My friend Ryan Letada gave an incredible talk at the most recent TEDxYouth@Hewitt in New York City in November two months ago.

In his talk, Ryan painted a very convincing picture of what failure has meant to him as a social entrepreneur and changemaker when faced with the very real and complex challenges of trying to disrupt the education system in the Philippines with his organization, eKindling.

“A mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a flame to be kindled” - eKindling

What started initially as a dream to bring magical education opportunities to school kids in rural parts of the Philippines through acces to computers and technology in elementary schools, was quickly met with the harsh reality of what that actually meant when the laptops were received by the schools and communities on the ground.

The whole notion of ‘changing the world’ is certainly a sexy idea and is often romanticized as such.

However, it comes as no surprise that passion and the intent of doing ‘good’ are simply not enough as it does require a high degree of persistence and true heart in order to build real change, together with looking at the complexities of the issues at hand while ensuring measurable impact in the process.

Faced with initial setbacks and challenges, Ryan and eKindling were able to turn these initial failures into important life and organizational lessons. In addition to the deployment of technology in elementary schools in the Philippines, eKindling also aims to design learning activities for the base-of-the-pyramid and develop talent among teachers and educators, in order to help re-create an education system that inspires a love for learning.

On a personal note, this talk was a great reminder for me to embrace failure with confidence and courage in my own personal life.

Failure is inevitable and though it may hurt a lot (based on past personal experience) and makes you feel extremely uncomfortable, it does help to build your character, allowing you to refine or change the assumptions that you have of the world around you, including your own view of yourself and your capabilities, making you a better and a much stronger person in the process.

Thanks for sharing your story, Ryan.

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine!”

- Edmond Dantès, The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

Having shared personal lessons learned over the years in Part 1, while painting a realistic picture of a world in the midst of chaos in part 2, Part 3 focuses on the art of possibilities and further elaborates on why I share a sense of careful optimism for the world today.

In preparation for my talk, I returned to my roots of social entrepreneurship and social innovation as a means to lift millions of people out of poverty around the world. And in the process, I turned to the writings and works of two people whom I consider to be personal heroes, among many others of course, namely Jacqueline Novogratz of the Acumen Fund, and Paul Polak, author of the book ‘Out of Poverty‘.

For the remainder of my talk, I highlighted four social enterprises impacting and improving the lives of millions of people in developing countries around the world, all within the context of showcasing opportunities that exist within the base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) market that many would-be entrepreneurs, especially those from developed countries, may not even be aware exist at all.

Base-of-the-Pyramid Market

Photo credit: World Economic Forum

When I refer to the BOP-market, I am referring to the estimated 4 billion people who live on less than $2/day in the developing world. Whereas we know everything there is to know about targeting affluent customers in the developed world, in a manner of speaking, it seems we know nothing of how to target the other 90% percent of customers in the rest of the world, representing an estimated market size of USD $5 trillion that is fairly rural and underserved, comprised mainly of an informal economy that is incredibly inefficient with very little competition.

If we are going to work towards lifting millions of people out of poverty, then the key to all of this begins with a shift in mindset where we see the 4 billion at the BOP not simply as passive recipients of aid and charity, but rather, as consumers, customers and clients, and more importantly, as people who want to take control and make decisions in their own lives.

Jacqueline Novogratz has an amazing TED Talk where she points out that when we think about large-scale solutions to poverty, we cannot deny humans their dignity–we need to give people the freedom of choice and opportunity because that is where dignity starts. Jacqueline also discusses some of these solutions within the context of patient capital alongside the work the Acumen Fund is supporting in East Africa and South Asia, where patient capital is capital that lies between the financial markets and aid/charity. This capital, which has, among its many characteristics, a high tolerance for risk as well as a long time horizon allowing the entrepreneur the opportunity to experiment, is invested in social entrepreneurs who know their communities and are building scalable solutions to address issues such as health care, water, housing and alternative energy.

The reality is, people in developing countries are already making transactions every day in cash markets, even if they are only living on less than $2/day. In fact, they are actually more market-oriented than most as they struggle to navigate their way through the informal, mainly cash-based economy when making decisions related to purchasing food, health care, education and other services.

