Hello from New York!  Though I hoped to be home by now, a combination of flight delays and lengthy lines at immigration caused me to miss the last leg of my three-part journey home.  And so I find myself in Jamaica, NY for a day longer than expected.  On the bright side, it provides me the opportunity to update you all on my last couple weeks in India.

After a brief interlude to discuss the work of some impressive NGOs in Kolkata, we are back to the reason I travelled all the way to India in the first place: Drishtee. 

Exciting news! As I’ve hinted at before in my posts, I desperately hoped for the opportunity to see some of Drishtee’s on-the-ground infrastructure in the rural areas, and…it happened.  I traveled for two days with Gaurav, a Drishtee employee who coordinates between the Delhi office and dozens of the education and banking service franchises in the surrounding areas.  During the two day trip, we visited several banks, and several education kiosks.

We went to the banks to help formalize the partnership between them and the Drishtee franchisees; the former would provide loans and other financial services while the latter would seek out those—the uneducated and poor—who had hitherto not had financial services.  This example of partnership and focusing on core competencies is typical of Drishtee, in that Drishtee tends to facilitate the provision of services rather than directly administer them themselves by seeking out those more suited to do the field and other specialized work.

The education kiosks were located in small towns/village centers, surrounded by extensive cornfields, rice paddies, and other farmlands.  They consisted of usually two or three small rooms, dimly lit and compact, housing, of course, many desks and computers for the students.  At them, we met many students.  One particularly audacious girl engaged me in conversation herself in well-spoken English, although she had difficulty understanding my “accent,” as at the center they learn “Indian English,” which is just English with an Indian accent added.  Nonetheless, her daring and composure impressed me, as did her determination to better herself through language courses.  In fact, the determination of all the students impressed me, for while they attend the computer literacy or English courses at the Drishtee center, they simultaneously attend primary school, secondary school or college.

The people we met exuded friendliness and hospitality.  We were offered chai, water, or limeade as well as snacks at every place we stopped.  One of our local partners invited us back to his house, where his children giggled at meeting a white person for the first time.  The young son invited his friend over, and the family and I took pictures together in the backyard.  His wife felt so taken by the novelty of it that she invited me to stay for dinner and spend the night as well!

Most of my remaining time I spent working on the expansion of the franchisee training program, which consisted of training in leadership, social entrepreneurship, networking, and management.

My summer exposure to new experiences and ideas has imparted upon me much for reflection.  As I leave, I continue to ponder the notion of sustainability.  While I worked in education, another intern was developing a US-based fundraising component of the organization.  The irony and uniqueness of a decade-old social enterprise finally getting around to fundraising struck me.  While most organizations in the social sector consciously handicap themselves through the charity model, Drishtee commits itself to self-sustainability through a business model.  The new fundraising branch is not meant to be a regression but rather a supplement, while Drishtee will continue to finance itself primarily through pursuing profit.  This focus on self-sustainably contrasts with the donation dependent model of Apne Aap and All Bengal Women’s Union, which have grown less rapidly than the problems they address.

A key to Drishtee, besides self-sustainability, is empowerment of the poor.  Education empowers.  Good health empowers.  Financial services empower.  I think of the words of the Grameen founder Muhammad Yunus who said that “charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor.”  To empower the poor while making sure they keep the initiative is the challenge, a difficult one.  We often simply want to give them things but as Yunus points out this only “appeases our conscience” so that we feel better while the poor are still in the same desperate situation, perhaps even worse, as our charity has reinforced the mind frame of looking outward, rather than inward, to solve their problems.

I value the opportunity, and appreciate the efforts of all those who enabled it.  Thank you!

Christopher Comley, Drishtee Intern

12 August 2010

*Names have been westernized to respect privacy

 Hello everyone.  Please pardon the interruption in the narrative of my time at Drishtee, as I have another experience that I would like to share with you this post.  I hope you’ll enjoy it!

