The Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class has launched several internationally known start-ups (including Embrace, Driptech and D.Light.) But main route for student teams to get their life-changing products into the hands of people in the developing world is by working with NGO partner organizations.
Working with partners is the quickest way to market: it eliminates the need to create a business model and distribution infrastructure, so that students can focus on getting the best possible product to people who need it.
Professor Jim Patel, who founded the class, and Erica Estrada, who teaches the class and directs our Social Entrepreneurship Lab, discuss why this is such a critical route-to-market for students in the class:
The 2010 Right Livelihood Awards go to four recipients who will share the € 200.000 cash award:
NNIMMO BASSEY (Nigeria) receives an Award “for revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production and for his inspired work to strengthen the environmental movement in Nigeria and globally”.
Bishop ERWIN KRÄUTLER (Brazil) is honoured “for a lifetime of work for the human and environmental rights of indigenous peoples and for his tireless efforts to save the Amazon forest from destruction”.
SHRIKRISHNA UPADHYAY and the organisation SAPPROS (Nepal) are recognised “for demonstrating over many years the power of community mobilisation to address the multiple causes of poverty even when threatened by political violence and instability”.
The organisation PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS-ISRAEL (Israel) is awarded “for their indomitable spirit in working for the right to health for all people in Israel and Palestine”.
QuoteJakob von Uexkull, Founder and Co-Chair of the Right Livelihood Awards, noted after the jury decision:
“True change starts at the grassroots level: physicians who did not wait for politicians before acting to end unnecessary suffering in the Middle East; villagers who work themselves out of poverty; and environmental movements which unite the victims of ecological devastation. Combine this work on the ground with targeted advocacy, for example for the constitutional rights of indigenous people, and you understand why this year’s Right Livelihood Award Laureates yet again offer role models, whose work and commitment can be replicated throughout the world.”
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Nearly nine months after the earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.
The money was pledged by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in March for use this year in rebuilding. The U.S. has already spent more than $1.1 billion on post-quake relief, but without long-term funds, the reconstruction of the wrecked capital cannot begin.
With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful.
Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food.
AUSTIN – University of Texas junior Eric Gladstone was sitting in his 500-student organic chemistry class Tuesday morning when his cellphone buzzed with a text message – an urgent warning that a gunman was loose on campus.
Looking around, he noticed others glancing at their cellphones and registering the same worry he was feeling.
The warning sent throughout campus by administrators was prompted by reports that a young man, clad in black, wearing a ski mask and wielding a semiautomatic AK-47, had fired shots as he entered the southern edge of campus. The gunman, 19-year-old UT student Colton Tooley, fatally shot himself after police chased him into a library. No one else was injured.
Within 15 minutes of the first police calls, sirens, e-mails, the UT website and public address systems blared the warnings, telling more than 55,000 students, faculty and staff members that the campus was in lockdown and urging everyone to stay behind locked doors. Meanwhile, law enforcement from the university, city and state swarmed to the site.
UT's efficient alarm system – practiced and coordinated by law enforcement only weeks before – was credited by local and national experts with probably sparing the campus from injuries and death.
Phi Beta Iota: ATTABOY UT. This was a text-book demonstration of responsible university preparation. There is only one other thing that students need to be taught: “Rush & Crush.” They must be drilled the way infantry drills for ambush responses. This is the “swarm” defense. Everyone close enough, call it out, throw something, then “Rush & Crush.”
1. The supercilious attitude of many State Department people, akin to that displayed by Clinton White House staffers to GEN Barry McCaffrey when he worked in Joint Staff J-5: “… we don't talk to you military people …”, something I've had said to me by certain State people.
2. Rudyard Kipling's poem, “Tommy”: “… and it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and chuck ‘im out, the brute. But it's ‘savior of his country' when the guns begin to shoot.'”)
By Joe Davidson Thursday, September 23, 2010; 8:20 PM
Now that most U.S. military forces have left Iraq, the American diplomats left behind face serious security problems the State Department is ill-prepared to tackle.
That's the grave message the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan presented to Congress on Thursday.
Much of the security once provided by the military will have to be done by private contractors, yet the department does not have the money to hire the number needed nor the capability to manage them.
Phi Beta Iota: The mixed tragedy-farce that is of our own making in Iraq will continue to drain blood, treasure, and spirit for the simple reason that we went in on the basis of 935 documented lies; while both military and diplomatic organizations lacked the integrity to get it right–one threw money at the problem without thinking, the other “went along” without screaming bloody murder in front of Congress and the public. Today the diplomats–we have zero sympathy–inherent a vast fortress that is actually unsustainable as well as unnecessary. The “threat” is vastly over-stated as it always in when security officers are in charge of threat assessments (the United Nations Department of Safety & Security is led by a former US diplomatic security officer, and we can attest from personal experience that DSS is largely corrupt in the worst case, inept in the best case, in its threat & risk assessments)–within State, ignorance and lack of integrity lead to two complementary problems: way too many individuals, most unqualified to be in-country, to be protected; and a security cadre with absolutely no clue that the “solution” is to evacuate most of them, turn the complex over to the Iraqis, and strip down to real professionals that can navigate in uncertain environments.
If the construction of settlements in the West Bank is meant to be on hold, why are Israeli buyers being offered new properties on Palestinian land at knock-down prices?
The housing project currently under construction in Almon offers enticingly priced, spacious family homes with a garden and a view. The surrounding neighbourhood, also known as Anatot, sits on a ridge overlooking the Judean hills, near Jerusalem, a blaze of cultivated greenery in the parched landscape. Residents have a relaxed air, and newcomers who have recently relocated from Jerusalem wish they'd made the move years ago. If I were a prospective house-buyer, I'd be charmed. But I would not be looking here – because Almon is in the occupied West Bank.
Phi Beta Iota: Worth a full read. This explains both the economics of the illegal settlements, and the massive financial resources that the Israeli government offers in favor of illegal settlements, at the same time that it lies to a complacent US Government that knows better, but prefers to sacrifice its diplomatic integrity for the pretense of progress.
Kyrgyzstan- Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states will help Kyrgyzstan stabilize the situation in the country's southern region, a source in the Russian Federal Security Service said 23 September after a regional SCO anti-terrorism council meeting, Interfax reported.
The council decided that law-enforcement agencies of member states will assist Kyrgyzstan maintain security by organizing information exchanges regarding regional militant activities, the source said. The source also said the council elected Chinese Deputy Minister for Public Security Meng Hongwei to chair the anti-terrorism council for one year. The council is set to meet next in Usbekistan in March 2011. Representatives from Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan attended the meeting.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Moscow-centered Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) declined to undertake a more intrusive intervention mission. The Beijing-led SCO mission is primarily an intelligence exchange, but potentially affords China unprecedented access to information about central Asian security issues. The SCO will accrue positive publicity for its limited mission, upstaging the CSTO.
The Chinese-led organization looks cooperative. The Russian-led organization looks timid. This in fact confuses different missions and burdens, but the public perception is likely to favor the Chinese-led initiative in the Russian sphere of influence.
Kyrgyzstan-Russia: Issues between Russia and Kyrgyzstan over Russia's military bases in Kyrgyzstan have been addressed and an agreement will be signed, probably on the 24
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Russians have four military facilities or bases in Kyrgyzstan, including Kant air base. Under the new agreement they will be consolidated in a single command structure and all will be governed by the new agreement, instead of four separate agreements. Russia's lease will probably be good for the next four or five decades.
Phi Beta Iota:Reference: Global Governance 2025 completely missed both the Hybrid and the Open models of governance that are displacing institutionalized ineptitude now characteristic of most governments, all unable to micro-manage complexity or achieve resilience. The above report suggests that Kyryzstan could be an early node where multinational information-sharing and sense-making is more influential, more effective, and more profitable, than standing military bases, but the two can co-exist. See also Worth a Look: Future of Business is Information Sharing. To appreciate such nuances one needs a strategic analytic modeland the inclination to actually understand the eight tribes of intelligence, “true costs,” and all other aspect of holistic reality.
