|
|
 |
|
german view of global grameen strategy as at dec 2009
volunteer info Hotllne Washington DC 301 881 1655 chris.macrae @yahoo.co.uk
- Black (or bold) means Global
Grameen Alumni Wolfsburg 09 or Yunus Partner- Grey means tracking - rsvp info @worldcitizen.tv if you have nomination
of SB collaboration partner in sustainability for tracking .CP2 Foundation
Brand Nike Foundation whose Girl Power brand announced at Clinton Global 09 is main funder ($5mn) of collaboration
gameboard end nurseless villages, aka Grameen Nurse Institute | CP1 Micro SB bank GRAMEEN BANK is the greatest job creation system and network ever designed -formal
data; informal data on 10 times more economic; jobs are created across generations through 3 empowering facilities
in one system: bank for the poor, 125000 hubs sharing knowledge for poor, and free community marketplaces for every 60 members; collaboration
with Grameen connects community solutions to all 7 sustainability wonders : financial services owned by poorest, education, healthcare, water & food & energy -and Gandhi's triple change whammy : government & professions and media;also grameen exports knitwear further sb partners : aravind replicated from India to Bangladesh; cure2children Italy to Bangladesh | CP12 SB System Design hubs & Microeconomics - worldtoilet, singapore
- TheGreenChildren.org, LA
- collaboration cafe- our sustainability multiplying values in this Bronx tv video; connect 15 cities in 3 continents- used by many networks including SaintJames last sustainability luncheon with 2 world ranking microeconomists who first studied in Bangaldesh and both
started searching for missing system of going global in 1976 1 2, simpol, EU knowledgeboard, YunusForum, journalistsforhumanity, return bbc worldservice to SB anchor women, African Diaspora nets, yunusbook clubs and dvd10000, GRN, Union of real gandhi networks, world citizen guides on edu collaboration entrepreneurs, global uni of poverty; we have an agreement to pilot with http://the-hub.net whether they have an SB club; we are delighted to sign similar collaboration agreements
- Wholelpanetfoundation, austin texaa
- Nancy Barry Club , NY; Bonsai Movie Club LA:
............................................................................. | CP11
DigiYouth | .CP4 Place Leaders: Queen Sofia, Spain Prince Albert, Luxembourg Prince Charles,
UK King of Thailand | .CP3 SB Summit | .CP9 University (Yunus Uni partner subtypes) - HEC, Paris, France
- Glasgow Caledonian, Scotland 1
- AIT, Bangkok, Thailand 1
- CSUCI, CA, USA
- Rikkyo Uni, Japan
- Kyushu Uni, Japan
- Zayed Uni, Abu Dhabi
| .CP10 SB Funds | .CP5 World Stage | .CP6 TN$ Market Sustainability | .CP7
Collaboration Nations | .CP8 Corporate Global Brands - Grameen Danone, Kids Nutrition brands, Paris, F &10
- Grameen
Veolia, Water, Paris, F
- GrameenCreditAgricole, Paris F &10
- Grameen Intel 1 2 , Digital for Poor & World Ahead LA, USA
- Grameen BASF, GHealth (mosquitos), Germany
- Grameen Otto, Factory of Future Germany
- Adidas,
Germany
- Autostadt- Volkswagen, Germany
- SAP, Deutsche Telecom, Scout24, Boehringer Ingelheim, Germany
- Unicredit
Italy
- Baumax, Austria
- US health corporation partners - Pfizer, General Electric Healthcare Systems, Mayo Clinic, Sabin Vaccine Institute and Johnson & Johnson- Emory U Laerning Panel
| | . | . | . | . | | . |
co-sponsor 
| Yes We Can, Muhammad Yunus: launching 1997 microcreditsummit’s race to end
poverty; 2010 is "Joy of Life decade" launching Global Grameen Nov 2009 | Co-sponsor 
| There is a missing system without which investments in the coming globalisation will not be exponentially
sustainable. Norman Macrae, survey Entrepreneurial Revolution, The Economist 25 Dec 1976 | GlobalGrameen.com – the
unauthorised biography of sustainability world’s greatest brand : Global Grameen, and world’s greatest invention
Social Business System Designs | The way the 1984-2024 generation designs globalisations will compound 10 times more or less
health and wealth. Uniting the human race in ending poverty is the way for microeconomics to go if global markets are to be
free to celebrate exponentials rising. Norman and Chris Macrae, 1984: 2024 Repot –concise future history of network
generation | Co-Sponsor 
| The entrepreneur makes more jobs than she or he takes – Nobel Muhammad Yunus, Social Business
Book tour 2008 | Co-Sponsor 
|
| My father and I believe the worldwide significance of Global Grameen's
launch can be described something like this. Do you have any editing suggestions, or do you see the value of global grameen
entirely differently? Chris Macrae, Global Institute of Social Business usa 301 881 1655 *
*
* Economics and sustainability are compound phenomena. Consequently,
it is impossible to truly value the impact of a global organisation without asking: is this system spinning a sustainable
exponential rising or an exponential that is crashing down? As
serial crashes of the 2000s make clear, the absence of exponentials attention in media and in annual reports of most of the
West’s largest organisations is becoming humanity’s greatest threat. Among entrepreneurial gifts that Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus has shared with this world,
none offers people around the world such a joyous opportunity as the 2010s launch of the Global Grameen brand : to be the world’s number 1 brand gravity connecting global social business partners in sustainability.
This launch capitalises on knowhow open sourced over a third of a century’s determination
of emotional and social intelligence. This is cultivated around a core group of Bangladeshi entrepreneurs who
invented a Micro Up system – which Yunus defines as the Social Business model. Mathematically and practically
this system is uniquely simple: the design benchmark for integrating everyone’s productivities and demands round
valuing sustainability exponentials. Social Business system's
brand DNA and its core metrics – and so its leadership's governance - are all about value multiplying communal win-win-wins
through every investment cycle. When Adam Smith wrote about free markets he was searching for this map. Absent of it, the
20th century has serially demonstrated the liability of macro economists to take a wrong turn and then accidentally
rule over how to be become ever less economical! So it is tmely
that Micro economists and citizen groups are uniting in calling the Social Business the world’s greatest invention.
For confirmation, see the life works of Europe’s senior economist whose published exponential forecasts since 1984 have continuously shown the 2010s to be the last decade that
our human race will have the choice to integrate local societies globally in ways that structurally map how to sustain the
future of our human race Global Grameen ABC Are you interested in promoting understanding
and creativity of global social businesses designed around sustainability exponentials? Will you help us track
what happens when clubs of the world's most resourced organisational typologies –global corporate brands, the 21st
Century’s outstanding universities, regional leaders, citizen networks, philantropists, global NGOs, sports and global
media stages etc - partner Grameen’s micro system serving life critical needs through grassroots
collaboration networking? Yes
We Can celebrate the 2010s as that joyous decade where millennium goals - and webs of urgent interactions - make sustainability's
choice for all future generations. If you know how to hi-trust network, please don’t lurk now. |
On November 7, over 100 people will be invited by Muhammad Yunus to be sustainability ambassadors to 2015 and launch Global Grameen on the journey of being
sustainability's world's favourite global brand partner - what questions should these people be rehearsing as a first 100 network of sustanability
system designers of global social business maps, and version 0 of what subsequent yunus forums of 100-5000 people amy choose to Q&A or search. getting the right item list in question 1 is probably most important to this
stage on global grameen launch (if only 1 question is surveyed I'd go to Q1).. With regard to such a question it is crucial not to assume you are only using it quantatively
– do you know the research practices of grounded theory?
