Development Dialogue – Day 2

If you have read our previous post, then you know that the Development Dialogue is the Deshpande Foundation’s big annual conference. The biggest highlight of Day 2 was the presentations from and conversations with the Ashoka Fellows. Here are some of the highlights from Day 2…

Ashoka Fellows: The opening session included a series of short talks from 5 social entrepreneurs from around the world that are supported by the Ashoka Foundation. All of the speakers gave very good talks that were both inspiring and informational. There is no doubt that many of the local NGOs in attendance gained some useful knowledge from this session. Here’s a brief overview of each Ashoka Fellow.

Tri Mumpuni (Puni) – Promoting micro-hydropower projects in rural un/under-electrified villages in Indonesia. Her NGO is called People Centered Economic & Business Institute (IBEKA). This was an interesting and necessary venture because Indonesia is a nation of 100s of islands, and hence has a lot of water available to generate electricity, but lacks the infrastructure to supply more than 100 million people with adequate power supply. Until date, IBEKA has built at least 65 micro-hydro plants that supply power to more than 400,000 people. We should also mention that Puni is one of the sweetest people that we have met, and it’s great to know that there are people like her out there in the world.

Madan Rai – Promoting development in rural villages near Everest base camp in Nepal. Madan’s initiatives work directly with young people and farmers to increase agricultural productivity, create new job opportunities, and open access to domestic and international markets. His next big venture is to promote ‘vocational’ schools that not only have rigorous sessions in the classroom, but also promote life skills like farming, tailoring, construction etc. We had a long talk with Madan at dinner later that night, where he explained his school concept in more detail and even invited us to come and stay with him to help teach kids English and sustainable development while learning a few things ourselves. An opportunity to go live near Everest base camp for some time, is this too good to be true? Could there be another move in the near future? Hmmm...

Noel De Villiers – Developing rural tourism in South Africa through his NGO Open Africa. Noel has been promoting this since the end of Apartheid in the early 1990’s and currently offers numerous vacation/travel options in South Africa. The proceeds from this venture go towards improving livelihoods and environmental quality of rural villages throughout the country. On Friday, we also had the opportunity to take Noel, who is about 70 years old, on his first autorickshaw ride through the streets of Hubli, where he experienced some of the crazy twists, turns, and common encounters that one has when taking this mode of transportation. We all reached the hotel safely, but as he got out, he proclaimed, “I’m surprised that I haven’t died in the past 24 hours!” Our reply was simply, “Hey, that ride wasn’t bad at all…it’s just the way things are here in India.”

Vera Gainsley Cordeiro – Establishing a holistic approach to children’s health care in Brazil through her NGO Associação Saude Crianca Renascer. Vera developed this idea why working as a pediatrician in a government hospital for more than 20 years. She constantly saw the same kids come in and get treated for ailments that were common for those living in chronic poverty. Through her experiences, she came to the believe that the way to better health was not only to encourage preventative healthcare, but to also develop other livelihood activities like family support systems and enhanced income generation that can lift people out of their desperate conditions. Since the inception of Associação Saude Crianca Renascer in the early 1990s, the organization has spread to 7 states in Brazil and is helping the Government of Brazil to establish a similar program that can be implemented nationwide.

Brij Kothari – Standardizing same language subtitles (SLS) for regional and national Indian television programs to improve literacy rates. Brij is a communications professor who has been developing this idea through rigorous research. He and his colleagues have found that if you scroll Hindi subtitles on the bottom of the screen of a Hindi television show, people inadvertently learn to read. The statistics on this for several languages are very impressive. Brij has successfully convinced the Government of India to implement this relatively simple idea for many of the programs that are currently on the public television channels (both Hindi and regional languages). Given that there are so many languages in the world, and this method apparently works so well, there is no doubt that we could all learn something from this approach.

Afternoon Sessions: The afternoon featured a series of concurrent sessions that focused on cases studies from DF funded projects as well as some talks on how to again follow DF’s model of innovation, entrepreneurship, and scale. There was nothing too groundbreaking here to report.

Evening Networking Session: DF organized a networking session so that the Fellows could interact with other conference attendees that have lived abroad during sometime of their life. We met quite a few interesting people including an Indian with a PhD in Physics from Harvard, who lived in the US for more than 20 years, but then moved with his wife to Delhi 6 months ago to work in the microfinance/development sector. His culture shock experiences were similar to ours. We also met a Venture Capitalist that split his time between San Francisco, Mumbai, and in his sailboat exploring Penobscot Bay. I never imagined that I would ever have a detailed conversation about Maine’s coastal communities in Hubli, India…Small World!

Dinner at Hotel Naveen (aka a lesson in Darwin’s survival of the fittest): Stay tuned, as this deserves a blog post of its own…