This past weekend I flew from Delhi to Kolkata, in the northeastern Bengal region of India, to learn more about anti-trafficking efforts in the area.  Kolkata is home to the largest red light district in India, Sonagachi, where thousands of women and girls are trafficked perennially.  I had read much about trafficking, but wanted to get a first-hand view of the environments where it occurs, and on-the-ground projects that combat it.  And so I met up with two interns from Apne Aap, an organization that lobbies for changes in the law concerning human trafficking, educates police on victim-friendly policies, provides education and vocational training to victims of trafficking and their children, and raises awareness of the issue. 

The weekend began with a visit to the Munshigunj red light area, comparatively small.

Mary, a local employee of Apne Aap, led us on our tour. She is a stout, proud woman, gentle but brimming with anger, and not afraid to show “tough love.”  When we first met, she examined us shrewdly with half-closed eyes, but then continued on to make light, laughter-infused conversation.  She works deeply with the women of Munshigunj, attempting unceasingly to persuade mothers to leave the profession, or at least to allow their children to be educated.    

Children from red light areas are largely uneducated.  The mothers often do not understand the value education, and prefer for their children to work.  The girls often become prostitutes themselves.  Indeed, Apne Aap has fought custody battles over girls who were taken out of their care and prostituted by their families, usually male family members.  Children of prostitutes also face widespread discrimination from educational institutions, preventing them from gaining an education should they even have familial support.  Despite the odds, Mary had succeeded in getting many of the children into schools.

Munshigunj red light area was rundown, the streets littered with garbage.  Many young children played in the streets.  Narrow, multi-story buildings, surrounded us as we entered, most of them brothels. 

After speaking with a woman inside a brothel, Mary returned, letting us know we had permission to enter.  That we were granted entry testifies to the strength of the relationship between Mary and the women of the red light district, who are wary of most people as a result of their exploitation.  We entered past a small wooden gate.  A damp, dimly-lit alley proceeded ahead of us for some thirty feet.  To our left and right, and on the floor above, small dark openings dotted the walls.  Each of these was a room where a woman or girl lived and “worked.” Some twenty women “worked” in each of the compounds.

The room was claustrophobically tiny.  A mere 6 x 4 feet, it barely permitted a narrow walking space alongside the bed, which fit snugly along the wall.  Open shelves lined the upper portions of the wall, baring rag tag clothing, a few cooking utensils, and boxes of condoms, though clients often refuse to wear them, leading to the transmission of HIV and other STDs to the women and girls.  A woman in her twenties sat atop the bed, nervously turning her head, and her young son accompanied her.  At night, he had to stay out in the streets while his mother serviced clients.

After touring Munshigunj, another employee, Sherry, led us into Sonagachi.  Though a petite, middle-aged woman who walked slowly and with a slight stoop in her shoulder, you could sense a steely quality to her spirit.  The paan, an Indian chewing tobacco, she kept wedged between her front teeth and bottom lip furthered this image.  Before entering Sonagachi, she instructed us to avoid any conversation.  At just five in the afternoon, women and girls had already begun to line the streets.  Nearly all the women were extremely light-skinned and bore features more reminiscent of east Asia than south, revealing their Nepali, Bangladeshi, or rural northern origins. We had arrived rather early for activity, and the women did not have to put up pretenses.  They stared vacantly at the ground with resigned faces, their lips painted bright red with a dark lining, faces covered in white powder to lighten the skin even more.  They are mostly uneducated, and come from destitute backgrounds.  Driven to extremes from poverty, those around them will commit unspeakable acts, selling their own sisters, daughters, wives, and neighbors into slavery. 

Often times, the women are tricked into becoming prostitutes, as was the case with Mary.  Following the death of her husband, she lived with her mother-in-law, who abused her and threatened her young child.  So, when a neighbor promised her a job in Kolkata, she accepted the offer.  Upon arriving, she was taken into Sonagachi, and forced to become a prostitute.  After a few years she finally escaped.  Apne Aap helped her to rebuild her life, and she began to work with the women and girls in the red light areas and also became a teacher.

