“There is no passion to be found playing small — in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living” — Nelson Mandela

Time is Nothing // Around The World Time Lapse from Kien Lam on Vimeo.

There are three things about development data that you need to know: 1) It is beautiful; 2) There is a hidden story within each combination; and 3) It needs to be set free.

Last year, the World Bank released it’s prized possession of data – one that tells the stories of economic, socio and political realities around the world. This is a push to “democratize development data” and embrace its open information policy. It’s absolutely incredible what has been done with the data and I wanted to highlight some of the initiatives that have been born out of this:

1) http://data.worldbank.org/

This is the main Knowledge Bank where you can information from poverty rates to the average life expectancy of a country. Data is sorted by topic, countries, indicators, sectors and the World Bank even made a neat feature of key development indicators around the world. It covers over 200 counties and in some cases, dates back as far as 50 years.

The data is updated regularly and as you can see from the screenshot below, you can even find information on the newest country in the world – South Sudan! The site includes the Bank’s widely-used and extremely useful datasets: the 2010 World Development Indicators (WDI), Africa Development Indicators (ADI), Global Economic Monitor (GEM) and Global Development Finance.

2) Apps for Development

With the launch of the the above resource, the World Bank organized an Apps for Development Competition – bringing together the best ideas from developers and data to create useful software applications that is related to the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). The competition was a tremendous success and the Bank received apps from 36 countries: 30 of the 107 final submissions from Africa. You can check out the winners from this competition here.

A side spinoff from this competition was also an International Day Hackathon on Dec 4th last year where developers write applications using open data to support and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s governments. My favorite application is the San Francisco Crimespotting – an interactive map of crimes in San Francisco and a tool for understanding crime in cities. Helping keep people safe with open data. Amazing!

3) Mapping for Results

This Platform provides detailed information about the World Bank’s work in poverty alleviation and development around the world. It provides access to interactive maps that highlights locations of the bank’s projects around the world and involved releasing data provided by governments and other entities.

4) Data on the Go!

The World Bank is bringing accessibility of data to a whole new level by providing information on an iPhone app. They have six apps ( 4 published and 2 in the pipelines) that are being developed and the interface and usability for the data is just incredible. My personal favorite is the classic Datafinder – an app that lets you access 50 years of WB data on global economic indicators that can easily be shared in presentations, research and projects. Two more apps are being released in August 2011 – The World Bank at a Glance and the World Bank’s Finances.

Data is truly beautiful and with the world’s development data at your fingertips, we can use, analyze and even criticize.. but the only thing we shouldn’t do is ignore it. The video below is an example at how magical data can be. 4 minutes – 200 countries, 200 years by world renown economist – Hans Rosling.

The question that caused this surprising reaction was: why do you believe in social entrepreneurship?

My brain raced through the reasons, each reason followed by what seemed like a giant red sign that screamed CLICHE.

I believe in a human centred market based solution to poverty. Cliche.

I believe in making the world a better place and leaving it better than when I’ve found it. Cliche.

My background and journey has led me to believe in the power of entrepreneurship. Cliche.

I come from a family whose lives have been changed through entrepreneurship. Cliche.

I stumbled into this field unknowingly. Cliche.

Social entrepreneurs are the key in unlocking the levers of change. Cliche.

Entrepreneurs have the ability to create and imagine. With support and direction, they can be the change we wish to see in this world. Cliche.

In my head, my emotions quickly churned from alarm to frustration. Why was it that I couldn’t explain my Why? Was it because I didn’t understand my reasons, or perhaps was it because I couldn’t find the words to say? Why do these reasons seem cliche? Perhaps people have overused them and they have lost their meaning…and then the question becomes: how do you do then convey any one of those reasons with sincere belief? After all, how can you capture passion and belief in 30 seconds. In a paragraph even. It doesn’t seem to even do it justice.

About a year ago, I wrote a post on the beauty of imagination. Although I still believe this reason to be true, I couldn’t quite get the reason of imagination to fit within the social enterprise/international development piece of my beliefs. It seemed to be missing a piece.

