Entrepreneurship in Central America

Hello Blakeley Blog,

I just finished my first two weeks with TechnoServe in Managua, Nicaragua. TechnoServe is an International NGO that works to improve the lives of business owners and farmers. Their motto is, "Business Solutions to Poverty." TechnoServe works throughout Latin America, Africa, and India. 

I am working closely with a project called Impulsa Tu Empresa - in English "Boost Your Business." Impulsa Tu Empresa is a business accelerator program to help grow small and growing businesses. Entrepreneurs entering the program do between $20,000-$2,000,000 USD in sales per year and on average have 14 employees.

Broadly, the program works like this: Entrepreneurs first work with TechnoServe "technicians" to develop a growth strategy. This lasts about three months. Then, these technicians work with the individual businesses on implementation. This is called "aftercare." The program is one year long. Most of the 2015-2016 cohort is just finishing up. In this region, the program is running in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. 

Officially, I am part of the TechonServe Volunteer Consultant Program. TechnoServe calls these people "VolCons." My consulting assignment is to work with their Central American offices on their entrepreneurship strategy for the region. Over the next two months I will be traveling around the region talking to entrepreneurs about their experience starting and growing their business in order to recommend the best intervention strategies.

This past week, however, I got the chance to join another project team to see the work TechnoServe is doing with smallholder dairy farmers. This project is called GANE and is in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Many of the farms we visited were located around the city of Wappy. We talked with farmers about GANE and challenges facing smallholder famers in the region. TechnoServe works throughout the supply chain. This meant that we also met with microfinance institutions, cooperatives, a mayor of a small city, and cheese and yogurt producers. I am not a dairy expert, so it was interesting to learn about things like incentivizing "trazabilidad" ("traceability" - tracking cattle with ear tags), and strategies for optimizing pasture quality.

Overall, being in the field was a great experience. I met some of the people TechnoServe works with got a better feel for the operations of the organization.

La Fundacion para la Innovacion Agraria

This summer I will be working with La Fundacion para la Innovacion Agraria (FIA), or in English, The Foundation for the Innovation of Agriculture. This is an organization that provides Chilean farmers with climate-smart agriculture technology to mitigate climate change and stimulate development in rural communities.  My role over the course of eight weeks will be to propose a new line of tools for potential development in Chile.

Specifically, this work includes understanding the current instruments and tools used in Chile financed by FIA and other organisations, such as the Chilean Ministry of Environment and Agriculture. Of particular emphasis is finding tools that will work specifically for Chilean farmers and the Chilean cultural context. This, in combination with understanding what tools are being used elsewhere, will serve as a foundation for this new proposal.

Currently, I am in St. George’s, Grenada at the Blue Growth Conference, hosted by the Government of Grenada and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This conference serves to give me a better understanding of what kinds of tools are being used in the realm of climate smart technology and systems, for the comparative part of my work for FIA. This is a great opportunity to kick off my internship with FIA, meeting with and learning from the leaders in this space. Of particular interest have been the GIS and debt-for-nature conversion tools, which are relatively newer and something I will explore further over the summer.  

Experiencing María la Baja: Empowerment and Local Associations as Engines of Development in Colombia’s Montes de María

A couple of weeks after my internship with Ayuda en Acción (AeA) began, I traveled with the AeA team to the community of María la Baja in Montes de María. The purpose of the visit was to evaluate the performance of the local NGO "Corporación de Desarrollo Solidario" (CDS) in pushing forward the objectives outlined in their Triennial Intervention Plan (PIT).

Despite having analyzed María la Baja’s PIT the previous week, it was shocking to feel that I knew nothing about the place, about the processes that were taking place. Yes, I had read about the region’s needs. Yes, I knew what projects were being implemented. Yes, I was briefed on CDS’s accomplishments in previous years. However, when I arrived to María la Baja, I felt that I had missed something huge: the essence of María la Baja and its people. The paramount difference between reading a document and actually experiencing that specific reality was astounding. 

Experiencing what “empowerment”, “advocacy” and “associativity” actually look like simply blew me away. As one of the regions of Colombia that were more severely struck by armed conflict, María la Baja endured decades of displacement, disappearances, mass murders, paramilitarism, poverty and complete state abandonment. Despite of, or maybe in response to, this devastating past, advocacy and local associations have become the core of all the processes that take place in the community. It was as if years of devastation led them to believe that it was up to them, and up to them alone, to make things better. Peasant leaders, youth, teachers, and women associations entirely empowered of their processes: working together, brainstorming, drafting plans to be passed to municipal authorities.

In addition to the tenacity and determination of the people of María la Baja, CDS has, without a doubt, had a central role in helping community members see themselves as the holders of rights and agents of their development. CDS is a truly base organization that has worked for decades in the region having horizontality, empowerment, work with youth and local associations as its pillars. To give a sense of the air that is breathed in the community, during my days in María la Baja many men and women came up to me, introduced themselves and asked me who I was and why I was there. It was interesting because it wasn’t the unfortunate, but common, vertical relationship between aid agencies and communities. It was a one to one conversation. They had questions, they had priorities, they envisioned themselves in certain ways and were working persistently to materialize these projections.  

