This post was originally produced for Forbes.

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A lesson all successful entrepreneurs seem to learn quickly is that they must solve a problem. For social entrepreneurs, this is even more important. If people are literally dying as they wait for a solution, the ones who show up to help have a greater obligation to do so something that will solve the problem—at least for some of those experiencing it.

Classy, which operates a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs, has created an award the company calls the Classy Award to recognize social enterprises that “are tackling some of the world’s most complex problems,” according to a company press release. The awards were presented on June 16, 2017, in Boston.

For this article, the ten winners and Classy co-founder Pat Walsh, the company’s chief impact officer, came together to record a discussion about the problems they solve and the work they are doing to solve them. You can watch the entire discussion with the winners in the video player at the top of this article.

Classy Award Winners

In no particular order, this article will identify each of the winners, the problems they seek to solve and the work they are doing to solve them.

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

Rebecca Firth, the community partnerships manager for Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, said, “In many places in the developing world, good quality digital maps do not exist, leaving millions of people uncounted. Without free, up-to-date maps it is hard to deliver health care and services, making places more vulnerable to disasters and epidemics.”

Imagine trying to find the source of an Ebola outbreak in a rural area where no reliable maps exist. How do you find a village that is at risk if it isn’t even on the map?

“What we do is we help anyone anywhere in the world create those maps,” says Firth. Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team uses a crowdsourcing model to create maps using the company’s simple online tool.

“This week we passed 30000 volunteers. We’ve mapped 45 million people who haven’t been on the map before.” Firth explains that these folks can now receive services that were difficult or even impossible to deliver before the map was created.

“One example of this is last year when there was a yellow fever outbreak in Kinshasa, the Missing Maps community activated to map the area using OpenStreetMap tools activated to map the area,” Firth says. “And then what followed was the largest and fastest vaccination campaign ever by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) who used the map to vaccinate 720,000 people in 10 days.”

Mission Asset Fund

Jose Quiñonez, 45, CEO of Mission Asset Fund, explains the person and societal problems that come from excluding some people from the traditional financial system. “People would be left in the shadows of our economy.” He notes that we all lose when certain individuals are not allowed to access basic financial instruments and therefore can’t buy a home, can’t start a business and can’t even invest in their own education. Those without a credit score are “economically invisible,” he says. About 45 million people in the United States fall into this group, he says. Globally, about 2 billion people fall into this category.

Mission Asset Fund is helping to formalize and legitimize an informal practice that is common around the world. The practice of lending circles, which go by a variety of names with varying protocols, all revolve around small communities creating tiny savings banks where members contribute periodically and occasionally get a turn at borrowing from the fund. By formalizing lending circles, Mission Asset Fund provides a connection to the formal economy and reveals the invisible people.

Days for Girls

Celeste Mergens, 55, founder and CEO for Days for Girls notes that there are 300 million women and girls of reproductive age counted among those who are living on less than $1.95 per day, the World Bank standard for extreme poverty. “Meeting basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and hygiene is a constant challenge for many of these women and girls,” she says. One of the challenges women face is the shame and stigma associated with menstruation.

Days for Girls has engaged 60,000 “Health Ambassadors” in the developing world to teach men and women about menstruation to remove the stigma. She notes, “Without periods there would be no people.” These ambassadors sell reusable feminine hygiene kits, increasing their own incomes at the same time they share their passion for the dignity of women.

Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)

Elizabeth Scharpf, founder and CEO of SHE, identified and tackled much the same problem with a different strategy. She notes that women without access to proper feminine hygiene use rags or even leaves to manage their menstruation. She confirms that some young women are victims of sexual predation or are forced into prostitution to fund feminine hygiene products so they can stay in school.

Scharpf says, “Eighteen percent of women and girls in Rwanda missed out on work or school because they could not afford to buy menstrual pads. Quite apart from the personal injustice, and the larger issues of health and dignity, we’re also talking about a potential GDP loss of $215 per woman per year – a total of $115,000,000 in Rwanda. It’s bad business.”

She invented a feminine hygiene pad that can be produced locally in Rwanda, made from the fiber of a banana tree. SHE helps women launch businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable pads.

Because International

Kenton Lee, 32, founder of Because International, identified the problem that many children who are growing up in poverty lack good shoes. One of the contributing factors is that kids outgrow their shows quickly and the parents and caregivers can’t afford to buy new shoes every time the kids outgrow a pair.

Lee says, “Shoes are a big deal.” There are three problems he highlights from a lack of shoes: 1) health is at risk, especially in communities without adequate sanitation, 2) shoes are often a required part of a school uniform so a lack of shoes keeps kids out of school, and 3) the dignity and self confidence that are missing without shoes.

Because International markets the “Shoe That Grows” primarily to faith-based organizations and other NGOs, that donate the shoes to children who need them. The durable shoes come in only two sizes but are both adjustable for five full shoe sizes so kids can wear them for years. He acknowledges that, “It doesn’t solve every problem for the kids.” The program really took off two years ago and they have been able to provide 100,000 shoes to kids in 89 countries and are now beginning to manufacture the shoes in some of the places where they are being most used.

Habitat for Humanity International

“About one in five people or one 1.6 billion people across the globe lack adequate housing,” says Jyoti Patel, director of capital markets for Habitat for Humanity. One of the key reasons for this is a lack of access to affordable mortgage financing for low-income families. As a result, many low-income families live in makeshift shelters even though they have income and could afford to support a small mortgage. Instead, they slowly build and upgrade their homes slowly over time.

Much of the microfinance industry that some think of as a solution to poverty focuses on short-term loans to support entrepreneurship. This creates a cash-flow mismatch when someone uses short-term microfinance loans to make permanent housing upgrades—think roof or a water tank–that will last for years or decades.

Habitat has created a $100 million “MicroBuild Fund” to finance longer-term loans to people without access to traditional credit sources so they can afford to upgrade their housing. The fund “is comprised of $10 million in equity and $90 million as a line of credit received from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation,” Patel says. Habitat is the largest equity holder. Omidyar Network and MetLife have also invested. Triple Jump, based in the Netherlands, is also an investor and also manages the fund. The money is invested with an eye toward capital preservation and a focus on both social and environmental impact.

International Justice Mission

There is a new form of sex trafficking of children in the Philippines that sends shivers down the spine of every parent. Victims are taken from the street and presented via the internet to customers who direct the sexual abuse of the child in real time.

Blair Burns, 43, the senior vice president of Justice Operations for International Justice Mission, says that this is part of a broader problem, the general failure of the rule of law.

Burns reports:

International Justice Mission (IJM) is the world’s largest international anti-slavery organization working to combat modern day slavery, human trafficking, and other forms of violence against the poor in 17 communities across the developing world. IJM does this by partnering with local authorities and partners to rescue victims, restore survivors, convict perpetrators, and transform broken public justice systems. To date, IJM has helped to rescue over 34,000 people from slavery and other forms of violent oppression.

Grassroot Soccer

As global health improves, one group is being left behind, according to Molly McHugh, 44, communications director for Grassroot Soccer, a nonprofit that has created an innovative way to reach young people. “In the last decade HIV related deaths have decreased for every age group except adolescents,” she says. There is a gap in the delivery of healthcare for this cohort.

The gap exists for a variety of reasons, from the focus on infant mortality to the lack of a trusted, competent person to talk to about sex and reproductive health. No teenager wants to talk to their parents about sex.

To empower young people to be the delivery system for accurate information about sexual and reproductive health, Grassroots Soccer uses the sport of soccer to engage them. The organization focuses on HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and malaria. “Our solution is to reach adolescents through a combination of 3 C’s: Curriculum using soccer-based activities and lively discussions; Coaches who are young community leaders, trained to be health educators, who connect personally with participants and become trusted mentors; and a Culture of safe spaces for youth to ask questions, share opinions, and support each other,” Molly says.

Samasource

Poverty is primarily a lack of money result from deficient economic opportunities, according to Samasource’s Wendy Gonzalez, its senior vice president and managing director. “Poverty is at the root of all social ills. We’re really trying to solve poverty.”

Samasource begins by providing training to “marginalized women and youth” to teach them to complete “dignified” internet-based work. Gonzalez says, “We work in the slums of Nairobi. We work in extremely poor, rural Uganda. We also work in India.” After providing digital skills training, Samasource either places them into full-time work or hires them directly.

“Our goal is really to be the bridge employer.” The idea is that once a person is employable and can work for a company without a subsidy, they are likely to be successful.

So far, Samasource has moved 36,000 people out of poverty and has paid out $10 million in wages. Gonzalez reports that 80 percent of them stay employed or go on to get university education.

OpenBiome

To say that OpenBiome fits a unique niche in the social good space is a gross understatement. The nonprofit stool bank is all about helping people get healthy poop. Yes, that kind of stool.

About 500,000 people get and 30,000 people die each year in the U.S. from a bowel infection called Clostridium Difficile or C-diff. It is a hospital acquired disease that results from antibiotic use that kills that healthy fecal microbiota. James Burgess, 30, executive director, said that he and his colleagues started OpenBiome after a friend suffered through a long-lasting C-diff infection.

“Today, we provide carefully-screened, clinical-grade stool to 900 hospitals across the country, enabling thousands of treatments and supporting dozens of ground-breaking clinical trials in the microbiome,” he says. The treatment is a fecal transplant. The material is traditionally administered via a colonoscopy. A new pill—a “poop pill”—is being developed, he says.

OpenBiome is now testing the use of fecal transplants to treat a wide variety of gut treatments.

The Award

The Classy Award selection process is rigorous, according to co-founder Pat Walsh. There is a four-phase process that begins with a lengthy nomination form. Each year, Classy works to improve the process. A selection committee determines who all the winners are.

The nomination process begins this fall for next year’s awards. If you know someone who is solving a problem worth solving, consider nominating them.

Over 1 million people have read my books; have you? Learn more about my courses on entrepreneurship, crowdfunding and corporate social responsibility here.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

The post 10 Problems. 10 Solutions. 10 Awards. Classy. appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

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Michael Trainer, 40, one of the founders of the successful Global Citizen events in Central Park in New York City, had a life-altering experience following the third concert. His father was diagnosed with dementia.

Trainer had been focused almost exclusively on Global Citizen, an event that people earn the right to attend by doing good deeds, activating tremendous cumulative impact through collective advocacy, donations and volunteerism. The shock of his father’s diagnosis caused him to reassess his priorities.

Recognizing that Global Citizen was in good hands, he left and began researching dementia, its causes and treatments. He came away determined to help people achieve “Peak Mind” and so created a new social enterprise that would encourage people to improve their health with an eye on preventing dementia.

Forest Whitaker and Michael Trainer at the 2015 Peak Mind Meditation summit with Dalai Lama

Watch the full interview with Trainer in the video player at the top of this article.

“While I have been focusing on issues like malaria and polio, diseases that are affecting the extreme poor, I now became aware of the fact that there was an extraordinary prevalence–growing prevalence–of diseases like diabetes and dementia that were affecting a different part of the globe.” Trainer continues, “And so it led me down the rabbit hole and was the genesis of Peak Mind.”

One of the things he found was a link between Type 2 diabetes and dementia.

Dementia already costs the world about 1% of global GDP or about $605 billion–and diabetes costs the world about twice as much. Trainer also explains that one in two people will likely get dementia, meaning that almost everyone will either get it or end up caring for someone with it. Similarly, about half the U.S. and Chinese populations are pre-diabetic. To punctuate this point, Trainer adds, ” We now have more obese people on the planet than non-obese people for the first time in history.”

Trainer compares his last venture with his current one. “With Global Citizen, we wanted to move beyond guilt and shame as a driver for social change, and more take people on a journey through hope and inspiration. I want to do the same with Peak Mind, only this time the focus is creating impact from the inside out.”

To inspire people to use and protect their minds, Peak Mind holds periodic events. The first event featured His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama hosted by Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker. At the events, Trainer says they hope to both inspire people and to provide practical, measurable steps people can take to improve their health and their lives.

Andrea Fennewald, Founder of The Wellness Collective, collaborated with Trainer on the first Peak Mind event. She says, “We believe change starts on an individual level, and thus aimed to create a shift in attitudes and habits around physical and mental health.”

Trainer says that Peak Mind is profitable, that it employs ten people and expects to increase that to 20 as the next event approaches. The company expects to top $1 million in revenue for 2016.

Michael Trainer with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

“I’ve been a social entrepreneur my whole life,” Trainer says. He lived and studied in Sri Lanka at age 19 and that led to a series of nonprofit, international development and social enterprise opportunities, culminating in Peak Mind.

“Our mission is at the core of what we do, my background is in building social movements, most recently as national director of Global Citizen. Most of these enterprises were nonprofit or for-purpose entities driven by impact at scale. With Peak Mind, the mission is the same, to build a movement around next-generation wellness,” Trainer concludes.

After learning of his father’s diagnosis, he took his dad to South Africa on a vacation. They shared a great bonding experience that included learning more about Nelson Mandela, whom Trainer considers his hero and role model. Peak Mind may not be able to cure those who have dementia today but Trainer hopes it will help prevent millions or even billions from suffering from it in the future.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN estimates that “roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted.”

Recognizing the journalistic injunction to avoid hyperbole, that truly is an enormous problem.

Justin Kamine, his brother Matthew and his father Hal determined that was just what they were looking for: an enormous opportunity. The Kamines have been developing infrastructure scale-projects since the senior Hal got into the cogeneration business in the mid-80s.

Justin Kamine joined me for a discussion about the company the family founded, KDC Ag, to tackle the problem.

The food waste problem also gives them an opportunity to address social and environmental problems they feel a desire to fix.

Food waste contributes to climate change as all the food that ends up in landfills required substantial energy to get there. Furthermore, the soil we use to grow crops is being consistently depleted; chemical fertilizers fail to restore all of the nutrients lost.

Justin Kamine, KDC Ag

Those chemical fertilizers, Kamine says, are overused. The first 50% of the nitrogen added does 80% of the good; the second 50% largely is lost to runoff, resulting in huge dead zones, especially in areas where runoff is concentrated in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Matthew Weatherley-White, Managing Director at CAPROCK, asked for comment, said, “Petroleum-based fertilizers mean, as Michael Pollan is fond of saying, that we are all eating oil.”

KDC Ag’s board of directors is comprised of luminaries, including former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman and philanthropist Howard Buffett.

Kamine cites Buffett as suggesting that conventional farmers need to be “much more environmentally sensitive and progressive.”

Six years ago, the Kamines invested in California Safe Soil, which has been working with the University of California at Davis to develop a process for converting waste food into fertilizer and animal feed. With that technology now commercialized, the Kamines formed KDC Ag to bring the technology to infrastructure scale with a goal of eliminating food waste over the next five years.

The new process mimics human digestion; they sometimes refer to it as compost 2.0. Waste food can be converted to fertilizer or animal food in three hours and is available for use the next day.

The KDC Ag process starts with virtually any supermarket waste food, including fruits and vegetables, meats and baked goods. The food pellets that result taste “like raisin bran,” according to Kamine. The pellets are fed to chicken and pigs. The Food and Drug Administration prohibits feeding the products to cows.

The liquid fertilizer can be added to a farmer’s drip irrigation system providing for precision agriculture that returns a broad range of nutrition to the soil. Food contains relatively little nitrogen so conventional farmers have KDC Ag add nitrogen to the liquid fertilizer. Organic farmers use it as it comes out of the system.

Craig Wichner, Managing Partner of Farmland LP, which invests in conventional farms and converts them to organic production, notes, “Using supermarket food waste to create fertilizer is completely philosophically aligned with organic production. They are taking a known good product (food at supermarkets), and closing the loop on the waste, converting it quickly and efficiently back into food for plants.”

The production process is sufficiently benign to be conducted in urban areas near the supermarkets supplying the food, allowing for an efficient backhaul distribution model employing trucks that deliver food to the stores to return to the farms carrying feed and/or fertilizer.

Because post-consumer food typically contains too much salt for a healthy soil amendment, those food wastes are not good candidates for the KDC Ag process.

Kamine was recently invited to participate in a clean tech competition hosted by the Prince of Monaco. Against 30 invited competitors, KDC Ag won the Clean Tech Equity Award.

What initially appealed to the Kamines, who report having $3.5 billion of infrastructure in their other businesses, is the scale of the opportunity. They hope to be operating in all 50 states within five years.

They earn approximately the same margin on both the feed and the fertilizer, allowing them to adjust according to demand without an impact on the bottom line. The margins are good enough, according to Kamine, to allow the company to invest quickly to scale up the business.

The KDC Ag process will reduce chemical fertilizer use, reduce carbon emissions, increase crop yields 10 to 40% and reduce water consumption all while reducing food waste at a potentially massive scale.

