• CEO Jacqueline Novogratz was interviewed recently for the NPR program Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. Check out the show’s website for a podcast and lots of supplementary material.
• In a special section on business and food security, the Financial Times featured two Acumen Fund investments: drip irrigation company GEWP here and nutrition company Insta here. Similarly, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) includes an interview with Acumen Fund’s Ajay Nair in its latest newsletter.
• Talent Manager Blair Miller was recently interviewed on Dubai radio about the Fellows program.
• An Outlook Business article profiles GEWP, PVRI and other for-profit businesses serving our target market in India.
• There’s still time to order your Book Club in a Box! Get yours now and share The Blue Sweater with others.

Sangeeta Chowdhry is Acumen Fund’s Ripple Effect manager. The India phase of  Ripple Effect included pilot programs by 5 organizations, the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation among them.

The Ripple Effect project presented the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF) in the Thar desert of Rajasthan with quite a challenge: Improve access to safe drinking water in the area in just 8 weeks. Not only did they meet this challenge but they went a step further - and added an additional goal – to create livelihood opportunities for women in the process!

The story of JBF is an inspiring one — as can be seen in this recent coverage on Indian television. For a start, the challenges addressed are not small. The project began in a region with highly saline ground water, rainfall of no more than 10-50 cm per year and temperatures of over 50C (over 110 degrees Fahrenheit) in summer. A few years ago, in an attempt to bring high quality, affordable water to the community, they had launched one reverse osmosis plant in Pachpadra village. While the plant was successful in providing safe drinking water at reasonable prices to customers who came to the plant, those customers had to walk around 2km to do so. JBF struggled to make it a sustainable business that reached larger numbers of people who could not travel the distance.

With the help of a small grant of $15,000 and business coaching provided by the Ripple Effect team, JBF created a viable water distribution business model that addressed these challenges. They established water outlets in villages that are managed and owned by women from local self-help groups (SHG), and also increased water sales from the plant itself.

Critical to the long-term impact of the Ripple Effect project, work was also done to make these advances sustainable. Work was done with JBF to understand the unit economics of the operation.  Once it was understood how much water needed to be sold per day, it became a matter of developing a strategy that would lead to multiple sales channels – wholesale to tankers and retail to individuals from the plant in addition to sales to and from the local outlets. Pricing models were then created to support this business plan.

This planning was essential but JBF’s commitment and enthusiasm was what really took this Pilot on to achieve results. In a span of the 8 short weeks of the Ripple Effect Pilot Project, JBF trained SHG members in business management; established four water outlets managed by the women entrepreneurs; improved the infrastructure of the treatment plant to fill a water tanker in 15 minutes instead of the typical 2 hours; created business plans for the main plant and the outlets and executed aggressive awareness campaigns in the village of benefits of safe water.

This careful planning, passion and commitment has reaped results that can serve as a viable delivery model in rural parts of India.  The water sale from the plant increased from an average of 2000 liters per day to 16,000 liters per day and the distance walked to fetch the water was reduced from 2 km to under 500m. Most significant, however, is that women operating the outlets are earning a living from their micro-enterprises and that, compared to a few short months before, thousands more people now have safe drinking water available.

Jal Bhagirathi Foundation has now turned over the running of the plant and it’s operations to the local village body, and is now planning to replicate the success of Pachpadra in 13 more villages in Rajasthan.

See more on this remarkable project here on local TV news.

Our good friends at Nuru Project, who put on the DIGNITY event with Acumen Fund’s New York chapter, are putting on a photo auction and benefit for Haiti and Partners In Health on February 4th. If you are in the New York area, we encourage you to come out for a good cause.

The application process for summer associates in Acumen Fund’s New York office is now open. We are currently accepting applications for the following positions for Summer 2010:

• Portfolio Associates - New York (3)
• Communications Associate - New York (1)

Applications will be accepted until 5:00PM EST on February 3, 2010. If your school subscribes to The MBA-Nonprofit Connection’s summer jobs program, please apply through that channel (a list of participating schools can be found at: http://mnconnection.org/schools/partner-schools.html). If your school is not a member of MNC, please send a cover letter and resume to summerintern2010(at)acumenfund.org. Please include the job title “Summer Associate - Portfolio” or “Summer Associate - Communications” in the subject line.

