Bay Localize & Green Roofs: An Interview with Ingrid Severson

Ingrid Severson is the lead project organizer of the Rooftop Resources project, a project of the Oakland non-profit Bay Localize. You can listen to my interview with Ingrid on the Big Vision Podcast, or read a transcript here.

Ingrid: Bay Localize is a non-profit project that started back in December of 2005. What we do is work to build a more socially equitable and sustainable Bay Area. This is in response to global warming and peak oil. I don't know if people know what peak oil is, but it is basically just the phenomenon that refers to petroleum depletion. It has massive impacts on the economy and the stability of our resources, etc. It affects the whole world. We're working on a local level which is why we're called Bay Localize because we are striving to bring production of our goods and services more on a local level within the Bay Area. So that requires a massive shift, and we're working towards building a more local economy in the Bay Area on a policy level by working to galvanize municipal response and developing models of localization that can be replicated by other regions. And also by raising awareness about the concept of re-localizing to bring other people into the movement as well. We work in the nine county region of the Bay Area.

Britt: What are some of Bay Localize's projects?

Ingrid: Right now we have three projects. Maybe people will begin hearing soon about the Localization Strategy Initiative, which is a multi-organizational initiative that Redefining Progress, Bay Localize and plenty of other groups in the Bay Area are working on. It is basically a piece of policy that argues and researches how to bring the Bay Area into localization. This is a policy paper that was just released a few months ago. Now the strategy is to bring city officials and county officials into the process. That's something that a few people in our organization are working towards.

The second one is the Localization Mapping Project that shows on a GIS map all the different localization projects happening in the nine county region of the Bay Area as a tool that other people can plug into. Also, it connects the dots with similar projects happening, so people can see where they are on the map. It shows all the assets that we have to work with to broaden and strengthen the whole movement.

So that's going to come out on our website, and also in a published form. That's something that Brian Holland is working on, he's part of Bay Localize. He's heading up that project. We also have the Rooftop Resources Project which is my project that I'm working on.

Britt: For people who aren't familiar with green rooftops, what is a green roof?

Ingrid: Well it's funny, in this era of the burgeoning green movement, where a lot of people are seeking to "green" everything they do: green your house, green your car, green your job, green everything, green roofs are in that sense called green because they do have that ecological sustainability aspect to them. But literally they're green because it's a garden on a roof. What we're looking at with the Rooftop Resources Project are all the different garden types that could work out on a rooftop. It's basically high tech gardening, high-tech roof gardening. With a rooftop garden there is an integrated roof garden, and there is also the raised bed rooftop gardens. The difference is that with the integrated roof, you plop down a membrane to seal it up, to make the roof waterproof. Then you just lay the soil down and start planting on the roof. With what they call an extensive roof, that's basically where you have a separation of the raised beds, modules to lay down, which are the waterproofing of the garden.

Britt: What are some of the benefits of a green roof?

Ingrid: It actually benefits the building itself. It acts like an insulator. It's like putting a jacket on the roof. It protects the roof from the UV rays of the sun and it will keep the building cooler in the summer, believe it or not, and warmer in the winter. It makes the building so it is like a living, breathing entity. It's a protective layer. It helps with energy efficiency, but also it benefits the city by making the air cleaner, and increasing habitat. You'll find a lot more birds and bugs and good things living on the roof.

Also for the types of roof gardens that are accessible, it increases the livable space for the city because a roof that otherwise would be bare all of a sudden has the capacity to be more like a park on a roof. It increases real estate value. Also, as it's a growing industry, if we can catalyze it here in the Bay Area it will generate more jobs.

I mean, who's not to like a garden on a roof?

[laughter]

The Rooftop Resources Project is, I've been calling it a research and development project. It's a three-step project, and the whole idea of the project is to show the feasibility and the benefits of edible rooftop gardening, rainwater catchment, and renewable energy. That's basically showing those three different designs and their applicability to the Bay Area and what kind of social and economic benefits that they have for the region. In other words, what kind of jobs could be generated from the mainstreaming of these applications. The Rooftop Resources Project goes in three steps.

The first step is to produce a conceptual design that shows prototypes of rainwater catchment, solar energy, and edible rooftop gardening as they apply to a study area. It's basically a neighborhood assessment. We're choosing a one half-square mile region of Oakland. We're going to choose a region of Oakland that has all the criteria of the buildings we're looking to show. To show the applications of all three designs, we're going to go for a neighborhood that has a good selection of private, public, and commercial buildings, and that way those buildings will have applicability to general urban building types.

Within that first step we'll produce a conceptual design that will be produced by an urban planning firm and an engineering firm. That way it's a professional piece of work that we'll be providing to the field. Within that conceptual design we'll show how much electricity could be produced, how many pounds of food could be produced, and how much water could be saved from rainwater catchment. That way it shows a good projection of data that will be a convincing piece of material that we will then use in a report. We'll publish a report, then we're also going to publish the Rooftop Resources Principles Guidebook that's going to show all the data from the study, as well as many different case studies that we've found that show how well these systems work and a cost benefit analysis.

That's going to be designed for homeowners, developers, tenants, for people who want to develop these systems on their own. They want to see what are the costs involved, what kind of plants will work for what kind of roofs, things like that. It should have a really good comprehensive piece of material for people to look into considering. We're going to be using that to catalyze these systems into mainstream use by starting a public awareness campaign, and then a municipal support type of campaign.

In a long sense that's the second step. And that should be happening, as in those pieces of literature and reports published, probably around July of 2007. That's basically the tools that we're going to be using for our campaigns.

One of the things we're planning on doing on a city level is catalyzing a demonstration project on a municipal building. One of the things that has inspired us is the city of Chicago and the city of New York. These are two really big urban cities that obviously have problems with pollution and really intense heat. What they've done is these cities have started a really broad program of green roofs. Both of those cities actually have green roofs on their city buildings.

We want to follow in their example, only we're thinking what we can do is influence. We're targeting the city of Oakland because it's a great city. It's got a lot of space to close the gap of violence and inequity and what not. Also the green movement is really big in Oakland. We're hoping to do an edible rooftop garden on one of the city buildings. That's pretty much the last phase of the project, working on a policy level to create incentives, financial incentives, tax credits, things like, that would help people to implement these rooftop systems.

Britt: What brought you to this work?

Ingrid: I come from a diverse background of, how would I describe myself? The most consistent thing that I've done in my life is massage therapy. I've been a massage therapist for about seven years, that has pretty much been the staple that has allowed me to do many other things. I've always been an advocate for environmental sustainability and a more eco-conscious lifestyle. In that way, I've always been a steward of the earth. Also, I've lived in the Bay Area since '97, I'm really passionate about making the Bay Area more livable, and broadening the environmental movement.

I would say what brought me to Bay Localize was understanding the implications of peak oil. About two years ago I found out about peak oil after meeting with a pretty avid, what would I call him, kind of PR type of guy. His name is Dave Room. He introduced me to the concept of peak oil and introduced me to the movement in the Bay Area around peak oil. I started going to monthly meetings. It was kind of like a support group of people talking about the implications and the solutions, and what needs to be done, etc.

