Tweeting from Robben Island...the new text of freedom

The opportunity to understand a little more about the famous prisoner 466/64 makes Robben Island a popular destination today.

As 50 of us tourists sat inside a prison in Section G, many were on their phones...tweeting what they heard, sharing what they saw and sending images to the rest of the world of their moving personal experiences.

Till 1991 - just 19 years ago, this was a maximum security prison known for its absolute and complete isolation of political prisoners of the Apartheid regime.

No information was allowed to leak out. Very little came in.

Nelson Mandela (466/ 64 - the 466th prisoner at Robben Island in the year 1964), spend around 16 years here, at the center of what would be South Africa's long and hard struggle for democracy and freedom from apartheid.

Today - we sat there communicating with the whole world. Each person in that room was writing, publishing, broadcasting through their mobile devices. In just 19 years so much has changed. This is the new text.

In a tour conducted by one of the ex-political prisoners, I had the opportunity to go inside the prison cells, walk the corridors and hear the stories of complete and total isolation. Of the atrocities only humans can bestow on fellow humans. And of how human dignity can still find ways to forgive.



Bereft of the tools for education, prisoners miraculaously found ways to convert the prison into a university - and the amazing process of Each One Teach One came into being. Popularly known as the 'Robben Island University' by the prisoners, they used every element of their spirit to over come the indignity of colour, separation, politics - and convert the subaltern text of imprisonment into learning.

Its amazing. Technology has changed the politics of freedom forever.

In 2004 I had the opportunity to visit the Alcatraz, off the San Fransisco Bay. When the wind blew across the bay, you could hear voices carry over from the city into this maximum security prison that had housed many Civil War prisoners. Information, learning, knowledge and news - were all a premium. A privilege that was considered unnecessary .

In 1997, I was an assistant director on one of the first film crews to be allowed to shoot in Kashmir. We shot on a few islands in the Dal Lake - islands that used to be the headquarters of the Hizbul Mujahideen. The site of many atrocities, these beautiful islands had seen so much struggle. We shot a docu-feature for the Home Ministry, stories that would build confidence and bring hope to the people of Kashmir.

The degree of despair in Srinagar in those years had amazed me. And as a film crew, we were a threat to many who saw news and information as a major de-stabiliser. Confirmed artists refused to act, under threat. And finally some CRPF personnel and 4 young surrendered terrorists became our key actors. The film ran on 'Doordarshan' - which for many years was the window to the world for India. Today of course, its irrelevant. There are over 250 channels on TV. Most of them with Breaking News every second.

Twitter, Facebook, SMSes, Mobiles have fundamentally changed our world. Made us free in such a different way. And it evolves every day.

Over 3 billion people have mobile phones across the world. 1000 new mobile customers are added every minute over the globe. Mobile internet is empowering Africa...

Inspiring organizations like Ushahidi have created platforms that allows people and communities to collate distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. A simple way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response. The people of Haiti have benefited tremendously from Ushahidi's innovation.

Georeferencing, geotagging, visual mapping, community mapping.... all innovative applications of mobile technology that connect the world today in such incredible ways.

And yet there is the oppression in Afghanistan.

It gives us more reason to continue innovating. Finding more ideas that will link technology and freedom...

An Innovation Fair!

Writing from the World Bank Innovation Fair, in Cape Town, South Africa. We are on Day 2 and just finished a Panel discussion on 'Scaling Innovations'. A favorite topic of course!

A quick background on this event: The World Bank Development Marketplace has been taking ideas to action for the last 10 years. The Development Marketplace is holding the first of a new generation event - the Innovation Fair on Moving Beyond Conflict and Fragility. The event is tied to the 2011 World Development Report and draws on a pool of innovative solutions collated through an online competition that invited applications, got users to vote and shotlist social impact ideas.

This Innovation Radar registered 2000 users, produced 223 project applications from 40 countries. 50,000 users viewed and engaged with the ideas online - and a final 30 social impact ideas were shortlisted and invited to Cape Town for the Fair. These ideas can be reviewed by clicking here.