Weatherley-White’s reaction:

As an impact investor, I’m intrigued. Clear benefits to healthy soils. Equally clear benefits to landfill management and organic waste therein (including landfill-released GHG reduction). Using organic, composted fertilizer on crops is a fantastic benign-by-design chemical replacement. And the potential for scale is certainly compelling: the combination of food waste reduction and ag chemical substitution could be a massive opportunity.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

The post For This Family, The Bigger The Problem, The Bigger The Opportunity appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

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Alex Scott, the second child and only daughter among four children, must have been born with the genes of a social entrepreneur. Her resilience and her perseverance are the hallmarks of almost all successful entrepreneurs.

Born prematurely in 1996, she manifested her fighting spirit immediately, defying the odds and quickly earning the right to leave the hospital. Her mother, Liz Scott, now 47, says it was a glimpse of what was to come.

Before her first birthday, Alex was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a pediatric cancer. She would battle the cancer for the rest of her short life, about seven and a half more years.

Liz Scott says, “Everything they had they threw at her.” Ms. Scott says, Alex demonstrated extraordinary strength through it all. No matter what, she could “find the joy in the day.” When she had a bad day, she would find a way to get through it with grace.

Watch the full interview with Ms. Scott in the video player at the top of this article.

The doctors tried all the conventional therapies, chemo, radiation and surgery. Nothing worked.

They started experimental treatments. They tried Metaiodobenzylguanidine or MIBG therapy that allowed them to perform a stem cell transplant, which works much like a bone marrow transplant to boost the immune system after being obliterated except that they use the patient’s own stem cells.

Even before it was confirmed by the CAT scans, Alex told her parents the therapy was working. In January of 2000, she told her mom she wanted to do a lemonade stand. Given the weather in Connecticut at that time of year—not to mention everything else going on in the complicated lives of a young family with a cancer patient—her mom put her off.

In June, Alex, now four and half years old, says, “I still haven’t had my stand.”

Annoyed, her mother asked, “Alex, what do you want to buy so badly that you need to have this lemonade stand?”

“I’m not keeping the money; I’m giving it to my doctors so they can help kids the way they helped me.”

And so, Alex’s Lemonade Stand was born.

Volunteers working at an Alex’s Lemonade Stand

By the time she was six, she’d raised about $30,000. Her parents were giving the money to fund neuroblastoma research to find a cure for Alex’s cancer.

When Alex found out, she said, “That is so selfish.”

“I wanted to say, ‘I don’t care!’ because I wanted a cure for my daughter,” Ms. Scott says.

Before she could get the words out, Alex said, “All kids want their cancer to go away. We should be giving money to all hospitals for all kinds of cancer.” That statement has defined the nonprofit’s vision ever since.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation has now funded research on 25 different pediatric cancers. Researchers apply for grants that are reviewed and scored by scientists. The projects with the best scores get funded, Ms. Scott says.

Alex Scott

Toward the end of her life, Alex knew the treatments had stopped working. She was going to have one last stand and thought if everybody helps, if everybody has lemonade stands on the same day as hers, we could raise $1 million. “She held on to see that goal met,” her mother says.

“She died knowing that she had done this and had accomplished this seemingly insurmountable goal and number,” she adds.

After Alex passed away, the Scotts weren’t sure they would continue the fundraising effort. Alex really was the driving force.

But other people kept supporting the cause. “That put wind in our sails,” she says. Other families were reaching out for help and companies were signaling a willingness to help.

“How could you walk away from the opportunity to help other children?” With that thought, the work of the foundation did continue. Ms. Scott and her husband Jay Scott are the co-executive directors.

Ms. Scott confesses, “When Alex said she was going to cure cancer with the lemonade stand, honestly, I thought it was cute and I was proud. I didn’t think it would make a big difference in the world of fighting cancer.”

That isn’t what happened. Big progress has been made, especially over the past ten years. She says she regularly hears from parents now who say, my child is in remission for one year, two years, three years. It is “indescribable” to think that Alex’s life has had that effect.

Ms. Scott remains personally connected to the families of children with cancer even as the organization grows in scale and impact. “It’s both inspiring and really hard because a lot of them do really well. And some of them don’t.”

Applebee’s partnered with the Foundation beginning in 2005. This year, the restaurant chain raised $1.3 million for Alex’s Lemonade Stand.

“Each year, more and more of our franchise partners and restaurants join our campaign with Alex’s, allowing us to make even more of an impact in many of our Applebee’s neighborhoods across the country, uniting team members and guests with a common goal of curing childhood cancers,” said John Cywinski, president, Applebee’s.

Franchisee Diann Banaszek shared her story:

While this cause has always been important to me, it was brought home in 2012 when my grandson, C.J., was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia at the age of 11. As our family went through our own battle, we came to learn first-hand the enormous difference that ALSF has made in families’ lives. My grandson finally defeated his leukemia, but ultimately lost his life in 2014 from an infection that resulted from his treatment. Throughout his illness, he, like Alex, was passionate about doing anything he could to help kids like himself in the future. We continue their fight to see the end of childhood cancer in C.J.’s honor and are proud to have the Applebee’s family fighting alongside us.

Miriam Matz, the mother of eight-year-old cancer survivor Ellie Matz, shared a similar story:

When my daughter, Ellie was diagnosed with cancer, there were many long nights in the hospital those first few weeks. I was beyond exhausted but too anxious to sleep. I remember googling “Philadelphia” and “Childhood Cancer,” hoping to get a sense of whether there was a community or resources that I could be reaching out to. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation immediately popped up, and I sent them an email. I was immediately contacted and offered both emotional and practical support, such as connections with other parents, a binder for organizing treatment and related information, and information about navigating the childhood cancer world. Early in our cancer life, our family decided that one way to survive and to hopefully make some meaning out of what we were going through, would be to get involved in helping raise money that could possibly help others. We’ve been lucky enough to be involved in ASLF ever since… being a part of that community has made us feel so much less lonely, and given us a tangible way to feel that we are contributing to help others.

Ellie’s cancer is the most common, meaning that there are several treatment options should the cancer return. Her mother points out that for families facing a rare cancer, there may be only one standard treatment—for some rare cancers, there are none.

It is for these families that Ms. Scott is most optimistic. She thinks curing cancer is realistic. Today’s progress is smart progress, she says. We’re looking at immunotherapies, targeted therapies and precision therapies or personalized medicine. “That’s how it’s going to become possible for every child to have the possibility of a cure.” For the cancers with no treatment and no cure today she predicts the greatest progress in the years to come.

As Alex’s mom reflects on her daughter’s life, she says, “She had to be one of the strongest people I have ever known.” She adds, punctuated by the sorrow only mothers who’ve buried their children know, “You have to remember to be grateful for what you have in your life every single day.”

Alex’s legacy is incomparable. Not only has the four-year-old founder’s organization gone on to raise over $150 million since she started selling lemonade in the front yard, the tally of lives saved and extended is just beginning. By the end of what should have been her natural lifespan in another 60 or 70 years, childhood cancer may be no more threatening than a cold—because she was a social entrepreneur.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

The post Founded By A 4-Year-Old, This Nonprofit Is Her Incomparable Legacy appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

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Meghan Waldron is 15 years old, runs track for her high school, plays in the school orchestra and is working on a novel. She is remarkable in many ways. One way is that she has progeria, a condition so rare only about 300 kids in the world have it; few are expected to live past their 20th birthday–unless promising new treatments are found.

Waldron recently completed her first book, a children’s book called Running on the Wind about a bird born under a rock that doesn’t learn to fly but instead to run.

The book was published by The Red Fred Project, a nonprofit publishing company that helps “children who live in extraordinary circumstances” like Waldron’s to create a children’s book that will both serve as an adult-like achievement to bring a sense of fulfillment to their lives and as a lasting legacy, evidence that their short lives mattered. The company has now published ten books, is working on an 11th and on a plan to publish many more in the future.

Dallas Graham

“A life has meaning and purpose, no matter the age,” says Red Fred Project founder Dallas Graham, 41.

The nonprofit is funded almost entirely by donations. The books are professional quality and they are sold to help fund the costs, but producing books at that quality costs about $20,000, a cost that isn’t covered by book sales.

Some of the funding comes from the Doctorow Family Foundation. Executive Director Suzanne Larson says of the experience of seeing the young authors work published, “I see the look of astonishment, wonder and joy on the kid’s faces holding, touching, grasping palpable, tangible evidence of their accomplishment. I know their loved ones are experiencing all the same emotions from initial contact to book in hand. in addition, the effect ripples out to everyone who has contact with durable legacy produced. this is a gift of enormous magnitude.”

She also sees Graham as something of a kindred spirit, whom she describes as a “magician orchestrating the masterpiece.”

Graham finds a deep sense of purpose working with the creative kids. “I see them as wonderful creators only lacking certain skill-sets their adult counterparts have.”

Because many of the young people he works to help are limited in their physical ability, energy and capability, he enjoys finding a way to help them use their creativity, something that is unconstrained by their circumstances.

“I’m interested in creating something stemming from their imagination and collected and lived life experiences. A book is a wonderful model for this kind of expression and it’s been around for centuries,” Graham explains.

His goal is to help young people who may never reach adulthood–something he is reluctant to even acknowledge out of respect for their hopes and dreams–to leave their mark on the world. “Their lives have just as much value as yours or mine, but because of age or experience, perhaps those are not as equally measured as their adult counterparts.”

“As humans, much of our validation of who we are comes through what we produce or how we show up in the world with relation to others. The ripples caused by the creative act help us understand our placement among people and ideas,” he explains further.

The vehicle for helping the authors to leave a permanent legacy holds appeal to Graham as well. “Children’s books also seem to retain a certain understandability by their readers, that of trying to distill the essence of life into a simple, relatable story.”

Waldron’s book about the bird, Cassidy, that learned to run rather than fly ends with her learning to fly in her own unique way, running and flapping her wings at once. A perfect metaphor confirming Graham’s vision that each and every life has meaning and purpose.

Over 1 million people have read my books; have you? Check out my free webinar exposing the three myths that impair and two keys for crowdfunding success.

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Fifty bucks and five minutes will make you an impact investor. I did it. So can you.

Swell Investing is a new impact investing platform created by social intrapreneur Dave Fanger, 40, of Pacific Life. The idea came, Fanger says, five years ago, thinking about how consumers were increasingly making buying decisions based on social impact and thought there ought to be a way for investors to do the same.

What he came up with incorporated the latest fintech tools for investing, commonly known as robo-advisors paired with impact data to make informed decisions about impact. The technology allows for accounts as small as $50 with annual fees of just 75 basis points or 37.5 cents on a $50 account.

The average account size is just $4,000, suggesting that most investors on the platform are small, some of who are starting with the minimum required investment.

Impact Investing:

Fanger says, “We define impact investing as identifying and investing in companies that are actively deriving revenue from the way that they are solving global and environmental challenges.”

That is distinct from traditional public securities investment strategies known as socially responsible investing, ESG or environmentally, socially and corporate governance investing strategies, that focus on a broader range of companies that are governed well and seek to mitigate their impact on the planet.

Swell Investing presenting puts its customers in their choice of six impact portfolios: green tech, renewable energy, clean water, zero waste, healthy living and disease eradication. The combined funds have about 300 companies, a small subset of the 4,000+ publicly traded companies in the U.S. markets.

The portfolios are intended to line up with one or more of the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals focused on eradicating extreme poverty by 2030.

One key fact about impact investing is that it has traditionally been available only to wealthy investors. Swell Investing is part of a movement to make impact investing available to ordinary investors.

Mike Wynholds, CEO of Carbon Five, helped build out the product. “I think Swell Investing meets in the middle of two separate trends that are important people: low-cost investment advice (robo-advisors, etc) and being responsible stewards of our planet. Swell gives people a way to do something they have to do–saving money–while also doing something they want to do – saving the planet.”

Bryan Walker, partner and managing director at IDEO San Francisco, concurs. “Swell offers a solution for investors who want double impact: financial and social investing. Swell provides a new way for socially conscious consumers to invest without sacrificing the value of their investment.”

Fanger’s focus on impact investing grew out of his superpower: empathy. He says, “I had [type 1 diabetes] since age eight and just living through that and managing this disease has shown me that there’s more going on in life besides what you see on the surface with folks.”

Walker saw that in Fanger early on. “From our very first conversation, I was excited by his true personal passion around the idea.”

Still, Swell Investing is not a philanthropy or merely a corporate social responsibility initiative. Fanger is building this business to make money.

Fanger sees the companies the firm invests in growing and the interest in impact investing among ordinary investors along with it, allowing the firm to scale up assets under management.

IDEO’s Walker says human-centered design will contribute to the firm’s growth. “IDEO brought a human-centered design approach to Swell’s development, which means that design choices were informed by consumer feedback. The team today continues with this approach, engaging with investors to get their feedback on a weekly basis as Swell continues to grow and develop new features.”

Walker boasts that when IDEO’s engagement with Swell ended, he decided to personally invest in Swell because he believes in the company.

The technology is key. It allows for individual investors to hold in separate accounts tiny, fractional interests in companies like Tesla. Fanger also insists the company uses the latest in security to protect those assets.

The company is not yet profitable after launching late in the spring of 2017 and has twenty employees.

Carbon Five’s Wyhholds sees good things in Swell’s future.

“From what I can tell Swell is off to a great start. The key for both the viability of the business and the impact it will have on the world is scale, and while it’s still early on, Swell is growing faster than its competitors did at this stage.”

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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One of the most controversial topics in impact investing is whether it is possible or fair to expect market returns on investments that do good. Gloria Nelund, chairman and CEO of TriLinc Global, says yes.

Nelund says her firm, which manages about $320 million, is designed to prove it. “The whole firm is really dedicated to creating and sponsoring funds that will prove to investors that they don’t have to give up investment returns to do good.”

TriLinc is a private investment fund that lends money to small businesses, including businesses in the developing world. To do business effectively in frontier and emerging markets, the firm partners with local experts.

Nelund explains, “We created a partner model where we went out and found the best private debt fund managers in the world in the countries where we wanted to invest and we developed a partnership with them where they would originate loans for us. We actually co-underwrite and co-structure all of the loans.”

Gloria Nelund, TriLinc Global

TriLinc typically funds the loans directly to the businesses; local partners do not act as intermediaries. Some of the loans are sufficiently large that TriLinc reaches out to other funds to complete the financing.

Nelund highlights a loan to Corporacion Prodesa, S.R.L., a manufacturer of affordable disposable diapers in Peru, as an example of the firm’s impact. The company’s founder, a Peruvian American who worked at Kimberly Clark identified hygiene problems associated with cloth diapers being used in Peru and utilized abandoned technology to produce diapers low and moderate-income families there could afford.

The company not only solves a social problem in the developing world but also provides jobs that raise the standard of living for the community.

Nelund says, “When they were really struggling at one point and we were working with them to try to restructure everything, his biggest concern was the people in the community losing their jobs because it was so important to them and their families.”

The loan of about $3 million represented about 2.1% of the funds’ assets, according to the 2015 10K filed with the SEC and has an interest rate of 15.5-15.6%. The firm’s loans have interest rates ranging from more than 8% to just less than 18%. The loans are made in Central and South America and in Africa.

Nelund explains the investment strategy. “We have a private debt strategy that makes loans to growth stage companies that meet certain environmental social and governance standards and who are committed to creating impact and then we provide loans to those companies so that they can grow and they can create more jobs and they can pay higher wages.”

While Nelund admits that some projects require non-investment capital—philanthropic or aid forms of capital—she sees market rate impact investing as the key to attracting sufficient capital to solve big problems. She says, “You should hold companies to the same [return] standard regardless of the impact they create.”

Matthew Weatherley-White, co-founder and managing director of The Caprock Group, who has invested in the funds, highlights two features of the TriLinc funds. First, he notes that retail investors have been invited to participate in the funds via public offerings—most impact investments are limited to accredited or institutional investors. The other point he highlights is the firm’s focus on doing things better. “This isn’t about perfect. It is about steadily raising the bar.”

Jeff Shafer, co-founder of CommonGood Capital, praises Tirlinc’s team and procedures for sourcing deals outside the US with an emphasis on impact. He adds, “Since investing today in the US is dominated by the left brain, market rate returns and proof of positive impact are critical to mobilizing large amounts of capital.”

Dr. Patricia Dinneen, senior advisor, EMPEA and chair of Impact Investing Council, agrees with Shafer’s analysis. Like Weatherley-White, Shafer and Nelund, she concludes that impact investing at market rates is possible. “TriLinc Global provides credible and convincing evidence that you can achieve both financial returns and social benefits.”

