iDE's News
iDE Honored as Top “WaSH” Org
iDE has just been named one of the top ten international organizations working in the field of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) based on a survey of experts in the field. The list was compiled by Philanthropedia/GuideStar, an information service specializing in reporting on U.S. non-profit companies.
Philanthropedia asked 116 WASH experts (funders, researchers, nonprofit senior staff, consultants, and others) from 90 organizations to identify nonprofit orgs that were making the biggest positive impact in the field. A total of 106 organizations were reviewed.
In their anonymous reviews, the experts cited iDE’s focus on “systemic change through market development of pro-poor technology as foundational to its widespread impact”. One expert wrote that “iDE doesn’t want to be a long-term service provider. In its best work, it refines a pro-poor technology, develops a market for that technology, supports business development to provide the technology, and then backs out to let the market drive the availability of the technology.”
For more than 15 years, iDE has pioneered innovative, market-based approaches to safe water and sanitation access. These approaches exploit the comparative advantage of private-sector, NGO, and government stakeholders to reach large numbers of poor households cost effectively and in short timeframes. iDE has successfully applied these approaches in promoting water filters, latrines, hand pumps, and behavior change in rural Cambodia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. In Cambodia, for instance, iDE’s sanitation marketing program recently enabled local enterprises to sell 17,400 latrines without subsidy in a one-year period, won the International Design Excellence Award, and was inducted into the World Toilet Organization Hall of Fame.
To read more about what experts in the field have to say about us, click on the Expert Reviews section on our organization profile here.
Learn more about iDE Cambodia’s WaSH program here.
More here on the history of WaSH at iDE.
iDE Annual Portfolio Now Available
iDE’s Annual Portfolio for 2012 is now available. It’s a colorful look at the exciting work we are doing in our country programs. Highlights include:
- The launch of new country programs in West Africa
- The incorporation of iDEal Tecnologias, a distribution enterprise designed to deliver microirrigation products to small plot farmers in Central America and Mexico
- Building on the success of our “Easy Latrine” in Cambodia, we’ve expanded our water, sanitation and health programs
Click here to download the iDE Annual Portfolio (PDF, 4MB).
iDE Launches New Toilet Project
Lack of access to sanitation is a major problem affecting the developing world. Poor sanitation is a major cause of diarrheal disease, lost labor productivity for adults, missed school days for children, and additional financial burdens for families requiring medical treatment. In Cambodia alone, diarrheal diseases account for 17 percent of deaths in children under five. The World Bank recently estimated the annual economic loss due to poor sanitation there to be $448 million a year, which is equivalent to 7.2 percent of GDP.
Existing markets for rural sanitation in the developing world are woefully underdeveloped. Low demand and weak supply chains hinder the availability of sanitation products and services. Publicly funded sanitation projects often make extensive use of hardware subsidies with disappointing results; typically, only a fraction of the subsidy reaches the intended target group, and recipients often do not use or maintain their latrines over time.
For a number of years now in Asia, iDE has been at the forefront of Sanitation Marketing developments to address these challenges. iDE recently completed a pilot project in Cambodia that exceeded expectations by enabling 9.6 percent of the rural population to purchase sanitary latrines in eleven target districts over a 16-month period.
Now, a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made it possible to expand these achievements on a national scale, improving the sanitation conditions of tens of thousands of rural households while stimulating vibrant and sustainable sanitation markets. Over a three-year period, the Cambodia Sanitation Marketing Scale-Up Project will build on the original pilot project by working directly with some 90 local enterprises, encouraging them to invest their own resources into addressing the demand for sanitary latrines.
The project will enable 115,000 households in 60 districts of Cambodia to purchase affordable sanitary latrines. Other outcomes include:
• Improved latrine designs for two “challenging environments”
• Sanitation financing mechanisms for consumer households and supply chain enterprises
• A research and training center to become a global dissemination platform for Sanitation Marketing experience
The total cost of the project is estimated at $6,942,199. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded iDE a grant of $3,987,717. Other key partners in the project include the Stone Family Foundation, the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program, PATH, and the Royal Government of Cambodia.