Riding at the back seat of a motorcycle in a dusty road, at 95°F, surrounded by mosquitoes, and not knowing what we would have as our next meal, I felt complete, fulfilled, inspired. It was such a blessing to be able to experience a facet of my country that I had never experienced, to listen to these people’s stories, to learn about how they live and the obstacles they face. I left Montes de María with so many new questions and so many new ideas. Eager to return to Colombia’s burning suns and contribute to improving the wellbeing of communities such as María la Baja. 

Geospatial Data for Development in Peru

As an AidData Summer Fellow hosted by USAID/Peru, I quickly realized the auspicious timing of my fellowship. I was working with USAID to collect and analyze subnational development data in a country where geospatial data had recently become a national priority. Just a few weeks into my fellowship, I attended an event launching the Spatial Data Infrastructure of Peru, known by its spanish acronym, IDEP. I learned that work done by the regional governments to catalogue and publish their datasets for public consumption had been integrated with national data in a single comprehensive platform.

The IDEP initiative is representative of two paradigm shifts in the government of Peru: (1) Applying spatial data analysis to key policy areas like economic growth and domestic security; and (2) Adopting open data norms of access and accessibility. USAID/Peru seeks a similar change in its work with Peruvian NGOs, civil society organizations, and government agencies. Specifically, the Mission aims to develop competencies in geospatial data and analysis in order to improve the design, monitoring, and evaluation of its programming in Peru. This is related to USAID's agency-wide push for a geographic approach to development. As a Blakeley Fellow, I was thrilled to play a small part in helping to advance this long-term goal and to see how one of the world's largest aid agencies was collaborating with Peruvian organizations to advance development.

With over 50 years experience in the country, USAID/Peru has worked closely with the Peruvian government and NGO community on initiatives in the fields of environment, democracy & governance, health, education, and alternative development. However, the Mission has long struggled to effectively answer the question of where they work, which is key to both strategic planning and reporting. Internally, this lack of location information may hinder cooperation between technical offices working in the same geographic areas on interdependent programs. Externally, the organization is not adequately equipped to report subnational activity data and impact to relevant partners or beneficiaries.

Thus, the top priority for the Program Office at USAID/Peru was to develop an online map of all their activities in Peru, at a subnational level. This first involved gathering location information and geocoding activities across four technical offices. To ensure the sustainability of the project, we simultaneously sought to improve data collection and management of all project-related information from budget to geographic location. The design of a new internal activities database was critical in achieving this. Additionally, it was important to train Mission staff in ArcGIS Online, as this software is supported by the USAID GeoCenter in DC.

When I shared the new Activities Database and Map with USAID/Peru staff, I was encouraged by their enthusiasm. Simply seeing where other technical offices were working sparked dialogue. During and after trainings attended by key staff members from each office, we held conversations around spatial questions and how they may inform the Mission's development objectives in Peru.

But what does all this mean for local organizations who implement these projects? On one hand, USAID relies on its partners in Peru to report accurate location information so they may utilize GIS to inform investment decisions. More importantly, however, USAID now has the capacity to help its many partners monitor their progress, communicate their impact, and plan for future projects. Given the national focus on sharing geospatial data in Peru, I hope USAID/Peru and its implementing partners will continue to develop their capacity and ultimately reach more Peruvians with development solutions.

Assisting Brazil on its path to become the country of the future

"Brazil is the country of the future – and always will be.” So goes a saying recognizing that despite Brazil’s great potential, the country is stuck in structural problems.

Five years ago, Brazil was on the rise, looking into a bright future fueled by economic growth and the prospects of becoming a major oil exporter. This mindset has changed given that the economy is shrinking by up to 1.5% in 2015; the Real has lost over half of its US Dollar value during the past four years; inflation is scratching double digits; corruption lingers in the highest levels of the political elite; human rights abuses in the favelas and towards minorities remain the rule; and the challenges of the next mega-event, the 2016 Olympics, are around the corner.

Up until today, Brazil has failed to translate its potential, ranging from its young population of 200 million, to massive natural resources and enormous soft power, into sustainable economic and  social policies. Curiously, the largest food exporter in the world is not able to feed its own population. The country of roughly the size of the EU is troubled with distributing its abundant territory. Brazil's sweet water reserves are enormous, but major cities remain without water. These problems, together with social disparity, inefficient public institutions, and shocking security problems animated young Brazilians to take to the streets in 2013 to protest investments in soccer stadiums instead of education and public transportation. 

It is a crucial moment to make Brazil more competitive through wise investment policies, as well as advanced transparency, education and public infrastructure. This is why I decided to intern for the Brazil Office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), a German NGO dedicated to political freedom and economic development. Operating out of Rio de Janeiro and funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, KAS has a track record training social entrepreneurs, as well as supporting transparency and socioeconomic development.

During my time at KAS, I was able to experience the full scope of work of the foundation abroad. I was impressed with the expertise of the analysts ranging from security to economic development. KAS is uniquely positioned, offering access to both communities and policymakers. By bringing stakeholders together, KAS aims to empower small businesses to be engines of growth by helping them to shape mechanisms to finance infrastructure projects, by streamlining local requirements to encourage investment, and by considering community needs. Hereby, the foundation is focusing on a number of innovative projects. Let me present you some of them: 

- "Virtual Democracy" -  The Internet and social media is gaining increasing importance and is leading to many social dynamics. KAS wants to understand and promote the impact of social media and innovative governance tools on policymaking and institutional effectiveness on all levels of the government. Hereby, KAS is initiating dialogue with various experts across the country to discuss how governments, businesses and entrepreneurs are reacting and adapting to these technological and social changes.

