Trade vs Aid

This past week I had the pleasure of attending the Social Innovation @ Ivey forum. One of the speakers was Oliberte's founder, Tal Dehtiar. He spoke very passionately how development driven by the middle class. This is done by generating jobs which does not happen with aid but instead by trade and specifically manufacturing. His company produces high quality leather shoes which are made, in the truest definition of the word, in Africa.

Currently he indirectly employs 300 people, approximately half of which are women in the factories which source him in Africa. The gender split is 50-50 all the was up from manufacturing to junior management and office jobs. In his long term plan the goal is to employ a million people, and jointly own all his factories with the employees who work there. Currently he does not own the factories and they are just under contract with him, so he only has limited control over working conditions. As his operations grow he is able to have more and more influence in ensuring better working conditions.

He was one of the keynote speakers at the conference focusing around social business. He objected with the term "social business / enterprise" however. In his opinion, and I agree with him, it is a ridiculous term in the fact that companies who maybe are not employing people in Africa, but have provided good stable jobs to Canadian families are not considered social businesses. In the Walmart, Monsanto, and Lehman Brothers' era perhaps we have stigmatized business as a horrible evil. However, the fact still remains that it is good business sense to treat people well, that includes your: employees, customers, business partners, suppliers, etc.

I took a business law course last year, and when we were talking about contracts he told a story of a company he had been hired by, who came out of a meeting happy that they had got a great deal. They had screwed over their supplier and gotten a very low price for the product. My prof asked his client what would happen to his supplier in a year or two under that contract. His client paused and then said that there was no way he would be able to keep doing business selling at that price and would likely go bankrupt. I think that was a moment of realization for his client. A truly "good" deal builds a long lasting mutual beneficial relationship which ensures the longterm prosperity for everyone involved. It does not help if you supplier goes bankrupt in 6 months and your need to find a new one.

The same way the term social business or fair trade is ridiculous because every business should be treating people with respect and integrity. Unfortunately that is not the case for all businesses. Hopefully through better information sharing and communications customers will be able to determine which companies are truly treating their employees, suppliers and customers with respect and they will be able to vote with their wallets. Currently there are still great people and great companies doing amazing things, and their numbers are only going to grow in the future.

Cheers,
Michael

Social Media

I have been busy skiing this week and working on my thesis. But I also found time to work on an assignment which was looking at what I think personifies excellence in geography. I settled on the use and application of social media. The ability for anyone with internet access to be able to publish material (like me!)

I made reference to Shawn in my last post - he was my example how how the application of social media can be used to do excellent things! He recently posted a new blog post after which I responded and directed me to one of his older posts.

I have replied to his comments with something I have been thinking about a lot due to this assignment. Whether it is feasible and possible for aid recipients to be able to video log themselves, rather than have someone like Shawn volunteer everything he had to go tell their stories. They could post videos to youtube, someone else in the international community could reply to that video with a translated version. Issues I see would be the availability and affordability of the internet access to upload the videos. Then there is the whole issue of the actual transfer of any donations. Maybe someone is a sort of free agent (not associated with any charity) like Shawn, could control the flow of funds if needed - once the people have posted the videos themselves.

In other news - my good friends from Bangladesh Ross and Melanie have started working on a project to design a mobile based technology allowing microcredit borrowers to compare the microfinance products of different MFIs. Very interesting stuff which might help to dispel some of the initial hesitation to join a bank - it would give some power back to the consumers.

Cheers,
Michael Clark

Excellence in Geography and International Development

Just a short post for now, working hard on my thesis but for a project for Implementing Sustainability I needed to find something excellent so here it is - I found this great blog by Shawn Ahmed where he connects the rural villagers in Bangladesh with the world via his blog, twitter and youtube. Check it out, it is called The Uncultured Project! Cheers, Mike

YAO Project

I now have a actual link to the project that the club is supporting. We are supporting their Village of Opportunity, called Arjona in Colombia. Take a look and even better take a look at our page and you can take a look and donate to our campaign (on the right) supporting the Arjona Project!

Partnership with Pinball Clemons and BetheGame!

