Swaziland, Africa

We had the good fortune to join Jennifer Sly, Founder of YouthAssets, in Swaziland, Africa as she traveled to various youth homesteads. Along the way, Jennifer told us about how she used Google’s G1 phone and Google GPS Maps to find the remote homestead of a 12 year old boy she had met over twelve months prior in rural Swaziland. Jennifer points out the importance of GPS maps in Africa, noting that in most locations people do not have street addresses.

YouthAssets is an international nonprofit organization that uses mobile technology to empower and connect orphans and vulnerable youth in southern Africa. To learn more about how you can support their important work, please visit YouthAssets.

Thank you Jennifer for your time to share insights on the power of mobile technology in rural communities.

For our previous interview with Jennifer on how mobile airtime is used as cash currency in rural Swaziland, be sure to check out: “Interview with Jennifer Sly: Mobile Phones & Airtime in Swaziland, Africa”.

Jennifer Sly, Founder of YouthAssets

About: YouthAssets is an international non-profit organization that empowers orphans and vulnerable youth in southern Africa through mobile technology. Website: www.YouthAssets.org

We had a great time talking with Tammy Tibbetts of ShesTheFirst this week and appreciate the valuable insights she shared on how to leverage social media effectively to raise awareness of a brand and a cause. To hear more about these insights, be sure to check out  “Interview with Tammy Tibbetts, Founder of ShesTheFirst | How Can Social Media Support Girls’ Education?”.

In our interview with Tammy, along with sharing valuable online marketing strategies, Tammy talks about the importance of girls’ education worldwide and how educating a girl has a positive impact on a girl’s entire community. Tammy also tells us about an upcoming benefit concert for ShesTheFirst called Girls Who Rock New York. The concert, which takes place in New York City on June 10, 2010, aims to raise brand awareness for ShesTheFirst, and raise funds for selected beneficiary, The Kisa Project.

What is The Kisa Project? Check out the great video above to hear all about The Kisa Project, a digital storytelling and computer training program of AfricAid, founded by twenty-five year old Ashley Shuyler.

For additional background on Ashley and to learn how Ashley started AfricAid at eleven years old following a trip to Tanzania, be sure to also check out our previous interview, “Starting an Education NGO in Africa | Ashley Shuyler, Founder of AfricAid”, produced by talented filmmaker and envisionGood Field Producer, Jen Myronuk.

Ashley Shuyler, Founder of The Kisa Project and AfricAid

About: The Kisa Project is a new AfricAid initiative that will provide school scholarships and leadership training to some of Africa’s brightest young women. Website: www.kisaproject.org

We had a fun chat with Daniel Epstein and Teju Ravilochan, Co-Founders of The Unreasonable Institute this past weekend. In this video interview, Daniel and Teju share the background story on why they started The Unreasonable Institute to provide training and mentorship for young social entrepreneurs. In this interview, learn about The Unreasonable Institute’s Fellows Program, who they are looking for, how to apply, and more. Applications open November 15th and run for one month. Twenty five high-impact young social entrepreneurs will be selected from around the world to join in an intensive 10-week training program taught by seasoned social entrepreneurs. Learn about the investor’s pitch, The Unreasonable Institute’s pipeline parters, seed capital for young social entrepreneurs in the Fellows program, and more.

The Full Transcript

Katrina: Hi, here I am with Teju and Daniel of The Unreasonable Institute.

Teju: Thanks Katrina. Well, first of all, it’s just a pleasure to be here, we’re really happy to share a little bit about The Unreasonable Institute with you. The Unreasonable Institute is basically an international incubator for early-stage social ventures. We’re focused on young people around who hunger to create systemic social change. And we bring them to Boulder, Colorado for ten weeks where they live under the same roof, undergo rigourous entrepreneurial training, receive mentorship from fifty of the world’s most seasoned social entrepreneurs, and ultimately connect them with the seed capital they need to launch social ventures that are gloablly scalable and that can improve the lives of millions of people.

Daniel: Nice. [laughter]

Katrina: This is an amazing incubator for young social entrepreneurs and I’ve been hearing around the blogosphere that this is being referred to as an MBA crash course for young people who want to make a difference. What inspired you to start this?

