atlanta and norman macrae

[chris macrae]

Economic forum to include Nobel winner

- I noticed you pre-announced the meeting; if would like to continue to discuss issue/good news stories etc at any time , please do- here's my first report from perspective of norman macrae foundation, a minor co-sponsor

 

45 college principals across georgia state host 1000 youth brainstorm on job creation

 http://www.usg.edu/social_business_microcredit

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Where will America ’s Top20 Regeneration Ideas Come From?

 

Thanks to the State of Georgia , one of the main sources of regeneration has now been demonstrated. It is statewide brainstorms of businesses that societies could value most. Brainstorming led by and for direct actions of university students. To appreciate how this works why not interact with some of the ideas that emerged in Atlanta, Georgia State University, on October 17 when over 1000 students, 45 college principals, various representative of state and federal government and business leaders came together to celebrate Dr Yunus by daring students to present their most exciting social business ideas.

 

The idea I recalled most after 24 hours is:  why not a microfinance bank for battered mothers. Every few minutes a mother is battered by an abusive spouse. The strength of this idea is that there can be few less productive situations for women and their children than a home led by a batterer. The weakness of the idea is the view that a banker never has the community right to act as if he is personally involved in feeling one person’s emotions more than another's . The threat of this idea is it is bigger than one student group or one state. Doesn’t it need a collaboration across the country by many institutes that are already concerned with both the crisis of battered mothers and with the crises of banking sustainably targeting peoples (mothers and childrens’ future) whose lives could be much more productive?

 

A suggestion : could one university in Georgia set up a halfway house for such mothers and families in which the mother gets fast support at training up whatever may be her greatest skills and her children get a smooth change of schooling. Such a college should probably have a maximum of one year so that it could focus on helping change lives at the most critical moment. During that year the two opposite opportunities for each mother could be assessed- that she could be re-empowered to lead her home microentrepreneurially, that she and her children needed longer-term help. Presumably we have many institutes of that second kind. As far as I know we have no microfinance bank for the abused mothers. So this idea is new to the world. And incidentally was co-presneted by a student who has survived being a battered mother herself/

 

I only heard 10 of the 38 ideas that were simultaneously tested among the 1000 youth and over 100 mentors assembled on 17 October. So this report cannot begin to be representative of the sort of combined energy that 1000 Georgian youth can generate few hours of co-presentations  We invite these ideas to be posted up and iteratively reviewed at www.youthandyunus.com and hope to track those that are sustained in future issues of the Journal of Social Business. Here is a sample of the other ideas I heard. That I would say they were not new to the world but potentially solution pathways that collaboration student networks across many states could entrepreneurially work on, and so celebrate putting America back to work

 

Solar for mobile homes of which there are hundreds of thousands in a state like Georgia

 

Cooperatives for regenerating an area that had lost its main employer of skills- apparently part of Gerogia has lost its textile manufacturing- a sewers cooperative would make a relevant regeneration channel

 

An e-trash centre that would recycle electronic gadgets. This could act as a hub for placing the recycled technology devices with youth who otherwise would not have access to the information age. Clearly this sort of concept has extra value if college students see this as a way of integrating peer to peer training, ie the college students knowhow of using technology could  valuably mentor schoolkids most at risk to not getting digital experience.

 

The central host of this process, with over a decade of experience of connecting entrepreneurial programs across American Colleges is Professor Bhuyina who can be emailed if you might want to try replicating this process at

Where will America ’s Top20 Regeneration Ideas Come From?

 

Thanks to the State of Georgia , one of the main sources of regeneration has now been demonstrated. It is statewide brainstorms of businesses societies want connected by university students. To illustrate how this works why not interact with some of the ideas that emerged in Atlanta on October 17 when over 1000 students, 45 college principals, various representative of state and federal government and business leaders came together to celebrate Dr Yunus by daring students to present their most exciting social business ideas.