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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We’re all familiar with payday lenders who are providing loans to people who can least afford it at interest rates that shock the greediest of corporate bankers. Can a fintech company that lends at rates up to 200% annual percentage rates ever be considered ethical? In this piece, I’m going to share my conclusion.

To help me make this evaluation, I turned to Morgan Simon, a vocal advocate for using a social justice lens for impact investing. She is the author of Real Impact: The New Economics of Social Change and Managing Director of Candide Group. She framed the question for me:

In general, when we think about fintech, from microfinance in the global south to financial services for working class populations in the US, we think a lot about the question of fairness. It’s common for a social enterprise to focus on providing better rates to a customer compared to what they had access to. But better does not always mean fair. So, we always look at a company and try to assess–is the financing non-extractive, meaning the customer receives more value than the company?  Is the operating margin reasonable compared to the consumer value created? Does the product help build assets as opposed to focusing predominately on consumption? Each company and case is different, and hence it’s impossible to say that a certain range of APRs enables fairness. It’s important to take each company case-by-case and try to assess its particular impact.

She framed the question well but didn’t answer it for me.

Lendup is a fintech company based in San Francisco with offices in Richmond, Virginia that provides four tiers of consumer lending, with the stated objective of providing customers with a path to better financial health. At the bottom rung of their credit ladder, they provide loans of about $250 at an APR of 200%. The company, backed by Kleiner Perkins, among other well-regarded venture investors, now has 220 employees, has made 4 million loans totaling more than $1 billion. By their estimate, they’ve saved their customers $130 million. They have also provided 1.6 million free online courses about money management.

For this article, I visited with Sasha Orloff, CEO and Vijesh Iyer, COO, to learn what they do and how they justify lending at such rates. You can—and should—watch the entire interview in the video player at the top of the article.

Vijesh Iyer, Lendup COO

Iyer explained the Lendup vision, saying, “We believe there are two types of financial products: chutes and ladders. Ladders help people up; chutes push people down. One of our core values is that every product we offer at LendUp is a ladder, and our success is measured by the long-term financial well-being of our customers.”

That lending at 200% interest rates could be a ladder to greater financial health begs scrutiny.

Orloff, 40, was quick to put Lendup’s practices in greater context. “When you’re thinking about the payday lending industry you’re typically talking about 400 to 1,000% APR annualized rates. You’re paying the same rate day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.”

Obviously, lending at half the rate or better than the competition is better for the customer, but it could still be a debt trap from which the customer might never escape.

The scale of the problem or opportunity, depending on your view of the situation, is staggering. Orloff points out that 56% of Americans don’t have access to traditional financial services. Payday loans are typically not reported to credit bureaus, which serves customers just fine when they default but is no help when they repay the loans according to the terms, leaving them stuck in financial purgatory.

No reader of this piece would want to borrow at 200% unless it were the best available option. Even then, we’d want to be sure that we wouldn’t be better off not borrowing the money.

Lendup takes the ladder concept seriously. Rather than go to a store-front with the employees working behind bullet-proof glass, customers borrow on their phones. They are encouraged to take financial literacy courses. As they make payments in a timely way, they move up Lendup’s ladder, earning the right to borrow more money at lower interest rates. At the top two tiers of service, the company reports credit results to all three major credit bureaus, potentially helping customers establish a credit score that would give them access to traditional credit products, Orloff explains.

Still, I worried what happens to customers that can’t repay their loans on time. Some payday lenders have been reputed to compound interest and fees monthly or even weekly, allowing an unpaid loan of a few hundred dollars to balloon out of control within a year. Does Lendup take the same approach to its slow-paying customers?

No. They assure me that the company never charges another fee. For their single payment loan customers, no late fees or interest accrue. Instead, the company works with the clients to ensure that customers are not stuck in a debt trap when they can’t pay.

Orloff says, “At the end of the day, we try to structure our products so that we make money when they pay us back not when they get further into trouble because we’re trying to lend people up.”

The problem has persisted despite the continued economic recovery, in part because so many people have been moving from salaried positions to hourly or even to the gig economy where people are paid only for the brief moments when they are working on a paid task. Uber and Lyft drivers, Upwork freelancers, Task Rabbit contractors and so many others now experience unprecedented volatility in their incomes.

Understanding how their model is designed to work, I set out to understand whether or not it does work. Orloff and Iyer were unwilling to provide data on the proportion of their customers who are able to climb to the top of their ladder and graduate. One can reasonably conclude the data isn’t encouraging.

They did share that a comparison of cohorts of their customers and non-customers showed that their customers improved their credit scores faster and farther than non-customers.

Credit scores matter. Iyer notes that a graduate of their program can save hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime by earning a higher credit score.

A graduate of their program gains access to traditional credit cards with a grace period that allows them to borrow money for longer than just one payroll cycle at zero cost. Orloff says, “They’re going from paying 400 to 1,000% APR to a zero-dollar borrowing cost. To me, that’s one of the proudest most incredible things that we’ve accomplished here at Lendup.”

They don’t see Lendup as the solution to the problem. Iyer points out, “We’re talking about over 50 percent of the US population not having $400 to take care of themselves in an emergency.”

They see Lendup as part of a growing movement to give people better access to the financial services they need. The company collaborates with nonprofits to help address the systemic challenges that make being poor so expensive.

Orloff says, “If our system is working really well for 44% of the country and it’s not working really well for 56% of the country then something has to change.”

He adds, “The reason why I’m excited about this interview and other interviews is creating a broader awareness of this movement has started and that we need the support of a lot of different players from the press from the regulators from the financial markets.”

One of the nonprofits with which Lendup collaborates is The Aspen Institute. Joanna Smith Ramani, the associate director for the Institute’s financial security program, helps answer my fundamental question:

One of our goals at the Aspen Financial Security Program is to build and spotlight leadership that is committed to solving the financial challenges of working Americans. Sasha is a real innovator in the financial service and fintech industry around his commitment to solving not just the credit needs of low-wage earners, but also the overall financial health needs of families as well. We have been encouraged by LendUp’s eagerness to directly learn from their consumers, to iterate their products, and to engage in cross-sector discussions, even with critics and advocates, about how to not just make their product better, but also the industry better.

So, is it ethical to lend to people who are struggling financially at an APR of 200%? Yes. When the customer’s interests are put before corporate interests, lending at such high rates is ethical. But I’ll be watching.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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Jennifer Williams, a school teacher in Mississippi, has now paid off all nine of her payday loans and hasn’t had one outstanding now for two years. She’s a success story for Southern Bancorp.

Modeled on Shore Bank, which failed during the Great Recession, Southern Bancorp was organized by a collection of Arkansas’s most prominent people, including then Governor Bill Clinton and Rob Walton, a member of the Walton family. Unlike Shore Bank, Southern Bancorp is profitable and growing today.

“Governor Clinton wanted to create economic opportunities and stimulate the economy in Arkansas’s delta region, one of the most persistently poor communities in all of America,” says today’s CEO Darrin Williams. He notes that Hillary Clinton served on the founding board of directors for the bank.

When launched more than 30 years ago, the biggest worry was that what worked for Shore Bank in the urban environs of Chicago and later Detroit and Cleveland might not work in rural Arkansas and Mississippi. The acid test of the past decade suggests the model works just fine in the rural communities it serves.

The bank operates 46 branches in Arkansas and Mississippi, 37% of those branches are in “bank deserts” where the Southern Bancorp branch is either the only bank operating in the zip code or just one of two. What’s more, 28 percent of the population in the bank’s market lives below the federal poverty line.

Darrin Williams, CEO, Southern Bancorp

The CEO Williams explains the market and the bank’s strategy, “Often our competition is not another bank; often our competition is a payday lender or pawn shop or someone who provides alternative forms of capital or credit that really strip wealth. So, we really do a lot of outreach. We don’t wait for people to come to the bank. We take the bank to them.”

The market Southern Bancorp serves is vast, when considered at a global scale. According to the World Bank, about 2 billion people around the world are unbanked or underbanked. In the U.S., an FDIC report in 2015 showed 9 million households were unbanked and another 24.5 million households were underbanked.

Mr. Williams notes, “It’s expensive being poor.” Unbanked customers are forced to routinely pay for services that banked customers receive a low or no charge, from check cashing to check-writing privileges. Check cashing services charge up to 10 percent of the face value of a check and buying a money order costs several dollars.

To be an asset to the communities it serves, the $1.2 billion asset bank operates three related Community Development Finance Institutions or CDFIs. The bank holding company and the bank are the first two; the third is a nonprofit called Southern Bancorp Community Partners.

Mike Myers, vice president, CFO and Treasurer for the nonprofit Winrock International, which partners with Southern Bancorp on some efforts, says, “By providing financial capital in geographic areas too small for the big banks to be profitable, Southern protects the economically disadvantaged from predatory lenders (pawn shops, payday lenders, etc.) Additionally, Southern provides hands on financial counseling teaching people how to use credit rather than credit using them.”

Mr. Williams explains that the bank focuses on measures of net worth as that helps to break inter-generational poverty. For many, the difference is as simple as home ownership. The bank, he says, has three “big hairy audacious goals:”

1. Help 10,000 people with home ownership
2. Help create 100,000 jobs
3. Empower 1 million to save money

He was quick to point out that helping people save money will come primarily as a result of the bank’s advocacy work rather than from providing savings accounts to 1 million people.

Mr. Williams has his work cut out for him. “We know that so many people just distrust banks.”

He explains that a typical overdraft fee of $25 or $30 throws customers for a loop. They don’t always appreciate that the bank provided a short-term credit facility and that the service should come with a fee. The effective interest rate on such overdrafts can, in fact, be every bit as penurious as the payday lenders Ms. Williams, no relation to the CEO, has learned to avoid.

One way that Southern Bancorp is working to address unanticipated fees is to create a checkless checking account. Customers get access to their money via a debit card. If the funds in the account are inadequate for the transaction, it is declined and no fees are charged. In this way, the customer picks up right where she left off after the next deposit. The bank offers several accounts with no minimum balance and no or low monthly fees.

The 380-employee bank makes a point to bank customers who have had trouble with banks in the past to help them get back on better financial footing. Banks customarily use ChexSystems to identify customers who’ve had accounts closed by other banks, typically refusing to open new accounts for them. Southern Bancorp uses the system only to screen for fraud. Everyone else is welcome, Mr. Williams says.

One key to the bank’s success is financial education. That’s how Ms. Williams first connected with Southern Bancorp. “My friend and I were looking through the newspaper one day and saw an advertisement for a credit counseling class offered by Southern Bancorp. We called and enquired about the class and began the class immediately,” she reports.

“By combining traditional banking and lending services with financial development tools ranging from credit counseling to public policy advocacy, Southern Bancorp helps underserved families and communities grow financially stronger – regardless of zip code,” Mr. Williams notes.

Mr. Williams, who was a litigator and also served in the Arkansas House of Representatives before joining Southern Bancorp as CEO, likes to ask, “Do you know where your money spends the night?”

He points out that every deposit in the bank is a simple form of impact investment. Not only does the bank use the money to make traditional loans to people in the communities it serves but also makes investments in school bonds, water bonds and other community infrastructure. “I would submit your bank account really is a primary way that you can live your values.”

The bank takes deposits from all around the country from people who want to support the bank’s mission. Mr. Williams points out that the bank is working on a new platform to make it easier for customers outside of the bank’s service area to make deposits there.

The bank is presently raising additional capital to support its growth and impact.

“We believe that wealth building isn’t just for the wealthy. So, we are wealth builders for everyone,” Mr. Williams says.

Myers praises Southern’s work: “Look at the impact…the number of loans less than $10,000, the EIC amounts recovered through free tax preparation, the jobs created and supported, home ownership leading to wealth generation. No other organization in the region has the mission, the tools, the approach, the passion…or the impact. If Southern does not do it, who will?”

Ms. Williams is a fan, too. “I feel that Southern Bancorp really cares about their customers. I feel that they put so much work into getting the word out about credit counselling and helping people build their credit. They make you feel comfortable and willing to share your information with them. Even after the classes, on many occasions, Mrs. Harris has called to check on my progress, and encouraged me to keep going and working on my credit. I feel that Southern Bancorp goes well beyond the basic duties of the typical services provided by banks.

Over 1 million people have read my books; have you? Check out my free webinar exposing the three myths that impair and two keys for crowdfunding success.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

The post ‘Wealth Building Isn’t Just For The Wealthy’ appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

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“We have grown far too tolerant of businesses not acting in alignment with the public good,” said Derek Fetzer, director of Johnson and Johnson’s CaringCrowd crowdfunding site for global health. “Shouldn’t all business, all entrepreneurship be for the public good? ”

“The spirit of social entrepreneurs is crucial in solving global health challenges, and has been a driving force in uncovering innovative solutions to tackle the ever-changing global health landscape,” Carol Pandak, PolioPlus director for Rotary International, said. (I am a member of Rotary and once wrote an article for the Rotarian Magazine.)

Pandak noted that global health issues hold a unique space on the plant. “It could be easy to diagnose many global health challenges as problems of individual regions and nations.” After all, it has been decades since anyone in the Americas got polio.

She pointed out that the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal number 3 targets healthy lives and well-being for all. “When it comes to global health, there really is no issue from which any group, any nation is immune.” Even with only 15 cases reported so far in 2017, polio is just a plane ride away.

To get a better perspective on global health opportunities for social entrepreneurs, I invited 12 experts and practitioners to join me for a roundtable discussion. You can watch the entire 90-minute discussion in the video player above. Pandak participated only in writing. In a wide-ranging discussion, we covered challenges and opportunities in global health along with specific examples and some key lessons learned.

Leslie Calman, Engineering World Health

Leslie Calman, CEO of Engineering World Health, extended Pandak’s idea. “The answer must be broadly systemic, not singular: a combination of broad public health measures; an educated and paid healthcare workforce including doctors, nurses and technicians; support from governments and NGOs for public hospitals and clinics that serve low-income people; [and] the education of women and girls.”

Entrepreneurs have many roles to play in global health, said Deepak Kapur, the Chairman, India National PolioPlus Committee. He highlights needs assessment, monitoring, cutting red-tape for rapid response to emergent needs, special perspectives of business and industry and piloting new programs.

Challenges in Global Health:

There are no shortages of challenges in global health for social entrepreneurs to pursue as opportunities.

Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, CEO and director of scientific affairs for the Cancer Research Institute, argues that fundamental research is the key to disease eradication. “Ultimately, I believe it comes down to research, and that means funding and time.” She added, “And without that, I feel we don’t get to deliver anything.”

She responded with a hint of irritation to a question about how long will it take to cure cancer, noting she is frequently asked how much money it will take, “Science doesn’t work that way.”

Calman put disease eradication into a broader perspective. “There is much more to health than the eradication of diseases. It is one benefit of a reduction in poverty and war. Health requires good nutrition, education (especially of women and girls), stable governments, public investment, peace. ”

UNICEF’s Stefan Peterson, who has spent most of his career working in or for resource-constrained countries, did take issue with the idea that scientific research should be the priority. “I think we need systems innovation more than product innovation. When two out of three kids and mothers die on necessarily because we have the technology and the knowledge and it doesn’t reach them. We need market research. We need delivery science and systems innovation.”

Contemplating that disagreement, I couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t just looking at opposite sides of the same $20 bill. Without research, there would be nothing to implement in the field; without distribution, the research has no value.

Social entrepreneur Dean Ornish, the founder and president of the non-profit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, has focused his career on lifestyle’s contribution to health. He concludes that good global health requires attention to both lifestyle and cell biology.

Bruce Aylward, Senior Advisor to the Director-General, of the World Health Organization or WHO, noted that Ornish’s work is important because of what is coming. “The escalating rates of non-communicable diseases are the great epidemic in front of us and not just in industrialized but in middle-income countries and low-income countries as well.”

Agreeing, Ornish noted, “More people are dying today in most countries in the world including much of Africa from heart disease and type 2 diabetes than AIDS, TB [tuberculosis] and malaria combined.”

Highlighting the challenges of dealing with the coming epidemic, Calman noted, “We work in hospitals that don’t have blood pressure cuffs.” Her organization works to train local technicians to service and repair hospital equipment. There are people around the world who have no way of knowing they have high blood pressure.

“The question is what’s available within the first mile the first-mile health system from your house,” she continued. “And chances are that it won’t be a hospital.” These frontline health workers may be at the nearby pharmacy.

Women and Children:

In the global health sphere, there is little that is more important than helping women and children. Peterson cleverly explained, “The best advice to an unborn child is to pick your mother well and make sure that she’s healthy and has a good pregnancy.”

More soberly, he said, “If we are serious about achieving the SDG goals, we need to focus on building strong health systems that deliver quality of care for every woman and every child, everywhere.”