- "CB 27" - Brazil has become a front runner in fighting climate change and reducing carbon emissions. However, the country faces major differences in coping with its proclaimed goals. While states in the south of Brazil have proven very successful to implement environmentally friendly policies, such as recycling initiatives, the northern parts of the country (especially in the Amazon) do not have the capabilities to match the success of the south. In order to share best practices among the local stakeholders KAS brings together all of the 27 state governments, along with experts of the private and NGO sector on a regular basis.

- “PSDB Mulher” - The aim is to enable politically engaged women - and those who are keen to become so - to fight for their interests on the political agenda with confidence and to become more involved in opinion-building processes.

Interestingly, just a few weeks before I finished my internship, KAS received a major EU grant that can support projects for the following years. The foundation is currently seeking for a right partner at the municipal level to initiate and implement projects relating to economic and social reforms. While the focus of this grant is rather vague, a KAS team is working to specify where the money can have the most impact. It is amazing how much effort it takes to apply and manage these grants. But having worked with an enthusiastic team of young social entrepreneurs dedicated to Brazil's future, I am convinced that KAS will have a continuing impact on the country's development.

The time at KAS has been very rewarding, not only because I learned a lot about project management, stakeholder management and innovation through the work with my highly experienced colleagues. But also because I believe that I have become part of the solution to some of Brazil's problems. Of course, a German NGO can only have a limited impact on the country's development, but I am certain that we are helping to move Brazil into the right direction to become a country of the future.

Let's make data systems more inclusive.

Data is not for donors. 
Data is not for headquarters.
Data is not for evaluators. 

From paper to Excel to cloud-based systems such as Salesforce, Dev Results, and dhis2, there are currently various tools and systems social impact organizations are using to monitor and collect data to meet their programming and reporting needs. No matter which platform organizations use, a major dilemma with current monitoring systems or software is unequal representation throughout the implementation process, particularly due to an increased focus on the outputs of the tool being implemented. Under these conditions, the process fails to adequately represent an organization's data flow, which begins and ends with the everyday users themselves. More often than not, folks who actually enter data are not part of the decision-making process, design, or adaptation process of new tools. They are simply involved at the end, during training. Not only is this a consulting and implementation dilemma, but also one for designers and developers, who receive feedback from an ailing process. What’s currently dead wrong about the thinking and monitoring systems available today are that they are marketed to, and sometimes built for, the wishes of donors and decision-makers. This leads to systems and implementers flaunting eye-catching graphs, mobile apps, time savings or increased productivity. These selling points are never as valuable as having clean data or strong user adoption, which cannot be achieved without equal and consistent input from an organization's entire user base. Without clean data and strong user adoption, the international development field is a junkyard of failed, drawn out, abandoned or over budget tool implementations. In order for new tools and systems to be more effective, the missing requirement is a more inclusive process in how these tools are marketed, developed, and implemented. 

The day in and day out programmatic level is the most critical part of your organizations data flow. In order to truly get the most out of any monitoring tool or system, data collection needs to be optimized for your organizations daily data needs, specifically for the roles of enumerators, secretaries, and database administrators. These roles should be at the table during the selection and decision-making process for a new  tool or system, and must be involved throughout the implementation. Once tools and processes are optimized from this perspective, results can flow upstream, providing a stronger data chain with more proficient users. Aside from saving time and money spent on fixing and updating systems, this will lead to stronger user adoption, which must be a top priority for any implementation. 

Furthermore, not only is the decision-making and implementation process often flawed, but the thinking that goes behind implementing a new monitoring tool or system also does not usually flow downstream. This has to do with the questions folks want and need answers to across different levels within the organization. The thinking and questions that a monitoring and evaluation manager, CIO, or country director wish to answer should flow downstream towards end users, regardless of the tool, system or software being used. As new tools are implemented, the thinking behind their purpose typically gets diluted into simple training for use down the road. Throughout an implementation, this can be improved by giving all users the necessary agency to adapt tools and the ability to provide feedback at any time during the process. Listen to this feedback and address it. Enumerators, secretaries, and database administrators should feel that the better the data they can collect and manage to answer the questions they have, get the insights they need, and generate the reports they want, the more headquarters, donors, and the international development sector as a whole can work towards better results. This awareness and proficiency with new tools will allow an organization to take full advantage of healthy monitoring and evaluation systems. 

In order to effectively use any platform, we must work to make data processes, data thinking, and data implementations more inclusive. This begins and ends with the everyday user. 

Funding in the middle: Rwanda and the age of social impact

This summer I have had the pleasure of working at Inkomoko, a business accelerator for Rwandan SMEs, which operates under the umbrella of AEC (African Entrepreneur Collective).  As part of their core set of business services, Inkomoko supplies SMEs with a mentor, usually a graduate student or young professional, to help the business grow.  So, when I arrived on the 25th of June, all I knew was that I was going to be embedded with a pork processor and a rice miller.  Being a central part of Inkomo’s package has been both an honor and a responsibility that has given me unrivaled access to the bustling and sometimes troubled world of Rwandan entrepreneurs in the agriculture sector.  