That said however, given the characteristics of the BOP-market mentioned above, people at the BOP are paying more money for lower quality goods and services, relatively speaking, than we do in developed countries for similar goods and services.

If that is the case, what if there was a better way to serve people in the BOP-market and in the process lift them out of extreme poverty, while generating profits to ensure financial sustainability for the social enterprise in the long-run?

Paul Polak has pointed out that this can and has been achieved, where some of the common features of initiatives that have truly helped extremely poor people move out of poverty, include:

1. thoroughly listening to poor customers and thoroughly understanding the specific context of their lives;
2. designing and implementing ruthlessly affordable technologies or business models;
3. energizing private sector market forces that play a central role in their implementation;
4. radical decentralization that is integrated into economically viable last mile distribution;
5. and, designing for scale–a central focus of the enterprise from the very beginning.

As highlighted by some of the examples of social enterprises below, there is certainly a world of opportunity that exists out there in the BOP-market; given the right mindset and approach towards tackling poverty and coming up with innovative and scalable solutions that places human dignity right at the centre of it all.

When reflecting on the nature of the social enterprise ‘space’ and all the opportunities that exist, not only in the BOP-market but in the developed world as well, I often find myself returning to the following quote, attributed to Bill Drayton of Ashoka,

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime… Social entrepreneurs and changemakers will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”

If you are interested in learning more about market-based solutions to the challenges of global poverty, although slightly dated, I would recommend reading the following:

• Emerging Markets, Emerging Models published by the Monitor Group in March 2009;
• The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid published by the World Resources Institute in March 2007.

c3 Conference – Connect. Collaborate. Create.

Micro Drip (Pakistan)

In Pakistan, 120 million people directly depend on agriculture to survive. Yet modern irrigation technologies cater to farmers with large fields, leaving smallholder farmers to rely on flood irrigation – an inefficient use of water resources that does not maximize crop yields – or on expensive and polluting diesel pumps.

To address this challenge, Micro Drip markets and distributes affordable drip irrigation technology in Pakistan, delivering water directly to the root of the plant–maximizing plant growth, ensuring major input cost and water savings, and improving farm yields. Its systems reduce the amount of water smallholder farmers need to cultivate an acre of land by 50 percent, improve yields by 40 percent, and lower input costs by 30 percent. And, because they allow for year-round farming, fewer farmers and their families are forced to migrate during the dry season. Micro Drip has already reached more than 3,000 farmers in 2009, and over the next five years has the potential to impact 20,000+ farmers.

The overall result: reduced dependence on flood irrigation and the opportunity for farmers to earn steadier incomes.

Source: Acumen Fund 

Aravind Eye Care System (India)

India has the largest population of blind people in the world. Of the 12 million blind Indians, 80 percent have been blinded as a result of complications from cataracts, including 300,000 children. A simple cataract operation could help seven million Indians regain their sight. Setting the eradication of blindness as its objective, Aravind Eye Care System has pioneered free surgery for poor people, and offers cataract operations costing between 50 and 200 US dollars. What is interesting about Aravind is that even though nearly 60 percent of their patients don’t pay a single rupee, Aravind still makes nearly US$8 million per annum, allowing it to operate the Aravind Eye Hospitals and to function as a research institute, providing international training in eye-care and producing eye-care products through Aurolab.

Aravind’s orientation toward patients and communities has determined its scale and its innovative approach. This patient-oriented philosophy has enabled Aravind to simplify its workflow and boost efficiency, where the secret to Aravind’s capacity for providing cataract surgery for US$50 and intraocular lenses for five dollars, is the hospital’s free clinics. Counterintuitively, Aravind does not lose money every time it performs an operation for free. In the medical business, overhead such as medical instruments and manpower accounts for the highest costs. So for Aravind, the more patients they see and the more operations they perform, the lower their average fixed cost per person becomes. So each time Aravind does an operation for free, they raise their profits ever so slightly.

