Interviewee: Andrea Cornejo (Peru)
Region: Latin America
Category: Technology entrepreneurship

Development of today’s world is highly dependent on the access to the Internet. Virtually, every business and organization benefits from the use of the Internet, which has enabled numerous work opportunities to emerge. This has opened a way out of poverty for populations in developing countries. Coderise does not only give individuals these technological opportunities, but educates one how to manage it effectively . The organization offers the guidance to obtain work, both domestically and internationally, as well as how to start up a new technological business. Providing skills, tools and connections, Coderise enables high school students to earn a promising future. 

The Peruvian director and founder of Coderise, Andrea Cornejo, is a serial social entrepreneur. In addition, she is also known as an economic development and impact evaluation specialist. In the past Andrea has founded both EmprendeSocial (the first online publication of social entrepreneurship in Latin America) and Proyecto Viña Vieja (a development initiative in Peru). Likewise, she has been involved in numerous organizations such as KNG health Consulting, France Amérique Latine and Partners of the Americas. Having received her education from several universities including: Harvard University, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Swarthmore College, Andreas project has a promising future.

For her various entrepreneurial endeavors she has received various awards. In 2009 she received both the Wilma A. Lewis Fund Scholar and the Peter-Merts Scholar for outstanding academic achievement. In 2010, Andrea was presented with the Swarthmore Intercultural Taslima Nasrin Community Builder Award. In the future Andrea and her team behind Coderise wish for at least fifteen students to graduate from the pilot program launch their first Coderise Hackathon at the end of the program and achieve a basic level of Javascript for 70 percent of students.

Why did you choose to focus on kids, education and programming?
We chose to focus on high school kids because at this age a great amount of very successful programmers got their start. Also, at this age you can be heavily influenced before deciding what career path you want to take in college. We chose programming because it is a very concrete tool with a lot of values especially in today’s global markets. If one at least knows a bit of programming you can be both, much more competitive in the employment market and get one step closer to developing your own applications. Applications can help solving a problem you see in your daily life or in your community and get a head start from there.

How does Coderise support the students who participate?
The way our program works is that three times a week the kids come in and we have them follow a course given by two instructors for three hours. In these lessons they learn multiple concepts about programming, at the moment the class is focusing on Javascript. Additionally, each student has the opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with distinguished tech entrepreneurs and programmers. We do this so they can get integrated with the tech community and continue to be connected after the program is done. We hereby give the students a direct opportunity to become part of the tech entrepreneurial network. Whether the students go through to college or straight into the working environment they have resources to start. They both obtain valuable skills and connections. 

Why is technology entrepreneurship good for the future? 
Coderise is based on the idea that in the future technology is going to allow everyone to have the same knowledge. The access to technology is lower in the developing areas, which hinders individuals who do not go to the best schools and have academic backgrounds to be just as likely to innovate compared to other developed communities. This is the reason why we are giving them the tools, the programming skills as well as the recourses to help these people along to a successful career path. Through technology anyone can become an entrepreneur and learn about entrepreneurship, as one needs little financial capital to get started.  

From your point of view, how does Columbia foster entrepreneurship? Do they do this successfully?    
The technology field is slightly different from other places because it is quite easy to get started due to reduced capital requirements (e.g. labor costs) to get started. Columbia is a country to follow as an example for Latin America because the government is providing resources and promotes an ecosystem of entrepreneurship, which is the initial thing that needs to happen. How to foster social entrepreneurship is a combination of having the right knowledge and connections. Columbia is doing this quite well from a government point of view, as they are seeking to look into and connect with key stakeholders out of the country, to bring back successful initiatives and bring these together with aspiring entrepreneurs in Columbia. This is done to secure good mentorship and guidance, which needs to happen in order to create a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

How did you make your project financially sustainable?
For our pilot program we decided to do a crowdfunding campaign where we acquired the minimum funds that we needed to make our program successful. Additionally, we will most likely launch more structured campaigns at the end of the program for the future. However, it was mainly through a campaign advert through crowd funding and stretching across our networks to receive individual support from sponsors. These sponsors were also local companies that are especially development focused in Medellín. 