It is hard to distil 7 weeks (so far) into one blog post, so instead I will stick to one main observation.  Rwanda has a funding gap.  Simply put, interest rates are too high for most businesses to take out loans, which leaves the government, non-profits and foundations trying to pick up the slack. Though my time here has been limited, I have now seen this system function and sometimes fail.  Below is a slice from one client this summer.

The Rice Mill

HPS&B is a medium sized rice mill located in the Ruhango district of Rwanda about one and a half hours from Kigali.  They process paddy rice from the countryside into white rice for mass consumption across the district and the capital alike.  Started with personal funds and small loans from Inkomoko they grew tremendously in the first two years of operation.  But at the end of the 2014 season they realized that without a large injection of working capital they were doomed to small profits and slow growth, producing rice well above the international market price. 

Unfortunately at 18% interest with hidden fees, conventional bank loans were simply not an option.  Worse yet, rice is produced throughout the season, with continuous purchases necessary to keep sufficient stocks of raw material. So, paying back a loan month by month is a difficult prospect, rather they would need a loan they could repay at the end of the season at a reasonable rate. 

Different financing, different metrics

As luck would have it, just before I arrived, HPS&B was able to secure patient debt financing from two non-conventional sources.  The first was AEC, which offered its first mid-sized loan ever to HPS&B.  Though USD 50,000 may seem like a lot for a beginning rice mill, this was still only enough to buy and process less than a quarter of their desired seasonal output.  Though a seemingly tall order, they eventually secured a loan to fulfill most of their needs from the RaboBank foundation at 8% interest for 5 months, which was disbursed in May.

AEC’s loan was only available because of HPS&B’s ongoing involvement in Inkomoko.  As a result of this long and fruitful multi-year arrangement AEC felt comfortable offering a large slice of working capital at a relatively low rate.  Only very few companies have the privilege of accessing such financing.  As for RaboBank foundation, even fewer for-profit enterprises have such opportunities. 

As a foundation, RaboBank wants to see that their money is put to good use—and income to entrepreneurs is just not enough.  So in addition to running a business, the foundation expected the company to track a set of social indicators from its participating cooperatives.  Short on staff, I took on the project to help devise and administer a survey to all of their cooperatives to demonstrate the social benefit of their business on the communities with which they work. 

In order to access this sort of patient and cheap debt, HPS&B had to be more than good business people with a profitable prospect.  They had to cast themselves as a social and financial benefit to their constituencies.  They had to prove it to funders. They had to create long relationships with Inkomoko.  And ultimately, they had to devote resources and time to collect data and give me access to their every functioning.  This is no doubt a high bar for an 8% loan.

The future of Africa - looking back at three months in Nairobi and the Obama visit

As my remaining time in Nairobi is running out quickly (three more weeks) I am starting to get nostalgic looking back at a very busy and very fulfilling summer. I will take with me countless of memories and lessons learned. The project I worked on over the summer was extremely rewarding and relevant and in retrospect the late nights and weekends in front of Excel and Powerpoint all well worth it considering how much impact I alone was able to deliver over only three months. And despite the busy work schedule I still managed to find time in the evenings to connect with local entrepreneurs and learn about their ideas not only for great technology platforms but, more importantly, for businesses that generate enormous social impact and profits. Lastly, there was no way to spend three months in Kenya this summer and be able to avoid the frenzy around Obama’s first visit to the country as a president. I wrote about his visit extensively in my last post, today I want to focus on what remains after the helicopters and motorcades left.

During his public appearances in Nairobi, Obama delivered some tough-love messages. He challenged Kenya to tackle three major problems in particular: corruption, sexism, and internal division. Obama's words resonated with me as, unfortunately, I had to experience or witness all three of these problems in some sort of form during my time here. At his appearance at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, Obama struck a more positive tone: "People are being lifted out of poverty, incomes are up, the middle class is growing and young people like you are harnessing technology to change the way Africa is doing business." Adding, “the future of Africa is up to Africans,” and that they should not look “to the outside for salvation.”

The future of Africa is up to Africans. I must have heard that line more than a hundred times during my time here and by now, after three months, have come to understand how true this prediction will turn out to be. In my work, both internally within my organization and in the interaction and work with clients, I engaged with exceptional colleagues and counterparts. From the very beginning of my engagement, I was impressed with how knowledgeable, experienced and confident my peers were. It was my Kenyan counterparts who made my engagement here in Nairobi such an outstanding learning experience and shortly into my time here I had realized that – while I would be able add significant value over the summer – there may be no need for me to come back here after my graduation from Fletcher. Kenyans are already able to source ample talent locally to tackle the countries’ development and public health problems themselves; and going forward they will see little need to fly in Americans or Europeans to do the work for them.

