The Affero Blog

You Are An Influencer

By Marc Krejci in News

What makes an influencer? This short documentary explores what it means to be an influencer and how trends and creativity become contagious today in music, fashion and entertainment. The film attempts to understand the essence of influence, what makes a person influential without taking a statistical or metric approach.

While much of the video is focused on pop-culture influence, there was a quote in this video clip that I thought was particularly relevant to us:

“It’s not about one individual.  It’s about a brand embracing a culture.”

As an organization, we embrace your influence. You, the individual as a part of this community, is empowering and driving the Affero movement forward. You are the change maker. We embrace the culture we are all creating together as part of this organization. So speak up. Speak out. Make an impact on your peers. Share what you’re learning. And together we can all help end global poverty and injustice worldwide!

What better way could there be to use your influence?

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Microfinance + Property Rights
  Microfinance institutions have been hailed for the trusting relationships they have forged with the poor across the world. How can these networks be utilized? Some believe they could serve as an important tool in helping the poor understand their property rights, and access secure land title. Abby Callard reports.

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Kraft uses social media to tackle hunger
  Major brands have a long history of promoting social causes, such as Method’s partnership with Goodwill to facilitate clothing donations. Kraft, however, recently launched an effort that taps multiple brands and multiple social media to involve consumers in fighting hunger.

Announcing “Race The Trace”

By Marc Krejci in News

Ever since beginning my journey to become an ultrarunner, I have always wanted to raise awareness and support for a cause I passionately believed in.  Running can be an extremely isolated sport, but when you focus beyond yourself to support a worthy cause, that accomplishment suddenly becomes greater than any one individual could have ever accomplished alone.

There are a ton of great organizations out there to raise money for, but I’ve never come across anything that I care deeply about in order to rally behind with all of my heart, soul and mind.  That is, until now…

Today, I’m extremely excited to announce a venture we’re calling “Race The Trace“, an attempt to be the first person(s) in recorded history to run the entire 444 miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway to raise support and awareness for the Affero Project.

(continue reading…)

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Why the U.S. Should Send Troops (and Spooks) to the Congo
  They arrive in the night like monsters. In northeastern Congo, in a swath of thick forest the size of some European countries, the apocalyptic Lord’s Resistance Army rebel group is a constant, foreboding presence. The LRA’s fighters — many of them kidnapped teens — murder, abduct, rape and pillage while constantly eluding a half-heartedly pursuing Congolese army.
• Jacqueline Novogratz on the Pakistan floods and our shared humanity
  Founder of Acumen Fund Jacqueline Novogratz recently visited Pakistan (along with TED Curator Chris Anderson) to offer what help she could and work with local friends on their relief efforts. On returning to New York, she gave a short talk at TED HQ and shared the stories of the Pakistani people she met along with a profoundly touching video created using her photographs against the music of Peter Gabriel.
• Seeding Progress in Developing Countries
  Thirty years ago, if you asked development experts how to move people out of poverty, they would tell you, “Invest in agriculture.” Today, if you asked development experts how to move people out of poverty, they would tell you, “Invest in agriculture.” The problem, according to Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, who spoke at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, is we haven’t done it to the extent that we should have. And, he says, USAID is as guilty as anyone. As a result, many African countries are falling behind, food inflation has been hitting developing countries in extreme ways, and more people are sliding back into poverty.

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• How social networks predict epidemics: Nicholas Christakis on TED.com
  After mapping humans’ intricate social networks, Nicholas Christakis and colleague James Fowler began investigating how this information could better our lives. Now, he reveals his hot-off-the-press findings: These networks can be used to detect epidemics earlier than ever, from the spread of innovative ideas to risky behaviors to viruses (like H1N1).

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Incubator for socially focused ideas
  Just as it takes a community to raise a child, so too it takes a community of peers and advisors to launch a new business idea. That's roughly the thinking behind Bloblive, which we covered last year, and it's also at the heart of UK-based Bethnal Green Ventures, a new school for people who want to use the web and mobile tools to create social change.

