Visiting a Village--Part 1
Written on 02/08 at 03:26 PM by Andy Posner
0 comments
Filed under:
philosophy
Business
environment
brown
micro credit
News
Andy and Jill with a Grameen Bank Center Manager and Borrowers
If you talk to anyone at Grameen Bank they will tell you that the real bank can only be found by going to the villages where Grameen operates. Grameen, after all, means rural, and in fact by law Grameen can only operate its lending programs in the villages. It is for this reason that on our third day in Bangladesh we--Jill, me, an Australian named Mark, our translator Matin and Mark’s translator Yunus--are all crammed into a mini-van barreling down the roads that lead to Rashahi, the zone that we will be visiting. Traffic here is an eclectic mix of motorcycles, bicycle rickshaws, cars, trucks hauling absurdly large loads and comically unstable buses all chaotically weaving and swerving, honking and narrowly avoiding catastrophe.
After 6 hours of bouncing along these roads we are happy, if not relieved, to have arrived at the Branch that will be our home for the next 10 days. It is a two-story building--the first occupied by Grameen--with two small rooms for guests. In order to understand where branches fit into the Grameen hierarchy, I need to take a moment to explain how the bank is organized. For in truth, Grameen is nothing short of an organizational miracle. In fact, I would go so far as to say that while Dr. Muhammad Yunus is praised for recognizing that the poor can be credit worthy, his real, lasting achievement is in the details of how he goes about delivering that credit to them in a cost-effective manner.
First Blog Post From Bangladesh--Actually, From the Bahrain Airport
Written on 01/03 at 03:09 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
Business
environment
brown
micro credit
News
This photo is from our first flight from Boston to London on 1-01-10
Jill and I are currently in the airport in Bahrain waiting for the third, and final, leg of our 28 hour trip to Dhaka, Bangladesh. We left Boston on the first of January at 7:20 PM and arrived in London at 6:50 AM on the second. As you can see from the photo above, we really lucked out in terms of our seating on the first flight: we got the seats that are usually reserved for flight attendants when they take naps on long flight; as a result, we had seats that could recline all the way down (even though we were in coach) and we had as much leg room as we could possibly want! The flight went smoothly and, as I have been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich--an absolutely fascinating history of Hitler’s Germany--the time passed rather quickly. Our second flight took us from London to Bahrain, where we are currently in the midst of a seven hour layover before one final flight to Dhaka.
The Commencement Speech That Never Was
Written on 04/30 at 01:42 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
philosophy
brown
News
Several weeks ago I was nominated--and then auditioned--to speak at the commencement ceremony for graduating graduate students from Brown. Though I was not selected to be the speaker (I have some conspiracy theories on that front, I assure you!) I would like to share the text of the speech that I wrote, because I believe it captures the essence of how I feel about leaving the confines of the university and entering the ‘real world.’
New Opportunities in A Global Century of Innovation
At first glance it would seem that now is an inopportune time to leave the grounds of the university and venture out into the world. After all, between rising unemployment, a financial system in disarray, and a whole host of other local, regional and global problems ranging from urban blight to climate change, it would seem that the prospects for putting our newly minted skills to work as teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs and employees of firms large and small are, to put it bluntly, dim. Yet we are also entering a world rife with unprecedented opportunities for those willing and able to take advantage of them. An explosion of innovation in information technology has made it easier for more people to collaborate to tackle poverty, to create new products and services, and to share thoughts, ideas and experiences. The cost of renewable energy is falling. Social entrepreneurs are creating self-sufficient businesses that solve social and environmental problems. The list is seemingly endless, and I believe that regardless of our particular field of study, as graduates of one of the finest universities in the nation, we are in a unique position to seek out these opportunities and apply our intellectual and financial capital toward them.
A New Logo For Two New Endeavors!
Written on 01/26 at 09:41 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
Business
environment
brown
micro credit
News
As soon as Mike and I incorporated our environmental services company--The Capital Good Group, Inc.--on January 1st, we wanted to get to work branding ourselves as a socially minded, mission driven company dedicated to serving people and the planet. Our first step was to hire Douglas Bonneville, owner of BonFX, the company that designed and built this web site, to create a logo for both The Capital Good Group, as well as The Capital Good Fund. The idea was to develop a logo that would convey the concept of a “triple bottom line” (social, environmental and profitability); that would be applicable to environmental consulting, microfinance and any other endeavors we undertake using the ‘Capital Good’ name, brand and concept.
After several rounds with Doug, we finally settled on the above logo. Mike and I really thrilled with the way in which it conveys the concept of three without being oppressive about it, and how the shapes in the logo can be viewed as trees, or a family, or just interesting geometric shapes. Read on to see the logo for the Fund.
Coal is Dead: Coal Ash Spill Yet Another Reason to Switch to Renewable Energy
Written on 12/26 at 12:51 AM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
environment
Renewable Energy
News
Image Credit: J. Miles Carey/Knoxville News Sentinel, via Associated Press
Coal Is An Awful Energy Source
For all the efforts of the coal industry to make it seem like it’s possible for there to be such a thing as “clean coal” (Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection has been running some great ads dispelling that myth), yesterday’s disaster in Tennessee has demonstrated yet another way in which coal is a nasty, dirty, awful source of energy. What happened was the following, as described by the New York Times: a “breach occurred when an earthen dike, the only thing separating millions of cubic yards of ash from the river, gave way, releasing a glossy sea of muck, four to six feet thick, dotted with icebergs of ash across the landscape.” The ash is actually fly ash, “a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity” that “contain[s] significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations.” This isn’t the first time such a breach has occurred, though it is probably the worst, having destroyed 15 homes and released 2.6 million cubic yards of toxic heavy metals. So add toxic sludge to air pollution, climate change, danger to miners, and mountaintop removal to the dangers posed by coal mining and the burning of coal to generate electricity. Isn’t that enough to convince America to switch to renewable energy?
Welcome. I call this the ideas blog. That’s because this is where I explore new ideas, discuss new inventions, and chronicle how they are being implemented in the real world. I call these the three I’s: Invest. Invest. Implement. Here I will look at everything that’s going on in the world of information technology, open-source software, renewable energy, energy efficiency, micro-credit/poverty alleviation, social justice, politics and literature. If that sounds overly broad, keep in mind that many of the world’s most intractable issues--poverty, hunger, injustice, environmental degradation--are profoundly intertwined. Solving them requires big ideas, and that’s what this blog is all about.
- San Diego Personal Injury Lawyers in Winning a Grant, and Other Exciting News:
Thanks for the great article, do you have any additional resources…
- Arjun in Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan:
2009 just may the year of payday loans, or at least the dawn of…
- eim model in Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan:
I am very impressed with the knowledge you are posting here. Thanks…
- July 2011
- May 2011
- December 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- August 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- Complete Archives
- Category Archives
- Thought of the Day
- My New Favorite Quote
- Thoughts on a Book: “Where Good Ideas Come From”
- Visiting a Village--Part 1
- A Story on Super Bowl Sunday
- First Experiences With Bangladesh and Grameen
- First Blog Post From Bangladesh--Actually, From the Bahrain Airport
- Reducing “The High Cost of Being Poor”
- Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
- The Commencement Speech That Never Was
Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…