Reich suggests that people target specific needs with unique projects, rather than creating issue-focused organizations.

If you want to change the world—whether locally or globally, big or small—you’ve probably thought about starting up your own social enterprise or nonprofit. Think again. Author and Columbia University instructor Brian Reich says that too many organizations impede progress toward solving the world’s most pressing problems. He argues that people need to use existing models to target specific needs or issues, through flexible structures rather than permanent ones.

Reich founded his marketing company, "little m media" in 2009 to help organizations focus on “information experience,” which Reich says "is the stuff we consume that shapes our behavior and defines how we function as human beings.” Reich teaches consumer behavior and marketing strategies in a Master’s of Communications program at Columbia University.

Dowser: Your recent book, Shift and Reset, recommends certain approaches to new media that allow organizations to take advantage of what it offers, without being too wrapped up in it. Would you say you’re arguing for the use of new media in moderation? Are we placing too much emphasis on its value?
Reich: We live in this amazing time where for the first time in human history we are connected. Technology has such a significant influence over all aspects of design. This creates a massive and exciting opportunity. We used to only understand problems as they related to whatever community or geography we had a direct connection to, and now we have the ability to know what’s happening on the other side of the world. We can access expertise and knowledge beyond the immediate network that we are involved with.

But as we are more connected and info moves faster, the challenges in the world are getting worse. And there’s an acceleration of things getting worse, because we’re all connected. So, if we don’t shift our thinking and address these problems now, then they’re going to get worse at a rate that’s faster than we’re able to solve them. And we don’t want to lose the belief that individuals can address these problems. What’s lacking is an understanding, a capacity to do anything. We’re using old models, old lines of thinking. And that, I would argue, is potentially making things worse.

Are we relying too much on technology and social media?
The issue is less about social media, and more about recognizing what it means to be a social human being. I’m platform-agnostic. I don’t think you need to be in-person to influence behavior or educate someone. But I do think you have to recognize the way the human brain works, and the way we act as individuals and in groups.If we’re going to use digital tools to connect, we have to take into account some of the analog, off-line ways of doing things. Social media isn’t bad, but we have adopted a set of behaviors through social media that aren’t sophisticated enough—we don’t listen well enough, we don’t stay engaged on issues for extended periods of time. Human beings can adjust to things on the fly. But we’re focusing on the efficiency and the scale—how many followers we have, how many clicks, how many ‘likes’—instead of measuring the substantial shifts in behavior. It’s not the tool--it’s how you use it.

Sounds like we have a problem of focusing on quantity over quality?
Right. And it’s not surprising because we want efficiency but it’s only great for certain things. When you’re looking at a real substantive societal problem, more is not always better. In many cases we need to eliminate things and focus on one, small tweak to effectuate change.  It doesn’t matter how many people are looking if they’re looking for the wrong things.

Can you give an example?
For two decades, scientists have been trying to solve a genomic challenge related to the AIDS virus and they hadn’t been able to figure it out. So they asked a bunchy of gamers—people who play and develop games professionally --and in less than two weeks, the gamers cracked the challenge. So the bad way--the social media-age way of thinking about this would be that gamers are the solution to everything. We hear about one interesting solution resulting from gamers being involved and everybody wants to have gamers solve everything.

So the better way would be to say, we’ve been looking at this problem one way for twenty years and now we looked at it in a completely way, which we never would have considered if we weren’t living in a connected society where we’re aware of these different ideas. At its core, the argument is to think and do things differently. But it’s a problem when we start focusing on outcomes instead of activity, and then we build massive institutions and lists—those things change the game inherently.

At Dowser we might look at what the gamers actually did. It may not be about gamers necessarily, but we’d want to know what they did that cracked the code. And then we’d ask about replication and scalability.
Here’s where I disagree with you. That AIDS challenge was unique. And thinking about replication makes people say, let’s bring in gamers for every problem, no matter what it is. And then two or three problems down the line, when gamers can’t solve it, people say, screw it, gamers can’t do it; they aren’t the solution. It’s not about scale or replication, it’s about adaptation, and accelerating our ability to learn from everything and apply the lessons learned in appropriate ways.

Reich's book argues that people need to think differently, focusing on the substantive nature of their work, rather than looking at numbers.

Right, it’s not about looking for the one solution.
When you have a complex problem, there’s no way there’s only one solution. There’s certainly more than one cause, so there can’t be one solution. In something like marketing, the simpler you make it, the better—but I’m not talking about fundraising or branding, I’m talking about solving the problems. But we’re operating under organizational approaches that we used in the past. Even the flattest organizations are still largely hierarchical and they establish a structure, get comfortable with it, and stick with it. But in a world where things are constantly changing, we need to operate in a much more fluid way.

This reminds me of something you said on a panel at the recent Green Festival, about the need for fewer new organizations. At Dowser, we highlight new organizations on a regular basis. Tell us more about your thoughts on social enterprise creation.
People shouldn’t start an organization. They should pick a problem, and try to solve it. You’ve got to do whatever it takes, structurally, to solve a problem. That may mean replacing your team—or not forming an organization at all. Once you start an organization you’ve got to keep it alive—you have to have staff, volunteers, an office space--and that takes time and is a distraction from the real work of solving a problem. And if you have a new organization, it’s probably in competition with a similar organization that’s doing the same thing. The most successful projects on Kickstarter do something specific: we are going to create a book about ‘x’, and it identifies a need in the market, or something people want, and it goes and does it. Ideally it’s socially-focused, rather than just money-making. But what does an organization solve, besides a global desire to be a part of something? Your goal as an organization should be to one day not exist—to solve your problem and then have no more work to do.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Reflecting back on his extensive reportage on homelessness, Fagan explains how solution journalism can become an instrument for social change and directly influence policy. In the case of his series on homelessness, his reportage caught the attention of the city’s mayor at the time, and prompted the creation of new social programs to deal with issues raised by the series. Below is Fagan’s conversation with Dowser on reporting on solutions to homelessness, and the particular obstacles involved in that kind of journalism.

Dowser: Why did you become a journalist? What did you think you could achieve?
Fagan: I became a journalist after working on the school paper in high school. It was the only job I really wanted. My mother had been a navy journalist and told me it was a wonderful thing to do. I felt like I could contribute to society. I could make change. I could make society smarter. I could inform them on serious issues to help people make informed decisions on how to make life better in our world. It’s the old journalism adage of ‘comfort the afflicted and afflict the comforted.’ You want to give a full, unbiased view of what’s going on, and hopefully people will make better decisions because of it. The other reason is that I like adventure; journalism is like being in an action movie all the time.