I attempted to visit Sonagachi again later that night, when activity picks up, but wasn’t able to.  Both the people at Apne Aap and my guesthouse were extremely concerned for my safety, as a combination of drunk and high customers, pimps, and extravagantly corrupt police would be too-happy to prey on a foreigner, which my light skinned proclaimed me to be. Ultimately, their scruples disallowed them from assisting me, and unfamiliar with the area and unable to speak Bengali, the language most widely spoken in Kolkata, I had to tell myself it was for the best.

Of course, the best was saved for last.  On our final day in Kolkata, we visited centers run by Apne Aap and All Bengal Women, another respected NGO that and provides education, rehabilitation services, and vocational training, for trafficking victims as well as slum dwellers.

We witnessed an Apne Aap program that teaches women embroidery and sewing, and visited an informal education center that caters to the children of the red light areas.  That morning, the children were practicing the alphabet, days of the week, months, and greetings in Bengali, Hindi, and English.

In the afternoon, we transitioned to our next destination.  Behind a pair of ten foot tall iron gates is the comprehensive All Bengal Women compound.  It encompasses a boarding school with some 200 students, a restaurant, a pre-school as well as primary school, offices, lodging, and centers for vocational training in weaving, knitting, sewing, embroidery, and block printing.

We met many women and girls working in the vocational centers.  Most of them smiled and chatted with each other.  One particularly charismatic and saucy woman insisted on posing for us with her loom and products she had produced.  After checking the photos, she declared them “perfect” gesturing accordingly in the western fashion and sporting a toothy smile.

All Bengal Women’s Union (ABWU) also houses former prostitutes.  In their mid-thirties, demand for women declines and they are usually thrown out by their pimp.  Uneducated, unskilled, sick, and suffering trauma, she is unable to support herself. 

To be able to witness the intensity of transformation that can occur when a victim of trafficking receives the love and support of people from Apne Aap or ABWU is inspiring.  At the same time, there is still much room for improvement in the way trafficking is combated, especially in terms of sustainability.  Whereas Drishtee, the organization at which I intern, is self-sustaining as it runs off a business model and raises profit, both Apne Aap and ABWU rely on a combination of grants and donations, which are subject to volatility and interfere with the expansion of the organizations.  As such, there has been little progress in reducing human trafficking, and in fact it has expanded over the past decades.  Both organizations do have quasi-businesses on the side, such as the restaurant or garment making programs discussed, but the profit margins are small.  To be able to design a social business that simultaneously combats trafficking and rehabilitates victims while earning profit to cover its costs and expand operations would be incredible.

As we walked around, a girl dressed in an oversized, yellow tunic quietly shuffled by, avoiding eye contact.  She stared determinedly at the ground, and seemed to stiffen when we were too close. As we were leaving, groups of exuberant school children began to greet us.  “Hello, what is your name?” “Chris”  “Aaahh.  Very nice!”  Encouraged by the interactions with other children, the girl in the yellow tunic approached us and introduced herself, telling us she enjoyed drawing.  On the way to the airport the other intern turned to me asking, “Ya know that girl was rescued from Sonagachi, right?”

Christopher Comley, Drishtee Intern

26 July 2010

Hello again from Delhi!

The past two weeks saw me busily developing the content for the two courses I mentioned in my last post, one on salesmanship and the other on business communications skills.

Drishtee helped pioneer business in the rural market, and has demonstrated that there is much untapped potential—markets, labor, entrepreneurship—in the villages.  Not only has Drishtee established rural education centers, but also rural business process outsourcing centers (BPOs), and is in the initial stages of developing a new program to establish rural manufacturing centers as well.  With the example of Drishtee, many other businesses have begun to explore the rural areas for business and recruiting opportunity, and villagers themselves are more actively seeking entrance into the formal economy. 

