http://viewchange.org Videos from ViewChange.org (Filtered by topics: Acumen Fund) en-us Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:45:00 +0000 Copyright 2011 Link Media, Inc. http://www.viewchange.org/videos/waterhealth-international-improving-access-to-safe-drinking-water Installing public water purification systems in India can create unforeseen benefits, such as reducing the amount of money poor families have to spend each month on expensive medications. Wed, 03 Nov 2010 09:45:00 +0000 http://www.viewchange.org/videos/waterhealth-international-improving-access-to-safe-drinking-water Water purification, India, Drinking water, WaterHealth International, Acumen Fund, Andhra Pradesh, Water & Sanitation, Health, Water, Foreign Assistance >> TITLE: People seek dignity, not dependence. Choice, not charity. Which is why we invest in entrepreneurs who are building transformative businesses to serve the poor. >> TITLE: Acumen Fund. Health, Housing, Water, Energy, Agriculture>> TITLE: Nehru Nagar Colony. Andhra Pradesh, India.>> PRABHAVATHI DASARI [Customer, WaterHealth International]: Earlier, my family had regular vomiting and diarrhea, but now it's under control.>> TITLE: 140 million people in India lack access to safe drinking water. >> TITLE: Families, especially women and girls, spend long hours collecting water from local water sources, and end up with water that is not safe for consumption. >> TITLE: WaterHealth International, an Acumen Fund investee, is changing this. >> ALLURU BUJANGARAO [Plant Operator, WaterHealth International]: Earlier, there was no water purification system. The community would drink either pond or well water and would have a lot of difficulty. This water is not clean. It's dirty. It has fish. It has fungus. It has algae and also micro-organisms. This water, after being processed, is happily taken by the community. >> SIGN: WaterHealth India>> PRABHAVATHI DASARI: I have faced a lot of challenges in getting my children to this point. I worked as an agricultural laborer and stitched clothes to provide an education to my children. Now, I stitch clothes. Earlier, I started with pipe water, then we would get it from the pond or well. And then later, we would get water from the Panchayat [local government] tap. The water quality is bad, so we would boil it before drinking. But now, we are getting WHI water and are healthy. Earlier, when we would fall sick, we would spend USD$11 to USD$33 for medicine each month. Now, we're spending a lot less. Everybody should be healthy; that's why we require safe drinking water. >> TITLE: Acumen Fund first invested in WaterHealth International (WHI) in 2004. >> TITLE: By the end of 2009, WHI had built more than 280 community water systems in India, providing more than 300,000 people access to safe drinking water every day. >> TITLE: Tell a friend. acumenfund.org http://www.viewchange.org/videos/husk-power-systems-bringing-sustainable-electricity-to-rural-india An innovative new type of generator that runs on discarded rice husks is bringing power to parts of rural India that were previously thought "economically impossible to reach" with electricity. Mon, 01 Nov 2010 08:45:00 +0000 http://www.viewchange.org/videos/husk-power-systems-bringing-sustainable-electricity-to-rural-india India, Energy development, Electricity, Energy poverty, Bihar, Electrical generator, Technology, Acumen Fund, Rice hulls, Foreign Assistance >> TITLE: Acumen Fund. Health, Housing, Water, Energy, Agriculture>> TITLE: KB Drip Irrigation Systems>> PRAHLAD LAXMAN GOREY [Farmer]: Look at these chili plants. They don't have any fruit on them. My neighbor's plants have started growing chilies, but my plants haven't even flowered yet. This is probably because of better irrigation on his farm. You can see the difference between these two crops even though they were planted right next to each other. Drip irrigation seems to increase flowering and improve yield. >> MACHINDRA BHOJE [Farmer]: To see how drip has helped, you can look at these two chili crops planted side by side. Some of his plants have flowered, some have not; my plants, on the other hand, have ripe chilies on them. His plants don't have any on them. That's the benefit of drip. >> INTERVIEWER: Did you get help installing it?>> MACHINDRA BHOJE: I didn't ask anyone. I went to him. He had a piece of drip tape and showed me how to install it. I came home and, well, he said that if I paid him Rs 200 for labor, he would send someone to do the installation for me. >> INTERVIEWER: You did it yourself?>> MACHINDRA BHOJE: I said I can just do it myself. This year, I planted early and used drip. This year with bad rains, it's unlikely that anyone would have had a similarly good harvest without drip irrigation. It's thanks to drip that I have such a good harvest this year. >> TITLE: Tell a friend: acumenfund.org http://www.viewchange.org/videos/a-better-harvest-through-drip-irrigation Modern agricultural techniques tend to focus on helping farmers with large fields (and more money to spend), but an innovative, inexpensive drip irrigation system, developed with investment from the Acumen Fund, is helping smallholder farmers in India dramatically increase their crop yields. Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:45:00 +0000 http://www.viewchange.org/videos/a-better-harvest-through-drip-irrigation Drip irrigation, India, Agriculture, Irrigation, Acumen Fund, Water & Sanitation, Agriculture & Food, Chili pepper, Foreign Assistance >> TITLE: Acumen Fund. Health, Housing, Water, Energy, Agriculture>> TITLE: KB Drip Irrigation Systems>> PRAHLAD LAXMAN GOREY [Farmer]: Look at these chili plants. They don't have any fruit on them. My neighbor's plants have started growing chilies, but my plants haven't even flowered yet. This is probably because of better irrigation on his farm. You can see the difference between these two crops even though they were planted right next to each other. Drip irrigation seems to increase flowering and improve yield. >> MACHINDRA BHOJE [Farmer]: To see how drip has helped, you can look at these two chili crops planted side by side. Some of his plants have flowered, some have not; my plants, on the other hand, have ripe chilies on them. His plants don't have any on them. That's the benefit of drip. >> INTERVIEWER: Did you get help installing it?>> MACHINDRA BHOJE: I didn't ask anyone. I went to him. He had a piece of drip tape and showed me how to install it. I came home and, well, he said that if I paid him Rs 200 for labor, he would send someone to do the installation for me. >> INTERVIEWER: You did it yourself?>> MACHINDRA BHOJE: I said I can just do it myself. This year, I planted early and used drip. This year with bad rains, it's unlikely that anyone would have had a similarly good harvest without drip irrigation. It's thanks to drip that I have such a good harvest this year. >> TITLE: Tell a friend: acumenfund.org http://www.viewchange.org/videos/ted-jacqueline-novogratz-a-third-way-to-think-about-aid The debate over foreign aid often pits those who mistrust "charity" against those who mistrust reliance on the markets. Jacqueline Novogratz proposes a middle way she calls patient capital, with promising examples of entrepreneurial innovation driving social change. Fri, 22 Oct 2010 07:00:00 +0000 http://www.viewchange.org/videos/ted-jacqueline-novogratz-a-third-way-to-think-about-aid Patient capital, Jacqueline Novogratz, Pakistan, Drip irrigation, TED, Acumen Fund, Foreign Assistance, Economics, South Asia, IDE India >> TITLE: TED Partner Series presents TED@Slate>> TITLE: Remarkable people, unmissable talks, now free to the world>> TITLE: TED: Ideas Worth Spreading>> TITLE: TED@Slate: New Ideas for a Better World>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Clearly we're living in a moment of crisis. Arguably the financial markets have failed us and the aid system is failing us. And yet I stand firmly with the optimists who believe that there has probably never been a more exciting moment to be alive. >> TITLE: June, 2009. Washington DC>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Because of some of technologies we've been talking about. Because of the resources, the skills, and certainly the surge of talent we're seeing all around the world, with the mindset to create change. >> TITLE: Recorded at U.S. State Department>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: And we've got a president who sees himself as a global citizen, who recognizes that no longer is there a single superpower, but that we've got to engage in a different way with the world. And by definition, every one of you who is in this room must consider yourself a global soul, a global citizen. You work on the front lines. And you've seen the best and the worst that human beings can do for one another and to one another. And no matter what country you live or work in, you've also seen the extraordinary things that individuals are capable of, even in their most ordinariness.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Today there is a raging debate as to how best we lift people out of poverty, how best we release their energies. On the one hand, we have people that say the aid system is so broken we need to throw it out. And on the other we have people who say the problem is that we need more aid. And what I want to talk about is something that complements both systems. We call it patient capital.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: The critics point to the USD$500 billion spent in Africa since 1970 and say, "And what do we have but environmental degradation and incredible levels of poverty, rampant corruption?" They use Mobutu as metaphor. And their policy prescription is to make government more accountable, focus on the capital markets, invest, don't give anything away. On the other side, as I said, there are those who say the problem is that we need more money. That when it comes to the rich, we'll bail out and we'll hand a lot of aid. But when it comes to our poor brethren, we want little to do with it. They point to the successes of aid: the eradication of smallpox, and the distribution of tens of millions of malaria bed nets and antiretrovirals. Both sides are right. And the problem is that neither side is listening to the other. Even more problematic, they're not listening to poor people themselves.