This video says it all - more about this here.

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This is a guest post by Babar Bhatti from TelecomPK.

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship is a new initiative at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which aims to serve as a launching pad for a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to launch innovative businesses in developing markets such as Pakistan. I was glad to see that Adnan Shahid, a Pakistani student at MIT is among the fellows of the Center. Below see an excerpt from Adnan’s profile and his plans for the incubation center.

Working as the Director IT Strategy with Mobilink, Pakistan’s largest cellular service provider, I witnessed the success of a single mobile phone turning into a business model. Mobilink started the ‘PCO Self Employment Package’, which included a wireless pay phone to be used as a Public Call Office. This one phone scheme provided employment opportunities to the less privileged households- becoming a financial earning source for the otherwise unemployed. This first-hand experience helped me develop a business idea and professional goal in life: to set-up a mobile technologies incubation center for low-income countries. The goal is to increase the commercialization of communication technologies and incentivize entrepreneurs and innovators.

I am working on getting further details about Adnan’s work and will report more on it as I collect the information. A bit more about the Legatum Center. Funded in Sep 2007 and based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship is founded upon the idea that bottom-up entrepreneurship is the central driver of both economic development and the emergence of good governance. Iqbal Quadir leads the Legatum Center. The Center website has more information on how their approach can “create a path toward poverty alleviation, elimination of corruption, and improvements in health and education.” See this article from Guardian for more background on the center’s financial supporters.

I view the Legatum Center as academia’s contribution to make the concept of social businesses a reality.

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Cybernet has just recently donated internet access via a VSAT Satellite to the UM Healthcare Trust medical hospital in the remote village of Zahidabad, NWFP, Pakistan. The internet service provider will also work with the NGO UM Healthcare Trust to open up similar connected facilities in various other rural parts of Pakistan.

The connected facility runs the Jaroka Tele-healthcare services, which provides access to doctors from APPNA in the USA, and will also allow the hospital to upload their medical records to data processing facilities at NUST to track pandemic diseases.

On the part of Cybertnet, I think this demonstrates good social responsibility. They are using their strengths and their services for social benefit by allowing data transmission for social good, which is pretty much inline with their business.

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ClickDiagnostics is one of the social ventures that received a SEED grant from the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT. They are trying to provide basic healthcare guidance and diagnosis to patients that are far from proper hospitals.

Their solution is to engage local entrepreneurs from communities who wish to work as Mobile Health Workers. These workers will carry a camera-enabled phone and will route pictures and notes form the patient to a remote dermatologist, who would then be able to help with the diagnosis and provide better treatment.

This project is very similar to the Jaroka Tele-Healthcare project in operation in Mardan. I’ll be trying to get a hold of one of ClickDiagnostics team members for more details.

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Sometime ago, in the not-so-distant past, we were bombarded with lengthy ads with cool looking dudes doing something extraordinarily brave (like cliff hanging) with a puff of smoke in the peripheral vision, ending with a short and speedy warning ‘smoking is injurious to health’. We’d also have similar disclaimers and caution messages for medicine advertisements with a voice speaking at a 100 words per minute (or something close to that) to ‘use medicine with doctor’s directions, keep them away from children, and if the illness is serious consult a doctor’. When I was young I used to try to speak at the same speed, but never came close.

This post is not about those ads, because they still tried to warn the consumers of any possible harms, no matter how ineffective or annoyingly paced the messages were.

My issue is different. It’s with the product marketers who know that excess usage of their products can be harmful - still they promote the excess usage without any warning. For example, does a soft-drink manufacturer realize potential harm that is caused to bones, especially of children if they drink excess of carbonated drink? I still remember the advertisement of a soft drink company which showed three kids drinking different types of drink (It was I guess tea, artificial juice and a soft drink) and the one who drank the soft drink became a pop-star while others grew up to be losers. Or another such ad in which a child doesn’t drink milk so his mother gives him milk toffee as a replacement for a glass of milk. Do these companies realize the effect these things can have on children’s health. Do they even care, at all?