Your
name ------------------------ Your
email or contact ------------------------------- 1) When you think of a brand or organisation
partnering Global Grameen, which of these advantages do you see a partner leverage 1)
Knowhow from Grameen as the world’s leading system designer resolving sustainability
crises 2)
Reputational gains of being a social business partner in the human race to end poverty
and staging joy of millennium goals 3) A change in the partner's purposeful
capability to innovate or let organisation-wide cultural/diversity values blossom 4) Long
term relationships needed to enter a new country such as China or Bangladesh so as to seed respected brand leadership
over time 5)
Specific knowledge/relationships from Grameen’s and Bangladesh's world leadership
benchmarking and networks on clean energy and climate crisis solutions 6) Specific
knowledge/relationships from Grameen’s world leading impact on smart digital or mobile media 7) Bottom-up opportunity to transparently map architectures ( free market centres) of
10 times more economical designs of healthcare, banking ,
job creation and .. 8) Opportunities to transform how
the world analyses value and leadership by being in a club of people connected around the networked world’s most trusted
visionary and creative entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus 9) Other __________________
please state 2) If
you mentioned several opportunities in 1, which one is it most pivotal from now to 2015 that the branding of global grameen
is seen to celebrate through communal actions. Please select 1-8 from 2 viewpoints: a) leadership
people with the most powerful responsibilities and asset decision-making b) 7 billion human beings worldwide 3 What is your relationship to global
brands and global markets A) I work at a global brand company B) I advise global brand companies/leaders C) My social
or sustainability concerns are directly impacted by media and global brands D) Other 4 Please tick social or sustainability concerns that you spend a lot of time on A) Ecological B)
Access to financial services that invest in local people C) Children’s
access to education D) Access to healthcare and personal safety E) Peace F) Other
system failures causing poverty G) Other please ------------------- 5) Regarding 4) do your concerns and actions most impact societies in Developing countries Developed countries Both
6) do you have any comments or suggestions of questions that 100 to 5000 people attending
Yunus Forums on Global Grameen should be good news connecting through Grameen
Dialogue ------------------------------- Global Grameen Social Business Partnering ABC –map last updated oct 2009 – see any incompletions please mail chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk – or for more detail guiding contact us in Washington DC 301 881 1655 – take official tour of grameen
lab – or visit fan labs at london LA DC Berlin Glasgow -please note our most uptodate & linking version of this map is
here
Veolia & Volkswagen (Autostadt) | W | xYz YunusCentre.org Yunus-Nobel | Adidas
& AIT YunusC & Grameen America & AshdenAwards | Bangladesh & BASF &BerlinFreeU | CISB (CSUCI) &CreditAgricole& Colombia SB Zones | Danone & | | U | Universities
for Sustainability; Media, Global Brand Marketing Sustainability | E | | T | Foundation | Social Business – sustainability world’s
greatest inventions | Health for Poor GrameenHealth.org Health Management Centres | | Eye Hospitals | Nursing Colleges | Medical University | Nutrition | Water | Mosquito N et |
GrameenKalyan.org | Tech for Humanity Grameensolutions.com Bankabillion.org | Wealth
opportunities for Poor – banks, centre-markets, knitwear, employment agencies, vocational grants, schools Bangla rural womens bank –grameen.com Bangla village youth investments –grameen shikkha GrameemTrust.org International replications | Grameen
Global Grameencl.com & Glasgow CalU | | R | Energy for Humanity –Shakti
– solar electricity, biogas utility, biogas ovens | HEC (paris) & | | Queen Sofia (Spain) | Intel & Islamic Dec Bank | | Prince Albert –Monaco Fund | Obama- Nobel | Nobel & Nike Foundation
(Grameen Nurse Institute) | Microcredit & Microcreditsummit.org &Microenergycredits.com | L | K | Jamii Bora & Jameel |
Volkswagen Autostadt Nov2009, an hour's ice-ride from Berlin: Well
over 100 leaders of sustainability came to celebrate goals and social business collaborations with Dr Yunus and the launch
of Global Grameen as the world class brand designed to celebrate partnerships in sustainability. We will be reporting who connected what by theme starting wth
healthcare. Text in Blue represents official notes of Global Grameen - rest is fans correspondence A Global Meeting for Social Business!
On November 7, 2009 Professor Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Creative Lab,
Germany is hosting the 1st Global Grameen Meeting in Autostadt/Wolfsburg
near Berlin.
The Grameen Global
Meeting is an integral part of the series of events to
celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall under the motto “Another
Wall to
Fall.” The meeting will begin at noon and is followed by an evening dinner
and a networking session.
Those who are invited to participate in this
upcoming intimate circle with Professor Yunus includes CEOs, board
members,
sustainability experts, as directors of social business projects.
The goal of this meeting is to convene the partners
and supporters of the
Grameen Social Business movement to share experiences and develop new
ideas.
The
GGM will support this by:
Exchanging experiences and knowledge among project participants’ field
reports,
existing social business joint ventures and other Grameen social
business projects, thereby developing the culture of
knowledge regarding
Grameen social business.
Fostering intensive networking and discussion of new social business
ideas
in an intimate circle with Professor Yunus
Creating a platform for interactions between social business
experts and
potential partners from the classical world of business
Announcing Professor Yunus goals for 2015
Committing to reduce poverty world wide.
Reinforcing the friendship between Professor Yunus and the companies
attending
Facilitating global cooperation Bureaus of GG - washington DC chris 301 881 1655
Many generations of my family have believed that humanity has a fundamental right to economies where media is used to share good
for you -and your community - news. With mathamatical and other weapons that Scottish internationalists have learnt to
action from Adam and James, we will fight peacefully for this right shaming the reputation of all who deny it. When Dr
Yunus spoke from his Nobel platform in 2006 about the world's greatest invention http://www.worldclassbrands.tv - and encouraged citizens everywhere to communaly club round it - we started a series of fans
webs: globalgrameen, grameenenergy, grameenuniversity, and so forth. Apart from the joy of celebrating good news from the global village, these collaboration
citizen webs are merely fans sites. We celebrate realisin g the worlwide generation's united gopal of ending poverty
which along with BRAC http://www.brac.net , Grameen http://www.yunuscentre.org has world staged Dhaka into the city en route to every sustainability city - and
thank UK ministers Miliband and Alexander for being some of the first to raise the cheers for this in their visit to
Dhaka in Sept 2009.