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: After 25 years of working on issues of poverty and innovation, it's true that there are probably no more market-oriented individuals on the planet than low-income people. They must navigate markets daily, making micro-decisions, dozens and dozens, to move their way through society. And yet if a single catastrophic health problem impacts their family, they could be put back into poverty, sometimes for generations. And so we need both the market and we need aid.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Patient capital works between, and tries to take the best of both. It's money that's invested in entrepreneurs who know their communities and are building solutions to healthcare, water, housing, alternative energy, thinking of low income people not as passive recipients of charity, but as individual customers, consumers, clients, people who want to make decisions in their own lives. Patient capital requires that we have incredible tolerance for risk, a long time horizon in terms of allowing those entrepreneurs time to experiment, to use the market as the best listening device that we have, and the expectation of below-market returns, but outsized social impact. It recognizes that the market has its limitation. And so patient capital also works with smart subsidy to extend the benefits of a global economy, to include all people.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Now entrepreneurs need patient capital for three reasons. First, they tend to work in markets where people make one, two, three dollars a day and they're making all of their decisions within that income level. Second, the geographies in which they work have terrible infrastructure. No roads to speak of, sporadic electricity, and high levels of corruption. And third, they are often creating markets. Even if you're bringing clean water for the first time into rural villages, it is something new. And so many low-income people have seen so many failed promises broken, and seen so many quacks and sporadic medicines offered to them, that building trust takes a lot of time, takes a lot of patience. It also requires being connected to a lot of management assistance. Not only to build the systems, the business models that allow us to reach low income people in a sustainable way, but to connect those business to other markets, to governments, to corporations -- real partnerships if we want to get to scale.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: I want to share one story about an innovation called drip irrigation. In 2002 I met this incredible entrepreneur named Amitabha Sadangi from India, who'd been working for 20 years with some of the poorest farmers on the planet. And he was expressing his frustration that the aid market had bypassed low-income farmers altogether, despite the fact that 200 million farmers alone in India make under a dollar a day. They were creating subsidies either for large farms, or they were giving inputs to the farmers that they thought they should use, rather than that the farmers wanted to use. At the same time Amitabha was obsessed with this drip-irrigation technology that had been invented in Israel. It was a way of bringing small amounts of water directly to the stalk of the plant. And it could transform swaths of desert land into fields of emerald green. >> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: But the market also had bypassed low-income farmers. Because these systems were both too expensive, and they were constructed for fields that were too large. The average small village farmer works on two acres or less. And so Amitabha decided that he would take that innovation and he would redesign it from the perspective of the poor farmers themselves. Because he spent so many years listening to what they needed not what he though that they should have. And he used three fundamental principles. The first one was miniaturization. The drip-irrigation system had to be small enough that a farmer only had to risk a quarter acre, even if he had two, because it was too frightening, given all that he had at stake. Second, it had to be extremely affordable. In other words, that risk on the quarter acre needed to be repaid in a single harvest, or else they wouldn't take the risk. And third, it had to be what Amitabha calls infinitely expandable. What I mean is with the profits from the first quarter acre, the farmers could buy a second, and a third, and a fourth.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: As of today, IDE India, Amitabha's organization has sold over 300,000 farmers these systems and has seen their yields and incomes double or triple, on average. But this didn't happen overnight. In fact, when you go back to the beginning, there were no private investors who would be willing to take a risk on building a new technology for a market class that made under a dollar a day, that were known to be some of the most risk-averse people on the planet, and that were working in one of the riskiest sectors, agriculture. And so we needed grants. And he used significant grants to research, to experiment, to fail, to innovate and try again. And when he had a prototype and had a better understanding of how to market to farmers, that's when patient capital could come in. And we helped him build a company, for profit, that would build on IDE's knowledge, and start looking at sales and exports, and be able to tap into other kinds of capital.