From sam-daley harris brilliant speech in sao paulo recently - incidentally in this of all years of microbanking opportunitity its s.america's turn to host the microcreditsummit - details
http://regionalmicrocreditsummit2009.org/

Sam Daley-Harris’ Remarks on Bringing Microfinance Innovations to Latin America
Last week Sam Daley-Harris spoke at a meeting of regional leaders Democracy in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The meeting was held at the Global Center for Development and Democracy with the goal of advancing democracy and alleviating poverty in Latin America. Sam joined a panel of 12 former Latin American presidents expressing a commitment to poverty alleviation and social inclusion the region to discuss innovative ways to improve microfinance’s effectiveness and reach in the region. Read Sam’s full remarks below.
“I want to begin by saying that it is a great honor to speak with the distinguished former presidents from Latin America. Out of respect for your deep commitment to change and progress in the region, I intend for my remarks to be provocative in order to push us to think and act in new ways.
I want to start by saying that microfinance in Latin America has much to be proud of. But in the Microcredit Summit’s count of the 106 million people with a microloan in 2007 who were very poor when they took their first loan, 97 million were in Asia and a little more than 2 million were in Latin America. Said more fairly, 78 percent of the very poor in Asia have accessed microfinance compared to only 24 percent of the very poor in Latin America. I know that most of you not only know Muhammad Yunus, but you count him as your friend. You have probably heard his answer to the question asking what his strategy was in creating Grameen Bank. His answer was, [Quote] “I didn’t have a strategy, I just kept doing what was next. But when I look back, my strategy was, whatever banks did, I did the opposite. If banks lent to the rich, I lent to the poor. If banks lent to men, I let to women. If banks made large loans, I made small ones. If banks required collateral, my loans were collateral free. If banks required a lot of paperwork, my loans were illiterate friendly. If you had to go to the bank, my bank went to the village. Yes that was my strategy. Whatever banks did, I did the opposite.” [end of quote]
For most of us that statement brings a smile to our face, recognition of a basic truth about our commercial banking system and its failure to serve the poor. It also reminds us of the fact that microfinance would never have existed if the rules of banking had not been broken. But my challenge to us is this. When we hear those words we’re awakened by them and we’re inspired by them and then we turn to our central bank governors, our superintendants of banks, our finance ministers and ministers of the economy and our aid agency specialists and ask them to build and regulate microfinance in our countries and we cannot figure out why very often it turns out looking so much like mini-commercial banks. Why it still misses the very poor. Just as Muhammad Yunus had to break the rules of banking there are microfinance leaders today, including Prof. Yunus, who are breaking the rules of microfinance to create new breakthroughs. The Latin America Caribbean Microcredit Summit is June 8-10 in Cartagena, Colombia. We polled microfinance leaders in Latin America asking for their top choices for plenary and workshop topics. By far the biggest vote getter was this session: “Breaking the Rules of Microfinance to End Poverty: Innovations from Around the World.” I was moved by the fact that this was what the microfinance leaders from Latin America wanted most. One of the innovators these leaders will hear from in Cartagena is Ingrid Munro of Jamii Bora in Kenya. I know that former President Toledo knows Ingrid and her work. Listen to Jamii Bora’s innovation and think about what it could mean for the most intractable problems in Latin America.
Jamii Bora, which means good families, is a Kenyan microfinance institution that has grown from lending money to 50 women beggars ten years ago in one of the worst slums of Nairobi to serving more than 200,000 members today. One of those members is Joyce Wairimu. Wairimu was one of the 50 women beggars who started Jamii Bora with founder Ingrid Munro in 1999. Munro calls her one of the fast climbers out of poverty. How fast? In ten years Wairimu has built six businesses and employs 62 people.