Sanitation Marketing has emerged as a highly effective approach for rapidly and sustainably improving rural sanitation at scale by connecting consumers with products that they want and can afford. Evidence from a number of recent projects demonstrates that stimulating private enterprises to address the untapped rural sanitation market can have a revolutionary impact on the uptake of sanitary latrines—with associated health and financial gains for rural households.
The Sanitation Marketing model leverages the advantages of private sector entities, civil society, and government to reach large numbers of rural households in short time frames. Donor funds are not used to provide direct subsidies for hardware or installation. Instead they are invested in laying the foundations for demand-driven, self-financing market systems.
Broadly, Sanitation Marketing applies iDE’s market-based poverty alleviation approach to the related problem of inadequate sanitation. First, we develop a deep understanding of the target group’s needs and aspirations, and adapt or design affordable technology options to meet those needs. We strengthen the capacity of local enterprises to manufacture and deliver the technologies, conduct social marketing campaigns to encourage the purchase and proper use of the technologies, and coordinate with NGOs, microfinance institutions, and government agencies to extend scale and to reach poorer households.
Photos: Polak Social Innovation Award
On September 22, the inaugural iDE Paul Polak Award for Social Innovation was given to its namesake at a gala event marking the close of the Design for the Other 90% exhibit at RedLine Gallery in Denver, Colorado. The well-attended event celebrated Polak’s contributions to the bottom of the pyramid design movement. Speakers included artist and RedLine founder Laura Merage, Ball Aerospace President and CEO David Taylor, iDE CEO Al Doerksen, and Metropolitan Homes President and CEO Peter Kudla.
The iDE Paul Polak Award for Social Innovation honors the important legacy of Paul Polak, whose work has inspired millions of the world’s poorest people to become entrepreneurs; increasing their income and livelihoods, and enabling them to live a life beyond subsistence poverty. This award will be presented annually to a deserving individual social innovator or organization that has significantly advanced design focusing on the “other 90%,” or otherwise demonstrated significant impact using principles articulated by Paul Polak throughout his career. In subsequent years, iDE will select a jury of industry leaders and development practitioners to review nominations, and select the award recipient from that pool of nominees.
Attendees gather at RedLine under a canopy of Nokero solar-powered light bulbs
Paul Polak answers questions with a donkey, which represents his first income enhancing design project, an affordable donkey cart sold in Somalian refugee camps.
iDE CEO Al Doerksen with Paul Polak's wife, Aggie
Ball Aerospace President and CEO Dave Taylor presents the award
Al Doerksen comments on Paul's legacy
Paul Polak and Metropolitan Homes President and CEO Peter Kudla
Art is Creative Problem Solving
“Design is creative problem solving. Art is creative problem solving.”
So says iDE founder Paul Polak in a new interview with Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner. Paul gives the reporter a guided tour of the just-opened Design for the Other 90% exhibit–along with a demonstration of a treadle pump in action!–while covering such topics as how iDE came about, the role of design in improving livelihoods in developing countries, why we don’t give products away, and what a collection of affordable technologies is doing in an art gallery.
You can stream the full interview here.
Swiss Parliament Gets Irrigated
Drip Irrigation in Front of Swiss Parliament
by Urs Heierli
SDC – the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is using the occasion to launch an initiative to educate the public about its work. As the Global Water Initiatives Division of SDC has launched a major cooperation program with iDE, SDC has included information about more efficient irrigation systems targeted to reach the poor. As part of a rotating exhibition in major Swiss cities, an iDE Family Nutrition Kit was shown as a model and attracted quite some interest. In late May, the exhibition was in Berne on the Federal Plaza, just in front of the Swiss Parliament. The Swiss parliament has recently increased the development aid budget from 0.4 to 0.5% of GDP and a major focus of the increased resources will be targeted to water projects. There is an increasing awareness that global water scarcity will severely affect all societies if “business as usual” policies are pursued. iDE has a lot to offer in this domain: affordable drip and sprinkler irrigation systems and other productive water technologies for small farmers provide really interesting solutions.
iDE’s SDC-supported program “Scaling up productive water technologies” will develop dissemination programs in several regions, including Central America (Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and later Mexico), West Africa (Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad) and Asia (Kirgizstan, Vietnam). Together with the Gates Foundation, It also supports the global dissemination of productive water technologies.
