Mechai Viravaidya is founder and chair of the Population and Community Development Association (PDA). He is a globally recognized leader in public health, education and community development. Mr. Viravaidya has initiated community-based family planning services back in 1974, innovative poverty reduction and rural education programs, large-scale rural development and environmental programs, as well as groundbreaking HIV/AIDS prevention activities throughout Southeast Asia. He is also known as "Mr. Condom", and condoms are often referred as "mechais" in Thailand 

Can you please tell us how everything started and how things have developed over the years?
Ok let me explain a little bit. We started 39 years ago. Today, we have 28 companies. And the profits can only be used for reserve, business expansion and charitable activities. And now we’ve been able to get funds from the Gates Foundation, to help expand social enterprise in Thailand. And last year we helped to establish 53 social enterprises through 2 universities and a bank. So our job today is to help expand. Most other "social enterprises" don't help other social entrepreneurs develop, but mainly take care of themselves. We thought that we want to help and of course we didn’t have the money, so we got it from the Gates Foundation. I believe that  the only way to survive as a development agency or a third sector is to do it with a social enterprise. You can be a foundation but you must also have a social enterprise.
Apart from that we have now established a school, which is a secondary school and all students are taught to do business. Hence, the school has turned into a school to produce social entrepreneurs and rural development workers and change makers. I think we are the first school in the world to help produce social entrepreneurs. It’s called bamboo school.

How would you call yourself?
Oh I just call myself Mechai. Some call me the "Condom King" because I started the family planning program and anti AIDS program. Some call me change maker, some call me social entrepreneur, some call me social engineer. Call me by my name, it’s much better.

But do you identify yourself with being a Social Entrepreneur?
I don't identify myself with a particular terminology. I’m trying to make positive changes in the lives of people who deserve attention and our help. And that’s also the main reason I’ve founded PDA. Well, the first part we did was the family planning. Then we went from family planning to HIV AIDS, to poverty eradication, getting companies to partnering with villages, and then on to social enterprise and then education. So we’ve gone through 5 mountains.

Was it a a natural evolvement?
Yes. You start up somewhere and then you develop over time. In Thailand we used to have 7 kids per family 40 years ago, and it was important to do something related to education and family planning. After about 28 years, we came down from 7 children per family to 1.2 today. And the population growth rate from 3.3% to 0.4%. From family planning we then went on to AIDS, which as a very natural expansion step for us. According to UN AIDS, we were able to help reduce new infections by 90% over a 12 year period, and according to the World Bank we’ve been able to prevent about 7.7 million individuals from being infected. Thereafter, we started looking at poverty eradication, trying to help people live a better life, hence also a natural development for our organization, follow by education. So all in all, we can say that each development step was a natural one.

Is that what drives you, these success stories? Or what is it?
Well, it's not necessarily the success, but the job itself that drives me. I truly enjoy what I do. I’m addicted to my work. And my advice to other people is “don’t take yourself too seriously”.

What does your organization look like and what's your role in it?
We have 28 companies, we have many people running it. For example, we have  19 restaurants, including one in England, called cabbages and condoms. It’s been at the top of the list in trip advisor as well. And in Bangkok we have about 250 people every night at our restaurant in Bangkok. We have 19 outside Bangkok. A lot of international people come to our restaurants. Of course when they come in here there are condoms everywhere. We’ve got Santa condoms, you got Tiger Woods dressed in a condom, you’ve got all sorts of flowers out of condoms, and lights covered with condoms. And it’s a great tickling find for people who have been shy and they  take photos like crazy. And we give out condoms after the meal.

PDA is a non profit, tax-exempt organisation. I guess it’s the same as 501c in America. We do not have a law in Thailand as a social enterprise. So we are a company, we pay 35% tax. But what we do with our profit is the key issue. At PDA, I’m the chairman. I used to be sort of the executive chairman but now I’m just a chairman and we have other people running it. We have the 28 companies, we have different people running things. The purpose of the 28 companies is to generate profit so we can use the profit for activities operated by the PDA - our public service / charitable activities. It is important that we earn our own money to do good, because you cannot rely on other people's money forever.
 
Are these 28 companies also social enterprises in themselves?
Yes these are all social enterprises. We are about 70% financed by the companies. We could be a 100% but there are people who want to continue to give us money because they think we create value in the world. So they trust that we help them get more for their bucks. We’ll probably never be a 100% because people still want to give us money to do things because we match their donations.

So are you a break even operator?
Yeah we could be. So if the donors decided to go away we would be financially independent.

Do you have competitors?
Well, you have organisations like ours looking for funds. I would say that is a competitor in terms of getting donations of course. But in terms of business our competitors are all restaurants. No we’re not afraid of competitors. You see the whole point is that social enterprises must be regarded as just some normal business. We have to be able to compete with the best outside.

What has been your greatest success as a social entrepreneur?
Oh it’s not me as a social entrepreneur. It’s the success of the social enterprises. Our restaurants have done well, our hotels have done well. Other businesses we have sort of, supermarkets have done well. Probably the one that is most prominent would be the restaurants and the hotels. The profits from those businesses help to run PDA. I personally am just part of the team. 

Did you ever perceive a clash between making money in for profit businesses and the social activities?
Why would there be a clash? Is there a clash between the government collecting taxes and spending money? Why should there be one when earning money honestly and using it to provide education, health care, and development? Our businesses are straightforward and honest. We pay tax and our economic development, social development and activities done by PDA and non profit organisation is also straightforward. Many scholars perceive that there is a clash between doing business and social development. But there's absolutely no clash.

What are your goals for PDA?
We’ve always said that our goal is to last for at least 120 years and we are now at 40. So we have 80 more years to go. Ultimately, our goal is to be relevant, to improve education, to improve people’s health, to improve the role of women, we want more women to run the country. Definitely gender equality, more than equality, we need it to be in gender superiority to reach a balance of equality later on. 

How would you describe social entrepreneurship?
Well it’s trying to do good development work and realising that you cannot depend on the generosity of other people for ever. You have to help yourself. So it’s financial sustainability.

If you could today launch something new, what would it be? What's your "dream" venture?
Well I think I like education very much because that is the need and the source of a great deal of goodness and capability. So I would say education is probably the most important one. Of course that could lead to getting rid of poverty, and any other inequalities.

Is there anything you would like to add?
What I’d like to re-emphasise is that so called successful social enterprises should help struggling ones and other NGOs, and non profits, to have their social enterprises. Furthermore, we should establish at least one school in each country that develops social entrepreneurs. Not at university level, but at school level, so that they can start young, so they grow up to be honest and responsible adults. 

Thank you very much! Good luck for the next 80 years+ of PDA

Interviewee: Jay Kimmelman
Region: Africa & Asia
Venture: Bridge International Academies (Interview 1 of 2)

​Can you tell me something about yourself how you grew up?
I grew up in New York within a family of folks, not necessarily an entrepreneurial family. My family has a lot of doctors and lawyers in the family. So they always thought that what I was doing was a bit crazy, but very supportive of that craziness. I’ve always been very focused on looking at things a little bit differently than others and how you could build things, whether that be physically or otherwise. And essentially really creating value and disrupting the status quo has been, I guess, a theme for me and my life. Both in my professional life and my personal life.

