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SFGate, June 11, 2010 Craig Newmark Check out a forthcoming Ironbound Films documentary talking about real results from the Acumen Fund. It airs on 15 June on PBS. The theme is that providing charitable services such as handouts to poor people sometimes fails; however, social entrepreneurship, where people are treated as equals and customers, looks effective in raising people out of poverty. Acumen has succeeded using this approach, and seeks to expand the approach. Here's more: This doc looks at a group of young people with business backgrounds armed with a radical plan to end global poverty: support businesses that charge poor people for goods and services. Heidi, Joel, and Suraj go through a rigorous application process to participate in the year-long Acumen Fund Fellows Program. It sends 10 young professionals to work with Acumen-funded social enterprises in Kenya, India and Pakistan. The three business grads featured in the film embarked on a year-long fellowship with the Acumen Fund, which invests in market-based solutions that provide basic goods and services -- water, healthcare, housing, agricultural inputs and energy -- to the poor. The goal is to help create sustainable businesses that provide long-term solutions to the problems of global poverty. Acumen's approach replaces the culture of day-to-day handouts with the dignity of choice. It supports new business models that provide poor consumers with a voice that has the power to influence everything from price to product design. These aspiring Fellows believe that businesses that serve the poor have the potential to create large-scale solutions for developing world issues and feel the poor benefit from being treated as customers rather than passive recipients of handouts. The New Recruits shows honest, generous people attempting to use capitalist tools to uplift rather than exploit.
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