In addition, iDE is launching a “Fair Trade Water project” funded by the Sustainability initiative of the Swiss retail chain COOP aimed at increasing the water efficiency of Fair Trade Cooperatives in Central America. COOP is the second largest retail chain in Switzerland and was selected as the world’s most sustainable retail chain, especially for the chain’s attention to the farmers who supply them. This project will be operating in Central America and will deliver affordable irrigation to small farmers belonging to Fair Trade cooperatives, with a special focus on diversification.
A Design Revolution in Colorado
On Tuesday, iDE and Denver’s RedLine officially kicked off “Design for the Other 90%” a major event which will bring the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s acclaimed exhibition to Colorado, along with other events showcasing the ways designers are addressing challenges in both the developing world and here in the U.S. The exhibit showcases low-cost solutions to the problems facing nearly 7 billion people in the areas of shelter, health, water, education, energy and transportation.
The exhibit’s name refers to a central thesis of iDE Founder Paul Polak, who noted in his book Out of Poverty, “90% of the world’s designers spend all their time working on solutions to the problems of the richest 10 percent of the world’s customers. A revolution in design is needed to reverse this silly ratio and reach the other 90 percent.”
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper was on hand to address the approximately 300 attendees. Also speaking at the event were iDE CEO Al Doerksen, RedLine Founder Laura Merage, JP Morgan Chase’s Vice President of Philanthropy Jill Barkin, and Peter Kudla of Metropolitan Homes and RedLine. “Design for the Other 90% will be a powerful demonstration that simple machines and simple ideas translate into powerful global impact, said Doerksen.
The exhibit will run July 8 through September 25 at RedLine, 2350 Arapahoe Street in Denver. We’ll post more information about the exhibition and concurrent events here as it becomes available.
Phnom-enal
Here is the latest newsletter from iDE Senior Advisor Andrew Romanoff:
What do you get when you cross a shower and a latrine? If you answered “an episode of Seinfeld,” you’ve been watching too many reruns. (That was my guess, too.)
In Cambodia, relieving yourself is no laughing matter. Sanitation-related illnesses claim more than 1,000 lives every month. And at $300, the price of a typical toilet exceeds most Cambodians’ annual income.
That’s why, as I reported in January, our team in Phnom Penh has been promoting a low-cost alternative: the $35 Easy Latrine. The device is manufactured locally and can be installed in a single day; 11,500 have already been sold.
Now the same crew is testing another vital innovation: a combination latrine/shower/drip-irrigation system. Click on the video below to learn how the Easy Shower may make thousands of Cambodians better off (and George Costanza awfully jealous).
MANHATTAN AND MARS
In my last newsletter, I suggested some reasons Americans should take an interest in the rest of the world. Our economy and our national security, I contended, are inextricably linked to our neighbors’ fortunes. Most respondents agreed.
“Prosperous nations tend to start fewer wars,” wrote Larry Kaufman, a “semi-retired journalist” and former railroad executive from Genesee. “They also make better customers than do poor nations.”
My friend and former colleague, Col. Joe Rice, reflected on his five tours of duty in Iraq. “Poverty, lack of education, and lack of opportunity are the main drivers of instability and terrorism,” he wrote. “A little money spent on international relief and development is in our own national interest.”
Then he added, “Oh, it probably is morally right as well.”
George Schumm, a professor of logic in Ohio, underlined that point: “A suffering human being is a suffering human being, and it matters not, from a moral perspective, whether it’s your suffering, that of your child, or neighbor, or fellow citizen, or someone living on Mars.”
None of these arguments, however, swayed a reader on the East Coast. “I don’t care about this,” a man named Aaron declared. “I live in New York.”
I’ll give another New Yorker the last word. In an article published in Outside Magazine in 2009, Nicholas Kristof, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author, explained why some causes (the plight of a homeless hawk on the Upper East Side of Manhattan) attract more attention than others (the genocide in Darfur).
“We intervene,” Mr. Kristof wrote, “not because of stories of desperate circumstances but when we can be cheered up with positive stories of success and transformation.… The irony: Altruism creates its own selfish reward. Or, to put it another way, nobody gains more selfish pleasure than those who act selflessly.”