Looking back, have you been able to achieve the goals you hoped to as a journalist?
Yes, I have. Shame of the City is one example. Robert Rosenthal, the managing editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, proposed the series. It was successful in encouraging positive approaches [to the problem of homelessness]. I got a ton of reactions to the series, and homelessness went down in the city during the time I was reporting. I had a full-time partner on that project, Brant Ward, a photographer. He cared about the issue as much as I do. We pushed supportive housing as the best answer out there to chronic homelessness. President [George W.] Bush read the series and he used it as a brochure for pushing the idea of supportive housing. We re-printed the series as a package and put out around 40,000 copies. Bush handed these out to the leading homeless organization directors around the United States, saying to them, “This is what we need to do,” and he had me come talk to their gatherings.

San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan

What’s a specific example of a local reform in response to your reportage?
There was a program called Homeward Bound created in response to my reporting on [a homeless person I profiled named] Rita. Her family saw my stories and they flew out from Florida, and got Rita and took her home, and fixed her. She had HIV, was on crack, heroin, and she got stabilized, and now she’s this vibrant, wonderful woman who I talk to every month or so. And I wrote about this, and about a dentist who fixed up her teeth for free. Mayor Newsom of San Francisco saw these stories and said hey, if you can reunite people and it’s successful, I want to encourage that. So the Homeward Bound program he created sends people out into the streets and they find homeless people and if the people want to go home, they help them call home and help them get reunited with them. To date, the program has reunited thousands of people and it’s still going on.

[My co-reporter and photographer] Brant [Ward] and I are skeptical, of course--so we hung out in the program to see how it was working, and it seemed to be working pretty well.

And you also investigated already-existing solutions for your series.
I did reporting on something called Homeless Connect. The problem was that homeless people don’t make appointments, like to go to the welfare office. They just don’t make them. So instead they said, let’s do a once-a-month gathering where homeless people can get all the services they need in one place. Brant and I had been in conversation with homeless outreach workers and we were telling them, you have to meet people where they are. It’s not like they recruited us to help, but during reporting we would emphasize that idea. You have to recognize that they’re still addicted and on the streets. So we wrote stories showcasing Homeless Connect as something that was having an effect and really helping people. With each story the thing grew; putting attention on it helped.

Was your reportage publicly recognized for its achievements?
We got nominated for a Pulitzer Prize each of the four years we were doing the beat. But we heard people saying, isn’t homelessness a problem of the eighties? And back East, especially, because there were some effective programs [out there], people don’t know how bad the situation is in San Francisco.

Brant and I won the national James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, along with several other national prizes, including Brant getting the Robert Kennedy Award for his photos and me getting the national Excellence in Urban Journalism Award.

Do you believe that writing about solutions is a legitimate form of journalism?
It’s absolutely legitimate. We get complaints that it isn’t. Journalism has time constraints and pressure to produce material every day, and that means you look at the shiny object, which is the things that are broken. It’s easier to write about what’s screwed up rather than what’s working. And it’s important to write about problems but it’s not the only thing to write about.

What is the biggest problem journalists run into when they cover solutions?
There’s an institutional, or industrial attitude that writing happy stories is sappy. But that doesn’t mean there’s a prohibition against writing about things that work well. They are seen as ‘puff pieces.’

Do you think some, or most, editors are hesitant to accept story pitches that explore potential solutions? Why?
Most would be leery of it. They want useful stories. The trick is you have to be sophisticated enough to let the editor know that you are writing about something that’s useful and informative rather than puffy and dippy. That takes sophistication on the part of the reporter, and on the editor’s part as well. I had to write thousands of stories before I figured out what’s a good story.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Dowser: When you meet with members of the private sector at work, or in conferences, do you find that there is a greater reception to these ideas and new business models that integrate social and environmental benefit along with profit?
Newberg: There are some that have started to turn the corner and see how this can help their businesses.  There are others who hear the words social and don’t think that fits with for profit.

A lot of this is messaging.  It  just requires explaining what this means to people.  For example,  I just wrote an article for Snowden that tries to explain this, using concrete examples of businesses, large businesses, that improve their bottom line, including impact.

What needs to be done to make this a more widespread approach?
We need to have a clear understanding that we’re talking about for-profit.  And that impact doesn’t mean no profit.

When we talk about businesses, businesses runs in terms of profit.  So the conversation has to be about profit, more precisely, how impact leads to profit for the businesses.

Is it just a lot of chatter on impact investing or is it actually happening?  Social entrepreneurs have expressed concern that there really aren’t that many high-risk investors.
What would you say if someone comes to you with a high-risk investment?  If you’ve got 10 minutes to make a pitch and the person pitching focuses on all the good that their organization will do for the first 5 minutes, it doesn’t really work.  Investors are waiting for the business model.

Part of this is message again.

Real impact business have gotten investments from solid venture funds.  And if you go through the portfolios of some of the funds, you’ll find impact businesses that are investments.  For example, Clayton Homes, which constructs green buildings and is LEED certified, is also owned by Berkshire Hathaway.  So, it’s out there.  When it comes to funds that just focus on 'impact investing,' there aren’t that many and in terms of scale, it’s still limited.

So, what do we have to do scale?  Do we have to go beyond the Acumen’s, Skoll’s, and Omidyar’s?
I wouldn’t say it like that.  But I think that the really interesting venture stage companies aren’t the ones that are for-profit and happen to have impact.  They are for-profit because they have impact attached to them.  The way they make money is by selling a product or service that automatically produces benefit.

If you go to an investor with a business that includes 'impact,' is it more likely to get attention nowadays?
Yes, but for the vast majority of the venture funds, I don’t see impact replacing profit as a first line of analysis.  It’s definitely something that will garner interest but it’s not the only criteria.

Are there certain parts of the country that have been more innovative than others and really progressed in terms of 'impact'?
It’s really everywhere.  Startup America and Impact Investment SBIC are emblematic of that;  that was an effort by the Office of the Small Business Administration and the White House.  Yes, 75% of funds from venture capitals tends to go to New York, Massachusetts, and California in the US,  but the commercialization of those funds -- as in the companies that transpire out of it -- are spread throughout the country.  It’s just a question of finding them.

What role can the public sector play going forward in terms of facilitating this kind of change?
I think the public sector is still figuring out the most effective way to catalyze this activity.  We’re in a constrained budget period. Funds are limited at the state or federal level, so, that does make it harder for these kind of activities.