You will note that these ideas have come from regions such as Sierra Leone, DR of Congo, Kenya, Burundi, SA, other African countries - and also from Columbia, Srilanka, a few from India. In some of these countries, the existence of conflict and the fragility of the communities is a very real scenario. And most of the ideas directly focused on how technology and innovation can be applied to empower, equip, build economic opportunity in such a context.

Egbe Osifo-Dawodu from the World Bank Institute wrote a great piece on why the subject of moving beyond conflict and fragility is relevant - and why this forms the basis of the innovation fair.

The ideas were collated and presented around 2 broad themes:

1. Improving Service Delivery and Governance through the use of Communication Tools
2. Innovative Research and Practical Approaches to Conflict and Violence Prevention

The application of Communication Technology forms a thread across many of the ideas - and while several of the ideas are in initial prototypes, a few have also created a fair amount of impact in more advanced pilot stages.

A few core themes have run through the discussions over the last two days:

• The role of the government in conflict areas to support innovation
• How do you scale beyond the initial pilots
• How do you sustain some of the ideas and get community really involved in owning and taking them forward..
• Role of institutions like the World Bank in supporting the social innovators...etc

Some of the discussions and quick excerpts of all the different presentations are accessible at the following link http://innovationfair.ning.com/

My comments on the Panel discussion on Scaling Social Innovations were really around the core thought that it is possible to 'Design for Scale' - rather than 'hope that the idea will eventually scale'... Given the nature of early stage innovations being discussed, shared 3 key thoughts around scaling...

• The notion of Innovation: Its not about the initial breakthrough idea - but about a series of ideas, which when layered together create significant impact. This usually involves innovations around the product, service model, revenue model, operation models etc, all combined together. Examples such as the evolution of pre-paid services on mobile phones that created a layer of a service and revenue model over the base mobile technology to make mobility accessible to millions of people. Without this extra layer of innovation - mobile phones would be limited to very few people. So the notion of innovation asks: What is that set of ideas that makes your core proposition strong and relevant?
  

• The role of the innovator: If the above is true then scale is built into the notion of Innovating, especially since the innovator needs to build a cohesive set of ideas that make a proposition work. This means that its important to start finding ways to succeed in creating the impact, incorporating many more simple solutions as the idea slowly takes shape... and find ways to have many people adopt your idea, thus creating a natural pull for your idea. The innovator has a role to play in building the core idea from the simple workability of the idea, through acceptability and adoption - and finally to a model that demonstrates the scalability of the model and its impact. Which stage is the implementation of your idea in right now?
  

• The role of the Ecosystem: And here come organizations like the World Bank, Ashoka Foundation etc - who have the capacity to facilitate collaborations, provide initial funding, exposure, learning for the innovator and his/ her team, help evaluate and provide a global platform for sharing, cross learning and fostering partnerships - that can give the social innovator speed. The most core resource is of course the funds. But its critical for Social Innovators to treat the funds as Working Capital - and not funding. Thus designing the models for sustainability very early on in the life cycle.
  

We talked through examples in India such as ITC eChoupal, SMSOne, Akshaya Patra that have approached scale in a structured manner.

A great example of a sustainable social impact model in a conflict environment presented itself right here at the Innovation fair!! The Social Media team anchoring the event - RLabs or Reconstructed Living Labs - is a beautiful idea that identifies disadvantaged youth, builds capability in them to use and apply technology and social media - and then finds a market for these skills and create economic opportunities. Was great to see them in action at the fair - you can see more on the work of the RLabs by clicking here.

Micro Entrepreneurs say go beyond News, Facilitate Market Access...

Bagmari, Ultodanga, Bhaghajatin are slum areas in North & South Kolkata - populated with several thousand enterprising, independent micro-entrepreneurs.