Of course I went through all of the stages that people in this movement go through. First you go through shock, of understanding how everything that we do is made available by cheap easy oil. And that once oil goes into more of a decline, our whole lifestyle is going to be turned upside down. So after going through shock, I began questioning everything that I did, and I do with my life. And I still do, I think it's really good to have a consciousness of how we're able to have such a luxurious lifestyle, what makes things possible, and of course, what's your ecological footprint. All these things I started examining on a deeper level.

So Bay Localize, I had worked with a few of the people in this organization on a different level. We were more of a grassroots organization. I was already in touch with Bay Localize, but I had the opportunity to become more involved with them this past summer. They were going through a transition and it became more of a ground level type effort to build the structure of the organization.

I happened to have free time this summer after doing some travelling, and I had wanted to do a rooftop assessment, like a green roof asssessment, to determine what the capacity of Bay Area rooftops is to carry gardens. It just so happend that Bay Localize was a good vehicle to propose this project, and so that's how it happened.

Britt: What resources can you recommend for people who want to get involved in re-localizing their city, or with the green roof movement?

Ingrid: For folks who have access to the Internet, I would recommend of course, our website. We've got some good info. We're a hub, we're at www.baylocalize.org. Then Postcarbon.org, this is an organization that does research and organizational type of work around peak oil. They are defininitely one of the leaders. Energybulletin.net is a good one.

Books, oh there are so many books. PowerDown by Richard Heinburg is a good one. He goes over peak oil.

A really good tool is movie nights. I've found these to be really, really powerful. One of the landmark movies is called End of Suburbia. I don't know if you've heard of it. I definitely recommend that to anybody who wants to look at the problem with American suburban infrastructure and how much of a dead-end type of infrastructure it is in that it sets people apart from a good stable access to sharing resources.

If you watch the movie, all of a sudden you'll just understand the problem. The movie is kind of scary, it definitely goes over the problem more than the solution. It's like an icebreaker, a catalyst, to bring people together to really begin dialoging. That's what I would suggest to anybody who wants to bring their community into the movement, is do a movie night. Only be prepared to be a little shell-shocked, and to be able to start asking, and begin looking for answers.

In terms of how people can broaden the localization movement. One of the things I always tell people that you can do is get to know your neighbors. It's so important just to know who you are living with on your block. Get together, have community potlucks, begin sharing the resources that we have so we're not so much an individualistic type of society.

I think it comes down to the simple basic things, like the things that we use. For example, if more people carpooled, it strengthens and bonds the community. If people had more resource sharing like, tool share libraries and bicycle libraries. Things like that where people can come together and have a base of things that go around the community, and are shared more. Those are a few of the things that I would suggest.

Localization is something that I think everybody yearns for, it's that missing link of bonding our community, to make community so we're not so isolated. So the answer really is out your front door.

For more information about Bay Localize and the Rooftop Resources project go to Baylocalize.org.

green
roof
local
city
Bay Area

Food Bloggers Unite for Good: Menu for Hope Starts Today

$17,000. That's how much food blogger, Pim Techamuanvivit of Chez Pim, raised for UNICEF in 2005. This year she is hoping to raise $25,000 for the UN World Food Programme.

For the past three years, Pim has held a Menu for Hope campaign on her blog. In 2004, right after the Tsunami hit, she asked a few food blogging friends to help her raise funds to support the Tsunami survivors in Southeast Asia, the region where Pim is from. They raised $2,000 for the Red Cross.

In 2005, 80 food bloggers were involved in the campaign, and together they raised $17,000 for UNICEF. Food bloggers were asked to contribute prizes to the campaign, and readers were asked to buy virtual raffle tickets. This year, over 150 food bloggers are contributing to the campaign, which starts today, and runs until December 22nd.

Here's how it works: "The more you give, the better your chance to win."

1. Choose a prize or prizes of your choice from the Menu for Hope

Have a meal of your life..
Delicious experiences..
Feasts for the eyes: books and more..
Tasty treats..
Cooks' tools..
Drink yourself silly..

2. Go to the donation site and make a donation. Each $10 you donate will give you one raffle ticket toward a prize of your choice.

3. Check back on Chez Pim on January 15 for the results of the raffle.

For more details go to Menu for Hope. It's a great chance to have fun and do good this holiday season.

*Bay Area readers: You can hear Pim and the co-founder of Kiva, Matt Flannery, talk about Fundraising for Nonprofits with the Social Web tomorrow, December 12th, at NetSquared's Net Tuesday. The event will be at Citizen Agency's Citizen Space (425 Second St. #300 in San Francisco). RSVP here.

Menu for Hope
Chez Pim
food
blog
philanthropy

The Struggles and Strategies of Online Organizing: An Interview with Leda Dederich

A couple weeks ago, I did an interview for the NetSquared Podcast with Leda Dederich, the creator of the dotOrganize project, and co-author of the report "Online Technology For Social Change: From Struggle to Strategy."

Below is a transcript of the interview. To start, I asked Leda what inspired her to start dotOrganize.

Leda Dederich: The entire project was actually launched after working for several years with organizations on an individual basis, and finding that they were struggling with the same problems over and over again. So I got frustrated with coming into organizations, seeing that they had these similar frustrations, and that there was really no infrastructure-wide capacity to support them. Also, I didn't even really have tools at my disposal to help support them and what their needs were.

The dotOrganize project generated out of that; and the main goal of the project was really to try to understand what it is that grassroots organizations, specifically, are struggling with in relation to technology, and how that can support their organizing, and then what we need to do, again, from kind of a sector-wide, capacity-building perspective to support them more effectively.

The problems that they are dealing with are really huge, so I wanted to start, in sort of a massive due diligence effort, by trying to understand, really, how that problem was playing out. Many capacity-builders, we all had similar instincts, right? Like data management and databases, that seems to be kind of killing everybody, that's sort of the heart of the challenge for a lot of people. There is a tremendous amount of frustration. People are kind of stuck. I mean, we all knew that, but we didn't really understand the specifics of how that was playing out.

So that was one of the main goals of this report, was, "What's really going on? Let's really find the lay of the land." It hadn't been done before, really, with this particular sector. Oftentimes when non-profits are focused on from a research perspective, it is the much larger organizations, so the little folks, the ones with budgets of under $100,000 a year, or $500,000 a year, or even volunteer-run organizations, often tend to get left out of the mix. So then the programs that are funded don't really cater to their needs, often.

So that was really the primary goal, was like, "What's going on with these folks, and how can we help them?" And I wanted to understand from their perspective what their needs were, rather than kind of theoretically stepping over to the side and looking at it and being like, "Well, I think they need this." I really feel that--this comes from my experience as an online strategist who has worked with lots of different organizations--you've kind of got to start with the user first.

Britt: What were some of the core findings?

Leda: The findings were interesting. A lot of it was actually validating what we already knew, that there is a big problem out there. I would say that the core findings would fall into four main categories.

The first, which was actually very exciting for us and somewhat surprising, was that organizations are really excited about technology. Now this was not the case, I would say, even five years ago. When I used to do trainings with organizations on how to leverage online technology for their missions, for example, I would have to spend 20 to 30 minutes in the beginning of my presentation just making the case, like, "This is why this might be good for you. Check it out." That's really not happening anymore. The buzz has been caught, people are really excited, and there have been some examples in the past five years of online technology really supporting organizations. They are super-excited and kind of ready, like, the carrot is sort of out there for them.

