Microfinance

“Everyone a Changemaker”, Ashoka and Google

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What an event yes­ter­day night. My wife and I were for­tu­nate to vis­it the Google Cam­pus and attend the Sixth Annu­al North Amer­i­can Fel­low­ship Induc­tion Pro­gram of Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, a social ven­ture fund where we have been involved for a num­ber of years, and thanks to which (thanks Michele!) my wife and I met in the first place.

18 new Ashoka Fellows/ social entre­pre­neurs were elect­ed, and after a fun cock­tail recep­tion the cer­e­mo­ny began. Sergei Brin (Google Co-founder), Sheryl Sand­berg (who helped launch Google Foun­da­tion and google.org), Salar Kaman­gar (the mind behind AdWords) gave intro­duc­to­ry remarks. Salar explained how he first heard of Ashoka (through the book How to Change the World, by David Born­stein) and how he saw tremen­dous sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ashoka and Google: both [Read more…] about “Every­one a Change­mak­er”, Ashoka and Google

Microfinance, and a very sharp brain

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We would like to join oth­er blog­gers in con­grat­u­lat­ing Muham­mad Yunus for hav­ing been award­ed the Nobel Peace Price.

The gen­e­sis of micro­fi­nance, in Pro­fes­sor Yunus’ own words.

Not often can we find per­son­i­fied exam­ples of what we write about. For 3 out of the last 4 entries in this blog, I can not think of a bet­ter exam­ple than Muham­mad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank-that launched the field of micro­fi­nance.

The entries:

- The Learn­ing Cycle, includ­ing Con­crete Expe­ri­ence and Active Test­ing: in 1976, when he was a Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics, he gave a small loan to a num­ber of vil­lagers. He did­n’t preach. He acted.

- Reflec­tion, that led him to an Aha! moment : “If you can make so many peo­ple so hap­py with such a small amount of mon­ey, why should­n’t you do more of it”? (quot­ed in NY Times today). His direct expe­ri­ence, and this Reflec­tion, gave him the moti­va­tion to try and lit­er­al­ly change the way many poor peo­ple live world­wide. It led to the birth of microfinance.

- The joy of giv­ing: I am sure Muham­mad Yunus, and thou­sands of peo­ple involved in his work, has been amply reward­ed with free dopamine and oxy­tocin. To quote today’s Finan­cial Times, “With­out col­lat­er­al, the sys­tem has to rely on trust and social inter­ac­tion to secure repay­ments. It is these fun­da­men­tal aspects of human nature that can help for­ward not only devel­op­ment, but also peace”.

Plus, giv­en that he has announced he will donate the $1.4m prize mon­ey, we can pre­dict an even high­er dopamine and oxy­tocin release in his brain, cer­tain­ly high­er than in the brain of the writer of this sur­pris­ing arti­cle.

Good news: there is a sol­id pipeline of future Muham­mad Yunus­es, opti­mist and prag­mat­ic social entre­pre­neurs (“New Heroes”, accord­ing to PBS):
— A great book titled How To Change The World, that pro­files the field and some of its most inspir­ing participants
— The pio­neers in sup­port­ing social entre­pre­neurs world­wide: Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Public
— Anoth­er great foun­da­tion: The Schwab Foun­da­tion for Social Entrepreneurship
— The Change­mak­ers community
— And of course, Con­stant Learn­ing at Grameen

Final­ly, a post on resilien­cy. Enjoy the weekend.

Microfinance and a Very Sharp Brain

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We would like to join oth­er blog­gers in con­grat­u­lat­ing Muham­mad Yunus for hav­ing been award­ed the Nobel Peace Price.
[Read more…] about Micro­fi­nance and a Very Sharp Brain

Brain and Mind Fitness Programs: resiliency, on top of attention, memory…

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Today:

6.30pm: I leave the office, down­town San Fran­cis­co, and take the train.

6.44pm: just before arriv­ing in my sta­tion, I remem­ber I have an appoint­ment with my hair­dress­er, which means I have to walk in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than usual.

6.48pm: I find myself walk­ing towards my house, oppo­site direc­tion from my hair­dress­er.

You may have had a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. You walk towards where you parked your car. Except that the car is not there. Then you real­ize that, on that pre­cise day, you could­n’t park your car in the usu­al place. And now you have to walk to a dif­fer­ent cor­ner of the park­ing lot. What corner?

Now you may feel dis­ori­ent­ed, not only about where your car may be, but about why we are talk­ing about this…

Well, this sto­ry is a good exam­ple of how our brains work. When we do any­thing a num­ber of times, the rel­e­vant neu­ronal net­works get more and more strong­ly con­nect­ed. “Cells that fire togeth­er wire togeth­er”. We devel­op auto­mat­ic habits, from which it is not easy to escape. We get used to just get­ting out of the metro sta­tion and walk­ing home. We know where we always park our cars.

You may also try an enlight­en­ing exper­i­ment on our habits.

Let me now make a brief detour. Over the last few weeks, I have had a num­ber of con­ver­sa­tions where the same con­cept has appeared: resilien­cy. Resilien­cy can be defined as “the abil­i­ty to recov­er from a fail­ure”. Resilien­cy is a crit­i­cal Men­tal Mus­cle to train.