Corporations in Pakistan are waking up to realize the power of children in influencing the buying power of a family, (hence the ‘captain safeguard’ and ‘life buoy’ germ busters campaigns), but do they even stop to think for a moment that all their products might not be suitable for people under a certain age bracket. Or at least have the decency of including a warning saying that excess usage of their product for children under a certain age is not recommended.

Or is due to absence of any check and balance mechanism in Pakistan they just want to maximize on the profits and ignore the harm their product brings to our young generation?

The problem isn’t so much the misguided ads, but the philosophy the advertisers live by. As consumers it feels like all those corporations care about are their bottom-lines without even stopping to think about consumer rights or awareness for a second. Exploiting and manipulating masses through advertisements that run non-stop. If this isn’t a form of brain-washing or capitalism to the nth degree, then I’m not sure what is. However, I understand that companies businesses run on successful sales - and successful sales are proportional to the brand’s presence and awareness. Having said that, I also know that if companies become a little more conscious of their advertising messages and themes, they’re brands would be better appreciated and looked up to.

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The Global Strategic Management Institute is holding a global conference called "CSR Performance 2008" in San Diego from Sept 30 - Oct 2nd. The conference is inviting participants from all over the world, and focuses specifically on the strategic elements of CSR - how to make a business case for CSR initiatives and create ROI from it within this socially aware marketplace.

The conference is expected to bring together C-level or executive level people from CSR, Business Ethics, Human Resources, Public Relations and more into a single place with a series of seminars and workshops aiming to help the participants gain a broader understanding of how to think about CSR within their functions.

It would be good if someone from a Pakistani firm attended, even if it’s as an attendee.

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Projects like the Mangla Dam Raising, Mirani Dam, Gomal Zam Dam, Subakzai Dam and Satpara Dam are simply not enough to meet the rising demands.

This could be a great time for social entrepreneurs or corporations alike to tap into a market with high demand using innovative solutions. Darwaish from the ATP team writes a detailed writeup of two very serious looming threats of Water and Food shortage. Here’s some of the facts from his original post.

• 38 Million acres of land are being spoiled because of lack of water
• The per capita availability of water has gradually decreased from 5,260-cubic metres to 1,100-cubic metres
• According to the World Bank, Pakistan is currently close to using up all its surface and ground water
• Pakistan only stores 30 days of its river water, compared to India (120), Egypt (400), and US (900).
• World Bank suggests Pakistan is one of 36 countries facing a serious shortage of food
• The number of people suffering from the food crisis has increased from 60million to 77million
• According to the State Bank, wheat, rice and maize production this year will remain particularly low, with a wheat deficit of 31% of the projected target.
• The UN warns that over the next 25 years, major conflicts between India and Pakistan could be over water resources.

 

The question is - what do you think can be done about all of this. Forget the government, what can individuals and the private sector do?

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A very interesting discussion has been brewing online recently related to Polio vaccination in Pakistan.

About a year ago, clerics in NWFP announced using the broadcast mediums available to them, that Polio vaccinations was actually an American plot to make the children of the region infertile. The parents of almost 24,000 children subsequently refused to allow their kids to get vaccinated, resulted in a sharp increase in the cases of polio in that region.

Mosque speakers, radio stations and word of mouth techniques were used to spread the message (hey, they knew viral marketing!) so clerics were largely blamed for spreading misinformation (a guardian article said 60% of refusals were given for religious reasons).

Later in 2007, refusal turned to hostility at the hands of militants who had bought into the rumors - polio workers were blown up trying to villages, and others were threatened, causing vaccination programs to be suspended.

Recent news includes a Fatwa issued in January by MMA’s leadership that urged residents of the north to get polio vaccinations, and the recently controversial peace pact with militants in the region which also included provisions to enable vaccination, which has now caused the polio program to continue.

But this is just half of the story. I have three points to add - is it really correct to blame the clerics for preventing vaccination and could corporations and companies have done anything to help?