Daniel: I think we were inspired by an obsession, actually – an obsession with the belief that entrepreneurship is the answer to the greatest challenges that we’re facing today. Our entire founding team – we’re a group of young social entrepreneurs. We are the very customers, clients, or constituents that we’re looking to attract to the Institute, and we recognize the shortcomings right now in supporting early-stage social ventures. There’s a lack of extensive incubators. There’s a lack of access to expert mentors. And, and there’s a lack of access to capital and these are all the things that we’re looking to drive into this ecosystem.

Teju: I might add that we’re after unreasonable people. You know, people who create change in the world are often called crazy. And you know, no one is probably crazier than a 20-something who says, “I’m going to put poverty in a museum”, to quote Muhammad Yunus.

Katrina: This is so inspiring. Let me ask you, how are you attracting seasoned experts to become the mentors for the program?

Daniel: We’ve teamed up with key organizations all around the world, from Ashoka to Endeavor in Chile to NYU University and a number of other award-deeming pipeline partners, which are organizations that believe that this is a very valuable experience.

Teju: We’re bringing to the Institute the brightest, hungriest young people. And these seasoned social entrepreneurs know the struggles that they’ve faced in trying to launch their social ventures, so they’re very excited about the opportunity to help the next generation of young people who are hungry to create that change.

Katrina: Fantastic, fantastic. So let me ask you this, what are you looking for? How will you determine of all the applicants you receive who will be invited to join you?

Teju: We’re looking at two different categories: one is the idea, and one is the person. So in terms of the idea, we’re looking for ventures that can meet four criteria. One, they have the potential of addressing a social or environmental problem. Two, they can financially self-sustain themselves within a year, meaning they have some kind of internal revenue mechanism for covering their cost of operations – so that three years after they launch they can scale beyond their country of origin. And finally, our fourth criteria is that they reach the needs of at least one million people.

In terms of the person, we’re looking for primarily three characteristics: unreasonablity, impatience, and boldness. So what do I mean by that? By unreasonability, I mean people who have the ability to persist through failure, who are willing to endure scathing scepticism and whatever challenges they face in launching a social enterprise, and are relentlessly determined to solve one of these problems at any cost. We’re also looking for people who feel a strong sense of urgency and who are impatient to create this change – who we can ask, “what is the world’s biggest problem today?” and “what are you doing about it right now?” and they have an answer for us right away.

And then finally, we’re looking for boldness. We’re looking for people who are willing to take risks, who are willing to try models that have never before been implemented, who are willing to think on the scope of millions, and even billions, of people, and risk failure in pursuit of that. And we’re looking for people who really have the entrepreneurial ability, who can make people believe in them, who have rallied the support of at least one team member, who are between the ages of twenty and thirty, though that is not a hard and fast rule.

Daniel: One thing we’re really looking for, and Teju touched on it, are teams. We’re looking for teams for a couple of reasons: one is to show that your idea is at a certain stage in development where you’ve been able to inspire people to come onboard and work on it full-time. Also, we’re looking for teams so that one of the members can come to the Institute, while the other one is back on the ground interacting with the market so that they can test prototypes and proofs of concept while their other team member is at the Institute. We think that this is absolutely critical.

Which gets us to another point, which is really quite simply, that we believe that entrepreneurs do stuff. So we’re looking for entrepreneurs who have done stuff. And if that means you’ve got a prototype to market, you’ve been working on your venture for six months, one year, three years, even if it’s just been two weeks, we want to make certain that you’ve got in on the ground, that you’re relentless about this, that you’re dedicated to it, and that you’re passionate about it.

Katrina:What are some of the things that applicants who are invited can expect to learn?

Teju: We’re bringing mentors to the Institute, for example, Mark Mathieu, who is the head of global brand marketing at Coca-Cola. We’re bringing Bob Pattillo, who started Gray Ghost Fund, a four hundred million social investment fund, for example, who can teach our Fellows, for example: “how do you reach remote rural customers?” “how do you market to them?”, who can say, “this is how you pitch to investors”.

We’re bringing someone who’s lifted millions of people out of poverty who says “this is how you communicate with people who live in poverty in rural Cambodia”, for example. “These are the kinds of questions you ask, these are the kinds of things you should be looking for when you’re out there on the ground. In addition to that, we’ll be bringing Tom Suttas, for example, who has started nineteen companies of his own, and has rasied over a billion US dollars in funds for those companies. So how do you raise that money? So everything it takes from putting together a team, to pitching to an investor, to marketing, to branding, you know, all those things are things our Fellows will learn from the mentors we bring to the Institute.