I  learned the word 6–7 years ago, at an Ashoka event in Buenos Aires, Argenti­na, orga­nized by social entre­pre­neur Alber­to Croce. Richard Barth, CEO of KIPP Foun­da­tion, used it last week when we were dis­cussing sev­er­al Brain Fit­ness pri­or­i­ties for teach­ers and stu­dents. My friends at the Insti­tute of Heart­Math pro­posed using “devel­op­ing resilien­cy”, instead of “beat­ing Stress”, when we were brain­storm­ing options to part­ner with pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions and bring proven anx­i­ety reduc­tion pro­grams to edu­ca­tors and health care pro­fes­sion­als. Mark Katz, when we met with a num­ber of school super­in­ten­dents, empathized how impor­tant for all stu­dents to devel­op the exec­u­tive func­tion of resilien­cy, and how that would help them over­come obsta­cles such as ADD? ADHD and oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic problems.

In the Neu­ro­science of Lead­er­ship post, we saw too that resilien­cy is a crit­i­cal atti­tude, and skill. To not spend too much focus and men­tal ener­gy on try­ing to dou­ble-guess hid­den mean­ings, and the past. To focus, instead, on what we can do next. On what is on our scope of influ­ence. On, as we dis­cussed before, being pos­i­tive .

Let’s sum­ma­rize. First, we have seen that some behav­iors become habits and there­by mind­less habits. They become us. What we call our per­son­al­i­ties. Then, we have seen how impor­tant resilien­cy is.

So, what pre­vents us all from devel­op­ing the habit of resilien­cy and let­ting be part of our behav­ior, habits and personality?

Brain and Mind Fit­ness are impor­tant. We can improve mem­o­ry, atten­tion, stress man­age­ment, decision-making…Now, in a holis­tic way, Brain and Mind Fit­ness includes the exec­u­tive func­tion, or habit, or atti­tude, of resilien­cy. If you know of Brain Fit­ness Pro­grams that allow peo­ple to devel­op it, please let us know. We are work­ing on that too.

Maybe a first step is to re-read the clas­sic Vik­tor Fran­kl’s Man’s Search For Mean­ing.

On being positive

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One day after 9/11, I would like to depart a bit from the pri­ma­ry focus of this blog and add some per­son­al reflec­tions onBe­ing Pos­i­tive and on Appre­ci­a­tion, which is what we prob­a­bly need to sur­vive in these times.

I remem­ber a few years ago when, over brunch, my good friend Rohit pro­posed that Hap­pi­ness = Real­i­ty — Expectations. 

(Play with it. It is powerful)

A few months lat­er after this dis­cov­ery, at a pub­lic con­cert, while some friends were hav­ing a live­ly debate on this equa­tion, a near­by stranger pro­posed a nice refinement:

Hap­pi­ness = (Appre­ci­a­tion, of what we have, and can do) x ( Real­i­ty — Expectations)

Which is nice­ly phrased in the sen­tence I have read in a num­ber of places

We need Seren­i­ty to accept
the things that can­not be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and Wis­dom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Mahat­ma Gand­hi encour­aged us to “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

There is much good around us, and much more good of us can do. We prob­a­bly would ben­e­fit from hav­ing eas­i­er access to a CNN of Pos­i­tive News, of Kind Ges­tures, Unex­pect­ed Gen­eros­i­ty, Mag­ic Coin­ci­dences, Beau­ti­ful Growth.

Some con­stant sources of per­son­al inspi­ra­tion, encour­age­ment, and Appreciation:

- Ashoka: Inno­va­tors for the Pub­lic, and their con­vic­tion that “Every­one is a changemaker”

- The Schwab Foun­da­tion for Social Entre­pre­neurs, that sup­ports amaz­ing and inspir­ing agents of change worldwide.

No mat­ter our reli­gion, or lack there­of, we can ben­e­fit from what the book Daniel Gole­man’s Destruc­tive Emo­tions: How Can We over­come Them pro­pos­es as “A Gym for Emo­tion­al Skills.” Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Anto­nio Dama­sio opened new ground in his sem­i­nal Descartes Error book on the role of emo­tions in our decision-making.

How can one train this mus­cle of Appre­ci­a­tion? Well, no clin­i­cal stud­ies here, but my wife and I like to reg­u­lar­ly do an exer­cise pro­posed by Jef­frey Brant­ley in Five Good Min­utes: 100 Morn­ing Prac­tices To Help You Stay Calm & Focused All Day Long:

First, trav­el back, in your mind’s eye, to a time when you felt a healthy exhaus­tion, and let you relive that moment as vivid­ly as you can.

Then, remem­ber, re-expe­ri­ence, a lov­ing exchange that real­ly touched you. Pause. See the moment. Smell it. Hear what hap­pened around you.

Next, visu­al­ize the most car­ing ges­ture you have ever received, as full of details as pos­si­ble. Who gave you that gift of car­ing. How you felt.

Now, trav­el to the most mag­nif­i­cent place you have seen. Enjoy the views. Pause. Lis­ten. Smile. Appreciate.

Good night