People we have met or corresponded with about Grameen and the Bangladesh
(including BRAC & ASA) in co-research maps designed to share thousands of social business franchise solutions all over the world Bangladesh: Dr Yunus ( centre), Dipal Barua (Energy 1 2), Professor Latifee ( Trust), Mrs Begum (Schooling) , Kazi Islam (Media for poor including world leading mobile solutions) 1 2 , Lamiya Morshed (Yunus year Ahead), Mr Sultan (Health 1 2 ) , Samir, Katrina, .. Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus invites social business
leaders to 1st Global Grameen Meeting; November 7, 2009; Audostadt in Wolfsburg (near Berlin, Germany) - more details
http://www.grameencl.com/ Global Grameen Meeting - the event of Global Grameen Social Business Movement | Social Business in the worlds of business, science and politics has emerged as a local movement as well as an innovative business model with
the potential to solve global challenges. The joint ventures that have been realized between partners and companies
with Grameen demonstarte that a worldwide culture of cooperation, in which the participating parties mutually complement one
another, is the key to solving many worldwide problems. This leads to the conclusion that the struggle against poverty is
a team effort. The goal of the first Global Grameen meeting is to convene the partners and supporters of
the Grameen Social Business movement to share experiences and develop new ideas. The Global Grameen Meeting supports
this by - Exchanging experiences and knowledge among project participants' field reports, existing social business
joint ventures and other Grameen social business projects (strategic and operatve dimensions), thereby devloping the
culture of knowledge regarding Grameen Social Business
- Fostering intensive networking and discussion of
new social business ideas in an intimate circle with Dr Yunus
- Creating a platform for interactions between social
business experts and potential partners from the 'classical' world of business
- Announcing Dr Yunus goals for 2015
- Commiting
to reduce poverty worldwide
- Reinforcing the friendship between Dr Yunus and your company
- Facilitating global
cooperation
| The Global Grameen Meeting is an integral part of the series of events to celebrate
the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall under the motto "Another Wall to Fall". With you, we would
like to make the wall of poverty fall. The Global Grameen Meeting will take place on 7 November 2009, at the Audostadt
in Wolfsburg near Berlin. The marketing and communications platform of one of the world's largest automobile groups will
host the event, thereby making a considerable contribution to furthering the development of social business partnerships The
meeting begins at noon and is followed by an evening dinner and networking session. Those who are invited to participate
in this intimate circle with Dr Yunus include CEOs, Board Members, sustainability experts as well as "directors" of social
business projects. | . | . |
if
you want to be on this global grameen trust map of connnecting people & networks rsvp info@worldcitizen.tv with reason why you qualify in terms of global grameen alumni status or sustainability exponentials auditing and/or social business system competence. this emerging 2010 version
will soon replace 2009 version UKLondon Ashden world leading prize network on
microenergy : Sarah Butler-Sloss (ne Sainsbury), BBC Paul Rose, Sofia B londoncreativelabs.com, Mostofa yunusforum.net –world social business summit during 2012 sustainability olympics; wcbn’s john caswell;
the-hub.net jonathan; muftah noblecities tv station; tom rippon future of postgrad SB apprenticeships, sandra BRAC Cumbria –paul rose and global grameen alumn
andy dickson of m pact InternationalScotland .. Sir Tom Hunter, 3 Glasgow Unis, Pamela Gilles,
Zasheem Ahmed, Ms Magnusson –origin in of Grameen Nurse institute now founded out of Nike Foundation; aims to be main
grameen bank trial in europe; has advertsied social business chair of wellbeing France: Yunus Movie :Benedict (HEC), The Big
4 of Global Grameen, YunusMovie: Vivian, Estelle (robert de quelen)Big 4 GG: France Grameen Danone, Grameen Veolia, Grameen Credit Agricole HEC SMBA France – social businessfnds – danonecommunities
and grameen credit agricole Germany Grameen BASF, GrameenCl (scout24 web & micromarket portals), Grameen Otto, Adidas (factory of future), Autostadt (Volkswagen)Lisbon reputedly first social business stockmarket advised by german firm linked to
Berlin Institute of Social Business & Yunus lab at Free University of Berlin all linked to GrameenCL in wiesbaden Monaco – Prince Albert Fund
for environment; Monaco social busienss fund for africaMadrid Queen Sofia- world microcreditsummit 2011, NazrulItaly- san patrigano,
mayor of Milan 2015, Bologna grameen bank tests USA:LA CSUCI Cal Inst of
Soc Business, Thegreenchidren, Holly Bonsai Yunus film, melanie the global summit, heath rowCA Grameen Intel ; (jeff skoll and larry brilliant)San Francisco
– alan webber compere of global grameen at wolfsburg 2009 and ex-founder fast company
Princeton- Sam-Daley Harris
Microcreditsummit (ya caitlin at swartmore PA)Boston
Grameen America Health & HQ Vidar Jorgensen; MIT Yunus Challenge; MicroloanFoundation & MIT entrepreneur labs
New York-
Grameen America Bank, St Johns Edu Degree in Social Business –wcbn global grameen alumn erich joachimstaler (and into
germany office markus Pfieffer)- booktour publisher clive priddle (ya alexis), susan davis brac,mancy barry
-ex womens world banking - now micro100 leaders net highly lnked columbia business school social enterprsie conference DC Alex Counts Grameen Foundation, (FINCA), microfinancepodcast;
ashoka-drayton social entreprenenur hq (ya alex)(MD centres of social
value creation and finance robert smith business school , melissa carrier)Austin – wholeplanetfoundation
– mackey conscious capitalism ning of sustainabilitity partners; (Atlanta Ray Anderson CEO of zero waste corporates)Seattle Unitus –with sam main
Usa supporter of jamii boraUSA pilots with Mayo Clinic, Pfeizer, GE Healthcare
(USA-UK); associations with Goldman sachs 10000 women job creation panel China – epicentre of 100 million jon creation challenge – ceo of ali babaIndia –with grameen partner in http://bankabillion.org ; should be way through to Nilekani visisn of jib creating india; Lucknow school Mexico Grameen carlos Slim – major microcredit aimed to fight compartamos (Cinepop)Colombia –
social business zones- gov of caldas –my indirect contact with ceo of leading dairy company (microfinances 2000 farmers
and a danone partner) Kenya : Jamii Bora Ingrid Munro Thailand- bangkok –Borje and Peter , AIT Yunus Centre, (Michel open source
processes)Singapore – world toilet sanitation conference producer hoping to be a creative lab soonJapan 3 universitiesJeddah? – university and
Islamic SB FundBangladesh- own page
2009 version UK Scotland .. Sir Tom Hunter, 3 Glasgow Unis France: Yunus Movie : Vivian, Estelle
FC's: France Grameen Danone, Grameen Veolia, Grameen Credit Agricole HEC SMBA UK FC: GE Healthcare USA Grameen Intel; pilots wit Mayo Clinic, Pfeizer; associations with Goldman sachs 10000 women Boston
Grameen America Health & HQ Vidar Jorgensen; MIT Yunus Challenge; MicroloeanFoundation & MIT New York- Grameen
America Bank, St Johns Edu Degree in Social Business Monaco - Principality Social
Business Fund USA East Coast DC microcreditsummit Sam Daley-Harris, Tom Harch, Hilary Clinton, microfinancepodcast West
Coast Seattle microenergycredits.com People newly supportung Dr Yunus on June 29 http://yunuforum.net/ all day dialogue Paul Rose , Nina Ness .. coming soon Other epicentres we dont yet have optimal
connectios with: DC Grameen Foundation, FINCA Austin - wholeplanetfoundation Seattle Unitus
|
|
|
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
. have you met dr yunus? If yes, and if a project started round which you need collaboration networkers, please tell
us so we can advertise your needs dr yunus loves celebrations of the second kind
what are these?