And that is certainly good news. Not so much for me, as I have embraced this country and its people – but its great news for the region. If Kenya can get it right, then neighbors like Tanzania or Uganda will only benefit and eventually the entire East African region will transform. This is not going to happen next month or next year but it will happen much sooner than I thought before I got here. The role of technology will be transformative in this process and I will be eagerly following the stories of the energetic entrepreneurs I met over the past months and likely regret not having invested into their ventures.

Social Impact of Storytelling in Rwanda

Rwanda. Recently hailed the 7th most efficient country worldwide by the World Economic Forum. Globally recognized as the nation with the greatest number of women in parliament at an impressive rate of 64%. Celebrated as one of the only countries on track to meet all its Millennium Development Goals by the end of the year. Without a doubt, an absolutely incredible place to spend the summer working with a small, innovative start-up that will one day impact millions.

The women of Rwanda have been essential agents of change leading the impressive progress the country has made in the last 20 years. Resonate believes that all women have the potential to lead change in their lives and communities, and uses storytelling workshops to empower women and girls to generate change and become leaders. As an intern with Resonate, I have the great fortune of working with three extraordinary Rwandan women who have overcome incredible personal challenges and have become examples of leading change in their own lives and the lives of others.

Gender equality has significant economic and social benefits, and many countries and organizations around the world are striving for this to optimize their growth and development. While Rwanda currently has a high percentage of women in parliament, the leadership gap is still significant at the sector and community levels. Resonate’s storytelling workshops address the issue of gender inequality at the local level.

I have seen the power of engaging women at the community level firsthand through the wide range of responsibilities I’ve had as an intern.  Assisting with Resonate’s Storytelling for Leadership training allowed me to hear the stories of courage told by women who have overcome extraordinary obstacles. Creating a monitoring and evaluation system for Resonate’s leadership camp pilot project exposed me to the impact the organization has made in local communities. Coordinating communications and marketing has enabled me to share these incredible stories and to promote the amazing work the women of Resonate are doing to catalyze change in Rwanda.

My time working with Resonate has been a very inspiring and educational experience. Although I’ve gained countless insights, I’d like to share a few of the most important lessons I’ve learned about working with a small but mighty social impact organization.

Make every effort to understand the local context.

No doubt you’ve heard this before, but Resonate personifies this advice. Resonate leads by example using an approach that prioritizes working side by side with local women to support their efforts to bring the kind of community change they want to see. Resonate’s founder is from the US, but she has made a concerted effort to surround herself with incredible Rwandan women that serve as lead trainer, operations manager, and operations intern. Working with these women has helped me to understand the importance of asking the right questions and carefully listening to the answers. It may require a longer discussion to arrive at mutual understanding, but I guarantee the time is worth the effort. Understanding the local context and listening to the perspectives of local stakeholders is essential for any social impact organization to be successful in the long-term.

Evaluate, take a step back, evaluate again.

It seems like everyone is talking about program monitoring and evaluation these days – and for good reason. Organizations want to ensure their efforts are creating positive social change and they want to quantify their impact. The ability to measure change effectively also contributes to securing the vital funding from donors and grant programs often needed to continue their work. Small social impact organizations should start by determining the primary outcome they want to measure and focus on doing that well. Although everyone appreciates quantifiable numbers, do not underestimate the utility of mixed methods approaches. Resonate has learned a great deal about opportunities for impact from focus groups and individual interviews. Keep in mind that designing effective M&E systems can be especially challenging in international contexts where differences in language exist. Collaboration with your local team is essential in ensuring that your measurement tools actually measure what you’ve designed them to measure. Take the time to talk it out.

Your idea can make a significant impact.

Resonate was founded on the belief that storytelling is an effective tool to help women and girls build self-confidence and develop leadership skills. After two years of listening to local partners, working through curriculum changes, and responding to local needs, the organization has successfully impacted the lives of over 800 women and girls. Resonate is changing the concept of leadership in Rwandan society by expanding the context of leadership beyond formal positions in government or business to the individual and community levels. The women and girls Resonate works with have discovered the courage to go back to school, seek new employment opportunities, take on new leadership roles at home, and lead change in their lives and communities. All change starts with an idea. Like Resonate, you have the power to create the change you believe in.

Rwanda will undoubtedly continue to prosper. Ensuring gender equality at all levels and supporting women as change-makers in their communities is essential for the country’s success. Resonate helps women and girls to find their voices and to have the confidence to take advantage of leadership opportunities. Storytelling is the spark that inspires women and girls to achieve their goals but it is these women and girls who choose the change they want to lead…and that’s exactly how it should be.

Nairobi ahead of the Obama visit and the Global Entrepreneurship Summit

There is only one topic of conversation in Nairobi these days: Tomorrow President Obama will visit Kenya for the first time as president. A visit that is creating tons of excitement as well as plenty of anxiety. Travelers flying into  or out of Nairobi over the next few days are advised to be at the airport at least six hours in advance due to to numerous police checks on the main highways, roads are 'beautified' in desperate last-minute attempts, and most offices and factories are just shutting down for the long weekend knowing their employees are unlikely to be able to get to the work anyway. Nairobi traffic is a disaster on a regular workday, it will certainly be a nightmare while Obama is visiting. And while the itinerary for the President's visit remains vague and secretive, he is expected to make an appearance at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit to be held in Nairobi over the weekend. In Nairobi, Obama's entourage of businessmen, venture capitalists, and philanthropists will meet an abundance of young innovators who have turned the Kenyan capital into the startup hub of East Africa, if not of the whole continent.

