THE STORY OF SOCIAL INNOVATION

INTERVIEWS WITH SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

An Online Project
www.roystonproductions.com/innovation/

First published in the “Social Innovation” column

in The Stanford Daily, Volume 227
January 2005 – June 2005

Interviews and Articles by

Lija McHugh and Adam R. Stone
 THE STORY OF SOCIAL INNOVATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: INTERVIEWS

I. A Job is Just the Beginning

An Interview with Elliott Brown, Founder of Springboard Forward .......................................................................... 3

II. The Power of New Ideas

A Guest Column by David Bornstein, Author of How To Change the World ........................................................... 5

III. Finding the Next Social Entrepreneur

An Interview with Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka .................................................................................................. 8

IV. Counting the Invisible People of Brazil

An Interview with Melanie Edwards of MobileMedia .............................................................................................. 13

V. Is Compassionate Capitalism the Cure

An Interview with Daivd Green, Founder of Project Impact ................................................................................... 16

VI. Making Globalization Work for the Poor

An Interview with Paul Rice, Founder of TransFair USA ....................................................................................... 19

VII. WITNESSing Human Rights

An Interview with Gillian Caldwell, Director of WITNESS ...................................................................................... 22

VIII. From Stanford Engineering to Social Innovation

An Interview with Martin Fsicher, Founder of ApproTEC ....................................................................................... 25

PART 2: ARTICLES

I. New Ideas for Social Change

An Introduction to Social Innovation ...................................................................................................................... 28

II. An Education with a Mission

Social Innovation at Stanford ................................................................................................................................. 30

III. Good Intentions and Good Results

Looking Beyond the Nonprofit / For-Profit Divide .................................................................................................. 32

IV. Injustice, Action, and social Change

Our Three Favorite NGOs ..................................................................................................................................... 34

V. The End of Social Innovation

A Retrospective on Social Innovation .................................................................................................................... 37

All interviews and articles by Lija McHugh and Adam R. Stone.

© 2005 by The Stanford Daily

A Royston Productions Project

www.roystonproductions.com

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PART 1: INTERVIEWS

I. A Job is Just the Beginning

An Interview with Elliott Brown, Founder of Springboard Forward

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 1/11/2005

This week, we interview Elliott Brown, Class of ’89, and founder of Springboard Forward, a non-profit career development
organization. Springboard Forward provides skills development and job coaching for low-wage workers. Based in
Mountain View, Springboard works with employers to provide their low-wage employees with the skills and confidence to
advance their careers.

Elliott Brown won an Ashoka Fellowship in 2004, a prestigious award for top social entrepreneurs and a “Social Capitalist
Award” in the Jan. 2005 issue of Fast Company.

The Daily: Springboard Forward takes a unique approach to helping the economically disadvantaged. What is the
idea behind its model?

Elliott Brown: If you look at the system of services and opportunities available for people in low-income communities, it is
obvious that this system is broken.

There are services to help people who are unemployed and poor to find jobs. But there is another 50 percent who are
employed and poor, and there is almost nothing available in terms of services and opportunities for that group of people.

If you don’t focus on what is next for these employees, all you’re doing is moving people from being unemployed and poor
to working and poor. It creates a lack of hope. Springboard aims to change that feeling of hopelessness through skill
development and job coaching.

The Daily: Springboard is hired by employers to work with their employees. What does Springboard offer the
businesses it works with?

Elliott Brown: When you translate the problem of hopelessness to the business side, that lack of hope creates a
workforce that lacks engagement creating high turnover, low retention, and poor customer service. If people don’t want to
be there, it’s going to show.

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What we’re trying to do is put the two together. We help low-wage workers get that light bulb to go on that says, “Wow, I
can do a lot more than I thought I could do.” We then help them realize what it is that they really want to do now that they
realize that they can do more. On the corporate side, companies are paying for us to do this for their employees because
they get a better workforce.

I was talking with someone a couple days ago, and he said, “So you run a business of hope.” I think that is the core of
what we’re trying to do.

The Daily: You’ve mentioned before that particular classes at Stanford had a large impact on the work you do
now. What were the most influential classes you took while at Stanford?

Elliott Brown: Two of the most influential classes I took were taught by Professor Albert Bandura in psychology. His
theory of “self-efficacy” just blew me away. He focuses on how behavior gets reinforced by current experiences, rather
than just past experiences.

He also introduced me to Delancey Street, one of the best examples of social entrepreneurship around. Delancey Street
used his theory of self-efficacy to create a self-sustaining community for ex-convicts and recovering addicts. I heard about
that when I was your age, and I decided that’s what I want to do.

The Daily: You’ve won several awards as a result of your work. Why do you think the social entrepreneurship
movement has become so popular?

Elliott Brown: What I think is exciting about the movement is that people can come to it from two different sides. If your
goal in life is to make the world a better place, there is no more exciting place to be than the social entrepreneurship
movement. The movement involves the brightest people and the biggest ideas. Winning the Ashoka Fellowship was a
validation from the social entrepreneurship side.

From the other side, there are people who mainly do business, but also want to do more to make the world better.
Winning the Fast Company award was a validation on the business side. It’s business entrepreneurs that read the
magazine. They will say, “These people are changing the world using the free-market system. I like that, and I want to be
a part of that. How can I help?”

The Daily: Students are often interested in getting involved in non-profits but don’t know how. How can students
help Springboard Forward?

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Elliott Brown: I think there are a lot of ways. We need someone to manage our Web site, and a lot of students now have
that capability. I think that the opportunity is there if people have skills that they want to bring, as well as an interest in
watching the progress of an organization.

I am always open to talking to students and answering questions. There is a lot of opportunity, and we have a lot of stuff
to do.

For more information on Elliott Brown and Springboard Forward, go to: www.springboardforward.org

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II. The Power of New Ideas

A Guest Column by David Bornstein, Author of How to Change the World

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 1/18/2005

David Bornstein is the award-winning author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and The Power of New
Ideas, and The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank. His articles have appeared in both national and
international news media.

A few nights ago, I made the mistake of turning on the TV news. As promised, in twenty-two minutes I was “given the
world” – that is, a world dominated by partisan politics, terrorism and war. I turned off the TV and resolved to stay away.

It’s not that I can’t handle bad news. When I turn on the TV news, I’m hoping to gain a better understanding of the world in
all its ugliness and beauty. The problem is that the image of the “world” that gets beamed into my home is like a badly
doctored photograph: like an image of a forest in which most of the trees have been edited out. The desolate landscape
left behind, I’m informed, is “reality.” To me, this impoverished depiction of the world – omitting vast stretches of human
activity – is worse than useless; it is deadening.

But there is a hidden world out there that is very exciting. I have spent the past five years traveling around the globe,
getting a glimpse of this world through the eyes of a hundred “social entrepreneurs” who are successfully advancing large-
scale social changes in their societies. There is a great deal that is powerful and “newsworthy” that we do not hear about.