What restrictions do up-starting social entrepreneurs face in your country? How can they overcome these restrictions?
From my experience in Peru it gets really difficult with Bureaucracy. This is because even at the point when your project is bringing in volunteers and receiving donations from other governments, there are several conflicts with local entities. These conflicts make it difficult to initiatives to take place. Governments are often not good at making initiatives in different sectors work well together.  This causes government responses to initiatives to be unclear and slow.  Social entrepreneurs must “pick up the slack” and articulate how an initiative fits in with government objectives, because often this won’t be clear. Social entrepreneurs have to be persistent and develop strong communication skills. Work with deadlines and be very precise with every entity that is involved, local or national. 

Do you believe that the biggest barrier social entrepreneurs face is the government?   
No, there is always a way around the government. If it is necessary there are always short cuts one can take. The more significant problem a social tech entrepreneur can face is his or her team. The team has to be organized and consistent. Also, finding a way to ensure the sustainability of the organization and developing a way to effectively evaluate your results. The results have to be presented to the sponsors in order to get more support. When all of these objectives are met, it makes the difference between a successful and an unsuccessful project. 

What were the most significant barriers you met when you founded Coderise?
Coderise is fairly young as we started developing the idea in April 2012. What was very challenging for me was to set up a team in a location where I was not physically present. I did go to Columbia eventually, however, my team did work on the idea of Coderise for a long time while I was still in New York. It has been especially difficult to start a program before having the money to be paying everyone for the work they do. It is therefore difficult to manage a structured team when most are working voluntarily. The two instructors for the current pilot program are also volunteering, as it is very new and experimental. However, for the future we would like to pay them, as we would like to keep them in the project. 

How did you get motivated to start a technology education program in Columbia, sitting in New York and coming from Peru?
The social initiatives I led in Peru from 2006 to 2009 gave me experience in management of community development driven programs, skills applicable to any future endeavor. I gained a more articulate understanding of poverty, its origins, and traps from working on the ground. My perspectives and commitment toward economic development has always been global and never with geographical specifications.
Back in the US, I complemented these experiences within and out of the classroom discussions that led to a theory to reduce social inequality based on a not-so-popular tool: computer programming technology. To apply our theory, we chose Colombia for the pilot program for Coderise because it is a country with national (and regional) strategies to direct economic growth based on the technological sector. We also had a strong support in both network and tech community, which were essential.  

How did you experience the first few weeks and months when Coderise started?
It was a nice feeling finally having the project up and running, as we had been planning it for so long. Also, when the project hasn’t started yet it seems very vague and outlandish. We only got the instructors through our networks and connection with other people. At this point nothing was actually happening it was more recruiting the team and the curriculum technical advisors. So it was a great feeling that it was actually happening.

What can we expect from Coderise in the future?
On the level of our students, we can expect the graduating students to have basic working knowledge of Javascript, CSS and HTML. Furthermore, we can expect them to be more competitive in whatever they choose to do, both in college and in the working field. We also want them to be empowered by the motivational speakers they heard and use the skills they have learnt to be able to go out into the world and create and innovate the solutions to problems they encounter. In addition, we can expect an expansion in the model of Coderise, once we analyze results at the end and evaluate what needs to change to improve the program. Then, connect with others to figure out where there are more resources and support to expand Coderise as a program. 
In the long term I hope Coderise will enable more people to understand what a great tool programming is and everything it can be used for. Also, for the project to grow and expand into other countries and have different communities have ownership of Coderise to see students get more competitive on the career they decide on. Finally, seeing the next generation in Latin America becoming familiar and liking the idea of being able to innovate their technologies and ideas. 

Do you have any advice to give to upcoming social entrepreneurs?
I have learnt from being a social tech entrepreneur that it is important to take your objective very seriously and treat it as seriously as if it was a for-profit business model, even when it is not. Also, accountability towards your volunteers and measuring impact through quantity of analysis of data we collect. It is additionally important to understand what each team member contributes with and have him or her work at high work standards. It is important to learn from the private sector as they are highly efficient in getting the job done.