When thinking about women’s health, it is important not to limit the discussion too narrowly. Discouraging girls from becoming parents or getting married as teenagers and staying in school are also public health issues but they don’t happen in hospitals, Calman noted. Organizations and entrepreneurs need to pay special attention to keeping girls in school during menstruation by ensuring they have access to feminine hygiene products and education along with adequate facilities. “Women do in fact hold up half the sky.”

Examples of Social Entrepreneurship in Global Health

Mellanie True Hills, the founder and CEO of StopAfib.org, who participated in the discussion is a great example of a global health social entrepreneur. “We’ve educated people not only in the US but around the globe around this whole issue of atrial fibrillation which for those who are not familiar with that is an irregular heartbeat that leads to strokes.”

Mellanie True Hills

Founded in 2001 by two University of Memphis professors, Bob Malkin and Mohammad Kiani, Engineering World Health set out to train technicians to service medical equipment. Calman notes that if you show up to a hospital with a broken x-ray machine it isn’t any different for the patient than showing up and finding the hospital doesn’t have one.

Calman added, “We encounter over and over again folks who are willing to train or retrain doctors and nurses and as vital as that is if they’re 21st-century doctors and they’re working with 18th-century equipment it’s a waste of resources.” Training technicians should be just as high a priority.

There are opportunities in cancer research as well. O’Donnell-Tormey notes that a revolution in immunology began about five years ago. “I think the medical community believes now that the immune system can be used to treat and control cancer.”

Innovation in cancer treatment doesn’t end there. Acknowledging that some cancers are caused by lifestyle choices, others are caused by viruses, meaning that they can be prevented with vaccines.

Ornish, a consummate social entrepreneur, has spent 40 years working on treating public health with lifestyle changes, focusing on helping people move to a whole foods, plant-based diet.

WHO’s Aylward, noted, “And this is what makes the kind of work that Dean’s doing and others are looking at so exciting when you look at those and say lifestyle choices and changes may actually not only reduce risk but reverse disease that gets really exciting and that starts to eliminate some of the excuses we frequently find when we’re trying to look at how do you tackle this big epidemic in front of us.”

Ornish remarkably reported, “We found that in just three months over 500 genes were changed turning on the good genes turning off the bad genes and particularly the what are called the oncogene to promote prostate, breast, and colon cancer just turned off within just a few months.”

“We found that we could actually lengthen telomeres, in a sense reverse aging at a cellular level,” he added. The length telomeres at the end of each strand of DNA have been shown to correlate with a person’s remaining lifespan; the longer the telomeres, the longer the remaining lifespan.

Dr. Dean Ornish, Preventive Medicine Research Institute

In the context of the discussion on global health, Ornish noted the irony that the diet he advocates is the traditional diet of many low-income countries. As countries become richer, they get KFC and McDonalds, changing the traditional healthier diet.

“You know the natural foods and organic foods and healthy foods market is exploding whereas the soft drink sales are down 50% the last few years,” he added, emphasizing the entrepreneurial opportunities in this arena.

Curt LaBelle, president of Global Health Investment Fund, is a venture capitalist whose limited partners are committed to balancing impact and financial returns. He shared some of his strategy.

“Every investment that we make we have to evaluate not only is it an innovative product that can serve a need in the developing world but is there a way to actually get it to the people who need it,” he said.

The range of possible investments is wide. “But our goal is to take innovative products–and these can be vaccines; these can be pharmaceutical products; these can be medical devices or medical diagnostics–and get them to the people who can benefit the most while generating positive returns for investors.” The firm does exclude medical devices that require substantial capital investments as they are not a fit for resource-constrained markets.

One example of the investments the firm has made is in a cataract treatment company called IanTech that make an affordable, handheld device that doctors can use to treat cataracts with results comparable to the current standard of care. He notes that doctors can learn to use it in just a few days so when the trainers leave, they leave the skill set in country with the device.

Another portfolio company, Path, produces a drug to treat hookworms and roundworms. This is a huge market; LaBelle notes that in terms of people impacted by their products, this has the potential to help the most people.

What happens if a disease is successfully eradicated by one of the portfolio companies? “We want to get rid of the disease and we want to make some money along the way but if we get rid of it and no longer make any money that’s actually fantastic. All of our investors would be thrilled.”

Derek Fetzer, CaringCrowd

Big pharma is sometimes accused of serving the market to treat a disease rather than the business of curing it. Johnson and Johnson’s Fetzer responded:

There is a powerful financial incentive to find and produce a cure, particularly if you think (which is the case) that other companies are also trying to find the cure anyway (and quite possibly not participating in the treatment market). So better you find the cure than someone else.

A great example of this is the hepatitis C market, which commanded huge premiums. The prior standard of care was expensive and had a low cure rate, less than 50%. Gilead with no prior hepatitis C treatment business came in with shorter treatment and a high cure rate, in the neighborhood of 80%, and produced record breaking profits for a single drug.

Fetzer’s argument suggests opportunities for entrepreneurs and researchers.

Opportunities in Global Health:

UNICEF’s Peterson suggests that one overriding reason for business to pursue global health initiatives is that all the people they save are potential customers.

Jack Andraka, who invented a new diagnostic tool for pancreatic cancer as a teenager and now studies at Stanford, says the big data movement presents an especially interesting opportunity. “I think one of the most important things are happening right now is this kind of big data movement that’s going on in cancer with machine learning as well as all these interesting biomarker discovery processes”

“And if you can’t prevent the cancer you can detect it early when treatment is, first, less expensive but also way more effective,” he continued. “And we could really see that with pancreatic cancer where if you’re diagnosed early enough you have a 100 percent chance of survival and you don’t have to do things like the Whipple resection which have huge mortality rates”

Similarly, he thinks the opportunity in the gut is interesting. “Looking at your microbiome inside your gut and looking at these unconventional ways are beginning of treating cancer.”

The Cancer Research Institute, under O’Donnell-Tormey’s leadership, raised a venture philanthropy fund to de-risk promising research and make it more appealing to investors. Of course, this means that some of the projects the Institute funds don’t succeed, but knowing another path that didn’t work is almost as important as knowing what does work.

“So, if we can as, a not-for-profit, create a mechanism where we help to de-risk early, do hard core correlative and translational science to understand mechanistically even when things fail why they fail.” This helps prevent research projects proceeding to phase three clinical trials they would likely have failed, allowing more funds to go to projects with greater promise.

Deepak Kapur, India National PolioPlus

In another vein of opportunity, Kapur noted that “In India, we have already begun leveraging the infrastructure and the experience of polio to routine immunizations against all diseases for which vaccines are available.” The lessons and infrastructure are significant. The Journal of Infectious Diseases recently published an article by John L. Sever and others about the lessons and legacy of polio eradication.

Aylward noted one example. “You can’t eradicate a disease if you can’t see it if you can’t find it. And the polio program has got incredible experience putting in place a disease surveillance infrastructure globally where we often do very little else.”

Innovation in polio eradication did not end with Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin and their respective polio vaccines, Aylward said. “Contrary to conventional wisdom, many of the greatest innovations in the eradication of the poliovirus were not those that took place to get us to the starting line of the global eradication initiative, but those that were conceived and taken to scale as we got closer to the finish line.”

The opportunities in global health for social entrepreneurs are as rich today as ever.

Lessons from Global Health:

Global health efforts over the past decades, especially polio eradication, provide lessons for social entrepreneurs hoping to operate in the field.

Long-term opportunity: Despite all the energy we put into disease eradication and lifestyle improvements, the need for health care is not going away. “People may think when somebody arrives at a hospital that public health ventures have already failed. But, you know, people do have motorcycle accidents; they do have pregnancies; they do need maternal care; they do need neonatal care,” Calman said.

Measurement and improvement: “We must build in, from the start, mechanisms to track progress and impact, and to make course adjustments when needed,” Peterson said. “Contexts change, often unexpectedly, and programming needs to adjust accordingly, and rapidly, if impact is to be sustained.” This approach is called “implementation research” and it dovetails nicely with lean startup models that emphasize execution, feedback and improvement cycles.

Quick returns: Ornish asked rhetorically, “Why should I spend my money today for some future benefit that some other company whether it’s another corporation or another insurance company is going to get?” The answer is that with his lifestyle changes, the benefits begin to accrue almost immediately. “We did a demonstration project with Mutual of Omaha and they found that over that they saved almost $30,000 per patient in the first year because under their doctor’s care most of these patients were able to avoid having the bypass surgery angioplasty or stent that they were told that they otherwise would have needed.”

Social transformation: Not all social entrepreneurs begin as social entrepreneurs. LaBelle said, “One of the things that has been really rewarding to me is to really open the eyes of entrepreneurs who otherwise wouldn’t think about these developing markets around the world.” He notes that products like IanTech’s cataract surgical device that has broad application in low-resource countries around the world is just as appealing in developed countries where it can deliver comparable results at a fraction of the price of the standard of care. He calls these “dual market opportunities.”

Global health is ripe for social entrepreneurs to improve the lives of people around the world at the same time they create profit opportunities.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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Interview with Jacob Allen, the Managing Director of Cicero Social Impact.

For nearly a year, Jacob Allen has been working on a comprehensive report about philanthropy in the State of Utah. While some of the lessons are unique to Utah–the most philanthropically generous state in the nation–most of the insights are generally applicable to charitable giving and the operation of nonprofits anywhere.

What is the problem you solve and how do you solve it?

We help mission-driven individuals and organizations maximize their impact rather than simply providing funding or services. We leverage the best analytic, strategic, measurement, and performance practices from business and apply them to solving social needs.

Download the Giving State Report here: http://www.cicerosocialimpact.org/givingstate/

More about Cicero Social Impact:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CiceroImpact
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SocialImpactCicero/
Website: www.cicerosocialimpact.org

Cicero Social Impact is an advisor, resource, and thought partner for mission-driven funders and organizations who want to maximize their impact in the world. Like our clients, we are wholly committed to improving the society we share. We combine that passion with a conviction that simply providing services or increasing the number of beneficiaries is not enough. To maximize impact, we help our clients blend data-driven strategies, inspired leadership, and effective implementation to dramatically increase society’s ability to achieve greater, more sustainable performance.

www.cicerosocialimpact.org

For-profit

Revenue model: Our mission-driven clients pay consulting fees for our services.

Scale of the enterprise: Cicero Group will generate approximately $16 million in 2017.

Jacob Allen

Jacob Allen’s bio:

Twitter: @jacob_allen1
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-allen-28268b5

Jacob Allen is a Partner with Cicero Group and Managing Director of the Social Impact practice, partnering with leading foundations, nonprofits, and social enterprises to improve impact through strategy, performance monitoring and impact evaluation (M&E), performance management, and donor and beneficiary analytics.

Over the past 15 years, Jacob has worked with mission-driven organizations, including leading corporate philanthropies, international NGOs, and nonprofit providers. He has led the strategic design, measurement, and implementation of social impact programs run by Presidents Bush and Clinton, United Way, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, YouthBuild International, Junior Achievement, Church World Service, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Nature Conservancy, and many others.

His recent work includes measuring the effectiveness and supporting the design and implementation of a national leadership development program sponsored by former Presidents Bush and Clinton, conducting a program evaluation in Guatemala and Nicaragua (including interviewing 600 program beneficiaries), and designing and managing a robust performance monitoring system for a corporate philanthropy’s multi-year efforts to train thousands of entrepreneurs in 20+ countries.

He co-wrote “The Giving State,” a comprehensive report on philanthropy in Utah, and “Stop Starving Scale: Unlocking the Potential of Global NGOs,” which outlines how funders have fueled the growth of global NGOs in recent years but imposed restrictions that thwart organizations’ ability to truly achieve impact at scale. He serves on the global board of directors for Mary’s Meals, which feeds a daily meal in school to 1.2 million children living in desperate poverty.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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This is a guest post from James Westwater, Chair, Utah Valley Earth Forum

At times, Utah cities along the Wasatch Front have the worst air pollution in the entire nation. Yes, we live in a bowl where our air pollution gets trapped by inversions in winter, but inversions are unavoidable and natural, but trapped pollution would not be a problem if there were no pollution to trap.

We can, should and must fix our air pollution problem, both here and world wide. Air pollution is harming our health, killing people, shortening all our lives, blocking our view of the great beauty around us and hurting our state’s tourist-reliant economy. Who wants to visit, or live, in a polluted environment? Air pollution causes changes to the environment which in turn are causing extremely costly, harmful and increasing climate-related problems both here in the US and around the world; including droughts, wildfires, famine, sea level rise, species die-offs, sever weather events and a warming planet. Again, we can, should and must fix the problem. But how? The solution is obvious: stop polluting. The main cause of our air pollution both here in Utah and worldwide is the mining, processing and burning of carbon energy: petroleum products, coal, gas and wood. We burn pollution-producing carbon to power our vehicles, heat, cool and light our homes and power most everything we do. To actually FIX our air pollution problem we can, should and must replace polluting carbon energy and fuels with clean, safe renewable energy.

How can this happen when we are so dependent on carbon energy? In what we call a market economy and representative democracy our leadership can and should take strong, effective steps to make clean, safe renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, sufficiently less expensive than polluting carbon energy. This can be accomplished by (1) imposing an effective fee on carbon energy (think of it as a “sin tax” on harmful, polluting behavior, like the tax on tobacco) and (2) incentivizing the production and consumption of clean, safe renewable energy, such as solar and wind power. (The “sin tax” on carbon energy and fuels can be returned to the public equally in the form of household tax credits or checks.) If clean renewable energy is much cheaper and plentiful, the switch to clean power and clean air will happen relatively quickly.

The key to implement the switch to clean energy and clean air is the will of the public and the will and ability of our leadership to make this switch. That’s were we, the public, come in. We need to get the anti-democratic, anti-common-good influence of big money out of politics and also to elect good, smart, responsible, effective leaders who have the guts, motivation and ability to make happen the switch to clean, safe renewable power. The majority of our current political leaders are lacking in those qualities and, because of the corrupting influence of money in politics, are beholden to those who benefit from the our current dependence on polluting carbon energy and fuels. If we want clean air, we need to clean up our own acts, and to vote for and demand effective leadership to do the same. Call your representatives today and make your voice heard loud and clear! And be sure to vote for clean air, clean energy candidates next November and in all elections. It also would help for religious leadership of all faiths to urge strong effective action to stop polluting and switch to clean energy and clean air.

James Westwater, PhD
Chair, Utah Valley Earth Forum
UtahValleyEarthForum.org

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This is a guest post from Kris Foss, the Managing Director of Disability Solutions at Ability Beyond.

One in five people in the United States have some type of disability and are facing challenges in getting hired. Some disabilities are visible, such as physical disabilities, and some are hidden; including mental health conditions, medical conditions, learning and cognitive disabilities. We also have a large population “aging into disability” for the first time and veterans with disabilities returning to the civilian workforce.

Ability Beyond is a non-profit pioneer serving people with disabilities throughout Connecticut and New York states for more than 60 years. Over the years, we encountered many companies eager to include jobseekers with disabilities in their overall talent strategies, but cited uncertainty about how to get started and a desire to not “reinvent the wheel” as challenges. Our solution was to create Disability Solutions, an employer-focused consulting service that has been an avenue for Mission impact across the globe!

Our service was founded on the principle that bringing together the most knowledgeable disability inclusion consultants would create a catalyst for true change in the workplace.

Utilizing our proven approach, Disability Solutions (DS) consultants work with companies of all sizes to develop and deploy a personalized strategic approach to filling workforce needs. They then develop talent partnerships and connect companies directly with qualified jobseekers, provide training and support communication to strengthen a diverse work culture, leverage hiring incentives, and help employers respond to a changing regulatory environment.

We set out to reduce the high unemployment rate among jobseekers with disabilities and have seen real results including:

• Partnering nationally and globally with major corporations committed to disability inclusion such as PepsiCo, Synchrony Financial, American Express, Staples, and most recently launching work with Aon Global, and Aramark;
• Connected talent and talent partners with our clients to build much needed pipelines, resulting in over 300 employees with disabilities being hired in full and part-time jobs to fill talent needs from entry to leadership level;
• Our client companies are seeing real business results including key Human Resource metrics:
  • An average 14% higher retention rate in the same roles;
  • 33% decrease in interview to hire ratios, saving talent acquisition professionals valuable time while decreasing time to fill;
  • An average 53 percentage points higher rate of self-disclosure and a range of diversity within disability including 21% veterans with disabilities;
• Facilitated interview prep and soft skills training courses to prepare hundreds of jobseekers and organizations for success; and
• launched a national online career center to bring top employers and top talent together and to source talent directly for their corporate clients. More than 400,000 people with disabilities visit the site each month to find the next career opportunity.

We truly work each day with the motivation that we are ‘changing minds and changing lives’ and working with employers across industries and sourcing talent for roles from the mailroom to the Board Room. The companies we are working for are seeing positive business results and are leading that change.