Have you done anything entrepreneurial already when you were a kid?
Yes, when I was a kid I actually spent a lot of time building little machines and taking things apart and putting them back together and I was also involved with businesses early on. I was a performing magician and a performing clown when I was both in middle school and high school and beyond which was both a business for me but also an opportunity to create. I also started a few businesses when I was very little and in primary school. So I was selling needed items to my classmates. I started a few newspapers when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade, for the school and for the class. So it’s been a theme throughout my whole life.

So while other kids were climbing up trees, you went out and started your own businesses?
Yes, that’s right. But it was less about climbing up trees versus starting something and more about, hey why does something not exist and what can we do about that? But I was still interacting a lot with my classmates. For the newspaper, for example, I “hired” a bunch of them to write stories for it and it blossomed into something bigger than that.

And then what did you study, what was the next part of your life?
I studied computer science and electrical engineering. After leaving Harvard, I moved out to Silicon Valley to start up a company. It was an educational software company called Edusoft – my first company that I started in San Francisco – which helped educational institutions make data-driven decisions when it comes to the education of their students.

Do you identify yourself with being an entrepreneur? And if yes what are the things that you as an entrepreneur do that you might identify with?
I do identify with being an entrepreneur. I’d say the qualities I identify with are creating value, seeing opportunity, disrupting the status quo.

Why do you refrain from calling yourself a social entrepreneur for example?
There are different ways of looking at entrepreneurial success, and one is evidently “social impact”. I think that it is not right to call yourself a social entrepreneur or not. It is not a “job title”, but rather the outcome of entrepreneurial activities. For example, there are many entrepreneurs who call themselves “social entrepreneur”, but actually have quite little social impact. Others again might not even think about the social impact of their actions, but actually have a huge social impact, in which case you would call them a social entrepreneur.

So would you say that the definition of social entrepreneurship as such lies in the outcome and not in a personal definition?
Correct. I personally don’t spend too much time thinking about the classifications, to be honest, but I would say an entrepreneur is someone who creates value, and who disrupts the status quo. And you know there are lots of potential outcomes to that, failure is of course one, success is another, but success in what way? You might build an organisation or company that makes a lot of money and at the same time impacts a lot of people’s lives.

What were the circumstances in your life that led you to dedicate your life to Bridge? And how did it happen that you founded it?
10 years ago I sold my company Edusoft. I then spent lots of time with my co-founder and wife Shannon, traveling and living in and researching all parts of the developing world, trying to understand the challenges and opportunities of those markets. We specifically tried to understand how we could have a massive impact on the quality of life for people who lived at the bottom of the pyramid, looking at things such as access to finance, agricultural productivity, education, etc.
The genesis for Bridge happened, when Shannon and I were living in a small rural farming village in the mountains of north-eastern China, called Guongbaiyu. Shannon was doing her PhD work, and I was sort of doing less formal research. Most people in the village lived on about 70 cents a day. It was about -40°C during winter and the people we were staying with had no running water and no heating. By walking through the streets and looking at the houses and the way they were constructed, one could tell who had a primary school education and who didn’t. It was that sort of deterministic. We then realized that if people get access to basic primary education – reading, math, problem solving skills, etc. – that their quality of lives would fundamentally improve.
Let me give you an example of how important primary education can be. One of our neighbours was 75-year-old cashmere goat herder. Due to his age, he was not able to take his goats up the mountain anymore. He luckily had good primary school education and we could watch him fundamentally change his life by buying and reading a book on how to raise foxes for their pelts. The advantage of foxes was that they could stay in your yard and you wouldn’t have to walk them up the mountain. So that’s what he did. He figured out the price for which he could sell his goat herd, how many foxes he could buy with that money and how much he could make with these foxes.
He was lucky. But many families do not have that much luck and lack exactly that type of primary education. So we started to look into this in greater detail and identified what later became the Bridge International Academies business.
But it was quite evident to us that we could only succeed with this if we come up with a business that is scalable, in order to give millions of individuals access to education.

Was there never a bit of a fear or respect from taking on the problem on such a scale?
I think it is quite normal that people tell themselves “Oh that’s too hard” or “It can’t be done because so many have tried it before” or “No one has tried it before because it probably can’t be done”. I think that’s probably sort of what distinguishes those who actually go ahead to tackle these challenges versus those who don’t. I always like to think about the analogy of when we landed a man on the moon. Just 10 years earlier, when someone said “we’re going to land a man on the moon”, no one knew how to do it. There wasn’t even a feasible plan of all the steps needed to get there. That was an important enough goal and that was the challenge and a very large group of people said “We’re going to make that happen because it’s important”. That is the way how these types of large challenges get tackled, whether they succeed or fail.
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What is it then that drives you and inspires you from day to day to keep going?
I think it’s the impact that we have. Obviously, what we do is incredibly challenging. And at times you know very daunting, at times frightening, at times angering. But at the end of the day, you know today there are 100’000 children from families who live from less than 2$ a day who are sitting in classrooms getting a world-class quality education that they weren’t able to afford before. And physically even going and visiting our academies and seeing what all of this work is for is enough to get me back on track, even in the most challenging of times.

Can you tell me as the CEO of Bridge, who are you working for? Who do you have in mind when you say this is the product we create and those are the people we are working for?
We are very customer-oriented. I think that’s necessary and part of our success story. We serve families who live on less than 2$ per person, per day; who know that the current options they have for education for their children are not sufficient. They know that the biggest opportunity for their families to get out of poverty is by making sure that their children have access to high quality basic education. However, how can you ensure this in a system where teachers oftentimes don’t show up in the morning or where children don’t learn to read even if the teachers are there, because no one is actually focused or concerned about the performance of the children. We serve exactly these families by giving them an option of affordable high quality education.

So you found a way of combining the social good with an actual business!
Yes, and I would argue that most really great businesses are the same. They may serve a different target customer, they may not be education customers, but great businesses help people with a real need by providing them a clearly value-adding solution at an affordable price. I believe it is all about value creation.

You’ve been hiring a lot of new people. What do you look for in your employees?
We’ve been growing from 2 people to 4200 people in the last 5 years. Obviously we are a people-driven business. The core belief of our people is that it’s possible. Also, it is important that they’re data-driven, because the scale we’re working at is simply too much without proper data analysis. Everything we do is about gathering information and data and making decisions based on that. It is important for us to develop a really good understanding for our markets and clients.
Our people also need to be able to handle the stress associated with the scope, scale and speed of our activities. The combination of operating at that intersection of scale, speed, and scope of work, is overwhelming for a lot of people. With regards to scope: We work everywhere from construction and research to curriculum development training and call centres and field teams, and finance and software development. With regards to speed & scale: We’re opening up a new school in Kenia every 2.5 days! We are currently also the largest chain of retail outlets of any kind in Kenia, whether we are a bank or dry cleaner or school. We’re the largest chain of private schools in Africa and we’re soon going to be the largest chain of private schools globally at any price point. When we find those folks they are awesomely successful and incredibly excited about the work we do.