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Secondarily, we wanted to see if we could export this drip irrigation and bring it into other countries. And so we met Dr. Sono Khangharani in Pakistan. And while, again, you needed patience to move a technology for the poor in India, into Pakistan, just to get the permits, over time we were able to start a company with Dr. Sono who runs a large community development organization in the Thar Desert, which is one of the remote and poorest areas of the country. And, though that company has just started, our assumption is that there too we'll see the impact on millions.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: But drip irrigation isn't the only innovation. We're starting to see these happening all around the world. In Arusha, Tanzania, A to Z Textile Manufacturing has worked in partnership with us, with UNICEF, with the Global Fund, to create a factory that now employs 7,000 people, mostly women. And they produce 20 million lifesaving bed nets for Africans around the world. LifeSpring Hospital is a joint venture between Acumen and the government of India to bring quality, affordable maternal health care to low-income women. And it's been so successful that it's currently building a new hospital every 35 days. And 1298 Ambulances decided that it was going to reinvent a completely broken industry, building an ambulance service in Bombay that would use the technology of Google Earth, a sliding-scale pricing system so that all people could have access, and a severe and public decision not to engage in any form of corruption. So that in the terrorist attacks of November they were the first responder, and are now beginning to scale, because of partnership. They've just won four government contracts to build up their 100 ambulances, and are one of the largest and most effective ambulance companies in India.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: This idea of scale is critical. Because we're starting to see these enterprises reach hundreds of thousands of people. All of the ones I discussed have reached at least a quarter million people. But that's obviously not enough. And it's where the idea of partnership becomes so important. Whether it's by finding those innovations that can access the capital markets, government itself, or partner with major corporations, there is unbelievable opportunity for innovation.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: President Obama understands that. He recently authorized the creation of a Social Innovation Fund to focus on what works in this country, and look at how we can scale it. And I would submit that it's time to consider a global innovation fund that would find these entrepreneurs around the world who really have innovations, not only for their country, but ones that we can use in the developed world as well. Invest financial assistance, but also management assistance. And then measure the returns, both from a financial perspective, and from a social impact perspective.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: When we think about new approaches to aid, it's impossible not to talk about Pakistan. We've had a rocky relationship with that country and, in all fairness, the United States has not always been a very reliable partner. But again I would say that this is our moment for extraordinary things to happen. And if we take that notion of a global innovation fund, we could use this time to invest not directly in government, though we would have government's blessing, nor in international experts, but in the many existing entrepreneurs and civil society leaders who already are building wonderful innovations that are reaching people all across the country.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: People like Rashani Zafar. Who created one of the largest microfinance banks in the country, and is a real role model for women inside and outside the country. And Tasneem Siddiqui who developed a way called incremental housing, where he's moved 40,000 slum dwellers into safe, affordable community housing. Educational initiatives like DIL and The Citizen Foundation that are building schools across the country. It's not hyperbole to say that these civil society institutions and these social entrepreneurs are building real alternatives to the Taliban. I've invested in Pakistan for over seven years now and those of you who've also worked there can attest that Pakistanis are an incredibly hard-working population. And there is a fierce upward mobility in their very nature.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: President Kennedy said that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. I would say that the converse is true. That these social leaders who really are looking at innovation and extending opportunity to the 70 percent of Pakistanis who make less than two dollars a day, provide real pathways to hope. And as we think about how we construct aid for Pakistan, while we need to strengthen the judiciary, build greater stability, we also need to think about lifting those leaders who can be role models for the rest of the world.