The second main finding, I would say, is that they are equally as frustrated. So they are kind of in this limbo-land a little bit, where they know that this can work for them, and the gap between knowing that it can work for them and there is something out there that is really beneficial, and also being able to find those new tools, implement them in a way that is effective and that also relates to their campaign objectives and their campaign goals--bridging that gap at this point is pretty challenging for folks. They don't know what tools are out there. Even if they get the list of the 100 tools that are out there that might be useful to them, they have no way of determining which one is most suited to their needs, how to implement it, and how to get ongoing support. So a tremendous amount of frustration.

And from a tools perspective, because we did try to get a bit granular with this research, in terms of tools that actually support them in their organizing, there is not one thing that is working for everybody. I mean, there are like 50 different kinds of tools that we named, and said, "Tell us what you think about these," plus lots and lots of other things that came in the open-ended comments from our survey information. So, lots of different options out there; none of them are really doing the full trick for folks.

And I think some of that is actually because the field of what one might call "online organizing" is such a new medium that the tools haven't quite caught up. So there is a lot of having to pull together different things and trying to cobble them together. If you are an organization that has technology people on staff, you are likely to be much more satisfied. That was actually a finding from the survey: if you have the folks in there that can do the bridging, that can cobble the stuff together, you are going to do great; but for the majority of the organizations that we talked to? Pretty frustrated.

The other thing that I have to say, even though sometimes this gets a little bit abstract for folks, is, from a very specific infrastructure perspective, the data management issue is really the heart of the problem. One of the reasons I feel like it's important to emphasize this, even though it is a bit technical and kind of wonky for some folks, is that you talk to any organization and they will tell you that, but because it is a little bit like, seems sort of back office, or something that is too focused on folks' operations, it tends to get overlooked, and it's actually the key to people being able to manage their relationships and engage their constituents, is sort of knowing who they are, knowing information about them, and then also being able to leverage that information in some way, whether that means sending an email to people, soliciting online donations, any of that kind of thing. Right now, when we asked folks, for example, "How long would it take you to generate a list of clean contacts?" the average response was five to 25 hours.

So it is really hard. It is really hard for folks. And then the open-ended comments, again, on that, I mean people just railed, they railed. And there are lots of things that are OK. There are lots of things that, if you spent $50,000 customizing it, it will mostly meet your needs. There are lots of organizations that have just done their own custom solution. There are some new emerging leaders in the field that seem to have some promise. But right now, if somebody came to me and said, "OK, I need to have a contact management solution for my organization that can also connect to some kind of organizing platform," I would not have an answer for them. So that's really challenging.

The final main finding that I would say, out of all of this, is--this had less to do with the information that we got from organizations and more research in the field in general--is that this is actually the moment to be addressing these problems. From a technology perspective, there is a climate of innovation right now that is totally suited to this.

We talk a lot about Web 2.0, which I think can be a really confusing term to some people, because Web 2.0 in some ways refers to tools, and in other ways refers to development practices, I think; but needless to say, that whole Web 2.0 environment is definitely creating a climate for innovation and collaboration that we haven't seen. So I think that in terms of being able to address some of these problems without spending $10 million, I think there is a moment to do that right now, this is kind of the time, so that's exciting.

Britt Bravo: There are some amazing statistics in this report. Fifty-five percent of the organizations surveyed didn't have an email list, forty-seven percent do not accept online donations, and thirty-nine percent do not use an email newsletter. What do you think that this means for the adoption of emerging technology by non-profits?

Leda: It is the question, right? So that was shocking to us, the amount of organizations who were struggling with very, very basic needs. Emerging technologies are great, I am all for emerging technologies; but I believe very, very strongly that it is like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: if people can't eat, then they can't go out to the fair. So all of these other technologies are very exciting, and I think for organizations that are in a position to try to leverage them in their campaigns, that's great; but we have to start focusing on the basics. If people do not have the capacity to solicit donations online, if they do not have an email newsletter, they really cannot worry about blogging and podcasting.

So I am very interested in, as we move forward, trying to create some broad-based infrastructure solutions so that it is easier for people to address some of these basic needs. And I think that there can be a split. The hype machine tends to focus on all of the new, fancy stuff, which for a lot of more grassroots organizations can be frustrating and even borderline offensive, I have to say, because you start to see all of these resources, all of this funding, all of this excitement, going towards these new and emerging technologies, and they're kind of like, "Whoa! We're over here; we have no idea what you're talking about. We have no idea how it relates to us. I'm tracking all my contacts on a piece of paper." So we really have to start there.

Britt: What are the next steps for dotOrganize?

Leda: The first step was really trying to understand what was happening, and to put this research out into the public space, and to solicit feedback. So right now there are two things going on.

One is, this problem is really too big for any organization individually to take on, so for me it is actually about building a community of practice and really connecting with other capacity builders in the sector to figure out a process for how to move forward to address this. So that is a big piece of what is going on right now, lots of different conversations about partnership opportunities with other organizations that are already in the field so that we can start moving forward on those.

There is a series of recommendations in the report that dotOrganize, as an organization, is not prepared to take on all of them. It was important for me to put this research out there and also have some thinking about how to address the problems. It was all published as a point of departure for broader conversation. The authors of the report, myself included, don't think we have the answers, but we felt like it was important to provide a baseline for conversation, even if someone wants to completely disagree, and therefore come up with a better way of solving the problem. To me that is success. So again, the first piece was really trying to generate some conversation around this and put some of these ideas into the primary discourse of the technology capacity-building community.

The projects that dotOrganize is specifically interested in taking on, because we have identified them as some of the really key challenges, that if we can address will have maximum collective impact, are two.

The first one is looking at information resources. I have an editorial background and I love information, and I think that self-education is possible, and especially if you are in a very small-budget organization and you can't hire a consultant, and you can't go to big, expensive trainings, that if there is an option, at least, for you to invest your own time and resources, then that can be very helpful. There are lots of information resources out there; from my perspective none of them are really cutting the mustard fully for what these groups need. So my intention, in collaboration with a lot of the other organizations that do have great resources out there--NetSquared and TechSoup being some of the primary--is to provide a centralized information resource that would allow an organization to come, and if they needed to know what kind of email solution, starting with the basics, would work for them.

They could get information on what tools were available, how they might implement them, and also some strategic guidance in terms of how to actually integrate that with their campaign and strategic goals. Which is something that, when we talk about technology in relation to non-profits, we often forget that very key piece, that there is a strategy and that really should be the heart of it, that the tool simply follows the strategy.

So I could go into a lot more information about what that information resource could look like. Again, we are going to start with the users and make sure that we are really finding out what they need; but it could be we'll have tools databases, we will have information, we will have strategic implementation guidelines. We could have, like, "Ask The Doctor" to get your questions answered. There are a lot of different possibilities there, and that will emerge, but that is the first project that we are focusing on.

The second one is a broader, more complex one that we are actually still in the process of kind of honing in and identifying the specific components for it, but that has to do with this whole piece around the capacity for organizations to manage their constituents, and also engage them fully. So what we are probably looking at more there is a program that can provide somewhat of an end-to-end solution, starting with the tools, and then talking about the implementation, and then also how those tools could be leveraged effectively from a strategic perspective.