 

Idea 1 why not a microfinance bank for battered mothers. Every few minutes a mother is battered by an abusive spouse. The strength of this idea is that there can surely be few less productive situations for women and their children than a home led by a batterer. The weakness of the idea is the view that a banker never has the community right to act as if he is personally involved in feeling one person’s emotions more than anothers . The threat of this idea is it is bigger than one student group or one state- doesn’t need a collaboration across the country by all institutes that are already concerned with both the crisis of battered mothers and the crises of banking sustainably targeting peoples (mothers and childrens’ future) whose lives could be much more productive.

 

A suggestion : could one university in Georgia set up a halfway house for such mothers and families in which the mother gets fast support at training up whatever may be her greatest skills and her children get a smooth change of schooling. Such a college should probably have a maximum of one year so that it could focus on helping change lives at the most critical moment. During that year the two opposite opportunities for each mother could be assessed- that she could be re-empowered to lead her home microentrepreneurially, that she and her children needed longer-term help. Presumably we have many institutes of that second kind. As far as I know we have no microfinance bank for the abused mothers. So this idea is new to the world. And incidentally was co-presneted by a student who has survived being a battered mother herself/

 

I only heard 10 of the 38 ideas that were simultaneously tested among the 1000 youth and over 100 mentors assembled on 17 October. So this first report cannot begin to be representative of the sort of combined energy that 1000 Georgian youth can generate few hours of co-presentations  We invite these ideas to be posted up and iteratively reviewed at www.youthandyunus.com and hope to track those that are sustained in future issues of the Journal of Social Business. Here is a sample of the other ideas I heard. That I would say they were not new to the world but potentially solution pathways that collaboration student networks across many states could entrepreneurially work on, and so celebrate putting America back to work

 

Solar for mobile homes of which the state has hundreds of thousands

 

Cooperatives for regenerating an area that had lost its main employer of skills- apparently part of Gerogia has lost its textile manufacturing- a sewers cooperative would make a relevant regeneration channel

 

An e-trash centre that would recycle electronic gadgets. This could act as a hub for placing the recycled technology devices with youth who otherwise would not have access to the information age. Clearly this sort of concept has extra value if college students see this as a way of integrating peer to peer training, ie the college students knowhow of using technology could  valuably mentor schoolkids most at risk to not getting digital experience.

 

The central host of this process, with over a decade of experience of connecting entrepreneurial programs across American Colleges, is Professor Bhuiyan. He can be emailed if you might want to try replicating this process at  [e-mail]; his current invitation to join in is at http://www.ofcvc.org/ofcpromo.html

[chris macrae]

Dear Prof Bhuiyan

 

Thanks for todays phone call. Your 2 compatriots Zasheem in Glasgow edits Journal of Social Busienss which to date my family has provided the social busienss loans to , and Mostofa now back in Dhaka (after graduating in London) has worked on parts of almost every youth project yunus centre has tested since 2006. At one time Mostofa was authorised to lead something called youth ambassador 5000 but ..

 

While I have spent a lot of the last 4 years working on understanding who is who around yunus and what models could be used worldwide by business, education or social networks, and have enjoyed how much of this has also helped me understand the main conflicts my dads work tried to overcome, I obviously dont begin to understand the depth of issues of growing up in a Bangladeshi vilage like Mostofa or having known yunus for most of bangladesh's 40 years independence like zasheem who also fought in that freedom war. So I welcome them editing any views or interpretations I have of what is happening. My views anyhow are subject to what information I have access to.

