beneficiaries in Sitapur districts of Uttar Pradesh, India. MGP was just named one of MIT Technical Review's Top 10 Emerging Technologies.
With less than $100,000 of Stage 1 support from DIV, start up social enterprise Sanergy will expand its award-winning, financially sustainable sanitation service delivery system in Kenya's urban slums. In the 12-month pilot, Sanergy will build and franchise a dense network of 60 low-cost and clean toilets to slum residents. Designed by MIT engineers and architects, the modular hygienic toilets can be assembled in one day and are franchised to local entrepreneurs and local youth groups, who earn income through affordable pay-per-use fees, membership plans, and sales of complementary products. Revenue from the organic fertilizer and biogas energy add to the model's profitability. The 10 million residents of Kenya's slums create a potential $72 million annual market. Within five years, Sanergy plans to expand to 3,390 centers reaching 600,000 slum dwellers -- creating jobs and profit, while aiming to reduce the incidence of diarrhea by 40 percent.
Three out of four people in Sub-Saharan Africa lack access to electricity. In Tanzania, 86 percent of the country's 43 million people are off the energy grid, and instead spend an annual $790 million on lighting and basic electricity needs. Those without grid access depend primarily on imported kerosene for lighting, and expensive, often distant charging business to power their cell-phones. EGG-energy is an award-winning private venture, started by MIT and Harvard graduate students, that bridges the "last mile" power distribution gap to bring affordable, reliable and clean energy in Tanzania. EGG-energy charges small lead acid batteries and rents them out to individual customers, after EGG technicians install electrical and lighting systems. Each battery can power 3 lamps, 1 cell phone charger, and 1 radio for 3 to 5 nights. With support of $100,000 from DIV, EGG-energy will demonstrate the business proposal of its model of franchising modular solar hubs to local entrepreneurs to charge home batteries.
This morning at her Global Impact Economy Forum, Secretary Clinton announced that USAID was partnering to grow this market even faster with of the most important pioneers in the social entrepreneur field. Through a Global Development Alliance (GDA) the Skoll Foundation and USAID agreed together to invest $44.5 million over the next few years to scale promising ventures.
The alliance marries DIV's pioneering approach at USAID with Skoll's decade-long experience cultivating the world's most successful social entrepreneurs. Through the new alliance, Skoll and USAID will identify high-impact entrepreneurs who have demonstrated innovations and sustainable business models that are ripe for scale. We will expect from every grant an evaluation of their impact using cutting-edge methods that will help deliver lessons learned about what works, to attract even more scaling support for the solutions with proven results.
Bill Drayton, the founder of Ashoka, once said, "social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or even teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry." Inspired by their spirit, USAID is working hard to revolutionize the way we support the pioneers, giving them the chance to innovate, test, and grow. It is the key to unlocking billions of dollars that lie in wait.]]>Crowd-Sourcing Development Innovation in Indiatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11609162011-12-20T17:11:47-05:002012-02-19T05:12:01-05:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/innovation hub for the West.
In light of this innovation boom, Administrator Raj Shah challenged us to think about how we could harness the enormous creativity and frugal innovation found in India, and how we could partner to find and scale high-impact development solutions that drive down the cost of development and get results faster--not just for India but for the rest of the developing world, and even here in the United States. USAID has had great success in significantly reducing HIV transmission rates and was within reach of eradicating polio in India. How could we do more of that while thinking globally, not just locally?
We didn't have to look further than Lalitesh Katragadda, who is an Indian citizen who earned his robotics PhD at Carnegie Mellon. Lalitesh joined Google when it was a start-up, and then returned to India to both grow the engineering talent base and search for inexpensive ways to solve some of the world's most troubling development challenges. With a group of volunteers he came up with a way to get the world to map its neighborhoods. The Pakistanis used the new Google Map Maker during the devastating floods last year to locate 800,000 people. They told Lalitesh that the maps helped them save an estimated 250,000 flood victims' lives, all with a crowd sourcing tool. This is an inexpensive solution at scale. This is what is sorely needed.
The Millennium Alliance: An India-US Innovation Partnership for Global Development will raise $50 million in seed capital, grants, loans, guarantees, and technical support for base of the pyramid solutions. The Alliance will be modeled on USAID's Development Innovation Ventures to deliver maximum development impact by focusing on cost-effective solutions, rigorous testing and evaluation, and transition to scale via public and private pathways. USAID has committed $7.5 million to help launch the partnership with the Indian businesses matching it.