Vegetable vendors who buy Rs.1500 worth of vegetables every day from wholesalers and sell it at a net profit of Rs. 150-200 per day.

Egg vendors who procure 1000 chicken eggs per day at approximately Rs. 2500 and sell for a net profit of Rs. 160 per day.

A family of potters who procures the clay for Rs. 6000 per truck - that lasts them 15 days, making 1000 small Diya's (earthen lamps) per day. The family earns a net profit of around Rs. 200 per day for the sale of these Diya's. Everyone in the family works on this.

Small stitching units that produce hosiery vests, children's clothes for the local markets - producing up to 50 dozen sets with a 2-3 member stitching team. Net profit per day for the business owner approx Rs. 350 per day

These are micro- entrepreneurs. Each running simple, very relevant local businesses - providing for their families through the business and in some cases also providing jobs to a few more.

In studying this ecosystem, we found some interesting initiatives that are keen to formalize this section of entrepreneurs - and create more economic and capability impact.

For example an enterprising News Service has been initiated in this area of Kolkata for the last 2 years to build a flow of news that can enable these micro entrepreneurs to share knowledge and build capacity - and therefore increase incomes. Supported by an international News Agency, that is keen to further the impact of News in disadvantaged communities - this project publishes a local newsletter distributed to the micro entrepreneurs.

Printed twice a month, Amar Khabar is populated with stories of success, little tips on new business ideas, info on loans - all collated by 'young citizen journalists' from within the same micro-entrepreneur communities.

In its 24th edition when I met the team in March 2010 - this newsletter now reaches 102000 entrepreneurs within north and south Kolkata, free. With a validated database of 5000 readers, the team is now putting all efforts behind building a strong repository of reader data - such that more specific inputs and info can be provided - and the black box of 'who are the micro-entrepreneurs' can be opened.

Its a valiant effort at somehow formalizing the information, learning and knowledge flow for entrepreneurship - within a highly fragmented, disorganized and dynamic community.

Impact?

Meet Gopa Bhattacharya, a middle aged serial entrepreneur who runs a small eatery, makes Bindi's for local women, and makes and sells an odd assortment of simple products.

She read an article in Amar Khabar that provided tips on how to make and sell solar lamps. She went to Barabazaar, got all the key parts needed, made her first solar lamp 2 months ago. She now makes and sell 5 such lamps each week. For a profit of Rs. 200 per lamp. In the last 8 weeks she has augmented her income by Rs. 6000 by building a completely new product line! This reiterates the power of knowledge. Make it accessible. And the enterprising person will find a way to use it and flourish.

But for Gopa to grow beyond this, she says she needs the obvious - market access. As a woman she cannot travel beyond her community - but she knows that at her price point she can produce a lot more by hiring a couple more people - but where can she sell it?

More income would mean more 'poonji' that can be generated (working capital), which would mean lesser loans from money lenders and MFIs. But how does she get access to markets?

So at Version 1.0 - This News project has succeeded in demonstrating the immediate potential of this idea. But for large scale impact the 'Gopa effect' has to be wide spread and critical mass of real financial impact created in the micro entrepreneurs business. Either top line - or savings in costs or new product lines...and several of these.. Repeatedly you hear the request for a MARKET for the products. "Find us a market, connect us to the markets....we will find a way to produce more..."

The fact is that the producer will need to find his/ her own market. But what or who can facilitate that? What's the capability needed for that?

Should version 2.0 of such a Newsletter go beyond 'Knowledge & Capability' and become more of a bridge between the sellers and the buyers maybe? The reader base needs to include both sellers and buyers, producers, aggregators and consumers. Clearly the newsletter would need to shift its paradigm - from providing access to News to becoming a platform and interface for business impact - powered by relevant knowledge and strong database of active readers.

There are around 1.5 - 2 million such micro entrepreneurs in Kolkata. Even at a price of 0.50 paise per successful connection between seller and buyer, A Newsletter could find ways to be sustainable. At a low cost of Rs. 1 per edition that helps build the capability and provides learning to its readers...it could be more sustainable. Combine that with SMS coverage to a dedicated subscription base - and access for whole sellers...more sources for generating funds to stay alive.

