Are there any “scalable” & profitable social ventures? There is talk of “social ventures” being our saviors from the likes of the non-profit world. Do they REALLY exist? Or are they mostly hybrid models which still rely heavily on their non-profit arms in order to succeed at scale? It is VERY hard to find examples [...]
What is this “sustainability” thing all about? It is a word that gets thrown around so often by NGOs, donors, and most people working in development, yet what is means in the reality of our day to day decisions is less often understood. I wrote part one of a two part look at PEPY and [...]
When I first read this post by Alanna Shaikh, I was too busy to write, so I passed it on internally to all those at PEPY, because I know that so many of us would disagree with her. I can’t see the comments on the page, because maybe they have been hidden, but supposedly there [...]
I just read this post “9 Reasons Not To Give Things Away” and I agree with it. It relates back to my earlier post discussing how a group working in the same area as us in Cambodia subsidized water filters and thereby destroyed the market for the product (and negatively effected water filter use/health). I [...]
Another post inspired from the Tales from the Hood blog, this one about honesty and NGO propaganda. A comment from Mo-ha-med (below) is something I really agree with: I’m particularly curious about a remark of yours about how the PR dept needs to communicate things in a certain way and that we shouldn’t “believe our [...]
Wow! Check it out! We gave out 106 bikes year year for the fourth installment of our Bike-to-School Program. This year, we have nearly 100% increase in students graduating from grade six since we started PEPY and nearly 1000% increase in the number of kids completing grade seven. A huge factor in that is that [...]
This is a very similar blog to my previous post – actually it is the first draft of what I wrote there (and by “draft” I mean – the first things that came out of my head after I read this blog – un-edited and very conversational, as my writing tends to be). Here is [...]