I imagine that your previous experience in the computer/education industry has been a major advantage for you to set up Bridge in the first place?
I think the biggest leverage from my experience at Edusoft is actually less the technology, and more about data-driven decisions. Edusoft focused on enabling data-driven decision-making in schools. At Bridge, we really understand our business based on the data we have. We understand our market, we understand our customers, we understand the academic interventions we’re making from a data perspective.
When we first started Bridge it actually had very little technology from an IT perspective. It had a lot of technology for processes and systems. We see technology as a means to an end. We use a lot of technology today as the backbone of our business, such as tablets for teachers, smartphones for every academy manager, or data feedback loops that give us a quarter of a million test scores every 10 days.

Your investors are equity investors. How did you attract them? What was the process of getting them into this very daring venture?
I think all great investors are always looking for big ideas. Obviously what we do is very unique. When we’ve gone out to talk to potential investors, we pretty much always started the conversation by saying that this is probably the weirdest story and idea they’re going to hear this year. But great investors see the opportunity just like great entrepreneurs. There’s a 51 billion $ market of customers who are desperately looking for a service that they need where there are very few people providing, if any, those services in any quality, scalable or in an affordable way. We figured out a way to deliver that service at a high quality at an affordable price while making it profitable.
So if you abstract away the fact that our customers are the poorest families on the planet, if you abstract away that we work in communities that very few businesses invest in, if you abstract away the types of challenges of working in emerging markets, the fundamental business is about providing an incredibly important service that is highly valued by 700 million customers. So when investors are able to really understand that, you can be certain that they will see it as an exciting investment opportunity. Many of them also see the amazing combination that makes Bridge so magical: Combining the investment with doing good by providing education for the 700 million families who live on less than 2$ a day. That’s incredible.
It wasn’t easy at first. People thought we were crazy when we first started it. Most people laughed at us in the beginning when we said that we will provide high quality education to the very poor families, charge an affordable fee for it and still be able to earn a profit

Can you remember what it was like when the first Academy stood and the first students came in to learn?
It was amazing. Someone actually just showed me a photo of me carrying one of the desks into the classroom minutes before the bell was going to ring. Nerve racking, exciting. But in many ways we built and operated our fist school as if it was school 100 or school 1000, which at the time seemed absurd to most people. For example, we asked our first academy manager to use the backend communication system to interact with the “Headquarter”, instead of using another way, because we wanted to put the system in place and test it for scale. Even though it was abstract to do at that time, with just one operating school, but we had to get the system running for a network of schools. So I remember both the sort of idiosyncratic challenges of school number 1, but at the same time I remember most that we were thinking about how this is going to work for a hundred schools.

What is your main goal for Bridge and how successful have you been so far at implementing this goal?
We want to provide high quality affordable education to 10 million children who live on less than 2$ a day. If we can do that, we’re fundamentally transforming those communities, those countries, those continents. Obviously there is a lot of risk to get into that scale. After just 5 years, we today educate 100’000 children in 300 schools across 45 counties in Kenia. Next year we will open up operations in 2 new countries, and in the following years start on multiple continents.

Did you ever perceive a clash between your social and economic goals and if yes, how were you resolving these?
No! I mean we set it up from the beginning so that those two things cannot come into conflict. For every time that we educate a child and provide a high quality service, we get paid. If we don’t provide high quality education, they do not pay us. Our customers are extremely picky and demanding. So when we increase the number of students and schools, we increase our revenues. That money is used to invest in new approaches to educate and operate our system, to grow the network and reach more students. So it’s in many ways a very clean set of goals.

Did you encounter failures along the way and if yes, how did it bring you forward?
Yeah, I mean hundreds and thousands of failures. We set them up on purpose in some ways as experiments. Everything we do, we test. We test different approaches to our lessons in the classroom. We test different approaches to marketing, we test different approaches to market research and construction. And we set them up as tests, we measure them, we evaluate the failures, we learn from them, we obviously learn from the successes as well. For us it’s all about using data to drive those learnings. We then try again and again until it works.

Would you consider yourself a for-profit or a not-for-profit entrepreneur?   
We are a for-profit company.

How did the collaboration with the governments work? Coming in and trying to revolutionise an educational system in an African country must be a bit of a scary thing. What were your experiences?
I think it’s hard to use the word government in a single context. A government is comprised of local government, county governments, national government. It’s also comprised of lots of different ministries. And within any of those are lots of different people who have lots of different opinions on things. So evidently, we have supporters and those who are less supportive. We focus a lot on the communication of our results.
For us there is nothing ideological about what we do other than we need to give options to parents who don’t have them. We’re not ideological about whether it should cost money or be free, we’re not ideological about our approach to pedagogy. We’re ideological about succeeding and providing successful options for our parents and about measuring that and knowing when it works and doesn’t work. So in many ways we have been successful to – although it’s always a work in progress - communicate that to everyone and get them involved. In essence, we share the same goals with anyone well-intentioned within the government which is to provide high quality education to the population. And since we’re not ideological about it we’re just about the results, which helps to make that conversation a lot more fruitful.

You take individuals, who themselves have relatively poor education, out of the communities and hire them as teachers. How does that work?
That’s correct. It was part of the model from day one because our main constraint for a scalable approach was the availability of teachers. One evident solution for us was to look at talents inside the communities that don’t have any opportunities and who lack formal education and training. Our goal was to make it possible to have these individuals as teachers, because we could then reach out to a large amount of talents in each community. We created a model for educating teachers and students at the same time.

And the teachers themselves are really excited that this is happening and see it as an opportunity for themselves, too.
Absolutely. 90% of our academy staff have never taught before, but 90% of them have also never had a professional job before. What we do is to empower them to help others and themselves at the same time. Those who are really motivated, can do great things with this.

Do you have a selection process for teachers? 
Yes and no. We fundamentally believe that great teachers are not born but made. We provide the training and monitoring system and so far it has worked out pretty well.

My final question, is a bit of a funny one, if you could set up any venture, which problem would you tackle?
I guess that’s an easy one. It would look like Bridge International.

So you are basically doing what you are dreaming of?
Yes.
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Is there anything you’d like to add.
No, this was great. Good luck with writing it all up and we look forward to seeing it. ​

It is quite a funny thing, this entrepreneurship. Everybody seems to love it, everybody I talk to wants to become an entrepreneur, and it is widely recognized as the prime solution to almost every major problem in the world - job crisis, innovation crisis and all other crises in that entrepreneurs come up with new products and services to tackle those issues. 
What is forgotten in all this glorification of entrepreneurship is how hard it is to build a successful and sustainable business and the ups and downs that one goes through on the way to success - or failure...

Keep reading here. 

In order to solve the youth unemployment challenge, we cannot rely on the large corporations to create sufficient amounts of jobs for the next generation. Instead, all stakeholders [policymakers, educators, large and small corporations and other support organisations] need to adapt and prepare the next generation to become job creators instead of job seekers. Youth entrepreneurship must be considered a critical pathway to decent work for young people and has to form a strategic component of national efforts to address youth unemployment. The number of entrepreneurship programmes has rapidly increased in the past years. However, little knowledge exists about their inter-connection as well as their effectiveness. Picturing the components that make up an entrepreneurial ecosystem as well as providing measurement indices has been missing to date. The proposed framework is expected to support policymakers and practitioners in setting up new entrepreneurial ecosystems and serve as a basis for future research.

Read the full article here.

If you describe yourself to someone who doesn’t know you and what you do, what’s the term you use?
I’m a born entrepreneur, and also a social entrepreneur. But I only found out about “the social” later. The drive that I have was always social, giving back something to people. I’m known for being a very fast thinker with a lot of creativity, a lot of ideas. But I didn’t even know the term “social entrepreneur” existed, back then. 