dr yunus
is the world's greatest planter of human collaboration networks that urgently and economically do vital services for ending
poverty- witness how today he and 15 other change agents are meeting in a yes we can celebration hosted by President
Obama; In the gandhian sense of the word truth, yes we can value Dr Yunus and over 100+ million
Bangladeshi confederates as bringing back the joy of reality to world celebrations that one type of media professional shredded (for a history of how the yes we can slogan was co-cteated over a third of a century ago to develop the
entrepreneurial capacity of the world's poorest - and most superpower-abused women, and ssutanability investment in their
next generation of children click http://yunusworld.com/ ) have you or your social networkers ever been asked by dr yunus to co-create a future
changing event? - if so and you need any help please tell us!coming soon - example events - dr
yunus 69th birthday party http://www.yunuscentre.org ; celebration of 20th fall of wall berlin nov 2009; kenyans april 2010 offers obama a yes we can test laboratory ; mandela
and dr yunus invited fifa & south africa's world cup to celebrate football and the african genius to end poverty; queen
sofia madrid 2011 asks the world to celebrate connecting african and spanish speaking hemispehere's knowledge of how to end
poverty, this can linkin with a royal hunt of the sun across Europe with early good cheer coming from Princes Albert and Charles
; Paris and London co-produce the greatest womens blockbuster movie of all time with a little help from people like you? (and youth ambassadors 5000); the BBC is publicy questioned as to where sustanability celebrations merits as much share of voice as spectator
sports just in time to make the olympics 2012 the greatest celebration humanity has ever linked into | since the first day that thousands of people
at http://www.cluetrain.com -now another dotcom grave - debated whether weblogs would be a good thing, I had an irritable feeling that I hadnt seen
one on the topic I most wanted help from other people searching around- after all when columbus sailed the blue I assume captains
logs collaboratively integrated maps of the new world- they weren't ways to see who could be the noisest worldwide captain
nor own the biggest wave in some canute-like trip of vanity
in the event that you are a communicator or being
looking for the same kind of weblog as I am , please ask for an invitation to co-edit this one; of course there are
a lot of improvements to make but we know the measure of when its good enough - it will help 100 global brand ceos jump ship
from mastering corporate irresponsibility to responsibility, a wee project in its 20th year of brewing around my family's
networks. |
Dear Rebecca
Thank you and dr yunus for the kind invitation
Mention is made of "bring up to 3 people from my organisation".
What I have done since forming
1000 bookclub with dr yunus book in 2007 is to map across europe and usa networks and organsiations most interested
in dr yunus work. This is just one system jigsaw piece of YunusForum.net the space originally founded at time of nobel prize for intercitizen dialogues to grow around social businesses seeding
demand for social business summits to become integral to what the microcreditsummit as world's most exraordinary
human networking paradigm does
Is it possible to tell me other orgaisations/people you have invited?
So that I can try to chose 3 other people who I think most need to be invited. For example, Paris is clearly an epicentre
of dr yunus global social businesses but for me the most loyal supporter or dr yunus in paris is vivian norris de montaigu
of yunusmovie I dont know if she -or other key journalists ans storytellers - have already been invited or not.
At another level of detail, dozens of people and I have collaborated in mapping how people in different
cities lead different apects of connecting 4 audiences all of whom need to come together if the media of millennium goals
ending poverty is to be valued by the 100 most globally responmsible brand ceos - see rough sketch at http://www.yunusworld.com/ The Global brand ceos I look for -as reinforced by a conversation I head with the President of Bacardi International this
week - find confirmation that this is the world stage to be on between 2009-2015 by the degree to which we can
confirm the other 3 audiences. (eg if the olympics is also to be a world stage cenelgration of ending poverty, then a huge amount
of citizen networking needs to be planted and also a strategy is needed to get the BBC involved given its constitution
as the largest social business in tv broadcasting; this strategy probably connects through networks like ashden energy and
british council education that both dr yunus and friends of mine are deeply connecting in )
*youth and activist
mentors for sustainability investment *policy makers and professions from the G8 down *the great and the
good
are all interconnected
Is there a way to brainstorm your invitation list. For example,
perhaps it is the right time to see if mary robinson as fellow presidentail medal of honor -and one time fridn of my father
- might come; simlarly jeff skoll and larry brilliant - whilst not directly first clients of social buisness, if they
understood they may be able to help in what remains timingwise the number 1 communications crisis- the loss of yes we can
spirit across the USA the one and only time we have a usa president elected to cheerlead it. With such a world cahnging meeting
as this the invitation process as a way of researching who is actionably who can be as critical to future flows of ending
poverty as other components of the event
chris macrae |
From: GlobalGrameenMeeting
Subject: Save-the-Date Global Grameen Meeting, November
7th 2009
To: chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk
Date: Wednesday, 12 August, 2009, 10:29 AM
Dear Mr. Macrae,
on behalf of the Grameen Creative Lab, I would like to cordially invite
you to the 1st Global Grameen Meeting to take place on November 7th, 2009 in the
Autostadt Wolfsburg near Berlin. The meeting begins at 12.00 am (noon) and is followed by an evening dinner and networking session.
Organized by the Grameen Creative Lab, the meeting
is designed to share knowledge and experiences by presenting cases of successful Grameen companies,
including both joint ventures as well as other Grameen Social Businesses
The convention will also bring together companies and key individuals interested in creating new Social Businesses. Ultimately,
this event will culminate in the Vision Summit 2009 and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall taking place on November,
9th.
The Global Grameen Meeting's main objectives are to:
1) learn from the experiences of existing Grameen Social Businesses from both a strategic and
operational perspective;
2) discuss and seed new
ideas for Grameen Social Businesses;
3) create a platform
for interaction and potential collaboration with traditional businesses;
Your
support is of the utmost importance in development of the next generation of corporate partnerships dedicated to extending
the Grameen Social Business model.
We invite you to bring up to three key
representatives from your organization.
Please save the date
in your calendar. You will receive an official invitation with a form to register in the following weeks.
If you have any questions,
please contact the Grameen Creative Lab team.
Yours
Sincerely,
Prof. Muhammad Yunus
for the Grameen Creative Lab
___________________________
Prof. Muhammad Yunus
Founder and Chairman
|
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Impossible is Possible Scripts - ref Humanity 1
If you have an inter-generational script that you feel neighbours ours,
we'd happily blog it here - chris macrae info@worldcitizen.tv ; we are particularly interested in hidden stories (eg how is hostory spinning the future of a place; which women or
unknown voices played roles that history writtne by powerful men forgets to mention; what's the most urgent impact of
that in today's changeworld of systems)
India- as reported by a
family tree of Scots in the British (oops English) Raj
1 Both Gandhi and David's father trained as barristers at Bar of London. Until approximately 40 Gandhi hadnt been that successful at change. The only
place he found to make a living with cases he wanted to defend was South
Africa. Then he got thrown off a train because of his color and in
a flash his new question in life was what happens when your profession is the problem.
2 For the next 13 years Gandhi
started developing wholly different educational systems for every age group in South Africa and India. Through a Quakers meeting in London, he was later to meet Maria Montessori
(whom he got to come over to India) and rue that he hadnt known of her methods earlier. By early 1920s, Gandhi returned
to India
in what is now called Mumbai.