The Blue Sweater, our CEO Jacqueline Novogratz’s memoir about her journey to found Acumen Fund, will be coming out in paperback on February 16. We couldn’t be more excited about this new opportunity to reach broader audiences with the story of Acumen Fund and patient capital.

As part of the new release in paperback, Acumen Fund is offering a limited edition Book Club in a Box, which includes:

• 5 paperback copies of the book
• 5 discussion guides
• 5 hand-designed bookmarks by Acumen Fund high school volunteers
• Access to a webinar with Jacqueline, just for book club in a box readers
• Available till February 16th, or while supplies last

The Book Club in a Box is available for $50 USD including shipping to anywhere in the world. All proceeds Acumen Fund receives from this initiative will go toward supporting our work. We hope you’ll take us up on this incredible opportunity to discuss the ideas in the book with your friends, co-workers, or community members.

Start by watching Jacqueline tell her Blue Sweater story: http://www.acumenfund.org/bluesweater

I hope you will inspired to spread the word about The Blue Sweater and help change lives.

The following notes were written by Afshan Khan, of UNICEF.

1. The earthquake in Haiti is a double disaster…it is a massive hit on the Haitian people whose history is already too full of hardship. The country was crippled by four hurricanes last year. Access to clean water, sanitation, hospitals, and other infrastructure — roads and communication — was barely functioning to begin with — now, much has been wiped out.

2. Children are the humanitarian priority. Nearly half the population of Haiti is under 18 years of age, 38% are under the age of 14 — making children the first call, for assistance.

3. Life saving supplies, emergency experts, and equipment are arriving — Getting the supplies to those who need them is the key, and the absolute, number one, priority.

4. Aid is getting through - Three UNICEF planeloads have landed in Port au Prince and in Santa Domingo. More are on their way. The road between Santa Domingo and Port au Prince is now useable and today 35 metric tons of UNICEF supplies will travel that road.

5. Clean water is saving lives and preventing disease outbreaks or a second wave of disaster - UNICEF is leading on water distribution. Yesterday, we delivered 250,000 liters of water to 60,000 people. Water tanks are been erected in each zone of the city. Today, 50,000 liters went to 38 distribution points providing drinking water for 80,000 people. Today, we supplied the general hospital in Port au prince with 120,000 liters of bottled water. Repairing the water and sanitation systems is a priority.

6. Providing for children who are lost or have become separated from their families must be a priority - In the middle of the kind of upheaval they are living — it is crucial they be reunited with their families, or with someone they already know. They need to be found, fed and kept safe. We need to find the right combination of providing care and being careful – to make children are properly protected.

7. Schools are closed - And we will re-open them. While that work is going on, UNICEF is bringing in supplies for temporary schooling once “safe spaces” for children are identified. We know only too well that in the chaos of any emergency, one calming factor for children is to re-establish routines…key among them, is the comfort of going back to school — even if it is a makeshift school.

8. This is a complex emergency, and in some ways a unique one - A combination of factors is challenging us: The capital is destroyed and along with it critical emergency services and infrastructure that are needed for relief distribution. The UN and other humanitarian agencies have also been directly and severely affected; loss of staff, loss of family, loss of relatives…and still, to their credit and through their grief, continue to do the work that needs to be done for the children of Haiti.

Ashoka and the Maternal Health Task Force at EngenderHealth recently announced a new competition for innovative solutions for maternal health. The Young Champions of Maternal Health Program will use the Changemakers online platform to identify 16 young leaders from around the world who will win a trip to the Maternal Health Change Summit in India and spend nine months working abroad on a maternal health project, mentored by an Ashoka Fellow. Additionally, maternal health organizations can enter to win one of three $5,000 in-kind Changemakers prizes.

