Wanderin': 6 weeks as a vagabond

I'm about to head off on an adventurous month of travel: Bangladesh to Nepal to Sri Lanka to Chapel Hill, NC to Washington, DC to New York to Iceland to Amsterdam to Barcelona to Madrid and finally, to Ann Arbor.

For the first time since I made my way out of my mother's birth canal and into the bright hospital light, I will be alone on my birthday. I don't see this as a bad thing, more as an adventure (if you were going to be on your own for your birthday, wouldn't you want to to be in a place with a name like Kathmandu?). I will blog as I wander but before I set off, I want to leave you with this thought:

If I can say one thing for my mostly inconsequential life, it's that out of some stroke of luck I have been friends with some of the most amazing people I've ever met. You are probably one of them (why else would you be using work time to read this?), and I thank you.

To kick off my 27th year of life and a month of wanderin', my friend and humor soulmate Tania Luciow has specially handcrafted a Luciow Original blog post for your reading pleasure. I'm not sure what possessed her to write about a serious place of academic learning (business school), but there you have it. Thank you, Tania. Check it out!

Happy Birthday girls!

I'm not sure if this is coincidence, luck or a pre-disposition to associate with people similar to myself, but I seem to know a bizarrely large number of July babies. Stav, the assistant country director of CARE Bangladesh, is one of them. For her birthday this year she threw a party - not for herself, but for the 20-some girls she volunteers with every week!

It was a two-day birthday extravaganza, with dinner, dancing, cake, and a sleepover at Stav's last Thurs (July 9) night, and yoga, french toast, nail painting, Bollywood movie watching, photo-taking and posing on Friday.

I remembered my camera for the second day and the photos are hilarious. I took maybe two of them. As soon as you take out your camera, at least six girls run at you at once - two to take it from you, three to pose for pictures, and one to watch.

I have uploaded a few below, removing the dozens they took of the Bollywood movie stars gyrating on tv, and the one they snuck of their 65 year-old caretaker taking a bath (sneaky little girls!). The photos are truly from the girls' perspective.

The party was a lot of fun. The girls were just as charming and funny as ever. Their personalities were out in full form! I got a good dose of reality too.. I've been wondering this whole time what happens to these girls when they leave their school. They're young – mostly 13 or younger. All 20 of them live, learn and play in a two-bedroom apartment that's smaller than Stav's apartment where she lives on her own.

From what Stav tells me, many of their families live in shanties similar to ones found throughout Dhaka (I described some of these in an earlier post). They are not entirely on the street, but you would be hard-pressed to call where they live a “house.”

Somehow they end up at this school which, though quite small, is considerably nicer than what their parents are able to provide them. They spend a couple years there and when they reach about 15 years old, most of them return to their families. A few of them – the ones who are very smart and have picked up a decent amount of English, may be able to pursue vocational training - one of the girls is in a junior nursing program.

What happens to the rest of them?
Some are married off, others become garment workers, and some become sex workers.

It’s hard to imagine that these girls who have pulled me in circles, fed me mango, painted my nails, drawn henna patterns on my hand, who have hugged me and kissed me and jumped on me and held my hand… these girls are destined for that fate. And here I sit, contemplating in front of my laptop, options that I have never had to consider.

What does that mean? What does that say?
I don’t know.

But, I will share them with you as they are now – happy little girls with 20 best friends.
Happy Birthday, girls!

For your viewing pleasure..

Sundarbans photos! And it only took me 456892127934 years to upload them. I'm missing high-speed cable internet like none other, though I suppose it's a small sacrifice for weekend trips to jungles, and dahl and roti breakfasts every morning.



Quick explanation of the photos..

What are those kids doing? Is that sanitary?

We stopped for about an hour at a town near Khulna to pick up a group of Germans. Pretty soon after we got there, we saw a group of little boys run down to the shore as fast as they could, jump onto their bellies and slide through the muddy sand down into the water. Within five minutes Ashish and Aigars were in the water, swimming to shore to join them. J.R., Charlie, Hayley and Arthur followed suit. You couldn't have paid me to do that.

Why? About 20 minutes after they jumped in, I watched clear yellow liquid being drained from the large ship docked next to them on the beach. That should answer part b of that question. But hey, it looked like it was a ton of fun!

Why don't you have more photos from the jungle?