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Investing in Microfranchising: What Should I Know?
  To date, this series has focused on the mechanics of microfranchising from the entrepreneurs' s point of view.  (The term "entrepreneur" represents both the franchisee and the franchisor.)  But to succeed, i.e. become profitable and scale, new businesses more often than not require infusions of capital to fuel growth. To that end, we at Ayllu would like to take a look at microfranchising from an investor's point of view. 
• Lord’s Resistance Army terrorizing people of Southern Sudan
  Albert Abuda might never see his children again. Long-haired, dirty men emerged from the dense bush around his village one day. They spoke a language he did not understand, fighting in a conflict equally as foreign and incomprehensible. They were members of the notorious Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA. They left with more than the year's harvest. His son is now likely training as a ruthless guerrilla warrior, and his 13-year-old daughter might be forced into commanders' harems.
• Escaping the Flood: A Story from Pakistan
  It was July 25th, and I was on my way back home to Lower Dir in the Swat valley. Lush green rice fields and shiny clean newly constructed restaurants and huts along the right bank of River Swat were an enriching and peaceful sight. After a challenging five years period of terrorism, militancy, and consequent displacement of a massive number of villagers, I was pleasantly surprised to see reconstruction almost completed.
• Our advice re: donations for Pakistan flood
  We’ve been researching the cause of disaster relief, with the goal of doing a better job than we have in the past serving the donors who come to us for help in the wake of a crisis. At this point our research is still in progress, but we can offer some basic advice to donors interested in helping as effectively as possible:
• MDG6: Malaria No More in Ghana
  This video shows how Malaria No More UK, working with Nets For Life, are working to ensure that communities in Ghana can have access to bednets. They recognise that delivery alone is not enough to get people to use nets, so they are training up local people to speak about why it is so important to use the nets, and use them properly.
• Solar lamp, water filter aimed at India’s poor
  The Sollys solar lamp and Sheba water filter are designed to help people in India who live without electricity and clean water.

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Microloans for clean energy in the developing world
  One-third of the world's population today has no access to any form of modern energy, relying instead on highly polluting fuels like wood and kerosene. Working on the premise that reliable energy is a key to fighting poverty — and that it needs to be clean — Energy in Common is a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to facilitating microloans to bring green energy to people in need.
• The Top 5 Most Ignored Humanitarian Crises | UN Dispatch
  The sluggish international response to the Pakistan floods emergency is actually not all that sluggish, at least compared to these humanitarian crises. Introducing the five most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crises:
• Learn more about the Millennium Development Goals
  Established 10 years ago in September 2000, the eight MDGs are an audacious set of goals for changing the world — with an equally audacious target of 2015 to reach them all. The UN has been tracking progress on the MDGs since 2000, watching as the economic slowdown pushed some goals back (like expanding access to education), while other goals inch forward (like increasing access to antenatal care). But throughout the list, much work remains to be done. You can find out more about each goal below; follow the links to reach the data-packed MDG Monitor mini-site for each goal, with stats, maps and individual success stories:
• China reviews law on death penalty
  China considers dropping use of capital punishment for 13 economic crimes.
• Hundreds of Roma Expelled from France: Humane Deportation or Xenophobic Slum Clearing?
  The French government vehemently defends their deportation campaign, saying it is “safe and humane” – claiming that sending in armed police at six in the morning, pulling mothers out of their homes and threatening to take their children is actually in the Roma’s best interest.
• Is Obama Failing on AIDS?
  President Obama is coming in for a very public flogging over a perceived lack of action on the global AIDS pandemic. Is it deserved?
• Fellows Friday with Sunita Nadhamuni
  Water and sanitation are among the most crucial issues facing India today, Sunita Nadhamuni notes in her interview with TED. But while these problems are daunting, Sunita says India’s many innovations in managing water can teach the rest of the world a thing or two.

Global Justice Links From This Week

By Marc Krejci in News

• Social-Profit Organizations
  Nonprofit should be nonexistent — the term, not the type of organization. The time is right to insist on a term that focuses on the investment, risk taking, and entrepreneurial imagination that have always been so essential to organizations that serve the social good. "Social-profit organizations" is a term that can better capture the contribution made by entities that have too long been known as charities or nonprofit groups.
• Sheryl WuDunn on our century’s greatest injustice
  Sheryl WuDunn‘s book “Half the Sky” investigates the oppression of women globally. Her stories shock. Only when women in developing countries have equal access to education and economic opportunity will we be using all our human resources.
• Timeline on Lubanga’s ICC Trial Regarding Child Soldiers
  The trial of Thomas Lubanga on war crimes charges that include the conscription of children, the first ever to be heard by the International Criminal Court, has been viewed as an important test of the international court’s credibility and effectiveness. Although the trial began in January 2009, Lubanga has been in ICC detention since March 2006. Beset by procedural hiccups, some observers fear the trial has gone on for too long. Others see the setbacks as a sign that justice is in fact being carried out in a court grappling with its first case.