In India, for example, a child-protection network called Childline, founded by a social worker, has provided emergency
assistance to hundreds of thousands of street children and spread to 55 cities. In South Africa, an organization called
Tateni Home Care Services, founded by a nurse, has trained thousands of unemployed youth as home-care attendants –
advancing a simple model for delivering compassionate care to people with AIDS and orphaned children across the
country. In Hungary, an organization called the Alliance Industrial Union, founded by the mother of a disabled child, has
launched a network of 21 assisted living and working centers for people with severe disabilities. In the United States, a
Washington, D.C.-based organization called College Summit, founded by a former divinity student, has helped thousands
of low-income students enroll in college (with an 80 percent retention rate), and is now working with the public schools in
several cities to rebuild their college guidance systems.

Each of these organizations was founded by an ordinary citizen; each was built up largely over the past eight years; and
each represents a fundamentally new approach, a new model, for solving a particular social problem in a given context. In
fact, judging from the millions of new organizations founded in recent years by citizens around the world seeking to

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address social problems, there are vastly more social entrepreneurs out there than terrorists; and their impact is both
wider and deeper. But we rarely hear about their work. What I have seen watching the social entrepreneurs for five years,
I don’t think I would have seen if I had watched the TV news, or read the newspapers every day, for fifty.

As with any new field, there is considerable debate about what constitutes “social entrepreneurship.” While some people
hold that a social entrepreneur is someone who uses “business skills” to achieve “social ends,” others hold that a social
entrepreneur is someone who runs a nonprofit organization that “generates revenues” to support its “mission.” Still, others
argue that social entrepreneurs create businesses that pursue “double- or “triple-bottom line” returns. While each of these
characterizations illustrates something that a social entrepreneur may do, none captures the essence of what a social
entrepreneur is – because social entrepreneurs are not defined by their strategies, tools or skills, but by their vision,
motivation and ethics.

Social entrepreneurs serve the same functions vis-à-vis social change as business entrepreneurs do vis-à-vis economic
change: they seize opportunities, gather resources, build organizations, overcome resistance; and, through a multi-
decade process of marketing and continual adjustment, they gradually change patterns in their industries and open up
new opportunities for others.

From a global perspective, the emergence of the field of social entrepreneurship represents a fundamental reorganization
of society – and therefore presents widespread opportunities for everyone. What has happened is that the sector of
society concerned with “social value” – a sector that for centuries has been run much like a “command economy” – is
beginning to resemble a market economy, comprised of many young, decentralized, flexible institutions created by
entrepreneurs. The result is a kind of “creative chaos” with countless self-motivated citizens attacking problems in new
ways, learning how to connect with one another, and with businesses and governments.

The personal side to this story is that, everywhere, people share similar desires: they love to build things; they enjoy
working with inspiring colleagues; they seek to use their talents in ways that bring security and recognition; they want to
have some fun and feel that their work is meaningful. Of course, not everyone would want to be a social entrepreneur, just
as not everyone wants to start a business. But today everyone has the option to work in this field. Because it is growing so
fast and in so many directions, the opportunities are wide open for people with diverse interests and skills. So if you
happen to be someone who would like to combine what you are good at, what you enjoy doing and what you care about –
and get to do it every day – that’s news worth watching.

More information about David Bornstein and social entrepreneurship is available at: www.howtochangetheworld.org.

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III. Finding the Next Social Entrepreneur

An Interview with Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka

First published in The Stanford Daily, 2/8/2005

Bill Drayton is probably the best-known name in social entrepreneurship. He has a vision and an organization that is
shaping the future of the “citizen sector” and social entrepreneurship.

Drayton founded Ashoka to find, fund, and support the world’s leading social innovators. From child-abuse hotlines in
India, to care for AIDS patients in South Africa, Ashoka has helped fund important social organizations around the world.

With Tony Wang from Solutions Magazine, we interviewed Drayton about Ashoka, social entrepreneurship, and how
students can get involved.

Bill Drayton: Before we begin, I’d like to make a small editorial suggestion. If you were to never use the words “nonprofit”
or “non-government,” that would be a great contribution. You just cannot define the sector that is half the world’s
operations by it not being something else. It is not helpful.

We suggest using the words “citizen sector” and “citizen organizations,” because citizens are the key driving elements.
Also, the more the citizen sector grows, the more people can actually be citizens. It is an empowering movement.

The Daily: Ashoka finds the most extraordinary social entrepreneurs, nationally and internationally, and then
gives them funding and assistance to pursue their projects. The best social entrepreneurs have taken innovative
ideas and turned the ideas into effective organizations in their communities. How did you come up with the idea
for Ashoka?

Drayton: It’s embarrassingly logical. What is the most powerful lever you can imagine? A big idea, but only if it is in the
hands of really outstanding entrepreneurs—you need both. The third element you need is the institution. It starts with the
person and the idea, and then grows to the institution. All three are intertwined.

What Ashoka tries to do is help launch the best ideas, entrepreneurs, and institutions we can find anywhere in the world.
We have to believe that the combination of the idea and person is, more likely than not, going to change the pattern in that
field—health, environment, human rights, whatever—at least on the continental scale. That’s an unusual idea and person,
but they certainly exist. They are actually very easy to identify once you know what you are looking for. And there’s just
nothing more powerful.

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The Daily: Among other things, Ashoka helps promote innovation in the “citizen sector.” When you began
Ashoka, did you feel as if there was a lack of innovation in citizen organizations?

Drayton: What we felt when we began Ashoka was that the wave of innovation was just beginning.

In the past, of course, there were outstanding individual social entrepreneurs, such as Florence Nightingale, Maria
Montessori, the anti-slavery leagues, and etc. But around 1980, we could see a wave of social entrepreneurs coming up,
and the citizen sector as a whole was making the move to becoming entrepreneurial and competitive.

We could see, in Asia and elsewhere, a new generation of people who were in their thirties, by and large, who were not
the independence generation. Rather, they were the children of the independence generation who saw that the
government could do better. We could just see that coming.

Although Ashoka was an idea that was actually created when I was an undergraduate, the right moment to begin the
project was around 1980. It’s extraordinary that the ensuing two and a half decades has been the transformation of the
Southern half of the world. That was the moment when ideas and people were taking off.

The Daily: Where do you see the future of social entrepreneurship going?

Drayton: Well, we have now reached a moment where there are, in four areas of the world, at least several million citizen
groups: modern, entrepreneurial, competitive citizen groups. We have second and third generation sophisticated citizen
groups, big ones in many cases. We also have a level of competition that is intense – there are a million citizen groups in
Brazil, more than a million 501(c)(3)’s in the US. In any metro area, in any sector, there is competition. This is a
remarkable moment, when the field has reached maturity in some sense, but is still very plastic.

I think the next five years we are going to see the social entrepreneurship field crystallize, and the only question is how
smart is that crystallization going to be. Are we going to crystallize as a globally-integrated field? The problems we face
are increasingly global. Even in implementation, if you don’t have economies of scale, certainly in thinking the problems
through and working together, there are huge economies of scale.

We think it is very important for this field to be the first one that is operationally integrated globally. All the legal structures,
national jealousies, and other things are cutting against us. It is an important job to get that one right.