It is an exciting time for the club. I met with Michael Pinball Clemons two weeks, and he loved what we were doing. So I am now working with him and his great friend Joe Drexler at BetheGame to help raise money for both microfinance projects and sponsoring and supporting kids in local sports!

The energy that the two of them give off is incredible. I am now trying to see if Western will let us have a big media day on Wednesday / Thursday where we can sell BetheGame apparel to support our causes. Michael Clemons and some of the Argos might be able to make it out to promote it as well! It is inspiring to work with them, and to think that they want to work with me!

Cheers

January Activities!

January has been a busy month and it is not over yet! I just got a great lesson on time management in one of my classes though, so I should get more organised! I'm trying to set aside time each week for this (although right now I am in my "Thesis Time").

Couple things: I have found microcredit even in London, Ontario!! The farmers' market where I am doing my thesis (on the economic impact that the market has on the surrounding community) is trying to set up, with the local Business Improvement Association, a economic development corporation which can be used to help provide vendors at the market with a loan to open full blown stores / expand their businesses!

I am now the President of the Western Microcredit Society (WMS), since our wonderful president for the last year and a half left us to go on exchange to Hong Kong! However the club is still moving forward I think under my leadership. =) We will soon have a page about us on Opportunity International's (OI) website under YAO (Young Ambassadors for Opportunity), and OIConnect site will be set up in a week or two to promote our events.

The WMS also has 5-6 interested students in the internship that I did last year to the Grameen Bank, our problem has been that the trip is very expensive, ~$3,500! However, Jannalee from Opportunity came into talk to us yesterday and gave us her great presentation about what OI does and how microfinance works. She had the great idea to look for companies to donate aeroplane points to pay for the flights! Soooo my charge for everyone is to ask if anyone wants to donate aeroplan points, or knows of good businesses to approach. It takes 130,000 points to get to Bangladesh and back x 5-6 people!

Cheers,
Mike

New Year's Resolution #2!

In the last week of every year and TV hosts and Radio broadcasters make their ridiculously vague new years resolutions: I want to be healthier, I want to have more fun, be nicer, etc. If you make a vague goal, you will have a vague response - nothing! So I always make a resolution not to make any resolutions. Which is usually easy to keep, but this year i have already broken it - for good reason I hope!I have now decided to have 2 resolutions for the new year, neither of them are really "New Year's" resolutions - they both just made sense to start in the new year, and they both are a lot more specific than "be healthier".

The first was to run the 30k Around the Bay running race in Hamilton this year. And the second, is to actually keep this blog updated. I was very busy last semester, and I did not keep up with a lot of things, this blog being one of them. I am not any less busy this semester - probably more busy actually, but I think I am getting a better grip on how to handle it.

This past semester I have started looking into possible international internships in developing countries (preferably back in Asia) in either Urban Development and Planning, Impact Assessment of Development Projects, and microfinance. I would really like to do a longterm internship, 6-12 months, or possibly two half-year ones. I found it was very interesting to be in Dhaka for 6 weeks, just in those few weeks you got such a better sense of the city than if you only stay for a couple days it takes to see all the tourist sites.If you are interested in longterm paid international development internships check out: CIDA Youth Internships or AIESEC Canada.

This resolution is turning a new leaf for the blog, the future of the blog will be updates from things I read related to international development. *Hopefully* it will also be where I can reflect on my travels to different parts of the world, fingers crossed that I get that chance again. I took a couple courses last semester on Globalization and International Development which were easily two of the most enjoyable parts of my week. I had to do many readings for those courses and  I am always reading new articles on my own believe it or not!, especially about microfinance, which I will direct you to and comment on!

Might as well start now with When Indian Elephants Fight which is an interesting article since it is one of the better insights into the India microfinace crisis. The author, David Roodman, is writing an open book on microfinance - where he publishes drafts of chapters in his blog for critic and review - and he visited Andhra Pradesh (AP) province in India to learn more about the crisis. The article talks about the need for regulation of the microfinance industry, however the regulation must be by a third party - not a competitor to microfinance (as in the case of the Government in AP). If it is regulated properly by consulting all inpacted groups; the rural poor, local government agencies, local non profits AND local microfinance institutions, then the industry can be allowed to grow to reach more people in a way which protects the poor and prevents exploitation.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Mike