So that is actually, in some ways, some of it has to do with software development, and some of it has to do with a culture shift around how organizations think about the people that are related to them. Are those people there to serve you, or are you there to serve them? When we look at constituents, and fundraising and this whole list-building thing, I think of list-building now mainly as a form of coercion, like, "Let me try to get somebody's name by any means necessary," which in the end is not actually that sustainable and doesn't built a broad-based movement.

So we have a whole technology challenge around folks being able to just go in and search for people in their neighborhood, or generate a walk list for them to go talk to them, those kinds of things; but we also really have a strategic challenge in terms of how people are perceiving this. I do believe in creating a broad-based movement for social change in this country. That is why I'm doing this work. And to me, that is about looking at what it means to build a movement, who actually makes those movements; it is bringing it back to individual people, and their needs a little bit more, and I think there is a great opportunity for organizations to rethink a little bit what engagement actually means. If we can start actually meeting the needs of those people that we are trying to engage, and relating to them in a way that is not just about soliciting a donation twice a year, I think we are going to have a much stronger movement, ultimately.

Britt Bravo: How can listeners to this interview get involved with dotOrganize and the work you are doing?

Leda: If you go to dotOrganize.net, you can sign up on the email list, we have a blog that is going to be starting soon. Also, the report has been published online, so if you go to dotOrganize.net/report you can actually see the online version of all the research. The reason that I did that, primarily, was because I wanted people to be able to comment and give feedback. So it is set up to do that, and we would most appreciate your thoughts and perspectives and ideas on what we have presented.

Britt: Is there anything else you want people to know about dotOrganize, or the report?

Leda: There are two key messages I would want to hit home, that I would want anybody who is listening to this to take away. One would be that to really understand that there is an infrastructure challenge here that is huge, that is affecting organizations all across the country, and it is mostly affecting organizations that have very small budgets, who basically have no way of getting their needs met. That infrastructure challenge, which as I said, the heart of that is really data management and how folks can manage their constituents and also how they can engage them, that challenge needs to be addressed on an infrastructure-wide level. We cannot do it organization-to-organization. If we do that, it is going to take 20 years to solve the problem. If we start addressing it more on an infrastructure-wide level, in five years the whole country is going to be in a much better place.

So that is the one piece. That is the kind of more technical piece.

The other thing that I would say that is really important is that oftentimes, when we think about social change and technology, and "non-profit" technology, we forget what we are really trying to do. Again, this is about social change, this is about a world that is pretty much in crisis right now. There is also a lot of hope. I mean, I am pretty excited about this election that just happened. I am feeling slightly less on the defensive.

I mean, obviously it is just a beginning and it could still be terrible, but there is opportunity, and that is actually why we are all here; and when we are looking at technology and non-profits, that is the end result that we are searching for, really, is social change, empowering organizers, making it possible for organizations to really focus on their missions and not be struggling with issues like how to manage their email lists. Such a waste of time; they have better things to do. So that would be the second thing I would want people to take away from this.

net2
ntech
Leda Dederich
nonprofit
technology

Transcription by CastingWords

Fast Food Nation, Backwards Hamburger & the Meatrix

Fast Food Nation. Read the book. Haven't seen the movie yet. Have you? Honestly, I was deterred by my all-knowing movie source, Rotten Tomatoes. They gave it 48% tomatoes. You need 60% to be fresh. Too bad, 'cause the book is great.

My pals at Free Range Studios, together with Sustainable Table and Participate.net have put together two online animated videos to promote the film: The Meatrix II 1/2 and Backwards Hamburger.

The Meatrix II 1/2 is the third in The Meatrix series, a spoof on The Matrix, where Moopheus, Leo, and Chickity fight factory farming evil-doers. In this episode, Leo and Chickity rush to save Moopheus from a processing facility where they witness dangerous working conditions and feces from processed cows' intestines falling into hamburger meat. Blech.

Backwards Hamburger takes us backwards from hamburger to cow with lots of facts and stats mixed in like:

• Fast food leads the US in low pay jobs while fighting any minimum wage increase.
• The average fast food meal is shipped 1500 miles. Lots of artificial preservatives keep it ‘fresh.’
• A typical burger may contain pieces of 1,000 different cows and a little serving of manure.
• Meatpacking is some of the most dangerous work in America, but pays 24% less than an average factory job.
• Rushed slaughter means animals are sometimes conscious while being processed.

If you go to the film, consider being part of Participate.net's Dinner and a Movie campaign. You can download invitations to your organic, locally grown dinner from the site, along with discussion questions to chat about after the film.

Fast Food Nation
hamburger
Meatrix

WorldChanging Launches Book & Local Blogs

Shop Local is a trend picking up speed this holiday season. Will Blog Local be far behind? The fabulous social change blog, WorldChanging, is celebrating the publication of their 600-page book, WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century, by launching a network of local WorldChanging blogs. Bloggers (like me) in Austin, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, the Twin Citites, Washington DC, and Canada are volunteering to post a couple times a month about WorldChanging projects, ideas and people in their city.

They are still looking for bloggers in the cities I mentioned above, and for people who want to launch local WorldChanging blogs for new cities. If you are interested, email network[at]worldchanging[dot]com.

I'll be at their book party tonight in San Francisco. Say hi if you come by. There will also be WorldChanging events in Denver and NYC this month.

worldchanging
local
blog

Best Internet Marketing for a Cause 2006

What makes us write a donation check, spread the word about a campaign, or show up for a meeting or protest? What makes us want to act for social change? Emotional connection. Passion for a cause.

For the past year, I have been writing for NetSquared about nonprofits and NGOs that are using the social web to cultivate donors, advocates and activists for their organization and their cause. I find that the campaigns I respond the most to are the ones with heart, whimsy and oftentimes, a story. Here are my picks for the Best Internet Marketing for a Cause 2006 (in alphabetical order). I hope you'll add your picks in the comments.

Blogging for Chickens by ProBlogger: Darren Rowse celebrated ProBlogger's second birthday by raising $1100 (AU), or about $830 US, to buy 110 pairs of chickens for impoverished families via Oxfam Australia. When Oxfam contacted Rowse they said that Blogging for Chickens was, "one of the more interesting fundraisers that they’ve seen."

I Love Mountains: Appalachian Voices, Coal River Mountain Watch, Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Save Our Cumberland Mountains, and Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards created the I Love Mountains campaign to stop mountaintop removal. Supporters can:

1. Sign a pledge and track the impact of their pledge on a map.
2. Download Wille Nelson singing Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind."
3. Watch a movie about mountaintop removal on YouTube.
4. View the National Memorial for the Mountains on Google Earth. Each flag represents a mountain that has been destroyed.

Jane Goodall Institute's Geoblog: The Jane Goodall Insitute has created a geoblog, the Gombe Chimpanzee Blog, Using Google Earth, the geoblog allows readers/viewers to view Gombe National Park in Tanzania while they read entries by Emily Wroblewski, a field researcher who is studying the Gombe Chimpanzees. I can't imagine a more powerful tool for environmental nonprofits and NGOs than to "fly" your supporters and potential supporters over the area of the world you are working in.