Second, it was an accident that the two halves of society’s operations split. Business became entrepreneurial and
competitive three centuries ago, and the citizen sector didn’t. But now we have the same architecture, and we are closing

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the productivity gap. (My guess is we’re cutting it in half every 10-12 years.) So now the potential for reintegration is
there—and that’s a huge productivity deal for the citizen sector, for business, and for the ultimate consumer as your client.

Are we going to integrate? Or are we going to continue inertially on the path to division? Again, the results are not at all
clear.

The Daily: What kind of integration are you envisioning? Do you think civil organizations should focus mainly on
international integration?

Drayton: No, at all levels. As you can probably deduce, I think we should move towards reintegration between businesses
and civil organizations as fast as possible. We actually have fourteen business-social bridge programs.

What is happening there is not only that everyone wins, but that the competitive dynamic is going to change, which we will
fan by making this as visible as possible. It is going to make not only business competitors but also citizen organization
competitors say, “We want one of those.” As a result you have business and society not talking to one another because its
“nice,” but because they both really want it. And that’s when people really learn.

The Daily: Why do you think the next five years, in particular, will be critical for the citizen sector development?
What development do you hope to see in that time?

Drayton: Why five years? Because we’ve now reached a certain level: there are so many groups, and so many things
going on, that we simply need understandable patterns of behavior. Institutions are going to evolve to support whatever
patterns emerge.

I think right now we have one of the rare instances where we can really impact the long-term architecture of half of
society—for generations going forward. Once this architecture crystallizes, we will have thousands of cross-cutting
synergies. We will, in effect, have an organism. And then it will be very hard to change any single piece, because it will be
connected to 15 other pieces, and none of them want to change. So for the immediate five years, that is the challenge.

Our ultimate goal is to make ‘everyone a changemaker.’ This is sort of Ashoka’s private articulation to ourselves of what
we are about, and this is something that we’ve only really been able to articulate well in the last year or so.

Every leading social entrepreneur is a role model. If Florence Nightingale, the lady with the lamp, can do this, then I can
do this. If Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank can market something to the world, well I can market this idea to the
world.

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I think there is an even more important process that goes on. Take any local community: when a major pattern-change
entrepreneur comes up with an idea and markets it successfully, what happens at the local level?

First, the existing arrangements get challenged, and will probably have to change. The sentiment that “things don’t
change” is weakened. That is like plowing the field. The other part is the entrepreneur’s idea, which he/she is trying to
make as user-friendly as possible since his/her goal is to get as many people to take it and run with it as possible. The
entrepreneur, in effect, provides seeds.

The result is that in community after community, each entrepreneur is encouraging someone, or several people, to
become local changemakers. They in turn become role models for their family and neighbors and so on. The more of
them there are, the more the institutions become user-friendly, and the easier it is for the next generation of social
entrepreneurs.

As our field has grown, and wired itself together, not only is their an increase in the number of social entrepreneurs, but in
the amount of major pattern change as well. The social entrepreneurs are wired together, and suddenly ideas from
Bangladesh travel to Brazil and upset local communities. So the rate of plowing and seeding has just been accelerated
exponentially. And that leads to everyone being a ‘changemaker.’ Instead of people being objects, people become actors.

The Daily: Many students, if not most, want to be ‘changemakers’ in society, in one way or another. But it’s not
clear how to get involved, since there’s no career path for “social entrepreneurs.” How can students become
changemakers?

Drayton: The fact that it’s not clear is both a problem and a huge opportunity. If you go into law, there is way oversupply
relative to demand. In this area, it is the other way around. This is by far the fastest growing sector, this is where you’ll
have a big impact, and this is where the energy in society is and will be for a long time. This is where the real
opportunities are to make a mark, because there is so much catching up to do. There are no glass ceilings if you start
your own thing. If you go to a dinner party now, people are much more interested if you say you are a social entrepreneur
than an investment banker.

Furthermore, salaries relative to business have stabilized and are beginning to gain ground. So those students that are
early in seeing it will gain a huge market advantage.
Second, now we’re so big that we need every type of student, not just entrepreneurs. We need professionals, we need
managers, we need graphic artists, etc.

The Daily: Even if there are many opportunities, it’s not easy to find them. It’s obvious where to look for a job in
investment banking—but where do you look for a job being a social entrepreneur?

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Drayton: If there are 1.1 million 501(c)(3)’s in the US at the moment, surely you can find one with a job opening.

The biggest barrier that anyone at any age has is the “stuffed shirt syndrome.” Everyone tells you “you can’t.” For anything
that is new, that is what they are going to say.

The psychology is perfectly obvious: they didn’t, and therefore they don’t want you to. It’s going to make them feel bad; it’s
a missed opportunity. So what do you think a law partner, who has spent thirty years sitting around in a law firm being
bored to death, is going to say when you say you are going to do something exciting? There is going to be a little twinge in
his heart, and he will puff up and say, “No you can’t do it. That’s unwise, young man.”

The biggest problem is getting beyond the “you can’t” syndrome. The moment you figure that out, anyone who cannot see
problems around himself is completely and utterly blind. Any problem is sitting there as an invitation for you to use your
God-given creativity and all the things you have learned in school to solve that problem. Of course you can do it. There is
nothing brilliant about these things.

It’s just giving yourself permission and then being persistent. Persistent in seeing the problem or opportunity, and
persistent in thinking about it until you have come up with some interesting ideas that might change the pattern. Then you
have to be persistent and keep refining them.

It’s not about having an idea and then implementing it—that is one of those wild academic monstrosities. It is an everyday
process for years: the world is changing, the idea is moving into different stages, and you are learning more. So of course
the idea has to change! It’s a constant iterative, creative process. All you have to do is have confidence that when a
problem comes, of course you can solve it.

It's really a mindset, not anything in the objective world, that is the problem. It is all the stuffed shirts and the whole pattern
of how youth is lived, even in our society. The adults are in charge of everything. They plan the extracurriculars, the
sports, the work, and you are told all the time that you are sort of incompetent. Don’t bother us, don’t take initiative.

There’s a small percentage of elite that do take the initiative, and who become the so-called natural leaders. But it should
be 50-60%, not 2% or 3%. It’s the stuffed shirt syndrome, and how we treat young people—those two things are the
biggest barriers.

At the risk of stealing some sneaker company’s slogan, you have to “just do it.” And you learn through the process. You
learn a lot. You help people open windows, and the next time you do it it’ll be easier.

For more information about Bill Drayton and Ashoka, go to: www.ashoka.com.

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IV. Counting the 'Invisible' People of Brazil

An Interview with Melanie Edwards, Founder of MobileMedia

First published in The Stanford Daily, 2/22/2005

How can technology transform international development? How can new technologies promote social change?

This week we interview the founder of MobileMedia, an organization that combines PDA’s with Brazilian youth to surveys
the “invisible people” of Brazil.

Melanie Edwards is the founder and executive director of MobileMedia, lecturer in Public Policy, and Reuters Digital
Vision Fellow at Stanford.

The Daily: What are “invisible people”?

Melanie Edwards: You and I are all registered through social security, or birth certificates. But about 1 billion around the
world are not officially recorded as existing or registered anywhere. We have invisible people in the United States,
especially in the case of homeless. But in Brazil, it’s about 12% of the population. Twenty million people fall into this
invisible category.