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: On one of my last visits to Pakistan I asked Dr. Sono if he would take me to see some of the drip irrigation in the Thar Desert. And we left Karachi one morning before dawn. It was about 115 degrees. And we drove for eight hours along this moonscape-like landscape with very little color, lots of heat, very little discussion, because we were exhausted. And finally at the end of the journey I could see this thin little yellow line across the horizon. And as we got closer its significance became apparent. That there in the desert was a field of sunflowers growing seven feet tall. Because one of the poorest farmers on Earth had gotten access to a technology that had allowed him to change his own life. His name was Raja. And he had kind, twinkly hazel eyes, and warm expressive hands that reminded me of my father. And he said it was the first dry season in his entire life that he hadn't taken his 12 children and 50 grandchildren on a two-day journey across the desert to work as day laborers at a commercial farm for about 50 cents a day. Because he was building these crops. And with the money he earned he could stay this year. And for the first time ever in three generations, his children would go to school. We asked him if he would send his daughters as well as his sons. And he said, "Of course I will. Because I don't want them discriminated against anymore." >> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: When we think about solutions to poverty we cannot deny individuals their fundamental dignity. Because at the end of the day dignity is more important to the human spirit than wealth. And what's exciting is to see so many entrepreneurs across sectors who are building innovations that recognize that what people want is freedom and choice and opportunity. Because that is where dignity really starts. Martin Luther King said that love without power is anemic and sentimental. And that power without love is reckless and abusive. Our generation has seen both approaches tried, and often fail. But I think our generation also might be the first to have the courage to embrace both love and power. For that is what we'll need as we move forward to dream and imagine what it will really take to build a global economy that includes all of us. And to finally extend that fundamental proposition that all men are created equal, to every human being on the planet.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: The time for us to begin innovating and looking for new solutions, a cross sector is now. I can only talk from my own experience. But in eight years of running Acumen fund, I've seen the power of patient capital, not only to inspire innovation and risk taking, but to truly build systems that have created more than 25,000 jobs and delivered tens of millions of services and products to some of the poorest people on the planet. I know it works. But I know that many other kinds of innovation also work.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: And so I urge you, in whatever sector you work, in whatever job you do, to start thinking about how we might build solutions that start from the perspective of those we're trying to help. Rather than what we think that they might need. It will take embracing the world with both arms. And it will take living with the spirit of generosity and accountability, with a sense of integrity and perseverance. And yet these are the very qualities for which men and women have been honored throughout the generations. And there is so much good that we can do. Just think of all those sunflowers in the desert. Thank you. >> TITLE: TED: New TED Talks each week at www.TED.com http://www.viewchange.org/videos/dorah-s-story-loyalty-through-quality-care <p>Dorah Nyanja runs a micro-franchise clinic in Kibera, a slum of Nairobi. She works 14-hour days to serve a community that desperately needs her, and she has found satisfaction in her work that equals the relief her patients receive from her.</p> Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:23:00 +0000 http://www.viewchange.org/videos/dorah-s-story-loyalty-through-quality-care Kibera, Health, Acumen Fund, Nairobi, Community development, Clinic, World Health Day, Kenya, Africa, International Women's Day >> DORAH NYANJA [Doctor, Sustainable Healthcare Foundation, Nairobi]: We want to weigh the baby. Okay. Five point two kilograms already. Five point two KGs for a 10-week-old baby? Good enough. >> INTERVIEWER: He's good? He's a healthy baby? >> DORAH NYANJA: Yes, this is a healthy baby. As a businesswoman in Kibera, the challenges are enormous. One, I'm in business, yet I'm in business in a community which is very poor. >> TITLE: This is the story of Dorah Nyanja, a Sustainable Healthcare Foundation (SHF) franchisee in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. >> TITLE: SHF uses a micro-franchise model of clinics to increase access to essential medicines. >> DORAH NYANJA: This is a