Human Rights Video Hub by WITNESS and Global Voices: WITNESS and Global Voices Online have teamed up to pilot a Human Rights Video Hub where anyone anywhere can upload human rights related videos to raise awareness and launch campaigns. You can check out the pilot project on the Global Voices blog here. Among the videos up right now is footage of police dispersing student protestors in China, UCLA police using a taser gun on a student in a library, and video shot by journalist Brad Will during the protests in Oaxaca, right before he was killed. Launch of the completed Hub is planned for 2007.

Kiva: Kiva is a nonprofit that allows individuals like you and me to make loans through PayPal to entrepreneurs who are working their way out of poverty. You can watch a 16-minute documentary about Kiva on the FRONTLINE World web site. When the documentary aired on Ocober 31st, the response from viewers was so great that it brought the Kiva site down. As co-founder Jessica Jackley Flannery said, "Kiva started out of relationships and love, ideally I would love for that to be present in every single transaction that happens. People connecting."

Menu of Hope by Chez Pim: Led by Chez Pim, food bloggers donated a delicious array of food-related raffle prizes for the second annual Menu for Hope in 2005. Each $5 donation that a reader made qualified them for one virtual raffle ticket to win the prize of their choosing from the prize list. The campaign raised $17, 000. Clearly, the way to a donor's pocket is through her stomach. For more info. about this year's campaign for the United Nation's World Food Programme click here.

Sam Suds and the Case of PVC, the Poison Plastic by Free Range Studios and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice: In this online video produced by Free Range Studios and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, Sam Suds is a bar of soap in charge of protecting the Johnson family from dangerous toxins. His next case is to find a mysterious character called "PVC". He's not making a lot of progress until a rubber duck he calls "Duckface" tells him,"It's this rubber duck I've been seeing, he seemed nice enough at first, but I'm starting to suspect that he ain't made of rubber. . . I think he's PVC."

What are your favorite examples of the Best Internet Marketing for a Cause?

Photo credit: Eastern Kentucky Mountains by Colin Mutchler.

nonprofit
internet
marketing
cause

Ask Starbucks to Hold the Hormones on December 5th

Nowadays, many dairy farms inject cows with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), a genetically-engineered, artificial hormone used to make cows produce more milk. In the United States, rBGH is given to about 22% of cows. It is banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, and the European Union.

On December 5th, Food & Water Watch is asking people to call Starbucks at 1 (800) 235-2883 between 5 AM-6 PM (PST) and request that they guarantee that all of the milk, chocolate, ice cream, bottled Frappuccino drinks, and baked goods that they serve are free of rBGH, also known as rBST. If you are more of an emailer, Democracy in Action has a form email that you can edit, or send as is.

Why should we care? Well, according to Food & Water Watch, rBGH increases the risk of infections in cows. When cows have infections, they are treated with antibiotics, which we drink, and those antibiotics can contribute to our being resistant to antibiotics in the future. Also, rBGH increases a hormone called IGF-1 in cows that is linked to an increase in colon, breast and prostrate cancer when humans have too much of it. Finally, Stabucks is such a huge company, if it only bought organic milk, that could have a huge impact on the organic dairy industry.

If you know your Starbucks Manager, Sustainable Table, has a postcard you can download and give to him or her that looks like this:

They also have an interactive map that shows you where you can buy dairy products without artificial bovine growth hormones and an rBGH-free dairy list you can take with you on your iPod when you go shopping.

Finally, if you are a blogger who wants to spread the word, they've asked that you tag your post with the tag: holdthehormones, and they have web banners that you can add to your post available here.

holdthehormones
milk
Starbucks
organic

Be Sweet: Creative Products with a Conscience & More Do-Good Gifts

While window shopping in our neighborhood this weekend, my husband and I went into a store that was selling the beautiful handmade bag pictured here. A card propped up beside it explained that it was produced by a company called, Be Sweet. Most of Be Sweet's products are made by artisans who work in job creation programs in South Africa. They sell hand-knit scarves, shawls, hats and throws, hand-crafted bags and jewelry, hand-spun and dyed yarn, knitting patterns and Be Sweet tanks and tees printed on American Apparel T-shirts.

You can find a store near you that sells Be Sweet products here, and if you are a knitter, they've posted a free pattern.

Last week I posted about the online fair trade store, Global Girlfriend, here and on BlogHer, and asked readers to post other ideas for do-good gifts. One reader suggested the Amber Chand Collection that features gifts by craftswomen who live in regions of conflict and post-conflict. My dad (!) suggested two sites related to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation (who he works for)-- New Mexico Creates, that features the work of 400+ New Mexican artisans and artists, and Worldfolkart.org, that sells work by international artisans.

If you have more ideas for do-good gifts, please post them here. You can also check out some other ideas myself and Have Fun * Do Good readers had last year here, here, here and here.

Photo credit: Shelley Big Bag from Be Sweet site.

holiday
shopping
knitting

Shop Local First

Hey Have Fun * Do Gooders--I've started posting over at WorldChanging: San Francisco about local WorldChanging happenings. I wrote the post below for them, but thought I'd post it here too 'cause Shop Local First Week is a national program.

Want to support local businesses in the Mission and save money? This holiday season the Mission Merchant's Association has designated December 4-6 as a time to Shop Local First in the Mission, and created a map and discount coupon that you can download and take with you as you shop.

Shop Local First is a program sponsored by San Francisco's Small Business Commission and is being facilitated nationally by the San Francisco-based BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and Washtenaw County, Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan are all participating.

If you're more of a downtown SF shopper, December 9 is Shop Local First Day. Forty local artisans and craftspeople will be selling their products out on Union Square, and Mayor Gavin Newsom will be there to present the 2006 Most Innovative Entrepreneur of the Year award.

If you are looking for a particular gift, check out the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance's local business search engine.

SFLOMA also has a great list of 10 Good Reasons Why to Shop at Locally-Owned Businesses that you can share on your blog, email list, or with friends and family. Even if your readers don't live in San Francisco, shopping locally benefits their city, too.

1. Significantly more money re-circulates in San Francisco when purchases are made at locally owned, rather than nationally owned businesses: More money is kept in the community because locally owned businesses purchase from other local businesses, service providers and farms. Purchasing locally helps grow businesses as well as the San Francisco tax base.

2. Most new jobs are provided by local businesses: Small local businesses are the largest employer nationally, and in San Francisco provide the most new jobs to residents.

3. Our one-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of our distinctive character: The unique character of San Francisco is what brought us here and will keep us here. Our tourism businesses also benefit. “When people go on vacation they generally seek out destinations that offer them the sense of being someplace, not just anyplace.” ~ Richard Moe, President, National Historic Preservation Trust

4. Local business owners invest in community: Local businesses are owned by people who live in this community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community’s future.

5. Customer service is better: Local businesses often hire people with more specific product expertise for better customer service.

6. Competition and diversity leads to more choices: A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term. A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

7. Reduced environmental impact: Locally owned businesses can make more local purchases requiring less transportation and generally set up shop in town or city centers as opposed to developing on the fringe. This generally means contributing less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss and pollution.

8. Public benefits far outweigh public costs: Local businesses in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.

9. Encourages investment in San Francisco: A growing body of economic research shows that in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest and settle in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.

10. Non-profits receive greater support: Non-profit organizations receive an average 350% greater support from local business owners than they do from non-locally owned businesses.