(You can read Mr. Kristof’s article by clicking here.)
UPCOMING EVENTS
I’ll be sharing other stories of IDE’s success in the weeks ahead. Please join me to learn more about our work and how you can get involved:
- Denver Mile High Rotary Club, Wednesday, April 6, 7 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., University Club, 1673 Sherman St., Denver.
- Castle Rock High Noon Rotary Club, Thursday, April 7, 12 p.m., Philip S. Miller Library, 100 S. Wilcox St., Castle Rock.
- Brown-Bag Lunch, Monday, April 11, 12 p.m. to 1 p.m., at IDE, 3rd floor conference room, 10403 W. Colfax Ave, Lakewood. (Please note new date.) This month’s discussion will focus on Latin America.
- Denver West Rotary Club, Tuesday, April 12, 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., Rolling Hills Country Club, 15707 W. 26th Ave., Golden.
- Denver Cherry Creek Rotary Club, Tuesday, April 19, 7 a.m., Inn at Cherry Creek, 233 Clayton St., Denver.
To schedule a presentation, contact Michelle Warner at mwarner@ideorg.org. To volunteer, contact Dana Cousteau at volunteers@ideorg.org.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Andrew Romanoff
A School of iDEas
From Raisa Chowdhury, here’s a report from iDE Bangladesh’s annual staff retreat.
iDE Bangladesh recently hosted its Annual Retreat for 2011 for all 76 staff from different field offices around the country. The 3 day workshop, from 14th to 16th March, was hugely successful in bringing about organizational integration and, it is hoped, will lead to significant performance improvements in the future.
The theme of the workshop was “A school of iDEas”. This sought to promote iDE Bangladesh as an organization which nurtures and creates innovation and new ideas. To make the learning and the team development process more effective, all staff including directors, officers, specialists, coordinators, administrators, interns, guards, drivers and friends, were divided into four different teams of Green, Blue, Red and Black to undertake group presentations, workshops, tasks and competitive sporting events.
The retreat harnessed the talent, experience, wisdom and logic of all members of the iDE Bangladesh family. This enabled staff to successfully complete team building activities including making presentations to generate intra-IDE knowledge exchange, designing posters representing staff expectations for the retreat, and also cultural events including singing, poetry recitals and mime! The cultural events were for many the highlight of the retreat.
iDE Bangladesh always seeks to continually improve its performance, and staffs were asked to provide feedback and recommendations regarding any aspects of their work. These comments will be addressed in four project management team meetings over the course of the year. The retreat proved to be an excellent opportunity for everyone to meet and tackle existing issues, address queries, perceive future challenges and to think about ways of improving how the organization performance. iDE is a collective of distinctive minds, and by joining together under the umbrella curriculum of poverty alleviation, we found we could establish a solid foundation for future successes.
IDE’s April Brown Bag Lunch – Updated
POST UPDATED: PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME AND LOCATION INFO
IDE Senior Advisor Andrew Romanoff is hosting an informational gathering for people interested in learning more about IDE’s work. This month, the special guest speaker will be Alma Lizarraga, coordinator for iDE’s programs in Latin America. Bring a lunch if you’d like. Please RSVP to Michelle Warner at mwarner@ideorg.org if you plan to attend.
When: Monday, April 11, 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Where: 10403 W. Colfax Ave. #500, Lakewood, CO, 80215, in the third floor conference room.
We hope to see you there!
Join Romanoff for lunch Feb. 2
IDE Senior Advisor Andrew Romanoff is hosting an informational gathering for people interested in learning more about IDE’s work. Bring a lunch if you’d like. Please RSVP to Michelle Warner at mwarner@ideorg.org if you plan to attend.
When: Wednesday, Feb. 2, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Where:1stBank Building, 10403 W Colfax Ave, Denver CO 80215. The meeting will be held in the classroom on the 3rd floor.
We hope to see you there!
Women: The Engines of Rural Markets
By Michael Roberts, Director, IDE Cambodia
“You cannot ignore the importance of women in rural markets”
World Food Day, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization’s annual campaign to raise awareness of hunger, extreme poverty and malnutrition, takes place on Saturday 16 October. The theme, ‘United against Hunger’, focuses on the pressing need to increase food production by 70 percent by 2050, and identifies farmers and farming as major contributors to this goal. Coinciding appropriately with the UN event is World Rural Women’s Day on 15 October, which aims to highlight rural women’s crucial, yet largely unrecognised role in agriculture.