My camera battery died, and I'm a rather lazy photographer. Sorry! But, to tell you the truth, it was your standard jungle. Not really as "exotic" as you might expect. The most unique experience of the trip itself was the mud walk - and the train ride back. I definitely have never trekked through calf-high mud before! And I've never taken an overnight train in a developing country, so that was definitely interesting. Actually, the train was much more comfortable than I had expected, despite being like 50 years old.

My favorite part of the Sundarbans trip was really being in the ship and in the row boat. It was a very different perspective of Bangladesh and my lungs were grateful for the fresh air.

You were on the boat for July Fourth - how did you celebrate Our Great Day of Independence?

We threw some tea overboard and made the Brits walk the plank.
Actually July 4th was pretty tame. We went out in the row boat for a couple hours, returned to the ship and headed back to Khulna, so we were sailing for most of the time. Basically we drank some Coca-Cola, talked in loud voices and irritated the Germans. All good fun! It was Scottish artist David's birthday on July 4th, so the night before the crew made caramel pudding, stuck some candles in it, and we sang the most known song in the world. David may have thought we were serenading him but we were really singing happy birthday to America.

Mangoves and.. Mangroves!

We finally went on the much anticipated trip to the Bangladesh Sundarbans. The Sundarban Forest is a dense network of mangrove trees connecting through Bangladesh and India. It is the home of the bengal tiger and a variety of other creatures, including crocodiles, dolphins, monkeys, deer, snakes and birds.

It's pretty cool, a little spooky, and really wet. Going through the Sundarbans is a web of waterways, subject to daily and seasonal flooding cycles that literally make chunks of land disappear and reappear with the tide (which seems to have a mind of its own).

For the trip I was joined by a group of Michigan students (Ashish, Charlie, Sarah, and Karen), an American I met here through Rosie (J.R.) and two Brits (Hayley and Arthur). The trip started with a 7-hour overnight van ride down to Khulna - interrupted only by a fishy (in so many ways) ferry crossing. We boarded our boat just as the sun was rising in Khulna and began sailing down through the Sundarbans.

Being on a boat again was amazing. I can't get enough of sailing. Bangladesh may not have the clear blue water and beautiful coral of the Palawan Islands in the Philippines, but its sandy brown water and friendly fishermen certainly have their charm.

We went on a hike, swam in the ocean, trekked through calf-deep mud, watched Germany beat Argentina 4-0 with a group of Germans, and bonded! In addition to the Germans (who we seemed to annoy with our incessant chatter), we were joined by Aigars, a Latvian backpacker, David, a Scottish painter, and a large Bangladeshi crew who kept us safe (the guards had giant rifles and clapped loudly to scare away hungry tigers) and well-fed. We docked at Kulna on Sunday, boarded an overnight train and rode for 11 hours to Dhaka. From there I went home, showered and went sraight to work. B-school has taught me well.

We didn't run into any bengal tigers (shame!), but we did see some tiger prints, beautiful mangroves, birds, snakes, a few monkeys and a bunch of deer.

Photos to come once I can get the photo uploader to work.. (things are a bit haywire right now.. my computer overheated and crashed.. oh Dhaka.).

WSJ Article on Danone's Expansion into Emerging Markets!

Imagine my surprise when I saw this article from the Wall Street Journal about Danone and its emerging markets strategy!

Even greater was my surprise at seeing a certain Ross School of Business professor quoted in the article... No, not C.K. Prahalad, founder of the base-of-the-pyramid concept and who, sadly, passed away a few months ago, but strategy professor Aneel Karnani, vocal opponent to C.K.'s model! Has Prof. Karnani's outspoken skepticism of C.K. and the Hindustan Unilever shakti amma BoP business model inadvertently pushed him further into the center of BoP strategy discussion, filling a void left at C.K.'s passing?

The world is getting weirder and weirder... but at least it still has a sense of humor.

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that it feels pretty good to see this article in the WSJ. If only it had been written a few months later... maybe the CARE-Danone social venture would have been mentioned!

Check it out for yourself: Danone Expands its Pantry to Woo the World's Poor - The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2010

Social Business Day, June 28

Hey people, it's Social Business Day! Bangladesh celebrates it.. do you?


In honor of the first annual Social Business Day, Bangladesh leading English paper The Daily Star interviewed Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize winner (2006) and founder of Grameen Bank. What's significant about this article is not its content or quality, but that it exists at all.