The courses offer training in a variety of areas that excite because perhaps just a decade or two ago no one could have imagined how relevant they would now be to the rural areas.  Areas include the basics of sales and marketing, product promotion, telemarketing, customer relations, “how-to’s” for preparing CVs, making presentation and business proposals, and skills for success in interviews and other business situations. 

That said, this project did keep me confined in the office during the workday.  However, my new project—to develop the training for franchisees, details still fuzzy—should allow for more travel opportunities, which I look forward to greatly.

Christopher Comley, Drishtee Intern

12 July 2010

After nearly two days of travel, I finally arrived in India, surprisingly un-jet lagged as I napped soundly for seven hours stretched across four seats on the airplane during my flight from Helsinki to Delhi.

Once off the airplane, I immediately converted my dollars into rupees, and bought a cell phone, an item that, despite the widespread poverty in India, everyone seems to have—street-side fruit vendors and rickshaw drivers included.

My pleasant nap energized me for the day, and I began my first day at the office a few hours after arriving in India.  Satyan Mishra, the founder of Drishtee, welcomed me to the office.  He founded the organization in 2000 to meet the needs of the nearly 70% of Indians who lives in the rural areas, especially the poor.  Despite the number of people living in the villages, a dearth of infrastructure complicates the lives of its residents, as the government finds it more convenient to focus on urban areas, where people are more educated and can press for their rights.  Drishtee now operates an impressive rural supply-chain of 14000 kiosks through local entrepreneurs, providing basic consumer goods, healthcare, microfinance and banking services, employment at rural BPOs, and education services. 

I am currently working within the education division of Drishtee.  Drishtee’s rural education centers currently provide training in English and computers, two of the most lacking skills in rural India and sorely needed for the modernizing Indian economy.

My job is to help expand Drishtee’s education offerings beyond English and technology into business training.  The project I’m working on is to develop the content for two new courses that Drishtee will offer in marketing and in business communication skills.

I am extremely happy to be furthering Drishtee’s work in education.  In my short time in India, the disparity in education has made itself evident.  While at work and in establishments like malls or restaurants I can get by using English, I cannot do the same with people in the lower class such as roadside vendors, servants, or rickshaw drivers, most of whom have emigrated from rural areas to the city looking for employment. 

Christopher Comley, Drishtee Intern

29 June 2010

Reflecting on my experiences at Drishtee, I realize that I had been very lucky to have my first internship in an organization that needed interns in order to operate at its full capacity. This really hit me when I started my internship with Citibank in Tokyo, once I said goodbye to Delhi and returned home to Japan. I knew that the financial sector would be vastly different from an NGO, and the way they view interns is different as well. Although my internship at Citi was also a very good experience, I would recommend students to try interning in smaller organization or NGOs in additioan to the traditional MNCs. In smaller organizations you hold a larger stake in the company, so you are given more responsibilities. That’s what an internship is supposed to be about, isn’t it?
In the case of an NGO like Drishtee, my work could have either positively or negatively impacted the lives of a dozen village women. I’ve been keeping touch with my mentors, so it seems that the project  is looking to be a success. The sanitary napkin manufacturing unit plan has been put aside as I had recommended, but the stitching center is starting up very soon. I’m really glad that my work and recommendations have been taken up by the Drishtee team, and I am keeping in touch with them to see how everything pans out.

Anjani Vedula, Drishtee Intern

1 Sept 2010

I have already completed seven weeks at Drishtee, and am now back home in Japan. The weather is much more bearable here and I don’t have to watch out for cow dung while walking on the streets, but I cannot help missing life in India.

Time has flown by incredibly fast.  A lot has progressed since my last blog post, so here is a list to sum it up.

1.     We talked to a team in Uttarkhand (another Indian state) doing the same sanitary napkin project as us. Main conclusions: main way to be successful is to have a large government organization willing to buy all that we produce/or large orders.