While my work for the Clinton Health Access Initiative certainly keeps me extremely busy and has been enormously rewarding, I frequently try to make time to meet and network with the young Kenyan and international entrepreneurs, hear their ideas, and gain an understanding of how their experiences trying to build an enterprise in the East African region differs from that of their peers in New York, San Francisco or Berlin. One opportunity to learn about Social Impact startups was the a pitch event hosted by VillageCapital which awarded $50k to startups in the field of agriculture. It was amazing to hear the variety of ideas and approaches the entrepreneurs presented, all trying to develop solutions for farmers and farming communities in a part of Africa where farming contributes ~45% of government revenue. The guys behind Mifugo.Trade presented an online livestock exchange that directly connects livestock producers to buyers cutting out the middlemen; the team behind Atikus talked about how they are trying to expand access to credit by increasing the capacity of MSME lenders via re-imagined insurance and technology risk solutions; and my favorite - though not directly related to agriculture - were the founders of Remit.ug who built an online platform for international money transfer to mobile money thus cutting out the expensive and inconvenient established money transfer providers.

What impressed me most while hearing the pitches and talking to the entrepreneurs was that they are not simply trying to copy American or European startup success stories trying to build an African Uber or Yelp. Instead, they are building business models that disrupt their local communities and are specifically designed to empower individuals that formerly had little power in negotiations with more powerful middlemen or corporations. And while technology is changing the way people do business anywhere, it has carries particular power for the poor and previously disadvantaged in East Afica. Providing technology solutions for these communities and also making money while doing it, just seems like a very rewarding way of doing business.

Obama's visit will give the local startup community its well-deserved time in the limelight. After he leaves and life returns to normal in Nairobi, I will be hopefully be able to get back to the office and have an opportunity to talk more about the work I have been doing over the past two months for CHAI in my next post.

Implementing a cloud-based tool to track drug rehabilitation services and patients in Santiago, Chile

Corporación La Esperanza (CLE) has been offering free outpatient and residential drug rehabilitation services to underserved communities across Chile since 1995. They’ve gone from one clinic to seven during this time, allowing them to provide a much needed lifeline for over 500 men and women every year. As a nonprofit working closely with the Servicio Nacional para la Prevención y Rehabilitación del Consumo de Drogas y Alcohol (SENDA), donors and government officials constantly pose different requirements and questions about CLE's program, making impact a moving target. 

Folks who’ve worked at CLE can readily tell you countless stories and anecdotes on how the program has improved peoples lives, warmly remembering those that have managed to turn their life around after suffering from years of addiction. Dedicated directors, therapists, and staff use these stories and collective experiences to improve the quality of the program everyday. Over the last few years, CLE has found that using these stories might not be enough to prove the success of the program. Externally, the trends from the clinical, governmental, and donor communities have been to demonstrate impact based on outputs, graphs, and reports, constantly asking CLE for statistics. Internally, CLE staff have been greatly interested in knowing their impact by applying new treatments with evaluation frameworks, developing indicators, and conducting an evaluation of their patients and services. 

Meeting both these external and internal needs requires clean data. A lot of clean data. This has proven to be a logistical and administrative challenge, given that all their medical records in the past twenty years are kept on paper. Questions like “how many patients between the ages of 19-25 have used crack cocaine” requires days of effort for already overwhelmed administrative staff. Gathering and disseminating these numbers is simply not what people should spend time doing. In 2012, CLE implemented an Excel based database that allowed them to keep digital records for the first time. In order to manage the volume of data, changes to the forms being used, and administrative capacity of staff, compromises had to be made and data collection was kept to a minimum. Additionally, the Excel tool became logistically difficult as heavy files needed to be mailed or sent by couriers in USB drives to headquarters when an update or an report was needed. Ultimately, all of these headaches can lead to bad data, jeopardizing both internal and external goals.

Understanding these limitations, the project at hand is using a cloud-based tool to replace the Excel tool and provide additional functionality for CLE staff. This requires replicating the current data flow and analyses, while allowing CLE to take advantage of new functionality where improvements can be made. The goal is in improving the quality of and access to data across the organization. 

At the launch of the project, the central questions we set out to guide the implementation were: 

• How can data help us achieve better results?
• How can we improve access to data across the organization?
• What is the value added of having a cloud-based system of record?
• Once we have this data, what do we want to know about our services and patients?

Currently, the new tool is built to track the same data that the Excel database contained so as to minimize change management. We’ve also been able to effectively migrate all digital data from each clinic into the new system in a matter of days. As forms change, new fields can be added with just a few clicks. Data privacy and security can be maintained using permissions and roles. New functionality allows clinics to collaborate using an internal social platform. Reports and dashboards are programmed once, updated automatically, and universally accesible as new records are created. Statistics, graphs, and reports can be pulled as needed for all staff in the organization. Business development staff no longer have to ask clinics to drop everything to generate a report for a new donor. Data is no longer a task or a simple output but can now be seen as a resource. 

