SOCAP is a organization dedicated in exploring the intersection of money and meaning. Their annual conference in San Fran is THE event to attend for leading global investors, innovators, curators and social entrepreneurs to build this social capital markets space.

I will be publishing a few pre-conference pieces and will write throughout the conference on socialearth.org. I will also be live tweeting during some key speeches (will be revealing who as the conference draws closer!) — so follow me on twitter if you want to be updated! If you are planning on attending, presenting or speaking at the conference, I would love to be in touch. You can contact me here. I would seriously love to hear from you.

My goal at the conference not only includes highlighting and reporting the event, but to also: 1) deepen my personal understanding of this intersection; 2) meet other individuals who are passionate about this cause and 3) learn about opportunities and initiatives in this intersection of money and meaning. Who knows what we may create after this!

Check out more about the conference here.

I recently stumbled across this incredible list of books, that I am now determined to get through in a year (I’ll let you know how it goes!). It’s a list by one of my fav organizations: Acumen Fund and it’s actually the recommended reading list for their Fellows. I’ll try to share my thoughts on each book as I move through the list. But meanwhile, here it is, below:

*I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read.. it’s a start!

GOOD SOCIETY READINGS
Rights and Responsibilities

“Culture Is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew” by Fareed Zakaria (Foreign Affairs, March/April 1994)
“Empowerment for a Culture of Peace and Development” by Aung San Suu Kyi (address to World Commission on Culture and Development, November 21, 1994)
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. (April 16, 1963)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (General Assembly of the United Nations, December 10, 1948)

Liberty and Social Order
“The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer” by Wendell Berry in Farming: A Hand Book (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich)
“Democracy” by Langston Hughes
Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
“Message to the Congress of Angostura, 1819” by Simón Bolívar
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
“Two Concepts of Liberty” by Isaiah Berlin (address before University of Oxford, October 31, 1958)
Equality and the Quest for Social Justice
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela by Nelson Mandela (Little, Brown and Company)
“O Yes” by Tillie Olsen in Tell Me a Riddle (Random House)
The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Community and the Search for Humanity
The Book of Genesis
The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism
“How to Write about Africa” by Binyavanga Wainaina (Granta 92, Winter 2005)
On Identity by Amin Maalouf (Harvill Panther)
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (Houghton Mifflin)
“Speech upon Receiving the Philadelphia Liberty Medal” by Václav Havel (July 4, 1994)
Property and Productivity
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen (Anchor)
Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff by Arthur M. Okun (The Brookings Institution)
The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldūn (Princeton University Press)
The Republic by Plato

LEADERSHIP READINGS
“Because We Can, We Must” by Bono (commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania, May 17, 2004)
A Confession by Leo Tolstoy
Death and the King’s Horseman by Wole Soyinka (W.W. Norton)
“A Far Cry from Africa” by Derek Walcott in The Norton Anthology of Poetry (W.W. Norton)
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins (HarperCollins)
“Great Expectations” by Bill Gates (commencement address at Harvard University, June 7, 2007)
Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky (Harvard Business School Press)
Leading from Within: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Lead by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner (Jossey-Bass)
Letter to Daniel: Dispatches from the Heart by Fergal Keane (Penguin Books)
The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking by Roger L. Martin (Harvard Business School Press)
“Rebellion” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov
Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society by John W. Gardner (HarperCollins)
Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness by Robert K. Greenleaf (Paulist Press)

FICTION
Black Boy by Richard Wright (HarperPerennial)
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (Vintage International)
A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Heinemann)
Independent People by Halldór Laxness (Vintage International)
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Penguin Books)
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin (Creative Education)
Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Anchor)
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (NYRB Classics)
Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh (Mariner Books)
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell (Penguin Books)
The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (Heinemann)
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (Grove Press)