Founded in 2012, Disability Solutions is the national non-profit consulting division of Ability Beyond headquartered in Bethel, Connecticut. To learn more visit: http://www.disabilitytalent.org/ or for more information about the Career Center, please visit www.disabilitysolutionstalent.org

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Interview with Karli Sue VerHoef, the Director of Sunshine Heroes Foundation.

As a child, Karli Sue VerHoef was a quadriplegic. At the time, she was told she always would be. She came to appreciate how she depended on others for help. When she recovered, she considered it such a gift that she has devoted her life to serving children.

On January 15, 2018, VerHoef will be leading a community service project for the Children’s Justice Centers in both Salt Lake County and Utah County. The event includes the Utah Chapter of the Cornell Alumni Association and the All Ivy Plus community as well as the Your Mark on the World Center community (that means you if you’re reading this). Learn more and register here.

The following is the pre-interview with Karlie Sue VerHoef. Be sure to watch the recorded interview above.

What is the problem you solve and how do you solve it?

We partner with rural communities and development experts on the ground to assess local needs. Then evaluate programs that will lead to sustainable impact and positive change. Together we assess each project to improve existing programs and implement promising ideas. We pull together resources from our networks to fund the initial costs of high-impact projects. Communities take the lead and together we work to ensure each project is implemented.

More about Sunshine Heroes Foundation:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunshineheroesfoundation/
Website: www.spreadsunshine.org

Sunshine Heroes Foundation was established with the mission to improve the lives of children and their families locally and around the world. We believe that, even if we only help one, every child is worth empowering and deserving of a bright future.

www.spreadsunshine.org

501(c)3 Nonprofit

Revenue model: Sunshine Heroes is proud to offer several opportunities for individual and corporate involvement! And the best part about it? 100% of every donation made will directly fund our global projects and improve the lives of children. Sunshine generates revenue by implementing projects and collecting donations (monetary and in-kind), payroll deduction is offered through specific business partners who coordinate with Sunshine Heroes Foundation.

Revenue for 2016 $1,581,887.70 that means $1,581,887.70 acts of service performed in monetary or in-kind donations.

Karli Sue VerHoef

Karli Sue VerHoef’s bio:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlisue-ludwig-verhoef-953973139/

Karli Sue VerHoef is the current Director of Impact for Tesani Companies and Director of Sunshine Heroes Foundation. As Director, Karli has assisted in the building and maintaining of ten children centers worldwide; additionally, she had lead the efforts of improving the lives of over 500k children through education, health, and clean water projects. Locally, Karli goes straight to the source to fix and implement strategies to help strengthen children and families. In 2017, Karli volunteered as the music teacher at local elementary schools who had lost funding for these programs.Her passion for making a difference is apparent in her daily activities. Whether at work or at home, Karli and her family can be found trying to make this world a better place.

When Karli joined Sunshine Heroes Foundation in 2017, she took their revenue from $448,793.83 to $1,581,887.70. She did this by taking the Foundation in a different direction, becoming project driven vs. revenue driven.

As a single mother of 5 children, Karli is constantly on the go. Before becoming Director of Sunshine, she put her efforts in starting a local preschool where lower income and refugee children could attend for free. With humble beginnings, her preschool has now grown into a self sustaining business.

Besides doing her best to make a positive impact on the world, Karli can be found: coaching crossfit, dancing in the kitchen with her kids, or reading a good book outdoors.. Passionate about people, traveling, and tacos, Karli is ready to change the world one child, one family at a time.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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Interview with Dontell Antonio, the Director of Composite Media.

Dontello Antonio, 27, is a filmmaker who is bringing attention to taboo subjects, from drug abuse to sex trafficking in his new short film The Hopeless Journey. While not strictly autobiographical, the story incorporates personal life experiences.

The following is the pre-interview with Dontell Antonio. Be sure to watch the recorded interview above.

What makes you a social entrepreneur?

Everything I do is to empower the people to be great at what they love and feel they should strive very hard at what they love.

More about Composite Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dontellantonio/
Website: http://www.dontellantonio.com/

Composite media is a media company that help people bring their visual to life. We specialize in image development of our clients to.

http://www.dontellantonio.com/

For-profit

Revenue model: We generate revenue on projects to project basis, Its normally depends on what the client needs done

We are still a small company, Our film we just did is still going and hope to be scaling 2018

Dontell Antonio

Dontell Antonio’s bio:

Twitter: @dontellantonio

Once a kid born in Chicago with a vision to impact the world, Dontell Antonio is now a man impacting the world with his creative visions in the form of films and music videos. In 2012, Dontell Antonio discovered his talent and passion for video while attending the Art Institute of Atlanta. He did not waste time to take his newly discovered talents to new levels. Within two years, Dontell Antonio has fined tuned his videographer skills, and he is providing services to some of the music industry’s mainstream and popular independent artists. However, it has not been an easy task for Dontell Antonio to get to this level. He has a formula for success that consists of ambition + determination + humbleness. Every project is another opportunity for him to grow and get better. Evidence of Dontell’s steady growth can be seen in all of his latest projects including his first short film “The Hopeless Journey” written, produced, and directed by Dontell himself. He never gets content with his achievements. He always feels there is room to grow and experiment with new ideas. With that being said, Dontell Antonio has his sights set on bringing the world even more high-end quality creative content that will continue to impact the world.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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Type 1 Diabetics, those who typically contract the disease as children and not as a result of a lack of diet or exercise, are entirely dependent upon insulin. Today’s insulin delivery and blood glucose monitoring use devices–insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors–that must be connected to them all the time. Finding a comfortable, invisible, convenient place to hold those devices is a relatively new challenge that Pocket Innerwear is helping to solve.

Interview with Laurel Bloomfield, the Co-Founder VP of Pocket Innerwear.

The following is the pre-interview with Laurel Bloomfield. Be sure to watch the recorded interview above.

What is the problem you solve and how do you solve it?

We strive to make life with Diabetes easier.  While insulin pump therapy provides greater diabetes control, it also causes complications and questions.  Where do I put this thing? Can I wear my regular clothes? What if I drop it? What if I pull out my site too early? Can I run, jump and play?  What about night time? What is the PumpPocket by Pocket Innerwear?  This patented design was created so people who are insulin dependent would have a clever place to put their insulin pump.  There is an outlet to allow the pump’s tubing to safely be fed through the back and connect to the infusion site.  Your pump remains safe, secure and concealed while preventing your tubing from getting caught or tangled.  All of this in discreet layering undergarments!

More about Pocket Innerwear:

Twitter: @pocketinnerwear

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pocketinnerwear.inc/?ref=br_rs

Website: www.pocketinnerwear.com

Pocket Innerwear is a for profit organization on a mission.  We strive to make life with diabetes easier by providing solutions in the form of clothing with specially designed pockets to keep one’s insulin pump safe, secure and discreet.  Pocket Innerwear was founded with the intention to give back from the start gate.  For every Pump Pocket we sell we give one to a child with Type 1 Diabetes.  We have given away thousands of Pump Pockets so far.

For-profit/Nonprofit: For-profit

Revenue model: We are primarily an e-commerce retail and wholesale apparel business

Scale: 3 Founders working full time on this project, we employ about 5 sub-contractors to help us scale this business.  We are a small start up at our tipping point, we are slated to launch in Wal Mart and are in talks with a few other retail majors.

Laurel Bloomfield

Laurel Bloomfield’s bio:

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/laurel-bloomfield-954a2670/

Laurel is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Pocket Innerwear.  She is a modern Ranch Wife, a Mother and a business woman.  Her husband and her have a beef cattle ranch in the North West U.S. they also have a Heavy Equipment construction company that specializes in Stream Restoration and Environmental projects.  Laurel and her husband have been married for 13 years.  They have 1 son 5 years whom they adopted at birth, he is the light and very purpose of their lives!  Laurel founded Pocket Innerwear with a couple other stay at home mom friends.  Laurel is creative and a serial entrepreneur so when her son was born and she was spending more time inside and less time on “Ranch Work”  she was on the look out for a way to channel her creative energy and latched onto this cause.  Having close friends with children with diabetes it quickly became not just a little business idea but a mission to really serve!

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

The post Why Diabetics Want Pockets in Their Knickers and Where to Get Them appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

This post was originally produced for Forbes.

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Catarina Schwab, 43, and Lindsay Beck have set out to completely revolutionize philanthropy. Their firm, NPX, Inc., has introduced a new security to Wall Street called the “Impact security,” which they hope will end the practice of funding nonprofits without impact.

Problems in philanthropy

Ted Williams, Managing Partner at Springbok Partners and an advisor to NPX, explained the problems in philanthropy today. “The nonprofit sector is woefully lacking creative destruction. Mediocre and weak organizations are still attracting funding and the best organizations are not accessing the funding they need to achieve real impact. The only way to get to a more efficient and robust nonprofit market is to reward good organizations and penalize bad ones. This will only occur when there are economic consequences tied to impact.”

For her part, Schwab says, “The nonprofit capital market is opaque and inefficient. It is a trillion-dollar industry and the money is being wasted. And it’s being wasted at the expense of human lives and the environment.”

Watch the interview with Schwab in the video player above.

Catarina Schwab

Impact Security

The impact security is intended to address this problem by inserting investors into the philanthropic capital market to better align the money with desired outcomes.

Nonprofits will issue impact securities in much the same way that corporations issue notes or bonds. The money will go to the nonprofit to fund a specific program with a measurable outcome or impact. The investors don’t get their return from the nonprofit but from a philanthropic guarantor instead. The guarantors are happy to take on this role because they want to give their money away but want it to go where it will have measurable impact.

Impact securities put the donors in a no-lose situation. If the program works and impact is verifiably measured according to the contract, the donors are happy to pay. They have funded something that actually did some good—no guessing, only measuring. On the other hand, if the project fails to achieve the intended results, the donors don’t pay and they keep their money to do good with it another day.

The nonprofit is happy with the arrangement. It gets the money for the program up front. This puts some new pressure to perform on nonprofits, but it is the sort of pressure that is already increasing in the philanthropic marketplace as donors increasingly look for measurable impact.

The investors are taking risk, but not as much as you might worry. The donors acting as guarantors will often put their money in a donor advised fund when the securities are issued so that the funds are already available to meet the guarantee if the outcomes are achieved.

Under longstanding Federal rules, nonprofit securities are not subject to SEC regulations, potentially making them less expensive to issue and allowing ordinary retail investors to participate, not such wealthy or “accredited” investors. This even opens the possibility of crowdfunding.

Measuring Impact

Measuring impact will be a challenge. Schwab says, “We can structure and execute an impact security for any nonprofit with measurable impact.” Still, it is often easier to measure intermediate outcomes than it is measure long-term impact.

Schwab says her model will increase the availability of measurement data and will thereby make measurement easier.

First Transaction: The Last Mile

The first transaction that NPX hopes to complete is an issuance for a nonprofit called The Last Mile that trains prisoners to code while in prison and even employs them to do it. The prisoners can earn $17 per hour, which compares favorably to the $0.94 per hour they earn from other work in prison. This allows them to leave prison with a nest egg, even though much of the money they earn goes to restitution and reimbursing the state for its costs. Some prisoners have even found six-figure jobs after being released from prison.

After working on the project for months, Schwab observed that people often say that prisoners deserve a second chance when they get out. She’s concluded that for many of them that isn’t fair. “This is their first chance; it’s not their second chance.” Some have simply never had an opportunity to get the education and training they need to survive as a contributing member of society. The Last Mile gives them this opportunity.

The impact security the nonprofit hopes to issue will fund a program at San Quentin. The impact that will be measured is straightforward: hours worked in the development shop. This output measure can be tracked easily and objectively. It does, however, ignore the question of whether the program achieves its stated, longer term objectives of helping with a successful reentry and reducing recidivism. Schwab notes that some of the prisoners will never leave but having a real job while in prison is still life-changing.

Prison statistics in the U.S. are staggering. While only 5% of the world’s population lives in the U.S., 25% of the world’s prisoners do. It costs five times as much to incarcerate someone as to educate them.

NPX hopes to help The Last Mile break the cycle and return productive people to society.

Schwab’s explains the premise of her work, “One simple change of linking money with impact changes everything.” Now she’s out to prove it.

Hundreds of nonprofits learned to successfully use online fundraising to reach–or surpass–their goals with my crowdfunding training. Get my free guide to attracting media attention.

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Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

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This is a guest post by John Pauley, Smithfield Food’s Executive Vice President of Retail Sales, Packaged Meats Division

Our country may have been split when the Alabama Crimson Tide faced the Georgia Bulldogs at this year’s College Football Playoff National Championship, but Eckrich brought fans together with a cause everyone could cheer for: America’s teachers. From the sheer importance of their job to their dedication to it, teachers deserve to be recognized, thanked, and rewarded—and that’s exactly what the Eckrich team strived to do at this year’s championship game.

In the brand’s second year as the official smoked sausage and deli meat sponsor of the College Football Playoff, Eckrich challenged ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit to complete a nearly impossible 20-yard throw to earn $1 million for the College Football Playoff Foundation’s Extra Yard for Teachers cause and invited Teachers of the Year from across the country to cheer him on from the sideline.

As hundreds of excited onlookers rooted him on and millions watched during ESPN’s “College Football Live,”Kirk stepped up to the line to attempt the throw. The ball soared through the air and hit the side of the target, missing by inches. Knowing he could make it, and unrelenting in his desire to earn the money for Extra Yard for Teachers, Kirk stepped up again and took two more attempts, sinking the third as his perfect spiral went right through the target. Despite two fruitless throws,we were thrilled to honor the success of the third and announce a $500,000 donation to the deserving organization.

The entire Eckrich team was elated when Kirk made his throw, and we feel honored to present the Extra Yard for Teachers cause with the largest donation from an outside benefactor it has received to date.

Teachers face multiple challenges in their profession today. This half-million dollar donation will help further elevate and support the teaching profession by inspiring and empowering teachers through the implementation of programs in four focus areas: resources, recognition, recruitment, and professional development. Extra Yard for Teachers hopes to address and make a difference in each of these areas over the next ten years, ultimately leading to brighter futures for tomorrow’s leaders—a“touchdown” for all.

John Pauley

John Pauley is Smithfield Food’s Executive Vice President of Retail Sales, Packaged Meats Division.

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The post How Eckrich Used America’s Love of College Football to Honor and Benefit the Country’s Teachers appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

This post was originally produced for Forbes.

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Chris Soukup, 38, is a third-generation member of the deaf community. As a child, he remembers his paternal grandparents visiting each week with a list of phone calls to be made by his mother, who could hear. In those days, before the relay services offered by companies like Communication Service for the Deaf, or CSD, the nonprofit that Soukup now runs, members of the deaf community were effectively prevented from communicating by phone.

Soukup’s life was also influenced by injustice. His grandfather lost his farm when a banker explained he didn’t believe a deaf man could operate a farm.

There are approximately 1 million functionally deaf people in the United States. As many as 14% of adults are deaf or hard of hearing, many of them over the age of 65. About 8 million are hard of hearing, that is, they have difficulty hearing a normal conversation even when wearing a hearing aid. About 70% of deaf people are unemployed or underemployed.

For more insights, be sure to watch my interview with Soukup in the video player above.

About 40 years ago, CSD was founded by Soukup’s father, Ben Soukup, who was also deaf. While many people assumed that the younger Soukup would follow in his father’s footsteps at the helm of the organization, he did not, at least not until he got to college.

Chris Soukup, CEO of Communication Service for the Deaf

Soukup started working full time at CSD after finishing graduate school. He joined the executive management team in 2007 and was appointed President in 2011 and then named CEO in 2014. He now manages a $38 million operating budget, all major business units and over 1,000 employees across the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and New Zealand.

The organization is focused today on solving a single problem: unemployment the high unemployment rate among deaf people.

“We’re very focused on trying to combat that and to combat that in a multitude of ways by creating resources and programs and solutions that better position the deaf community to be successful in employment, to identify opportunities and to help match the supply of jobs to those who are actively looking for employment.”

CSD provides job training, resources and educational material in ASL to deaf and hard of hearing people through a Federal program. This effort is called CSD Neighborhood.

Early in 2017, CSD launched another program called CSD Works to place deaf people in career positions and help create deaf-owned businesses.

CSD recently partnered with Uber to help riders interact more effectively with deaf and hard of hearing drivers. The organization is also adapting training materials for those drivers to help them succeed as well.

Soukup acknowledged that the deaf community is becoming more diverse. Not only does it include people who are deaf from a young age along with people who lose their hearing, often as they age, there are those who have cochlear implants that allow them to hear well but who also identify with the deaf community. CSD is working to serve each member of this community.