Image credit: San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance logo taken from Cole Hardware's web site.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

shop
local
San Francisco

Thankful Trees, Thanksgiving Books & Hope

When eating fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.--Vietnamese Proverb.

I have a lot of tree-planters to thank for the fruit I have eaten this year: my husband for being the best hubs ever, my parents for a lifetime of love, my friends for inspiring me, BlogHer and NetSquared for helping me make a living doing something I love (blogging!), and Have Fun * Do Good readers for their notes and comments that keep me going. I'm looking for a way to celebrate all of the gifts I have been given this year.

Last year Michelle Malkin wrote about a Thankful Tree her daughter made in school. Each child cut out a tracing of their hand, wrote what he or she was thankful for on it, and pasted it on the tree. Jana of Once Upon a Family Blog, suggests cutting out leaves from colored paper for each of your Thanksgiving dinner guests, asking them to write down something they are thankful for, and placing the leaves in a bowl, or on a tree at the table. Afterwards she puts them in a Thanksgiving Book along with photos, sort of like a Christmas Memories Book.

Another way to celebrate the holiday season is to create a thankfulness journal, and write down one thing every day that you are thankful for, like Aimee of the My Happiness Project blog has done.

For some people, Thanksgiving can be a painful reminder of challenges within their family, or more globally, the oppression of people of color by white people. Feeling loving and thankful can be a real challenge, but as Jacqueline Keeler, a member of the Dineh Nation and Yankton Dakota Sioux wrote in, "Thanksgiving: A Native American View,":

[I]f we can survive, with our ability to share and to give intact, then the evil and the good will that met that Thanksgiving day in the land of the Wampanoag will have come full circle.

And the healing can begin.

Photo credit: Eden Hall Tree by Surplusparts.

thanksgiving
craft

Eat Local Thanksgiving Challenge

"I'm not one to rain on anyone's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But, on the first Thanksgiving, the pilgrims did not have the much-loved cranberry sauce at the table. Why? Because they didn't have any sugar to make it with - it wasn't locally available to them."---from "Keep it Local This Thanksgiving," by Holly Lahd, Minnesota Daily.

On its way from farm to plate, food in the United States travels an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 miles, 25 percent farther than in 1980.--from "The 100-Mile Meal," by Kim O'Donnel of the Washington Post.

This Thanksgiving, 100MileDiet, the Locavores, EatLocalChallenge, Local Harvest, BALLE, Straus Communications, and other sustainable agricultural and local food groups are encouraging people to eat locally with their Eat Local Thanksgiving Challenge:

A Thanksgiving meal prepared with local ingredients will not only be fresher and healthier, it will also support the small farmer who pays her workers a living wage, grows a diversity of crops, refuses to use pesticides or genetically modified organisms, kills her animals in a humane fashion, sells her products only within local markets (ensuring that the money stays within the community), and whose children more than likely go to school with your own.

You can find resources to plan your local Thanksgiving dinner on the 100-Mile Diet's Thanksgiving page where you can read other readers 100-mile Thanksgiving menus and stories, and check out their Getting Started Guide.

Sustainable Table has re-vamped their web site and their Eat Well Guide in time for the holidays. The East Well Guide allows you to search by zip code for farms and stores that sell sustainably-raised beef, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, lamb, goat, dairy and eggs in the US and Canada. It also give you lots of tools to eat locally like an Eat Seasonal page where you can see what foods are in season for your state, and numerous Shopping Guides where you can find CSAs (community supported agriculture), farmers markets and other healthy, local food near you.

Photo Credit: Cooking Cranberries by Tracy Ducasse.

local
food
Thanksgiving

Know Where Your Coffee Comes From

Through just one cup of coffee, we are inextricably connected to the livelihoods of millions of people around the world who are struggling to survive.--from the Director's Statement, Black Gold

Black Gold is the kind of movie that makes you want to buy Fair Trade certified coffee, chocolate, Fair Trade everything. Now when I see a Fair Trade certified symbol (pictured here), I see two images from Black Gold in my mind: one of a long table of Ethiopian women sorting through thousands of coffee beans by hand for 50 cents a day, and another of a child being weighed at a therapeutic feeding station to determine if he is undernourished enough to receive food. According to Black Gold, a 1% increase in Africa's share of world trade would bring in five times more than what it receives in aid.

Black Gold tells the story of Tadesse Meskela, the manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union in Ethiopia. During the film Meskela tries to find buyers who will pay a higher price for his farmers' coffee. 67% of Ethiopia's export income is from coffee, so Meskela's story is the story of many Ethiopian farmers.

You'll probably be buying and drinking a lot of coffee this holiday season, so please consider buying Fair Trade coffee. According to TransFair USA, Fair Trade means fair price, fair labor conditions, direct trade, democratic and transparent organizations, community development, and environmental sustainability. You can find Fair Trade stores near you and online that sell Fair Trade products by searching on the TransFair USA site.

For an extra do * good bang for my buck, I just bought Newman's Own Organics Fair Trade Colombian Especial for our Thanksgiving dinner. Not only is it organic and Fair Trade, but Newman's Own Organics, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Coffee Kids are working together on an agricultural program that benefits women in Oaxaca.

Green Mountain Coffee also has a cool holiday gift idea for the coffee lovers on your list, a Fair Trade Organic Coffee Tour: two bags of a different Fair Trade, organic coffee each month for six months. Yum.

**Oh, and I forgot to mention that you can look on the Black Gold site to see where the movie will be showing near you and California Newsreel will be releasing it on DVD.

Fair Trade
organic
coffee
Black Gold

Go Holiday Shopping with Your Global Girlfriend

According to a recent article in Muncie, Indiana's Star Press, "the National Retail Federation expects the average consumer to spend $791.10 this holiday season, up from $738.11 last year."

If you're going to spend that kind of cash, why not give a gift that gives back? Global Girlfriend is an online fair trade store that sells handmade gifts made by women's non-profit programs and cooperatives.

Global Girlfriend's founder, Stacey Edgar, received a
Microsoft Start Something Amazing Awards Honorable Mention, and was named the 2005 Aveeno Woman with Organic Style.

The creators of Global Girlfriend's merchandise come from all over the world:
Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Africa, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam. In the United States, for example, products are made by women from The Enterprising Kitchen and WomanCraft in Chicago, Women's Bean Project in Denver, Appalachian by Design in West Virginia, Thistle Farms in Nashville and Rosie's Place in Boston.

I'd love to compile a list of stores with gifts that give back. What are some other online stores where you can buy do * good gifts during the holidays?

Photo Credit: Recycled Plastic Beach Tote from Global Girlfriend site.

holiday
shopping
fair trade

ChipIn Over the Holidays

Did you know that according to the 2005 Kintera/Luth Nonprofit Trend Report:

"On average, online givers donate in total (both online and offline) more than 50 percent more than those donors who do not give online."

I've been thinking about how bloggers can use their blogs during the holiday season to support organizations that they care about, like Chez Pim has done for UNICEF with the Menu for Hope.

My fellow BlogHer co-editor, Beth Kanter, has launched a fundraising campaign using ChipIn. ChipIn allows a group of people to collect money online whether it is for a birthday gift, a party or a fundraiser.