BOOKS ON INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR POVERTY ALLEVIATION
“A Behavioral-Economics View of Poverty” by Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Eldar Shafir (American Economic Review 94, no. 2)
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier (Oxford University Press)
Capitalism as if the World Matters by Jonathon Porritt and Amory B. Lovins (Earthscan Publications)
Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen (Anchor)
The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey D. Sachs (Penguin Press)
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C.K. Prahalad (Wharton School Publishing)
Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz (W.W. Norton)
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta (Knopf)
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto (Basic Books)
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer (University of California Press)
Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green (Bloomsbury Press)
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble by Lester R. Brown (W.W. Norton)
Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day by Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford, and Orlanda Ruthven (Princeton University Press)
The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Williams Russell Easterly (Penguin Books)
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams (Portfolio Hardcover)
The World’s Banker: A Story of Failed States, Financial Crises, and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations by Sebastian Mallaby (Penguin Press)

The video competition was a huge success and what I thought to be a really creative way of engaging youth to think about issues about Canada-relations. The issues that came out of the contest, harness the collective capability and genius that would spur growth and research direction of the foundation. Some of the themes that emerged included: People as a resource, representation in the media, self-identity and green technology exchanges.

“Capabilities to develop new kinds of relationships, sense important developments, add value and turn nascent networked knowledge into compelling value are becoming the bread and butter of wealth creation and success.”

- Wikinomics, Don Tapscott

On a another level, it was a great learning opportunity for me to step into an area and network of which I was not really connected to, all because I stepped out of my network circle. It reminded me a great TED video by Ethan Zuckerman on Listening to Global Voices. He spoke about how even though the web connects the whole world, we really end up being stuck in our own web bubble rather than listening to what the world has to share.

So in the spirit of collaboration, here are my favourite sites on listening to global voices:

1) OpenIDEO: An online platform where people collaborate to design better for social good. It’s a wonderful dynamic resource on tackling global resources and I’m going to submit a solution to one of their problems soon!

2) World Pulse: A global network that broadcasts and unites women’s voices from all over to create a powerful voice for change. What I love about this is not only is it a print and web magazine but it’s also an interactive community newswire, PulseWire, where women can collaborate and connect to solve global problems.

3) Global Voices: An international community of bloggers who report on different global issues with topics ranging from arts to politics. It’s an amazing resource and my fav feature is the different languages that you can read the website in. (I occasionally flip the switch over to Indonesian, just cause! And it’s so interesting to read the same article both in English and in another language!)

4) paper.li: This is a little different than the above three platforms as it really is more a snapshot of the things/links that you tweet about, but I love the creative format and I find it super interesting the way it picks up on the different things I’m browse through online. Below is a snapshot of what it looks like and I thought I’ll share this one just for fun!

So..what global voices have you been listening to?

What I did come across in my meanderings across the interwebs was this [recent-ish] issue of the TIME’s magazine, which highlights “10 ideas that are changing our world right now”. The compiled list of ranged from issues in religion to infrastructure to the economy, one of which I found to be of particular interest to me.

Africa: Open for Business

The article highlights that Africa has long been perceived as a continent of where progress is irrelevant regardless of the efforts being done — foreign aid, economic stimulus, etc. Africa is essentially viewed as hopeless, and a $40 billion/yr foreign industry has been built around that perception to the point where people are starting to question whether aid is even doing any good at all. Thus, when the world’s economy went into Defcon 5 last year, the $40 billion industry started being called into question with debates and books being written that foreign aid is bad, fuels corruption, undermines governments, unsustainable and is  counter productive. (ie. Dead Aid — Dambisa Moyo, former Goldman Sachs and World Bank economist)

Drilling down to the actual relevancy of aid and development, the article points out the obvious fact that has been staring us in the face all this time. That throughout the noise of the aid industry, reality is that aid is no longer Africa’s main source of foreign income. Yes, that’s right. Africa is now a business destination.

So, I did some economic digging and cam across some very interesting information.

1) Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)  inflows into Africa have improved tremendously in the last 6 years. From $14.6 billion in 2002 to $53 billion in 2007 (UNCTAD World Investment Report, 2008). This translates into a 263% growth rate over a 6 year period!

Note: FDI refers to investment in domestic structures, equipment and organization by foreign private sectors or governments. Does not include foreign portfolio investment in a domestic economy. FDI contributes to the economic performance of a host country by: first,representing additional resources which can be used to build additional physical capital and create more employment. Secondly, increases a country’s output and productivity by encouraging efficient use of existing resources by increasing the size of the capital stock. Overall, FDI also improves local skills and technology know-hows which translate into growth and development.