Anything you would like to add?
I think there are more private sector opportunities focusing on development, more than what we dare to think. There may also be opportunities where there don’t appear to be any at all. I don’t think that tech entrepreneurship is the only way forward in the future, but I think it is often a tool that gets forgotten with respect to social economical development. Therefore, where it can fit in and act as a supporting tool, it should be.   

The global labor market crisis for young people is getting worse and worse. Governments around the world are struggling to reduce unemployment. Special attention needs to be given to youth unemployment, as the earliest years on the labor market have the most significant impact on a persons' professional development. 

While employers argue that there is a war for talents and that universities do not produce enough talented workers, the unemployment rates in several developed countries are rising beyond what one has thought could be possible. The scariest chart of the labor market has now become even more scary!

Source: Eurostat

More than 75 million young people were unemployed in late 2010 (UN World Youth Report 2012). This is a trend that disproportionately affects the developed world, which might sound somewhat counter-intuitive if we consider the shrinking birth-rates. However, there are some logical reasons for this trend:

• An aging population.
• Pension systems that cannot afford financing people for 30 years or more after having paid into the system for maybe 30-35 years.
• An older generation that therefore needs to and wants to work longer.
• An academization of the younger generations as a result of the misconception that everyone needs to go to university in order to become successful.
• A mismatch between what is being taught at schools and universities and what is being required on the labor market.
• A lack of experience among the younger generations and at the same time a lack of available jobs for younger people to develop their professional track-record and gain work experience.
• An increase of productivity and automation in the manufacturing industry leading to job-cuts
• Universities that are too ignorant to develop function career-guidance services that help their students prepare for the labor market.

If no suitable labor market incentives are identified, the result will be economic waste as well as an undermined social stability and a marginalization of the local workforce, a valuable natural resource for any country. Entrepreneurship is one of many active labor market policies that need to be focused on. Supporting young people in gaining work experience through starting projects and companies is an effective mechanism to by-pass the challenges of getting an entry-level position. Of course, not everyone is made for entrepreneurship. However, by helping young people realize entrepreneurial projects and ideas, relevant skills for the general labor market are being learned.

Interviewee: Sebastian Lindstrom (Sweden)
Region: Africa
Category: Filmmaking

I, Sebastian Per David Lindstrom, hail from Sweden where I served in the Swedish Military Special Forces, learning, among other things, how to survive in -30 degree Celsius weather. After the chilly winters of Sweden, I thawed, graduating from the University of Hong Kong's International Business and Global Management program. I have also consumed knowledge at educational institutions in Singapore, China and Korea. I’m the co-founder of non profit organizations and have become an integral part of several more globally-focused groups, including the Sandbox-Network. One such organization, Light for Children I co-founded with two Ghanian partners in 2005.  The organization works with HIV-infected children and mobilizes volunteers from around the world every year to volunteer in Ghana on a variety of child-centered projects. I maintain links with The University of Hong Kong as part of this growing network that supports the region’s affected children.

Prompted by the question 'What took you so long?’, I bought the domain whattookyousolong.org (WTYSL) and subsequently launched a film expedition across Africa in search of the unsung heroes in the international aid community. In 2008, using only public transportation, we traveled from Morocco to South Africa. A new and highly formative string was added to my bow when the filmmaker Alicia Sully joined the crew of volunteers, later becoming an integral part of WTYSL. Upon completion of the documentary expedition, WTYSL co-created a screening tour which brought the film to 20 cities and universities across the US and eight European countries. 

WTYSL works in collaborations with NGOs and is contracted for freelance work. Some clients and partners include: USAID, TED, PBS, EDC (Education Development Center), Agora Partnerships, Makeshift Magazine, and PSI (Population Services International).

I am a passionate and energetic speaker who talks about what I know best, namely Guerrilla film-making and camel milk. The guerrilla ethos developed over the four years of WTYSL's existence filming non-profits and social businesses in more than 60 countries. In guerrilla filmmaking you embrace the unknown, never getting permits, working with semi-professionals and volunteers, and moving around with local people on public transport.