2.     Compiled all the costs (which we got from Mrs.Rajaram and the UK team) into a financial cash flow statement.

3.     Compiled all our documents to prepare a business plan/proposal and cash flow statements to send to organizations requesting for grants/loans for the Sanitary Napkin Project.

4.     Prepared three training booklets/presentations: 1) Generalized, 2) For Production Team, 3) For Sales Team.

The main thing I was working on for the past few weeks has been entrepreneurial training for the women involved in the sanitary napkin project. Since most of these women have only studied until 8^th or 10^th grade, they need to be taught the basics of accounting, finance and marketing in the most basic terms possible. Although I recommended that Drishtee send an intern to help these women run day-to-day operations for the first 2~3 months, eventually, we want these women to run their business on their own. I cannot help being cynical and asking myself if uneducated village women can really do this, but my mentor and colleagues’ faith in the women has taught me not to underestimate their abilities. So I did my best to prepare a multi-day training program with as many diagrams/pictures and interactive exercises and role-plays as possible so that these women can learn the basics of business.

Although I still believe that the sanitary napkin production unit should not be implemented yet, because of lack of demand, Drishtee has plans for other mini manufacturing units for Bati. The women going though the entrepreneurial training will have the knowledge to take care of these new projects as well, so they will get employment soon. I am a little disappointed that no concrete action could have been taken to start up any manufacturing unit while I was in India, but I am a believer of slow-and-steady, so I hope to keep in touch with my mentor and receive updates.

My experience at Drishtee over-all was more than I could have hoped for. I was given an extremely interesting project, and, thankfully, I was able to contribute to its progress and development. I also made great friends with my colleagues and now have a new passion for social entrepreneurship. I am really grateful to PennSEM for allowing me to have to have this opportunity!

Anjani Vedula, Drishtee Intern

14 July 2010

It has been another two exciting weeks at Drishtee, in Noida, India! We have made some progress on assessing the feasibility of the low-cost sanitary napkin manufacturing unit in a nearby village Bati, and it has forced us to step back, and think about what it realistically possible. Our main step forward has been the visit to a similar manufacturing unit near Delhi. Although took the 2 hour journey there after lots of correspondence with its high-profile owner, Ms. Janaki Rajaram, she didn’t turn up due to some misunderstanding. As she always mistook us for some other group during our many phone calls, we ultimately decided that Ms. Rajaram needed a personal assistant to coordinate her life for her. Anyways, we were able to extract some useful information from the women working there, including the fact that Ms. Rajaram  took care of the ordering the raw materials, marketing the product and that the equipment was funded completely by grants.

This was exactly the kind of information we were hoping NOT to hear because it was Drishtee’s aim to start a self-sufficient manufacturing unit that was run by the rural women themselves with little external assistance. They were planning to help the women take out a microfinance loan for the equipment, worth almost $1500, and then pay back the loan over a year and a half. Although my financial analysis had showed that the women would need to sell about 2000 packs of napkins a month (which is a ridiculously high amount), just to break even, I was hoping that by visiting another unit, we would see something that would explain how this could be feasible. However, the unit we visited just showed us the opposite…and ultimately convinced me that without a grant to buy the equipment with, the women would not be able to pay back their loans. So I talked about this to Swapna, my mentor, and she agreed. NEXT JOB: writing a business plan that we can send to organizations to convince them of this idea and procure grants….

Now a little bit more about how I have been culturally immersing myself in my homeland! Some of my family in India came to visit for the weekend, and my mom and sister came to join me from Japan. They all wanted to hang out in malls the whole weekend, but I was able to drag them all the Dillihaat, which is this adorable village market with handicrafts from all over India. I was able to practice my bargaining and got several great deals on handmade scarves and some decorations for my dorm room next year. A definite must-visit foranyone who comes to Delhi!