The IMF puts Africa’s average annual growth for 2004 to ’08 at more than 6% — better than any developed economy — and predicts the continent will buck the global recessionary trend to grow nearly 3.3% this year — Time Magazine

2) The reason for an increase in FDI is an improvement in both economic and political conditions on the continent.

Economic Conditions: The UNCTAD Report stated that not only has Africa’s economy grown over 5%/yr since 2001, but cross border M&A’s in the extraction and related service industries of Africa has tripled. Combined with the fact that the high prices and demand for resources like oil has attracted investments from both developed and developing countries. An interesting fact to note is that because Africa’s economy is relatively displaced from the global economy, it is actually to their advantage during the current economic crisis, that they have been relatively unaffected.

Perhaps the most attractive element of the improving African economic condition is the very fact that China has developed a healthy interest in the continent.

While the old superpowers still agonize over Africa’s poverty, the new one is captivated by its riches. Trade between Africa and China has grown an average of 30% in the past decade, topping $106 billion last year. — Time Magazine

The Chinese has changed the psychological approach on Africa. They enter the continent to trade, not to provide aid. In her book, Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo pointed out that those who still needs convincing about Africa should ask themselves if they are convinced about China, “because if you back China, you’re backing Africa.”

Political Conditions: The turn of the new millennium has brought about a wave of peace, with a rapid decline in civil wars and conflicts. Democracy is up, trade is improving, inflation is declining and growth is happening. Yes Africa still has its Zimbabwes, Darfurs and Congos, but the truth of the matter is, the continent is trending towards a more peaceful and democratic region as a powerful consensus is emerging across Africa for good governance and as nearly all African countries have been involved in some type of political and institutional change.

This is reflected by the fact that better governance means better standards of living, infrastructure, education and although most Africans are not middle class, most are also not living in extreme poverty.

The percentage of Africans living on $1.25 a day or less dropped from 59% to 51% from 1996 to 2005 and has decreased further since — World Bank

Essentially, when it comes down to it, Africa really is open for business. Perhaps the issue lies in whether the world is ready to receive it? Remember, the figures really do speak for themselves. Trade, not aid.

For those who are curious, the full list is:

1. Jobs are the new Assets

2. Recycling the Suburbs

3. The New Calvinism

4. Reinstating the Interstate

5. Amortality

6. Africa, Business Destination

7. Rent-A-County

8. BioBanks

9. Survival Stores

10. Ecological Intelligence

The TIMES’s article can be found here

His post walks us through a Lokman Tsui’s PHD Dissertation on Global Voices and the people behind it. He takes us through three models of journalism, essentially, how we need to move away from the current models and towards objectivity as a key journalistic value towards HOSPITALITY.

Lokman proposes that “the internet has challenged us to rethink and re-imagine journalism and democracy” and we have not yet done a good job fully utilizing its potential. If we then compare media to politics, where political democracies have functioned best where they represent a broad range of interests, opinions and people, why then, can’t media be representative and as hospitable, offering a space for conversation?

***

“Why has hospitality slipped away? Is it because we’re experiencing the false intimacy of a globalized world? Lokman suggests that we’re seeing a paradox of choice emerging online — as we’ve got more choices, we often make decisions that isolate and cocoon ourselves. Part of this may come from the biggest way in which we isolate ourselves — we restrict the flow of people across national borders to a much greater extent than we restrict financial or cultural flows. Perhaps we’ve become better at accomodating a person’s CDs or movies, but less good at accomodating the person herself.

This means that hospitality is a duty and an obligation, but that we shouldn’t pretend that we can prevent exclusion from some spaces.”

- Ethan Zukerman, Lokman Tsui on hospitality, journalism and Global Voices.

***

All that being said, I would hardly imagine to call myself a journalist, but, I, at the very least, am going to do my part to offer this s p a c e for conversation, and share my opinions.  I truly believe that having our ideas out there is becoming increasingly important in a connected world. So here’s a little background on myself and what I plan to use this s p a c e for.

I have something to say. Do you?

Thumbnail Picture Credit: Uploaded on December 3, 2006 by :petra:BadInternetSorry!!!