Firstly, isnt it pompous to blame anyone for not taking vaccinations? As the CHUP editor points out in the original post, even in the US vaccinations are left as a choice in majority of the states, where all but 2 states have the right to refuse vaccinations on religious grounds, and many allow exceptions on philosophical grounds! Rural Physician gives more history of this "vaccination anxiety", dating it back to the 1950s when a vaccine created by Clutter Laboratories caused paralysis.

Should vaccinations still be considered a choice of the people or is there enough evidence to support considerations that make it mandatory under law?

Second point: why only blame clerics - because they are an easy target? Think of this from another way - who makes us pompous enough to think we can just walk into someone else’s culture, and tell them what to do? The intents might be noble, but I couldnt help feeling that the approaches used by the healthcare workers may not have factored local culture or sensitivities - and that that is the more likely cause of such an empassioned response from the local communities.

A friend of mine referred me to the book Three Cups of Tea - which has a beautiful description of how one man overcame very similar challenges. His take: you have to find local evangelists to sell the message for you. In the case of the northern regions - if clerics really do have such an influence over the region, and are basing their decisions on faith, it could have been simpler to use the right approach to make them buy-into the idea, make them comfortable with the presence of healthcare workers, and asking for their assistance to help their people. Do you think a less presumptious approach was possible?

Thirdly, when all of this was in mid-stream - could any company or corporate entity intervened to help? Yes, it would have been an enormously bold step for a company to try to negotiate with clerics who already have a difference of opinion with capitalism, but could something have been done? Could pharmaceuticals or vaccine importers or distributors have found any business incentive to spend the extra time, energy and investment to do so? This one I’ll leave to you - it would be great to hear your thoughts on it

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Jason from 37signals points to a very cool story by the LA Times about the Ivanhoe Reservoir in Silver Lake in Los Angeles county. The reservoir is the drinking water source of millions of people, but was contaminated with Bromate, which causes cancer. Bromate is caused by the reactions of chlorine and bromide mixed the water, and sunlight.

The city of Los Angeles has come up with a very interesting solution - just stop the sunlight from touching the water. They are unleashing over 3 million hollow plastic balls all over the surface of the lake to cover the entire surface and block the sunlight.

I couldnt embed the video but its a must see here.

[Photo from Curbed]

While the solution is pretty innovative and promising on paper, its interesting to see the comments to the LA times story. People have raised a lot of valid concerns with this approach.

For one thing, people are saying that this seems to be a fairly last-minute stop-gap type of a solution which doesnt actually do enough to reduce bromide from the water (they have been doing that too, but perhaps it wont be enough).

Secondly, there are concerns about putting plastic substances in drinking water for such an indefinite period of time - that plastic balls may contain harmful chemicals in themselves that may leach into the water over time. Other citizens have worried about the effect of completely blocking sunlight on the amount of natural bacteria or infections that can arise from there.

This approach is going to be cheap in the short-term but may cause long-term harm to the reservoir. As such it can serve as a stop-gap while bigger filtration plants are set up.

What do you think - will this work?

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This is a somewhat easy one - what would you say is the primary Social Responsibility of media organizations? It doesnt matter if they come from old-school print, electronic (television or radio) media or their newer step-child: blog-based media companies (like even CDF Software).

The primary function of media entities is to present a perspective or a way of looking at something to their audience. News items add perspectives (or stories) to real-world events in order to let other people know about them. Magazines or feature articles aim to raise awareness about a topic by analyzing or discussing it at length. By and large though, their function relates to making people more informed. Even blog-based mediums do this, but often the perspectives are formed in the conversation within a community itself.

One of the fundamental ethical responsibilities of media is to make sure that the perspectives presented are fair to the subjects (i.e. does not delve into libel) and that the facts presented to argue the angle are valid. This seems somewhat obvious but it becomes interesting in new-media platforms. This responsibility exists because by definition mediums exist in a position of influence over their audiences… perspectives delivered over the appropriate medium does shape the perception we will carry towards an issue. Ethics are inevitable then.

But what about the Social Responsibility of media? Here are my thoughts…  you all can get involved by adding your thoughts to the comments.

Read more…

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