About 95% of CSD revenue comes from providing revenue-generating services, including relay services, equipment distribution and interpreting. The organization also receives grants and donations and has investment income.

Hundreds of nonprofits learned to successfully use online fundraising to reach–or surpass–their goals with my crowdfunding training. Get my free guide to attracting media attention.

Never miss another interview! Join Devin here!

Devin is a journalist, author and corporate social responsibility speaker who calls himself a champion of social good. With a goal to help solve some of the world’s biggest problems by 2045, he focuses on telling the stories of those who are leading the way! Learn more at DevinThorpe.com!

The post 3rd Generation Deaf Person Well Suited To Lead 1,000-Employee Nonprofit Serving Deaf Community appeared first on Your Mark On The World.

Veteran Kenyan journalist, Mr. Wycliffe Muga has a conversation with Siddharth Chatterjee, UN’s Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator and the UNDP Resident Representative to Kenya.

A prolific writer, Chatterjee is a regular contributor to Reuters and Huffington Post.

A Princeton University alumnus, Sid Chatterjee was decorated for gallantry by the President of India during his service in the Indian Special Forces where he rose to the rank of Major.

He is active on social media; his Twitter handle is @sidchat1

Sid Chatterjee during a show jumping event at the National Defence Academy in India.

Wycliffe Muga (WM): Everyone has a remarkable story from his youngest days. Something which happened that only now looking back do you realise how profoundly it influenced you for good or bad. Looking back, what would you say had a profound impact on you?

Siddharth Chatterjee (Sid): Without a doubt it was being laughed at by a teacher when, aged 14, I told him my ambition was to get into India’s prestigious National Defence Academy. He hooted with laughter and described me in words I have never forgotten- “You are the deadwood of mediocrity”. He in fact asked me to pursue a vocational skill and forget about advancing in academics as he did not see a future for me there.

I was hurt and furious, but I was not really surprised because, to be fair, it wasn’t completely unjustified. So comparing me to the deadwood of mediocrity, may actually have been a compliment, as mediocre is certainly better than plain bad (Sid laughs).

Getting into the National Defence Academy is incredibly competitive and I was failing to shine both academically and at sport, so my big ideas about being a Special Forces officer in the Indian military and learning to parachute and play polo and dive sounded pretty hollow to my teacher.

I suspect that statement of my teacher stuck to my psyche. While it sounded cruel and insensitive then, on reflection it might have woken me up. Rather like a jolt of electricity that shook me and spurred me on.

By way of background, my father came to India as a refugee from East Pakistan– now Bangladesh–when India was partitioned in 1947. My mother came from a very simple background. She came from a family of 9 siblings and her mother was married at 11 years of age. Even as a child I remember clearly noticing the massively different status in Indian society of the different genders. Gender differences in India are very pronounced. I saw deeply ingrained patriarchy, misogyny and gender inequalities within my family and the wider community. It was not easy for my mother and for countless women who were married young and had scarce opportunities to achieve their full human potential.

Sid Chatterjee as a 6 year old with his parents Dilip Chatterjee and Gouri Chatterjee.

Ours was a simple household. My father’s family lost everything during the partition of India, which on all counts may have been one of the worst genocides in history. No side was innocent, except for the women and children caught up in the tragedy.

My paternal grandfather died and my grandmother fled East Pakistan with her two sons and a daughter. Life was hard for them, very hard. To be made indigent from a reasonably comfortable home and throughno fault of their own left my father’s family deeply traumatised.

So when I see refugees anywhere in the world, I connect with them in many ways and feel deep empathy.

My father’s family basically restarted their lives from scratch. When I was born and growing up, there was no money to spare at home but, like most parents, my mother and father were very ambitious for me, and really struggled to ensure they did their very best for me. My father was the bread-winner and my mother stayed at home to raise my brother and me. They used their modest means to get me private tuition, but I was still failing. I changed schools often simply to avoid having to repeat the previous academic year.

I also contracted polio as a child, but was very lucky as it was detected early and corrected in time. Countless other children in India had to resign themselves to a life of handicap, pain and immobility. I was three years old, but my memory is still vivid with the painful rehabilitation process I had to go through at a military hospital.

My brother was born 10 years after me and in the meantime my experiences at school could at best be described as inconsequential. I tried my hand at boxing, but invariably I would be either knocked out in the first round, or even when I survived the first round, I never won any fight.

However, I think my childhood experiences on seeing how women were treated and my own tryst with polio, may have had something to do with my passion to fight gender inequality and my enthusiasm to advance universal health coverage. These are two issues I am deeply passionate about.

Sid Chatterjee with his parents and his younger brother, Gautam.

WM: Looking back, do you see why? Because it wasn’t that you didn’t have brains. What do you think was holding you back?

Sid: Frankly I found the education system tyrannical. Corporal punishments and bullying was common. The pressure was intense. I must admit I hated each day, I had to wake up and go to school.

I also think it was because the education system involved a lot of rote learning. It was all about how much you could memorise, and didn’t focus on problem-solving or creativity of any sort. This didn’t play to my strengths.

It was obvious I wasn’t heading for a good university, but with the help of a tutor I managed to pass the entrance exam for the National Defence Academy (NDA) on my second attempt. This was a huge success for me. Out of around 100,000 applicants only about 200 were selected following difficult exams and rigorous interviews. I was overjoyed.

An aerial view of the National Defence Academy in India.

The NDA is like the West Point of the United States of America. However it is a unique military training institution where the three arms of the armed forces train together, the Army, Air Force and the Navy, as officer cadets. We join as sixteen year old after passing an entrance exam followed by a week of personality, psychological and medical examinations. The process is exacting, it is an intense period of studies and training. You are groomed to be an officer and a gentleman.

At the end of three years we receive a Bachelor’s degree and move to the specialised service academies, the Indian Military Academy, the Air Force academy and the Naval Academy, where we spend an additional year. It is like doing a graduate programme on steroids.

Something about being accepted changed me. Perhaps it was my “Forrest Gump” moment. On the first day at the Academy they cut your hair, put you in a uniform, and basically start to build you as a new person. I found this liberating. It was like a formal break away from the past where I hadn’t known any success and had no self-confidence. Suddenly the lights came on.

Sid Chatterjee as an officer cadet at the National Defence Academy.

From a childhood of academic and sporting failure, in three years at the Academy I became a top boxer, show jumper and polo player. I also finished my Bachelor’s degree by 19 years of age, and set my sights on joining the Indian Special Forces.

Sid Chatterjee (left) with his colleagues at the Indian Military Academy at a polo match.

Joining the Special Forces was a crowning moment of my life. You put on that maroon beret and that uniform and you are a part of an elite unit, quite a feat given my background. I started getting top grades in the commando course, the infantry course, and the junior leaders’ course. Suddenly I was coming first in my unit in battle physical efficiency tests, and I became a parachutist, a combat underwater diver and skilled in unarmed combat.

Sid Chatterjee, a trained Army Combat diver.

In a sense, the military helped me find purpose in my life. I was decorated for gallantry by the President of India for my part in counterinsurgency operations.

But this intense exposure to combat unsettled me. I started to feel uneasy, a sort of “subconscious disquiet”. Something about this violence did not make sense at all.

WM: Let me hazard a guess here: Was it all the people being killed? Was there an incident which crystallised the doubts in your mind?

Sid: Many years ago, while out on patrol in a very hostile insurgency environment, a platoon of my Special Forces unit came under fire. Minutes later, an officer lay lifeless from gunshot wounds. I remember that day like it was yesterday.

Nothing can prepare a soldier for the death of a comrade – nor for delivering the news to his family. I remember the look of pain and agony on the faces of my fallen comrade’s wife and children, and that memory still breaks my heart.

Sid Chatterjee holds up a live and deadly Russel’s Viper, teaching his students survival and living off the land at the Commando School which trains young infantry officers in commando operations. Photo: Indian Army

Every time the media reports on military deaths, I think of the families of those soldiers and wonder if a little more regard for soldiers and their familieswould inspire us to seek non-violent resolutions to conflicts.

Ihad misgivings about the whole principle of fighting an insurgency when alternate opportunities existed for advancing peace, dialogue and diplomacy. If I could turn back the clock and if I had any position of influence, I would have encouraged dialogue and reconciliation.

India has the largest number of war widows, currently estimated at 25,000, but very likely much more. I doubt there is another nation-state that has lost so many soldiers to fighting within its own borders.

2018-New Year’s Message by @sidchat1:

This is a picture of sheer grief. Everyday countless people experience such grief due to conflicts. @antonioguterres remarked-“We are a world in pieces. We need to be a world at peace.” Hope 2018 is more peaceful, less violent. Happy New Year. https://t.co/SPZKFkKi4V pic.twitter.com/hdf9wMl9cP

— SIDDHARTH CHATTERJEE (@sidchat1) December 31, 2017

WM: That is a large number of war widows. Surely the political leadership in India as well as the population of India must be sitting up and taking note of this?

Sid: I wish that was the case. Frankly I am not sure.

In banal, patriotic statements, we declare these fallen soldiers martyrs and war heroes, while ignoring the shattered dreams of the spouses and children left behind. Clearly, we must find alternatives to sending young men and women to war. The cost is not only in lives lost and families shattered, but also in long-term damage to the mental health of military veterans. Many struggle to adjust to life after very traumatic and disturbing experiences in war, and some even take their own lives.

Sid Chatterjee reads Barbara Tuchman’s book “The March of Folly”.

When I went into a counterinsurgency operation in the North East of India, I realised we were fighting in an insurgency with no real prospect of success. I had read this very interesting book by American author Barbara Tuchman called “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam”. The book is compelling and brilliant and draws on a range of examples, from Montezuma’s absurd surrender of his empire in 1520 AD to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour-she defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. Sheen lightens the reader with four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam.

Something started to stir in my mind when I went into this particular counter insurgency operation.

There was no endgame in sight, for that matter anywhere in the world in this sort of environment. That was when it became clear to me that something needed to change.

Sid Chatterjee with a team of Indian Special Forces Officers in a joint exercise with a US Army Special Forces team.

WM: You are saying then that military victory – or what is generally assumed to be victory – is really little more than an illusion. But many leaders who have taken their militaries into war have argued that there was no other choice. So what do you think should have been done?

Sid: History is replete with examples that military might alone cannot end such insurgencies or what is called low intensity conflicts.

From my own experience in India’s military, which included many years of active service in counterinsurgency operations, it is clear that unbridled violence invariably back-fires, as it tends to add fuel and sustain the insurgency, just as it has in other parts of India and the world.

In many parts of the world governments continue to combat insurgencies over decades. In most cases such conflicts are unwinnable, each side inflicting increasing levels of violence, creating a vitiated environment of hate and a vicious cycle of vendetta and revenge, with civilians bearing the brunt.

Insurgencies thrive in the parts of India have seen protracted socio-economic deprivation, inter-generational poverty, poor governance and a deep sense of injustice. For example this is particularly true given the fact that the problem of left-wing extremism and the question of social justice are essentially entwined in India. In 2009, former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared, “Left-wing extremism poses the gravest internal security threat to India.” He was right. India’s long-running Maoist insurgency has developed into one of the country’s most serious security challenge of the past 50 years.

Unfortunately, this form of militancy has all along been sustained by India’s wide and deep-rooted inequality with conflict over land ownership, struggles for the rights over mineral and forest wealth, poverty, and denial of justice and human dignity, which plays a pivotal role in alienating a large segment of the working class poor. It often reflects the harsh reality of the wider local region, which is typically affected by either exploitation of the peasantry, struggles over mineral wealth, or denial of rights over forest-land to the local tribal population.

WM: Not that I think your message would have any real chance of reaching him, but if you had an opportunity to convey a short message to India’s Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, what would you say to him?

Sid: Ending conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy is a daunting undertaking. However, history shows that peaceful negotiation can resolve even the most obdurate conflicts. For instance, we can learn from the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to the long-running Irish conflict or the recently-concluded peace agreement in Colombia. It needs perseverance, stamina and an abundance of optimism.

The road to peace in Ireland was characterized by violence, setbacks and numerous false starts, but the negotiating parties realized that military strength alone would not guarantee peace.

India’s Prime Minister, Honourable Mr. Narendra Modi, can change this. He is an exceptional leader much admired throughout the country, leading the world’s largest democracy. Peace with India’s neighbours and peace within, would unleash the country’s’ true economic and social potential, lift people out of poverty, make India a beacon of hope, prosperity and social cohesion.

WM: I understand the Indian Army enjoys great prestige in Indian society and is considered a good career option. So what prompted you to leave the Army?

Sid: As Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

I still remember that day when it was announced in the newspaper that I had been awarded a decoration for gallantry for my role in counterinsurgency operations. Suddenly the events that led to my being decorated for bravery played out like a kaleidoscope.

I didn’t feel the euphoria that usually accompanies this kind of recognition. That was the moment I knew that my time to move on from the military had come.

Sid Chatterjee is decorated for gallantry. Photo: Indian Army

My award for gallantry in combat made me feel I was being recognised for something that was not going to bring the conflict to an end. I wished that soldiers could be rewarded for efforts to ensure peace and reconciliation, not for the number of people they had killed. I wished my own award recognised my achievements in negotiating with village elders and with belligerent groups towards resolving the conflict.

The primacy of politics and dialogue had failed and this was being replaced by belligerence and hate.

Obtaining early release from the Special Forces was not straightforward, and it took nearly 12 months of negotiation to secure my return to civilian life. I became a civilian on the 1st of January 1997 and set off for my first civilian job as a security officer in the UN mission in Sarajevo, on the 15th of January. That is where I started my career in the United Nations, from pretty much the bottom of the rung, and I am glad I did as it laid the foundations of my new work environment, which was very different from the army.

WM: Well, that was a long time ago. By now you have had two decades in the UN. What are some of the highlights of your UN career?

Sid: After a short stint as a security officer in Sarajevo, I went to Iraq, where I got a break from security to work as a UN Coordinator in Iraqi Kurdistan in a place called Suleimaniyah. I spent more than two years with the Kurds in northern Iraq and saw first-hand the impact that the UN can make in terms of improving access to basic services like education, health,clean water and sanitation, and nutrition. This in turn had a huge impact on the Kurds’ ability to find solutions to their own developmental needs and the foundations of democracy were laid. They are a group of people that have seen so much of pain and deprivation, yet they continued with stoic determination. I have tremendous respect for them.

From Iraq I went to South Sudan, which was fighting with the North but where there was also an internal war between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Sudan People’s Democratic Front. I set up an office in Rumbek South Sudan for UNICEF in 2000 and my boss, a highly dynamic leader called Dr Sharad Sapra, asked me, “Sid, “Why don’t we get the children out of the military?.”

Child soldiers in Rumbek, South Sudan, . Photo: UNICEF/OLS Mann

We began dialogue with Commander Salva Kiir, who was then chief of the SPLA, and with John Garang, the Chairman of the SPLM. In October 2000 we got a written agreement from (now President) Salva Kiir to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) chief Carol Bellamy, agreeing to demobilize 3,500 child soldiers from the frontlines of the conflict. This followed months of discussions, during which we never threw the book at them on the Convention to the Rights of the Child, but instead persuaded them that their political capital would go up exponentially if they became the first rebel army to remove children from their ranks.

Sid Chatterjee with Commander Salva Kiir, Chief of the SPLA, meet Ms Carol Bellamy, then UNICEF Executive Director, in Rumbek, South Sudan, Oct 21, 2000. Photo: UNICEF

To see those children in South Sudan return to a normal childhood and to give them access to education, food, immunization, clean water and sanitation was immensely fulfilling for me. It remains one of my proudest achievements to this day. In many ways this particular event was transformational for me personally. It also filled a spiritual vacuum in my life. Here is a TEDx talk I did on it. (Video)

3551 child soldiers were demobilized in February 2001. Photo UNICEF/OLS

I was then appointed chief of the emergency section in Indonesia, working with more than a million internally displaced people due to the conflict in Aceh and the Malukus. We were at the front lines of providing assistance to displaced communities, negotiating days of peace and tranquillity to access children in order to immunize them. We established an Indonesian version of a ‘school in a box’ programme that enabled us to set up and equip a makeshift tented school whenever belligerent groups burned down school buildings.

UNICEF’s then Executive Director Carol Bellamy asked me to lead UNICEF’s response to the emergency in Darfur in 2004. I helped scale up UNICEF’s response to the emergency and led a wide-ranging immunization campaign throughout Darfur. Ensuring we could access every child no matter where they were, which involved negotiating access with the rebel leaders who controlled wide swathes of territory in order to access these children with health, education, clean water and protection.