How did it come about that you got interested in fair trade in the first place?
I was born and raised in Zürich. I started my professional career as a business consultant and auditor with Deloitte. Later, I got hired by my former client, Glencore, as a project director for large Mergers & Acquisitions. I was flying around the world, lived in airplanes and hotels, and looked after multi-million dollar projects. It was fantastic, I loved it! I was on the board of three mines in Peru and visited these companies on a regular basis where I spent a lot of time with the miners. I saw how difficult it was for them to make a living. Following a reorganisation, many of those miners lost their job. This had a profound impact on me as I realised that, with my work, I was making the rich richer and the poor poorer. I realized that with this reorganisation relatively little money is saved, which then flows back to the head office where most of the shareholders are multi-millionaires. For the miners on the other hand, it will be very difficult to find a new job. And I’m supporting that system? My epiphany was so strong that I decided to leave the job and sell everything. I wanted to live with no assets. I had the feeling that I had to reconsider what to do with my life. I decided to go to Mexico for a sabbatical where I did all the things I had never had time for: a handicraft course, studying philosophy and literature and how to play the violin. But after 3 months, I got sort of bored. And I thought I might as well see if I can do something for the benefit of the local people. And that’s when fairtrasa was born. Fairtrasa stands for fair trade South America. 

Was it a natural step? Or an idea that just popped into your head?
No, I wasn’t serious! I said to myself, this is my sabbatical project. I would not have thought that this would become what I would do for the rest of my life. I knew already at the beginning that I wanted to create a system that covers entire Latin America. What I didn’t know at that time was that it would grow way beyond what I imagined at the beginning.

What’s the difference between your work and the work of a fair trade label?
I get asked that a lot. Max Havelaar is a certification scheme. They define standards which ensure that small-scale farmers get a fair deal, that is, a fair price for their products, for which Max Havelaar sets minimum prices. If the market price is above the minimum price, then this higher price needs to be paid to the farmer. However, what I learned through my work was that a better price alone was not enough. At the beginning, I thought fair trade certifications alone will lift farmers out of poverty. But it really is just a certification. I started a project with mangoes where farmers got paid on a daily basis. They took the money, went into the next pub and got drunk. I realised, money alone can do more harm if it’s not structured. Thus, education is very, very important. This led me to develop my own system.

Can you explain to me what a small-scale farmer is, and how your model is supporting them? 
Key for us is the direct support of the farmers and the core of what we do is a three tier development. There are millions of small-scale farmers that own land between 0.5 and 4 hectares. They live in the middle of nowhere, detached from markets, and their local markets sometimes do not even give a return high enough to cover harvesting costs. As a consequence they are trapped in a vicious cycle. But not all small scale farmers are the same. They are at different developmental stages.

• 1st level: The farmers on the first level we call rural-poor. They are subsistence farmers. Many of them don’t even have the money to buy seeds or plant a value crop. 
  
• 2nd level: The semi-developed farmers, on the second level, already have a product but they don’t have access to technical know-how and have to sell to middle-men at very low prices. They live in remote places and are reliant upon one single buyer at whatever price. They lack opportunities and alternatives. 
  
• 3rd level: Finally there are the more developed farmers, on the third level. They achieve better yields and some of them can even export because they meet the standards of international markets. And they can be fair trade certified. 

As Max Havelaar is a demanding certification system, only level 3 farmers may comply with such elevated standards. Consequently, level 1 and level 2 farmers do not fulfil the conditions to get certified. This means, that the fairtrade system really only supports the rich amongst the poor. It is not a system that helps a farmer from the first or second level. To address the needs of 1st and 2nd level farmers, we therefore established a tailored development model that takes small-scale farmers from 1st and 2nd to the 3rd level. Our system is based on technical support, which increased fruit quality and yields. Sometimes 1st level farmers come to us, saying they would want to develop their land but don’t have money to do so. In joint ventures we help them develop their land into very professional plantations. And in return, we get a financial return on the fruits of their land.

Was your later decision to become a doctor influenced by this stark contrast in your childhood? 
To tell you the truth, no. I was also inspired by my uncle Mauricio, a physician and wonderful human being. His house was like the United Nations, people from everywhere came to him to be treated. And he treated not only their bodies, but their souls. He understood this connection between the mind and the body. So ultimately it was my uncle and the example of my parents that helped the people around them who inspired me to become a physician. 

How did it come about that you founded your own organisation Associação Saúde Criança? 
I was nominated head of the psychosomatic department in the Hospital Federal da Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro, where I had been a general practitioner. I was in charge of the psychosomatic department in the paediatric sector, treating children and their diseases. I always wanted to understand the person behind the disease since so often social aspects were the real cause of their diseases. I experienced it many times that mothers who came to the hospitals with their children said, “Doctor Vera, please, keep my child. Please, raise her for me, I have no money”. In these instances I felt like my heart was breaking. I understood back then, that traditional medicine all over the world does not take care of the psychosomatic aspects of the disease. Medicine treats the body but neither the mind nor the environment the patient finds himself in. I saw that we needed to look at the big picture of health care, also at the mind, the social and economic environment, and the psychosomatic problems. I love Margaret Mead’s statement: “Never doubt a very committed group of people because they can change the world. In fact only they can change the world”. In 1991 I founded the Associação Saúde Criança. I came together with people from many backgrounds and different areas of human knowledge. We took a step away from the traditional health care and went beyond the hospital walls. This vicious cycle of poverty, hospitalisation, and re-hospitalisation, and ultimately death these poor urban families experienced we wanted to break. Additional health care, more medicine in other words, doesn’t break it. But taking action together with the whole family, treating the child, the family, and its psychosomatic problems, that is the way to break this vicious cycle.

When you are describing yourself to someone who does not know you, what is the term you use? 
I’m a social entrepreneur! Social entrepreneurs see an obstacle and want to commit themselves to solve the problem, though they might not yet know the solution to the problem. I understood early on that traditional health care is not the way to treat people. Not in Brazil, and not anywhere else. I didn’t know the answer but I wanted to commit my life to finding it. And I knew that I would be able to convince many people to get into the same boat. Social entrepreneurs are some sort of crazy people, there is no way out for us. I cannot be anything else than this restless person. What we really want is to change the world even though we know that that which we want to transform is so much bigger than us. 

Is this what inspires you from day to day, a wish to change the world? 
There are two things which inspire me. I believe that you cannot be happy if the people around you are suffering and live without dignity. Everyone should do something, be it small or great. And this dignity I want to bring to as many families and children as I can. I cannot see anything worse than a mother with children, and all of them dying. We at Saúde Criança have committed our lives to bringing about a life with dignity for them. And second, through dealing with poverty and promoting social inclusion through health, I understood that there is a way out. It’s not impossible. It’s really possible! It’s like we discovered penicillin. And so I just have to tell everyone who wants to listen to join. Join us, we know a way! We want to be a movement for all, not just the poor.