3 David’s father was by now a chief judge in the British Raj. His first job was to sentence
Gandhi to prison. 25 years of dialogues later- David's father's last job became writing up the legalese of India's Independence. Gandhi
had not wanted what we now call Pakistan and Bangladesh to be separated but he lost that bit of rapidly decided geo-politics.
4 Granddad died when
I was 4 or 5. The only thing I personally remember is how often he used to say - the thing I have learned in life is : nothing
is impossible
5 The gravity of Muhammad Yunus (and likeminded Nobel Laureates), see 2008 transcript of the chair of
Nobel judges) is at the epicentre of all the worlds networks of "nothing
is impossible". As someone who has worked on global brands for 33 years, I guess the dominant communications question
I ask myself every day now is where can the positive Micro virus of Yunus be spread and interconnected to multiply
the most human impact.
6 Places have successful economies where people are productive, happy, healthy, have safe communities
where families and children enjoy time to learn and where media is not dumbing down. In other words microeconomists map how
healthy societies beget strong economies not vice versa. Whilst all this sounds like motherhood, we live in a world of measurements
sponsored by the big get bigger and macroeconomics that is systemising everything the wrong way round. This was
the scenario dad and my 1984 book wished networked peoples would unite to prevent http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html .
7 There are letters by both Einstein and Von Neumann which suggest that each laid odds against human
sustainability being the exponential system*system outcome of the world when technology made us more connected than separated.
Looked at as a maths problem all of the biggest professional monopolies are still using rules that value separation of
systems instead of connection. The boundary risks of this are compounding like nobody's business -which is probably
why epidemiologist Larry Brilliant has moved on from being ceo of google.org to http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090424/full/news.2009.400.html
8 It is somewhat absurd to see more and more global systems spiral viciously because of one simple maths mistake,
but as far as I can see that's where 2009 is at - and we are rerunning the 20th century almost year by year except this
time the conflicts are not just originated out of European Imperialism. Neither nature nor microeconomists predict security-
let alone sustainability - in any world where over-big systems dominate, and shred transparency and trust. Adam Smith's
framework of free markets never ever applied to the high cost of speech we have now built round life critical news and
service replications.
9 Ironically, my father's 1976 survey "Entrepreneurial Revolution's Next Capitalism
" http://erworld.tv on Christmas Day in The Economist asked whether we would securely get rid of too big organisational systems by 2010. Entrepreneneur
(french- between taking) had its origin in "once we have guillotined the heads of
those whose monopolisation of resources are stopping French people's freedoms to be productive, can we
design a more human and sustainable society"?
10 Looked at with microeconomics lens: the Future Capitalism invitation of Dr Yunus to organisations with the most resources to try an innovation partnership with those
grassroots networks serving the most life critical needs offers leaders a way to benchmark Global Industry Sector Responsibility.
This is the other way round to leadership by Corporate Social Responsibility, which it is claimed does not permit
investing in doing no evil because it would mean putting our corporation at cost disadvantage of being first to do something
humanly good but which costs more the ways laws and goodwill analysis are currently framed. It seems that a minimum
critical mass of French and German CEOs get Yunus's invitation where I have to say I find little evidence that USA
and UK do yet. If I am correct all the energy that Obama could have generated among youth will disappear like Alice's Cheshire
Cat unless we urgently change how people are rewarded/compensated everywhere that big business spins.
Herstory
worthy of writing up one day: Maria Montessori, Gandhi's mother (by all accounts one of the kindest mums a boy can
get), Obama's mother, Yunus' mother ... Sonia Gandhi
Most extraordinary current book on India - Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
Association of Collaboration Journalists : Bangalore, Delhi, Pakistan, Dhaka, Lucknow , Ahmedabad
8:51 am edt
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Social Business - A Step Toward Creating a New Economic and Social
Order
Professor Muhammad
Yunus, Grameen Bank, Bangladesh
INDIA PARLIAMENT Lecture delivered at the joint-meeting of the members of Lok
Sabha and Rajya Sabha of India, in Delhi on December 9, 2009. Second Annual
Professor Hiren Mukerjee Parliamentary Memorial LectureHon'ble Vice President, Hon'ble Prime Minister
of India Manmohan Singh, Hon'ble Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Hon'ble Members of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, Distinguished Ladies
and Gentlemen:
It is a great honor and privilege for me to deliver the second Annual Memorial Parliamentary Lecture
in honor of the formidable academician and parliamentarian, Professor Hirendranath Mukerjee. I am very proud to pay my respects
to an individual whose commitment to social justice spanned over 60 years, until his death in 2004.Hiren Babu’s commitment to the plight of the oppressed and exploited during his
entire life has inspired many. His gift of oratory has captivated and enlightened individuals across the political spectrum.
Indeed, Hiren Babu's faith in the ability of his fellow human beings to help themselves reflects my own beliefs about the
innate ability of all people, including the poor, to change their own lives for the better.
Professor Hirendranath
Mukerjee has been one of the 20th century’s best examples of the intellectual prowess in South Asia.
If our human resources are nurtured and simply given a chance to grow, I am certain we can all change our economic and social
situations dramatically.
So I pay tribute to the memory of this great son of the region who dedicated himself
to improving life for the people at the bottom of society.
Professor Mukerjee tried to address the poverty issue
politically. I first got involved in it as an academician, and then personally, almost by accident. I got involved
with poverty because it was all around me. The famine of 1974 pushed me out of the university campus. In disaster situations,
most of us take up our social roles unhesitatingly. But in my case what began in a time of crisis became a life-long
calling. I gave up my academic position and founded a bank - a bank for the poor.
Enslaved by the Money Lenders
In 1974, I found it extremely difficult to teach elegant theories
of economics in the classroom while a terrible famine was raging outside. Suddenly I felt the emptiness of economic
theories in the face of crushing hunger and poverty. I realized that I had to leave the campus and somehow make myself
useful to the distressed people of Jobra, the neighboring village.
In trying to discover what I could do
to help, I learned many things about Jobra, about the poor people, and about their helplessness. I came face to face
with the struggle of poor people to find the tiniest amounts of money needed to support their efforts to eke out a living.
I was shocked to meet a woman who had borrowed just five taka from a money-lender and trader. The condition of the loan:
She would have to sell all her products to him at a price he would decide. A five-taka loan transformed her into a virtual
slave.
To understand the scope of this money-lending practice in the village, I made a list of the people who had
borrowed from the money-lenders. When my list was complete, it had 42 names. These people had borrowed a total
of Tk. 856 from the money-lenders. To free these 42 people from the clutches of the money lenders, I gave them the money
to repay the loans. The excitement that was created in the village by this small action touched me deeply. I thought,
“If this little action makes so many people so happy, why shouldn't I do more of this?”
That's what
I have been trying to do ever since.
Grameen Bank Lends Even to Beggars
The first thing I did was to try to persuade the bank located in the university campus to lend money to the poor.
But the bank manager refused to do that. He said, “The poor do not qualify to take loans from the bank - they
are not creditworthy.” I argued with him about this for several months, but I couldn’t change his mind.