The Daily: Why try to survey the invisible people?

Melanie Edwards: Governments, corporations, and nonprofits all want to serve the under-served, but they really don’t
know who they are. How can you serve a population when you don’t know who they are?

“Invisible people” don’t have access to the basics that you and I would. They don’t have access to education, microcredit,
or land titles.

The Daily: How does MobileMedia survey them?

Melanie Edwards: We hire and train local youth, our “mobile agents.” We teach them survey techniques and how to use
a PDA. Then they’re sent into the field to collect data and information on the “invisible” community, from income to health,
education and housing needs.

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This gives the community more of a voice. It also gets the mobile agents, some of whom are former drug traffickers,
closer to their community. As our local partner told the agents: “You guys are giving every person whose house you are
walking into a voice in the world about who they are and what their needs are.”

The Daily: Why hire Brazilian youth? How do you get them to work for you?

Melanie Edwards: They get paid over double minimum wage, since we want to make this a profession and create real
positive role models. We also did some research on what the drug traffickers make, because it’s a major business there.

We want to show people in the community that there’s a future with technology, and that there are options out there
besides drug trafficking. We want to show that there is so much potential for growth in the community itself.

The Daily: What will happen with the data once you’ve collected it?

Melanie Edwards: We want to use this data as an advocacy on behalf of them. We’re in the process of forming a contract
with the Brazilian government. The government will use the data to increase access to existing services and to formulate
new services for these invisible communities that are now becoming visible.

The Daily: Why start MobileMedia? Why leave the private sector...?

Melanie Edwards: I’ve worked in both the private and public sectors, living the extremes from Wall Street to West Africa. I
studied psychology in college and then went on to be a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. When I came back to the
U.S., I studied International Relations. Then I went into investment banking with JP Morgan.

But I always had this nagging feeling of wanting to get back into the field. To do something in development, to make an
impact. Investment banking provided great professional training, and it led to social entrepreneurship. I realized that we
can use business knowledge and skills to really make an impact.

The Daily: ...And why work in social innovation? Why not something traditional?

Melanie Edwards: After working in the technology sector, I started Global Technology Corps, which is like a digital peace
corps. During the Kosovo crisis, Al Gore came to us and asked if we could get Internet access to the refugee camps.

That was my first experience seeing the power of the internet and technology in a crisis situation. That’s when I realized:
this is what I have to do. Technology in developing countries is where the high impact is.

The Daily: I’m a Stanford student and I’m sold. How do I get involved?

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Melanie Edwards: First, there’s the social entrepreneurship course series in Public Policy. That is a great way to first
understand what social entrepreneurship is: measuring social impact and making organizations sustainable through
revenue generation.

Second, there are social start-ups all around Stanford that students can get involved in. The MobileMedia project, for
instance, is a product of Stanford, organic from The Farm. Students were involved with the incubation and evolution of the
idea from day one.

For more information on MobileMedia, check out: mobilemedia.stanford.edu.

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V. Is Compassionate Capitalism the Cure?

An Interview with David Green, Founder of Project Impact

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 4/5/2005

David Green is a leader in social innovation and international health. His innovations in technology and distribution have
helped make healthcare accessible and affordable in developing countries.

He is the founder and executive director of Project Impact, based in Berkeley. He has been awarded both a MacArthur
Fellowship and an Ashoka Fellowship.

The Daily: You’ve helped prevent disabilities across the developing world. How did you do it?

David Green: There are basically two ideas behind what I’ve done. The first ideas is that it is possible to make healthcare
both self-sustaining and still orientated towards providing for the the poor. You can do this with a multi-tiered pricing
system—where free is the lowest price.

The second big idea is that you can reduce the price of key medical products.

The Daily: How do you reduce the cost of medical products?

David Green: Consider the case of intraocular lenses. In the 1970’s in America, using intraocular lenses became the
procedure of choice for cataract surgery. I was getting lots of intraocular lenses donated, since cataracts are the main
cause of blindness in the world.

When the donation of lenses started drying up, we started looking to making interlocutor lenses. That’s when we set up
Aurolab in south India.

The Daily: You created Aurolab to design cheap lenses for surgery. Was it successful?

David Green: Aurolab’s first product was intraocular lenses. It now sells over 600,000 lenses a year to over 80 countries.
It meets the same regulatory requirements as other companies do in order to sell in Europe.

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When we started, the lenses sold for $300 in developed country markets, and over $100 in markets in India. Now, our
price is around $4. We have been able to bring down the price of key technology and make them available to non-profit
programs. In turn, this helps those programs become sustainable.

Since then, we have done the same for producing suture and hearing aides.

The Daily: You promote a “sliding-scale” of payment for medical services. How can that be sustainable?

David Green: A lot of my earlier work I did in conjunction with Aravind Eye Hospital in India. It is one of the largest eye
care programs in the world.

Aravind Eye Hospital has a model where 47% of patients pay nothing, 10% pay two-thirds cost, and 35% pay well above
cost. That model allows it to be self-sustaining. For every dollar they spend, they make about a $1.60. They do over
220,000 surgeries a year.

With multi-tiered pricing, you can offer first-rate quality to rich and poor alike, rather than offer third-rate quality to people.

The Daily: You design, produce, and distribute medical devices—just like any other company. What’s different
about your approach?

David Green: We have consciously chosen to maximize distribution—while still remaining sustainable.

That’s quite different from how most corporations exist. Most corporations have an ethical responsibility to provide a return
on investment to shareholders.

In the case of Aurolabs, we have no shareholders. Our shareholders are the communities and the people that benefit from
our work. It’s a different business model.

The Daily: Obviously, there’s a lot of need at the “bottom of the pyramid.” Why aren’t multinationals serving
those people better?

David Green: Multinational corporations usually are not convinced that developing markets are viable for them to go into.
Usually, multinationals perceive such markets as costing too much to develop, and having too low of margins.

We consciously decided that if we can’t convince companies to lower their prices and still make margins, then we would
instead try to gain control of technology, production, distribution, and pricing to better serve the poor.

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For me, the question is this: how can we transform corporate behavior so that corporations use more of their core
competencies and assets to help the world? How do you make important products more affordable to those that need
them?

The Daily: You promote “compassionate capitalism.” How do you become a compassionate capitalist?

David Green: There are two ways you can pursue compassionate capitalism. First, you can do what we have done and
develop a fresh approach. That is really hard. You have to be willing to take risks, and you have to be ready for failure.
Most ventures like mine fail.

Second, you can be a force for change in the corporate environment in which you find yourself. This route is probably
equally hard. Most corporations in the industries I work in have similar cost structures to mine, and have a lot more
wherewithal.

Stanford students, as they move into the corporate world, have the intelligence and wherewithal to bring about that level
of transformation in their corporations.

The Daily: Okay, I want to be a compassionate capitalist. What do I need to know?

David Green: If you’re going to do something different, wake up every morning embracing the possibility of failure—while
still acting. You have to keep acting, even when the fear factor sets in and you think you’re going to fail. You have to find a
way to keep acting in spite of the fears and anxiety that accompany this type of work.