Anjani Vedula, Drishtee Intern

8 June 2010

I’ve been working at Drishtee for about 9 days now, and my experience so far has been nothing short of amazing. I came in expecting to be given limited responsibilities, and to learn mainly through observation, but instead I was given a brand new project to work on with the guidance of my mentor, Ms. Swapna Mishra.

This project is part of Drishtee’s new initiative called “Capacity Building & Livelihoods Generation” for Below Poverty Line Youth, which basically aims to help young adults in villages find employment. Although it is relatively easy for men to find jobs by going to near by cities and towns, the same isn’t the case for women. So one of the ideas Drishtee had to help rural women find employment was to start a mini rural manufacturing unit for low-cost sanitary napkins, which would be owned and run by a group of 7~10 rural women entrepreneurs.

This idea has been used in many villages across India, after an inventor named A. Muruganandam created a low-cost, easy-to-use sanitary napkin making machine. Although it has supposedly been successful in villages in other parts of India, it was my job to see if this machine would be profitable in a nearby village, Bati.

On my second day of the job, I battled the 110­ºF heat to go to Bati with Swapna, my mentor, and see the progress that Drishtee had made this far in this project. The village visit was definitely an interesting experience, as I had never been to an Indian village this small before. This was not an agricultural village, so it was definitely not as well off as the lush, green villages I had seen in Bangladesh or in South India. As we went around to each house to call the women to come to the Drishtee village office, one of things that struck me was the friendly, open nature of all the villagers, especially the children. Since holidays had begun, all the kids followed us around, giggling and smiling whenever I looked back.

There were about seven women who came to the office, and these were the ones who were interested in working for sales in this sanitary napkin project. Swapna had gotten them to start selling an existing low-cost brand of sanitary napkins door-to-door to gauge demand. Unfortunately, they faced many social barriers, especially the resistance to change. Women were accustomed to using unhygienic cloths and rags instead of sanitary napkins and didn’t want to spend the extra dollar on this new luxury.

It was my job to basically figure out how to make this project work, and get it to work in the upcoming weeks.  So for the past week or so, I have been focusing on evaluating the feasibility of this project. One of my main concerns is that the sanitary napkin making machine requires a large investment and constitutes a large fixed cost, so I have been trying to see how that investment can be reduced. Another concern is that there is not enough demand in Bati by itself to validate starting this manufacturing unit, so we need to see if we can supply surplus napkins to nearby hospitals or retail points. Basically, a lot of work remains to be done.

One the things that I really enjoyed about this internship so far was the fact that my opinions were given importance, despite the fact that I’m just a college student. The work atmosphere is really friendly and laidback, and I’ve become good friends with the other interns. I really look forward to learning a lot more as I keep getting more and more involved in this project.

Anjani Vedula, Drishtee Intern

1 June 2010

As I approach the half-way point of my internship here at First Book, I have begun to encounter several themes which stand out to me as interlinked, forming one of the core questions facing social enterprise today.  When this question is ignored, the effect varies on the spectrum from being inconsequential to substantial, but when answered thoughtfully and strategically, the outcome can improve and build upon the organization’s long-run goals and mission.  For the sake of the development of this idea, I will call the question at hand one of identity.  To be more specific, I think the who-are-we-now, what-have-we-been-in-the-past, and where-are-we-going chronological landscape is implicitly linked to identity.  For an organization like First Book, I think this question is further complicated by the fact that the concept of nonprofit is in the midst of transforming from the traditional perception of what a nonprofit has been in terms of language, the what, and the how.   From my interactions with the First Book staff, I think this is a question at all times in the back of their minds and influences big decisions.  Thus far, however, I have only seen it arise when attached to smaller pieces of the bigger picture.  I will continue to explore this issue from two sides, the academic simply because I am in the habit of addressing conceptual questions from a disciplinary, systematic approach as a student, and the applied because this is the approach more likely to resonate with the actual work of a social enterprise today.