 

You asked for my thoughts on a social business fund for georgia. I will write something on that over weekend and post to the three of you. However I cant separate that from other questions like:

 

how to take your wonderful 11-year process across 50 states

 

what georgia could learn from other best entrepreneur competitions

  

so let me have a go, and then people can say whether any of my ideas help

 

On something else I mentioned- the whole process, goals etc that you have spent 11 years practising is worth celebrating in a special issue of journal all to istelf especially if we could get the business judges and other yunus usa partners to write brief reviews of how your work can help all of the deepest us movements around yunus

 

My list of deepest yunus-us movements includes:

 

your work

 

sam daley-harris work at results, microcreditsummit www.microcreditsummit.org  and from december this new civil society network (princeton & DC)

 

monica yunus work www.singforhope.org   (new york and princeton) - I know monica well enough to believe that sometime in future all yunus youth usa networks will be most sustainable if they criss cross through her hi-trust guardianship

 

vidar jorgennsen www.grameenamerica.com and www.grameenhealth.com and yunus biggest partner fund raiser liasing eg with

carlos slim worlds richest man in mexico partnership

 

www.grameenintel.com whose 2 leaders yoiu had as judges

 

whole foods whose foundation has set up 40 microcredits www.wholeplanetfoundation.org austin

 

Yunus also has connections with Branson who in the past has used atlanta as his pr centre for a womens foundation for s.africa

 

There are youth and filmakers organsiations passioante about yunus whoch include

www.mficonnect.com that aims to connect all student hosts of microcreditclubs

www.thegreenchildren.org which raised $1mn with yunus pop song for the first 2 eye hospitals

 

There is grameen foundation that I dont really try to understand as it seems to have let big banking in (and repeated requests to interview alex counts havent gone anywhere);

 

I believe there are at least 30 world changing concepts that dr yunsu has raised (and the world of youth wants) but few if any operating networks with open enough protociols to scale; I suggest that up to 10 regions (eg in us atalnta, princeton, boston and one wherever grameen intel chooses and 6 in rest of world) need to take responsbility for leading 3-7 of the top 30 projects making sure at least half are co-owned with another region. This view of mine is modelled on assumption that hasina nationalises all of yunus busiensses in Dhaka- a process that seems to be unstoppable albeit it slow and desperately personal 

 

in my professional practice levels I am interested in economic. media, conflict resolution and professional change models, education (where I wanted to help mrs begum connect world leading edu entrepreneurs), and how tech can be used to create jobs as per the 1984 storyline dad and I wrote up as a book on the net generation  http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html

 

I diarise public parts of what I learn at http://normanmacrae.ning.com

 

chris macrae

[chris macrae]

The judges include 21 national and local business and community leaders.

“We are delighted that Professor Yunus will help anchor this event,” said USG Chancellor Hank Huckaby in a news release. “Our goal is to put together a number of key state players in economic development along with our talent in the University System to explore ways in which our partnership efforts can better benefit Georgia’s economic recovery and possibly create the potential for new businesses and jobs.”

Dr. Yunus is the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner for his pioneering work in microcredit, the extension of very small loans to those in poverty designed to spur entrepreneurship. The original microcredit business concept has been expanded by Dr. Yunus to incorporate a larger focus to creating business solutions to solve social issues.

In addition to USG, the following agencies and organizations are involved with the conference including Georgia departments of education, early care and learning, economic development, community affairs, human resources and the Technical College System of Georgia, Georgia Student Finance Commission, Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, Georgia Professional Standards Commission, Georgia Economic Developers Association, Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Georgia Independent College Association, Association of Education Agency Heads, TiE – the Indus Entrepreneurs, Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta and Yunus Creative Lab.

Among the judges participating are Suhas Apte, vice president, global sustainability, Kimberly Clark Corp.; Daniel Austin, chief architect of large-scale payment systems at Paypal; Richard Bernhardt, president and COO at Silicon Valley Investment Group and owner and CEO, Bernhardt Communications Co.; Paula Boggs, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, Starbucks Corp.; Phil Bolton, president of Agio Press Inc. and publisher of GlobalAtlanta; Colin Brady, OBE, president and CEO of Pinnacle Partners International Inc.;