slum area. The area is densely populated. People are poor. Most of them live on less than USD$1 a day. Sanitation here, it is quite compromised. The prevalence of diseases like tuberculosis is very high. When something like meningitis strikes, it spreads very fast. You can imagine, if you cannot afford the basic needs, like shelter or food, at the end of the day, how will you afford healthcare? And that is where people like us come in. We try and tell them, "You can have quality care at an affordable fee." They know, once they come and pay, then I'm accountable for their health. If they go for free service, whether they get better or not, no one is accountable. SHF keeps me on my toes because I know I have to maintain standards. The clinic has to be absolutely clean. The drugs have to be of the right standards. >> DORAH NYANJA: Initially, I was seeing about 30 patients a day, but when they realized this is a professional who is here, and she is ready to help, the number started increasing. From 30, I went to about 50, 60. Now, I end up seeing even 100 patients in a day. You have to go out and market yourself, yeah? I've gone out. I've gone to schools. I've gone to the women groups. I've gone to the churches. I've gone to the chiefs of barazas [local councils]. The way you relate to the community also plays a big, big role. I put in more than 14 hours every day. I don't live around here, I live 20 kilometers from here, and I have to take public transport from home to the clinic and back every day, so it becomes quite challenging. What keeps me going at the clinic is that the patients appreciate the service that I give to them. Money plays a big role in life, but it is not everything. Some of us have a lot of money, but they are not happy. But I'm making much less, but I'm a happy person, because I know I'm giving service to a community which deserves to be given quality care. http://www.viewchange.org/videos/ted-jacqueline-novogratz-invests-in-africa-s-own-solutions Jacqueline Novogratz applauds the world's heightened interest in Africa and poverty, but argues persuasively for a new approach. Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:27:00 +0000 http://www.viewchange.org/videos/ted-jacqueline-novogratz-invests-in-africa-s-own-solutions Jacqueline Novogratz, Microfinance, Africa, Acumen Fund, Kigali, TED, India, Tanzania, Developing country, Jeffrey Sachs >> TITLE: Remarkable people ... unmissable talks ... now free to the world. TED: Ideas worth spreading.>> TITLE: Jacqueline Novogratz>> TITLE: July 2005, Oxford, England.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: I want to start with a story, a la Seth Godin, from when I was 12 years old. My uncle Ed gave me a beautiful blue sweater -- at least I thought it was beautiful -- and it had fuzzy zebras walking across the stomach, and Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Meru kind of right across the chest, that were also fuzzy. And I wore it whenever I could, thinking it was the most fabulous thing I owned. Until one day in ninth grade, when I was standing with a number of the football players. And my body had clearly changed, and Matt Mussolina, who was undeniably my nemesis in high school, said in a booming voice that we no longer had to go far away to go on ski trips, but we could all ski on Mount Novogratz. And I was so humiliated and mortified that I immediately ran home to my mother and chastised her for ever letting me wear the hideous sweater. We drove to the Goodwill and we threw the sweater away somewhat ceremoniously, my idea being that I would never have to think about the sweater nor see it ever again.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Fast-forward 11 years later. I'm a 25-year-old kid working in Kigali, Rwanda, jogging through the steep slopes, when I see, 10 feet in front of me, a little boy, 11 years old, running toward me, wearing my sweater. And I'm thinking, no, this is not possible. But, so curious, I run up to the child -- of course scaring the living bejesus out of him -- grab him by the collar, turn it over, and there is my name written on the collar of this sweater.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: I tell that story, because it has served and continues to serve as a metaphor to me about the level of connectedness that we all have on this Earth. We so often don't realize what our action and our inaction does to people we think we will never see and never know. I also tell it because it tells a larger contextual story of what aid is and can be. That this [sweater] traveled into the Goodwill in Virginia, and moved its way into the larger industry, which at that point was giving millions of tons of secondhand clothing to Africa and Asia. Which was a very good thing, providing low-cost clothing. And, at the same time, certainly in Rwanda, it destroyed the local retailing industry. Not to say that it shouldn't have, but that we have to get better at answering the questions that need to be considered when we think about consequences and responses.