But, I do believe that there is an important convening role. For instance, last year, the White House and the Aspen Institute convened on the Impact Economy, producing a report from the event. Individual states are also adopting new corporate forms, serving as options for entrepreneurs.

In some cases, government purchasing can drive some of this stuff by attaching standards to the products and services to what government buys like green standards for housing and efficiency standards for energy-related products.

Competition such as Race to the Top has pushed school systems to adopt more innovative curriculum in schools.  The Social Innovation Fund drove high performing, innovative nonprofits to crystallize what they were doing.

And again, talking about this as a real and growing part of the American economy is really important; when you put the stamp of legitimacy on something, especially something that people have struggled to grasp.   For example, the JP Morgan Chase report that came out last year was really important.  It said that we’ve done research on it and the market is this size and it’s a real thing.  That mattered.

This is a real market.  That’s why it’s essential to consider it.

Randall Kempner talks with Patricia Ojora, who runs PromoPrint Ventures in Lagos, Nigeria. Her local business is bolstered by ANDE's network.

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs, commonly referred to as ANDE, targets the often-overlooked sector of small businesses in emerging markets.  By working through intermediary organizations, such as Ashoka, Skoll, Endeavor, Accion, Inveneo, and more, ANDE hopes that more investors, multinationals, and international organizations will take interest in this missed market and help build a more inclusive economy.

Recently ANDE partnered with Switzerland-based Argidus Foundation for a new competition for innovative businesses that need early stage capital of $20K - $250K to get their ideas to scale.  The competition targets businesses from Burkina Faso, Guatemala, Honduras, Mali, Moldova, and/or Nicaragua. Here’s our conversation with Randall Kempner, Executive Director of ANDE:

How does ANDE contribute to economic development?
ANDE helps small, growing businesses in emerging markets.  We work with intermediaries who pay a fee to ANDE to join.  Those businesses that are helped may or may not pay a fee. They join because ANDE provides programs and services to make our members more efficient.

How do you see the paradigm shifting as more of the economic activity shifts to emerging markets and developing nations?
Two perspectives here: [the] development side has largely been about giving away grants.  We’ve got to find another model.  So, why don’t we try private sector development to build more sustainable programs that decrease poverty?  This tool is much more sustainable.

The traditional investor [thinks]:  My mission is to make money.  They’re saying that maybe there is some shift to the middle where I can make social impact and make money - maybe I have to make a tradeoff now but it will be good in the long run.  Hopefully, in the future, there won’t be that tradeoff.  But, the momentum is there now and moving in the right direction.

If we look at the latter, do you see more and more interest from investors to take on these ventures or high-risk ideas in developing countries?
It’s a mixed bag.  It’s still really hard to get capital for a social enterprise but there are more investors looking at this space now.  It’s a bigger industry (impact investing) today than it was last year.

Does the term social enterprise still hold relevance?  Does the term social enterprise throw off investors perhaps?
Yes, there are a lot of definitions and it doesn’t necessarily help.  So, we’re trying to make that definition clearer.  The whole investment process is challenging.  It depends on the investor and what he/she is looking for in terms of social impact and finances - or the combo of both.

Where in the world are you seeing entrepreneurship with impact thrive?  Any developing nations that have surged ahead with innovation and growth in this space?
Brazil, South Africa, and India come to mind,  but impact investing and some aspects of social entrepreneurship are actually much more advanced here in the US than in developing countries.

What are some of the ideas/ innovations that you’ve seen in the emerging markets that could be transplanted to the US or Europe?
Some of the products could have applicability here.  For example, mPESA has spread like wildfire in Kenya.  It's a lower cost way of transferring money and we could use the same service here, if it existed.  Another is the solar powered lightbulb by Nokero.  I have it in my house in DC -- could come in handy when the next hurricane comes through here (laughs).  There are a whole host of products that could be used here.

What led you to take on a career in economic development?
I grew up in a city in Texas where inequality was in our backyard.  This was not a gated community.  There was just one high school and we all studied with each other.  It was a town that had poverty and it was evident.  So, I learned about the reality of these issues first hand.  Plus,  I grew up in a family that was interested in service.  So it was ingrained in me from an early age.

The last three years at ANDE,  I've had the chance to build something from the bottom up that can really help individual lives.  For me, that's important because  I want to die knowing that I've made people's lives better.

Looking ahead,  what would you like to focus on this year?
This will be the year of the regional chapter.  We want to have resources on the ground and go beyond DC.  We want to empower them locally.

Would you like to see more local ownership and entrepreneurship?
Yes, absolutely.  For example,  seeing Cape Town organize an event on social enterprise themselves was great.  Because normally,  you don't see a city host it on their own; it’s usually through an intermediary organization.  So they're clearly taking interest at the local level.

Can you share an instance with us where you've seen the work of ANDE personified?
I was visiting a chicken farm in South Africa.  It was in the process of being transferred from a white family to a black family.  Members of the black family had worked on this farm for years.  An intermediary organization that's part of the ANDE network was helping with this transfer; it's a NY-based group that provides loan guarantees.   And for me this was like, 'Wow!  This is what I want to see.'   Here was disenfranchised group that had raised significant capital on their own, by working hard, but would not have been able to get the bank loan that they needed.  However, an ANDE member was able to help them get the guarantee and help them move along in life.

Just being there, walking in the farm, alongside the chickens, with the gentleman who was going to take this over, that was pretty compelling and humbling.  It showed what ANDE is all about.

Photo Credit: Rotimi Adeoti

His experiences led him to be a strong advocate for the idea that non-profits can best survive if they demonstrably create economic value while providing social benefits. In a time of increasingly tight belts at all levels of government, this couldn’t be more important, he believes. Below, Rothschild elaborates on this approach and others he describes in his book, giving context through his non-profit management experiences.

Dowser: Your book advocates for a high-performance model for non-profits. Is that argument is partly based on your successful experience with the pay-for-performance model you’ve used with Twin Cities Rise?
Rothschild: I spent 22 years in the for-profit world, and I started the Yoplait yogurt company for General Mills, and I was on numerous non-profit boards and I started a few non-profits. Over that period of time, and while starting Twin Cities Rise, I came to understand that there are principles in the for-profit world that are being used in the non-profit and social enterprise world—and that these principles were improving results.