The most ambitious project thus far has involved a year-long journey, covering 20 countries, filming camel milk entrepreneurship and cultures. Due to this expedition I have become a huge Camel Milk promoter and consumer. To test out the Bedouin tradition of camel milk detoxification I stopped eating food and water in Nairobi and instead started consuming only unpasteurized Kenyan camel milk. Each day I drank five liters of the milk and after nine days my mind and body were clear. At the conclusion of my camel milk detox I was invited to Swedish TV’s biggest morning show to share camel milk and camel cheese with the host.

In April 2012 WTYSL was the official documentary team for the first ever TEDxSummit in Doha, Qatar, where 700 TEDx organizers from around the world joined forces to coordinate the 'ideas worth spreading' movement. A month later, taking the ‘ideas worth spreading’ further, WTYSL helped organize TEDxMogadishu "Re-birth" in a city that some still call "the most dangerous city on earth." The Somali Diaspora joined the event from abroad via live stream and Twitter to take part of the first sign of normalcy after 21 years of war in a stateless environment. In May the WTYSL team was in Rwanda filming the Rwanda Open Summit; a collaborative innovative space with education professionals from around the world who came together to discuss the future of education in the developing world. In June I was invited to collaborate on the education committee for Create32; an Austrian governmental initiative organized by the Austrian entrepreneurship organization to develop a vision of how the country should look 20 years from now. In July, I was a speaker and facilitator at the International Baccalaureate World Student Conference on Social Entrepreneurship in Segovia, Spain. 

Currently I’m in the Center for International Education’s Master’s Program where I’m focusing on open education solutions in complex regions. I will very likely remain an enthusiastic generalist due to my healthy obsession connecting people to co-create progress. Traditional education is not dead, it is just realigning itself in the world of crowd-everything and I would like to be part of this process. 

Goals
After over four years of filming, producing, editing and coordinating over 100 videos for non-profits and social businesses in over 60 countries, I have decided to dedicate two years of my life studying and working at CIE. 

The conversations I have had with CIE staff in the last month triggered me to venture out deep into the sea of alternative educational methods. I have decided that I would like to focus on the educational possibilities linked to the Open Knowledge movement.

My goal is to develop new open education solutions for children and youth, particularly in complex and fragile environments, that help eliminate barriers of entry into quality learning experiences. I want to assist in the creation of an ecosystem where knowledge is not pre-determined but can emerge through study and empower learners to feel curiosity of inquiry.

Rationale
Education systems, for some, have been a vehicle of division and the accumulation of power for a ruling elite. There are also massive challenges in delivering quality education to the approximately 39 million out-of-school children around the world who live in situations affected by vicious conflict.

I envision a future where Open Educational Resources (OER), a sub-product of Open Knowledge that promotes the idea of free sharing and peer collaboration, could potentially alleviate the digital divide between the global North and the global South. OERs will also contribute to decreasing the resource divide between rural and urban learning environments.

Such open education initiatives can widen access to quality education, especially when distributed and shared amongst many countries and higher education institutions. 

The primary region of intervention will be the Middle East and Africa. To enable a deeper understanding of the Arab context, I will undertake a program of language study. My chosen dialect is Egyptian Arabic, as it is most widely spoken and understood in the Arab world. To further build upon my filmmaking background, I will obtain a Graduate Film Certificate.

Flash. Right now a lot of my passion to film comes from my fellow team member Nate Mook ; he just told me to watch On the Road. This morning when I woke up I realized that my friend’s other restaurant in Mogadishu had been bombed and I felt no hunger to read or write. I wanted to sit down and run away so I started to watch Nate’s movie suggestion. One quote in the movie especially captured my imagination. “We were leaving confusion and nonsense behind, performing our one noble function of the time, move”. It resonates with me. In the end of the day my only quest is to move.

What is the vision for your films? What do you hope they will be contributing in the short- and long-term?
Our vision is to explain the world; other people will watch, take action, and in a perfect world,  improve it.