We knew FICCI was the right partner when we saw on the Boardroom entry wall a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and quote from his FICCI address in 1927, which read, "The industry should regard themselves as trustees of the poor." Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Secretary General of FICCI embodies that motto- smart business and caring about those currently left behind.
Together we are eager to create a new, transformational relationship with India that marries USAID's continuing and sustained efforts to make American taxpayer dollars go further and India's potential as a global innovation laboratory to lift up the world's poor.]]>Let's Test a Life-Saving Balloontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10337912011-11-09T16:04:55-05:002012-01-09T05:12:02-05:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/150 new babies will have been born across the globe. For many families, it will be one of the most special minutes of their lives. For many mothers, it's a moment of joy -- but it can easily turn into a heartbreaking nightmare.
On June 26, 1981 I gave birth to my first child, Finn. Like many new moms, I started losing blood, and lots of it. A medical team managed to stop the bleeding, but not before my red blood cell count plummeted. In spite of the scare, I was the lucky mom -- I was in a teaching hospital in New York City.
Worldwide, a woman dies from an uncontrollable postpartum hemorrhage every four minutes, totaling 140,000 deaths per year. This complication is the leading cause of death for new moms, and is responsible for 25 percent of maternal mortality cases. It should be no surprise that most cases occur in the developing world -- most babies are born there and, given more limited resources, many new mothers in developing countries do not have access to the skilled, live-saving medical support that I had.
There is a medical device called a balloon tamponade that can help save a mother from excessive blood loss. Tamponades are effective almost every time they are used. However, with costs ranging from $77 to $312 for a single-use tamponade, they are prohibitively expensive for widespread use in developing countries. It is a familiar story: We know how to save lives, but high costs keep our hands tied.
We could lose hundreds of thousands more moms while we wait for the price of tamponades to come down. Or, we could be on the hunt for breakthrough solutions to development problems that are far less expensive. Here at the U.S. Agency for International Development, we started a Development Innovation Ventures program (DIV) to go the second route. DIV offers grants to innovative new development solutions, and a Seattle-based global health organization with reach into 70 low-income countries applied.
Smart and clever researchers at the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH) designed a safe, simple balloon tamponade that, at less than $10 per device, would be affordable in the developing world. The tamponade stops hemorrhaging and controls uterine bleeding at as much as a 97 percent reduction in cost. It's these kinds of cost savings that we search for at DIV: foreign assistance that produces less expensive ways to improve lives.
With the $100,000 award from USAID's Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) PATH and partners will develop, test and validate product requirement specifications and a low-cost manufacturing feasibility plan for a safe, effective tamponade device that meets international standards for medical devices. A PATH team will conduct user-based evaluations of the design in Ghana.
Should this device prove successful, the results could be transformative for mothers across the world. These tamponades are a high-impact, non-surgical, proven intervention for postpartum hemorrhaging. When a balloon tamponade is inserted into the uterus and filled with water or saline, it can stop bleeding within 10 to 15 minutes.
Through DIV, USAID invests in compelling development solutions that dramatically lower the cost from current best practice. DIV tests the solutions using cutting-edge analytical methods, and if the evidence shows that the solution works, DIV supports the project to scale up to development grand slams.
Finn and I, along with his dad and sister, celebrated his 30th birthday. For 140,000 other kids born that year, their moms were not around to share in that milestone, or any others. At USAID, we are thrilled to partner with innovators who find inexpensive ways to help birth be a source of lasting joy for all families.]]>WASH for Life: Testing Promising Solutions and Scaling Proven Successes in Water, Sanitation and Hygienetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9040072011-07-19T20:07:41-04:002011-09-18T05:12:01-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/ Slumdog Millionaire brought the issue of unsafe sanitation to the silver screen. Audiences cringed as young Jamal is forced to jump into the open pit of feces in which he was previously seen relieving himself. But such scenes are not simply fodder for movie-goers and awards ceremonies. Today, 2.6 billion people lack access to safe sanitation. Of these, 1.1 billion people practice open defecation, meaning they have no sanitation facilities at all. Unsafe sanitation is not only unpleasant, it can be deadly. Improper waste disposal can pollute the drinking water supply, spreading water-borne disease. More than 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and those with some access cannot always rely on it being available or clean.