Twin Cities Rise’s pay-for-performance model is based on the idea of creating economic value out of social benefit. It was developed in the early Nineties, with the state of Minnesota. We went to the state economist and we said, ‘Anytime an organization can take someone from one level of income to a higher level, and that person had been using public subsidies, this is not only beneficial to the individuals and their families, but it’s also beneficial to tax payers.’ In pay-for-performance, we only get paid for success, and it’s based on economic value. And looking at non-profits as there are more cuts to government spending, it’s clear to me that we can’t rely on government funding. So, we’ve created the human capital performance bond, which is a state-issued bond that can be used to fund high-performance non-profits that demonstrate that they are generating economic value to the state, above the cost of the state borrowing money from the bond-holders.

And are you seeing the bond in use yet?

Steve Rothschild

This was just passed in Minnesota last July, as a pilot. The state authorized $10 million of bonding authority to pilot it, and they’re now in the process of implementing it. And what it will do is demonstrate that high-performing non-profits create economic value for the state, not just social good.

And this is particularly important now, because non-profits are faced with a difficult future as government cuts back spending on what are called ‘discretionary programs.’ Organizations that are doing well need to be thinking about new strategies and approaches for the future—new ways of funding themselves. My book provides for-profit ideas for organizations and suggests that they marry it with the best ideas from the non-profit world.

What are some of those ideas, from the for-profit and non-profit worlds?
I would say that the main aspect of successful organizations is that they have a clear and appropriate purpose. They are focused entirely on their purpose. Non-profits have typically done that very well. The best for-profits have also learned to create passion in the work that they do. I remember a story about a CEO of a company that made pace-makers, and he visited the factory and met the woman who was the highest-quality and fastest assembler. He congratulated her and said, ‘Why is it that you assemble these pace-makers so fast?’ And she said, ‘I’m not assembling pace-makers. I’m helping people get well.’ The problem with some non-profits is that it’s one thing to be focused on your mission, but it’s another thing to be accountable to it. Too many non-profits get off-track because they either chase grant money or government contracts that aren’t necessarily aligned with their purpose. Or they keep adding programs because they feel the people they serve need other things—job training, drug prevention, ESL—and the result is they dilute what they’re doing. So, I try to point these things out and I ask a series of questions at the end of each chapter to help people think about whether they are focused on their original purpose.

Another main thing is measuring what counts. The for-profit world does a good job of that, because there are standard and objective measurements—like return on investment. In the non-profit world there really is no standardization, so organizations can choose their measurements. Often they choose outputs instead of outcomes, because outputs are easier to measure—how many people took classes or graduated, as opposed to how many people got a living wage job and stayed in it, which is a longer-term result that really counts. Organizations need to focus on outcomes more than inputs and outputs—that’s how to truly measure whether you’re meeting your purpose.

The third advice is to be market-driven. Organizations have lots of stave-holders—government, donors, foundations, employees, clients. But market-driven organizations choose one group as their customer--the one they count on to survive--and interestingly in most cases the customer is not the client. For example, Twin Cities Rise is about helping people out of generational poverty, but our client is the employer because employers have the jobs. If we don’t meet their standards, we lose them and then we can’t help people.

How does this advice apply to non-profits that don’t focus on structural poverty?
The book’s aim is to get people to think about whether what they’re doing is in their best interest. I find that many non-profits start with a behavioral-centered model, saying things like, ‘Dress for success, don’t get into any arguments, show up for work on time.’ And that’s all fine, except it may only last for a few weeks. But accountability is very important. It’s very important that people don’t come to work with a non-profit and feel entitled to something. They have to earn what they get. And it’s a two-way street—you get what you give.

There’s the principle of personal empowerment. Working with people who live in generational poverty, I learned that those people often don’t know what accountability is, because they’ve lived on the streets and their sense of the future is not good—they see people getting shot and going to jail. That’s counterproductive if you’re trying to get a job, and so changing the person’s belief system from the one I described to a hopeful one, is our approach. We learned that you can’t get people to change by focusing on behavior; you have to focus on beliefs first.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Dowser: In a nutshell, what is the new book about?
Schwartz: How you create a movement and bring people along to make change.  Creating a movement that is SUSTAINABLE by involving people who keep change going.  The difference between this book and others in the market is that the vast majority of those books focus on the social entrepreneurs.  In this one, I’ve tried to weave in the voices of whose lives have been changed by the social entrepreneur.  It’s about the magnetic skills of the social entrepreneurs and the people, corporations, donors, and the businesses that they pull in to create change and create a community to do so.

This week, we had the Oxford Skoll Forum, which has grown vastly since it started to include wealthy philanthropists, the private sector, public policy officials, and more.  So, are we seeing a significant growth in the field of social entrepreneurship?
Well, Bill Gates  calls himself a social entrepreneur.  So, if you think about just that one case, we’ve made great strides (because of his immense work in the field). As more and more entrepreneurs and tech entrepreneurs get to a certain point in their careers, they are calling themselves social entrepreneurs.  Also, if you are living in a country like Nigeria, in a city like Lagos, and you’ve got the option now to use a portable toilet for the first time in your life, you’d think that we’re making great strides.  It’s all perspective.

In the US, we get jaded, even in thinking about the power of a solar light, for example.  What effect does it have?  But, think about the vast distribution of these low-cost technologies.  It’s making great strides!

The more I delve into the people in the book, the more I wrote the story, I actually became more and more enthused, more so than before.

Sustainability - how do we ensure it in this movement of social entrepreneurship?
The more and more people you engage in the change, starting with the community, the more chance you have to achieve sustainability.  Go from local grassroots upwards.  Now, we see community banks cropping up because social entrepreneurs come to an area and start a flow of goods, services, and money.  So, the banks follow.  And a community flourishes around it.  And there’s   a lot of copying, scaling, that happens.

There’s been a lot of debate on whether or not 'social entrepreneurship' is a useful or accurate term.  What do you make of the debate?
I think it’s a useful term.  Social entrepreneurship is one side of the coin, it’s one kind of entrepreneurship.  And people understand the term entrepreneurship in terms of business and profit.  But they don’t understand it in the context of social 'profit.'  The skillset is very similar; the mission is different.  I think it’s a very valuable term.  People also use social innovation along with social entrepreneurs.  And that’s ok because it is an innovation.

That’s at the core of Ashoka, which advocates that everyone can be a changemaker.  It’s about bottom-up change.  So, do you think that grassroots outweighs top-down reform?
I think it’s a mix of both.  Sometimes ,the top-down doesn’t happen, which then forces the grassroots movement, compelling it further.  So the bottom gets swollen up to influence it.  At various times, various levels, it’s not unidirectional.