Daniel: More practical needed tools are assets. So, we’ll work with them [Fellows] to build websites, free legal consultation throughout the Institute, access to capital to build prototypes over the ten weeks. At the culmination of the Institute, we’ll be having an investor’s pitch fest and conference, where our Fellows will go on-stge in front of two hundred investors and enlightened philanthropists, and be able to say “these are the ideas that are going to change the world in the next generation and the coming years, and invest in them.”

Katrina:Awesome. And how much does this cost? For someone who wants to attend, how much do they have to pay?

Teju: The cost of attending the Institute is US $6,500 but we don’t, in fact, allow our Fellows to pay it. In fact, what happens is, we’ll get applications and we’ll narrow it down the initial pool of let’s say, a couple hundred, to forty or fifty we hope. We’ll put those forty or fifty entrepreneurs on what what’s called a finalist marketplace, which is a platform inspired by kickstarter.com, where these entrepreneurs can profile their ventures and their ideas to the world.

The world then can come to this marketplace and vote with their dollars on the ideas that they think are the most viable for creating deep social impact. So the first twenty five finalists to raise sixty five hundred dollars through this platform are the ones who become Unreasonable Fellows. This is perhaps one of the best tests of their enterpreneurial ability. Can they go out and get people excited enough about their idea, and get people to believe in them and their idea enough to support them with their dollars?

Daniel: We know the difference between receiving a full-ride scholarship to an organization or to a fellowship, versus having, say a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred people support you like Teju said. With that amount of excitement, ownership, and accountability when you’re attending the Institute and hundreds of people have said, yes you deserve to be here, yes your idea is viable, we believe will truly be incredible.

Recently we realized a slight issue with this model which was that it wasn’t going to be fair for applicants and finalists coming from more impoverished backgrounds. And so, we’re actually staggering the amount of sponsorship you can receive over a fifty day period. So in the first week, anyone in the world can come and sponsor their way to the Institute, but you can’t give more than ten dollars.

The idea behind that is, if you can get six hundred and fifty people to support you in one week and say that you should come to the institute, then you should come to the Institute because that’s absolutely incredible. The second week it will be fifty dollars, the third week it will be a maximum of a hundred, and so on and so forth. And the idea here is to really level the playing ground.

Katrina:With the staggered voting model that you’ve shared, we can expect applicants from all over the world, right?

Teju & Daniel: Yes, yes you can.

Teju: In fact, Katrina, we already have two hundred fifty people signed up to apply actually, which is really exciting. And they’re from all over the world. You know, we’ve got applicants from sub-Saharan Africa, from Southeast Asia, from Latin America, and from Europe, and of course from North America and the United States. So, we’re really excited by the people signed up to apply because it reflects that there is international interest.

Katrina: Is there anything you would like to share with everyone, any tips you can give to applicants?

Teju: We want the best entrepreneurs to apply, and to be very honest and transparent with us about what they know, what they don’t know, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and what they’re looking to do.

Katrina: Thank you so much for your time, and I’m really excited to hear what emerges with The Unreasonable Institute. Thank you so much. It’s always so fun talking with you two.

Teju: It’s been a blast, thank you so much.
Daniel: Thank you too.

Teju Ravilochan & Daniel Epstein – Co-Founders of The Unreasonable Institute:

About: The Unreasonable Institute unites up to twenty-five high-impact young social entrepreneurs from around the world for an intensive 10-week summer institute to provide skills training and expert mentorship to give new social ventures wings. Website: www.unreasonableinstitute.org

We met up with Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Fund, in New York City following Clinton Global Initiative. In this video interview, Diana shares her passion for social entrepreneurship and tells us about her youth-led organization that lets youth take action and make a difference through smart investments. Diana also shares insights and advice with social entrepreneurs and people of all ages: “we hold in our hand a compass so we can write our own maps – so go write your own map, and follow your compass.” Thank you Diana!

The Full Transcript

KATRINA: So here I am with Diana of Fast Forward Fund. Diana you’ve been to Clinton Global Initiative this past week representing Fast Forward Fund. Can you tell us about your organization and your role?