If you’re interested in learning more about David Green and Project Impact, see www.project-impact.net.

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VI. Making Globalization Work for the Poor

An Interview with Paul Rice, founder TransFair USA

First published in The Stanford Daily, 4/19/2005

Have you ever seen a “Fair Trade Certified” logo on a bag of coffee? If you have, then you already know the work of this
week’s social entrepreneur, Paul Rice.

In 1998, Paul Rice founded TransFair, the only independent certifier and promoter of Fair Trade products in the US. He
has been awarded an Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship for his work on the behalf of farmers in the
developing world.

The Daily: You founded TransFair in 1998 to certify and promote Fair Trade products. What is the big idea behind
Fair Trade?

Paul Rice: Right now, everyone from activist organizations to the World Bank itself is showing us data that globalization
has lead to a dramatic rise in trade and increased wealth.

But the questions is, who is getting that wealth? There are still 3 billion people that are surviving on $2 a day.
Globalization is not solving that problem. Some people even believe that it’s worsening that problem.

The big idea behind fair trade is that you can actually make globalization work for the poor. We help communities that are
currently victims of the market to become competitive, profitable players in the market.

The Daily: In order to get Fair Trade certification, companies must show that farmers have been paid a fair price,
among other things. Doesn’t this raise the cost for consumers?

Paul Rice: Fair trade does cost companies who are getting certified. From a business perspective, the only way Fair
Trade will work is if they can pass that extra cost onto the consumer. At the end of the day, fair trade will live or die by the
consumer.

Consumers in this country are like a sleeping giant. They are not indifferent to world poverty—they just don’t know about it
or what to do to change things.

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Fair trade is not a boycott. Its more like a buy-cott. Let’s buy from companies who are trying to do the right thing. Let’s buy
from companies who have been independently audited and certified to guarantee that their product comes from farmers
who got a fair price.

The Daily: Fair Trade requires not only labor standards, but also environmental standards. What does Fair Trade
do for the environment?

Paul Rice: Fair trade products are typically certified organic. We have very strong environmental stewardship criteria
within the fair trade standard.

If you want to get certified, you cannot cut down your forest. We require conservation and reforestation. Farmers also
have to protect their soils and streams, as well as monitor how chemicals are used, worker safety and health, and pest
management.

Fair trade and the environmentalist movement go hand in hand. You cannot save the trees unless you help the people
under the trees find another option.

The Daily: You graduated from college in 1983. How did you go from there to founding TransFair in 1998?

Paul Rice: I studied economics and political science as an undergraduate, and was really interested in poverty and
underdevelopment. Two months out of college, I went to Nicaragua to stay for a year and get some hands-on experience
in international development.

I ended up staying for eleven years. During those years, I worked on several different development projects, survived the
war, and lost a lot of friends in the war. And this became my life.

After four years of working on fair trade in Nicaragua, I decided that the most important thing I could do with my life was to
come back to the states and put Fair Trade on the map.

I went to get an MBA at Berkeley, and wrote the business plan for TransFair while I was there. I spent a few years raising
the money, then launched it in 1998.

The Daily: Lots of students want to make the world a better place. What advice do you have for them?

Paul Rice: Go live your dream. Don’t let student loans stop you, and don’t take “no” for an answer. Use your youth and
the relative freedom of that to explore.

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For those of us who dream of a more sustainable world, we should explore the possibility that business and markets
aren’t the enemies.

In our era, the challenge is to find ways to make business work for the poor—not to just opt out. Our challenge is to figure
out how the system works, and find a way to enrich the lives of the poor, develop those communities, and make it all work.

If you would like to learn more about TransFair, as well as their internship program, check out www.transfairusa.org.

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VII. WITNESSing Human Rights

An Interview with Gillian Caldwell, Executive Director of WITNESS

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 5/17/2005

“See it. Film it. Change it.” This is the catchphrase of WITNESS, a human rights organization founded in 1992 by the
musician Peter Gabriel. WITNESS helps front-line human rights organizations use video and other media in their
advocacy work.

Our social innovator this week is the Executive Director of WITNESS, Gillian Caldwell, a lawyer and film maker.

The Daily: What’s the “big idea” behind WITNESS?

Gillian Caldwell: WITNESS is the first and only organization at a global level to provide video cameras to human rights
organizations. We also give them technical and tactical guidance to use video to create change.

The Daily: Why do human rights organizations need cameras? What need does WITNESS help fill?

Gillian Caldwell: I think the biggest problem in human rights advocacy is that small, under-resourced human rights
organizations are having difficulty getting traction around the problems they face. WITNESS helps them make effective
use of media in their advocacy work.

Bigger human rights organizations based in the West are getting more and more savvy in terms of integrating media into
their campaign, and they should.

What worries me is what happens to the smaller, less well-funded organizations operating under repressive
circumstances a long way from here. Those organizations are really the front-lines against the kind of oppression and
abuse that we see happening around the world.

The Daily: Once an organizations collects footage of human rights abuses, how is it used to create change?

Gillian Caldwell: Sometimes it’s used for grass-roots education and mobilization. Sometimes it’s used for evidentiary
submission for a court or tribunal. Sometimes it’s to work with the media. And sometimes it’s for a screening before a key
decision-maker with the power to make a difference.

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What is consistent in every campaign is that we have online calls to action each month, with new video broadcasts at our
website (www.witness.org). One of the way that students and others can get involved in our work is to go online and sign
up for a free membership. It’s a very simple way to get alerted and to commit to taking action on a variety of issues around
the world.

The Daily: WITNESS is involved in a number of different human rights campaigns. What campaign are you most
proud of?

Gillian Caldwell: Our project on the California Youth Authority is one we have high hopes for, and that is very pertinent to
California.

We are working with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on a project called “Books Not Bars.” It is an effort to push
for a complete overhaul the California Youth Authority. We’re trying to close the biggest penal juvenile facilities in the
state, and to replace them with the community-based model along the lines of Missouri’s model.

The Daily: You created a film called “System Failure” for the California Youth Authority campaign. What kind of
video footage did you collect?

Gillian Caldwell: The footage came from interviews with former wards and their parents. We also collected film from the
California Youth Authority itself. It included surveillance footage of CYA prison guards beating an unarmed ward with
twenty eight separate punches.

An eight minute version of the “System Failure” film is online at our homepage.

The Daily: Before joining WITNESS, you spent to two years with the Global Survival Network. What draws you to
work on the issue of human rights?

Gillian Caldwell: I’ve been doing social justice as long as I can remember. I began actively when I was twelve, when I
was coordinating my high school Amnesty chapter.

It never occurred to me to work in a private law firm. When I went to law school, my intention was to get the credibility and
the degree I would need to be able to do systems-changing work at a policy level.

The Daily: What advice do you have for students interested in getting involved?

Gillian Caldwell: I think the best advice may unfortunately be too late for anybody enrolled at Stanford. One of the things
that you need to pay the most attention to is what kind of debt you are accumulating.

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If you don’t face the financial pressures of a student loan, my real plea to students is to get creative and get energetic.
There are so many organizations that are fascinating places to work and to develop a skill set, but may just take a little bit
more energy to identify.