Truth be told, I was then suddenly mesmerized by the fact that perhaps, just perhaps my reason WAS the combination of all those cliches. And more. After all, isn’t our understanding of the world a limitation of what we have experienced and inherited knowledge? Maybe my passion is a combination of a mathematical sequence of experiences (I like to think so!):

1) I grew up painfully aware of poverty and socio-economic oppression

2) My family’s story changed because of entrepreneurship

3) Hard work and a stranger’s faith in seeing my potential allowed me to continue my education in Canada

4) I unknowingly stumbled into this field through a “less-than-perfect” volunteer program through my university

5) Tipping point: Working with a women’s group in Lesotho ignited an understanding that identifying change levers in a community can change lives

6) Throughout business school, I have developed a natural bias towards a market based solution to solving problems.

Therefore: 7) Giving people the opportunity (just like it has been given to me) to create and imagine a better life is the key to creating a better world. A human-centered market based solution.

Social entrepreneurship shakes up our complacencies by challenging how we place value on social and economic urgencies. It spins us round in two ways at once: it shows us the sights and social values that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us parts of capitalism that have grown rusty and need changing.

So what is my answer you might ask? For now, I will have to settle for a combination of cliche answers, my sequence of experiences and that nagging voice at the of my head telling me that it is the right thing to believe in.

I’ll be sure to check in with my answer again as my understanding of the world continues to grow!

“Rebellion — which is different from revolution because it is perpetual alienation from power rather than the replacement of one power stem with another — should be our natural state. And faith, for me, is a belief that rebellion is always worth it, even if all outward signs point to our lives and struggles as penultimate failures. We are saved not by what we can do or accomplish but our fealty to revolt, our steadfastness to the weak, the poor, the marginalized, and those who endure oppression. We must stand with them against the powerful. If we remain true to those moral imperatives, we win.

I am enough of an idealist to believe that the struggle to lead the moral life is worth it.”

- Chris Hedges, The World As It Is

***

“Deep and intertwined in our humanity, is a need to support and feel involvement in the kinds of projects and companies which we care about. Until the recent crowdfunding phenomena emerged, our more centralized and intermediated capital formation and funding mechanisms scarcely recognized the social power of crowds which form affinities around any kind of mission. Crowdfunding is a natural systemic response to fill this gap, and an expression of our collective human will. It is perhaps, one of the most powerful developments in our modern-day socio-economics, and promises both to transform the capital formation landscape and to offer an avenue for a creative and intellectual re-birth.” – Kevin Lawton, The Crowdfunding Revolution.

There are nearly 7 billion people in the world, and over 2 billion of them have Internet access. As momentum grows for social finance, social impact bonds, and social venture exchanges, perhaps a third way to view social finance would be in opportunities for you and I to make a difference within 5 minutes. I’m talking about a platform of mass collaboration, one where social networking meets venture financing and microfinance on a larger scale. I’m talking about Crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is causing a shift in the way businesses and organizations operate by engaging the public with causes that resonate with us. There is a larger social and technological trend towards more collaboration and as the crowdfunding model takes on a social cause, it is a sneak peek into what the future of capitalism could potentially be. It is changing the way we fight poverty, rally behind causes and most of all, bring together a global community that has never before been possible. So when we are talking about the accessibility of social finance, crowdfunding is the key. The landscape has seen an increasing amount of players in the last few years. Some of the more intriguing models include 33needs, which highlights a future revenue sharing model, Crowdcube, an equity-based crowdfunding platform, and StartSomeGood, which offers a blended tipping point financing model.

However in the crowdfunding world, StartSomeGood is truly blazing ahead and bringing the ‘social’ back into the equation. They are the first to offer full-circle support for social innovation ideas: from funding to service-needed impact. Furthermore, their innovative tipping point model directly addresses a social entrepreneur’s need to truly start some good and get the project off the ground. Tom Dawkins, one of the co-founders, said that they hope to be “a platform for better-world idea ignition. We want to help social entrepreneurs address problems and realize opportunities in their communities by allowing anyone to support them in turning their ideas into action and impact.”

In a world of rapid change, crowdfunding is quickly establishing itself in every corner of the globe – a decentralized and emergent force that if properly financed, could possibly and truly create a better world.

So what are you waiting for? Tick tock.

Note: If you’re interested, here’s a wiki on crowdfunding that features an excellent list of crowdfunded organizations. On Twitter, @crowdfunding is a great source of relevant news.