Each year 536,000 women die of complications during pregnancy or childbirth – that’s around 1 death per minute. What’s astonishing is that 99% of these deaths are in developing countries. Most of the complications, such as post-partum hemorrhage, infections, eclampsia and prolonged or obstructed labor, that lead to death or severe injury can be prevented or treated with quality reproductive health services.While improving maternal health is one of the Millennium Development Goals, not enough progress has been made. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that maternal mortality has decreased at an average of less than 1% annually. The world needs more solutions.

At Acumen Fund, we’ve seen the difference that innovative business models can make in making quality reproductive care accessible to those who do not receive adequate care from the public sector and cannot afford to go to a private hospital. We’ve invested in LifeSpring Hospitals, a network of low-cost, high-quality maternal and child healthcare hospitals in India. LifeSpring’s services include prenatal and postnatal care, normal and caesarean deliveries and family planning services, at prices that are 30-50% below market rates. Since our investment, LifeSpring has grown from 1 hospital to 9 hospitals, and has provided quality, dignified care to approximately 80,000 patients.

If you have an innovative idea that has the potential to change the field of maternal health, now is the time to share it. The deadline for ideas is March 3, 2010, and winners will be announced on June 16^th.

As the crisis in Haiti continues to unfold, with some sources suggesting that as many as 100,000 may have perished, here at Acumen our hearts and minds are with those who lost their lives, homes, and loved ones.

While Acumen does not work in the field of emergency care, at this critical and challenging moment, we encourage our community members, supporters, and friends to consider giving to organizations that are involved in efforts to provide emergency relief at the present and large scale reconstruction in the coming months.

There are many good organizations working to address the crisis, such as Partners in Health, which has worked in Haiti for over 20 years and already initiated efforts to provide relief to those impacted by the quake.

For reconstruction efforts, we suggest supporting Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit design group that has already launched a major initiative to assist in reconstruction. As in previous efforts, they are doing so with an eye towards sustainable, innovative, and design oriented solutions. Click here to read an article by Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, discussing the challenges of reconstruction in Haiti.

Yehia Houry, a 2009 - 2010 Acumen Fund Fellow, is spending the year working with 1298, the first reliable emergency medical response service in Mumbai and other major cities in India. He has experience as a financial analyst, focused on access to financing for the poor. Yehia holds a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.

Whoever said living in India was cheap?

Certainly not someone who would have followed my friend’s recommendation to check out Aer, the newest addition to Mumbai’s hip social scene. Sitting on top of one of the fanciest 40-something-floor hotel in the city, this rooftop lounge is one of the most stunning bars I have ever been to.

With an incredible view of the sun setting behind the Arabian Sea, an “atmosphere that redefines the notion of freedom,” and a Moet & Chandon glass in hand, what more could you ask for? Classy weights to hold down champagne flutes on the lavish coffee tables? check. Stylish mini-torches to read the Mediterranean tapas menu? You got it. Quite simply, things can’t get any better.

But everything has a price, especially in Mumbai. A few weeks ago, Aer’s manager was quoted as saying that “All you can see is the sea and the lights of Mumbai spread out like a blanket beneath you.” Well, that is certainly true. But what is also true is that if you look down instead of looking over to far-away cruise ships sailing across the Indian Ocean, you would see dark, disorganized areas of the city, appearing almost blurred from the fortieth floor. Below you are some of the world’s largest urban slums.

My biggest culture shock in India has not been the omnipresent abject poverty, or the constant deafening noise, or the thousands of people crammed together in the rickety commuter trains. Ironically, it has been the incredible wealth that sits right next to absurd poverty. More than half of Mumbai lives in slums, yet it is home to the richest collective of billionaires in the world – ahead of New York and London. With 0.00001% of India’s population now accounting for a quarter of its trillion-dollar gross domestic product, the wealth disparity is enormous.

And yet, it seems to make sense to everyone but me. My middle-class Indian friends have reinforced this many times when they say: “Of course it’s normal that the rich and the poor live next to each other… The rich live here and require services, so the poor come in to fulfill that demand.” It doesn’t shock anyone that you could pay 22,000 rupees to get into a new year’s eve party, much more than the national yearly income. And no one seems to mind that the office I work in, which has air-conditioning, wireless internet, and biometric fingerprint security, sits literally across the street from hundreds of temporary workers and their families – we’re talking dozens of children per street block – who cook, eat, bathe and sleep on the dirty sidewalks every night.