The bottom line is that every individual has the capacity to make a difference. That is the belief WITNESS is built on and
is organized around. We make it possible for people who care to make a difference.

If you’re interested in WITNESS, visit their website www.witness.org for information about their internship program and
their online calls to action.

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VIII. From Stanford Engineering to Social Innovation

An Interview with Martin Fischer, Founder of ApproTEC

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 5/17/2005

Can a water pump help alleviate poverty? Our social innovator of the week, Martin Fisher, has spent the last fifteen years
showing the world that it can.

In 1991, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon founded ApproTEC, a non-profit organization that develops technologies for
alleviating poverty. Over 36,000 farmers in Kenya have now used their low-cost water pumps to create their own small
businesses.

Before founding ApproTEC, Martin Fisher earned his PhD in engineering from Stanford.

The Daily: What’s the big idea behind ApproTEC?

Martin Fischer: ApproTEC is all about enabling poor people to make enough money to actually escape poverty. We do
this by developing and mass marketing very low-cost capital equipment that people can buy and use to start profitable
businesses.

The Daily: Your most popular products are water pumps. How can they alleviate poverty?

Martin Fischer: We work in Africa, where 80% of poor people are farmers. These farmers have one asset, a small plot of
land, and one basic skill, farming. The best business opportunity for them is to move from subsistence farming into
farming cash crops.

Our manual irrigation pumps enable farmers to do exactly that. On average, when a farmer uses our pumps, he increases
his income from $110 per year to over $1100 per year. In Africa, that brings him from below the poverty line into the
middle class.

The Daily: Why help the poor start private businesses? Why not provide direct aid?

Martin Fischer: Our mission is to enable millions of families to escape from poverty. When we’re talking about poverty
we’re talking about a lack of a way to make money.

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We define poverty in a way that is very different from how people traditionally would. Traditionally, people talk about
poverty as lack of clean water, lack of healthcare, lack of schooling, and etc.

But the bottom line is that nearly everyone in the world lives in a cash economy. If you have a way to make money, then
you can afford all those other things.

The Daily: You’re critical of much of international development work. What’s the problem?

Martin Fischer: One thing about development is that there seems to be a very short institutional memory. We really need
to go back and learn the lessons of the past, because I see the same mistakes made again.

Right now, we are back to thinking we can fly into a village and bring some piece of equipment, make it community
owned, and make a difference. That just won’t work.

Development is generally all about giving things away to communities and doing social engineering. We’ve realized it’s
much better to sell things to individual people, using the existing private sector.

The Daily: How do you use the private sector in your own work?

Martin Fischer: In our supply chain, everybody makes money. We have big manufacturers who mass produce the pump
equipment. We have wholesalers who make money selling it. We have 250 retail shops, in every little village, town, and
city in Kenya. They all make money.

It’s a completely sustainable supply chain. When we walk away from it, people will be able to go back and get spare parts,
and get new equipment.

The Daily: You received a PhD in engineering from Stanford. How did you end up as a social entrepreneur?

Martin Fischer: After earning my doctorate, I went down to Peru on a vacation. That was my first experience being face
to face with real poverty.

As an engineer, I just remember thinking that there has to be something we can do to change such a situation. I started
researching the “appropriate technologies” movement in Kenya. I was supposed to go for 10 months, but I ended up
staying for 17 years.

In 1991, I started ApproTEC with Nick Moon. It wasn’t until 2000 that we had a real, tested, scalable model. Now we want
to take 400,000 people out of poverty in the next few years.

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The Daily: Do you have any advice for students who are inspired by your work?

Martin Fischer: Right now, it’s most important to prove these models can work. We need more appropriate technology
models that work, are cost-effective, and show sustainable impacts. In order to do this, people need to be very
entrepreneurial and willing not to make a lot of money. It’s hard work to go out there and make it happen.

But once we do that, then we can actually start to eradicate poverty for a change.

If you’re interested in learning more about ApproTEC, go to www.approtec.org.

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PART 2: ARTICLES

I. New Ideas for Social Change

An Introduction to Social Innovation

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 1/4/2005

The Innovation section in the Daily usually focuses on technological innovations at Stanford. This is no surprise, since
Stanford is a leader in developing new technologies. From new medicines to new search engines, technological
innovations coming out of Stanford will change the way we live.

But Stanford contributes to more than just technological innovation, and these innovations often get overlooked.
Researchers, students, and alumni are also developing social innovations: innovative ideas aimed at improving our
society. These social innovators aim at ending cycles of poverty, improving healthcare access, conserving natural
resources, and others.

Social innovation begins with ideas, but doesn’t end with them. The best social innovators turn their ideas into
organizations aimed at social change. Somewhere between traditional nonprofit and for-profit models, these organizations
aim at sustainability and measure success by calculating their social bang-for-the-buck. The people behind these
organizations, who hold others’ needs and rights as a priority in order for a better future, are what are being called “social
entrepreneurs.”

This column is our way of bringing these people and their ideas to you. Each week, a different social innovator will be
interviewed, sharing their thoughts and their experiences with the Stanford community. Some will be from campus, some
from the Bay Area, and some from further away. The column is a way of sharing their ideas and organizations with you.

Social innovation is, of course, not a panacea. It requires lots of money from generous philanthropists, and its focus on
measurable results diverts its energy away from less tangible social goals, such as social justice. “Charity is not justice,”
Cornel West reminded a Stanford audience last November. Smaller organizations with limited aims need to work together
on a national scale to accomplish larger changes in our society. However, even taken individually, these socially
innovative organizations are improving people’s lives and communities around the world. As these organizations grow, so
will their goals and their impact.

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The social innovation movement is an important new movement. It is prompting intelligent and entrepreneurial people to
address social issues that others had written off as either unsolvable, or not their concern. These people are not just
aiming to make a difference, but aiming to make a big difference.

While this column is mainly about socially innovative ideas and organizations, it's also about showing why cynicism and
apathy are mistaken.

A common misconception, at Stanford and elsewhere, is that when it comes to making the world a better place, “nothing
works.” Every solution has its problem—and anyway, problems are only really problems if we call them problems. Why not
just say, “that's the way it goes”?

It's a prevalent attitude, but it's not everywhere. Social entrepreneurs remind us that the world is better now because of
the efforts of people like them in the past, and that the future could be better if we take action now.

Stanford and its surrounding areas are full of bright, motivated people. This much is clear. But how this talent will be used
is up in the air. We hope this column will help inspire and inform people at Stanford about how their talents can be used,
not just to pursue profit, but to make the world a better place—a much better place—as well.

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II. An Education with a Mission

A Guide to Social Innovation at Stanford

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 1/25/2005

Stanford is currently the leading undergraduate institution for social innovation. Over the past six years, since the first
class in social entrepreneurship started, student interest has grown tremendously in innovative non-profits and for-profits
with social missions.

The contemporary social innovation movement began, in large part, in the Bay Area. It arose from a combination of new
wealth, socially-conscious business leaders, and entrepreneurial spirit. Many nationally renowned nonprofits and for-
profits, such as Delancey Street and The Bridgespan Group, began in the Bay Area. Local foundations, such as the
Hewlett Foundation and Packard Foundation, have played important roles in shaping the movement and the nonprofit
sector. .