Regardless of these technological and system improvements, some of our guiding questions still remain unanswered. Whatever tool organizations use, simply collecting data might never get you those answers. However, having clean data can give rise to new questions or uncover answers that were previously obscured. Improved systems can lead to more time thinking about data instead crunching it. Increased data transparency can lead to greater collaboration across the organization. Having already bridged the data process with a new tool, the current challenge lies in bridging the tool with the institution of data - why are we collecting it, what are we learning from it, how is it important to my role, how do we manage it. The most difficult challenge, however, will be in bridging any tool with improved outcomes and improved services for nonprofits like CLE. 

Greetings from Jerry Blakeley regarding new Blog portal

Finally we have this ready for you to post Blogs and we are most anxious to hear from you. If you have any questions or difficulties getting signed up and posting Blogs please email me at:

jblakeley615@gmail.com

Reflections on a Summer in Dhaka

As I begin the last week of work at my summer internship at BRAC, a development agency headquartered in Dhaka, Bangladesh, it is hard not to be overwhelmed with amazement that my time here is coming to a close. Summer in Dhaka has been everything one might imagine of life in this South Asian city – incessant noise, daredevil streets, the beautiful call to prayer, the pounding heat and hair curling humidity. It has also been a summer of invitations, iftars, a newfound gratitude for cloudy days, an addiction to sweet milky tea and a growing willingness to throw myself into a street filled with oncoming traffic. It has been a summer of mobile money and planning, of working and waiting. I have learned to strive to achieve my goals but to slow down and recognize the need for patience. It was a summer learning to live in a developing country. The fierce competition of the streets belies the disregard for time. A half hour? Forty-five minutes? A day? Two weeks? Time has a different meaning here. Even the lethargic opening of stores baffled me at first, before I slowed down my mornings and learned to savor the morning hours before rushing into the bustle of the day.

Dhaka teaches those who live in this crowded, vibrant city to appreciate the duality of life. Everything comes with a price. The rain cools the city. The downpours also create rivulets of mud on the bumpy sidewalks that inevitably cover my salwar kameez with droplets of street dirt. The hot, scorching sun creates the type of heat that will make you sweat while lying in bed naked with the fan on full blast. The same sun dries the streets and makes the walk to work dusty but clean. When in Dhaka, it is an art to appreciate the good in every situation and release the frustration of the bad. (And in general, Bangladesh is an excellent way to hone one’s sense of humor. There’s nothing like tackling a cockroach-infested room after a day in the field to help you see the absurdities of life. Or so it seemed at the time – in hindsight, it may have been the exhaustion showing itself…)

This is a hard city to live in. It pushes at you, mentally and physically, with car horns and the press of bodies upon bodies. There is so much need here, need that is sharply highlighted by the oases of luxury apartment buildings with swimming pools shimmering on rooftops. The contrast makes my head spin each time I come face to face with the stark differences between worlds here. Poverty in Bangladesh is a systematic need that cannot be solved by one person. Mentally I know this, but it is hard to shake the sneaky feeling of shame that starts to stick to you after walking past beggar after beggar, the same people stationed everyday on their specific tile of sidewalk by handlers in the early morning hours.

Perhaps I came with the expectation that working at BRAC would provide some sort of mental peace, an image coming from the idea that I would be doing my miniscule part to improve life in Bangladesh. More likely I didn’t comprehend the reality of life in Dhaka until I was immersed in this strange, scary, beautiful, and complex culture. It’s amazing how fuzzy the start of my summer seems now that I exist in the peculiar twilight zone of those who are about to leave a country.

I did have certain expectations for my work at BRAC. I came to assist BRAC’s Social Innovation Lab (SIL) with its Innovation Fund for Mobile Money. Which indeed I have – but of course not in the manner I expected. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting SIL’s Innovation Fund to encourage the transition from cash to mobile money within BRAC. SIL is facilitating the process change to mobile money within BRAC; it is not implementing the mobile money pilots. Rather, other BRAC programs are implementing pilot projects. To be selected for an internal “grant” from the Innovation Fund, programs needed to submit an idea regarding how to incorporate mobile money into a project to an Innovation Challenge run by SIL. BRAC employees voted on the projects in the challenge, and then the list was narrowed to semi-finalists in May. Final projects were selected on June 1, right on time. Idealistically, I expected to head straight to the field and see bKash, the first and most commonly used mobile money platform in Bangladesh, being incorporated into projects. Instead, I have come to see the tremendous complexity that accompanies changing a system. The transition from cash to mobile money requires coordination and cooperation between many departments, and at an NGO of BRAC’s magnitude, that is no small hurdle. Steadily, SIL has progressed with the final seven mobile money pilots that were selected, but the programs are just starting implementation of the pilots now.

I have assisted by applying some hard gained skills from Fletcher’s DM&E series: formulating indicators, definitions, baseline plans, and evaluation plans. I have also put these skills to use by designing and piloting an internal knowledge management database for BRAC pilot projects. SIL is a dynamic team, and I have been fortunate to work with several team members on multiple projects simultaneously. Mobile money has been a huge focus of my summer, but my attention has also been dedicated to knowledge management systems and research. I have gone to the field, but not as often as I had originally hoped. Yet I gained knowledge and experience that I could not have imagined when accepting my internship in March. The task of incorporating mobile money into an organization is much more intricate a challenge than I could have anticipated from Medford.