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: So, I'm going to stick in Rwanda, circa 1985, 1986, where I was doing two things. I had started a bakery with 20 unwed mothers, we called the Bad News Bears, and our notion was we were going to corner the snack food business in Kigali, which was not hard because there were no snacks before us. And because we had a good business model, we actually did it, and I watched these women transform on a micro level. But, at the same time, I started a microfinance bank, and tomorrow Iqbal Quadir is going to talk about Grameen, which is the grandfather of all microfinance banks, which now is a worldwide movement -- you talk about a meme -- but, then it was quite new, especially in an economy that was moving from barter into trade. >> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: We got a lot of things right. We focused on a business model, we insisted on skin in the game. The women made their own decisions at the end of the day as to how they would use this access to credit to build their little businesses, earn more income, so they could take care of their families better.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: What we didn't understand, what was happening all around us, with ... the confluence of fear, ethnic strife, and certainly an aid game, if you will, that was playing into this invisible but certainly palpable movement inside Rwanda, that at that time, 30 percent of the budget was all foreign aid. The genocide happened in 1994, seven years after these women all worked together to build this dream. And the good news was that the institution, the banking institution, lasted. In fact, it became the largest rehabilitation lender in the country. The bakery was completely wiped out, but the lessons for me were that accountability counts: got to build things with people on the ground, using business models where, as Steven Levitt would say, the incentives matter. Understand, however complex we might be, incentives matter.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: So when Chris raised to me how wonderful everything that was happening in the world, that we were seeing a shift in zeitgeist, on the one hand I absolutely agree with him, and I was so thrilled to see what happened with the G8 -- that the world, because of people like Tony Blair and Bono and Bob Geldof -- the world is talking about global poverty, the world is talking about Africa in ways I have never seen in my life. It's thrilling. And at the same time, what keeps me up at night is a fear that we'll look at the victories of the G8 -- USD$50 billion in increased aid to Africa, USD$40 billion in reduced debt -- as the victory, as more than chapter one, as our moral absolution.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: And, in fact, what we need to do is see that as chapter one, celebrate it, close it, and recognize that we need a chapter two that is all about execution, all about the how-to. And if you remember one thing from what I want to talk about today, it's that the only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scalable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: And it was that -- that whole philosophy -- that encouraged me to start my current endeavor called Acumen Fund, which is trying to build some mini-blueprints for how we might do that in water, health, and housing in Pakistan, India, Kenya, Tanzania, and Egypt. And I want to talk a little bit about that, and some of the examples so you can see what it is that we're doing. But before I do this -- and this is another one of my pet peeves -- I want to talk a little bit about who the poor are. Because we too often talk about them as these strong, huge masses of people yearning to be free, when in fact, it's quite an amazing story. >> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: On a macro level, four billion people on Earth make less than USD$4 a day. That's who we talk about when we think about the poor. If you aggregate it, it's the third-largest economy on Earth, and yet most of these people go invisible. Where we typically work, there's people making between USD$1 and USD$3 a day. Who are these people? They are farmers and factory workers. They're working in government offices. They're drivers. They are domestics. They typically pay for critical goods and services like water, like healthcare, like housing, and they pay 30 to 40 times what their middleclass counterparts pay -- certainly where we work in Karachi and Nairobi. The poor also are willing to make, and do make, smart decisions, if you give them that opportunity.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: So, two examples. One is in India, where there are 240 million farmers, most of whom make less than USD$2 a day. Where we work in Aurangabad, the land is extraordinarily parched. You see people on average making 60 cents to a dollar. This guy in pink is a social entrepreneur named Ami Tabar. What he did was see what was happening in Israel, larger approaches, and figure out how to do a drip irrigation, which is a way of bringing water directly to the plant stock. But previously it's only been created for large-scale farms, so Ami Tabar took this and modularized it down to an eighth of an acre. A couple of principles: build small, Make it infinitely expandable and affordable to the poor.