My work in Darfur was recognised by UNICEF’s senior leadership, and in November 2004 I was promoted and appointed UNICEF’s deputy representative in Somalia. This was a remarkable experience at a very challenging time for the country. I led UNICEF’s humanitarian response efforts spanning the tsunami in 2004 to immunizing children in conflict-affected parts of Southern Somalia to ensuring a back-to-school programme for children in North-eastern Somalia. My office was seen as a pivotal humanitarian and development organization and we developed good relationships with other organisations operating in the country, and with local governments.

WM: Now let us move to some of the more controversial stuff:I understand that you rose from a very junior IFLD 4 position in Sarajevo, in 1997 to a professional level P-5 in Somalia in 2004. That is like seven years and I am told this rarely happens in the UN. There has been some controversy that has followed you around because you are the son-in-law of Mr Ban Ki-moon, the immediate former Secretary-General of the UN. There are those who suspect that maybe this was the reason behind your meteoric rise.

Sid: Mr. Ban Ki-moon joined the UN as Secretary General in 2007, after a long and distinguished career as a diplomat. I joined the UN in 1997, a full 10 years before Mr. Ban.

Sid Chatterjee with his in-laws, Ban Ki-moon and Yoo Soon-taek in Seoul.

I met my wife Ban Hyun Hee in Darfur in July 2004 and we got married soon afterwards. By then I had already been appointed to P5 level (a senior level of UN management) after seven years of service in some of the world’s most difficult and dangerous places, and a full three years before Mr. Ban’s election as the UN Secretary General.

Yes, I progressed quickly in my career. That was because I was privileged to serve with phenomenal leaders like Ms. Carol Bellamy, Dr. Sharad Sapra and Mr. Rolf Carrier (who was UNICEF’s Representative in Indonesia), who recognized and rewarded results. I am deeply grateful to them.

In 2007, I turned down an offer from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to head up their Nepal office and instead accepted an invitation from the UN’s special representative in Iraq to work with him. Ironically, it was at that point that the gossip about nepotism started, though it is hard to imagine that going to serve in Iraq at one of the most dangerous periods in its history could be viewed as a soft option for a family member!

But soon after my father-in-law’s appointment my wife and I became a target of vicious and malicious media attacks. The period between 2007 and 2016 was difficult for both of us, because, suddenly, our private lives were thrown into the public domain. In those circumstances, it becomes not just about your family honour but protecting the name of the institution too. There was nobody who would speak out to defend you, the UN could not, so it was a complicated situation.

I soon realized that we were left to our own devices to protect our name and honour. The situation got so bad that our prospects for employment in the UN system were in jeopardy, because institutions were wary of bringing media attention on themselves.

It was a tough situation.

Everything that happened from January 2007 was viewed through the distorted lens of nepotism, with no regard for my 10-year career at the UN prior to that. Suddenly, it was all about being the SG’s son-in-law. Itwas relentless and distressing.

One of the few media houses that presented the story in a fair and just and truthful way was Forbes, which in 2013 published a piece titled, “Misread Nepotism At The U.N.: Why Siddharth Chatterjee’s Well-Earned Appointment Requires Explanation”.

I am deeply grateful to Ms. Carol Bellamy, Dr Sharad Sapra, Mr. Rolf Carrier, Ambassador Frank Wisner (former US Ambassador to India) and my former boss at the Red Cross, Ms Goli Ameri. Not only are they great leaders, they also had the courage to speak out publicly in my defence.

WM: I recently saw an interview you did which was published in WION News India, where you were asked about the UN Deputy Secretary General, Amina Mohammed, and her role in the “rosewood scandal” when she was in Minister of Environment in Nigeria. You defended her. How come? And for those who may not know what this scandal was, maybe you could explain a little of the details.

Sid: Well the question was sprung at me by WION news, and I could have easily ducked it, but decided not to.

The Nigerian government emphatically rejected allegations of rose wood export racketeering to China levelled against UN Deputy Secretary-General Ms Amina Mohammed, when she was the Minster of Environment. The ministry stated that all the CITES permits signed by the ex-minister were done in line with stringent guidance and procedures.

Having been a target of malicious and fake news myself for close to 10 years, I could empathise with her. I felt it was most unfair to target Ms. Amina Mohammed, whose professional, ethical and integrity standards are excellent and beyond reproach. I have no regret speaking up for her. In my view that was the right thing to do.

Wycliffe, as the famous 1855 saying by Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon goes,“If you want truth to go around the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go around the world, it will fly; it is light as a feather and a breath will carry it.”

WM: By now you must be acquainted with the sad reality of just how polarizing Kenyan elections are. International civil servants like yourself, can suddenly find that either they or their staff are viciously attacked because something they said or did – really quite innocently – has upset one side of the political divide or the other.I noted during the elections in Kenya in 2017, one of your staff and also you personally were attacked by some bloggers. I took note that you came out strongly in your colleague’s defence. Are you saying people within the system should speak out in defence of their staff?

Sid: Absolutely. I firmly believe that we all have a moral responsibility regardless of our rank, pay-grade or station in life, to stand up for the truth without fear or favour.

I am the face of UNDP so it is easy to attack me. A lot of fake news got propagated after the elections. I can take the attacks but will stand in between when it comes to my staff. The safety, security and reputation of my staff is paramount. I will go to the end of the earth to defend them.

WM: Let’s go back a bit. You were offered the position of UN Resident Coordinator in Namibia in 2009, how did that come about and why did you not take up that position?

Sid: Every Resident Coordinator has to pass a UN Resident Coordinator Assessment. Failure rates are quite high. An independent human resources company from Canada carried out my assessment, which I passed in 2008 and was proposed by UNICEF (the agency I served with) to become the UN Resident Coordinator in Namibia in 2009. A post of that seniority and responsibility has to be signed off by the UN Secretary General, and so I made the difficult decision to decline that job offer because of my personal situation. I did not want to expose myself, my wife, my father-in-law or the UN itself to any suggestions of perceived impropriety. Perceptions matter and that is what I have had to deal with since 2007.

Instead I made a life-changing decision, perhaps my best decision. I decided to go back to school and spent a year studying for a Master’s in Public Policy at Princeton University. It was again a leap of faith, I took a year’s leave without pay and there was no right of return to my previous job or to any position for that matter. I would have to compete for any position. It was a big risk and I knew because of my special situation organizations in the UN were reluctant to hire me.

My year of study and reflection at Princeton was without doubt one of the best experiences of my life. I developed intellectually through engagement with teachers and with a fascinating mix of fellow students from all parts of the world and from all walks of life. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity I had at Princeton.

As Alvin Toffler said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

I would encourage everyone to take a year out of their careers to pause and go back to school. It gives you the freedom to pursue your intellectual interests, develop new capabilities, expose yourself to new approaches and methods and advance your career.

Sid Chatterjee with Senator Ted Cruz at a Princeton University reunion in Princeton, New Jersey, June 2017. Photo: Caroline Cruz.

WM: There is one place where you have worked, which was neither the UN nor the Indian Army. I note that you went to work for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. You had a fancy title of Chief Diplomat. How did that come about?

Sid: While I was at Princeton, an executive search firm contacted me to check if I would be interested in this position at the Red Cross. I said yes without hesitation and went through a rigorous selection process. I had my final interview in Geneva led by the hiring manager, an absolutely spectacular leader called Ms Goli Ameri, who used to be a former Assistant Secretary of State during President Bush’s administration. She was the Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Diplomacy and Strategic partnerships.

My role was to promote humanitarian diplomacy. It was about persuading decision makers and opinion leaders to act at all times in the interests of vulnerable people, and with full respect for fundamental humanitarian principles.

The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is the world’s largest humanitarian network. The Movement is neutral and impartial, and provides protection and assistance to people affected by disasters and conflicts.The Movement is made up of nearly 100 million members, volunteers and supporters in 190 National Societies
The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, was led by a humanitarian hero and a champion for the most vulnerable, Mr. Bekele Geleta. It was a privilege to serve with both of them as well as develop a new network of friends and colleagues. The national societies of the Red Cross Red Crescent movement are perhaps the only organization that areprimed to go the last mile and can be relied on to deliver humanitarian assistance where no one else can go. These are true volunteers who epitomize the spirit of service, humanity, compassion and trust. It was an honor to be part of this great organization for nearly three years.

The United Nations family in Kenya is very lucky to have a partner like the Kenyan Red Cross, to respond to Kenya’s humanitarian needs. They are a versatile and highly respected organization globally.

Sid Chatterjee with his colleagues from the Red Cross Red Crescent movement during a Global Management meeting at the IFRC HQ in Geneva, 2012. Photo: IFRC

WM: So can you then trace for me the path by which you moved from the IFRC to your appointment as the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya?

Sid: I first came to Kenya in 2014 as the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) Representative to Kenya.

In 2016, I was invited by the UNDP to apply for this role andI am deeply grateful to Ms. Helen Clark, the former UNDP Administrator, for giving me the opportunity to apply and compete. I am also grateful to my predecessor Ms. Nardos Bekele-Thomas who encouraged me to take on this position.

As I was working with UNFPA they first had to approve my applying for the role, which they did. I applied for the UN Resident Coordinator(RC) role in Kenya in 2016. Again, I went through a selection process called the Inter-Agency Appointments Panel and was shortlisted. Regardless of the decision being taken, the final decision rests with the Government of the country where an RC is being proposed to.

I was honoured and deeply humbled by the support and confidence of the Government of Kenya to be the UN’s Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

Sid Chatterjee presents his credentials to CS Foreign Affairs Ambassador Amina Mohamed on taking over as the UN Resident Coordinator in Kenya.

WM: One more hypothetical: Let’s imagine you were given an opportunity to speak to a group of highly influential political leaders at the UN, what would you say to them?

Sid: In his New Year’s message on Sunday 31 December 2017, UN Secretary General Mr. Antonio Guterres issued “a red alert for our world.” He called for unity and has said that, “We can settle conflicts, overcome hatred and defend shared values. But we can only do that together.”

I would remind these political leaders of the words of the very controversial William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union General during the U.S. Civil War, who once said, “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”

The damage of war goes far beyond what we once believed; society has now reached an understanding about the kind of moral, communal and psychological toll war can have on the soldiers, their families, community and even country.

Perhaps the question we need to ask is if there is a need to bolster our quest for non-violence as a means to resolve disputes and differences.

However, today we have terms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), chronic depression, cognitive impairment and traumatic brain injury to help explain the symptoms suffered by active and returning soldiers.

Apart from PTSD, combatants also suffer from issues such as mood disorders, depression, anxiety, night terrors, and maybe at increased risk for substance abuse, and be more likely to commit violent offences in civilian life.

For example, suicide-related deaths in the U.S. military surged to a record 349 in 2012 — more than the 295 Americans who died fighting in Afghanistan in 2012. Statistics show that there is one suicide death every 18 hours.

Sid Chatterjee speaks to the Governors of Kenya’s 47 counties about the SDGs. Photo Credit: Council of Governors.

When we see terrifying images from across the world of professional soldiers from developed or developing countries carrying out some of the most egregious violations of human rights, we have to pause for a moment to think of the triggers that cause such reactions. Far away from families and friends, the pressure of combat brings the worst out in many. I have seen this first hand. It unleashes a savage, despite great educational, emotional, and spiritual enlightenment.

And I suppose societies too need to hold up a mirror to themselves. After all these soldiers do not come from Mars. They come from the very communities where they are raised, educated, groomed and nurtured.

The toll that war takes on a soldier is clear, but what sort of toll does it take on a community?

These problems don’t just affect the returning soldiers’ parents, wives, children, siblings, friends and neighbours. What are the social consequences of millions of psychologically scarred soldiers returning to communities all over the world feeling hopeless and angry?

And then there is the massive financial cost. A 2013 Harvard study notes that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could end up costing the U.S. between 4 and 6 trillion dollars, including the medical care of veterans, leading to an enormous negative impact on the global economy.

No doubt wars and conflicts are hell — but for reasons far beyond what we traditionally thought. Conflict not only tears apart the people that partake in it, emotionally as well as physically, but also their families, communities, societies and even their countries. It is extremely expensive, not only in money, but also in human capital and lost potential. These costs are simply too great to bear.

My key message to them would be that, if the world cannot find a way out of war, then we may well be defeated as a civilization.

So I would implore them to get behind the UN Secretary General’s call for peace and prevention of conflicts.

WM: And in your view, what is the UN leadership doing about it?

Mr Guterres, swears in Ms Amina Mohamed as UN Deputy Secretary General. Photo Credit: UN

Sid: Today, over 65 million people are displaced or have become refugees, the largest displacement of humanity since the second world-war, due to conflicts, natural disasters or sheer poverty.

There are many thorny issues facing the world, and the UN Secretary General Mr Antonio Guterres and his Deputy Ms Amina Mohamed have called on the United Nations staff and member states of the UN to stand up and unite to tackle the challenges of extreme violence, large movement of refugees, underdevelopment and poverty, and civil strife.

They are together driving some of the boldest reforms of the UN system at the country level, which is where the UN makes a real difference. They are leading efforts to ensure that the UN is more effective, efficient, coherent, coordinated and a better performing United Nations country presence with a strengthened role of the UN Resident Coordinator and a common management, programming and monitoring framework.

They must get the support of the member states of the UN as well as the UN system as a whole. All the UN funds, programmes and agencies need to get behind the SG on this.

WM: No doubt you have had many opportunities to address young university students. Looking back on your own journey, and at how you reached where you are now, what would you tell such a group now, by way of offering them encouragement and urging them to have great aspirations?

Sid: I would say drive, determination, perseverance and belief. A belief that you can do it. Everyone needs a little bit of luck in addition to their personal drive and willingness to take risks. In my case, there were plenty of times when I had to take that leap of faith, not knowing how I would land.

Self-confidence, regardless of how much people doubt your ability, is crucial. That is what kept me going, because all the odds were stacked against me and there were many points when I could have failed.

You get attacked for your successes and your failures, and, as you rise, there are inevitably people that will be jealous and many who will dislike you. I always keep the wise words of Winston Churchill in mind, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

So having a thick skin is crucial, find strength in adversity and never giving up.

WM: What would you say to any of them who might then ask you what you now believe – after all these experiences – to be the key to your style of leadership?

Sid: I owe my foundations in leadership to the National Defence Academy in India and my unit, the 10th Special Forces battalion where I served. These are two institutions that were central to my all around development, my ability to withstand stress and adapt to rapidly changing situations. Above all it imbibed a sense of loyalty, courage and a “never give up attitude”. You learn about the true meaning of Espirit de corps, the sense of camaraderie, how to earn the respect of those you command and how to reward that respect by returning it. You are set some of the most difficult physical, mental and emotional tests and many strong people can’t cope. It’s not your physical stamina that sustains you over three days in the desert on a navigation exercise with very little food and water, it’s your willpower.

The culture is, a leader leads from the front and knowing the right balance when to lead from behind.

Courage and integrity are crucial, whatever the situation. Stand up and stand by your staff, be loyal to them.

UNDP Administrator Mr Achim Steiner joins Sid Chatterjee,the UNDP Resident Representative, and his team in Nairobi during a visit. Photo: UNDP Kenya

My principle is that when something goes wrong, I will take the hit for it and will stand by my staff. When things go well and we are successful, I will ensure the credit is passed on to individuals and the team.

To me real leaders are visionary in their aspirations but practical and flexible in their approach, ambitious for their staff and the organization, while being demanding, they must be sensitive and compassionate towards their teams. And when a leader is having a bad day, try not to show it.

I have always requested a 360-degree performance review. Getting honest and reliable feedback is necessary to test one’s own perceptions, recognize previously unseen strengths, and become aware of blind spots in one’s self-perceptions.

WM: I saw your article in Forbes where you threw out a challenge to President Obama and President Putin on the matter of the war in Syria. I think the title was Obama And Putin Must Stop The Appalling Slaughter Of Syria’s Children. What prompted that?

Sid: I wrote that piece in 2013 following heartbreaking research from the Oxford Research Group report, ‘Stolen Futures – the Hidden Toll of Child Casualties in Syria”. It was damning in that it shows that children were specifically and deliberately targeted. 11,420 children were killed in Syria between March 2011 and August 2013. Among them, 389 were killed by snipers, 764 executed, and 100 tortured.It highlighted the depravity on all sides of Syria’s war.

Nelson Mandela once said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Perhaps there’s something else that needs to happen in terms of the way we see ourselves as a species and the collective nature of humanity. How can we prevent conflict, resolve it when it happens, and protect the most vulnerable from its impact?

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley holds photos of victims of a gas attack as she speaks as the U.N. Security Council meets in an emergency session on April 5, 2017, about Syria. Photo: Reuters

Children continue to suffer in war, as horrifying images from gas attacks in Syria show, and President Donald Trump correctly called an “affront to humanity.”