Stanford benefits from being located within the heartland of social innovation. Both the Graduate School of Business and
the undergraduate programs have begun to promote and involve students in the growing field.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business houses the Center for Social Innovation in addition to the Public Management
Program for MBA students. The Center for Social Innovation sponsors research, organizes conferences, and publishes
the quarterly “Stanford Social Innovation Review,” a journal on managing and improving nonprofits.

The challenges of social innovation cross many academic fields: nonprofits need to find funding, manage revenue
streams, motivate volunteers, assess needs, and measure their social return on investment. The Center for Social
Innovation brings together scholars and people with experience and research in these areas to help nonprofit leaders find
new ideas and operate effectively.

Stanford alone has an undergraduate curriculum as well, which now includes a minor in Social Innovation. The Public
Policy and Urban Studies Programs offer several course options for students who wish to study social entrepreneurship.
For example, Melanie Edwards (founder, MobileMedia) and Laura Scher (CEO, Working Assets) lead the introductory
Social Entrepreneurship courses, including an SE Collaboratory where students work in groups and actually develop a
business plan for an organization that would work to alleviate a certain social need. This quarter in “Business Concepts
and Skills for the Social Sector,” Working Assets president Michael Kieschnick lectures and leads discussions from the
practitioner’s side of the social innovation movement, from mission statements to marketing. Last quarter, a team of
students from Fusion and the GSB’s Public Management Program worked with Melanie Edwards and GSB Professor Jim

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Phills (co-director, Center for Social Innovation) to put on a 1-unit lecture series which gave students the opportunity to
listen to a variety of social entrepreneurs speak about the evolution and growth of their organizations and then give advice
to students through Q & A sessions afterward. Social Innovation is a concentration in the Public Policy Program and a
minor through the Program on Urban Studies.

The social entrepreneurship curriculum has empowered several teams of students to participate in the annual business
plan competition put on by the Business Association for Stanford Engineering Students (BASES). The competition started
with an Innovator Challenge and an Entrepreneur Challenge, but has expanded to include a Social Entrepreneur
Challenge. The SE Collaboratory directly prepares students for this socially-minded business plan competition, where
teams of Stanford students compete to win a cash prize of a few thousand dollars which can be used to fund the starting
of their organizations. The competition includes a series of presentation rounds which are judged by Bay Area social
entrepreneurs, thus simultaneously creating a forum for discussion and networking as well as a way for students to get
feedback from experienced practitioners.

Undergraduate student groups also have focused on promoting social entrepreneurship on campus. The student group
FUSION (Future Social Innovators Network) has promoted social innovation and entrepreneurship among undergraduates
at campus over the last three years. The group initially grew out of a class on social entrepreneurship by one of the
academic leaders in the field, Gregory Dees, then at Stanford and currently at Duke University. “The class made me
realize that social entrepreneurship had the potential to unite the differences between public service and entrepreneurial
communities at Stanford,” said Tarek Ghani (’03), co-founder of Fusion. The group has sponsored conferences, classes in
Public Policy, and consulting projects with local non-profits.

The Stanford Association for International Development (commonly known as SAID) has also worked to promote social
innovation on campus over the last three years. For the last three years, the group has organized events for students to
learn more about international development, including an annual conference. This year, the conference will focus on the
role of non-governmental organizations and others in improving international health. The conference is entitled,
“Innovations in Improving Access to Health Care: Appropriate and Feasible?,” and will be held on February 26th in Bishop
Auditorium. “We hope the conference will get students more interested in innovative ideas in international development
and health,” said Christina Riechers (’05), conference co-coordinator.

Social innovation is obviously alive and well at Stanford. There are endless opportunities for students to get involved
through classes, student groups, competitions, and more.

In order for social innovation to create real change more is needed: ideas and inspiration need to become real
organizations that change real lives. But as a first step, and an important step, Stanford succeeds in providing students
with the tools and connections to become the next generation of social entrepreneurs.

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Good Intentions and Good Results

Looking Beyond the Non-Profit / For-Profit Divide

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 2/1/2005

as "Have Your Cake and Eat it Too"

Stanford students want to change the world — even if they don't always admit it.

Freshmen arrive knowing all the privileges they've been given, and seniors leave wanting to show that their Stanford
experience wasn't just all about getting that job at the end.

But at the same time, there's an idea out there that subverts these good intentions: If you want to make a change, you
have to work for a non-profit organization. Non-profits are good for social change, but bad for the bank; for-profits are
good for the bank, but bad for social change.

This is wrong. Non-profits don't always improve society, and for-profits don't always make things worse. Non-profits can
cause more problems for the world or just waste money and resources. For-profits can address social problems with new
products and policies.

It's true that non-profits have "social" goals and for-profits have "economic" goals. And it's also true students who gravitate
to non-profits tend to have different motivations than those who are attracted to for-profits.

But intentions are one thing and results are another.

It's not enough that someone wants to help disadvantaged kids by starting a tutoring program. Or that someone wants to
make millions writing computer software. One is not necessarily "socially" better than the other. The question isn't "what
kind of organization is it?" but rather "what does it do?" We should be asking: Is it actually helping people? Is it working
efficiently? Is it sustainable?

These realizations drive new, innovative ideas for social change. It's the realization that everyone, in all sectors, can
contribute to social change.

The key is to recognize that non-profits and for-profits share core features. We've been too quick to see the two as
opposites: tree-huggers and frat-boys, justice and self-interest, Seth and Luke. But for all their differences, they both
share the goal of utilizing their resources in new and effective ways.

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Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield wanted to make ice cream, but they also cared about the local community, the
environment and social causes. The Body Shop was founded with the hopes of bringing nature-inspired products to
socially and environmentally-minded consumers. Working Assets, a communications and credit card service provider, is
"making it easy to make a difference," and they have donated over $46 million to progressive causes.

Then there's "corporate social responsibility." Multinational companies, the wise ones at least, are taking huge steps to
use their global presence and power to address social needs.

While there is still much to be done on this front, companies like Gap, Inc. have grown in a positive direction over the last
decade. The market for socially-friendly products is growing fast.

All of these examples are situated within what we call "social innovation." Social innovation includes the new approaches,
the new models, and the new ideas that are being born to address social problems. And these solutions span all sectors
— nonprofit, for-profit and public.

It's an old moral: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." It's results, not just motivations, that matter. It's what you
do, and what it does, that changes the world.

Stanford students want to make a change in the world. But whatever sector they join, it's only the first step. For-profit, non-
profit or otherwise, social innovations can make the world a better place.

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IV. Injustice, Action, and Social Change

Our Three Favorite NGOs

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 3/9/05

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has described non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as “the conscience
of humanity.” NGOs address every issue imaginable and they operate in every country in the world.

Non-profit multi-national organizations range in size, structure and purpose. But they are all mission-driven, broadly
representative and full of the potential to catalyze massive systemic change. They’re present on both sides of every
conflict, and they’re not risk-averse.

Below are our three favorite NGOs — who they are, what they do and why we think they’re so great.