In that sense, India is quite different from Africa, where the rich are merely middle-class, the poor and the rich are typically segregated, and the ultra-rich promptly shift their assets (and themselves) out of the country. Yes, as an expat in Africa, I certainly felt wealthy, privileged, or just plain lucky. But here, holding a glass of one of the most expensive champagnes in the world, surrounded by the cream of the crop of Indian society and looking down on more than six million human beings living in slums forty floors below, I can’t help but wonder if this is some kind of a sick joke that everyone, including myself, is somehow part of.

Sasha Dichter is the Director of Business Development at Acumen Fund. The following piece is a re-post from his personal blog, which can be found here.

A few weeks ago I started a generosity experiment.  The idea, sparked by a homeless man to whom I did not give, was to spend a period of time saying ‘yes’ to all requests to give – whether a person on the street, a donation request from a nonprofit, whatever.

Some people, like Jeff, really hated the idea at first (“AHH! NOO! STOP!” was his initial reaction); others shared my sense that the practice of being generous itself was inherently valuable.

A month later, I’m glad for the experiment.  I gave more than I normally do and I gave more often.  And it felt good and right, especially during the holidays, a time when presents of all sorts were flying in all directions.

And while I won’t continue giving to virtually everyone who asks, I will give more and more often.  The practice of being generous instead of critical (discerning?) is, I have found, important for at least two reasons:  first, we are how we act, so if I can habitually act more generous, I will be and become a more generous person.  Second, the experiment served as a deeper exploration of how much giving is an act of self-expression, rather than (or in addition to) a “purchase” of a social outcome.

The people who didn’t like my experiment all said something like, “If I pass a person on the street asking for money, I don’t give because I know it makes more sense to give to a homeless shelter.”  Put another way, one could better purchase social change for a homeless person by giving to a shelter or a food bank.   Objectively, that’s probably true (though one doesn’t know for sure).  However, it also misses something: first, because whether or not you give a dollar or two to a person on the street really doesn’t affect the larger donation you’ll hopefully make to the homeless shelter or the food bank; second, because the act of saying ‘no’ over and over again is reinforcing something in you and in me.

I’m not saying give every time, I’m asking us to be honest about why we do and don’t give, and to recognize the effect it has on us.

Let’s take an extreme example: suppose that over the course of the year I’m asked to give 200 times – maybe 100 times directly and 100 times by various nonprofits in various ways.  And let’s say I have a limited amount of money to give, which I do.  Isn’t the practice of saying ‘no’ 195 times and ‘yes’ 5 times reinforcing a mindset and habit that I’m the kind of person who says no when people ask for help?  And couldn’t there be a way to say “yes” 15 or 50 or 100 times that would reinforce something else entirely?

I don’t want to take this too far – to the conclusion that all philanthropists should spread their funding widely so that they can practice saying ‘yes.’  That’s not right either.

But I do want to push myself and others to ask whether it is healthy to think of every giving decision from the head rather than from the heart.  Can’t the argument that “this isn’t the best use of my money” be paralyzing or, worse, an excuse never to part with any money, because nothing is ever good enough?

Maybe a request for a gift isn’t always chance to analyze what is or isn’t the “best” use of my money.  Instead, maybe a request for a gift is an opportunity to practice being the person that I want to be – someone whose first response is to be open and generous.

And maybe, with practice, I will be transformed in a way that is powerful for me and for the world.

Omer Imtiazuddin is the Health Portfolio Manager at Acumen Fund, where he has been since 2006.

Studies have indicated that up to 25% of those hospitalized in South Asia fall below the poverty line. In large measure this is a result of hospital related expenses (the situation is similar in sub-Saharan Africa). Microinsurance has the potential to shield these families from such shocks and to help them to maintain a minimum standard of living. It can also provide them the opportunity to bounce back from illness, to take active charge of their economic and social position within society. And as research in this field has demonstrated, significant percentages of the poor do not seek healthcare because of the cost. Thus microinsurance can also promote health-seeking behaviors.