So I offered to become a guarantor for loans to the poor. The bank agreed to accept this proposal. By the middle of
1976, I started giving out loans to the village poor, taking personal responsibility for their repayment. I came up
with some ideas for making it easier for the poor people to repay the money they had borrowed. These ideas worked.
People paid back the loans on time, every time.
It seemed to me that lending money to the poor was not as difficult
as it was imagined. But I kept confronting difficulties in trying to expand the programme through the existing banks.
Finally, I decided to create a separate bank for the poor. Finally I succeeded in creating this bank in 1983.
We called it Grameen Bank.
Today, Grameen Bank is a nationwide bank serving the poor in every single village of Bangladesh. It has 8 million borrowers, 97 per cent of whom are women. The bank is
owned by the borrowers. Nine of the thirteen members of the board of directors are elected by the borrowers as shareholders.
Grameen Bank lends out over $ 100 million a month in collateral-free loans averaging about $ 200. It encourages children
of Grameen families to go to school. It offers education loans to them to pursue higher education. There are more
than 42,000 students who are currently pursuing their education in medical schools, engineering schools, and universities
financed by education loans from Grameen Bank. We encourage these young people to take a pledge that they will never
enter job market to seek jobs from anybody. They'll be job-givers, not job seekers. We explain to them that their
mothers own a big bank, Grameen Bank. It has plenty of money to finance any enterprise they wish to float—so why
waste time looking for a job working for someone else? Instead, be an employer, rather than an employee.
Grameen
Bank is financially self-reliant. All of its funds come from deposits. More than half of the deposits come from
the borrowers themselves, who are required to save a little bit every week. They have a collective savings balance of
over half a billion US dollars. The repayment rate on loans is very high, about 98 per cent, despite the fact that Grameen
Bank focuses on the poorest people—those that other banks consider non-creditworthy.
Grameen Bank even gives
loans to beggars. They use the loans to start the business of selling goods from door to door, rather than begging door
to door. Beggars like it. We now have over 100,000 beggars in this programme. During the four years since
this programme was launched, over 18,000 have quit begging.
This idea of small, collateral-free loans for poor
women, known as "microcredit", or "microfinance", has spread around the world. There are now Grameen-type
programmes in almost every country in the world. We even run a programme named "Grameen America"
in New York City. It is now branching out to Omaha, Nebraska, and San Francisco, California. Even in the richest country in the world with the most sophisticated banking
system, there is a need for a bank dedicated to serving the poor.
Poverty
is Not Created by the Poor
When I meet Grameen Bank borrowers, I often meet mother-daughter and mother-son
pairs in which the mother is totally illiterate, while the daughter or son is a medical doctor or an engineer. A thought
always flashes through my mind: the mother could have been a doctor or an engineer too. She has the same capability
as her daughter or son. The only reason she could not unleash her potential is that the society never gave her the chance.
She could not even go to school to learn the alphabet.
The more time you spend among poor people, the more you
become convinced that poverty is not created by poor people. It is created by the system we have built, the institutions
we have designed, the concepts we have formulated. Poverty is an artificial, external imposition on a person.
And since it is external, it can be removed.
Poverty is created by deficiencies in the institutions that we have
built. For example, financial institutions. They refuse to provide financial services to nearly two-thirds of
the world’s population. For generations, they claimed that it could not be done, and everybody accepted that explanation.
This allowed loan sharks to thrive all over the world. Grameen Bank questioned this assumption and demonstrated that
lending money to the poorest in a sustainable way is possible.
During the current financial crisis, the falsity
of the old assumption became even more visible. While big conventional banks with all their collateral were collapsing, microcredit
programmes, which do not depend on collateral, continued to be as strong as ever. Will this demonstration make the mainstream
financial institutions change their minds ? Will they finally open their doors to the poor?
I am quite serious
about this question. When a crisis is at its deepest, it can offer a huge opportunity. When things fall apart,
that creates the opportunity to redesign, recast, and rebuild. We should not miss this opportunity to redesign our financial
institutions. Let’s convert them into inclusive institutions. Nobody should be refused access to financial
services. Because these services are so vital for self-realization of people, I strongly feel that credit should be
given the status of a human right.
Poverty Belongs in Museums
Every human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of himself or herself, but also to contribute
to the well being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential, but many others never get the chance
to unwrap the wonderful gifts they were born with. They die with those gifts unexplored, and the world remains deprived of
their contribution.
Grameen has given me an unshakeable faith in the creativity of human beings and the firm belief
that human beings are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty.
We can create a poverty-free world if we
collectively believe in it—a world in which the only place you would be able to see poverty is in poverty museums. Some
day, school children will be taken to visit these poverty museums. They will be horrified to see the misery and indignity
that some human beings had to go through. They will blame their ancestors for tolerating this inhuman condition for so long.
To me, poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed from the tallest tree in a tiny flower-pot,
you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted, only the soil-base
that you gave it is inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds, but society never
gave them the proper base to grow on. All it takes to get poor people out of poverty is for us to create an enabling environment
for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.
A Fundamental Conceptual Flaw
Let me return to the current financial crisis.
Unfortunately, the media coverage gives the impression that, once we fix this crisis, all our troubles will be over.
We forget that the financial crisis is only one of several crises that are threatening humankind. We are also suffering
a global food crisis, an energy crisis, an environmental crisis, a health care crisis, and the continuing social and econonomic
crisis of poverty. These crises are as important as the financial crisis, although they have not received as much attention.
Furthermore, the media coverage may give the impression that these are disconnected crises that are taking place simultaneously,
just by accident. That's not true at all. In fact, these crises grow from the same root—a fundamental flaw
in our theoretical construct of capitalism.
The biggest flaw in our existing theory of capitalism lies in its misrepresentation
of human nature. In the present interpretation of capitalism, human beings engaged in business are protrayed as one-dimensional
beings whose only mission is to maximize profit. This is a much distorted picture of a human being. Human beings
are not money-making robots. The essential fact about human beings is that they are multi-dimensional beings.
Their happiness comes from many sources, not just from making money.Yet economic theory has built the whole theory of business on the assumption that human beings do nothing
in their economic lives other than pursue their selfish interests. The theory concludes that the optimal result for
society will occur when each invididual's search for selfish benefit is given free rein. This interpretation of human
beings denies any role to other aspects of life - political, social, emotional, spiritual, environmental, etc.
No
doubt human beings are selfish beings, but they are selfless beings too. Yet this selfless dimension of human beings
has no role in economics. This distorted view of human nature is the fatal flaw that makes our economic thinking incomplete
and inaccurate. Over time, it has helped to create the multiple crises we face today.
Once we recognize this
flaw in our theoretical structure, the solution is obvious. We can easily replace the one-dimensional person in economic
theory with a multi-dimensional person - a person who has both selfish and selfless interests at the same time.
Immediately our picture of the business world changes. We now see the need for two kinds of businesses, one
for personal gain (profit maximization), another dedicated to helping others. In one kind of business, the objective
is to maximize economic gains for the owners, even if this leaves nothing for others, while in the other kind of business,
everything is for the benefit of others and nothing is for the owners—except the pleasure of serving humanity.
Let us call this second kind of business, built on the selfless part of human nature, as “social business”.
This is what our economic theory has been lacking.
