Inspiring Acumen Fund 2011 Fellows Part 2 of 3

To encourage some of the most brilliant professionals to harness and direct their business savvy on social enterprises addressing endemic poverty, The Acumen Fund announced their 2011 Fellows earlier this month. Let's taking a closer look at these extraordinary individuals and the social enterprises they will be working with for nine months, after participating in an intense eight-week training. All of the social enterprises to which the Fellows have been assigned are Acumen Fund investees, who will use these talented individuals to refine business plans, expand market, enhance supply chains, lead new business ventures and more.

Management consultant for Bain & Company, Bryan Farris will be assisting Ansaar Management Company in Lahore, Pakistan, further develop an integrated approach to quality, affordable housing. Launched in 2008 by Jawad Aslam, Ansaar Management is the outgrowth of the Saiban low-income housing project and Base of the Pyramid, a Pakistani for-profit development company. Now CEO of Ansaar, Aslam, too, was once an Acumen Fund Fellow. Ansaar's first project was a 100-acre, 3,000 unit housing development located in the outskirts of Lahore, target marketed to locals earning $100-250 USD per month. To develop nurturing healthy and sustainable communities, Ansaar created pioneering policies to promote private sector involvement with public-private partnerships. Farris will apply skills he honed at Bain & Company to help businesses be more profitable to further develop the integrated business model Ansaar Management developed.

Another management consultant, Mario Ferro from Italy, who collaborated with NGOs in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, will apply his expertise with expanding SMEs to refining the urban landscape and enhancing the quality of life for extremely low-income communities in Nairobi, Kenya through housing and sanitation projects. As a 2011 Acumen Fellow, Ferro will be assisting Ecotact develop more environmentally responsible housing and sanitation projects for the poorest communities of Nairobi. Ecotact, an Acumen Fund investee, was the recipient of the Africa Regional Social Entrepreneurs Award for 2009.

After working on environmental initiatives for Sanyo, Chikako Fujita of Japan started a rural electrification and development initiative in India for a NGO. Now as an Acumen Fellow, she is headed to Mumbai, India, to work with1298 Ambulances, which provides affordable emergency medical response services. Dial 1298 for Ambulance, a project launched in association with UK government agency London Ambulance, is an initiative started by a group of young professionals deeply committed to social and public service. 1298 Ambulance introduced a nationwide network of Life Support Ambulance Service intended to be accessible to anyone, anytime, anywhere through an easy to remember four-digit telephone number. Fujita will enhance the processes, systems, protocols, training and project implementation started by the London Ambulance Service to promote and expand life-saving services through the 1298 network.

With a solid background in the consumer goods industry and extensive microfinance experience, Shane Heywood of Jamaica will collaborate with the Netherland-based Western Seed, in Kitale, Kenya. Founded in 1990, after ten years of conducting research and testing new innovations, Western Seed develops, produces and distributes seeds that yield superior vegetable crops, offering growers around the world F1 hybrids with high performance. Heywood will apply his business skills to Western Seed's production of pioneering hybrids and distribution to small farmers in Kenya; seeds that may make the difference between poverty and prosperity.

Acquiring a broad range of proficiencies at Endeavor, JP Morgan and TechnoServe, consultant Khuram Hussain of Pakistan will join Husk Power Systems in Bihar, India as an Acumen Fellow. Husk Power Systems, a social enterprise, provides energy to more than 50,000 rural Indians in a financially sustainable, scalable, environmentally friendly and profitable manner. Using innovative biomass technology to convert abundant rice husks into energy, HPS owns and operates thirty-five 100 kW "mini power-plants" that deliver electricity to impoverished, off-grid villages in India's Rice Belt.

Despite the impressive accomplishments of these young professionals, their immediate future holds great promise for even more breakthroughs, ones that will literally change lives. Tomorrow's post will feature the remaining Acumen Fund Fellows of 2011 who will be working with for-profit and social enterprises to provide health care, safe water and lighting to those in greatest need.

Photo credit: Karl Hym