You mentioned your social methodology, what exactly is it that you are offering in Saúde Criança? 
We are offering a service that we created bottom-up. We learned from the people we serve that poverty is a multi dimensional problem. We could not just focus on health, although our main area of concern is health. If we really wanted to transform the lives of the people who seek out a hospital with a sick child, we had to work in five areas: health, education, housing, income generation, and citizenship. The methodology we created we called the Family Action Plans. Saúde Criança means “Health Children”, but it is impossible to deal with sick children without dealing with their whole families. And that is what we do. Ten hospitals in Brazil are linked to Saúde Criança, and within them volunteers and staff, social workers, psychologists, and physicians work with the whole family. First, a social worker, a psychologist, volunteers, a lawyer, a nutritionist, and a physician conduct a thorough interview, trying to understand everything about a patient’s life. How can they overcome the challenges they face in a sustainable way? How much does the head of the family, which in 95% of the cases is a woman, earn? How many children are in the family, in what conditions do they live, how many personal documents does the mother have, are the children going to school, etc. We have to make a holistic diagnose of the whole family in order to truly help a child coming to us for medical help. Together with family we create a plan and goals in all of these five areas, health, education, housing, income generation and citizenship. And those goals the whole family will be pursuing within our programme for about two years. We have very clear criteria when to discharge the families, in all of the five areas that we work in. One example regarding income generation: at least one adult in the family must be working and earn a minimum wage [the minimum wage is approximately US$ 320 per month]. Then they can live with dignity, and it’s a dignity which is defined by them. As Muhammad Yunus says, “You have created a powerful methodology to include the poorest among the poor”.

What do you mean by that, “including the poorest among the poor”? 
When you live in a country like Brazil, you understand that there is a huge difference between the poorest and the poor. When a family tells me “As poor people, Doctor Vera, we have everything”, then I know they have internal and external tools to deal with poverty. But when I see a person with lack of money and internal tools, like joy, inner strength, and the ability to deal with the everyday life, I know I’m dealing with the poorest among the poor. So when we chose to help a family with a sick child, according to our methodology, we choose to help those poorest among the poor. 

Is Saúde Criança a foundation or are you a financially self-sustaining organisation? 
We are a Non-governmental organisation, we are dependent on donations and grants. But we are trying to become a social business. We are providing consulting services to other organizations, to private sector companies, and to the government about how to best implement our methodology. We are learning how to make use of our most valuable product, our social methodology and are aiming to becoming financially self-sustaining in the near future. My team and I were deeply committed to finding a way to transform our work into a social business because other organisations started to approach us for a share in our social methodology. If I want to help as many people as possible, I know Saúde Criança has to become a social business.

Do you have competitors in what you do? 
I would not use the word “competitors”. I went to 16 countries and gave more than 60 talks about Saude Criança, and of course attendees of these talks asked me to send them further information. And so they got to know our methodology and created something based on it. But they are not competitors, they implement our methodology for the benefit of the people. And that is good! When an idea is good, I don’t want to be the “mother” of this idea, it should be spread to wherever it is needed. It was after all not solely myself who created the Family Action Plans. It was organizations like Ashoka, AVINA, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, the Skoll Foundation, Praxair, Johnson & Johnson, and other sponsors, dedicated volunteers, and the mothers and children that we serve: it was a group of people listening to people. I led this group of people for 23 years but it was all of us together who created this powerful methodology. But after all, we were pioneers with our multidisciplinary approach to deal with health problems and promote social inclusion in order to fight poverty.

Did you ever encounter failure as a social entrepreneur? 
There was no model to follow, so we learned from trial and error. For example, one main challenge was to figure out how we should organise our governance. Via network or social franchise? What is the right way? We only discovered with time that for us, a social franchise is the best way. We had originally inspired 23 institutions with different names, linked to 23 different public hospitals in a network. In 2010, I had to change the governance from a network, which was confusing due to its variety of names, to a social franchise. Nobody really knows how to maintain a social franchise, but we asked a consulting company for help. And together with them we changed our governance. We chose ten hospitals, which are linked to 10 Saude Criança units today. They are located in Rio de Janeiro, in São Paulo, San Jose dos Campos, Porto Alegre, Florianopolis, Goiania and Recife. We agreed that we want to work first and foremost in Brazil. If we can create a movement of social inclusion here, it will spread all over the world. Three researchers from Georgetown University made an in-depth study about the long-term impact of Saúde Criança and found long term benefits for the families we have helped. Three to five years after the families have graduated from the program, there is a decrease of 86% in hospitalisation, a 92% increase in family income. We are confident that our methodology can be linked to schools, nurseries, hospitals, governments and NGOs, as social franchises.

What are your goals for the coming years?
We want to consolidate our centre of excellence of social inclusion [Centre of Reference for Social Inclusion] and spread our social methodology from Rio to wherever it is needed. Rio de Janeiro is like a resume of the world, with all social strata and living conditions. It is the perfect city to talk about social inclusion. We plan annual meetings, training, and consulting for people from all over the world. We will not only pass on our knowledge, but also learn from other people and organisations.

Thank you very much, Vera, for this interview. Is there anything you would like to add to what we have been talking about?
I want to thank all the volunteers, board members, our staff, sponsors, partners, and health professionals that built this powerful social methodology. And finally I also want to deeply thank my whole family, my parents, my husband, my two daughters and granddaughters for always believing in me and supporting me. I especially want to thank my mother since today was her birthday and she also dedicated a lot of her time to this organisation. She made it possible. I read everything about C.G. Jung who created the concept of synchronicity. The history of Saúde Criança is a history of synchronicity. So thank you!

• Interviewee: Jeannie Javelosa
  
• Region: Philippines / Southeast Asia
  
• Organization: ECHOstore – ECHOsi Foundation
  
• Category: Retail of eco-friendly, artisan, fair trade products, Product Development and market access for small producers
  

Jeannie Javelosa is the co-founder of the green retailer and social enterprise ECHOstore Sustainable Lifestyle (ECHO-Environment Community Hope Organization) and President of its non-profit arm ECHOsi (ECHO-Empowering Communities with Hope and Opportunities through Sustainable Initiatives) Foundation. She is also an awarded-book author-artist-designer, museum curator, writer, and international speaker who advocates for sustainability and culture. In 2012, Jeannie was the Cartier Women’s Award Finalist from Asia and invited to be a member of the World Entrepreneur Forum. She is founding president of the Business and Professional Women (BPW) in Makati, Philippines.

Her social enterprise ECHOstore is a tri-concept including a store, café and market that sells fair trade, green, organic, artisan-made products (both food and non-food). The non-profit ECHOsi handles the development work all over the country, including product development, design and packaging intervention, preparing artisan products for market readiness through financial literacy, checking the sustainability of their production processes, branding and market access. They work with micro-entrepreneurs and farmer groups. Through ECHOsi, she is private sector co-architect for the GREAT Woman Platform–a unique integral and inclusive model of development and market access which ECHOsi has put together. It is now the gender platform for the Philippines. The GW Platform is a convergence of national and local government agencies, women’s groups resulting in improving local business policy, projects and services for women businesses. GREAT Women also known as “Gender Responsive Economic Actions for the Transformation of Women” addresses gender issues in both micro and social enterprise development. The goal is to help women up the supply and value chain. The focus is presently on food and textile weaving. The GW Platform is being studied for replication in APEC economies and ASEAN countries.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, professional and entrepreneurial experience and how you ended up being an entrepreneur?
I graduated with a Masters Degree in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. The first part of my professional life was expressing the entrepreneurial and creative side as a painter with 20 solo shows, printmaker, curator, writer-book author with awards for certain  books. Then, with a business partner, I set up a communications agency which morphed into a stakeholder relations firm. It is now 15 years old. But the real entrepreneurial experience I would like to highlight is that of being a social entrepreneur when I set up ECHOstore Sustainable Lifestyle with two of my friends.