The innovation challenges to building version 2.0 of such a News Service?

• How to institutionalize the 'Gopa process' of enterprise and risk taking across a larger community?
• Making content creation a far more collaborative effort - can mobile phones be leveraged to collect, write and collate news and content?
  
• How to build a knowledge chain that meaningfully links producers, consumers, buyers, sellers - in a manner that direct economic impact is possible to measure?
  
• Can this be a 'lifecycle' engagement for micro entrepreneurs - or should it be limited to providing connects and news
  
• How can available technology be integrated across the network - mobiles phones, field devices already used by large FMCGs in these markets, local phone booths.

Meeting the micro-entrepreneurs and seeing the impact of the News flowing through - led me again to the thought: There are great ideas out there, good prototypes being implemented. The initial ideas are often supported through philanthropic funds.

But to make them sustainable - what's needed is to build the next level of solutions if real impact has to be brought to economy and life in India...that's where innovation is needed. To go beyond the prototype.

If you know of some well scaled models that focus on increasing the economic success of micro-entrepreneurs and use technology and business models for this - do pls write in. Would be great to study and learn from them. Will help cut the curve immensely!

Another interesting news service I learnt of - HIBR.me in Lebanon.

Education...on a full stomach and nutritious meal!

Had an opportunity to explore and briefly immerse in the work of Akshaya Patra - a programme that provides food to over 1 million children in India. Now feeding 11,98,206 children everyday!

Millions of children in India don't get enough food for them to have any motivation or energy to really attend school or 'engage with learning'. Different studies put the number of children missing school because of lack of adequate food ranging from 7 million to 40 million across India.

Akshaya Patra focuses on this group of children. Through a range of public private partnerships, several schools now benefit from a very organized, nutritious mid-day meal.

What differentiates the Akshaya Patra effort from several other 'feeding children' initiatives is really how they have dealt with the size of the problem. By designing and engineering highly replicable, standardized processes. Spread across 8 states in India, accessible through centralized and decentralized kitchens, this non-profit organization is looking to reach 5 million children by 2020.

This mission is powered by some very large scale planning. A quick look at some numbers and the size of the operations, just in one kitchen!




The Kitchen on the Kanakpura road, Bangalore:

• Designed on the simple principles of gravity - this kitchen is a highly effective, eco-friendly operation that uses renewable fuel (husk based fuel) and recycles a large part of its waste
• Feeds around 100,000 children everyday. Plus Old people, expecting mothers and the local jail
  
• The kitchen cooks approx 6000 kgs of rice and 12,000-20,000 litres of sambhar/ dal (lentils) everyday
• Procures 5000 kgs of vegetables and 8000 litres of yogurt everyday
• Stores approximately 270 tonnes of rice for a month provided by the FCI for the mid day meal...apart from that procures rice for the BBMP scheme to feed old people in the communities
• Around 250 members work within this kitchen in 2-3 shifts starting at 3 am and going on till 6.30-7.00 pm
• People from local communities are employed in the kitchens - generating employment and building training and skills in cooking, hygiene, production, distribution..
  
• Over 3000 employed across all kitchens in India
  

Getting a hot nutritious meal to over a million children everyday is no mean feat! A brilliant example of achieving 'Scale' in social impact - comparable to any factory model for food production and distribution, Akshaya Patra has taken the job of cooking and distributing food to disadvantaged communities to another level of seriousness. Its engagement with the government at a regional level and ability to manage a diverse set of stakeholders in ensuring that healthy food reaches children and the needy is another aspect of its incredibly quiet but effective style of working.

Next level of innovation sensitive areas - community engagement, several million more children, scale out and scale up - get more education and nutrition based organizations to adopt the principles that are working here, building significantly enhanced nutrition in simple meals...so much more..