I am grateful to have spent my summer at BRAC in Dhaka. My time here has been both enlightening and difficult; at the risk of sounding trite, this internship has been a learning experience. Fortunately, it is immediately applicable to my next challenge: working with the Akanksha Foundation, an educational NGO, in India. While in Bangladesh, I received word that I will be an America India Foundation William J. Clinton Fellow in Pune, India from September 2014 through June 2015. My return to Fletcher has been postponed for a year. And while a (large) part of me yearns to reunite with my friends and professors in Medford this fall, all of me is ready to see India.

After my summer in Dhaka, I’m ready.

Final Thoughts from South Africa

Through the smoke coming from the braii (South African BBQ) one could hear the chimes of local entrepreneurs discussing African business, local beer and wine in hand. It was a gathering of the businesses in the cool, up-and-coming 44 Stanley complex, a converted factory that now hosts media and ad agencies, architects, cafes, local artisan shops, a beer garden, and our Endeavor office.

Everyone was friendly, interested to know what each other did and where they came from. Almost nobody was from Johannesburg, but come here since Joburg is the hub of the South African economy. In my time here I have consistently run into a similar conversation – “there is a huge talent shortage and these new laws are only going to make it worse.”

As my time in South Africa comes to a close I thought I would take this opportunity to reflect on this overarching theme, as it strikes at the heart of my Fletcher education.

Entrepreneurship is abuzz in Joburg as the national unemployment rate is 25% and the government looks to solve the problem through entrepreneurship. One of the critical ways it does this is by legislating how businesses must employ black people, and spend money supporting SME black enterprises and entrepreneurs.  This policy, BBBEE (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment), has extreme effects on the SA economy so let me take a second to explain it further. Businesses get a score (level 1-8, 1 being the highest and 8 lowest) based upon factors in five areas:

1. Ownership – Amount of black ownership
2. Management Control – Amount of black executive leadership and voting rights
3. Skills Development – Amount of black employees and skills training received
4. Enterprise and Supplier Development – Amount of spending on suppliers who are black enterprises; contributions to economic development programs that benefit black businesses
5. Socio-economic Development – 1% of NOPAT (net operating profit at tax) must be spent on economic development that is geared towards income generating activities for black beneficiaries

One should also note that SA has some of the most labor-friendly employment laws, making it very difficult to fire an employee.

You can imagine the many ways BBBEE affects business, from administrative costs to limiting the pool of candidates it can hire. This would not be an outrageous issue if there were well-qualified candidates, but alas the SA education system is horrendous! For example, a recent World Economic Forum Report ranked South Africa the worst in the world for math and science education.

Historically, South Africa has had the largest and most advanced economy in Africa. However, recent data shows Nigeria to now be the largest economy in Africa. At Fletcher we live at that intersection of economics, politics and society – and nowhere is that more relevant than this topic in South Africa. The combination of a poor education system, which has many causes, and a poor BBBEE policy has choked South African businesses, and thereby stifled the economy. Businesses must divert skills and resources from their primary business activities to adhere to BBBEE, making them less competitive and productive. They must also get employees trained-up so they are capable of doing their jobs, and highly skilled labor is expensive. Yet, despite these factors there is still a skills shortage in SA. Normally, this would be a great opportunity for a young professional like myself, but alas the government has passed new legislation that extremely restricts importing labor to ‘critical skills’. My favorite example of a ‘critical skill’ - sheep shearer.

Since being in SA I have heard of a Fletcher alum who has lived in SA for several years being stuck in DC for weeks due to his visa being “in process”; his visa has been “being processed” for two years. A friend and her boyfriend who employ more than 10 people whose visa is now expiring within 90 days, their extension was denied. An American who has lived in SA for 11 years, owns a home, has a family and employs several people who might have to spend a year in the US waiting for a visa renewal because nobody knows how to implement the new legislation. The government’s justification for this poor law is the same old excuse -- foreigners are stealing jobs. This is just sad. Poor government policies seem to be based upon a poor understanding of economics. As Keynes explained, a dollar is worth more than a dollar having pass-through effects in the economy. Ricardo’s theory of competitive advantage, another underpinning of a globalized economy, hinges upon the idea that countries are better off importing what they are not good at and exporting what they have a competitive advantage in -- in this case SA needs to import skilled labor. Skilled labor, like myself, will not be stealing a job, but filling one that will actually help grow the economy; thereby having knock-on effects that are likely to create other jobs for many of those unskilled unemployed people.

I recognize that there are real and valid reasons for the government’s policies, rooted in a tumultuous history. Yet, the inherit problems will not be solved in a short time-frame. Should SA radically reform its education so that labor is capable of filling the need, it will take at least a decade. It is true that there are two worlds in SA rich and poor, where skin color is often the clear delineation. Yet the current policies will not alleviate this for the masses. My primary lesson from my time in SA is that poor policies rooted in xenophobia will only further stifle the country’s economic progress and make it harder to achieve the government’s aim. It might think it’s winning the battle, but it is slowly losing the war. SA must continue its efforts to reform the education system, while opening up its economy to skilled labor if it wanted to thrive.