Tell us about ECHOstore-ECHOsi Foundation
We wanted to do business that would make us grow old gracefully, something we could enjoy, and could use our combines skills, talents and network. We looked at the gap and realized nobody was helping the poor producers sell their products, and no one was talking about the sustainable green lifestyle. So bringing our unique expertise together that included retail, branding, marketing, design, product development, and communications, we set up ECHOstore. We pioneered the first green store in a high-end retail space. Within a year, we needed to set-up a non-profit arm because we did not want to confuse retail with development work. So ECHOsi Foundation was born to handle all the development programs. Store-Foundation are linked in that what we help develop and produce, we market test and bring to various markets (mall, e-commerce, export to international)

At the core of everything we do is about Sustainability - production, consumption and lifestyle. It is about checking the supply and value chain of the lifestyle products we sell, from the bottom of the pyramid of how the material is planted by the farmers, to the small micro producers, all the way to international markets.

• How did you come up with the idea?
  
• What are you specifically doing?
  
• What’s your impact?
  

Approximate metrics at present include: the licensing and expansion of ECHOstore into 5 stores (and more) and expanding sales, an e-commerce site, and international export presence which allows for consumer impact  and expansion. To date, store-foundation has helped 100 organizations and foundations, close to 80,000 beneficiaries, managed the development of so many new products that are being market tested or now are being sold. 

In 2013, under the GREAT Women program alone, the ECHOsi Foundation posted an impact reach of approximately 500 women, with around 900 additional beneficiaries through cascade workshops, impacting 28,500 women (women x 5 family members x direct impacts of women neighbor) and household members.

ECHOsi combines a good cause with commerce. Do you see this as being the future of Social Entrepreneurship?
ECHOstore is the social enterprise firmly rooted in business, and as deeply rooted in the values it espouses: Care for the self, the community and the environment. The Foundation, which is the non-profit must also be firmly rooted in sustainable ways of continuing its programs to support itself. I believe the future of social entrepreneurship is the ability to balance both profit, development, values and sustainability for all.

What is social entrepreneurship for you? Do you see yourself as a social entrepreneur?
Social entrepreneurship is using entrepreneurial skills and abilities towards businesses or programs that bring about social good and impact. Yes I see myself as a social entrepreneur. I don't think I can even just call myself “an entrepreneur” because all my endeavors now have social issues that include poverty alleviation, care for environment and even cultural tradition and heritage preservation.

How do you see the concept of social entrepreneurship in different contexts? More specifically, how does it differ between developing and developed economies? Is there something like social entrepreneurship in the informal sector or do those entrepreneurs focus exclusively on the classic moneymaking business?
In developing countries, social entrepreneurship is young and lack the support structures and mechanism. When we started ECHOstore five years ago, we were one of a few social entrepreneurs. Today, so many start-ups are looking at social causes but whether their enterprises would prosper also as a business must remain to be seen. There must be the heart and business savvy linked together. 

In the informal sector, most directions are to survive, therefore money-making initiatives are key. Into this sector, we are trying to teach the idea of sustainability and greening the value chain.

Do you have a role model? If so who and why?

• Economically empowering women through Market Access: I think in the USA, it would be the Full Circle Exchange of the Priddy Brothers. It is similar to what we are trying to do at ECHOstore–but they are bringing products of women from the bottom of the pyramid to Walmart all across the US –which is a fantastically large customer base! 
• For inspirationally motivating the Youth: Gawad Kalinga headed by Tony Meloto in the Philippines, for inspiring volunteerism in the youth to build homes for the poor.
• For Skills Training: Barefoot College of Bunker Roy, which started in India, for the audacity and unique idea of empowering grandmothers with skills within their communities.
• For Environmental Education: The Green School in Bali, Indonesia for creating an alternative way of educating the young about the environment and how to try to live sustainably.
  

What’s your advice for novice and future social entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in the world?
Know business even as you keep your heart on your sleeves for the causes and advocacies you wish to stand for. All endeavors will need funds, just as funds are available for good causes, programs and a customer base willing to spend on good products that support causes. 

I believe we cannot do things alone. Find good collaborators and partners with shared values and whose professional skills can complement yours.

Find the gap and that which is missing, then try to create something to answer the gap, the need.

What is your next project?

• Under ECHOstore: license out more ECHOstore-café-markets around the country; begin exporting our products around the region specifically as the ASEAN economic integration is happening soon; begin pop-up stores for our sub-brand “Great Women” in the local market.
• Under the ECHOsi Foundation: To continue the second phase of the GREAT Women Platform specifically focused on the textiles of the cultural and indigenous peoples of the Philippines. The Philippine textile industry is also dead, so I am trying to see how we can help revive and strengthen natural fibers, dyes and design traditions and present this in lifestyle products that are natural and yet keep alive the spirit and story of our people. For food products, to find more unique Filipino ingredients and infuse more cultural designs and messages into them.

Interviewee: Zhihan Lee
Region: Singapore/Philippines
Category: youth unemployment


Youth unemployment is increasing world wide, causing numerous problems for individuals as well as nations. Many are seeking employment abroad, which is harmful of the local economies as they are missing a generation. Individuals loose their skills after a long time of unemployment and it is difficult for them to gain new skills and a job. BagoSphere has addressed this issue and provided a training program for rural youth in the Philippines to get employed. The organization provides a unique arrangement of training in communicating, critical thinking and life skills. The program only lasts 2 months, which enables students to find employment almost immediately. Students will be able to find employment in the call centre industry in the Philippines. This enables them to pay for a higher education, upping their chances for the future. 70% of BagoSphere’s alumni are high school students and 80% of their graduates have been able to find employment within the second month from graduating. In 2013 103  students graduated from the organization and in 2014 over double, 200, students are expected to graduate. The goal of BagoSphere is to see a world where the youth can do what they are passionate for, have a respectable income and enable an improved future for the next generation. 

Zhihan Lee, who graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2011 with a master in Engineering Science. He spent a year in Stockholm focusing on medical-tech start-up, then travelled to India and became involved in rural IT sourcing.  Previously, Zhihan has co-led ad-hoc community service projects to rural villages and schools in Laos and Thailand. In 2010, Zhihan founded BagoSphere in the Philippines.  Zhihan is a member of the Sandbox-Network because of his work with BagoSphere. 

BagoSphere received the Singapore International Foundation’s Young Social Entrepreneurs Grant Program and won the 3rd prize at Start-up@Singapore’s Business Plan Competition (Social Enterprise) in 2012. BagoSphere’s clients are Transcom, Teleperformance, Teletech and Panasiatic Solutions.   

Why did you decide to become an entrepreneur? When did you decide to become an entrepreneur? 
There are two reasons why I decided to become an entrepreneur. 

