The Joburg buzz...

I was sitting at Dopio Zero near Emerentia with my parentals on Sunday at about lunch time, and is was wild, not bad wild, that kind of intangible buzz that only a big cosmopolitan city can have. Energy! And lots of it. There's something about this city - It's so good to be be back.

My first 11 days in Joburg

the journey has certainly begun!

My approach to date has been to just gather as much information as I can by meeting people who are both interesting and interested in social business. Given the fast growth of CSR in South Africa over the last couple of years, people are generally very receptive of the idea BUT there is little and mainly absolutely no knowledge of the concept.

However, there is a serious trend towards investing in more sustainable projects and companies are also looking for ways that they can use their company expertise in a lot of cases. So maybe that's the social business gap?!

Here is an overview of the interesting meetings I have had so far:

1. Amy Hertz who is running the social entrepreneurship certificate programme at GIBS which is the leading business school in South Africa. I had really interesting discussions with her about development in general, the difference between social entrepreneurship and social business and exchanged lots of contacts.

2. Bottom of the Pyramid Hub Team (GIBS) - they invited me to join a meeting in which they were discussing a book they are currently writing about BOP businesses in South Africa. So interesting, but very focussed on profit generating ventures.

3. Charles Rolinson who started an enterprise called Wizzit Bank that provides banking to the unbanked through cell phone banking. Fascinating work!

4. A CSR executive at a "big four" audit firm in South Africa, who gave me a very good idea of how CSR works in South Africa.

He explained where social business would fit into the black economic empowerment (BEE) scorecard which is a tool used to manage economic transformation in South Africa. Unfortunately, from what I can understand, social business would not fall under the "enterprise development" category which earns far higher points because it is not a profit maximising enterprise. This would mean that CSR programmes would receive a higher score (and thus be eligible for government tenders etc) if they rather invested in a social entrepreneur's venture. But this is something that I must look into to clarify.

5. An executive director of the same audit firm who is charge of infrastructure, government and healthcare. She has arranged me meeting with her sector leaders of education, healthcare, water and rural development which will give me an idea of the needs in South Africa.

That's all for now on the social business front :)

The red bus and the black taxi

Technically I'm meant to be in Spain now, but instead I write from my mother's beautiful spotty arm chair in the family room of my parents' house in Johannesburg, good old sunny South Africa.

The comedy of errors that got me here

So, here's what happened, a certain silly me went to the wrong terminal at Heathrow (approximately 3 weeks ago), and believe it or not, at 5am there are no trains operating between the precious terminals at that time of the morning. So, I hopped in a black taxi (by that I mean... I woke up the taxi driver who was sleeping on the back seat - not ideal) and asked him to take me to the right terminal so I didn't miss my ridiculously early flight to Frankfurt.

The genius of a taxi driver took a gap that was too small and wam bam (literally)... a bus, a red London bus for the purpose of this story, rammed into the side where I was sitting. The second genius of the morning was me, because I was not wearing a seatbelt and so I got flung across the back of the taxi. Again, not ideal.

Adrenalin rush! Going to miss my plane! So... despite the fact that I had 4 cracked ribs, I convinced the paramedics I was fine and asked the policemen to give me a lift to the terminal.

So my afternoon to explore Frankfurt was spent in a hospital being x-rayed and playing charades to explain which parts of me were sore. Fun fun!

After a hectic week at the Grameen Creative Lab in Wiesbaden, stories for another day, my dear parents decided it was a good idea for me to fly home for a little rib-recovery, so here I am.

3 weeks down, 3 to go. It's meant to take 6 weeks to get these silly ribs better!

From Bangladesh back to my roots!

My four months in Bangladesh really were among the best in my life so far but now it's time to take what I learnt there and try and find a way to apply it to South Africa.

Social business for South Africa

South Africa has the second highest income disparity (indicated by the gini coefficient) in the world. This is ideal for social business as it means that while there are a vast number of social needs to addressed, there is also a large wealthy upper class, a very active Corporate Social Responsibility industry and generally a lot of money being invested in unsustainable social interventions.