What do you see as the role of Ashoka going forward?
Collaboration of all types.  There’s so much to be done when people start collaborating.  We see collaboration in sectors (girls, technology, health, water/sanitation, empathy) but also cross-cutting.   One of the things we’re also thinking about is - how do you build things with different kinds of entrepreneurs?  How do you take entrepreneurs from different sectors and build something?  It would help if people organized around collaboration.  And at what point do people start collaborating instead of competing?  There is that fine line.

It’s easy for Ashoka to do that.  It’s easy for Skoll to do that - because both of them have fellows.  So, it would make sense if both of them got together and do two-years worth of collaboration.   We’re looking at an experiment then around different sectors.  That’s the way you can rebuild towns/ villages.  It grows out to cities.

Social entrepreneurship is becoming more mainstream.  But are there still gaps in this ecosystem that need to be addressed?
In the eight years that I’ve been at Ashoka, I’ve seen a huge uptick in the attention that we’re getting from media -and it’s global.  In the last four years, it’s been more so.   It has a lot to do with people that are very well known. So, look at Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, Jeff Skoll/ Participant Media - more and more of these people are getting known for their work in the social realm.  So, it becomes more lucrative for those working in the field and their work is getting more attention because of these names.

We’re also going beyond the CSR model.   This is way beyond CSR.  Corporations are doing strategic philanthropy; I see a very tenuous connection between that and the selling/marketing of their services.    The further beyond we get it, the more attractive it becomes for people coming out schools who are jaded.  It makes it feasible for them to work at an Intel, Vodafone and do something of social impact through their social innovation offices.   The more corporations that expose their employers to that and they share it with their family, friends - it spreads and becomes a way of life.  That’s the way it grows.

There’s a lot of talk about Impact Investing.  Is there really a growing pool of money out there for these risky ideas and these innovators?  Or is it more talk and less actions?
Has it ever changed?!  We’re always talking about money, or lack there of it.  But, yes, relatively speaking, we’re growing again as an economy and we ebb and flow with the economy.  I do believe there are more people, corporations investing.  There is also, however, more competition for it.  We hate to use the word competition - but oh, yes.   Yes, there are more donors giving; but there are more people asking for that money.

When there’s a need, people see it and you just have to keep on innovating so that you’re constantly evolving so that you’re constantly attractive to those who have money.

For Kapur, water is always on his mind.  It has been for over a decade, when he first began to take notice of the water wars developing around the world.  Since then, he’s been crafting Paani, a film that looks at the complexities of our modern day water woes, which he hopes to start filming later this year.

Water is a chaotic topic: messy, intricate, and complex.   That is, because there is no one solution to the global shortages of water, the inequalities in water distribution, the contamination of water, and the privatization of water.  To fix the world’s water problems doesn’t just require the government to manage its resources better, the private sector to avoid exploiting one of life’s most fundamental sources, citizens to take notice, or communities to come together.  It requires all of the above, Kapur says.

Most of all, he says, it requires a collective consciousness to understand the magnitude of the challenges with water.  “Twelve years ago, if I’d walked down the streets of NYC or LA and asked, what is going to be the cause of the next war, most people would have said bombs.  Today, 90% would say, water.”

If people get it, then why don’t the powers that be?   In India, for instance, where Kapur resides and works, water shortages in the metros are reaching breaking point every year, particularly in the summer months when demand rises and supply can barely meet up.

Dowser: How is modern urban life connected to the water wars?
Kapur: Urbanization doesn’t take place around water anymore.  Before people used to gather together around a water source.  That’s not the case anymore.  Cities are based on ideas, ways of living, instead.  And because they’re densely populated, they’re a good source of votes for governments.  So, the government will do what it needs to bring water to these cities, even if they’re damaging rural areas in the process.  So, for instance, to meet Delhi’s water needs, water is drawn from Himachal.  But think about where our food is grown.  It’s in the farms in rural India.  So, the government is not innovating but just trying to do what it needs to get the votes.

Middle class India is already experiencing this problem.  It’s not a poor man’s problem.  They’ve been living with it for a long time.  The poor have learned to deal with it.  Every morning in the metros across India, people are waking up at 4 am to collect the water for the day.  In middle class families, that bucket is in their homes.  In lower middle class homes, they have to go to a communal tap for it.  The story of the empty tap is a middle class story.

But yes, there is a lot of waste, especially among the rich.  In Mumbai, there are new apartment buildings that advertise a swimming pool on every 3rd floor.  How are they going to get the water up there?  They say they’re buying water from the municipal, but it’s actually the black market.  In 5 - 10 years, the black marketing of water will be common.  It’s already happening in India.  Then, people will sell it for the highest profit.

How does the clean water debate differ from water wars?  Is it a completely different ball game?
Clean water is a shortage of water.  When water can’t flow, it becomes stagnant and contaminated.   There are technologies to make that water clean but how many of them are low-cost and sustainable.  That’s the challenge.  The will to make that technology available does not exist.  In India, infant mortality is caused primarily by malnourishment and water-borne diseases.  But there’s a lack of political will to make these changes, to clean up the water.

It’s not as if there isn’t clean water.  You can buy bottled water, which may in 10 years turn out to be a carcinogen, but you won’t have diarrhea or get sick now.  The problem is who can afford the bottled water - it’s the price problem.
Most people cannot pay for clean water.

Currently, there is interest in privatizing water because it’s not been managed well by governments. Do you see that as part of the solution to the water woes?
This is a great raging debate right now.  But let’s theorize this and compare it to air.  Now, instead of water, let’s say we put a price on air. So, if you want to use air effectively, pay for it.  Well, the what would happen to the companies that are pushing smoke into the air?

Compare that to companies that are putting chemicals into water, or pumping so much water out for agricultural purposes.  What is the effect on the small farmer then?  Causing him to scramble, basically.

Right now if you walk into a big investment company and ask what should I invest in, they’ll tell you water.   The profitability of water is going to rise.  That’s done by hoarding it and selling it.  The dangers of pricing water is that it makes it into a commodity.  And then, you’re commoditizing the second largest resource on the earth (after air).

So, companies don’t work.  But, governments have not been able to manage water well either.  What about governments - don't they see their people dying of water-borne diseases?
The systems of government do not work.  They’ve taken away any moral authority that people had before.  It’s been said again and again that when people have to use the natural resources, they’ve learned ways to live in a symbiotic relationship with natural resources.  When centralized authority has come in, they’ve used it for power and revenue.  We have to find a different administrative system.