• Short-term we strive to create movement of thoughts and ideas; potentially through provocation, buzz or inverted hype.
• Long term we want to create measurable positive outputs like increase in funding, changes in the way people think / operate / share / do / live. 

How did you come up with the idea for the WTYSL Foundation? 
The name derives from a conversation with a girl named Lina who used to be very close to my sister. We were in a car driving to a beach somewhere in Los Angeles. 

For some reason Lina says: “What took you so long?” It resonated with my ongoing questioning of everything around me so I decided to buy the domain  whattookyousolong.org right away. What the domain would be used for was at this point still very unclear.

The idea of what we are, what we do and what we want to achieve has been fluid. I would argue that it is a child exploring and evolving throughout the world of development, outputs and impacts. Filming was initially a segment of our quest; it is now our vector of output; our soul to give. 

You seem to have become an expert of Africa, despite the fact that you are originally from Sweden. Tell us more about this and how it happened that you decided to follow this path.
Me nor anyone in the WTYSL team will ever consider ourselves to be an expert in Africa or anything else. The learning theory Connectivism teaches us that some people are good at finding the knowledge, others store it. I would consider myself, at the best, to be in the category of know-where rather than know-how. If a path is needed I’m on a path of diversity. A quote I read sometime ago in a report titled "future work skills 2020" by the institute for the future at the ‘University of Phoenix research Institute’ concludes that "Research now tells us that what makes a group truly intelligent and innovative is the combination of different ages, skills, disciplines, and working and thinking styles that members bring to the table". The What Took You So long team can embrace that diversity of learning and share via peerology and knowmadic epiphanies. 

Who is your role model in the entrepreneurial world? And why? 
I’m inspired by people who can do things that I can’t. Playing the guitar, the drums ; singing properly. Artists ; people who can paint and use their fingers in any direction. Long distance runners who can deliver four marathons in a row. I feel weak but it inspires me to push harder. Steve Jobs makes a great point in this video from 1995 ; 

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you”.

What are the greatest challenges you have met in your entrepreneurial career to date?
To see a purpose in everything around you.

How did you make your organization financially sustainable? Do you have any financial advice to give to upcoming entrepreneurs? 
Stay off the radar. Minimize expenses rather than focusing on profits. Flexible budgeting where larger organizations will pay more for your services and smaller org’s will get a sweat subsidized price tag to enjoy. Don’t have kids. Have cheese for dinner. Couchsurf without guilt world wide. Ditch an office. Get unlimited data on your phone and turn it into a hot spot. Make love to the media ; they will add credibility to your story. Don’t feel bad about borrowing stuff. Make people believe in you as a person. Set up boxes with your belongings in friends apartments on all five continents. Make conferences pay for your biggest cost, air fare. 

If you were to start your organization today, what would you do differently?
I wouldn’t try to raise money with an idea to redistribute it to projects that were ‘good’. 

I would have bought a motorbike. I should have learned a new language. Built a stronger advisory board earlier on. Discuss scalability models in a dark room with people I don’t know.

Tell us about something you are exceptionally proud of?
I’m proud of the great friends I have made on the road. Filmmaking is the perfect vector to share your energy with curious souls. 

What was crucial when you founded your organization and what would you advice other entrepreneurs to do when starting up?
Start your vehicle and wait as long as possible until you register the venture into a non, for or hybrid profit / corp. Provoke to gain traction. Disrupt everything. Talk to everyone. Surround yourself with diversity. 

What are you next big goals with the organization and in life generally?

Big goals:

1.     Find a good animator who wants to join the road.
2.     Set up a Guerilla filmmaking school.
3.     Understand what complexity is all about.
4.     Be more humble.
5.     Learn Final Cut Pro 10.
6.     Learn Arabic.
7.     Buy a pair of second hand running shoes.
8.     Read more.
9.     Write more.
10.  Give back more.

Is there anything else you would like to add or talk about?
My running shoes were stolen by a taxi driver in Boston so now I can’t exercise.

If you want to learn more about what Sebastian is up to and the camel milk project, then take a look at his TED talk: