I have loved writing this blog and all the special people it has allowed me to connect with, to learn from and to honor through my stories.  It has been fascinating to chronicle my journey working with Acumen Fund and AtoZ, the mosquito net manufacturing company in Tanzania.  Just a few weeks ago, AtoZ unveiled a new facility which will allow it to produce over 11 million nets per year as the only African manufacturer of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets to battle malaria.  Many came to celebrate in Arusha, including the President of the Unites States.  And of course, the debate over public vs. private market distribution of nets continues (click to see latest BusinessWeek article).

I have decided to wrap up this chapter of my blog From Tribeca to Tanzania and take a break for a few months before I write again. 

In the meantime, I will still be storing up stories to tell you later as I continue to help build Bamboo Finance (www.bamboofinance.com) in Switzerland.  As many of you have read, my newest adventures are in designing a new Swiss-based asset management company that specializes in social entrepreneurship.  We have a great team that provides debt and equity investments to social ventures globally which are addressing critical problems (health, education, shelter, energy, etc.).  This company is looking to fill the gap in risk capital for social enterprises described in the article I co-authored this year published by Oxford (click here). We were recently mentioned in the magazine BusinessWeek with our sister company Blue Orchard (click to see BusinessWeek article).  If you know of entrepreneurs looking for finance, please don’t hesitate to send me a message!  We work globally, and next month I am headed to Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.

As promised, I continue to read interesting books and will share my opinions when I blog again.  The most recent book is called When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (a gift from a special Zimbabwean family-thanks) and another book I just peeled open is called MicroFranchising: Creating Wealth at the Bottom of the Pyramid (a gift from Troy at Coast Coconut Farms in Kenya-thanks).

Thanks so much to the community who has been reading my blog, contributing and supporting me.  Please continue to contact me to share your ideas.  And thank you to the Skoll Foundation and Social Edge team, especially Sally, Victor, Jason, Phil and Cristina for all of the creative ways they supported my opportunity to reflect here.

Here`s a round-up of my most interesting posts:

• You are Not Smart Enough to Be Pessimistic
• Last Night I Applied for Food Stamps and an Abortion
• Sex in the City:  Last Night I Went to a NY Strip Club
• How I Raised $10,000 this Week
• Filex, an artist in Tanzania
• From 2 to 24 Striped Socks Behind Me
• Dynamic Distribution from the Factory Gates
• Getting Back to Living with HIV Instead of Dying from It
• Shit Business Brings Dignity
• A Screwtape Letter
• Female Circumcision
• Justice Like A Hot Dog
• My poem- An Invitation

Asante Sana

AtoZ has a fantastic distribution system for delivering its products into Tanzanian homes through wholesalers and retailers.  Most of these wholesalers purchase other items AtoZ manufactures such as plastic buckets, bottled water and T-shirts.  Retailers are usually running tiny shops in villages much further away from the commercial centers where the wholesalers operate.  They purchase items and strap them to the back of a bicycle to transport them back to their shops or sometimes (if they are making enough profit, they transport them via bus of train). 


Bundling these other items for distribution through Tanzania’s wholesaler/retailer networks has made it very cost effective for AtoZ to get mosquito nets to remote areas of the country where people really need them.  At times, AtoZ’s marketing team is identifying potential retailers and linking them to wholesalers in the nearest commercial center. 

I accompanied one of AtoZ’s intrepid truck driver-salesman, Fred, as the nets left the factory in Arusha destined for homes in a region called Ifakara.  Carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in AtoZ’s merchandise, we encountered bumpy unpaved roads, bridges too narrow to fit a truck, and wild animals roaming free on the road in Mikumi park.  Sometimes Fred is away from home for two weeks, but this time we were out just one week.   

One of the most interesting deliveries we made was to a wholesaler which is selling only mosquito nets.  Most wholesalers sell many other items such as flour, cooking oil, (and, of course, the most profitable) Pepsi/Coke, beer and cigarettes.  I was amazed and proud to learn that this wholesaler was profitable enough to have created an entire wholesale and retail business aimed at preventing malaria.  As a married team, Mr. and Mrs. Kimambo have run this business for over 12 years.  Below I have shared a photo story for you to better understand their work:

Photo 1:  AtoZ’s truck driver salesman, Fred, with his seven-ton-carrying delivery truck.

Photos 2:  This is the market in Morogoro where Mr. & Mrs. Kimambo have both a wholesale business and a retail shop.
 
Photo 3:  This is one of the tailors outside of the Kimambos’ shop doors reviewing her patterns before she starts working on the most exquisite sewing machine.  

Photo 4:  Outside of the Kimambos’ shop- a nicely painted wall with a big mosquito and a message about strategies for preventing mosquitoes with malaria.

Photo 5:  Mr. & Mrs. Kimambo are assisting a customer who has come to purchase a net.  She looked first at the polyester Safi-net (which has to be retreated with pesticide every six months and costs less than a dollar with her voucher).  She then decided she wanted to purchase AtoZ’s Olyset net (which lasts for 5-6 years without any retreatment), but she was 20 cents short of being able to afford the better net.  The Kimambos paid the extra 20 cents so that this pregnant mother could protect her family at night with a better net.  

Photo 6:  AtoZ’s team unloads nearly hundreds of nets for the Kimambos’ shop.  Its hot and heavy work since Fred had to park the big truck far from the shop on the road. 

Photo 7: This is the inside of the shop where Mr. Kimambo, Fred (AtoZ’s truck driver salesman) and Peter (AtoZ’s Marketing Manager), handle the billing and inventory check for our delivery.

Photo 8 & 9:  A retailer named Peter came to the Kimambos’ shop to buy nets.  Unlike most retailers, Peter is only traveling across town and he could only afford to purchase a few nets.  His delivery ride will be much simpler than most retailers who sometimes travel for days in rough conditions.

Photo 10: After saying good bye to the Kimambos, we made our way to a town called Ifakara, where we discovered the most beautifully painted mural on the side of a medical clinic, which featured women tying up mosquito nets!

AtoZ has been working with the local government hospital here in Arusha to sell bed nets to malaria patients at a subsidized price. There are 10,000 cases of malaria in this hospital every year, so I went to meet the Regional Medical Officer there to exchange ideas about how we might distribute bed nets through all Tanzanian government hospitals. It turns out that the pilot of AtoZ's distribution scheme in this hospital was quite innovative. When patients came in with malaria who were obviously very poor, the doctor would write a prescription for the subsidized net. AtoZ would supply the nets in the hospital's pharmacy, and the pharmacy allowed them to be stocked without adding any profit margin for itself.

One of the challenges however, has been to get doctors to actually write the prescriptions given so many other priorities and demands on their time (resources are tight---this hospital has long lines and sleeps two strangers to a bed at times). We also found that the price, even at a subsidized level (roughly 3-4 USD), is still too expensive for many patients in the government hospital. We did brainstorm some interesting solutions for providing incentives to the doctors and cross subsidizing the nets from one distribution channel to another.

While I was there, I met a woman who has AIDS. The nurse (who happened to be this woman's cousin) told me that none of her treatment seemed to be working and the doctors had tried so many tests. She looked so beautiful wrapped in a bright yellow kanga skirt and a golden patterned headwrap, but I couldn't help but see the pain in her eyes. She was young like me, yet she walked slowly like a woman of 90 years old. I came home that night to hear a story from a friend about his good 30 year old friend dying of AIDS a few days earlier. While my time here in Tanzania has me focusing on malaria, this was a good reminder of the numerous other challenges we are called to meet in caring for those who are suffering from disease.

A new short film, THE BICYCLE, is an inspiring experience in just that. It follows Pax Chingawale as he cycles over 20km per day from village to village in Malawi, fighting AIDS at the grassroots. Pax volunteers with Dignitas International, headed up by Dr. James Orbinski, who accepted the Nobel Peace Price for Medecins sans Frontieres.

The movie shows us how determined volunteers and antiretroviral drug treatments allow millions of people to get back to living with HIV/AIDS instead of dying from it.

You can view the film by clicking here and going to the section "Watch Videos."

Einstein once said, "Not everything that counts can be measured, and not everything that can be measured counts." Developing tools to meaningfully measure social impact as well as financial performance of an organization is one of the biggest challenges for our field. My favorite tools are the logic model, which I learned from Barbara Kibbe, and the SROI methodology, which I learned from Jed Emerson. In the last two years, I have been more intrigued by how New Economics Foundation has build on Emerson's SROI method. Acumen Fund has spent the last few years developing a methodology for assessing the performance of the social enterprises in our portfolio, with an emphasis on keeping it very practical and building on the good work of others in the field.

This methodology is known as the BACO (best alternative charitable option) and helps us to understand the social impact and cost effectiveness of our investment as compared to other charitable options that address the same issue. This is BACO's first public appearance, so we acknowledge its limitations and know that it is certainly not a perfect framework for assessing organizations delivering critical goods and services to the poor. However, we have found great value in using it with our portfolio of social investments, and we welcome any of your ideas or questions related to how to strengthen this tool. A draft document outlining BACO with the example of AtoZ’s bednet manufacturing in Tanzania is now available online by clicking here.

Fighting fatigue, rain, heat and hunger, seven powerful and dynamic saleswomen from AtoZ put on their blue uniforms and walk daily door to door selling bednets to the people of Arusha.
One of the AtoZ saleswomen invited me to meet a client who had purchased the net from her. This woman lived in a small, simple, mud walled home, barely lit with incoming light from holes in the ceiling. She seemed so solemn as she shared with me that she suffers from malaria at least twice per year. The good news is that since she bought the bednet six months ago, she has not suffered. It took her two months to save the three dollars required to buy a subsidized net. Toward the end of my visit, stepping over a chicken running in the doorway and two small children staring at me intently, she shared with me that her son had died the day before. He was at his teacher’s house studying, when robbers burst in and began shooting. I could see the pain in her eyes, and all I could do was tell her how sorry I was for her loss. This strong and beautiful woman made me think about life's fragility and reminded me to cherish the gifts we have of family and health before they slip away.

I have barely slept these first few days—but they have been great days.

Day 1: Looked for an Apartment
Thanks to Divesh’s help, I got a cell phone and my apartment hunting landed me a nice place that is central, clean and managed by a woman named Happiness. That night, I had some tea in the hotel and started reading Jeffrey Sach’s book The End of Poverty, which was a recent gift from my friend Molly who I worked with in Peru several years ago. I was joined by Rustom, who had just flown in from New York. Rustom and I will be working very closely on this bednet project. He was central to the first investment deal that Acumen Fund made in AtoZ, and he is very passionate about this social enterprise space. He is quite entrepreneurial himself and should be an interesting person to work with.

Day 2: Got to Work in India or Africa?
As Rustom and I drove to the AtoZ factory, I tried to see the majestic mountain peaks of Meru (14,979 ft) and Kilimanjaro (19,340 ft), but they were hiding from me behind a few clouds. We went out to AtoZ’s new Olyset bednet factory being built- amazing! The nets start as tiny plastic blue pellets from Japan that get spun into thin strands, woven together with huge machines from China, cut and sewn up by local Tanzanian women and then quality checked by local women who ensure there are no flaws before stocking. This is an extremely complex process- the chemicals, the settings, the training, all have to be precise or else one mistake causes huge wastage. Including its new factory, AtoZ will employ nearly 4,000 people (mostly women near 20 years old) and produce over 7 million nets annually. They also produce textiles and plastic tableware such as bowls and packaging containers. Their expertise in plastics is why they were a perfect fit for the complex long-lasting insecticide treaded bednets.

AtoZ is a family business, and most of the senior management team at AtoZ is Tanzanian-Indian. There is a huge population of people with Indian ethnic ancestry here mostly because their ancestors originally came to Africa through interest in the spice trade via places like Zanzibar. Divesh is Indian and invited me to join his family at a wedding that night—wow- what a beautiful Hindu ceremony full of interesting traditions. In a room full of women wearing sparkling jewelry and bright colored saris, I watched the bride’s parents pour milk on the groom’s toe, the groom’s little sister rub something on his back with a bell sound to keep him awake, and the groom and the happy couple as they circled the fire pit, carried a coconut, and changed from white to red, complementing the beautiful henna designs. I even got to feed the bride sweets in the tradition of wishing that only sweet things to come to her life. Divesh’s family has wonderful personality and made me feel very welcome to their friend’s party. I did go to sleep that night wishing I had packed the fancy sari my friend Sujeet gave me 2 years ago and thinking: Am I in India or Africa?

Day 3: Rolling Up our Sleeves
Today we started to outline the project I will undertake this year (more on that later). In the AtoZ boardroom, I perused the pictures on the walls of people who have visited the factory—two Presidents of Tanzania, Bono, President of the Global Fund, US Ambassador, and now me ;-) … pretty impressive list. We began to dig into project planning and then took a break for lunch at a Chinese restaurant that is evidently the local favorite, Louie’s. I discovered that a block away from my new apartment is the standard place for wedding processions and pictures. Lots of people are all dressed up with music, singing in Swahili and dancing happily. It is quite a joy. Hakuna Matata

As I finished a leisurely walk on my new street, I wondered: how is it that women around the world are so good at balancing baskets on their heads and strapping large babies to their backs with just one small cloth? Impressive talents those.

Day 4: Lunch with Anuj
Today the CEO of AtoZ, Anuj, returned from a trip to China and we had lunch to discuss the project. Anuj was born in Kenya and is a phenomenal entrepreneur. His father founded AtoZ and he has run the company for nearly ten years. I spent the rest of the day analyzing some of the data on the effectiveness of a variety of distribution channels and preparing a presentation for the Google.org and Acumen teams who are coming to visit tomorrow.

Getting on the plane to Tanzania was bitter sweet. I was excited about the 8 month adventure ahead of me, but also sad that I would be leaving my sister, brother-in-law and friends in New York….and all for a strange city where I knew no one- Arusha.

On the plane ride, I scored a whole row of seats to myself as I watched the movie Gandhi (only after boring myself with Nacho Libre) and was reminded of why I work for social change (because its possible)…and ultimately, why I waved good bye to my family and friends.

On the layover in Amsterdam, I hopped on the internet to escape the smoke-filled airport cafes and decided to read the Arusha Times online newspaper where I found bittersweet headlines that went something like this:

Man murdered over cell phone dispute, but Caught by the Long Arm of the Law
Dar man brings Cholera Outbreak to Arusha
Independence Day Festival this Weekend

Amused because I had never heard anyone seriously use “long arm of the law,” I also found myself curious about the Independence Day celebrations. Evidently there are speeches and parades- most people have the day off work. A bit of history: Tanzania fell under German control in 1886, but was given to Britain after WWI. Present day Tanzania is the result of a merger between the mainland (previously Tanganyika) and Zanzibar in 1964, after both had gained independence.

I arrived in Kilimanjaro airport around 10pm and was met in the hotel by Divesh. Divesh is my new colleague at AtoZ, the company I will be working with on behalf of the Acumen Fund. Divesh has been managing the program which administers coupons that help the poor buy bednets at much cheaper prices ($3 rather than $6). Over a Coke, we chatted a bit about the culture and project and then he headed home so I could get some rest.

As I laid my head on the pillow to sleep, my mind was racing. I decided to name the gecko on the wall Fred. I was annoyed at the fact that I had been bitten thrice by mosquitoes already in such a short time and had forgotten to take the malaria meds. I also was thrilled that I was sleeping under a white net that cascaded around my bed like that of a princess…but thinking that the blue color nets made by AtoZ would be even more fun. Since the pole outside my hotel marked the exact center of Africa- midpoint between Capetown and Cairo- I wondered how long it would take to walk to Cairo from here and which animals I would encounter in the Serengeti along the way.