These failings have a profound effect on the health of people around the world. Proper access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services is critical to saving lives. Contaminated drinking water infects people with diarrheal disease, typhoid, polio, guinea worm disease, schistosomiasis, Hepatitis A and E, and cholera. Diarrhea alone kills almost 2 million people around the world every year, of which 1.5 million are children. Children suffering from these diseases can become undernourished, resulting in stunting and often, death. Inadequate access to basic WASH services also damages the economy: water-related disease is costly, sick workers are less productive, weak children cannot attend school, and improper waste disposal can harm farmland, making it more difficult to grow food. Women and girls are disproportionately affected as they often must travel miles to collect water for the family, giving up the chance to work or go to school. While USAID and partners have been working to improve basic WASH services to save lives around the globe, we still strive to promote the importance of activities such as hand washing and point-of-use chlorination, introduce life-saving solutions at lower cost, and elevate the importance of sanitation and hygiene in the WASH triad. Simple, inexpensive measures that are massively deployed can save millions of lives.
Earlier today, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President of the Global Development Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and I announced WASH for Life, a $17 million initiative which aims to address these very challenges. With co-funding from the Gates Foundation, USAID will use Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), which produces development outcomes more effectively and more cost-efficiently while managing risks and obtaining leverage by focusing on rigorous testing, evidence, and scale, to solicit breakthrough ideas that will dramatically improve access to WASH services for the poor. Over the next four years, WASH for Life aims to identify and rigorously test new WASH technologies and delivery models, and then scale proven successes across multiple countries to reach millions of people. WASH for Life is particularly interested in potential solutions which operate in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya and/or Nigeria; address issues in the sanitation and hygiene sectors in particular; and affect people earning under $2 a day.
We view this partnership as an important validation of DIV's approach, which systematically seeks, tests, incubates, and mainstreams cost-effective, breakthrough ideas to substantially improve the lives of people in developing countries. Leadership through this type of innovation is a key piece of USAID Forward and DIV aims to be both a model and incubator for other donors, host countries, and organizations looking to use proven successes to impact people in developing countries. We are proud to have the support of the Gates Foundation as we seek to ensure that open defecation is restricted only to the movie screens of theaters worldwide.
]]>USAID and ISC Celebrate Anniversaries with Ben and Jerry's!tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8833912011-06-24T17:10:06-04:002011-08-24T05:12:01-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/
Today, we know that investing in simple, innovative, targeted interventions can save lives for pennies on the dollar, help prevent conflict, eradicate diseases, and increase prosperity that helps create markets.
Partnership is critically important to USAID's ability achieve development goals by extending the reach and effectiveness of its programs and we have had more than 1000 partnerships globally over the last decade. Today, the development community is rapidly growing to include NGOs, corporate and faith-based leaders, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, students and universities who are focused on the challenges of the developing world. For 20 years, the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC) has been one of these organizations -- working hard to address development challenges.
ISC's mission is to give people the tools and skills they need to inspire active citizenship, protect the environment, and tackle climate change. This year ISC is also commemorating an important milestone - its 20th anniversary. ISC and USAID have partnered together in 17 countries on 31 projects since 1992. Today, in Serbia and Kosovo, ISC and USAID work with nonprofits to help them better represent the needs of ordinary people and become more influential partners with business and government.
Partnership is a key reason why USAID has achieved so many successes, so on our 50th anniversary we are celebrating the future of partnerships. Today, with the help of Jerry Greenfield, ISC Board Treasurer and co-founder of Ben and Jerry's, we commemorated ISC and USAID's Anniversaries with an ice cream social event for the staffs of USAID and ISC with USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, ISC President George Hamilton, and Jerry Greenfield.
"It's so inspiring to meet people like the staff at ISC and USAID who are incredibly dedicated, committed and have a vision to make the world a better place to live. I am consistently blown away by how smart, creative, and strategic they are. The least I can do is bring ice cream," said Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.
For USAID, this anniversary is a time to reflect on service and an opportunity to continue to deliver meaningful results by cultivating future alliances for development. Together, as partners, we can create a safer world that strives to let all people realize the potential that freedom from life threatening disease, extreme poverty and repressive governance can bring.