So, privatization doesn’t work, governments don’t work.  Water seems to be a complex problem.  Where does one begin to change it?
The solution is multi-sourced.  It’s a combination of a variety of things.

We have to start doing rainwater harvesting again.  We have to embed this into the education system.  We have to keep in mind virtual water.  Our consumption of products like jeans, which use up a lot of water, is an issue.   Think about Pakistan, for example, which has serious water problems.  Pakistan exports cotton, which is a dirty water crop.  So, those textiles are sold in NY.  If someone buys a cotton shirt, they’re not supporting the farmer.   The farmer gets maybe 1% of the profits.  The majority is going to some executives in NYC.   Superprofits.

Start creating a consciousness.  Write about it.  Blog about it. Make films like Paani.  Push corporations to change their ways.  Buy products made of resources that consume less water, like hemp.  Purchasing power can also change companies' ways.

Just get a collective consciousness on the story behind water.

KOURAJ consists of a group of activists and leaders in Haiti’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community who are focused on empowering themselves by overturning common conceptions of LGBT people as marginalized, vulnerable, and infected persons. Their first project, for which they are currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, is a bar/cultural center that will be provide a space for Haitian artists to share their talents, while providing a space where Haitian ‘masisi,’ as LGBT are referred to, feel comfortable. Below, an American named Nick Stratton, who helped create KOURAJ, explains why the project is not only urgently needed in Haiti, but also an exciting model for grassroots, sustainable, community-based development.

Dowser: What led you to become involved in this work in Haiti?
Stratton: My work in Haiti began in Boston during college, where I was highly involved in the Haitian-American community, both on campus and in the city. Having spoken French fluently already, I started learning Haitian Creole before graduating in order to facilitate the move to Haiti. I finally made the move to Haiti with my partner of nearly two years, Vincent, who gave me the courage and support to live here. We did not come to Haiti to defend LGBT rights. Only after several months of getting to know the ‘masisi’ [LGBT] community in Haiti through simply hanging out with them did we realize the urgency and necessity of such a project. In that sense, friends got us involved in this work.

Why was it so urgent, at this moment in Haiti’s history? It’s a country with many problems; why focus on this one?
We realized Haiti was ready for this type of project when we went to the beach in Jacmel. Nine masisi, including Vincent and I, walked onto the public beach one day in Jacmel. Immediately, all 150 pairs of eyes fell on us as we wriggled through the crowd. All of sudden, wild screams and chants arose from all sides, ‘Masisi! Get out of the water! Leave the beach!’ And this was no group of young hooligans; I spotted an elderly lady, a mother and her little child, all in unison chanting ‘Masisi! Masisi!’ Already, we were the only white people on the beach and had attracted a lot of attention; now we were the only masisi, too. I was scared to death. Our friends reassured us and calmly pointed out this was completely ‘normal.’ And then something happened that I never could have imagined. The masisi with us started playing with the crowd. They shook their [butts] in front of over one hundred swimmers; they posed and walked the cat walk down the beach; they even shouted back at everyone, ‘Me, masisi? Then I guess I will be seeing you later tonight…’

‘Courage,’ was the only word that we could say. This day at the beach was the beginning of KOURAJ, which means ‘courage’ in Haitian Creole. We knew from that moment on, that no matter how hard the struggle would be, Haiti is ready for an LGBT rights-based movement, and that Haitian masisi are ready to lead the way.

What, to your knowledge, is the situation like for LGBT in Haiti?
For me, the most surprising aspect of the ‘LGBT community’ in Haiti is that it doesn’t really exist, even though a strong LGBT culture does. Intimate networks of masisi exist in circles of friends, but unity and mobilization are still only aspirations here. Given the challenging ‘masisi’ life of isolation, secrecy, and fear of being cast out of the family, it is difficult to think beyond survival and wanting to simply be accepted. Difficult, but not impossible. Those few courageous individuals who do imagine a community beyond themselves are fighting for recognition and mutual respect in Haitian society. Haiti has beautiful drag queens, beautiful artists and musicians, beautiful dancers, and a beautiful LGBT culture. Unfortunately, all of this is overlooked by official, institutional ideas about masisi as simply ‘vulnerable’ or ‘marginalized groups’ infected with HIV/AIDS. In this sense, official discourse reduces gays in Haiti down to sick, poor, and vulnerable people. Societal rhetoric defines masisi as someone who rapes Haitian boys or who is a pedophile. Religious rhetoric dictates that masisi are mortal sinners and abominations to society. Violence against masisi is commonly justified because homosexuality is still considered a choice and not a characteristic acquired at birth.

These public definitions have cornered masisi into a very degrading situation; unsurprisingly, many members of the LGBT community have emotional and psychological problems. Creating an alternative discourse on masisi is the first step towards change, hence why KOURAJ has made a mass public communications campaign its primary objective.

How is KOURAJ providing resources and support for the masisi community?
The ideal for many masisi is to leave Haiti to live ‘the good life’ of gays abroad in Martinique, in Guadeloupe, in Miami, or in New York. KOURAJ’s primary motivation for the bar is to create ‘the good life’ for LGBT persons right here in Haiti, such that masisi can aspire to live and work in their country with dignity, pride, and self-respect.

What resources do LGBT people have to support them, if anything?
Only three initiatives serving the LGBT community (and some not even explicitly LGBT) exist in Haiti: a psychosocial health organization called SEROvie that works with sexual minorities infected with HIV/AIDS, a health services organization for HIV/AIDS victims called POZ (not officially LGBT), and a lesbian organization FASCDIS with whom KOURAJ works.

KOURAJ sought to fill the empty space of LGBT advocacy using a rights-based framework and empowerment. We have worked closely with these organizations, and were disappointed in the processes and results they produced. All of them are 100% dependent on foreign money, mainly from USAID, the CDC, or other foreign NGOs and universities. They are focused on health, not on rights. KOURAJ leaders reject every one of these frameworks. Future LGBT organizations must realize that at the core of mental health disorders, rising rates of HIV infection, prostitution, and unemployment in the LGBT community is sexual orientation--and gender-based violence, discrimination, and stigmatization. LGBT groups must stop using self-defeating and dehumanizing language that describe the community as weak, vulnerable, victims, and marginalized. KOURAJ believes we masisi are powerful, capable leaders and role models for not just the LGBT community, but for all of Haitian society.

