Trained as an eye doctor, Jordan Kassalow had worked in more
than 40 countries, helping treat river blindness and other
ailments. "For [each person] who needed sophisticated eye
care, there were 30 people who needed basic reading glasses,"
says Kassalow, 43. "There was a huge market failure, and a
huge market opportunity to sell cheap reading glasses."
Kassalow believed entrepreneurs were best positioned to fill
this niche. "Smaller companies can take cost margins [selling
to the poor] that larger companies may be unwilling to
take."
Along with partner Scott Berrie, 39, Kassalow launched Scojo
Foundation, a nonprofit organization that identifies entrepreneurs
in El Salvador, Guatemala, India and other poor countries; trains
them to sell reading glasses; and helps them find small loans to
start eyeglass-selling businesses in their villages. Scojo
Foundation plans to help sell reading glasses to over 350,000
Indians within the next three years and has been recognized by the
World Bank as an innovation leader.
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Over the past five years, American entrepreneurs have
increasingly focused on bringing social enterprise overseas. The
reasons for the shift: today's traumatic global political
environment drawing America's attention abroad; high-tech
billionaires starting foundations and VC funds to aid for-profit
companies that promote international social good; and business
experts like C.K. Prahalad, author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,
bolstering the idea that companies can make money selling to the
world's poor.
Net Impact, a San Francisco-based clearinghouse for
social-enterprise entrepreneurs, has more than doubled its number
of member chapters in the past six years, while prestigious U.S.
business schools, including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, now offer programs focused on international social
entrepreneurship. The United Nations is catching on, refocusing
some poverty reduction efforts from giving aid to boosting
entrepreneurship.
KickStart, a nonprofit firm started by Martin Fisher,
47, and Nick Moon, 50, in San Francisco, has developed a niche
designing low-tech agricultural equipment specifically for poor
African farmers. KickStart trains small manufacturers abroad to
make this equipment in bulk and trains small retailers to sell it.
The retailers then sell the equipment to the farmers. Today, the
firm has a staff of 174 in Africa and five in the United States.
According to Fisher, the equipment allows farmers to make more than
$30 million in profits each year.
During the Vietnam War, Lee Thorn served on a U.S. ship that
launched bombing missions over Laos. Returning to Laos in 1998,
Thorn was shattered by the extent of the bomb damage, and he vowed
to help the impoverished country. But as a lifelong businessman,
Thorn was skeptical about the ability of pure aid organizations. So
he launched a for-profit company, Jhai, to seek entrepreneurial
Laotian coffee-bean growers, form a cooperative, train them to pick
the highest-quality beans, then market that coffee in America. His
U.S. nonprofit arm, the Jhai Foundation, channels some profits from coffee
sales to Laotian village development and funding for the farmers.
"We played to Laotians' strength--the truly organic
element of their coffee," says Thorn, 62. Jhai is doubling the
amount of coffee it ships to the U.S. each year, with 2005-2006
sales projected at about $500,000.
Noting all this success, some foreign governments are searching
for a few good American small-business owners to offer expertise
and capital. Fisher notes that the government of Ghana is currently
wooing KickStart. And Becky Rottenberg, Net Impact's new
venture director, says the governments of Uruguay and Chile have
welcomed Endeavor, a New York City-based social enterprise
organization that helps fund entrepreneurs overseas. Says
Rottenberg, "The U.S. is still viewed as the gold standard of
entrepreneurial activity."