I read her book, Dead Aid, when it first came out and it opened my eyes to a very different perspective of aid, development and the financial world. Her views are a challenge and a strong vision on how to address the global poverty issue. Spread the word (and read the book!)

Women hold up half the sky — Chinese Proverb

Reality is hard. It is a startling revelation at times often because we choose to surround ourselves with our view and experience of the world. This Thanksgiving, I am reminded of reality when I sat down to read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. In Half the Sky, Kristof and WuDunn throw an interesting twist into the conventional view of plights of women around the world: by telling their stories. From Cambodia to South Africa. From sex slaves to maternal health. By putting a name, emotion and passion into the stories. This tentative foray into the realm of story-telling melds surprising well with what is, essentially, a passionate call to action against our generation’s most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls worldwide.

The opening of the book follows the story of Srey Rath, a young Cambodian teenager, who was sold as a sex salve across the borders, ending up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where she endured routine brutality and constant humiliation. It was a huge shock to my system, as Malaysia is someplace I call my home town…  to read in such vivid detail the human rights violation done to Srey Rath was stunning in every sense.

These stories of human perseverance, injustice and ultimately hope, just like Srey Rath, are woven into three main issues: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence e.g. honor killings and mass rape and maternal mortaility. Sub issues include education, microcredit and religion. The stories in the book are shocking, but ultimately this is the central truth of the book: Women aren’t the problem but the solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.

“It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine “gendercide” in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.

In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century, the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world. ”

Through stories, Kristof and WuDunn demonstrate how the key to economic progress lies in the fact that as a society, we need to stop ignoring women who hold up half the sky. Unleashing this incredible human potential is not only the right thing to do in terms of our own shared humanity, but also the best way to tackle poverty. They show how in vastly different circumstances, the endurance of the human spirit and how a little help can go a long way e.g. the simple act of iodizing salt to improve a baby’s IQ.

I won’t go into the details of the book because my summary will not do these incredible stories justice. However, on a personal level, this book’s message has imprinted itself deeply within my beliefs in international development. After all, how many books make such a  statement about a matter than concerns everyone because of our shared humanity? The stories of these women show me the resilience and amount of hope they have within themselves who have every reason to give up but continue on. It’s so moving and inspirational that I just want to shout it out loud and tell everyone about the issues Kristof and WuDunn have written about. If there is one thing that this book is about, it is the story of transformation.

Rating: 10/10

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” — Derek Bok

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?

1) There is always, always two sides of a story and

2) We need to use resources around us — beyond what we have at hand in order to learn

This event was in UBC as part of the International Week celebrations:

To provide some background: (Taken from event description)

Mr. Paul Rusesabagina was the manager of the Sabena Hôtel des Mille Collines, and sheltered hundreds of Tutsis and moderate Hutus people for a hundred days using all available resources to him.  His courageous efforts thwarted bands of genocidal militia while Rwanda descended into outright genocide and civil war, and was celebrated in the Hollywood movie production, “Hotel Rwanda”.

A recipient of numerous international awards, including the Wallenberg Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Mr. Rusesabagina is a powerful speaker with a story of heroism and humanity in inhumane conditions.  In addition to his experiences during and after the Rwandan genocide, Mr. Rusesabagina will share his insights into the nature of the conflict, the failure of the West to stop it, and the challenges of reconciliation.

The event started out with a quick introduction by Brian Sullivan and quickly proceeded to Paul Rusesabagina’s speech itself. I won’t go into details of the speech, which was an account of his experiences of the Rwandan genocide and what went down in Hotel Rwanda. It was incredible hearing his accounts first hand, but the real experience cam during the Q&A period. Prof. Michael Byers was the moderator for the session.

Three things occured during the Q&A that took me completely by surprise:

1) There was a substantial amount of people that are Rwandan genocide refugees that were present. I had no idea that event of this event managed to reach past the UBC community, which was impressive.

2) The questions regarding comparisons of South Africa and Rwanda’s economy was very much unexpected, considering the different political, cultural and economic conditions of both countries.

3) The response towards Paul Rusesabagina’s speech was centered around his accountability and actions of Hotel Rwanda.