Social Business –
A Non-Loss, Non-Dividend Company
A social business is a business where an investor aims to help others
without taking any financial gain himself. At the same time, the social business generates enough income to cover its
own costs. Any surplus is invested in expansion of the business or for increased benefits to society. The social
business is a non-loss, non-dividend company dedicated entirely to achieving a social goal.
Will anybody
in the real world be interested in creating businesses with selfless objectives? Where would the money for social business
come from?
Judging by the real human beings I know, many people will be delighted to create businesses for selfless
purposes. Some have already been created. I’ll give briefs on some of them a little later.
Regarding the
source of fund, one source can easily be the philanthropy money going for creating social businesses. This makes enormous
sense. One problem of charity programmes is that they remain perpetually dependent on donations. They cannot stand
on their own two feet. Charity money goes out to do good things, but that money never comes back. It is a one-way
route. But if a charity programme can be converted into a social business that supports itself, it becomes a powerful
undertaking. Now the money invested is recycled endlessly. A charity taka has one life, but a social business
taka has endless life. That's the power of social business.
Besides philanthropists, many other people
will invest in social businesses just to share the joy of making a difference in other people's lives. People will give
not only money but also their creativity, networking skills, technological prowess, life experience, and other resources to
create social businesses that can change the world.
Once our economic theory adjusts to the multidimensional reality
of human nature, students will learn in their schools traditional money-making¾and colleges that there are two kinds of businesses businesses and social businesses. As they grow
up, they'll think about what kind of company they will invest in and what kind of company they will work for. And many young
people who dream of a better world will think about what kind of social business they would like to create. Young people,
when they are still in schools, may start designing social businesses, and even launch social businesses individually or collectively
to express their creative talents in changing the world.
Grameen-Danone
and Other Social Businesses
Like any good idea, the concept of social business needs practical demonstration.
So I have started creating social businesses in Bangladesh.
Some of them are created in partnership with large
multi-national companies. The first such joint-venture with a multi-national company was created in 2005, in partnership
with the French dairy company Danone. The Grameen-Danone social business is aimed at reducing malnutrition among the
children of Bangladesh. The Grameen-Danone company produces a delicious yogurt for children and sells it
at a price affordable to the poor. This yogurt is fortified with all the micro-nutrients which are missing in the vitamins,
iron, zinc, iodine, etc. If a child eats¾children’s ordinary diet two cups of yogurt
a week over a period of eight to nine months, the child gets all the micro-nutrients he or she needs and becomes a healthy,
playful child.
As a social business, Grameen-Danone follows the basic principle that it must be self-sustaining,
and the owners must remain committed never to take any dividend beyond the return of the original amount they invested.
The success of the company will be judged each year not by the amount of profit generated, but by the number of children getting
out of malnutrition in that particular year.
Many other big companies are now approaching us to create social businesses
jointly with us. They want to create joint ventures with Grameen because they want to make sure that it is done the
right way. Once they become experienced in social business, they will take the concept wherever the need exists.
We have a joint-venture social business with Veolia, a large French water company. The Grameen-Veolia Water
Company was created to bring safe drinking water in the villages of Bangladesh where arsenic contamination
of water is a huge problem. Villagers are buying water from the company at an affordable price instead of drinking contaminated
water.
BASF of Germany has signed a joint-venture agreement to produce chemically treated mosquito-nets in Bangladesh as a social business. The BASF-Grameen joint-venture company will produce and sell these mosquito-nets as
cheaply as possible to make it affordable to the poorest. The company will have to be self-sustaining, but there is
no intention of taking any profit out of the company beyond the amount invested.
Our joint-venture social business
with Intel Corporation, Grameen-Intel, aims at using information and communication technology to help solve the problems of
the rural poor—for example, by providing health care in the villages.
Our joint-venture with Adidas aims
at producing shoes for the lowest income people at an affordable price. The goal of the Grameen-Adidas company is to
make sure that no one, child or adult, goes without shoes. This is a health intervention to make sure that people in
the rural areas, particularly children, do not have to suffer from parasitic diseases that can be transmitted through walking
barefoot.
Grameen-Otto is planning to set up a garment factory as a social business in collaboration with Otto,
a large chain store and mail-order company of Germany. Profit of the company will be used for the improvement of the
quality of lives of the employees, their children, and the poor of the neighbourhood.
As these examples show, social
business is not just a pleasant idea. It is a reality, one that is already beginning to make positive changes in people’s
lives.
Many more social businesses are on the way. One attractive area of social businesses will be in creating
jobs in special locations or for particularly disadvantaged people. Since a social business company operates free from
the pressure of earning profit for the owners, the scope of investment opportunities is much greater than with profit-maximizing
companies. Profit-maximizing companies need to be assured of a certain minimum level of return on investment before
they'll invest and create jobs. A social business does not need to fulfill such a condition. It can easily invest below
that level and go down even to near- zero profit level, and, in the process open up opportunities for creating
jobs for many people, which exciting area of social business is in afforestation. Forests are being denuded all around the
world by individuals, greedy businesses and in some cases by government officials who are paid by the tax-payers to protect
the forests. This is having a documented negative impact on climate change. Planting trees across huge tracts of land could
be an excellent area for social business This opportunity, we cannot afford to ignore for saving our planet.
Healthcare
is another highly potential area for social business. Public delivery of healthcare in most cases is inefficient and
often fails to reach the people who need it the most. Private healthcare caters to the needs of high-income people.
The big empty space between the two can be filled by social businesses.
In Bangladesh, Grameen
Healthcare company is trying to create social businesses to fill this gap in the healthcare system. We are trying to
develop a prototype of health management centres in the villages to keep healthy people healthy by concentrating on prevention
and offering diagnostic and health check-up services, health insurance services, etc. We are making efforts to take
advantage of universal availability of mobile phones. We are in the process of working with leading manufacturers to
design diagnostic equipment that can transmit images and data in real time to city-based health experts.
Grameen
Healthcare is in the process of setting up of a series of Nursing Colleges as social business to train girls from Grameen
Bank families as nurses. Bangladesh has an enormous shortage of nursing professionals. The global
shortage of nurses is also quite enormous. There is no reason why vast number of young girls should be sitting around in the
villages while these attractive job opportunities are going unfilled.
Grameen Healthcare is also planning to set
up secondary and tertiary health facilities, all designed as social businesses. To train a new generation of doctors
to staff our social business healthcare facilities, Grameen Healthcare plans to establish a University
of Health Sciences and Technology.
Many other segments of health care are appropriate for
building successful social businesses--nutrition, water, health insurance, health education and training, eye-care, mother
and childcare, diagnostic services, etc. It will take time to develop the prototypes. But once creative minds
come up with the design for a social business and a prototype is developed successfully, it can be replicated endlessly.
Designing each small social business is like developing a seed. Once the seed is developed, anybody can
plant it wherever it is needed. Since each unit is self-sustaining, funding does not become a constraint.
Putting Today’s Powerful Technology to Work
The world today is in
possession of amazingly powerful technology. That technology is growing very fast, becoming more powerful every day.
Almost all of this technology is owned and controlled by profit-making businesses. All they use this technology for
is to make more money, because that is the mandate given to them by their shareholders. Imagine what we can achieve
if we use of this same technology to solve the problems of the people!