How did you develop the vision for KOURAJ’s bar/cultural center?

The site of the yanvalou, in Port-au-Prince

The vision for the 'Yanvalou' [the bar/cultural center] [occurred] in response to two questions we asked ourselves: one, how can a rights-based political movement in the Haitian LGBT community secure long-term financial stability and sustainability that will ensure its continuity throughout the cyclical whims of international donors? And two, how can the LGBT community rest assured the decision-making process will remain rooted in the community despite its solid working relationships with large, powerful international NGOs? We knew we had to answer these questions if we were to take seriously the autonomy, sustainability, and capacity of the vibrant Haitian LGBT community to finally assert its rights.

How will the bar/cultural center [Yanvalou] benefit Haiti's population more generally?
We are working hard to make the Yanvalou a cultural hub of Port-au-Prince. Only four or five [performance] stages exist in this vibrant capital city for a population of 2.5 million Haitians [and they are expensive and difficult to get to from the capital city.] Film nights & festivals, the public art space, concerts, preventive health resources, and conferences will all be available free of charge in a location accessible to public transportation in lower Port-au-Prince.

Most importantly, the Yanvalou will become the first place in the entire country where the general population can encounter the LGBT world in a healthy environment. Masisi will be customers like everyone else, and they will participate in cultural events like everyone else. Finally, the general population will see for itself a strong, capable, creative, and proud LGBT community, and not within the context of HIV/AIDS, prostitution, or marginalization. This space will provide a humanizing, empowering step forward in changing public discourse in the struggle for human rights.

What strategies are you using to make your Kickstarter campaign successful?
Since we are creating a business, we reached out LGBT-friendly businesses in the US, starting with sponsors of NYC and Boston Pride Week. This strategy was not very successful, because most businesses are focused on local community development. It is very difficult to portray in a one-page letter why the Haitian LGBT community is relevant for businesses in Boston and New York City.

Recently, we hosted a masisi masked ball with food, drinks, a DJ, manifestos, and a drag queen show so LGBT people could celebrate Carnaval; the event was a huge success. Over 200 people attended in spite of the rain, and many Haitians gave small donations within their spending means after the event. Several guests commented that KOURAJ’s home base was “the best dance floor in all of Port-au-Prince, ‘the “best party they had ever been to,’ and the ‘first time masisi have ever been able to express themselves in security during Carnaval.’

The most effective strategy has been to reach out personally to individual friends and family in the States. Kickstarter funding can succeed using many strategies, including having a few rich donors or many small donors. We feel the second strategy is more legitimate for a community-based project like KOURAJ/the Yanvalou. In other words, if we can get 200 people to contribute $100 each, we have reached our goal. If we can get 800 people to contribute $25 each, we have reached our goal. We are confident we can find this many people who would like to see Haiti break from the development model of dependency on foreign NGOs, and who want to engage in the global struggle for LGBT rights & equality.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

Another, newly-launched, Twitter-based alternative currency called PunkMoney is attempting to leverage online tools to create an exchange circuit that subverts existing ones. The idea behind it is that you tweet to someone a promise—such as, “I will take you out to dinner,” or, “Mowing your lawn next week,” and then that person can redeem the promise at any time, or before a certain date that you specify; the person can also transfer the promise to another person. The tweets are tracked on the PunkMoney site, creating a record of the promise. London-based Eli Gothill was inspired partly by Occupy Wall Street to start PunkMoney as an example of how people can form economic relations without using structures created by government or large corporations. Below, Gothill shares with Dowser the ideas behind PunkMoney, how it works, and where he hopes it will go.

Dowser: What motivated you to create PunkMoney?
Gothill: Punkmoney wouldn’t have happened without [anthropologist] David Graeber’s [recent book] on debt. It made me think differently about money. PunkMoney tries to challenge our conventional ideas about what money is, and show how we can re-envision money. One idea from Graeber that influenced PunkMoney is the history of peer-to-peer money which has been forgotten by economics. There are many examples of money created by people as opposed to states or banks: Graeber writes about bills of exchange that existed in England, or credit notes between merchants in the Indian Ocean. As capitalism took hold and power became consolidated, the state and banking system clamped down on these forms of money, particularly in England, and we see today, a few hundred years later, that hardly anybody knows that these types of money existed. There isn’t a very good theoretical understanding of what they were and  why they had advantages over more centralized forms of currency. I think there’s potentially a theory of peer to peer money that someone should try to create, but Graeber sketched it out a little bit.

When did PunkMoney get started?
I created PunkMoney around the time of Occupy Wall Street, in October.

Was that a coincidence?
No. I actually wrote PunkMoney in New York. I was there going to a conference for Contact, which is an interesting event bringing together innovators and technologists, who are interested in a peer-to-peer future. Occupy was going on at same time so I went down there and found it quite inspiring. So, the site is a baby of that period last year when people were thinking in revolutionary terms. My particular interest is monetary systems, and the design of money is a big factor in why we’ve had a massive financial crisis, and the fact that there are alternative money systems is not really discussed outside of more radical circles. Whenever people talk about fixing the crisis, they talk about tweaks to existing models—better regulations, for example, or higher reserve requirements. There’s no discussion about completely rethinking money and how it’s created.

What is the mechanism that makes PunkMoney function online?
You can look at a currency as a kind of recorded statement. In PunkMoney those statements are promises. There’s a whole category of money based on promises—government money is a promised discount in equivalent amount from your tax liability, or bank credit is a promise to pay you on demand. So PunkMoney consists of promises between people as opposed to between people and institutions or states. It’s entirely trust-based, and between peers, so it requires or encourages community. The only way that this money has value is if people trust each other. Reciprocation is not essential to it—it can be entirely one way or based on reciprocation of uneven value, and that’s an important dimension of Graeber’s thinking, how economies work on three different principles, exchange, hierarchy, and communism, but not in totalities—elements of these categories can co-exist.

How does the trust money transfer list help PunkMoney function?
That’s an idea that’s still developing. The basic idea is when you say you’re gonna transfer PunkMoney it implies that the person you’re transferring it to is happy with that. If Sally promises Bob a coffee and Bob gives it to Bill, Sally might not be happy about that, because maybe she trusts Bob more than Bill. That was one of the interesting problems that arose. And the trust list is part of that solution—it makes transfers limited to a community. So, if you say, I’m happy to transfer this note anywhere within the Occupy Wall Street community, you’ve made it less problematic because people in that community have reputations and they’re interconnected.