Firstly, I have this deep-seated feeling to do something meaningful in my life. For the longest time, it clashed with the conventional expectations of how I was supposed to live a life. Growing up in Singapore was wonderfully comfortable and my parents provided me with enough for most people to be contented. But I wasn’t. There was a feeling of unfulfillment that constantly haunted me even as a child. It was only in my early twenties when I started to be more aware of this feeling. And I started to search for answers by travelling, by volunteering, and by making friends from people all over the world. 

Secondly, I love the thrill of solving problems. The problem is which problems to solve! Just before I decided to go into BagoSphere, I had secured a place to pursue my masters in engineering to do research in the field of nanotechnology. I loved research, and delving into interesting theories and performing experiments was my kind of thing. But I realized that problems “outside of the lab” were more fascinating to me.

As a result, I believe that being an entrepreneur gave me the perfect platform to “hack into life.”

How did you come up with the idea of BagoSphere?
In 2008, my co-founders Ellwyn Tan and Ivan Lau led volunteer projects in the Philippines, while I led projects in Laos.  Travelling extensively gave me an opportunity to explore rural poverty first hand. 

I was once leading a volunteering project in Laos. We raised tens of thousands of dollars to construct a community library for hundreds of children to use. We got thousands of books flown from Singapore to equip the library. It was launched and the whole community was so excited. As volunteers we felt ecstatic and went home feeling mission accomplished and we all gave ourselves a pat on the back. A few months later, I was backpacking and was passing by so I took the chance to visit the library. To my shock, I found out from the locals that the library was unused. This community library was placed in a public school. Apparently, there a change in the school management and the new one had a different opinion on how the library should be used. Nevertheless, I was extremely disappointed, and I realize that I had a lot to learn.

While interning for a medical devices technology startup in Stockholm, a friend and I organized a small event inviting social entrepreneurs to share their stories. I was inspired but it wasn’t enough for me. When I returned to Singapore, I grabbed a chance to go to India to experience working in a social enterprise. And that was what I did. So a few months later, I returned from a study trip in rural India with a social enterprise that trained uneducated Indian youths and employed them to do basic Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) work. At that point, I had enough of being inspired. I wanted to get my hands dirty.

It was at this point in 2010, I met Ivan and Ellwyn who had strong ties with the city government of Bago City, a small city in central Philippines. Bago city is a second class city in the Philippines, with a population of about 165,000. When the price of sugar crashed in the 1970s, unemployment numbers shot up and has remained a problem till today. Most high school graduates who have no means to pursue college education find it hard to enter the service industry because of poor communication and job related skills. Manufacturing jobs are few and far between. 

In late 2010, we did a market study, talked to a few call centers, discussed our plans with the local government and started working together to solve rural poverty. I joined the team in 2011 shortly after my graduation at the National University of Singapore.

What was your general motivation not to pursue a classical corporate career?
It was a matter of timing. I could have pursued a corporate job after graduation, but I saw a huge market opportunity in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) of the Philippines. I believe that this market opportunity would enable BagoSphere to thrive as a business, but not only to be profitable but to be able to create a solution to youth unemployment. These circumstances would have passed me by if I wouldn’t have grabbed it. 

Besides, I felt that I have more control over what I wanted to learn and grow in an entrepreneurial path. Living in South-East Asia is so exciting! Increasing development of Vietnam, Philippines, the rise of China, use of technology are all culminating into a perfect storm. I chose to go outside and embrace all these changes happening in Singapore’s backyard, and I am thankful that I can.

Who is your ideal ‘role model’ in the entrepreneurial world?
I do not subscribe to any role models because I am aware of a certain survivorship bias and how stories are usually made much sexier than it seems. I try to learn from many sources as possible. Typically, the people that I learned the most are usually people that are close to me. For example, they will be my board of advisors and my entrepreneurial and even non-entrepreneurial friends. The more authentic my interaction with them, the better insights I get. For example, I have a board member in my company who has continuously mentored me in the art of communication. As a newbie CEO, I had to learn how to talk to investors, to manage a board meeting, to communicate ideas in a more effective manner. And throughout the years, he has been my role model in communication. What also struck me was the amount of effort he used to mentor me. So the ideal ‘role model’ for me would be people that I know personally, and I have a close relationship with and are willing to mentor me through the path of a young CEO.

Tell us more about your organization. How did you come up with the initial idea and what were the first weeks / months / years like?
Firstly, we have created a unique training program that has proven to help youths start rewarding careers in the Philippine BPO industry. The program contains a combination of communications, critical thinking and life skills training in 2 months to rural youths. 70% of our students are high school graduates. Most of them do not have the opportunity to go to college. When they get a job through our program, they typically earn an income 4x higher than unskilled work. The job enables them to save for pursuing your professional and personal development goals.

Secondly, BagoSphere wants to make our form of education affordable to all. The hall-mark of our student financing program is the “Study Now Pay Later” deferred payment scheme. Under this scheme, students start paying their tuition fees in affordable monthly instalments after employment. We believe strongly in inculcating positive values in our students and this is a way that they can “pay it forward.” We also work with Micro-finance organizations (MFIs) and more recently with Kiva, to finance the student’s tuition fees.

The first few weeks wasn’t easy. I remember in June 2011, a week before I flew to the Philippines, my mum asked me, “When are you going to get a real job?” It was not easy even to leave Singapore. I was leaving a lot of my friends and loved ones back in Singapore. I felt that I was jumping off a cliff.

When we first started in 2011, we validated the needs of call centers on the ground. We interviewed recruitment managers from call centers such as Teleperformance, Transcom and Convergys. We learned that out of 100 applicants, they would only able to hire 10 which is abysmally low due to the poor quality of talent. Besides finding it difficult to recruit new hires, attrition rates were also a cause of problem for call centers. We also talked to the local city government who gave our support and we decided to plan for a pilot. In July 2011, we commenced a pilot project with a small grant funding from Social Venture Lab (formerly known as Grameen Creative Labs@NUS) at the National University of Singapore and a charity foundation. NUS also kindly donated 15 used computers to us. 

So in later 2011, we created the first version of our training product and conducted a 4-month program residential program, where students would only go home on weekends. We made a ton of mistakes particularly in hiring and managing people but learned a lot. Most of all, we were happy with the result that 90% of our students got placed in call centers. One of the learnings from the pilot was that the 4 month residential program was not a good model as the training period was too long. 

In 2012, we felt that we had some validation of our model and we planned to raise serious money. After much thinking, we decided to incorporate a for-profit company, but we did carefully design our incorporation papers to specify that the company exists to solve a social problem.

During our first capital raise, I learned that people invest in people. The main difficulty that I found was to communicate the vision and the passion to potential investors. Thankfully we had an experience board of advisors and mentors to guide us though. We also had a ton of help from various organizations such as NUS and Impact Investment Exchange (Asia) who bought in legal and financial advice, and that was what I believed accelerated the entire fund raising process. 

It was a major milestone for BagoSphere. We have just transitioned from just a self-funded adventure into a seed funded for-profit business with a social mission. Being a CEO for the first time, I felt exhilarated. But I also felt the fear of the unknown. We went back to the Philippines in October 2012 and hired our first employee.

In early 2013, we pushed ahead with our classes starting from our 2nd Pilot, and ending with Batch 4 on the 18th of December in 2013. 