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: This family, Sarita and her husband, bought a USD$15 unit when they were living in literally a three-walled lean-to with a corrugated iron roof. After one harvest, they had increased their income enough to buy a second system to do their full quarter-acre. A couple of years later, I meet them. They now make USD$4 a day, which is pretty much middle class for India, and they showed me the concrete foundation they'd just laid to build their house. And I swear, you could see the future in that woman's eyes, something I truly believe.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: You can't talk about poverty today without talking about malaria bed nets, and I again give Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard huge kudos for bringing to the world this notion of his rage: for USD$5 you can save a life. Malaria is a disease that kills one to three million people a year; 300 to 500 million cases are reported. It's estimated that Africa loses about USD$13 billion a year to the disease. USD$5 can save a life. We can send people to the Moon, we can see if there's life on Mars -- why can't we get USD$5 nets to 500 million people?>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: The question, though, is not why can't we; the question is how can we help Africans do this for themselves? A lot of hurdles: one, production is too low; two, price is too high; three, this is a good road right near where our factory is located -- distribution is a nightmare, but not impossible. We started by making a USD$350,000 loan to the largest traditional bed net manufacturer in Africa so that they could transfer technology from Japan and build these long-lasting, five-year nets. Here are just some pictures of the factory.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: Today, three years later, the company has employed another thousand women. It contributes about USD$600,000 in wages to the economy of Tanzania. It's the largest company in Tanzania. The throughput rate right now is 1.5 million nets, three million by the end of the year. We hope to have seven million at the end of next year. So the production side is working. On the distribution side though, as a world, we have a lot of work to do. Right now, 95 percent of these nets are being bought by the UN, and then given primarily to people around Africa. >> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: We're looking at building on some of the most precious resources of Africa: people, their women. And so I want you to meet Jacqueline, my namesake, 21 years old. If she were born anywhere else but Tanzania, I'm telling you, she could run Wall Street. She runs two of the lines, and has already saved enough money to put a down payment on her house. She makes about USD$2 a day, is creating an education fund, and told me she is not marrying nor having children until these things are completed. And so, when I told her about our idea -- that maybe we could take a Tupperware model from the United States, and find a way for the women themselves to go out and sell these nets to others -- she quickly started calculating what she herself could make and signed up.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: We took a lesson from IDEO, one of our favorite companies, and quickly did a prototyping on this, and took Jacqueline into the area where she lives. She brought 10 of the women with whom she interacts together to see if she could sell these nets, USD$5 apiece, despite the fact that people say nobody will buy one, and we learned a lot about how you sell things. Not coming in with our own notions, because she didn't even talk about malaria until the very end. First, she talked about comfort, status, beauty. These nets, she said, you put them on the floor, bugs leave your house. Children can sleep through the night, the house looks beautiful, you hang them in the window, and we've started making curtains. And not only is it beautiful, but people can see status -- that you care about your children. Only then did she talk about saving your children's lives. A lot of lessons to be learned in terms of how we sell goods and services to the poor.>> JACQUELINE NOVOGRATZ: I want to end just by saying that there's enormous opportunity to make poverty history. To do it right, we have to build business models that matter, that are scalable and that work with Africans, Indians, people all over the developing world who fit in this category, to do it themselves. Because at the end of the day, it's about engagement. It's about understanding that people really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions, they want to solve their own problems. And that by engaging with them, not only do we create much more dignity for them, but for us as well. And so I urge all of you to think next time as to how to engage with this notion and this opportunity that we all have -- to make poverty history -- by really becoming part of the process and moving away from an us-and-them world, and realizing that it's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share. Thank you. >> TITLE: TED: New TED Talks each week at www.TED.com