Between now and December 31st, Beth is working to raise $750 for the Sharing Foundation, an NGO that works with local officials, orphanages, and NGOs in Cambodia to improve children's lives. She sits on their board. The money is going to support a college scholarship for Leng Soparath (pictured here), an orphan from the Kampong Speu orphanage. $750 will cover her college fees and living expenses.

As of this writing, 3 PM on November 16th PST, she has raised 44% of her goal, and she started the campaign ten days ago!

Beth has been keeping notes about what is working and what isn't on her blog. If you have a web site or blog, and want to start a similar campaign of your own, I'm sure she'd be happy to share tips and advice-- she's very nice (:

sopharath
net2
nptech
philanthropy

Solutionary Women: Jessica Jackley Flannery of Kiva

Jessica Jackley Flannery is the kind of person who makes you feel at home right away, like she is truly happy to meet you, which is why I wasn't surprised when she said,

"Kiva started out of relationships and love, ideally I would love for that to be present in every single transaction that happens. People connecting."

Jessica is the co-founder, with her husband, Matthew Flannery, of Kiva, a nonprofit that is using the Internet to allow everyday philanthropists, like you and me, to loan money to budding entrepreneurs all over the world. She has worked in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda with the Village Enterprise Fund, and Project Baobab on impact evaluation and program development. She is currently pursuing an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

You can watch a 16-minute documentary about Kiva on the FRONTLINE World web site. When the documentary aired on Ocober 31st, the response from viewers was so great that it brought the Kiva site down.

Below is an edited transcript of my interview with Jessica, which you can also hear on the Big Vision Podcast.

What is Kiva?

Kiva's mission is to connect people, through lending, for the purpose of poverty alleviation. The way we do that is by providing opportunities for individuals from all over the world to lend money to specific, real people, in pretty much real time, through our web site; and we do that by working with a number of microfinance institutions all around the world--MFIs.

We find entrepreneurs through our partner MFIs. The entrepreneurs are posted up on our site with their profiles and a word about their lives, their families, and their plans for the business and the money they are requesting. Lenders come to the site and lend any amount from $25 up, in increments of $25.

What is an MFI?

There are 3500 or so MFIs on record, but estimates go up to 10,000. About 70 percent of MFIs, or lending institutions, loan to fewer than 2500 people. There are a few that are a lot larger. There are also nonprofit ones; a lot of them start out as nonprofits and then slowly move toward financial sustainability, and they might turn into a non-bank financial institution, or a number of other kinds of forms along the way.

Microfinance, as a whole, is a big category of financial services for the poor: microloans, microcredit, is just one offering, and that is what Kiva focuses on. It is kind of the most well-known and most talked about, and oftentimes it is confused--people say "microfinance" when they mean "microcredit" or vice-versa.

How did Kiva start?

In the very, very beginning, Matt and I had this idea like, "How neat would it be if we had individual, real people on our web site with their needs, and the amount of funding that they need? I'm sure we could get people to help them and to loan money to them, so let's just try it."

We didn't actually have a specific organization that would work with us besides Village Enterprise Fund, which is a great non-profit. Shout out to them! They do microenterprise grants, not loans; but we worked with some folks that had been given grants and used those successfully, and basically worked with our friend Moses, who listed the seven businesses in the very beginning, put them online, and helped post the information about them. We put them on the web site and within just a few days our friends and family indeed did step up and loaned the money that was needed.

So, fast-forward a whole year. We work with a little more than a dozen MFIs all around the world who... let's take Kenya: say there is a head office in Nairobi, and maybe some branch offices in Kakamega or Kisumu, towns all around Kenya. In those branch offices are loan officers. They are the people that get on the motorbike every day, or take the bus, or whatever they do, to get way out to villages where their borrowers may reside. So they are the people that go and actually do the vetting, accept loan applications, do training if there is any--most of our partners do that--and actually distribute the funds, collect the repayments every few weeks, that sort of thing. So they are the people on the ground.

In the very, very beginning we were working with people like that, like the loan officers. We just started to work with our buddy, Moses, who is a wonderful man, who was serving in that capacity. But to scale, we knew that it was going to be necessary to work at least a level or two up. So now we work with organizations that employ dozens, hundreds, of loan officers who then go out and find the businesses. Sometimes there will be a designated loan officer within an MFI in one region that is the "Kiva person" that is doing that. Sometimes there will be a few. All of their names are listed on the web site, because we really want it to be, again, a very real and transparent experience. So anything that is posted on Kiva, you will see a name of the loan officer that did that, that day.

If an individual wanted to make a loan to an entrepreneur, how would they do that?

Go to Kiva.org, and one of the main buttons at the top says "Lend." Click on that and you are able to see all of the businesses that day that are posted, that need funding. Some of them may be close to fully funded, some of them may have just been posted and may have no funding now, but basically you will probably see a number of different businesses, different individuals, who are entrepreneurs that need a loan of, who knows, anywhere from $200-300 all the way up to $1000, maybe. That's about the range that is typical.

You can click on them, read about them, and then there is a button that says "Lend," and you can basically, like I said, pick any range--$25, $50 and on up--and using your credit card or a PayPal account, you are walked through the payment process. Then you will get an email soon thereafter that says, "Thank you for your payment. Thank you for your loan. We will let you know when the business starts." Then maybe it still takes a few more days for the rest of the funding to come in for that person. When it does, and when the money is transferred, and that person actually begins their business from the loan that you have helped to fund, you get another email that says, "Great! Jane--the person that you funded, Jane the goat herder in Uganda--is starting her business."

From then on out, you will have seen in the loan, the very, very simple, basic loan terms that are on the site next to each entrepreneur. They are each unique, so maybe for Jane's loan there is a nine-month term. Over the next nine months, you would get emails saying, "Hey, Jane made her payment today of $25.00 or $30.00," or whatever her schedule is. She made her payment and here's how her business is doing, and here's a picture of the new goat that she got. Or anecdotal things, like, her kids are in school now, and that's great because they weren't last year, but now she can afford uniforms. Or there's a big celebration because there's a holiday at this time of year in Uganda, and this is what happened.

So it's very personal. And at the end of the loan term, not only have you kind of seen the whole process unfold, but as that entrepreneur repays, you get your money back. A vast majority of lenders actually just reloan the money and say, "That was a great experience, I've seen that it works; let's use it again for another business," which is super exciting for us.

We get a lot of feedback that says, "I've never done anything like this before." So whether that means they've never gotten involved in a nonprofit operating internationally, whether that means any sort of online lending, whether it means getting involved in something related to microfinance, we're reaching a lot of people that have never gotten involved in something like this before. So that's exciting to us.

What is the path that brought you to this work?

I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I have a wonderful family and had just the best childhood and the best growing up. I loved every day. I felt very blessed all the time and I was very thankful.

When I got an opportunity in high school to travel a little bit, I went to Haiti with a church group, and that was the first time that I really saw abject poverty. And it just spun my world around; I was blown away. And it was funny because I was a senior in high school, and I came back the week after I had gone to Haiti to see all of this, and experience, and volunteer and serve. I came back and it was prom. [laughter] And it was just like the height of all excess in my life. It was really quite a contrast for me. I grappled with that. It left a really big impression on me.

In college, I went on a study abroad program called, "Semester at Sea," and got to see 14 different countries in a period of three months. That also just added a lot of richness and color and depth to my understanding of my place in the world, and what else was out there.