Here are some of our milestones: 

• Recruiting youths from over 700 applicants and graduating 103 students in 5 batches in 2013
  
• An average of 60% of every class are employed 1 week after graduation & 80% 2 months after graduation
  
• Establishing a team of 11 (including co-founders) in Bago City
  
• Establishing formal partnerships with call centers,  local government, NWTF (MFI-partner) & KIVA

What were the greatest challenges you had to face in the beginning of your entrepreneurial career?
I recently shared some of my biggest challenges over the last one year to our board and some close friends.

1) Hiring was much more difficult than expected: Since we are located in a more rural location, we didn’t have access to many talents which normally aggregate in hubs like Manila or Cebu. Generally, in the rural context, people are less exposed to professional work environments and lack experience in their domain fields. So hiring good trainers and marketing staff took us a long time. However, it drilled into me some of the nuances of hiring, and I saw through the genesis of BagoSphere’s culture, which is very important to retain talent. 

2) Pivoting the Business Model: From the start, we had intended to partner with MFIs to finance the student’’ tuition. We didn’t want to get into the operations of financing. We later realized that the problem is that MFIs only finance their clients. Hence, the model shuts out a huge part of our market.

Hence, in the later part of 2013, we decided that we need to formalize the loans that we provide to our students to attend our training program. We do not have any intention of becoming a micro-finance company but in formalizing the student financing scheme we have now (termed as the "study now pay later"), we are putting in more resources (e.g. Kiva 0% credit line, setting up loan tracking system, implement micro-credit policies, etc) to reduce the risk profile of the financing scheme. We also separate the credit line used for student loans away from our working capital. When we master this, the combination of our training program and the loan product will allow anyone who is deserving of training to get it.

3) Complexity of operations: As we open more classes, our operations became more complex. Data management became more complex. Collecting data from hundreds of youths became more complex. Google documents became unwieldy and we had to constantly search for new ways to stay productive and aligned. With operations, it was hard to keep focus on the most important thing. My learning is that delegation is the key here, and there must be A+ people with the right skills to delegate to.

4) Productivity was hampered by poor infrastructure: In rural Bago City, it took us a long time before we had stable power. We suffered from frequent brown-outs and internet disruption during the first half of 2013. After some red-tape and infinite patience, we have now a much better power supply. Thankfully, Typhoon Haiyan did not cause much damage to our facility and operations.

Tell us about the most amazing experience you have had since you started your business? What has the biggest disappointment been? 
On the last day of class on the 18th of Dec 2013, our students participated in an activity through which they shared their personal journey at BagoSphere. As I sat there and listened, I was completely touched by their stories and how much

BagoSphere has positively left a deep imprint on their lives. I sat there and thought, “Wow, this is transformational.” And to think that I had some hand to play in creating this transformation, I felt really happy. I felt that my whole body was smiling. And all my stress, lack of sleep and problems melted away.

My biggest disappointment was to learn that some our graduates do not know how to manage their new-found opportunities well. In the beginning, the link seemed logical - that once rural youths get a job, they will earn money and improve their lives. We were wrong.  In the early years, we realized that many of our graduates who are now call center agents do not have the habit of saving money despite having a lucrative pay check. So our hypothesis was wrong and we needed to have an immediate course correction. It means that we cannot just train youths in English and IT skills, place them in a call center, and expect them to know how to pull themselves out of poverty. So we made an adjustment to our training program. That’s why we now have a strong emphasis on financial literacy in our training program. It would have been a disaster if we were not self-aware of our effectiveness in pursuing our social objective – solving rural poverty.

In your opinion, what sets apart an entrepreneur and a non-entrepreneur? 
Recently, as we were talking about personal goals, one of my staff shared to me this quote from Hermann Hesse in his book, Siddhartha, “Most people...are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.” I think that is what sets apart an entrepreneur and a non-entrepreneur.

Where do you see social entrepreneurship going in the future?
I think more young people will take it up, and mid-career people will find it an interesting proposition. There needs to be more successful stories, whereby success is defined as both having a profitable business and social impact. We also realized that not all kinds of social problems can be solved in such a blended way. So I think there is much learning in that area too. I am in particular a fan of grounded stories of struggle and real impact. One of my favourite social enterprises is Digital Divide Data. Its CEO & co-founder Jeremy Hockenstein talked about putting down 10 years of hard work before their work was recognized. At the end of the day, we are all going to realize that social entrepreneurship is no different than entrepreneurship. I believe that as we realize that our current model of resource consumption is not sustainable, businesses will need to consider social impact as part of their strategy to be relevant for the next 50 years. We are just going one full circle.

What advice would you give to any aspiring entrepreneurs? What should they be careful about? What financial advice would you give them?
Someone once said to me that any start-up is an extension of the entrepreneur’s dreams and personality. I find that if we are clear with ourselves, we will be able to handle challenges much better. If we are clear with our own objectives, then we will be able to make better decisions. We would lead with purpose and with clarity. If I was to be married with a child, I would need to understand that my personal vision has to co-exist with my family, and how things are going to change once I started a company. I might not be spending a lot of time with your family. Is this something that I can endure? Hence, I would advise any aspiring entrepreneur to try to understand their own personal vision and motivation before starting a company.  Rushing to starting a company because it is cool is not advisable. 

Having some financial security before starting a business is always important. When I start a company, I wouldn’t myself to be worrying about my college debt when I am getting my first customer. Hence, I would encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to try to put themselves in a financially neutral position before diving in. If you are not in one, my suggestion is to find work, get some experience and work on the idea whenever possible. Again, going back to your own personal motivation and goals are important.

Which areas do you believe provide the greatest opportunities for aspiring social entrepreneurs – i.e., what are the emerging trends?
One trend that I am particularly interested about is the silver-health care industry. The problem is getting bigger with the aging population of the world, in particular in Asia. Education is also a sector that I think is a good place to be in. There are always two things that never change: the demand for good health care and the demand for quality education. Nevertheless, South-East Asia is rapidly developing and I see bountiful opportunities. The catch is that you have to spend time on the ground to understand see those trends.

Is there anything you would like to add?
Nope

Thanks a lot for your time and the interview!

It will be held in Geneva on February 4th, 2014, right before liftconference.com (and hosted by them).

After 20 countries, 10 months, nearly 1’000 invitation-only applicants and 1 winner per country now is the time to gather the winners from Cape Town, Santiago, Bangkok, Nairobi, Baku, Buenos-Aires, and all the other cities, learn from their mindsets, and elect the world best startup.

At this conference, you'll have the chance to:

• Meet investors and entrepreneurs from all around the world and enlarge your network.
  
• Discover emerging market startups and entrepreneurs and find out who will be the “Seedstars World Best Start-up” pocketing up to CHF 500k investment.
  
• Assist to the world premiere of crocodileintheyangtze.com, the story about China’s first Internet entrepreneur, Jack Ma from alibaba.com. Live for your Q&A is Porter Erisman, VP ofalibaba.com (trending with the current IPO schedulded for Q1 2014).

On top of that, here is a special discount for you:

Instead of 199CHF, pay 119CHF (40% discount!) - there's a special price for students!
Valid until January 25.
Use the code Jobzippers40offSSW13

Dont forge:
When : February 4th, 2014
Where : C.I.C.G. in Geneva/Switzerland partnering with the LIFT Conference.
Visit www.ssw.vc to see the agenda and get more information about the final event.