The United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Antonio Guterres, has described Syria as one of the worst conflicts of our time. But every day millions of children around the world are caught up in crises and disasters, many of man’s own making.

Consider this. In 2016 alone, one billion children around the world experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence. Globally, one in four children suffer physical abuse, one in five girls are sexually abused at least once in their lifetime, and more than 240 million children live in countries affected by conflict.

A growing number of boys and girls, some as young as eight years, are being abducted and sent to the frontlines as child soldiers, or fall prey to sexual violence in times of war. These experiences sear their psyches with macabre memories and condemn them to a terrifying and hopeless future.

On the issue of children, values must be the guiding principle, not Realpolitik. As President John F. Kennedy once said, “Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future”. That future should not be jeopardized.

Frankly, it is difficult to find another species that treats its offspring with such cruelty.

WM: You came to Kenya in April 2014 as the head of UNFPA and now you have been the United Nations Resident Coordinator since 2016. In all this you have carved out for yourself a reputation as one man who is very passionate about women’s rights. Tell us about both your roles in this and what you may have achieved?

Sid: As mentioned, my firm belief in fighting gender inequality started as a young boy.

However, one particular incident remains etched in my memory to date. While serving in the army as a young officer, I was horrified to find out that a soldier from my unit had raped a young girl. I remember the sheer fear and trauma that girl went through, and the helplessness of her family.

It was a life changing moment for me. While the punishment that followed was swift and uncompromising, it was at that moment that I swore to fight all forms of misogyny, discrimination and violence.

So when I came to Kenya, it was as if the unseen hand of destiny brought me here. At UNFPA I had the opportunity to deal with the terrible tragedy of high maternal deaths, discrimination and violence at the centre of the country’s political, social, cultural and economic dialogue.

My role in Kenya has been the most exciting of my entire career. When I got here I found an incredible team of UNFPA staff determined to change the game and claim our space in matters of maternal health. I decided that the first move would be to get behind what the First Lady’s Beyond Zero Campaign aimed at ending maternal deaths in Kenya. Kenya is lucky to have a truly remarkable First Lady in Margaret Kenyatta.

The First Lady of Kenya, flanked by CS Foreign Affairs Amb Amina Mohamed, former UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya, Ms. Nardos Bekele Thomas and Sid Chatterjee. Ms Margaret Kenyatta was recognised as the UN Person of the Year 2014 for her invaluable efforts to advance maternal and child health in Kenya. Photo: UN Kenya

Her passion, dedication and sheer determination is exceptional and frankly unparalleled. Her clarion call, “no woman should die giving life” resonated to every corner of the country and beyond. That became the tailwind for UNFPA’s own efforts.

Working with the University of Nairobi, we discovered that 98% of maternal deaths in Kenya were happening in only 15 counties. Armed with that data for my first meeting with then Health Cabinet Secretary James Macharia and the First Lady, I proposed we should get the Governors from the 15 counties to commit to ending the scourge of maternal mortality in their counties, and to support them with targeted interventions.

It was a success. Despite initial doubts from several quarters that we could do it, we gained the support of the Kenya Red Cross and the World Bank and ran a sustained and highly focused campaign. 15 County Governors from the counties which have the highest burden of maternal deaths signed a communique on ending preventable maternal and new born mortality in Kenya.

A communique signed by 15 County Governors to end preventable maternal and new born mortality in Kenya being held by former CS MOH, Mr James Macharia, Dr Ramana of the World Bank and Sid Chatterjee. Photo: UNFPA Kenya.

Change has been dramatic. Kenya had a maternal mortality ratio of around 488 deaths per 100,000 live births. In a matter of a few years, this dropped to 366 deaths per 100,000 live births. Our efforts were recognized by the World Economic Forum. We were invited to Kigali and then to Davos and Durban because of the gains that these counties had made.

Our next frontier is universal healthcare, so that no Kenyan is denied access to medical help through lack of financial means or lack of facilities. With the clear support of the government, I am confident we can achieve this.

Kenya is a beacon of hope in this region. A rapidly growing population offers opportunities for growth and innovation, but this demographic dividend can only be achieved through focusing concerted efforts on ensuring youth empowerment. We also need to ensure that women and girls have rights over their bodies and can plan their families. That will help unlock Kenya’s demographic dividend.

As the UN Resident Coordinator, I have worked with the UN country team and we have come up with five priorities in the new United Nations Development Assistance Framework, which will start in June 2018.

First is to help the government to create five million jobs by 2022. A million young people enter the labour market every year, but there are barely 100,000 new jobs, most of them in the informal sector. We need to dignify technical jobs, so the skills of a plumber, mason or carpenter are respected, encouraging young people into areas of high demand and helping them establish their own businesses.

Sid Chatterjee is congratulated by the former Chair of the Council of Governors, Honourable Peter Munya on being appointed the UN Resident Coordinator to Kenya. Photo: Council of Governors

Number Two is to address drought and hunger. By 2030, agriculture will be a trillion-dollar industry in Africa, with the potential to employ most of its youth, and Kenya must seize this opportunity. Young people’s energy and ideas could transform the sector.

Third is universal health coverage. We must not be afraid to think creatively. We know, for example, that it will be difficult for Kenya to produce enough doctors and nurses, so why not train community health workers to do some of the mundane, non-medical tasks that currently take up much of their precious time? We could train a million school leavers to perform immunizations, for instance. We need to think of new ways of addressing old problems.

Fourth is ensuring that development leaves no one behind and that is perhaps one of the best weapons to defeat the scourge of violent extremism. The principle of Vision 2030 is about making sure that it’s an inclusive process. As the UNDP Administrator, Mr. Achim Steiner, emphasizes, “let’s leave no one behind and reach the farthest behind first.” That is how you start to lead on issues of inequality and inequity.So the focus needs to be on the counties with the worst human development indicators.

Finally, we need to expand cross-border cooperation to encourage economic development and opportunity. The existing cross-border programme with Ethiopia, and the new road that connects Isiolo with Addis has seen the number of young people from Marsabit County joining Al-Shabaab drop exponentially. The road is a route to commerce and opportunity and economic integration.

President Kenyatta said he wants to turn this area into a ‘Dubai’. We will work very hard to make that happen.

The signing of the Kenya-Ethiopia cross-border programme by the Foreign Ministers of Kenya, Amb Amina Mohamed and Ethiopia, Dr Tedros Adhanom overseen by the Heads of State of Kenya and Ethiopia. December 2015 Photo: UNDP Kenya

WM: Speaking about violent extremism we are seeing this as an increasing phenomena globally, but particularly so in Africa. What is your take on this critical and highly sensitive issue?

Sid: Very important question Wycliffe. UNDP recently launched a ground breaking report, based on deep research and interviews with former extremists and those incarcerated. The report debunks a lot of myths and perceptions on the scourge of violent extremism. I would encourage everyone to read the report titled, “The Journey to Violent Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment.”

Bottom line is, deprivation, marginalization, underpinned by weak governance, are primary forces driving young Africans into violent extremism.

The report also finds that, many of these extremist movements erupt from borderlands and under-served areas. Large swathes of the population are extremely poor and there are chronically underemployed youth. That is why the Kenya-Ethiopia cross-border programme is particularly significant. I really applaud and commend the vision and leadership of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of Ethiopia and President Kenyatta of Kenya, for moving this forward.

President Kenyatta of Kenya and Prime Minister HailemariamDesalegn of Ethiopia lay the foundation of the Kenya-Ethiopia cross-border programme in the border town of Moyale in Marsabit county, Kenya. Photo: UNDP Kenya

This programme has brought two National Governments, two regional authorities, and two United Nations Country Teams together to advancing peace, development and empowerment in this area.

I am confident that not only can this programme be replicated, but may potentially be the key to resolving intractable border problems globally.

WM: Given your background in both the military and as a global technocrat, in your view what would be the best way to go about addressing this challenge?

Sid: We need to address security challenges through a development lens. I would add that if we were to urgently invest in 4 E’s- Education and skills, Empowerment of youth, women and girls, a Marshall plan for Employment in Africa and Equity, Africa will not only reap a demographic dividend, it would prevent irregular and forced migration and perhaps prevent and defeat violent extremism.

I recently had the privilege of co-authoring an article with the former President of Ghana, Honourable John Mahama, titled, “Promise or Peril: Africa’s 830 million young people by 2050”, where we discuss Africa’s youth population. Africa has a median age of 19 and has a rapidly growing youth population, which is expected to reach over 830 million by 2050. Whether this spells promise or peril depends on how the continent manages its “youth bulge.”

Many migrants use the dangerous sea route crossing between North Africa and Italy in search of a better life. Photo: REUTERS/ MARINA MILITARE

According to the World Bank, 40% of people who join rebel movements are motivated by lack of economic opportunity.

In the wake of the Second World War, the Marshall Plan helped to rebuild shattered European economies in the interests of growth and stability. We need a plan of similar ambition that places youth employment in Africa at the centre of development.

WM: When someone has had the kind of successes you have had on the one hand and on the other hand also undergone a great deal of anguish – we might almost say injustice – at the hands of critics, there is always this need for vindication in the long run. Here’s my question within that context: ten years from now, what would you like to look back as having happened in the next five years? In other words, what would you look back on with the greatest satisfaction?

Sid: You know Wycliffe, the difficulties my wife and I had through 2007 to 2016, made us stronger and taught us to be resilient. As a matter of fact much of the negativity thrown at us, from within and outside the institution and those that tried to hurt us, only made us tougher and smarter. So I am grateful to them too and hold no grudges. I have learnt a great deal and developed immensely from this experience.

I am really grateful that I am now in Kenya. It is a time of monumental change and opportunity.

As you are aware, His Excellency President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced his BigFour plans, inter alia, affordable healthcare, food security, manufacturing and affordable housing as his main concerns for the next five years. The UN’s priorities in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework(UNDAF) for Kenya are fully aligned with those of the Government.

In the next five years my hope is that we scale up our partnership with Kenya and all development partners to achieve the Big Four. I am confident Kenya can do it and serve as a model for many other countries in Africa and throughout the world.

The year 2018 presents incredible challenges and opportunities. Here is my New Year’s message to Kenya.

In several ways, 2017 was not an easy year, first because the UN globally is facing an ongoing funding downturn to which no agency is immune, but particularly in Kenya because of the turbulence and uncertainties associated with lastyear’s general election.

Despite these challenges, I firmly believe that 2017 was a year of notable achievements, when we once again asserted the value and credibility of the UN system in Kenya to the Government and people of Kenya.

I thank all UN agencies that stood at the forefront of the drought response. It is the credibility and trust we enjoy that led to resources coming our way from the Flash Appeal to support the humanitarian response. The Government of Kenya sees the UN family as a partner they can trust and rely on. We must continue to remain vigilant and ready to support the Government and people of Kenya as the indications for the coming year do not look so good.

Sid Chatterjee discusses youth employment with President Kenyatta. Photo Credit: State House.

Despite shrinking resources, we are expected to do more. These past years, we have responded on time, effectively and coherently; and our work is helping people feed themselves, care for the sick, empower more youth and women and promote models of development that reduce dependency.

For instance, the Joint Programme on Reproductive Maternal Neonatal Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCAH) has led to notable progress on coherence, service delivery, partnerships and key health outcomes, especially in under-served counties. This was not only recognised by Forbes “The UN and Philips Bring Hope And Health To Africa’s Most Challenging Region”, but also acknowledged by the Government of Kenya and the World Economic Forum. This became the basis for the SDG public- private partnership platform to leapfrog universal health coverage in Kenya.

Here is Kenya Foreign Minister’s Speech, Ambassador Amina Mohamed, at the UN General Assembly on Friday, 22 September 2017, where she spoke specifically to the SDG platform in Kenya to leapfrog achievement of Universal Health Coverage in partnership with the United Nations in Kenya and emphasized the central importance of maternal and child healthcare.

https://gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/72/ke_en.pdf

The Cabinet Secretary informed the General Assembly of efforts made in her country to accelerate implementation of the SDGs as well as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. She also spoke of Kenya’s assistance to refugees and efforts made to combat human trafficking.

This is a wonderful endorsement and recognition of the UN’s role in “Delivering as One”. The Government of Kenya is already planning for a similar platform in partnership with the UN on Zero Hunger, SDG 2.

Partnerships with the private sector and development partners have unlocked significant resources and technical assistance to deliver significant improvements in areas previously considered little more than lost frontiers.

Our network of more than 25 UN agencies in Kenya has continued to offer creative programmes and campaigns on a wide-range of issues, including human rights, peace and security and sustainable development. In addition, we have put in place wider collaboration with the private and public sectors to make our programmes robust and our outreach more effective.

Sid Chatterjee together with the UN Country Team in Kenya welcome the former UNDP Administrator Ms. Helen Clark along with UNDP’s Regional Director Mr. Abdoulaye Mar Dieye to a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya in August 2016. Photo: UNDP Kenya

Kenya’s cross-border programme with Ethiopia, the UN Delivering as One programme, is finding great interest locally and globally and has the potential of not just unlocking more resources but can be replicated elsewhere too.

These are only a few examples of real progress; changes that are not abstractions but which have been documented in terms of mothers and new-borns saved, girls retained in school and the vulnerable fed. It is work that has made a real difference in the lives of people, but which could not have happened had we not worked together.

But we have challenges ahead. The SDGs which the UNDAF now seeks to support are broader and more challenging than the MDGs, because they encompass more goals such as peace, justice and strong institutions.

To that extent, much of the hard work lies ahead. Inequalities persist and progress has been uneven across the counties in Kenya. Our youth in Kenya remain on the periphery of development, and millions are left behind.

These are extraordinary challenges, but they also present extraordinary opportunities. The coming year is a chance for all our agencies to re-evaluate and to innovate. The question before us is, how can we do our work better? How can we stretch our resources more effectively?

The coming of a new year reminds us anew of the enduring value of the United Nations, as the place where citizens expect solutions to problems. I believe that each of us has a part to play in lifting up people all across Kenya, in finding solutions to today’s urgent challenges.

WM: Sid, I remember when we first met. It was at a party held at the residence of the (immediate former) German Ambassador Andreas Peschke in 2014.You have now been here for a few years, and no doubt have had the opportunity to form a personal impression of many members of the diplomatic community in Kenya, as you interact with them all the time. Is there any of them whom you would single out as doing exceptional work here?

Sid: That is a difficult question Wycliffe. All the Ambassadors and High Commissioners I know and interact with are superb and lovely human beings.

I will mention all the same, Ambassador Bob Godec, who is the epitome of a fine diplomat and a staunch believer in Kenya’s potential as a great democracy and a great country. We share a passion for running half marathons (he is far better than me though), the advancement of women’s rights and equality and leapfrogging Kenya’s push to achieve Universal Health Coverage. I had the opportunity of co-authoring an article with him in the Star about the scourge of Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya.

US Ambassador Robert F Godec and Dutch Ambassador Frans Makken, strong advocates of ending FGM. Photo: UNFPA Kenya

WM: Last question. Is it true that you run a half-marathon every Sunday?If so – and really that cannot be said to be out of a need to get some exercise – what inspires you to run?

Sid: Yes, as far as possible I run a half-marathon or 21 km every Sunday. I also try and run to the office 2 to 3 times a week. I stand at work for at least 4–5 hours a day and keep myself moving. And I also do a headstand two or three times a day.

Sid Chatterjee does a headstand in his office. Photo: JBC

Running is therapeutic and it also acts as a catalyst for ideas. Most of the ideas for the opinion pieces I publish on my blog in Huffington Post and Reuters come when I am running.

I wake up at 3 am each morning to read, write and reflect.

Sid Chatterjee runs a half-marathon. Photo: UNDP Kenya

I dote on my 6 year old son. He is the centre of my existence. I suppose I also keep fit for his sake. I must admit, if there is one thing I look forward to, every day and every second, it is the joy of seeing my son grow.

Wycliffe Muga and Siddharth Chatterjee had this conversation at the UNDP office in Nairobi, Kenya. Wycliffe Muga is a columnist for The Star where he was previously Opinions Editor, and also Weekend Editor. He was for ten years (2006-2015) the “Letter from Africa” correspondent to the BBC World Service (Business Daily). He is a former columnist for the Kenyan Daily Nation newspaper, and the monthly magazines, Nairobi-based Diplomat East Africa, and the London-based African Business; also, a former Contributing Editor (Science and Technology) for the East African Flyer magazine. In 2006 he was listed by the Financial Times as Kenya’s most influential print commentator.

Wycliffe Muga

Mr. Muga is a Fellow of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a winner of numerous journalism awards and media fellowships.

This interview was originally published by The Star of Kenya here: https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2018/01/15/i-survived-polio-and-overcame-deadwood-of-mediocrity-label-siddharth_c1696922

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