Source: Commonwealth Magazine – Aravind: Efficiency in a Battle with Blindness

A Liter of Light (Philippines)

A Liter of Light is a sustainable lighting project which aims to bring the eco-friendly Solar Bottle Bulb to disprivileged communities across the Philippines. Designed and developed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog (MIT), the Solar Bottle Bulb is based on the principles of Appropriate Technologies – a concept that provides simple and easily replicable technologies that address basic needs in developing communities.

Source: A Liter of Light website

$35 Aakash Android Tablet (India)

The Aakash Tablet,  distributed at a government subsidized price of $35 to anywhere between 10 to 12 million students across India by the end of 2012, is an example of a “leapfrog technology,” a concept where the latest innovations jump directly into areas where legacy technologies never penetrated. Tens of millions of people throughout India who never had access to a landline phone now walk around with cell phones in their pocket. Many of those likely to use or own the the Aakash Tablet will never have used a desktop computer, and it’s possible they never will.

Now imagine the educational potential of the world’s lowest-cost tablet being unleashed to hundreds of millions of Indians eager to join the world economy. At the heart of the Aakash tablet is an HD video co-processor that will connect viewers to one of the largest educational libraries ever assembled: YouTube. When the Aakash tablet reaches villages across India, an entire generation will have instant access to rich educational content such as the Khan Academy. And with the Aakash tablet in hand, students across India will be free to do what their global counterparts do — or should do — with their computers, including the educational basics such as creating documents and spreadsheets, and browsing the web for research materials.

Source: VentureBeat - Hands On: India’s $35 Aakash Android tablet lands in America

I am SUPER DUPER EXCITED to share that my application was accepted and I will be heading to Palm Springs in California towards the end of February to attend TEDActive 2012 Full Spectrum.

I have been a TED fan for a number of years now, and having been involved with planning TEDxWaterloo, TEDxAlAin and TEDxUW held at the University of Waterloo recently, attending TEDActive will prove to be a dream come true as well as a huge opportunity to connect with and learn from the TED speakers, TEDx organizers and TEDActive delegates in attendance.

I look forward to bringing the inspiration and passion of TED back to the Waterloo Region as well as to the University of Waterloo, especially with TEDxWaterloo 2012: DIS CONNECTED taking place shortly thereafter on March 21 at the Centre in the Square.

As for TEDxUW 2012, very BIG things are on the horizon…

Over the next two months, I will be planning the logistics of my trip as well as drumming up community support and sponsorship to help me out from a financial standpoint as attending TEDActive does not come cheap. If you would like to help out, feel free to drop me a line and I would be happy to take you out for coffee to discuss this in a more in-depth manner.

In the meantime, I am just going to take a moment to sit back and let all of this sink in, before picking up my pen and notebook, of course, and scheming ideas with the intent of bringing to life projects designed to create a better world.

Will definitely be aiming for the stars on this one, giving my mind permission to travel as far as my imagination will allow.

About TEDActive

TEDActive is an opportunity to let your mind travel the world of ideas while watching the live-hosted TED2012 program in a comfortable, customizable space. When the talks are over, your conversations with other passionate people begin — a chance to engage in inspiring discussions and projects.

Whatever you’ve been meaning to build, or learn to build, you can. Innovation happens when you tinker, explore and play. These opportunities awaken latent creativity and let you rediscover the joy of making something with your own hands. Attendees can sign up for workshops to learn to use the tools in these spaces or dig in and share skills by leading their own workshops. Think bike repair, hacking, sculpting in cardboard, 3D printing, homebrewing beer and more.

Included in the TEDActive mix are TED leaders from around the world who are helping to foster TED’s mission of spreading ideas: Volunteer translators, independent TEDx event organizers, rock-star TED Prize wish contributors and spectacular past TED Fellows. Special events create opportunities for these community members to meet face-to-face and exchange best practices.

As the saying goes, the pen is mightier than the sword, with the capacity to influence and change people’s opinions and perspectives, launching revolutions and inspiring generations for years to come.