Karen Robinson Cope, vice president, Out-of-home Media, NanoLumens Inc., Ken Cutshaw, executive vice president, general counsel and chief compliance officer, Church’s and Texas Chicken; Grace Fricks, founder, Access Capital for Entrepreneurs; Kazi Huque, CEO, Grameen Intel Social Business; Zeev Klein, board member at Digital Wish, general partner at Landmark Ventures and co-founder and director at Doing IT for Good; C.N. “Madhu” Madhusudan, CEO, VectorSpan Inc. and president of TiE Atlanta;

Andrea T. Mills, Fiscal Management Associates LLC; Tamela G. Noboa, chief of strategy and new business, Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership; Rajan Palaniswamy, chairman and CEO, Virima Technologies; Kristin Peterson, co-founder and CEO, Inveneo; Kanchama Raman, president and CEO, Avion Systems Inc.; Sndhya C. Rao, senior advisor for Private Sector Partnerships at USAID; Narayan Sundararajan, CTO, Grameen-Intel Social Business, Intel Corp.; Eileen Sweeney, senior director of Motorola Giving and Philanthropic Rleations, Motorola Inc. and Boby Zukis, global strategy and technology executive.

[chris macrae]

we welcome reports of parallel experimental processes where universities become entrepreneur labs eg miami's http://www.thelaunchpad.org/about-us 

extreme entrepreneurs tour and bios http://www.extremetour.org/speakers/index.php

[chris macrae]

This is intended as a  first-draft discussion document (please edit its Q&A if relevant to you) focused round 3 questions from the limited experience I so far have of them.

 

A What Can State of Georgia Do next to Empower Youth Job Creation

 

C How could the Georgia-OFCVC model go across 50 US states or other regions where educators want to help youth job create?

 

B How do Yunus methods such as SB funds and SB stockmarkets connect

 

My perspective is framed largely by how my father’s and yunus ideas connect in seeing the purpose of economics as investing in next generations productivity , as well as share 4 years of information on who I have met inspired by yunus/bangladesh to help make 2010s youths most productive decade

 

 

A) & C) I mentor teenagers including my own that universities are the next big bubble in USA almost as dangerous to their productive lifetimes as Wall Street. Their costs and required student loans gone up astronomically, and the more expensive the university the less their principals seem to define their purpose in job creation terms   Using the microentrepreneurial language of Yunus, most work in the future will be innovated while you are still being educated and enjoying extraordinary peer networks not by getting a top grade in an exam for a job waiting you in a big corporation or big government.   A1 I therefore interpret Georgia’s 1000 youth SB competition as a breakthrough for liberating the relationship between student and teachers. Almost every idea presented needs its principal to ask where in our college are we learning to network how to create jobs from that idea. In other words the large part of funding (future) competition winners must come from changing processes and reallocation of universities own revenues as well as the state’s budgets for social or business development. However by being the first to demonstrate this method across states, Georgia and Yunus and OFCVC can claim training revenues from other states or demand other partnership exchanges. I   A2 With job creation top of peoples agendas, there is also a timely opportunity to build on integrating the constituency networks OFCVC has developed in its 10 year long sharing of an entrepreneur program across colleges such as 1 principals 2 state and local government and development organisations 3 youth 4 business leaders   A3 Two next choices seem critical – the first handful of states to extend to –what will they give to be part of the process; within Georgia who else has funds that ought to want to join in promoting an innovation out of Georgia that the world of youth wants most (jobs/ income-gen futures) Examples of Georgia-leading industries  could include coca-cola, branson who indirectly started entrepreneur training and virgin unite out of Atlanta, ted turner already a reform UN partner of yunus. Interface the world most exciting model of transforming industry to zero carbon   Ideas of which states to extend to first:   C1 interested to know where ofcvc 101 college strength is and whether eg texas is a first candidate; I was sat at dinner next to sponsoring family rehman whose daughter works for fed economic development out of Austin- Austin is where one of 2 US CEOs most supporting yunus is based – ie John Mackey whole foods   C2 I have been searching which 4 places in usa could become epicenters for Yunus greatest projects- along with Atlanta I would suggest which ever state Intel chooses (the other US major  resources partner of Yunus and worldwide leader of infotech possibilities of Yunus) ; probably Massachussetts if we could negotiate that because the future of US education is tested out of there and Yunus number 1 global partnering agent (head of Grameen America) is headquartered in Boston; and maybe the princeton /new jersey region as which is where both monica yunus and sam daley harris are based.   Although I am based in DC and Maryland, I can say from experience that I don’t find these states easy to connect universities , though would happily join a group testing inter-state demand at any future time.   C3 A lot is changing in next few months so any ideas logged up now need continuous reappraisal: In particular 2012 is the most political in US 4-year cycle and this time jobs will be number 1 agenda   Sam daley harris is ending 15 years of making microcredit his main network focus and turning to leading a wholly civil society networks- finding out his first regional hotspots seems relevant