Among some of the big questions related to the identity question at large include the following: First, what is the difference in concept and practice between a nonprofit and a social enterprise, and what, if any, are the pitfalls and/or advantages of being labeled as one or the other?  Second, how is social media changing the sphere in which nonprofits work, and how is an organization’s use of social media becoming an indicator of the organization’s success or failure overall?  Third, are nonprofits facing an existential threat as the touchstone of corporate social responsibility in the private sector becomes more and more embedded in a company’s mission and work?  I’ll begin in these blog posts by looking at some examples, big and small, of where in my work at First Book these questions have come up.

First, I’d like to focus on the ambiguous territory and terming of nonprofit versus social enterprise.  While a larger question of identity looms in the background, one quality that I have observed which contributes greatly to First Book’s success is versatility.  Maintaining a consistent picture of an organization’s mission and work is undoubtedly important for integrity’s sake, but fluency in the different languages of the public, private, media, and constituent circles is equally critical.  However, among all the different modes of communication First Bok employs, one piece of phrasing remains the same throughout, no matter the audience: First Book, a national nonprofit.  Whether it’s an introduction to a potential corporate partner, another nonprofit, a donor, or a recipient of First Book’s funds and resources, First Book aligns itself in the nonprofit space.  Simply put and simply understand, nonprofit conveys that an organization is chartered for “other than profit making activities.”  And unless, it’s a school or a hospital, this also means that the organization most likely has some sort of philanthropic goal and depends on external funding.  People feel secure donating to a nonprofit, believing that their money is going directly to the cause at hand, which implicitly leads one to make the conclusion that donating to a “non” nonprofit, in which category social enterprise falls, is risky or ineffective.

The truth is, neither are necessarily the case.  Thus, nonprofit truly becomes a loaded term.  For First Book, I see the precarious balance between nonprofit and social enterprise exemplified in the evolution of book distribution strategies.  First Book began giving new books to kids through small-scale donations and outside volunteerism.  Then, the Book Bank was developed, which gave publishing companies an alternative to pulping books sitting stagnantly in inventory while simultaneously providing free, brand new books to children who otherwise would have never read them.  The third landmark down the book distribution path was the First Book Marketplace, an online store carrying books at deeply discounted prices at or below retail, with an average cost of $1.85 per book.  The revenue from these sales, generated in a variety of ways including donations from corporate partners, goes to supply costs; however, for each book sold, First Book acquires a 10 cent profit.  But the profits don’t make First Book any richer.  Rather, the goal is that this market-based model could potentially mean self-sustainability.  In other words, First Book would no longer necessarily need to rely on funds from external sources and donors.

It is clear that this step in the social enterprise direction would only increase efficiency, advancing First Book’s goal of global access to books and in a sense, literacy itself (if literacy is in fact something to which people require access, and I would argue it is).  But what would this mean for how First Book defines itself, not only in terms of its own practices but in relation to its niche in the nonprofit world, including competitors and eligibility for certain policies, donations, awards, etc.?  What does this say about nonprofits in general?  Are social enterprise models and structures on their way to replacing nonprofits as we know them?

My answer to the last question, at least for now, is no—or, no, not quite.  The First Book Marketplace has provided opportunities of remarkable growth for First Book, and it will continue to do so.  But the Book Bank is still a vital source of free books for programs that can’t afford even the two dollar book.  With this analogy, one can see that social enterprise methodology is certainly creating innovative solutions to problems, but the need for the intermediary nonprofit and simple charity still exists.  School bakes sales to protect the manatees and large social enterprises like United Way, the Salvation Army, and the American Cancer Society all have the same core interest—providing aid where there previously wasn’t any.  And so, maybe the distinction between nonprofit and social enterprise isn’t so important after all.  Or maybe, an organization can be both.