]]>Global Engagement: An Approach for Mutual Respect and Mutual Interesttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5516872010-04-26T09:57:55-04:002011-05-25T16:15:25-04:00Maura O'Neillhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/maura-o/
Cary Dillman in Bloomington, Indiana tells a similar story. For 40 years, his company Dillman Farm made craft butters, jellies, and preserves. They were yummy. He was proud of the jobs he had created and the families that were supported by his business. After spending $100,000 of savings to repackage his products in 2008, the credit crunch cut Cary's cash flow. It left the lights dimming and the pink slips stacking up . Five banks turned him down when he went looking for help.
In Shamim's case it was a USAID program that helped her with the design and business skills needed to launch her business. Cary turned to the Small Business Administration. Today Shamim has over fifty people working for her. Sales are up at Dillman Farm and its products are in more stores, including large chains. Cary reports that the SBA loan saved his business.
I think about Shamim's and Cary Dillman's stories as we approach the first anniversary of President Obama's seminal speech in Cairo about U.S. engagement with countries with significant Muslim populations. This creative and courageous mother of three living in an industrial city in Punjab and the determined Indiana small businessman share the same aspiration- a better life for themselves and their families. We may dress differently. We may speak a different language but this aspiration is one that bind us together all over the world.
Today and tomorrow we are delivering one of the key actions the President outlined in Cairo: a global Summit on Entrepreneurship. The President is bringing together approximately 200 successful entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries to talk about ways to get more people involved in business and social entrepreneurship; build networks; and create partnerships that advance entrepreneurship. That is, to provide the same opportunities to improve people's lives abroad that we enjoy at home, like the examples of Shamim and Cary Dillman. And we know along the way it will create more trading opportunities for U.S. companies and more hope for a less war torn future.
For USAID, President Obama's call for global engagement is an exciting opportunity to share our hopes, dreams and knowledge about creating new businesses. We will move away from what Secretary Clinton called "patronage," to true partnerships. A primary focus of our foreign assistance should be the development of local institutions, communities, and partnerships to create more independence. We must insist that programs put people on a path to self-sufficiency, not long-term dependence. We are more secure in America when people around the world can feed themselves and are investing in their communities.
Such economic growth can transform developing societies, letting them emerge from dependence on foreign aid and generate the resources necessary to finance their own development. It helps bring about a more stable world with self-sufficient countries that can, in turn, buy more goods from America's businesses and be better partners with the United States. And proof of how this can work abounds.
Jordan provides one such example. In the late 90's Jordan's financial sector was outdated and didn't have much infrastructure. Basic financial data was unavailable and investments were lagging. In 1999, USAID and the U.S. Treasury initiated policy reform and institution-building programs aimed at improving opportunities for the Jordanian people. Wide area networks were constructed to connect hundreds of brokers, investors and companies. By 2007 the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) had been transformed.
Today more than half of the ownership of ASE securities is Jordanian, there are now one million Jordanian investors, and approximately $6.2 billion has been added to the wealth of one million Jordanian people through this project. This is real money in real people's pockets. Two way trade between the US and Jordan has grown to $2 billion and it is an important diplomatic partner.
President Obama has challenged all federal agencies to expand our global engagement and development. He has challenged us to seek new ways of building people to people and business to business connections. At USAID, we're reaching out to all sorts of people from think tanks, non profits, our implementing partners, and to activists to craft innovative ideas to solve critical global challenges. We're expanding our conversation with other international donors, philanthropists and religious leaders to gain greater understanding of the communities we serve. And for them to understand us.
For USAID, entrepreneurship is a key component of this effort. Whether you live in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the US Midwest or Southeast we all want to be able to take an idea we have and grow a business. As part of the Summit, we're announcing a number of programs that highlight USAID's commitment and excitement about global entrepreneurship. The promise it has for creating more jobs and more security here and abroad. It is vital that we continue to engage and deliver significant results for which the American people can be proud.
We look forward to President Obama's Summit on Entrepreneurship on April 26th and 27th . Tune in to the live streaming. You never know what new ideas will be hatched when a bunch of entrepreneurs get together. We welcome the opportunity to work with the world's leading entrepreneurs, other federal agencies, and envoys from the U.S. private sector in order to take the next major step in deepening our global engagement.
]]>