B0 How do Yunus methods such as SB funds and SB stockmarkets connect?   B01 When I first met yunus at end of 2007 after forming  first 1000 social business  bookclub, he had two globally popular slogans that reinforced each other” join human race to poverty museums develop social business stockmarkets he also used a more detailed vocabulary a)social action – one year team development of small groups of students to test an emerging social business concept; b) social business to be the main model he used to govern any goal-oriented project, organisation or network; c)future capitalism to be a club of global partners connecting round yunus community economic models by investing some of the world’s most advanced tech resources as well as their finance and other capabilities   This January 2008 video typifies how he then explained his open relationships with youth  education, investment, job creation linked to youths millennium goal networks http://www.youtube.com/user/caplinski#p/u/14/idn4vCtJ0Hs   The first chapter of his first book on social business was arguably the most relevant economic contribution to systemic development in the 33 years that I have heard people relate to my father’s 1976 article on entrepreneurial revolution in The Economist – for fathers surveys go to  http://normanmacrae.ning.com/forum/topics/norman-macrae-books-surveys   B02 Something I would most like to see journal of social business do is use its back pages to catalogue/update all cases of sb funds and sb capital markets. The Economist started life with front pages on changing weekly news; and bank pages developing ever more informative data. Why not JOSB too? . click pic to download journal of pro-youth economics   There are many variants and ways to intervene with “SB funds” but the strategic ones that the French help yunus co-create from 2005 are economically very different from the PR ones hans reitz suggests yunus should promote in any city that wants to commemorate him   B3.1 My understanding is that yunus went through 3 extraordinary stages of innovation – each of which built on the other but became his next passion:   B3.1.1 1976-1995 modeling 10 times more economic models in the village – fortunately the basic molecule of this was poorest mothers centres of 60 which interacted banking, ownership of community market, and hubbing knowhow   B3.1.2 1996-2004 introducing mobiles through village phone ladies- one lady became hub connector with other 100000 hubs   B3.1.3 2005 on when 4 large organisations in paris all offered to partner yunus with technology and funding to test an extreme innovation using rural bangladesh as an innovation lab   B3.2 Oddly summits and world stage of yunus developed slightly out of sequence   B3.2.1 1989 world bank asked for international arm Grameen Trust to be developed 1997 microcreditsummit launched (along with Grameen foundation in DC); over next 9 years status of Yunus as Nobel Prize 2006 laureate grew but quality control of how summit advanced microcredit models diluted 2003? Skoll asked yunus and abed to join Drayton , ashok’s founder of social entrepreneurs, to join world social entrepreneur club of 5. Yunus fairly quickly found that social entrepreneurs didn’t necessarily value having a business model- this seems to be where social business (entrepreneur) originated as a term, though it represented the main model no dividend, no loss, owned by poorest (or those in most need of purpose) that Yunus had innovated to bring sustainability to charities and bottom-up empowerment to aid