Another of the fast climbers is Wilson Maina. Before Jamii Bora, Maina was a thief, one of the most wanted criminals in Mathare Valley slum. Starting with a loan of $20, Maina has built four businesses and a new life for himself and his family. Along the way, he has convinced hundreds of youth to get out of crime. I promise you, no other microfinance institution in the world gives loans to thieves successfully.
So where does Munro’s capacity to innovate and defy conventional wisdom in the microfinance field come from? It started 20 years ago when she and her husband adopted three street children. It was in the fertile ground of her relationship with the mothers of her sons’ friends in the streets—women who were beggars— that her profound insights would grow. When Munro, a Swedish trained architect and urban planner, retired from the African Housing Fund in 1999, she thought she would also retire from the little group of 50 beggar women with whom she had been working. But when the women pled with her not leave them, Munro agreed to stay and insisted that they must lift themselves out of poverty. For Munro that meant the women had to start developing the discipline of saving on a regular basis.
She had them come every Saturday with about 50 cents in savings. When they deposited their 50 cents she would give each of them two scoops of corn and one scoop of beans for free. She admits now that for those first two months she was tricking them into saving with the lure of free corn and beans. After two months, the bags were empty, but the beggars continued to save and the free corn and beans never returned.
But Munro didn’t stop at providing microcredit to help the poorest slum dwellers. Jamii Bora decided to build a town with decent housing and business space for her entrepreneurs. She said, “Every poor person’s dream is to move out of the slums, not patch up the slums.” On January 30th, that’s exactly what happened when the first 246 families moved out of the slums and into the newly created Kaputiei town with nearly 1,800 families to follow. For the same monthly mortgage they had paid for their one-room shacks, each family now lives in a home with two bedrooms, a bath, a kitchen and a living room. But this is sub-sub-prime lending that works because in order to qualify for a mortgage the residents have to have successfully repaid three micro-business loans.
Another of Munro’s breakthroughs and secrets to success is that all of the Jamii Bora staff are former members, previously destitute themselves. Proposal I: There should be a Sao Paulo Declaration coming out of this meeting and another at the Ibo-American Summit later this year where the former Presidents and the current Presidents of Latin America commit to having the region lead in successfully reaching and empowering the very poor with microfinance even beggars, thieves, and prostitutes in the worst slums and barrios of the region.
But I warn you, this hasn’t happened thus far because it breaks all the rules. The rules of microfinance say we must only work with the economically active poor. The rules of microfinance say that the very poor cannot benefit from microfinance, they need safety nets first. This declaration is doomed to fail, truly doomed to fail if in implementing it we turn to those who embrace the rules. There must be a commitment to “break the rules of microfinance to end poverty” and we must draw from innovations in Latin America and around the world. There must be study visits to programs working successfully with the ultra poor: Jamii Bora in Kenya and Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh. There must be competitions to determine which practitioners and which government officials in each country are most serious about reaching the ultra poor and a commitment to send those leaders on the study trips. And I encourage this group of former Presidents here today to also take such a trip along with current presidents. This kind of fundamental change will only happen if you lead the way.
Several months ago I asked microfinance leaders working in Latin America to provide additional policy proposals for me to bring to this meeting today. Let me discuss a few of them and just mention a few others.
Proposals II and II: Create a regulatory framework that 1) allows microfinance institutions to accept and on lend deposits and 2) doesn’t require an ownership structure that pushes the microfinance institutions (MFIs) away from reaching the poor. The push for allowing MFIs to take savings came from ACCION, Deutsche Bank, RAC, COPEME, Global Partnerships and others. This is something that Prof. Yunus has been encouraging for years. Here is what Rick Beckett of Global Partnerships said about both points:
….MFIs need to access saving to serve the needs of borrowers, lower their cost of capital, and remain competitive and sustainable. Many regulatory structures in Latin America presume or require private equity ownership of regulated financial institutions and thereby limit or complicate efforts by a mission driven NGO to become regulated, access savings, and maintain full ownership control without introducing owners into the equation whose motivations are more economic in nature [and less focused on social returns]. In each country, there could be a regulatory classification that encourages non-profit ownership of a regulated entity with full access to savings provided the MFI maintains sound financial ratios and performance [so that deposit holders are protected]…. Moreover, we’d like to see those regulations allow for the MFI to employ a range of business models without restriction (e.g. integrating education and health services at communal banks)…Such a regulatory structure would encourage the development of social enterprise, more akin to what we see in Asia, and encourage the development of a “mixed market” where social and commercial enterprises compete on a more even playing field and people living in poverty benefit from a broader range of choices in their MFI.
As Mario Otero of ACCION said about savings, “Those banks that can count on savings as a major source of funds for on-lending are the least affected by the global financial crisis. The same holds true for microfinance institutions….”
But this is not a new proposal. It’s just that it has seldom been implemented or has been implemented badly. Let me warn you again, this proposal could be embraced and still the essence gets lost because it follows the more commercial model that regulators are familiar and comfortable with.
Proposal IV: On the issue of interest rates countries should “Legislate either the enforcement of declining balance interest rates (i.e. making “flat” interest rates illegal) or alternatively pass truth-in-lending legislation requiring all lenders to state the annual percentage rate (APR) of all loans purchased by their clients. This proposal came from Chuck Waterfield of Microfinance Transparency. Most in the field argue against interest rate caps including responses received from ACCION and Opportunity International and there are also calls for consumer protection against usurious interest rates.
Maria Otero spoke for interest charged on a declining balance when she said, “Interest rate caps tend to discourage interest charges on a declining balance. As we have seen in India, for example, a 10% per year interest rate for a one year loan amortized over the entire tenor of the loan equals an actual interest rate of well over 500% per annum.”
Proposal V: Create high quality national or sub-regional autonomous wholesale funds to 1) provide lower cost loan funds so MFIs can more easily serve rural areas and 2) build the MFIs’ capacity. COPEME, Red Financiera Rural, and MicroNegocios called for either providing loan funds to MFIs at lower rates so they are better able to bring their services to rural areas or called for promoting best practices in financial and administrative sustainability. Seven years ago the Microcredit Summit Campaign commissioned a paper about wholesale funds written by the Managing Director of PKSF in Bangladesh who is now that country’s Central Bank Governor. PKSF, a Bangladesh wholesale fund, played a key role in developing many MFIs in that country including two global giants, BRAC and ASA. The paper on creating autonomous microfinance funds can be downloaded from the Microcredit Summit’s website.
There are several other policy proposals that remain in this paper that I will just list: 1) Promote private credit bureaus to generate more credit information from the microfinance sector and protect clients from over indebtedness; 2) Provide a regulatory framework that promotes transparency on the financial side (effective annual interest rates, elimination of commissions) and on the social side (social balance, impact on clients, statistics on populations that benefit). 3) Do not allow governments to lend microfinance funds directly to clients (see below); 4) Governments should create a facility to hold the foreign exchange risk of their own currency and thereby encourage much lower cost capital for MFIs (see below); 4) Modify social security laws so the informal sector has access to social security.
As I said at the beginning, “Out of respect for your deep commitment to change and progress in the region, I intend for my remarks to be provocative in order to push us to think and act in new ways.” I hope I have been able to do so.”
For more information on the Global Center for Development and Democracy, please visit http://www.cgdd.net/english/index.htm