Like many of the achievements in social enterprise in Bangladesh, Social Business Day owes its existence to Prof. Yunus. According to the Yunus Centre:

Social Business Day will:
· encourage the participants to discuss the critical features of social business, merits, achievements, and challenges of social businesses
· discuss the plans for upcoming social businesses
· explore future social business opportunities, and
· inspire individuals, entrepreneurs, students, foundations, and companies to create their own social businesses

So get out there and celebrate! I really hope Social Business Day reaches its first birthday.

I still remember the first time I heard Yunus speak. I was in the car driving home from my Fortune 500 company job, stuck in the parking lot know as the Capital Beltway. I was listening to the radio... I suppose it must have been NPR, though I should clarify that I'm not one of those enlightened people who chooses NPR over talk radio or top 40.. I'm really not. I just sort of ended up on the station just when they were interviewing Yunus about his book.

Mostly I was bored and daydreaming, but at some point the words coming out of the dashboard managed to push their way through the cloudy fog of happy hours and weekend plans that made up 80% of my after-work brain activity and sink in.

I remember sitting up, stick straight, and listening intently.. I think I scrawled "Yunus" and "Grameen" on the palm of my hand (the gentlewoman's notepad).
And that was the moment my life changed..

Just kidding.

Actually I think I forgot about it, but you know how life has a way of shoving the same thing in your face, over and over, until you take proper note of it? Well, that is what happened. And here I am, working on a social enterprise in Bangladesh! Funny thing, life.

Creating a Social Enterprise

I realized the other day that I still have not mentioned what I'm actually doing this summer. I guess I've been busy... working? Anyway, a professional update is certainly in order.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm here as a WDI Fellow at CARE Bangladesh, country office of NGO CARE International. I got placed here at an amazing time. CARE BD is in the process of separating its innovative Rural Sales Program from the non-profit to form a joint social venture with global consumer product goods company Danone. I get to work on the final business plan and governance structure, preparing it for approval by Danone's social enterprise group!

Background on the Rural Sales Program

The Rural Sales Program is an initiative formed by CARE BD’s Economic Development Unit. It equips CARE BD's infamous "Aparajitas" (women who do not accept defeat) with training and products to sell to villages in rural Bangladesh. The program employs more than 2,000 women who source products at more than 50 hubs.

The model is based on CK Prahalad’s BoP concept and is similar to the Shakti model run by Hindustan Unilever. The big difference is that it was set up by an independent organization, allowing them to engage a number of for-profit companies and keep close measurement of social impact.

As a result, the Aparajitas sell a range of products, which ultimately mitigates risk. They sell shoes (Bata), daily packets of soap (Bangladesh Unilever), sanitary napkins (Square), seeds, animal feed, phones/minutes (Grameenphone), yogurt (Grameen-Danone Foods), and will soon be selling garments. Shoe sales, which earn the women the largest commission, fluctuate in a cycle of about one-two months, while soap sells daily but provides less commission. In the end, sales balance out into a steady income stream for the women.

The Aparajitas operate completely independently of CARE. They sell only what they want to sell and front the money for the goods themselves. This independence gives them full ability to tailor their sales to their geographic region so they can maximize individual profit. It also limits losses for the for-profit consumer goods companies.

In 2009, RSP generated $1M in sales for the companies it partnered with, and it is projected to generate $10M this year, almost 700 million Bangladeshi taka. In addition to providing the women with a regular income, the project also empowers the Aparajitas to become entrepreneurs and decision-makers in their families. RSP targets the most marginalized women in rural Bangladesh, so the impact of empowerment can be quite significant.

As one woman told us on a field visit, before she became an Aparajita, she couldn't approach even the poorest house in a village, and now she is welcomed at the home of the wealthiest.

The Future of RSP

The new social venture will be headed by the CARE staffer who formed, tested and ran RSP from the beginning, and who is also my supervisor. The work has be incredible so far. CARE has never been in this position, despite 65 years of experience, so we are essentially flying by the seat of our pants. I've been working on the new enterprise's governance structure, valuing the model to support CARE's ownership share (thanks to Ross finance professors Sreedhar Bharath and Gautam Kaul for imparting on me the most valuable knowledge I have so far gained as an MBA student).

We had a meeting with Danone on Monday and things are looking good. I have a few more numbers to clarify, and then I'll send my calculations to someone much smarter than I to make sure I didn't mess anything up. Once I'm done with that, I'll start work on refining the full proposal CARE will be submitting to Danone's social enterprise team for final approval (has been in the works for about six months).

It's all so exciting... and terrifying! I really hope I don't mess everything up.