Melissa Goodman, First Book Intern

7 June 2010

Cherry popsicles, sunburns, and pool noodles come to mind as I recall the lazy summer days following the last day of school.  But, above all else when thinking about what summertime means, I find myself reminiscing over the hours I spent lost to the wonders of summer reading.  And this summer, besides a different selection of titles in mind, my reading plans were no different.  Fresh from Philadelphia and my sophomore year at Penn, I stepped off the train in Union Station in Washington, DC armed with several sorely missed novels that had sadly dropped down on the priority list in the face of more intimidating Norton anthologies and bulk packs of critical articles.  I charted out my summer reading waters with the following course: I’d begin with some of the guilty pleasure reading we all know and love (and try and cover up, rather unsuccessfully), work my way through a few pulp fiction favorites, throw in a few of the recommendations my mother will not stop belaboring, and at last boldly reach my destination by blowing the dust off of two Gabriel Garcia Marquez novels I had received on my birthday last October (yes, that’s how far behind I am in my reading).

However, in the last three weeks, my flashbacks of elementary school summer vacations have grown ever more vivid.  I’ve traded in Michael Chabon for Roald Dahl and Love in the Time of Cholera for the Ramona Quimby series (which, made for a particularly awkward first impression on my summer roommate, resulting in me having to explain that I can, in fact, comprehend books above the fourth grade reading level).  But, why the sudden and seemingly random regression in my choice of reading materials?  Have the international law statutes and European Union treaties finally taken their toll?

On the one hand, absolutely yes.  On the other hand, as I began my internship with First Book, a national nonprofit which provides free and low-cost books to community programs and schools serving children from low-income families, I realized that in order to fully grasp the impact of what it means to read your first book, let alone become a book owner, I would have to return to the ABCs of children’s literature.  Thus, it was with giddy pleasure that I paid my new neighborhood public library a visit and began working my way through the greats of the children’s classics (I think it’s safe to say now that in a week or two, I will graduate proudly to the Young Adult section).  On my first day at the First Book office, I walked down the halls to find bookshelves, in addition to my soon-to-be colleagues’ and mentors’ desks, lined with beloved children’s titles, including editions uniquely provided by First Book like a bilingual version of Eric Carle’ s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Anyone who didn’t walk home at the end of the first day inspired to tap into her inner child with a bedtime story should move soul-searching to the top of the to-do list.

I expected to become a student of social enterprise work this summer, but what I didn’t count on was a trip down the path to revisit the keystone at the heart of my, and truly everyone’s, infinitely renewable student status.  This keystone I am referring here to is, of course, literacy.  And by student, I allude loosely both to the literal journey we take from pre-K through college as well as to the Curious George alter ego we all have constantly running off with our yellow hat, forcing us to chase after discovery and see the world creatively.

If you’ve gotten this far, you may be thinking, wonderful—children’s literature, we’re all on board.  And, it’s true, my first couple weeks at First Book have not converted me (completely) to the practice of throwing out any book with print smaller than size 14.  I suppose my point here is to drive home one of the first lessons I’ve learned: It’s one thing to run a nonprofit with business strategies or a business with charity oriented goals, but it’s a completely other type of venture to organize an effort committed to seeing through to the end a critical and debilitating universal problem like illiteracy, despite the different makes and models of swords and shields acquired along the way.  The tools only get you so far without the guiding belief and focus of a single cause.  Too often, do-gooder organizations are pinned down by the need to retain a certain status, that shining 501(c)(3) title which allows access into the pockets of corporate partners, the minds of fellow nonprofit players, and the hearts of community stakeholders.  What about the endless possibilities for providing resources and touching lives if the barrier were to be broken down?  In the next several weeks, as I continue to immerse myself in the work of First Book, I hope to investigate the crucial question with which cause-oriented organizations like First Book now find themselves facing: Nonprofit or self-sustaining social enterprise?  Through my explorations, I will lend as much insight to this question as possible, in addition to sharing the everyday tasks and challenges of the thing First Book does best—getting books to kids who don’t have them.

Melissa Goodman, First Book Intern

27 May 2010