Though the commencement address by Paul Hawken at the University of Portland is from 2009, I decided to re-publish it under the ‘People Who Inspire Me‘ section of my blog and share it with all of you, as I often find myself referring to this speech whenever I look at what is happening in the world today and a part of me begins to lose faith in humanity.

It’s not hard to imagine why given all the unfortunate news and headlines that we’re seeing every day.

But then I turn to the speech written below and something happens when I read Paul’s words.

Even though I must have read the speech transcript way too many times to even count, I am still moved to the core of my being that the world, in fact humanity itself, will reconstitute given the willingness and determination of countless people all across the globe to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider the world around us.

TIME Magazine even named ‘The Protestor’ as Person of the Year 2011.

Indeed, words truly are powerful, but only if they are brought to life through the actions of people just like you and me.

By Paul Hawken

Commencement Address, University of Portland, 2009

 When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

A World in Crisis

Given the headlines we are seeing in newspapers and publications all over the world, there is no doubt in my mind that the world is going through a monumental shift in the way we operate as humanity, in light of the complexities of the global challenges we face.

We only have to look at the Arab Spring Revolution from earlier this year as well as the Occupy movements right here in North America to get a sense that all is not right with the world today.

Europe currently finds itself in the midst of a euro zone debt crisis calling into question the very existence of the European Union as a political and economic entity. And in recent days, we have seen tens of thousands of people turn to the streets in Russia to protest alleged ballot-rigging in the recent parliamentary elections, demanding a re-run.

One headline that many people may not be aware of is the fact that rising food prices are currently adding pressure to already fragile political and economic systems, sparking food riots in many developing countries across the globe. We are also seeing an increasing frequency of natural disasters together with the further degradation of our environment  leading to unprecedented numbers of climate refugees worldwide.

Indeed, there is a lot of pent up frustration in society with more and more people recognizing that the systems we have in place, from the financial and housing markets to healthcare and education, don’t seem to be working.

Returning closer to home, in a recent op-ed piece to CNN, writer and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff points out that if you think the Occupy Wall Street movement is just a phase, you don’t get it.

That’s because, unlike a political campaign designed to get some person in office and then close up shop (as in the election of Obama), this is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc. As the product of the decentralized networked-era culture, it is less about victory than sustainability. It is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus. It is not like a book; it is like the Internet.

Occupy Wall Street is meant more as a way of life that spreads through contagion, creates as many questions as it answers, aims to force a reconsideration of the way the nation does business and offers hope to those of us who previously felt alone in our belief that the current economic system is broken.

With all of this in mind, if you were to ask me whether I was optimistic or pessimistic about the future, I would say that I share a sense of careful optimism for the following reasons: the very powerful ideas of social enterprise and social innovation brought to life by changemakers and the incredible (often, youthful) idealism of people wanting demanding that there must be a better way to do things.

Of course, this is not to say that the systems keeping the status quo in place won’t give up without a fight. As JFK once said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. 

The world is changing, no doubt.

The question remains, what side of history do you want to be on and what role will you play?

Next: A Better World is Possible (Part 3) – Opportunities in the BOP-Market

I was invited to speak at the recent C3: Connect. Collaborate. Create. conference and in preparation for my talk, I was reminded why I became passionate about the field of social entrepreneurship in 2007 in the first place.

More importantly, I recalled why the concept of ‘doing good while making money’ –as social entrepreneurship was described to me back then– captured my imagination as an undergrad in my final year at the University of Waterloo, allowing me to make decisions that have led to where I am today.

As my parents have always taught me, we are defined by the choices we make.

Over the years, I have learned a lot from numerous successes as well as failures; from family, friends and yes, even relationships.

When I thought about the lessons that would prove most useful for the mainly student audience trying to figure out next steps beyond university, I came up with the following three lessons that proved key to where I am in my career right now, only a couple of years out of school and not much older than most people in the audience.

In the later part of my talk, I provided an overview of the huge market potential that social enterprise in the base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) market offers today, in the hopes of igniting the imaginations of audience members and showcasing the art of possibility. I will be covering this topic in two separate upcoming blog posts (A Better World is Possible Part 2 & Part 3).

Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

I can’t stress this enough.

You are never going to find out what your ‘passion’ is and what keeps you awake at night (a nod to my good friend Kristina, currently in Tanzania pursuing her ‘heartwork’ in the mobile health space), if you don’t actively seek what you want/don’t want through a gradual process of experimentation and elimination.

You only get to know what it is that you are made of, what moves you, by experimenting with a number of different projects and working on different teams. As the saying goes, life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.

Where do you begin putting experimentation into practise you might ask?

As I have written in the past, JFDI.

In addition to experimenting, I would also encourage many of you to start a blog. On any topic. On whatever happens to capture your interest. It doesn’t matter.

Though this advice may seem trivial, not only is keeping a regular blog a great way to document your learning journey over time, in this day and age of uncertainty where our generation seeks full-time employability rather than full-time employment, a personal blog preferably with the url www.yournamehere.com, will go a long way towards establishing yourself as a thought leader in the space you want to work in.

I could go on and on about the merits of starting a blog. Instead, if you’re interested in learning more,  feel free to drop me a line, keeping in mind that I enjoy good sushi and a great cup of coffee!

Building on the notion of experimentation from lesson 1 above, you should not let the fear of failure paralyze you.

Instead, just like in the art of jujitsu, embrace the fear of failure and use it to drive you, using the principle of leveraging an attacker’s energy (in this case, fear) against them rather than directly opposing it.

On the topic of failure, the famous inventor Thomas Edison, once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

On this note, I will be the first to admit that many of the projects and initiatives that I have been a part of in the past, including the startup non-profit Laurel Centre for Social Entrepreneurship that saw a brief period of success from 2007-2009 in the Waterloo Region, failed.

And that is perfectly ok.

There were certainly many lessons learned from the Laurel Centre and other similar experiences that I have taken to heart. I have kept many of these lessons learned in mind as I find myself continuing to experiment and work on other projects, including a number of community initiatives, most notably the Ignite Waterloo and TEDxWaterloo series, that have found a great deal of success these past few years; as well as the early stage tech startup that I am currently in the process of building with a great team right here in Waterloo.

On a side note, I have also begun laying the foundations for a writing project that I want to bring to life, aptly titled ‘The Failure Manifesto for the Aspiring Young Changemaker’, hoping to co-create it with other like-minded individuals who have gone through similar ‘failed’ experiences and are willing to share their lessons learned.

Interested?

Shoot me a message.

And finally, in the spirit of ‘walking the talk’ using the proposed ‘Failure Manifesto’ writing project mentioned above as an example, the third lesson that I have found key to my success thus far, is to simply ask for what you want.

Whether it is reaching out to your network of trusted friends and mentors for help, advice, or at times, a couch to crash on when you happen to be embarking on a solo road trip across Canada, or perhaps, requesting a meeting with the President of the Philippines when you happen to be visiting the country, the worst case scenario is that people say ‘no’ and don’t offer to help you out.

The best case scenario? People –family, friends and even complete strangers– actually say ‘yes’ and step forward to help you out, providing boundless opportunities and promises of experiences that you would never have imagined otherwise had you not asked.

When I visited the Philippines earlier this year, instead of meeting with President Aquino, I was put in touch with an incredible organization called the Philippine Centre for Islam & Democracy by way of my friend Alia and her connection with former Senator Santanina Rasul, that provided me with a more human perspective of the conflict taking place in southern Mindanao and the important work that organizations like PCID and the UN-based Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP) were doing to bring lasting peace to the region.

Although I have yet to meet President Aquino in order to provide him with my perspective of how I would govern the country if I were president, this particular experience in the Philippines and other similar experiences where I have simply asked for what I want, has strengthened my belief in the notion that the moment you buy a one-way ticket to the world, possibilities abound and the universe works with you, never against you.

Next: A Better World is Possible (Part 2) – A Sense of Careful Optimism

Im looking forward to attending the inaugural TEDxUW at the University of Waterloo this Saturday, November 12.