I knew I wanted to get involved in something international, but that's not very focused. I started to hone in on international development of some sort, but again, wasn't exactly sure where I fit best.

Fast forward a few years, I ended up getting to work at the Stanford Business School. While I was there as staff, I heard Mohammad Yunus from the Grameen Bank. I heard him speak and a light bulb just went off, and I said, "OK, that's it. That's what I want to do."

I basically talked to anybody that would give me the time of day over the next year, and found a wonderful mentor and friend and encourager in Brian Lennon, the head of Village Enterprise Fund. Basically, we had lunch every few weeks for that year and I was able to pick his brain and ask questions. Meanwhile, I was talking to a lot of other people as well.

Eventually, after that year of research and learning and talking to anybody that I could, I decided I just wanted to go get experience in the field, and that was the best way to jump in. I was so excited to do that. So that's what I did.

At that time, I had only been married to Matt for six months, and then I quit my job and I left for three months to East Africa. Kind of a funny time for us. Matt came and visited me. While we were there together, I'm there just being totally compelled by these stories, and so was Matt. But Matt also has more of a technology background than I had at that point, and he really saw the potential for connecting people.

We would be out on a four-hour drive, way out in the middle of a village in rural East Africa, but our cell phone would work. It was just amazing to think, what if we left the cell phone here? What if we left a few hundred dollars here for some people that really had some great dreams of doing a business; what would happen? And what would that look like? And how fun would it be to keep in touch with them and watch their progress and encourage them along the way. So that was our vision. A very simple one.

Over the next year, we researched, and again, talked to anybody that would talk to us. We asked a lot of questions. We got a lot of positive, and a lot of negative feedback in terms of why what we wanted to do was efficient or not, or would work or not, or was even legal or not.

Eventually, we just started, we just tried it, like I described with Moses. That was a year ago, and now we are where we are today.

How do you keep inspired and motivated, and not get burned out?

Well, where we're sitting right now, I can look around and I can see our team who is absolutely amazing. Every person here is just here because of their desire to be a part of something they really believe in, and they believe is going to change the world.

Sometimes, I'll be sitting in class, and I'll know there are six people here every day working full-time to just make this happen, and they believe in it with all their hearts. That's one inspiring thing, but really, I guess there are just so many amazing people involved in this, like the lenders. They care about the businesses, and the comments they write to different entrepreneurs that they funded are ones of hope and encouragement and inspiration, and just support. That's inspiring.

There's a 12-year old girl who has been writing in over the past few weeks to encourage an entrepreneur that she funded. And that is just the coolest thing, to think this 12-year old girl cares about somebody she has never met around the world, and is excited for their development.

And then, of course, it's really easy to just spend 30 seconds on the site and read the story of one of these entrepreneurs, and just feel so filled with excitement for what you know is going to happen in their lives. Because it's going to be something transformational, it's going to be something that will give them an opportunity to improve their standard of living, and for their kids. That never gets old for me. I spend a lot of time on the site reading those stories and being pretty happy about that.

Is there one Kiva success story, even though there are a lot of them, is there one that you can share?

There is one woman in the "original seven," in the very beginning that we started off with. Her name is Rose. My Mom (because, of course, at the beginning, it's friends and family doing this with us to just do this experiment, and see what happens and see if it works) my Mom was one of the people who loaned money to Rose and her business. Throughout the course of the loan, Rose had a lot of updates because it was just this really small set, and my mother and others would write in and say Rose, how's it going?

I had met Rose before, when I worked there, and I knew Rose had a daughter named Doreen who was paralyzed from the waist down. In rural Uganda, you know, it's mud huts, grass-thatched roofs, and no roads really back where Rose and Doreen and their family lived. I knew that her situation was a tough one, and I also knew that Doreen had never been to school. She was 12 years old and still had never been to school because she couldn't get there very easily at all. There are only a few bikes in the village, and it's really hard even to get her on the bike to get to school.

My mom learned about this, and my mom is a school teacher and thought no way, there's no way that this little girl should not go to school. I mean, she's right there. It's just her disability that's keeping her from actually physically getting to school. So my mom was able to send money for Doreen to have a wheelchair, and just a few weeks ago I was back in Uganda and I saw her, and she was in her wheelchair, and she was going to school, and it was a really, really a special thing.

So that is one that stands out to me. I should also say this, when I saw Doreen and Rose they looked very healthy. Doreen had grown and was bigger and Rose also was very plump and healthy, which was a good sign. So because of the loan, and because of my mom's gift to Doreen I felt really good about the improvements that they had made in their lives.

What else do you want listeners to know about Kiva?

OK, one thing is not a touchy-feely thing, and one is. First, three really important groups are served through Kiva, and we really care about all three of these groups. On the one hand, are the lenders. I personally get super excited about the lenders because I love seeing people get really excited about other individual's lives around the world. So that's one group that's being served. It's a sustainable, really high impact, high engagement way to get involved with just a little amount of money.

I love that and it's just real. It's connecting with a real person - I guess maybe that's one of my main messages. Kiva is real. It allows you to connect with a real person, and it's specific, and I love that so much. Kiva started out of relationships and love, ideally I would love for that to be present in every single transaction that happens. People connecting.

Obviously the borrowers are served because they're getting funded. In the middle, are the microfinance institutions. A lot of them out there are great organizations, but their barrier to growth is capital. There are many things that are in the way, but that is a really significant one, and lenders, by providing zero interest, flexible, debt capital, really empower a lot of the smaller MFIs to grow, and to more quickly reach a level where eventually they'll be able to get commercial capital, and access commercial markets.

So that's very exciting, because microfinance institutions are a great investment, but unless you're a really rich person, an accredited investor, or a big institution, you can't really invest in them. Even when you can, they are really only the top few, like the top tier that can absorb your investment, especially at that level.

So it's a lot of money going to organizations that already have a lot of money, and sure could use more, but there are thousands and thousands of smaller organizations out there that are working hard to serve their communities and to loan money to people and do this wonderful sustainable development, but they don't have funding.

So Kiva also serves the MFIs, and I think is really going to change the whole system because Kiva increases the transparency and accountability and gives an MFI an opportunity to earn a great reputation on our site with the public. We are an organization that is doing this work well, and we are repaying our loans, and really paying attention to the development of our borrowers.

One other thing - microfinance is not perfect; microcredit is not perfect. There have been borrowers who have not been model citizens. We had an intern go to Cambodia and visit one of the businesses that was supposed to have started a fruit stand. She and the loan officer were surprised to find that the money had actually been used, part of it had been used, to pay for a wedding - the daughter's wedding, and they were slowly going to try to pay off the loan, but they were honest, they said, look, we used some of this money for the wedding, and we're sorry. We're going to do our best, but that's what happened, it's the real deal. We didn't have any other money and this was an important thing for us.

So that was written about on the blog for the Kiva lenders to see and it started a really interesting dialogue. It was disappointing, but real, and we love that because we want to encourage transparency and accountability.

What advice would you give to someone who has an idea for a nonprofit or socially responsible business that they want to start?

My advice, loud and clear, would be just start and try and iterate and there is always a next step you can take. Even if it's a really small one, and it's not the full thing, just start doing it.

For more information about Kiva, go to kiva.org

kiva
microfinance
microloan
women
net2
nptech