So, what I am trying to do now is figure out where and how social business fits into the South African development landscape.

A social business example: Grameen Danone

Grameen Danone aims to reduce malnutrition in women and children in Bangladesh. It does this by selling fortified yoghurts to these women and children.

It sells the yoghurts (called shakti doi in Bangla - strength yoghurt) at Tk6 in rural areas and Tk12 in urban areas such as Dhaka in order to cross subsidise.

All profits beyond the initial investment amount, which will be paid back to Danone, will be reinvested for expansion or improvement.

What is social business?!

Definition: A social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company which addresses a social goal.

Unlike charity, the investor also receives their initial investment back. So, social business is an alternative and complement to charities or non-profit organisations and provides a sustainable solution to a social problem.

Because it is a business, the social business dollar has multiple lives (the profits of the company are reinvested for expansion and improvement) in comparison to a charity where the dollar is used once and the charity is then forced to seek further funding to continue its operations.

See next entry for an example!

The Yunus Centre

The Yunus Centre, my office in Dhaka, is located in the Grameen Bank building in Mirpur-2, probably the most rural area of Dhaka. In Mirpur... one might see goats travelling on rickshaws, a big truck selling rice by the mug full to its bottom of the pyramid customers, fruit and veggie stalls measuring the quantity of produce using rusted scales, people peeing in the drains that run down the side of the pavement, cha (tea) stalls. It really is buzzing with activity! And all this is witnessed from a cycle rickshaw on my way to buy lunch :)

I hit the ground running with work at the Yunus Centre! And as predicted, I totally loved it :) The social business team's main objectives at the moment are to work with companies or other investors to establish a new social businesses and universities to establish Grameen Creative Labs which would work to engage students with the idea of social business.

Why Bangladesh??

I was always been involved in Interact (Rotary international's schools intervention) at school, and then SHAWCO (A student-run NGO that worked in the field of education in the townships (slums) surrounding Cape Town). As I was nearing the end of my degree and coming swiftly to the realisation that working in finance was just not my interest, Varkey George, the director of SHAWCO, assisted me in writing a proposal for a fellowship programme at NYCU's Centre of Civil Society and Philanthropy.

I didn't get the fellowship, but what I did get, was a new direction combining both my interest in development and business background. I was granted an internship at the Yunus Centre in Bangladesh, working in the office of Professor Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Laureate and founder of Grameen Bank, to work on social business.

So on the 1st of January 2010, I boarded a plane destined for Dhaka (Bangladesh not Senegal), one of the most overpopulated Muslim cities in the world, in a "least developed country" and one that I knew only as a cricket-playing nation and very little else. Reading the Lonely Planet guide of Bangladesh on the way over indicated a poor life decision, as the author, while having a great sense of humour, evidently wasn't particularly fond of Bangladesh. Rather amusing!

Demystifying Nicola Bashall

For those who don't really know me... or need an update, here is a little info to help you out.

I have just got back from working in Dhaka, Bangladesh at the Yunus Centre (office of Professor Muhammad Yunus - founder of Grameen Bank and Nobel Laureate) for four months and am in the process of figuring out what the next steps are. So for now, I am on a mission to meet as many interesting people (and anyone interested in what I have been doing in Bangladesh who is likely also to be interesting :)

Who am I?

I am a South African, born and raised in Johannesburg. We moved to Cape Town when I went to high school and I did Business Science (Finance honours) at the University of Cape Town, graduating in December 2009.

I am slightly eccentric, seriously appreciate a good sense of humour and love meeting new interesting people. Oh, and am a complete gypsy. My life which used to be located in the boot of my little orange Yaris, and until recently could be found in an stuffed backpack. I am a complete travel junkie - but prefer the "living in a place" kind of travelling where you actually grow to understand the culture, learn some of the language and actually LIVE there.