WASHINGTON, DC | June 23, 2014 - This week on BIZ+SOCIAL, we bring you the best from The New Global Citizen, Business Fights Poverty, Fast Company, and more.

GLOBAL PRO BONO

Out of Africa: The Social Sabbatical Experience

Four weeks in Kenya all expenses paid? Who’s to say no? Jim Tubman says he had the time of his life in Nairobi, yet it was no vacation. In fact, the idea of spending a month in Africa as part of SAP’s Social Sabbatical program made him very, very nervous. “The day I departed,” says the Senior Support Consultant from Dublin, “I was terrified. I knew at the time I had to push myself to do this. This was way outside of my comfort zone.” The SAP Social Sabbatical is a unique, short term assignment for top talent who are assigned to solve business challenges for entrepreneurs and small businesses in emerging markets. Hand selected through an interview process, the individuals are grouped in diverse teams as business consultants to companies they have never met let alone heard of. Teams of four scatter across the globe and regroup in cities like Nairobi, Bangalore and Shanghai, in support of SAP’s Corporate Social Responsibility efforts. They are given a business issue to solve. In four weeks. With people they’ve never met before. Read More...

IMPACT & INNOVATION

iDE And American Standard See Big Business In Toilets At The Bottom Of The Pyramid

This is the story of a successful partnership between two organizations that share a passion for toilets: an NGO with 30+ years of making markets work for the poor and the largest toilet manufacturer in North America. Eventually, they made more impact together than either organization could make alone. The idea of a partnership started back in 2011 at a water and sanitation conference in Delhi. Cordell Jacks, the co-director of iDE’s Global WASH Initiative, and Jim McHale, VP, Research, Development, & Engineering for American Standard, met for coffee. It didn’t take long before Cordell and Jim realized that they had the makings of a perfect partnership. iDE would bring local expertise of rural supply chains and last-mile distribution in Bangladesh, as well as a host of sanitation market development experience gained from projects in other countries. American Standard would bring 140 years of state-of-the-art product design, computerized fluid dynamic engineering & modeling, as well as global sourcing, manufacturing and state-of-the-art product testing. Read More…

LEADERSHIP

5 Books Aspiring Leaders Should Read This Summer

Every so often, leading publications publish juicy lists of inspiring and educational texts. I have always perused them with interest, but more often than not failed to follow through on actually reading them. According to George Miller, the average human can only hold in their working memory up to seven things, plus or minus two. Erring on the side of skepticism—and my own forgetfulness—there are five books I’m reading this summer that I suggest every aspiring leader should read, too. A combination of old, new, long, short, American, and international, I consider these five books to be a foundation for the future of leadership in 2014. 1) How can I stop wasting time? Read: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less; Earlier this summer, I traveled to Brazil for a much-needed week-long vacation. I had planned to rest my brain and indulge in a mystery novel. Instead, I devoured Essentialism…Read More…

CITIZEN DIPLOMACY

The Center for Citizen Diplomacy to Drive Purposeful Global Engagement

The Center for Citizen Diplomacy, a signature initiative of PYXERA Global, will no longer focus solely on Americans, but rather on driving purposeful global engagement around the world. Formally known as the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, this new name reflects the Center’s focus on shared understanding, inclusivity, and respectful and responsible relations among people of different countries and cultures. The Center seeks to unite the growing movement of citizen diplomacy by providing a collective voice and a platform through which to share, participate, and learn. Recently launching an extensive new website, the Center provides new resources for citizen diplomacy organizations and the higher education community. Among these include in-person workshops and webinars such as “Bridging Public and Citizen Diplomacy,” the first in a series for 2014. The Center is also introducing the Citizen Diplomacy Network, a membership program for organizations dedicated to citizen diplomacy. The Network provides the community with a cohesive voice and serves as a hub of best practices, recognition, and visibility. Read More…

ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT

Engaging Venture Capital To Strengthen Agricultural Value Chains In Morocco

By Mike Deal, executive director and CEO of Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA), and Malina Dumas, a VEGA program associate. Deal is speaking at “Private Sector Partnerships & International Development Volunteers” on Friday, June 13 at InterAction’s Forum 2014. Sicopa, a 40-year old Moroccan agribusiness firm was straddled by debt and in trouble when the Moroccan venture capital firm MarocInvest got involved in 2008. Its intervention helped Sicopa become debt-free and acquire the newest olive-processing equipment from Spain, thus opening up new clients around the world, including Subway in the U.S. But MarocInvest saw even more untapped potential for scaling up and for making a broader development impact through job creation and higher income levels for its employees. In the past 20 years or so, across most emerging and frontier markets, a class of impact investors like MarocInvest have emerged, seeking new investment opportunities in local growth-focused small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). Read more…