Needless to say, due to time constraints, only 3–4 questions were answered and the session ended. However, several Rwandan community representatives spoke up on their version of Paul Rusesabagina’s actions, questioning his motives, financial accountability as well as alliances during the genocide. They had the Chan Centre riveted with accounts of their personal stories of their survival and encounters with the military.

I have been to numerous events at the Chan but this was the first one that I have ever experienced such a strong outcome and discussion after. Students were gathering outside the Chan around these Rwandan genocide survivors who were engaging in more personal conversation about their experiences and there was buzz in the atmosphere about newfound knowledge.

My Main Takeaway: Paul Rusesabagina has been potrayed by Hollywood as a hero and revered for his courageous efforts during the genocide. However, the discussion at the Chan center which questioned his alliances, financial accountability, and actual self-preservation efforts. This  has made me realise that there are always two sides to a story, no matter how well know one side is. It is our responsibility to always be aware of the other side.

I leave you with a phenomenal TED talk by Chimamanda Adiechi telling the danger of a single story. Because our lives and cultures are composed of many overlapping stories, if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

However, it took a course to change my entire perspective, approach and the way I viewed MNCs as well as the longest paper I have written in my undergrad life — 2,500 words. But before I divulge into my findings, I must say that taking poli sci courses on top of my commerce courses has been one of my best academic decisions in UBC. Poli sci courses have given me a phenomenal balance of theory and the practicalism of economics courses and I only wish I could take more!

So, in light of finishing my marathon paper, I thought it would only be fit to share a summarized version of my research and thoughts around this area (Source — Myself, 2010):

The first realization I had on MNCs, was the fact that their presence (aside from production, resource allocation and economic impacts) has re-defined what it means to have a firm-government relationship. The conventional “obsolescing” bargaining model for depicting MNC-State relations is now obsolete (Ramanurti, 2001). Instead, market and non-market strategizing is an iterative process of resource allocation that responds dynamically to changing conditions, jurisdiction and level of government intervention (Windor, 2007). Reality is, the success of many MNCs depends on the market performance that is tied inherently to relationships with local and host governments. MNCs and governments are constantly in this symbiotic relationship in which the future seems to be dominated with a push and pull of policies and compromise. (Model of coopetition — cooperation and competition)

The second realization that I had was one surrounding the definition of sovereignty. It wasn’t till a year ago that I learnt of the 1648 treaty of Westphalia ( yes, I know I was a little slow to catch on..) which marked the birth of the modern state and the end of universal medievalism. Since, the modern state has become geographical constructs of which political authority is defined and based upon geographical perimeters (Anderson, 1986).

What really fascinated me was the fact that it never crossed my mind until now that MNCs could be (perhaps?) the dawn of a new definition of sovereignty. This is because MNCs by the very nature of their operations have placed a new spin on the concept of sovereignty with their transfer of resources, capability, knowledge and power within and amongst different firms as the primary concerns. The issue here is that although an MNC is incorporated under local law of a host country, indicating that it is subject to the same responsibilities as a national firm, its subsidiaries and affiliates in other territories contains elements of a “double personality” (Vernon, 1971). MNCs have a responsibility to the sovereign that sanctions its existence, but as an international unit, each affiliate may have conflicts of interest than of its host country’s.

This means that in regards to internal sovereignty, the emergence of MNCs have placed constrains of autonomy and control on the implementation of internal sovereignty. However, in terms of external sovereignty it has forced governments to reconsider its construct of mutually exclusive borders, territory and geographically based political and economic governance (Kobrin, 1998). Hence the emergence of free trade agreements (NAFTA, ASEAN…) , border agreements, etc.

Now there’s the exciting part, what if the increasing globalization, need for FDI and growth of MNCs are bringing upon society a new definition of what it means to be part of a state and culture on an economic and political level? We’ve already seen the rise of third kid culture kids ( myself included) and the bleeding of world culture and languages into each other. Every 14 days a language dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them not yet recorded—may disappear (National Geographic, 2010).

I really wonder the correlation between MNC growth, globalization and cultures. I guess time will tell. Until then, I leave you with a thought by Susan Strange.

A metamorphosis is occurring with structural change in the world economy with the state becoming, once more as in the past, just one source of authority among several, with limited powers and resources (Strange, 1996).