Accounting and Program Audit
Team
Log # 6
By Shelby Chambers
Tonight our speaker, Dr. Barrett P. Brenton, spoke to us about
Geographic Information Systems. GIS is an intergraded system using
hardware, software, and data capturing for, analyzing, managing,
and displaying all forms of geographically referenced information.
In his presentation, he went into depth about the many ways you can
use the GIS maps. He referred to them as “smart maps” because they
are capable of giving you much more information than a regular map.
I believe a way the Accounting Team could implement the GIS maps is
to research different enterprises. With these maps we could see
what kinds of businesses could prosper in each country. From there
we could give this information to the Daughters of Charity so when
they are having meeting with potential borrowers they can know what
to do with the money they will be receiving. Also with the GIS maps
we could tell the borrowers the best routes they can take in order
to make their business work if they have to travel to a market
place. There are so many opportunities for the borrowers with the
GIS maps. They are a great way to measure what is going on in the
area with the roads they have available, the amount of resources
they have, and how the borrowers can utilize the recourses.
The second part of the class today we talked about how social
entrepreneurs can use their brilliant ideas to change the world.
These social entrepreneurs have theses brilliant ideas and they
just need a way to get across to the people they are helping. A
couple weeks ago, we read chapter 12 in the David Bornstein book,
which talked about how the entrepreneurs could take different
routes in order to achieve social excellences. Some of the
different approaches he listed were giving control to the children
in the community, giving different a prospective about how to
approach the situation, and getting the citizens, government, and
business sectors involved. I believe once the social entrepreneurs
are involved in one of these initiatives they will be able to
deliver the results they need to get change in the environment they
are in. A way the Accounting Team can implement one of these
initiatives is to give the children complete control of how they
want the programs to be ran. The children are the ones who will be
able to implement this project and make a better future for
themselves. Once they have a focus, they can rely on themselves to
become successful entrepreneurs themselves and help themselves.
Finance and Risk Assessment Team
Log # 6
By John Marchi
This past week, I was reading for theology and came across this
quote Nelson Mandela once said: “we must use time creatively, and
forever realize that the time is always ripe to do
right.” I immediately thought of GLOBE because of the
limited time we have to set out to accomplish so
much. That made me think however, it is quality over
quantity, and that GLOBE is a continuing project beyond the
semester’s end, where each team picks up where you left
off. If something is worth doing, it is worth
overdoing. As a member of the Finance and
Risk Assessment Team, our primary responsibility is to track and
come up with solutions to improve loan performance, mitigate risk,
and also issue new loans. Currently, GLOBE operates in 4
countries in 2 regions- being Africa and the South Pacific. If we
are going to track loans, we need to do it right. We met in
practicum today to discuss the questions we came up with and
essentially decided to go back to square one. In doing
so however, we realized what we needed was very vanilla and quite
frankly, right in front of us. Although it is important
to find out external factors to loan performance, we must first
just identify the loan performance, by simply asking the Daughters
in the field questions about the loan itself and the
borrower. From those answers, the finance team can
derive further information.
In class, we learned about geographic information systems
(GIS). This is a powerful tool that is used by analysts that
utilizes geographic data and enables the user to add layers of
information. Such information could be mortality rates,
economic performance, and so fourth. It is user driven and
could essentially be molded however the MFI needs. We could
GIS to depict loan performance globally by using an algorithm that
utilizes data received from the field and create a map layer over
the region. Different icons could then depict difference
performance categories.
The finance team read up on the importance of a founder to the
social business. In the case of GLOBE, our founder is our
fearless leader, Dr. Sama; but also, each semester’s managers, and
the part they play in transitioning the following semesters
managers. In the end, GLOBE will only be as successful as the
managers, and the projects we initiate this semester will only be
as successful as the managers in the future make it. GLOBE is
more than a course; it is a family of borrowers, lenders and
managers, with one common ideal: micro-entrepreneurship.
Marketing and Fundraising Team
Log # 6
By Tiffany Yeung
For this weeks reading presentation my group is in charge of
presenting chapter 8 of Creating a World Without Poverty
Social Business and the Future of Capitalism by Muhammad
Yunus. I learned that Yunus was always interested in social
consciousness driven enterprises and creating for-profit and
non-for-profit companies with very clear social objectives. Yunus
does not do this for personal gain but rather for the social
purpose that creating a business enterprise will bring. I also
learned that social businesses are self-sustaining companies just
like profit maximizing businesses, so commercial lenders will have
no difficulty in funding them, and they will benefit from the good
publicity it will bring them.
Before reading this, I had no idea that 4 Grameen companies became
the social investors and created Grameen Health Trust and Grameen
Health Services to administer the Eye care Hospital series. In the
reading, it talks about Tom Bevan and Milla Junde, the founders of
the music group Green Children. Milla and Tom became intrigued by
the idea of social businesses after they visited Grameen Bank back
in 2006. They fell in love with the people of Bangladesh and even
wrote a song “Hear Me Now” which is about a Grameen Bank borrower
they had spent time with while in a Bangladeshi village. Milla
funded the first Eye care Hospital and she and Tom contributed the
entire sale proceeds of the music video “Hear Me Now” to build more
Eye care hospitals. I thought this story was very inspirational.
This couple that had no idea what a social business was or how it
worked made such huge contributions for the betterment of the
future. It was moving to discover that they instantly fell in love
with the Bangladeshi people and became such enormous advocates of
social business. Yunus is convinced that young people will be
excited about social business and the potential it has to transform
the world however there are some complications. One is that people
are only motivated by money, not by the desire to do good things
for the world. The other problem is that we are lacking the
enabling social and economic structure that will make social
businesses possible. I believe that social businesses will benefit
the poor and enable them to express their gift for entrepreneurship
but we have to find a way to put down the doubts and face the
obstacles that come with social businesses in order for it to be
successful.
Technology and Communications Team
Log # 6
By Elaine Vasquez
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The
unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable
man.”
- George Bernard Shaw
As we discussed the makings of a social entrepreneur and the
role of social entrepreneurship, the biggest difference that stuck
out to me was the passion of social mission. I am a firm believer
that passion should be at the heart of every great social movement
and without such passion; it is quite easy to give up. The biggest
difference between a social business and a regular business
however, is the ethics. Social businesses are purely motivated with
their sense of mission in mind and find themselves fully
accountable, a characteristic that is often missing in the
corporate world. Social change requires new innovation and ideas
that corporate interests cannot solve.
As the Information Technology and Communications team it is our
responsibility to inform our fellow students, the future of the
business world, about this new business paradigm. Students need to
know that there are other business options; that not every business
needs to be run with only profit margins in mind. I truly believe
that the only thing stopping the wide spread expansion of social
business is a lack of understanding and education about this
relatively new form of business. If our next generation of business
leaders are well versed in the option of being able to carry out
their entrepreneurial spirit while still keeping their drive to
promote social change, many, if not most, will choose to pursue
social entrepreneurship.