------------------------------------------

Despite what Adam learned in philosophy class, Descartes is not the only good thing to come out of France. In 1971, a
group of French doctors founded the first non-military NGO to specialize in emergency medical assistance. They call
themselves Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), but we know them as Doctors without Borders.

MSF is different from other international health and humanitarian aid NGOs because it acts as a witness “and will speak
out, either in private or in public about the plight of populations in danger,” according to MSF’s Web site.

Part of the organization’s mission is to “alleviate human suffering,” so it is willing to go to great lengths to protect life and
health in the communities it serves by raising awareness of the issues, concerns and crises that MSF volunteers
encounter.

According to its mission, MSF offers assistance “without discrimination and irrespective of race, religion, creed or political
affiliation.” It is unfortunate that other large aid organizations, such as the International Red Cross, have not adopted this
same set of guiding principles. Where there is a medical need, MSF is there — no matter where you’re from, what you’ve
done, what you look like or who you’re fighting for.

We’re not the only ones who think they’re great: The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded MSF the Nobel Peace Prize in
1999. (Most people seem to be over the whole Rigoberta Menchu thing by now.)

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------------------------------------------

According to the World Bank, almost half of the people in the world today are under 25 years old, and nine out of 10 of
these young people live in developing countries without proper access to food, water, education, shelter or healthcare. If
the children are our future, what does it mean when 90 percent of children suffer from malnourishment, disease, lack of
education, violence and political unrest?

Save the Children is a group that attempts to address these issues. It is a leading international relief and development
organization working in more than 45 countries to provide communities with “a hand up, not a handout.”

It was started in 1932, when a group of citizens gathered in New York to respond to the needs of populations who had
been hit by the Great Depression. Save the Children’s approach is to work with families to define and solve the problems
their children and communities face by “utilizing a broad array of strategies to ensure self-sufficiency.”

Today, this organization’s empowering initiatives are innovative and efficient, earning it the 1993 National Volunteer
Action Award presented by former President Bill Clinton.

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In 1978, in the midst of the Cold War, Human Rights Watch (HRW) was founded as Helsinki Watch to monitor the
observance of Soviet countries with the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Accords.

In 1988, the several “watch” committees that had formed around the world officially banded together to form HRW. There
are a lot of think tanks out there, and a lot of advocacy groups, but HRW is a rare, efficient hybrid of the two.

Human Rights Watch researchers conduct fact-finding investigations into human rights abuses around the world. Then
HRW publishes the findings in books and reports, generating local and international media attention that “helps to
embarrass abusive governments in the eyes of their citizens and the world,” according to HRW’s Web site.

Human Rights Watch then takes the next step and meets with government officials across the world to urge changes in
policy and practice.

In order to maintain independence and accuracy, HRW does not accept governmental donations, neither directly nor
indirectly. Their steadfast dedication to the pursuit of justice and truth has brought some of the world’s worst human rights
violators to the scrutiny of the international public.

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International advocacy networks have immense potential and power. For instance, NGOs have been invaluable in the
struggles for women’s suffrage and the collapse of apartheid. MSF, Save the Children and HRW are three prime
examples of successful NGOs that are truly changing the world. They have created innovative ways to mobilize resources
and band together communities with only one common denominator: The need and pursuit of systemic change.

For more information on our three favorite NGOs, go to www.doctorswithoutborders.org for Doctors without Borders;
www.savethechildren.org for Save the Children; and www.humanrightswatch.org for Human Rights Watch.

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V. The End of Social Innovation

A Retrospective on Social Innovation

First appeared in The Stanford Daily, 6/1/05

All things must come to an end, and this is the end for our social innovation column. It’s been a bumpy ride (just ask our
editors), but it was worth it in order to make a simple point: dedicated and talented people can create positive social
change.

Since we’re in college, we’re expected to know something about needless suffering in the world—and even to care about
it. (“Isn’t there a crisis in Sudan right now? That’s terrible.”) But there’s little expectation to know about solutions to this
suffering. And there’s even less expectation to promote them in the real world.

Fortunately, not everyone feels this way. Every other week, we met “social entrepreneurs” who were, without a doubt,
much cooler than us. Not only did they know and care about social problems, they had practical ideas about how to
improve them.

Is local poverty intractable? We met Elliott Brown, a Stanford graduate who realized that one of the biggest problems
facing the poor is not how find a job—but how to create a career. Elliott started Springboard Forward in East Palo Alto to
help end poverty through job-coaching and support for the working poor.

Can technology really help the poor in Brazil? We met Melanie Edwards, a Stanford fellow who realized that everyday
PDAs could help the “invisible” poor of Brazil. Her organization, MobileMedia, employs Brazilian youth with PDAs to
register the uncounted people of Brazil for social services and benefits.

Is modern healthcare out of reach for developing countries? We met David Green, who started Project Impact to help
bring down the prices of key medical products. He developed technologies and production strategies aimed at maximizing
distribution—not profits. He does this all while still being economically sustainable.

Do consumers even care about “fair-trade”? The social entrepreneur Paul Rice started TransfairUSA to find out. After
working with farmers in Nicaragua for eleven years, he returned to the USA to help market fair-trade products. Consumers
are buying fair-trade products, and it is returning more profits directly to the farmers that create them.

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Is human rights best left to the states and the UN? Armed with video cameras and expertise, Gillian Caldwell has helped
human rights organizations capture human rights abuses on film. As director of WITNESS, she works with NGO’s to film
human rights abuses and leverage them to create change.

One last one: is it possible to help start small businesses in Africa? Stanford graduate and enginneer Martin Fischer
helped to do just that. With his organization ApproTEC, he created and marketed water pumps in Kenya that allow people
to grow crops throughout the year. It has helped tens of thousands of Kenyans improve their salary by an order of
magnitude.

So when we say these people are cooler than us, we mean it. Collectively, these entrepreneurs and their organizations
have literally improved the lives of thousands of people who otherwise would have went without these basic life
necessities.

Why don’t we hear more about the solutions to the problems we already hear so much about? In part, because there are
no perfect solutions. No one thinks they have “solved” poverty, or human rights abuses, or unfair trade. No one thinks that
their solutions didn’t also cause some problems elsewhere.

But that didn’t stop them, and it shouldn’t stop us. There are no perfect circles, or perfect term papers, or perfect business
plans—but this doesn’t stop us from designing, writing, or starting businesses. Everything has a cost, everything has a
flaw. The question is, on balance, are we doing the best we can?

Before we go, we would like to thank some people who helped us put together this whole thing. Thanks to all the students
in FUSION (in particular to Tony Wang), and to all the people and organizations we interviewed, bothered, and etc. We
appreciate it.

Finally, thanks to all the people that emailed us and approached us to tell us how meaningful this column has been to
them. This outpouring of support and interest in our column and interviews has made us feel—know—the entire effort has
been worth it.

Is this the end of social innovation? Graduation marks the end of the column, but not social social innovation. Rather,
graduation marks the beginning—when students stop being students and, with luck, become advocates for positive social
change.

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Acknowledgements

These interviews and articles would not have been possible without the time and support of FUSION, The Stanford Daily,
and all the people and organizations featured here.

www.roystonproductions.com/innovation/

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