Prashanth and his enthusiastic team of volunteers have been hard at work over the past year to turn the vision of this event into a reality: a platform to showcase the best ideas from the University of Waterloo to the world.

If you are not able to attend, I would highly encourage you to check out the livestream of the event at www.tedxuw.com/livestream beginning 830 AM EST this Saturday.

About TEDxUW:

We live in an age where ideas can spread like wildfire, where tools can be harnessed to connect people across vast distances and where people can be mobilized en masse with the click of a button. Social movements across the world are now being spurred on by the use of incredibly powerful, highly-scalable technologies that can turn desire into action within minutes. The gap between our ideas and ability to take charge of our reality can be crossed in a single stride. We are inspired by revolutionary ideas, but we are also inspired by revolutionary leaders and agents of change.

Why?

Because they took action.

This is what TEDxUW captures – the excitement of taking action and showcasing the achievements of those people who defied the naysayers and created things, built relationships and brought their ideas to life.

And that’s just today.

Can you imagine tomorrow?

]]> http://www.renjie.ca/2011/11/07/tedxuw-at-the-university-of-waterloo/feed/ 0 http://www.renjie.ca/2011/10/18/sig-inspiring-action-for-social-impact-series/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sig-inspiring-action-for-social-impact-series http://www.renjie.ca/2011/10/18/sig-inspiring-action-for-social-impact-series/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 13:46:24 +0000 renjie http://www.renjie.ca/?p=3892

Social Innovation Generation is pleased to announce that the Inspiring Action for Social Impact Series is concentrating its next webinar events entirely on Canadian ideas in social innovation.

From November 2, we explore innovation through the eyes of our own SiG leadership team. It’s rare that we focus on our own collaborative, but this gives us an opportunity to share with you the strength of this unique structure, and the great learnings that each Director has to impart. It’s not so much a “how-to” but a “what I’ve learned and what I see in the future” series.

Launching the series will be Frances Westley, international social innovation thought-leader and co-author of Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed. Frances will frame her discussion around social innovation & resilience.

• November 2: Frances Westley on Social Innovation and Resilience
• November 9: Stephen Huddart on Managing Innovation
• November 16: Allyson Hewitt on Shared Value and what it means for the non-profit sector. Allyson will discuss Shared Value, the concept first popularized by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in their Harvard Business Review article. What is the impact & import for the non-profit sector?
• November 23: Cheryl Rose on Community-University Partnerships
• November 30: Tim Draimin on Supporting global learning: Australia/Canada social innovation synergies
• December 7: Al Etmanski on Natural Care
• December 13: Tim Brodhead on Key trends in philanthropy for grant seekers from a SI perspective
• December 20: Dr. Ilse Treurnicht on Upcoming Trends in Innovation

All webinars will be held for one hour, including time for questions and comments from participants.

Registration will be open soon.

Speakers in order of presentations:

Frances Westley: JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation, University of Waterloo, SiG@Waterloo
Stephen Huddart: President and CEO, JW McConnell Family Foundation
Allyson Hewitt: Director, Social Entrepreneurship at MaRS, SiG@MaRS
Cheryl Rose: Director, Partnerships and Projects for SiG@Waterloo
Tim Draimin: Executive Director, Social Innovation Generation (National)
Al Etmanski: President and Co-Founder of PLAN, Director, SiG@PLAN
Tim Brodhead: Senior Fellow, SiG National. Fmr President, JW McConnell Family Foundation
Dr. Ilse Treurnicht: CEO, MaRS Discovery District

Full bios available on the SiG website.

With the Occupy Wall Street movement (also known as #OWS) finally making headlines around the world and capturing people’s imaginations, the timing of Contact Summit 2011, tagline: the evolution will be social, taking place in New York City on Thursday, October 20, could not be any more timely.

The emergence of the #Occupy so-called protests that started in New York City last month and are now spreading fast across North America (with #OccupyToronto taking place today, October 15 on King St. and Bay St. downtown) has been described by noted media theorist Douglas Rushkoff as the first net-era movement in North America, taking its cue from the collaborative, open source, and sustainable models many people around the world are working to build right now.

Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO (with over a $1 trillion under management) argues that #OWS is more than just a nascent movement that will grow in the weeks and months ahead. Along with the non-violent grassroots protests that we have seen emerge from the Arab Spring earlier this year, particularly in Egypt and Tunisia, El-Erian argues that #OWS is part of a worldwide drive for greater social justice that has the potential to unify people from diverse cultural backgrounds, political affiliations, religions, and social classes. He also dismisses skeptics and critics of the #OWS movement as repeating the mistake that many made in Egypt, Israel and Tunisia—that of falling hostage to an outmoded way of thinking about seemingly-leaderless grassroots movements.

Rushkoff also makes a similar argument wherein he argues that the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the #OWS protests as incoherent, is precisely because the press and the public are themselves. He notes that it is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped. Rushkoff goes on to say that unlike a political campaign designed to get a person in office and then close up shop (as in Obama ’08), #OWS is not a movement with a traditional narrative arc. Rather, it is the product of the decentralized networked-era culture that makes up our reality today, where it is less about victory than sustainability; it is not about one-pointedness, but inclusion and groping toward consensus; it is not like a book, it is like the Internet.

Returning to the Contact Summit, convened and hosted by Douglas Rushkoff himself, and with the likes of Dennis Crowley (founder of Foursquare), Eli Pariser (founder of MoveOn.org) and Clay Shirky attending, along with a number of other very talented people, the conference should prove to be interesting especially given the very participatory and results-oriented nature of the event. The Collaboratory—a “collaboratory” of attendee-conceived and moderated conversations taking place throughout the day, along with The Bazaar—a two-hour midday festival of demos, have been designed to produce results with the question, What concrete steps can we take to realize a true potential of the networked era?, kept in mind.

From the Contact Summit website:

“Contact is a working festival of innovation where the net’s leading minds and entrepreneurs can connect with the people who are building the social technologies of tomorrow. The net of the future will not be fueled by ads, but by people solving real problems through distributed, peer-to-peer solutions. This is dormant promise of the Internet, finally coming to fruition.”

Im looking forward to attending and participating at Contact in New York City next week and will certainly be keeping close tabs on the #OWS movement, especially now that I am back in Canada for the next little while and all of this hits way too close to home.

With my parents in Banff, Alberta - August 2011

At the end of September last month, my parents celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary along with my Mom’s birthday. With that, I wanted to pay tribute to them by telling you part of their story in as many words as a blog post allows, although an entire book would be needed to fully tell their story and truly capture how much I have grown to love, admire and respect my parents in the years gone by.

Now that I am older and have a lot more perspective on the world around me, I hope to provide a glimpse of just how much my parents have sacrificed in their lives in order to give my sisters and I the opportunities that they themselves would never have dreamed of when they were growing up in the Philippines.

To make a long story short and to skip over the extended family drama on both sides, my parents grew up without a lot of money and yet, through sheer determination and hard work, they managed to put themselves through high school and then onwards to university on scholarships. They both attended one of the oldest universities in the Philippines and one of the top schools outside of Manila, the University of San Carlos (USC) in Cebu founded by Spanish Jesuit priests in 1595, where they graduated magna cum laude.

My Mom and Dad 27 years ago in Cebu, Philippines

My Dad being a little bit older than my mom, had already graduated from USC when they met and was holding down two full-time jobs in order to pay the bills and put his siblings through school: working at the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) during the day, and then teaching accounting and business to undergraduate students at USC by night, while pursuing his CPA designation. My Mom on the other hand, was a graduating senior at the time, had been actively involved with student government throughout university and to the best of my knowledge, held leadership positions with a number of campus organizations. Perhaps the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all.

Loren's baptism - circa 1988

My Dad often likes to recall stories of how he was an extremely popular lecturer at USC, mentioning that when it came to marking exams, he was always strict but fair. With regular night classes being very unpopular on campus, he would often mention that his classes were the exact opposite—always packed, with the majority of students being female students of course. Somehow, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch of the imagination to believe this to be true. To my Mom’s credit however, she claims that she had actually never heard of my Dad being ‘kind of a big deal on campus‘ until the day they first met back in early 1984.

