How You Can Change the World: Solving Global Poverty Through Social Business

February 22, 2010
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Come join Rising Pyramid and Vittana on March 4th, 2010 at 8pm and learn about Social Entrepreneurship! Kushal Chakrabarti, Co-Founder and CEO of Vittana will be sharing his experiences starting up a company and about the successes and challenges he has faced in the microfinance industry.  Much like Kiva.org, Vittana allows anyone (including you) to help fund an education loan for a student in a developing country.  If you have an interest in education, entrepreneurship, international development or philanthropy, you wouldn’t want to miss this talk.  Kushal is the co-founder and CEO of Vittana. Vittana partners with microfinance institutions around the world to develop student micro- loan programs, oftentimes providing the first and only access to college loans in those countries, and makes it possible for those students to receive loans from people around the world through vittana.org. Vittana is currently working in 6 different countries, has a 97% repayment rate on its loans, and loan dollars to students are increasing at double-digit rates every month. Vittana was recently featured in the New York Times, voted by 1.7 million readers as the #1 “Ultimate Game-Changer in Philanthropy” on Huffington Post, and named by Fast Company as one of “5 Social Capitalists Who Will Change the World in 2010.”

In past lives, Kushal was a computational biologist (we couldn’t make that up if we tried) and an artificial intelligence scientist. Most recently, he ran the multi-hundred million dollar personalized recommendations team at Amazon.com (“You might be interested in X because you bought A, B, and C”) and is the author of 20+ patents, papers and talks. In his (copious) free time, he runs Ironman triathlons and trains guide dogs for the blind. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a B.S. in computer science and B.A. in molecular biology.

Rising Pyramid was started to educate people about the fast-paced growing industry of Social Entreprneurship and to spark interest in the concept of market-based solutions at the Bottom of the Pyramid. We aim to discuss the fundamentals of the industry and facilitate a discussion with you about your interests and ideas!

“How You Can Change the World: Solving Global Poverty Through Social Entrepreneurship” will take place on March 4th, 2010 at 8pm at the University of California at Berkeley at Andersen Auditorium in the Haas School of Business.  Several on-campus groups and professors are involved in marketing and supporting this event, including: Asian Business Association, Berkeley Group, Berkeley Consulting, Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, Lester Center For Entrepreneurship, Microfinance DeCal, Net Impact Berkeley, Social Entrepreneurship DeCal, and the Taiwanese American Professionals, among others.

About Vittana: Vittana is an early-stage non-profit startup bringing student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microfinance. We are a different kind of non-profit: we are designed from the ground up to be scalable, cost-effective, and just get things done. We are an Internet startup, we just happen to be in the business of creating good instead of creating money. Vittana is headquartered in the historic Pioneer Square district of Seattle, WA.

About Rising Pyramid: Rising Pyramid is about the gradual improvement of life for the world’s poorest, living at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). Despite setbacks, social entrepreneurs who set goals on hitting the triple bottom line have been challenging global poverty head on and have succeeded in many cases. We believe that both the successes and challenges faced by these entrepreneurs are leading to the rise of those at the bottom of the pyramid.

Capitalism at the Crossroads by Stuart Hart

February 18, 2010
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In the second edition of “Capitalism at the Crossroads” Stuart Hart makes a very strong case for MNCs to start thinking about the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) and environmentalism as opportunities.  The book, which is subtitled “Aligning business, earth and humanity”, manages to cover the most significant global issues of our time – global warming, global poverty and terrorism – in a way that is comprehensive and insightful.  Hart argues, in a very compelling manner, that to be successful tomorrow, the businesses of today need to embrace green practices and target the world’s poor.  As if that weren’t enough, Hart goes on to provide unique guidelines for how businesses can go about transforming themselves.  The title reflects Stuart’s argument that businesses have a choice to make; they can invest to become the leaders of tomorrow, or they can continue to operate under the status quo and miss the next big wave of growth. Read more »

Rebuilding Haiti: Microfinance in Action

February 16, 2010
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One of microfinance’s strongest traits is the ability to adapt to a-typical circumstances. The intent, when created, was to reach the “unbanked” people who did not have access to traditional banks; were not aware of their need for a bank; or could not get appropriate access to the credit they needed. These “unbanked” people are the poorest of the poor and live in the worst of conditions. Those in rural Bangladesh, India, and Africa were the initial core audience for this innovation. However, in order to reach those at the bottom of the financial pyramid (BoP), microfinance institutions (MFIs) needed to have the ability to adapt to doing business in these harsh conditions. The lack of reliable electricity, traditional road access, water, and governmental infrastructure are just a few of the organizational hurdles that have been crossed by MFIs throughout the third world. Haiti, however, was one of the strongest showings to date of how effecient MFIs can be in the time of a natural disaster. Read more »

Microfinance's Bubble May Be Bursting-Lets Hope Not

February 11, 2010
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The global economic slowdown all began with a credit bubble.  The over-simplified version of what happened is that too much credit (loans, etc) was given out while spreading the risk over many players.  As a result, no one had a clear understanding of the cumulative risk across the system.  This lead to an increase in delinquency rates because too many bad loans had been approved.  As more people stopped repaying their loans, banks felt pressure because they had less money to repay their own debt.  The entire ordeal was much more nuanced than I describe, but essentially a rise in loan defaults was one of the first signals of the financial collapse.  Banks across the world were all connected to the crisis in some way, but somehow the microfinance industry remained unscathed.  Despite the economic downturn, the world’s poorest continued to generate an excellent track record and repay their loans. Read more »

Drink 1 Give 10

February 8, 2010
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Drink 1 Give 10 is a collaborative effort between Volvic and UNICEF that helps to bridge the connection between for- and non-profit organizations in a common quest towards helping the world’s poorest. For every one liter of water purchased in the United States and Canada, Volvic will donate money to a non-profit organization that will provide ten liters of clean drinking water to those in Ethiopia, Niger, and Mali. Read more »

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