DIANA: Well, I’m the founder and CEO of Fast Forward Fund which is building a pipeline of next generation social investors. So we’re very excited to be transforming philanthropy into social investment for the next generation of people who want to make a difference and can make a difference through their financial transactions. So we’re doing that through training programs, advisory services, peer-to-peer investor events and developing diversified, leveraged, aggregated social investment portfolios.

So we’re creating a social portfolio movement through our organization in partnership with pipeline partners, which is our deal sourcing model. So all of Fast Forward Fund investment opportunities are youth-led, addressing global issues and diversified across for-profit, non-profit and hybrid social ventures: all pre-vetted and nominated by our pipeline partners which include the leading incubators of social entrepreneurship.

So one of our pipeline partners, Clinton Global Initiative, also served as our launch partner when we began just six months ago, which I can hardly believe, in February 2009 in Austin, Texas at the Clinton Global Initiative University. We were very privileged to launch Fast Forward not only as an outstanding commitment of action, but featured in a press conference with the president. So this last week at CGI was an exciting opportunity for us to check in on our first six month milestone and get context of the larger CGI community.

KATRINA: Fantastic. And can you share:

Why are you targeted specifically at youth? What is it about youth that attracted you to form this organization?

DIANA: Well, I believe that investing in this next generation of leaders is the best investment we can make and we’re going to yield the best social return on our investment by focusing on emerging leaders, ages 18 to 29 years old, who are at that critical inflection point where they’re forging their financial identity, their adulthood as global citizens. And we want to ensure that at that juncture they are embedding philanthropy as a social investment into their financial literacy, identity, and experience.

So, from the get-go as young adults are approached to and taught and learn about how to earn hopefully, and how to consume and build debt, and then manage and pay off debt hopefully and invest and save, the missing piece is philanthropy and we want to offer that missing piece. Not only because we feel that young adults have a lot to offer and are an under tapped resource for short-term social capital but that they will become lifelong long-term investors if mobilized at this critical age in their development.

We also see unprecedented demand from this generation to be engaged, to make a difference, and to be strategic with their efforts. While they are frequently and increasingly told “be an entrepreneur and start something, become a volunteer and serve, or join the social sector as a profession” – and I’ve done all three so I can speak to how great those ways are to make a difference – but not all people are cut out to do those things. We want to provide another option for making a difference and believe that investment is action. So by focusing on young adults as investors now we’re countering that other response to “I want to make a difference, what do I do?” to “Well, come back in twenty years when you can write a big check.” No, we need all hands on deck right now, we don’t have twenty years to wait.

KATRINA: Fantastic.

So, what would be some examples of how you help young people make socially responsible investments?

Do you have a portfolio or is it in promoting fair trade products?

DIANA: So we have a portfolio that we are developing. We are early-stage start-ups so we are happy that we have selected by our young student portfolio directors, four pilot projects for our portfolio as a diversified investment opportunity. They include for-profit, not-for-profit, and hybrid social ventures nominated by Clinton Global Initiative, Global Engagement Summit, New York Young Women Social Entrepreneurs and Teach For America’s Social Entrepreneurship Institute. And that presents one way how we help young investors, emerging investors make good decisions with whatever their resources are.

We also piloted our training program last spring through partnership with Bard College’s Globalization & International Affairs program. We worked with 13 competitively selected students from 6 different countries, teaching best practices in social investment and culminating in an investor pitch session that was the first ever youth-to-youth, young adult-to-young adult investor pitch session in New York City and their selections for the portfolio pilot project. We’re now looking to adapt that training to take our program to scale and reach next-gen investors wherever they are to become investors.

KATRINA: Fantastic, wonderful. And Diana, off-camera you shared with me the source of this beautiful scarf that you’re wearing from Nepal and you mentioned that you had a transformational life experience when you bought this beautiful scarf.

DIANA: I did.

KATRINA: Can you tell us about that story?

DIANA: I’d like to think it was the scarf, but it might have had more to do with looking out at the foothills of the Himalayas. So my background is international human rights law and I had a wonderful peripatetic life living in different countries and cities and working with the UN and academia and international organizations – great places, Human Rights Watch, Penn … And married with two children. And I was with my husband, having left our two children behind, and I looked out at the foothills of the Himalayas and I thought of them back home in Brooklyn, and said to myself, “I want to leave the city, and I want to leave my wonderful job with Penn, which I loved, directing free expression, working with writers all over the world, and work for myself, and I want to have a third child. Just like that, looking out at the Himalayas! And a year later I was pregnant in the country, working for myself, writing my first book called “A Global Agenda”, which was looking at the UN’s performance over the past year and laying out priorities for the next year.
Fast forward to 2009 a couple years later and I’m now thinking a lot about how Fast Forward Fund advances the human agenda and moves beyond the global agenda of nation-state-countries in the UN to the human agenda in the global community and how each of us have a role to play.
KATRINA: Fantastic. And what can you share with young people out there who do want to make a difference? You’ve mentioned several ways that people can take action: volunteering, joining the professional sector, or through investing.