Technology is a kind of vehicle.
One can drive it to any destination one wants. Since the present owners of technology want to travel to the peaks of
profit-making, technology takes them there. If somebody else decides to use the existing technology to end poverty,
it will take the owner in that direction. If another owner wants to use it to end diseases, technology will go there.
The choice is ours. Present theoretical framework does not give this choice. Inclusion of social business creates this choice.
One more point to ponder – there will be no need to make an either/or choice. Using technology for one
purpose doesn’t make it less effective for serving a different purpose. Actually, it is the other way around.
The more diverse use we make of technology, the more powerful it gets. Using technology for solving social problems
will not reduce its effectiveness for money-making use, but rather enhance it.
The owners of social businesses
can direct the power of technology to solve our growing list of social and economic problems, and get quick results.
We May Create Social Stock Markets
Once the concept
of social business becomes widely known, creative people will come forward with attractive designs for social businesses.
Young people will develop business plans to address the most difficult social problems through social businesses. The good
ideas will need to be funded. I am happy to say there are already initiatives in Europe and Japan to create Social Business Funds to provide equity and loan support to social businesses.
In time, more sources
of funding will be needed. Each level of government—international, national, state, and city—can create
Social Business Funds to encourage citizens and companies to create social businesses designed to address specific social
problems (unemployment, health, sanitation, pollution, old age, drug, crime, disadvantaged groups the disabled, etc).
Bilateral and multi-lateral donors can create Social Business Funds. Foundations can earmark a percentage of their funds
to support social businesses. Businesses can use their social responsibility budgets to fund social businesses.We'll soon need to create a separate stock market for social businesses
to make it easy for small investors to invest in social businesses. Only social businesses will be listed in this Social
Stock Market. Investors will know right from the beginning that they'll never receive any dividends when they invest
in social stock market. Their motivation will be to enjoy the pride and pleasure of helping to solve difficult social
problems.
Social business gives everybody the opportunity to participate in creating the kind
of world that we all want to see. Thanks to the concept of social business, citizens don't have to leave all problems
in the hands of the government and then spend their lives criticizing the government for failing to solve them. Now
citizens have a completely new space in which to mobilize their creativity and talent for solving the problem of our time.
Seeing the effectiveness of social business governments may decide to create their own social businesses or partner with citizen-run
social businesses, and/or incorporate the lessons from the social businesses to improve the effectiveness of their own programmes.
Governments will have an important role to play in the promotion of social business. They will need to pass
legislation to give legal recognition to social business and create regulatory bodies to ensure that transparency, integrity,
and honesty are ensured in the social business sector. They can also provide tax incentives for investing in social
businesses as well as for social businesses themselves.
The Power of
Dreams
The wonderful promise of social business makes it all the more important that we re-define and
broaden our present economic framework. We need a new way of thinking about economics that is not prone to creating
series of crises; instead, it should be capable of ending the crises once for all. Now is the time for bold and creative
thinking—and we need to move fast, because the world is changing fast. The first piece of this new framework must
be to accommodate social business as an integral part of the economic structure.
In this context let me raise another
question.
What will the world be like twenty or fifty years from now? More specifically, what will South Asia be like? It’s fascinating to speculate about this. But I think an even more important question
is: What do we want the world, and specifically South
Asia, to be like twenty years or fifty years from
today?
The difference has great significance. In the first formulation, we see ourselves as passive
viewers of unfolding events. In the second, we see ourselves as active creators of a desired outcome.
I think
it is time to take charge of our future rather than accept it passively. We spend too much time and talent in predicting
the future, and not enough on imagining the future that we would love to see. And even so, we don’t do a very
good job of predicting the future. With all our wisdom, expertise, and experience, we repeatedly fail to imagine the
amazing changes that history continues to throw our way.
Think back to the 1940s. Nobody then predicted that,
within fifty years, Europe would become a borderless political entity with a single currency. Nobody predicted
that the Berlin Wall would fall even a week before it happened. Nobody predicted that the Soviet Union
would disintegrate and that so many independent countries would emerge out of it so fast.
On the technology front,
we see the same thing. In the sixties, no one predicted that a global network of computers called the Internet would
soon be taking the world by storm. No one predicted that lap-tops, palm-tops, Blackberries, iPods, iPhones, and Kindles would
be in the hands of millions. Even twenty years ago, no one was predicting that mobile phones would become an integral part
of life in every village of the world.
Let's admit it, we could not predict the world of 2010 even from 1990 -
a span of only 20 years. Does this give us any credibility in predicting the world of 2030 today, given the fact that
each day the speed of change in the world is getting faster and faster?If we have to make predictions, there are probably two ways to go about it. One would be to invite the
best scientific, technical, and economic analysts in the world to make their smartest 20 year projections. Another would
be to ask our most brilliant science fiction writers around the world to imagine the world of 2030. If you ask me who
has the best chance of coming closer to the reality of 2030, without pausing for a second I'd say that the science-fiction
writers will be far closer to the reality of 2030 than the expert analysts.
The reason is very simple. Experts
are trained to make forecasts on the basis of the past and present, but events in the real world are driven by the dreams
of people.
We can describe the world of 2030 by preparing a wish-list. This wish-list will describe the kind
of world we would like to create by 2030. That's what we should prepare for.
Dreams are made out of impossibles.
We cannot reach the impossibles by using the analytical minds which are trained to deal with hard information which is currently
available. These minds are fitted with flashing red lights to warn us about obstacles that we may face. We’ll
have to put our minds in a different mode when we think about our future. We’ll have to dare to make bold
leaps to make the impossibles possible. As soon as one impossible becomes possible, it shakes up the structure and creates
a domino effect, preparing the ground for making many other impossibles possible.
We'll have to believe in our
wish-list if we hope to make it come true. We'll have to create appropriate concepts, institutions, technologies, and
policies to achieve our goals. The more impossible the goals look, the more exciting the task becomes.
Fortunately
for us, we have entered into an age when dreams have the best chance to come true. We must organise the present to allow
an easy entry to the future of our dreams. We must not let our past stand in the way.
Let’s dream that
by 2030 we'll create a well-functioning South Asian Union. There will be no visas required, no customs officials limiting
travel among the South Asian countries. There will be a common flag, along side our national flags, a common currency,
and a large area of common domestic and international policies.Let's dream that by 2030 we'll make South Asia the first poverty-free region of the world. Let’s
prepare to challenge the world to find a poor person anywhere in South Asia.
Let’s dream that by 2030 South Asia will set up a reliable state-of-the-art healthcare system that
will provide affordable care for all people.
Let's dream that by 2030 we'll create a robust financial system to
provide easy access to financial services to every single person in South Asia.
Let’s
dream that by 2030 the first career choice for every child growing up in South Asia will not be to work
for some company but to launch his or her own enterprise.
And let’s dream that by 2030 we'll have a range
of creative and effective social businesses working throughout South Asia to solve all the remaining social
problems.
Do all these dreams sound impossible? If they do, that means they are likely to come true if we
believe in them and work for them. That’s what the history of the last fifty years teaches us.
So let’s
agree to believe in these dreams, and dedicate ourselves to making these impossibles possible. Thank You.
Thank you.
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