So they met, fell in love, got married and with me soon on the way less than a year after their wedding, they realized that things needed to change as my Dad working two full-time jobs in Cebu earning a salary in Philippine pesos did not seem to cut it at all. My parents set out to create a better life for themselves and for the beginnings of their young family.

Somehow, whether it was lady luck shining down on them or perhaps the result of being at the right place at the right time, the green pastures of the Middle Eastern desert beckoned them. First Saudi Arabia and then the United Arab Emirates where our family roots were firmly planted for close to 20 years before my parents finally decided to move to Canada several years ago.

One of the many parks in Al Ain, UAE - circa 1990

However, all of this was easier said than done. Keep in mind that when my parents got married in 1984, Ferdinand Marcos and his regime had a vice-like grip on Philippine politics and business. The early to mid-1980s saw countries like the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia experience financial and economic turmoil. Within this context, its not hard to understand why under the Marcos regime, the ‘export’ of the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) to countries in the Middle East, Europe, North America and wherever work was available, soon became the norm for many Filipino families for years to come. Today, the estimated 11 million Filipinos worldwide outside of the Philippines that make up the Filipino diaspora, send remittances back home to the tune of US $16.4 billion or 13% of GDP, as reported in the balance of payments accounts in 2008.

In an era well before email, instant and text messaging, and Skype, the decision for my Dad to go to Saudi Arabia on his own to work as a Senior Accountant for one of the government hospitals, was incredibly hard. And yet, both my Mom and Dad made the most of the situation for 5 years, that is, until opportunity arose and my Dad was offered a teaching position at the Higher Colleges of Technology in the UAE in 1990. Although there was a lot of uncertainty in the air, somehow they knew that moving to the UAE would lead to bigger and better things. After being separated for so long early in their marriage, my parents decided that it was best we move as a family to this foreign city in the middle of the desert called Al Ain. Our family hasn’t looked back ever since.

Loren and Loubelle with Mom and our Yaya (nanny) Gina - Hong Kong, 1993

Throughout the time my Dad was in Saudi Arabia, I recall my parents writing letters to each other constantly and at some point, Im fairly certain they sent recorded ‘voice tapes’, essentially blank cassette tapes with our voice recordings on them, in order to make communication easier—voicemail well before modern telephone voicemail was even available! I have also never told my parents this but one of my earliest memories as a child revolve around my Dad coming home from Saudi Arabia when I was three or so and bringing toys with him for me to play with. One of these toys was a grey plastic sword that my Dad had bought for me and from then on, Im fairly certain I imagined myself to be a hero, with sword in hand, running around chasing imaginary bad guys and trying my best to save the world. Yes, even at 3 years old I was causing trouble and rocking the boat.

I also vividly recall this one time where we dropped my Dad off at the airport in Cebu and my Mom telling me to wave to the airplane as the Philippines Airlines flight took off, with Riyadh as the final destination. I didn’t fully understand why my Mom was sad seeing a piece of metal go up in the air and fly off in the distant horizon, but I do now. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I always get a mixed set of emotions, from a sense of wonder and excitement to nervousness and a longing for ‘home’, every single time I find myself at an airport.

Family vacation in Thailand - circa 1998

As the years go by and the fact that I am slowly inching closer towards 30 with 20 being a distant memory away,  I have come to realize that my parents truly are my source of inspiration and my steadfast rock of support. No matter how crazy some of my ideas have been in the past or how big my ambitions are for the future, I know that my parents will always be there for me just as they have always been. Not only for me, but for my sisters Loubelle, Lorel and even Loren when she was still with us. When Loren passed away back in early 2002 to what I thought at the time was a cruel sense of fate, Im fairly certain that it was my parent’s faith in God that helped them overcome it, holding our family together in the process. When all is said and done, I hope that I can live up to my parents’ dreams and expectations and make them proud. They are certainly the best parents a son could ever ask for. I love you both.

My sisters goofing around in Thailand - circa 1998