Are there any other insights that you can share with young students, young aspiring social entrepreneurs?

DIANA: Well, I think that it’s a fairly universal drive and impulse that you want to make a difference and it comes to this perfect storm moment in young adulthood where you still have that youthful vision and powerful energy and drive and yet you’re old enough that you have some skills and some capacity to actually do something about it. So, trust where you are and that you can make a difference right now.

I also would say that while we all want to make a difference, many people get overwhelmed and think, “but what can I do?” and the fact is that we all do make a differece – by design or by default – every single day. And most of us make a difference by default. So what I hope with Fast Forward Fund is that we are offering a vehicle for people to make a difference with design and intention. And that effective action requires three things, in my opinion: intention, integrity, and impact. And if you have those three elements: intention, integrity, and impact, your action will make a difference. And the fourth and sort of magic ingredient is inspiration.

So when you feel that spark, trust that, and go with that. And finally, I want to share a quote from one of the speakers from Nigeria who I heard this last week at Clinton Global Initiative. He said the most beautiful thing for a young adult wanting to make a difference or for anyone at any stage – in fact my 7-year-old son said “that’s beautiful, mommy”. And that’s that:

“We hold in our hand a compass so that we can write our own map. So write your own map. And look at your compass.”

KATRINA: Thank you so much Diana.

DIANA: My pleasure.

KATRINA: I will defintitely look at my own compass.

DIANA: Do, do! I look forward to seeing your map.

KATRINA: Thank you so much, and best wishes with Fast Forward Fund. It’s been a delight to talk with you.

DIANA: Thank you.

Diana Ayton-Shenker, Founder & CEO of Fast Forward Fund:

About: Fast Forward Fund transforms young people in their twenties into social investors for life by mobilizing this generation’s financial resources, passion, energy, and drive to advance global sustainability & human dignity. Website: FastForwardFund.org

What is Unreasonable Institute? How can being “unreasonable” help entrepreneurs in their quest to create positive social impact across the globe? How does Unreasonable Institute help incubate young social entrepreneurs?

Daniel Epstein, Co-Founder of Unreasonable Institute met up with us in San Francisco, California this month to share answers to these questions and more. Hear why he is committed to being unreasonable and learn how his social venture helps fellow young social entrepreneurs grow and develop their ventures. Thanks for watching! Let us know what you think about this vid – leave a comment below, thanks!

Daniel Epstein, Co-Founder of Unreasonable Institute

About: Unreasonable Institute unites 25 brilliant and high-impact youth social entrepreneurs from around the world to attend an intensive 10-week summer institute. Once there, ventures are incubated and entrepreneurs are connected with start-up capital. Website: www.UnreasonableInstitute.org

envisionGood.tv met up with Phindile, Youth Advisory Board Member of YouthAssets, in Swaziland, Africa in July 2009. Phindile talks about Life and shares one tip with young girls (and boys too): “concentrate on your studies”. YouthAssets is an international nonprofit organization that empowers orphans and vulnerable youth in southern Africa. Thank you for watching. Please subscribe for more videos, and drop us a comment: we’d love to hear from you.

Phindile, Youth Advisor to YouthAssets

About: YouthAssets is an international non-profit organization that empowers orphans and vulnerable youth in southern Africa through mobile technology.. Website: www.YouthAssets.org

Katrina of envisionGOOD.tv met up with Jamie Lloyd, founder of Ghana Youth Photo Project, at a recent benefit event for SF Camerawork’s “First Exposures” youth photo program. Hear what Jamie has to say about the cultural & photographic exchange that took place in summer 2008 in Ghana between San Francisco youth and Ghanian youth.

Jamie Lloyd, Founder of Ghana Youth Photo Project

About: Ghana Youth Photo Project helps youth in Ghana show their world through photography. Website: www.ghanayouthphoto.org