If you are serious about addressing rural poverty, you cannot ignore the role of women in rural markets. In Cambodia, women make up the majority of the agricultural labour force but they tend to have less access to resources and assets that would increase their productivity. Cambodian women also play significant roles in trade, entrepreneurship, and business management although they often face more obstacles than men in these roles.
In IDE’s Nestlé-supported project, for instance, women make up only about one in ten of the Farm Business Advisors (FBAs) that have been recruited and trained, due largely to the requirement for mobility. FBAs need to travel frequently between villages to promote their business and provide service to existing customers. Concerns about safety make many women hesitant to travel, while responsibilities for cooking and childcare make it difficult to be absent from home for more than a few hours.
Despite greater barriers, the women who have taken up the FBA role are among the highest performers, averaging 45 percent higher sales than the male FBAs.
Interestingly, we also find that the FBA role is nearly always run as a family business with active involvement of the spouse and other family members. So even when a man is listed as the FBA, women are active participants in the business, usually taking on essential home-based tasks like caring for the vegetable demonstration plot and selling products to clients that come to the house.
More important than the number of female FBAs, perhaps, is the impact that FBAs are having on women farmers. Follow-up surveys indicate that FBA clients earn an average additional income of about US$150 per year. The surveys also indicate that about 35 percent of vegetable crop management and 79 percent of crop marketing is done by women. Thus, in most cases, income from vegetable production goes into the women’s hands first.
I recently talked with Mom Samol, a woman farmer in Prey Veng province. She described a typical day marketing the long beans from her vegetable plot. She can harvest about 10 kg of beans once every two or three days for about a month. She picks the ripe beans, ties them in bundles, and then takes them on her bike to sell to small road-side vendors near her village. It takes her about an hour and she receives USD 0.50 per kg, which amounts to about $5 each time she harvests. She uses part of the money to pay for daily expenses and puts away some money for larger purchases in the future. The daily expenses she handles on her own; the larger expenses she discusses with her husband. She expects him to discuss large expenses with her also.
We believe that the FBA project is having a positive impact on gender equity by improving women’s ability to access and benefit from the products and information provided by FBAs.
Art of Dirt on PBS NewsHour
A solar pump is one of the technologies on display at IDE's Art of Dirt.
IDE’s Art of Dirt exhibit was recently featured on PBS NewsHour’s website.
The interactive story features a slideshow and an audio interview with IDE CEO Al Doerksen.
The Art of Dirt is an exhibition of water technologies and artwork from developing countries where IDE works to cultivate prosperity. It runs at Denver’s 910Arts Gallery through September 25.
Read the full story at PBS NewsHour.
View the slideshow at PBS NewsHour.
An Art Gallery Growing Tomatoes?
A two-part gallery exhibition of affordable water technologies and artwork from developing countries where Denver-based IDE works to cultivate prosperity, The Art of Dirt opens August 6 at the EventGallery 910 Arts, running through September 25. The show allows visitors to experience how simple, affordable technology design can improve the incomes and lives of the millions of people at the base of the economic pyramid through The Art of Dirt. The exhibition includes photographs, videos and a tomato garden growing in the gallery that is irrigated using IDE water technology.
IDE is dedicated to creating income opportunities for poor, rural households in the developing world. “The Art of Dirt” showcases some of the simple technologies, such as the foot-powered treadle pump, low-pressure micro-sprinkler and affordable drip irrigation that IDE has made available to poor, rural families, allowing them control over their water supply and opening up a new world of income-generating possibilities.
Many of the technologies in the show were selected by the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum for its recent Design for the Other 90% exhibition; this is the first time that they have been exhibited in the Denver area. The Art of Dirt incorporates photographs and videos of farms, farmers and irrigation in some the countries where IDE works; after Sept. 1, the exhibit will also include artwork by artists in these areas, which will be available for purchase through a silent auction benefiting IDE’s programs.