But is that list exclusive or does it have requirements for joining?
So the second question is, how do you define what a community is, and how do you do it in a way that’s not very political? It’s possible using trust grabs—the idea is you start off with some seed users, and then on Twitter you create a list for that group and you put in it the people who you think are also in that. And they do the same, and so on. And then PunkMoney can crawl those lists from the starting points we give it--and there’s a peer-to-peer way, somewhat, of defining the boundaries of community. So, if Bill turns out to be a free-rider or an untrustworthy individual, you can go to the person who listed Bill and say that Bill seems like he shouldn’t be part of the community.

It sounds like a contentious process—there’s no objective way to decide who’s in and who’s not in the community. This has been an issue with Occupy Wall Street—they have debated whether they can exclude members who pose risks to the community in a significant way.
There’s always a subjective dimension about who should be involved in a community. The important thing is to have transparent mechanisms for dealing with it. But the potential to become unlisted is an incentive for people to be honorable. The long-term goal is to enable PunkMoney to support lots of types of communities.

How would it do that?
It would be cool if anybody could create a community through a hashtag. Essentially you would use the tools I’ve been describing to crawl your own community list, and by doing that you’re establishing these trust communities where PunkMoney can flow easily. PunkMoney can become a tool for community-building by encouraging people to gift to each other.

Why would I use PunkMoney, though, within a community, if I could just say to someone I trust, ‘Hey, I’ll buy you a beer tomorrow,’ or something like that?
PunkMoney is not for high-trust relationships; it’s intended more for people you have some links to--you know each other somewhat. I’m trying to see whether you can use PunkMoney as a tool to create more trust and stronger relationships.

How are you evaluating the success of the project so far?
Right now, it’s a prototype and it works, but I’m working toward a more robust system, with better community management. I built PunkMoney as a proof of concept, but people do use it a bit. And people talk about it more than they use it. The idea seems to resonate with people. But the actual usage might not be quite there yet; it will take some time. The common usage now is, ‘here’s my commitment: I’ll take you out for beer, and you make it public’—and then it’s up to them to take you up on it. It’s popular in the alternative finance community, in London and abroad. Thinking about how to evolve PunkMoney is quite delicate because I don’t want to mess up what’s good and overcomplicate it. I have dozens of ideas but I’m pretty conservative about anything I do, because there’s something in it that works.

Interview has been edited and condensed.

The UN estimates that 1.4 billion people have no access to electricity, either because energy services are not available or because they cannot afford to pay for them. While that sounds inconvenient to people who can switch on a light bulb or charge their cell phones at any time, the need for energy is about much more than convenience.

Access to energy affects how much time a child can spend on his or her homework; it determines how a family cooks (which has implications for health -- traditional cookstoves, for example, are big contributors to respiratory illness) and how much time is spent on this task; and it impacts a person's ability to earn income, whether it's light to keep a shop open at night or fuel to operate an irrigation pump on a farm.

This last piece is the focus of Poor People's Energy Outlook, a new report from Practical Action, a UK-based organization that uses technology to challenge poverty and puts out a major report on various aspects of energy access annually or every other year. The 2010 report focused on energy in the home, an area that covers lighting, cooking, space heating and cooling, and information and communications. The 2012 report focuses on the impacts that access to energy has on the ability of the world’s poorest people to earn a decent living. Ultimately, it argues that when poor people have the sustainable energy access that is necessary for enterprise activities, it becomes possible to escape the cycle of poverty that has trapped so many people around the world.

For examples of the crucial role that energy plays, the Practical Action report points to a grocery shop in Nepal where the owner makes his income from charging cell phones and selling, in addition to standard items like bread and candy, cold drinks from his refrigerator. But an energy crisis has brought cuts to the regional power supply and the owner has had to close the shop early and cannot sell cold drinks, both of which have reduced his income. Power cuts have also hurt Subash, who runs a small carpentry workshop in the same village as the grocery store. Since he can no longer support his family also because of power cuts, he said his wife and children have had to start rearing cattle and finding firewood to help out.

Stories just like this one are countless around the world, where if one piece in the larger puzzle of economic struggle is misplaced, the whole game is thrown off. If the income-generator of the family cannot make ends meet, responsibilities often fall to children, who then miss days of school, or an education entirely -- one of the factors that makes poverty a hard-to-overcome cycle.

Albert Butare, Rwanda's Former Minister of State for Infrastructure, drives this home further: East African economies are driven largely by agriculture and small enterprises, which are not major energy consumers. "This makes it less attractive for private enterprises to offer services in this sector, which compounds the problem of having limited infrastructure available," he says in the report. "Without infrastructure (including clean energy services), it remains very difficult to persuade skilled people to move back into rural areas, leading to a shortage of trained teachers, nurses, engineers etc. in rural areas."

Drew Corbyn, energy consultant for Practical Action, explained that access to energy is not a miracle solution--that energy alone cannot solve people's problems, but that it's necessary before other steps can truly help.

"Energy is not the be-all and end-all. It is an enabler. To realize increased incomes, you need many other factors," he said, such as business skills, access to markets, appropriate policies and regulations.

But the bottom line, he said, is: "Energy access is a prerequisite for development. Energy is important for all development goals. It's required in the home, in enterprise and community service."

And because it's required in these different realms of life, Practical Action doesn't prioritize which energy needs should be met first. Instead, the organization advocates what it calls "total energy access."

This approach contrasts with that of other organizations that Corbyn said look at the supply side of the issue and define energy access in terms of grid electricity or use of kerosene, for example.

"If we only consider energy access as using, say, grid connection -- so for example, you discount a solar lantern or a solar home system as having energy access -- I think all of the money would then flow to areas which are easily connected to the grid," he said. "It would potentially mean that a lot of the efforts and resources aren't going into technologies which are actually a lot more appropriate for certain poor households and that can meet poor people's energy service needs.

"I think there is a danger if the definition of energy access is too narrow or too focused on grid electricity or just simply modern fuels -- then the full range of benefits won't be realized," he added. "We're looking at the way that energy is used, in terms of the lighting and cooking, which actually brings you much closer to the potential development benefits."

Corbyn is optimistic that the UN's initiative this year will drive attention to the issue of energy access, which was not one of the Millennium Development Goals and has been left out of much of the global conversation around poverty and development. The Poor People's Energy Outlook report lays out a framework for action that Practical Action calls an energy access ecosystem. There are specific recommendations in the report for governments, civil society, international institutions, and the donor and private sectors.