The primary focus of our investment in First Microinsurance Agency (FMIA) in Pakistan is in fact Health Insurance, though the company also offers credit life insurance and is exploring agricultural insurance. We also expect that some of our other portfolio companies might benefit from becoming customers or partners of FMIA. But there will be a steep learning curve for both established and start-up companies considering the use of microinsurance services. Many established companies have, at least at the outset, treated microinsurance as more of a CSR play than potentially advantageous service. Start-ups, while better prepared to embrace the opportunity, and more inclined, often do not have the protocols and systems in place to adequately respond. As we become shrewder in our understanding of microinsurance, this will of course change. But it will take time.

And certain strategic networks and/or partners will be important for companies that want to start extending microinsurance to the poor. From a customer acquisition point of view, partnering with organizations that can provide for a large group of people will be important (e.g. MFIs) in order to quickly reach scale and lower costs. It is also very important to partner with a wide variety of clinics and hospitals to ensure that we are providing genuine access to the poor. Finally, the government too may come to play a crucial role in providing microinsurance to the poor.

Economic and political stability will be essential for the facilitation of innovations and investments in microinsurance. If we take Pakistan as an example, where inflation is now officially running at 25%, it is hard to convince a customer that health insurance, which is a new product to begin with, should be considered a necessary addition to their already constrained budget.

Taking a long term view will be crucial to enabling the spread of microinsurance. If we use microfinance as an example, we need to be cognizant of the fact that it took 30 years for Microfinance to be as widely developed as it is, and there is still room for further growth. Those now working in microinsurance should be able to utilize some of the lessons of the microfinance revolution, so its growth should be quicker, but it will still require long term vision.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned Acumen Fund’s work in her remarks at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. It is thrilling to see Secretary Clinton discussing the importance of investment as a complement to aid. To read the full text of her comments, click here. To see a video of the speech, go to the bottom of this post. (Secretary Clinton’s comments on Acumen begin at the 17:00 minute mark.) Excerpts below:

“This approach highlights the difference between aid and investment. Through aid, we supply what is needed to the people who need it – be it sacks of rice or cartons of medicines. But through investment, we seek to break the cycle of dependence that aid can create by helping countries build their own institutions and their own capacity to deliver essential services. Aid chases need; investment chases opportunity.

Now, that is not to say that the United States is abandoning aid. It is still a vital tool, especially as an emergency response. But through strategic investments, we hope to one day, far from now, to put ourselves out of the aid business except for emergencies.

Our commitment to partnership extends not only to the countries where we work, but to other countries and organizations working there as well. New countries are emerging as important contributors to global development, including China, Brazil, and India – nations with the opportunity to play a key role, and with the responsibility to support sustainable solutions. Long-time leaders like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, the U.K., Japan, and others continue to reach billions through their longstanding work in dozens of countries.

Multilateral organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the UNDP, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria have the reach and resources to do what countries working alone cannot, along with valuable expertise in infrastructure, health, and finance initiatives.

Non-profits like the Gates Foundation, CARE, the Clinton Foundation, Oxfam International, networks of NGOs like InterAction, as well as smaller organizations like ACCION and Transparency International bring their own resources, deep knowledge, and commitment to humanitarian missions that complement our work in critical ways. And some foundations are combining philanthropy and capitalism in a very innovative approach, like the Acumen Fund. Universities are engaging in critical research, both to solve urgent problems like hunger and disease, and to improve the work of development, like the work of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT.

Even private businesses are able to reach large numbers of people in a way that’s economically sustainable, because they bring to bear the power of markets. A company like Starbucks, which has worked to create supply chains from coffee-growing communities in the developing world that promote better environmental practices and better prices for farmers; or Unilever/Hindustan, which has created soap and hygiene products that the very poor – long-overlooked by private business – can afford.”