During the show’s run, IDE and 910Arts will host a number of special events, including First Friday open houses, film nights, and a gala event honoring IDE founder Paul Polak. For more information on these events, please visit www.artofdirt.org.
EventGallery 910 Arts is located in the heart of Denver’s art district at 910 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, 80204.
Easy Latrine Wins IDEA Award!
Users and schematics for the award-winning IDE Easy Latrine. Photos courtesy Jeff Chapin and IDE Cambodia.
What do a consumer technology product, an ecologically responsible laundry detergent, and a simple design innovation for an age old product have in common? They were all selected as winners of the prestigious Best in Show Award at the 2010 IDEA Awards for international design excellence.
Latrines are a decidedly unsexy topic, more likely to induce uncomfortable giggles than provoke innovative thinking. People in the developed world take access to sanitation for granted. Yet in most of rural Cambodia, lack of adequate sanitation causes more deaths than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Despite this fact, many villagers view purchasing sanitation equipment as an unnecessary luxury, partly because of the expense and difficulty of installing traditional latrines.
Jeff Chapin, a designer on sabbatical from IDEO worked with our IDE Cambodia team to tackle the problem. The solution? A low-cost sanitation system that villagers could build themselves using cheap, locally available materials. Each latrine costs about $25, and more than 2,500 have already been purchased and installed by villagers.
We couldn’t agree more. Congratulations to Jeff Chapin and the entire IDE Cambodia team on this well-deserved recognition.
The Sanitation Marketing Pilot Program, from which the “Easy Latrine” design resulted, is funded by USAID Cambodia MSME and the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank, and is implemented by IDE.
Best in Show judges video at fastcodesign.com
IDE Wins First Nestlé CSV Prize
IDE Cambodia was awarded the first Nestlé Prize in Creating Shared Value for its Farm Business Advisors program today at an awards ceremony in London. Since its inception in 2005, the FBA program has enabled 60 rural Cambodian entrepreneurs to start small farm advisory businesses, which in turn have helped 4,500 small-scale farm households increase their net income by 27 percent or US $150.
The prize of 500,000 Swiss Francs (about $433,050) will improve the project by recruiting and training an additional 36 advisors, generating approximately US $1.9 million in new income to positively impact 20,000 people in more than 4,000 rural households across Cambodia.
Nestlé Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, who presented the award to the IDE, said: “We congratulate IDE Cambodia on being the first to be awarded the Prize. The work they do is inspirational. The support and training from IDE ensures that all involved work together to create sustainable farming enterprises.”
Accepting the award, IDE Cambodia Country Director Michael Roberts said, “It is an honor to receive this recognition from Nestlé. The prize will help us further IDE’s mission to create income opportunities for poor rural households. We hope to leverage the Prize to reach more than 75,000 rural Cambodian households in the next few years. On a global scale this is still very small but we think there are big implications in what we are learning.”
The CSV Prize – which received more than 500 applications from 79 countries – was awarded during Nestlé’s Creating Shared Value Forum, an international gathering of leading experts in water, nutrition, rural development, and the role of business in society which took place in London on 27 May. The Prize was created to provide financial support of up to 500,000 Swiss Francs to individuals, NGOs, or small enterprises who offer innovative solutions to nutritional deficiencies, access to clean water, or progress in rural development. The prize money will be disbursed over a three-year period to assist in the scaling-up of the project.
Learn more about IDE’s Farm Business Advisor Program.
Watch Nestlé’s video on the award below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOxmZ9AqXuI
Toilets: Business is Booming
Photo courtesy Jeff Chapin (wanderingjefe.blogspot.com)
Though most of our projects are focused on the agricultural value chain, even seemingly unrelated projects like our water and sanitation project in Vietnam can create new, sustainable sources of income for poor rural families.
The Dutch organization IRC – International Water and Sanitation Centre tells the story of Thuy Thanh Ky, a 43 year-old mason in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam. Unable to support his family through farming alone, Thuy started a successful business as a toilet mason, helping meet the increased demand for affordable, effective sanitation in rural Vietnam.
It’s interesting to note that Thuy was not initially chosen by his commune to be part of the group trained by IDE’s project. Not to be deterred, he was able to train himself after coming across IDE’s training manual. What a great example of the way IDE projects often spark rural entrepreneurship even outside of those we are able to directly impact within the original project itself.
IDE + Gates: 100K+ Served
Check out Dana Goldstein’s interview with Bill Gates over at The Daily Beast. The discussion touches on a number of topics of interest, including Haiti, companies that are setting a good example in the bonus era, government’s role in meeting social needs, what works in public schools—and a revolutionary “scuba rice” that can help fight poverty. Of course, we’re also extremely pleased that he mentions our affordable irrigation technology work when asked about innovations he’s most excited about! Here’s what he had to say about IDE and the Gates Foundation’s approach to agricultural development:
…Another technology that is meeting with great success is a simple, low-cost treadle pump that enables farmers with limited water supplies to irrigate their crops, utilizing every drop of water effectively. Our grant to International Development Enterprises has allowed more than 100,000 farmers in India to benefit from this technology.
Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future. But technology is only one part of the puzzle. Small farmers also need training and resources to grow these enhanced seeds, and access to stable markets that offer them a fair price for their crops. That’s why we invest in each of these areas with our grant-making, to fund improvements across the agricultural value chain.
Our thoughts exactly. What do you think?
Securing the Prosperity of Nations
To start IDE’s blog on an inspirational note for 2010, we give you an excerpt below from an analytic essay written by IDE’s founder, Paul Polak along with Peggy Reid and Amy Schefer for the forthcoming special edition of Innovations Journal, “Tech4Society: A Celebration of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows” to accompany a live conference in Hyderabad, India next month.
It seems self-evident that we should care about helping 2.4 billion people raise themselves out of poverty. But really, why should we? Most of us working in the field of development fall into that fortunate few: the richest 10 percent of people in the world. Is it altruism alone that motivates us to care about the fates of billions of individuals whose lives we know relatively little about? For some of us, perhaps. But for most, recent history has made it painfully evident that the fates of all nations are connected. As economic institutions and markets have become ever more globally linked, the peace and security of our nation and of all nations are inextricably interwoven. And the widening gaps between the “haves”and the “have nots” are not simply morally questionable—they also lead to greater violence and instability and further economic stagnation. As President Barack Obama cautioned the world in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo, Norway,“Security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.”
As we slowly recover from the worst economic downturn in nearly a century, we would be wise not to ignore the spectacular opportunities to create jobs and profits and to spur more rapid economic growth by giving birth to dozens of Henry Ford sized new markets that serve 90 percent of the world’s customers. By investing in income-generating enterprises that provide access to basic human needs, we are investing not only in prosperity but also in education, health, and greater global security.
The strategies to get there are surprisingly simple. We need to start by recognizing the enormous market opportunity to create products and services that 90 percent of the world will pay for instead of limiting ourselves to 10 percent of the world’s customers. We need to start treating the poorest of the poor as customers, not as charity cases. We need to listen to those customers to understand their biggest, most pressing needs and build simple, affordable solutions; ones that can be easily maintained and which create profitable businesses for local entrepreneurs. And we need to do so by relying on business models that offer attractive profits to companies and commercial rates of return to investors. Most importantly, we need to galvanize and embrace the self-interest and enterprising spirit inherent in all of us—companies, investors, and poor people.
The most effective way to reach the world’s poorest people and to give them the chance to generate wealth and lift themselves out of poverty is to energize market forces, those same forces that have fueled enormous wealth creation in developed nations for generations.
The time to begin is now.
– Paul Polak, Peggy Reid, and Amy Schefer
IDE’s “Invisible Hand” a Success
Chuck Plunkett of the Denver Post writes in the Paper’s 20 Dec 09 edition…
“Without doubt, it has been a bad year for capitalism.
In the smoldering ashes of last fall’s Wall Street meltdown, the free-market system that has been as much a part of America’s foundation as our concept of democracy itself has looked to large segments of the population like a perpetual 1928-era crash waiting to happen.
Those who seek to enrich themselves are seen as greedy and destructive.
Government assistance is the new cool.
But in this holiday season, when many Americans are adding charitable organizations to their gift lists, a newly strengthening movement aimed at reducing world poverty ought to challenge the doubters and the haters.”
IDE is the key originator of that movement, and Plunkett judges our method a success amid the gloom.