© 2009 The Microcredit Summit Campaign - A Project of RESULTS Educational Fund

Blog year2008 in october is about ending poverty http://events.takingitglobal.org/20255 so we hope this week's syndication to 100 blogs will exponentialise to tens of thousands of blogs by then, with a little help from friends like you

sustainability club http://sustainabilityclub.com

social business club http://www.socialbusinessclub.net

collaboration cafe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nL_a0K97I

yunus 10000 http://yunus10000.com collaboration coordinators for youth dialogues in that city and between cities together with invitations to action specific to each video good news story - eg if you want microcredit to beat off big banks why not help any school try out micro credit with the world's simplest program small change, big changes - a microloanfoundation franchise

Peers across hemispheres and I are far more interested in ensuring that each of these intercity movements vetoes any uses of 20th c failing system methods that the majority of club coordinators -or where elected an honorary board - vote against, than prescribing revenue models.

OPEN SOURCING THE CLUBS
Obviously we should want coordinators to make a living out of work input whlst at the same time recognising that being a club coordinator is probably worth more than having many a professional qualification - or needs to become so if this world is to be sustainable. Equally where profits are repeatedly generated I assume we can find a way iof agreeing some sliding scale that should be contributed either to your favourite grassroots organsiation in bangladesh or to a small list of other potential grassroots partners of future capitalism which should probably need at least 75 of members refendum to confirm

I am very happy if people will negotiate what other rules they would need to want to participate as well as to clarify where they want diferent contant at the mother webs. The main web system I use costs $35 a year per web so its not difficult to imagine that major cties will also want to set up their own branch web or of course a free blog - either of which we will happily linmk from the top of the mother web.

Obviously some of our constitution needs double checking with for example the 100000 bangladeshi's and other Gandhians who are the main practical exemplar of the values we seek to network worldwide so that the future sustains 7 billion brilliant jobs and goodwill multiplying across all women, children and even men.

We wish to learn from each city's most successful ways of mobilising and cross-cultural celebration, as well as metods for ensuring that any action network actually reaches to those in most desperate need of its service. This is one of the big lessons of bangladeshi experience -reiterated by every micro-system designer in bangladesh we have interviewed - once a networks starts empowering the entrepreneur inside it will never get deeper than the deepest needsholders it begins with. This is a lesson that many global NGOs seem never to have begun to grade.

chris macrae http://worldentrepreneur.net
washington dc inquiries desk usa 301 881 1655 info@worldcitizen.tv
y10000 at facebook http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22045349892

Dr Yunus of Grameen and microcredit and Nobel peace 2006 is setting cities and citiens around the world an interesting challenge. If he is passing through your city would you be able to find 1000 people who all wanted to collaborate with each other as well as him in empowering a good global world instead of the bad one currently compoundingSynonyms for good are win-win-win, sustainable, empowering every community up, one where hi-trust people transparently win over low-trustSo 2 questions:if Yunus was passing through Africa cities, which do you think would produce the most collaborative impactsif you are a twin national

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2516276605 - eg living in a rich city but with family roots back in Africa - how ready is your big rich city to represent Africa interests when Yunus hosts his Forum 1000 there.My friends are particularly working on London and New York as 2 test cities; partly because a London University student spent the summer interning in Dhaka on this project. One intercity collaboration idea is collaboration cafe - see those we have already hosted and tell us at info@worldcitizen.tv if you want to replay one in your city or virtually http://worldcitizen.tv/_wsn/page4.html

Another collaboration idea is can we produce a good global idea to heroes, their projects and networks for humanity. Why do people all over the world know the top 10 sporstmen for 50 different sports but not top 10s for different vital issues of human sustainability? http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5475184122

http://worldcitizen.tv/_wsn/page2.html

But the best truth about collaboration knowledge cities http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2Bknowledge+%2Bcollaboration+%2Bcity&btnG=Google+Search in the 5 years that I have been searching the peoples and communities that weave them is that if any city does a great job in turning round a beter Global with Yunus we can all learn from what it did and work out how to invite the 1000 most relevant citizens when Yunus passes your way. http://grameen.tv/

Which will be the meetings with the most impact for humanity in 2007? - one of the most critical years of the decade of truth our future historians, economists, entrepreneurs and internationalists forecast 2005-2015 would need to be if the networking revolution is to integrate a sustainable globalisation rather than one that terminates future generations?
http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html

Our FutureHistory affiliates wish both Davos' oldtimer World Economics Forum (WEF) and newcomer Brazil-Kenya's(WSF) well.

http://futurehistorian.tv http://futurehistory.jp
In WEF's early days before it was famous , my dad helped out as a speaker more than once. However, absent of reformation, WEF has to be reviewed as potentially slipping out of relevance compared with meetings that did not even exist when the millennium began.

First there's the league of inspirational intiative meetings such as
Clinton Global , http://changeworld.net/_wsn/page5.html
microcreditsummit, http://microsummit.tv http://thegreenchildren.com
ted.com http://worldcitizen.tv/_wsn/page3.html
whose world citizen research rankings we maintain here http://sustainabilityclub.com/_wsn/page4.html

Second, this year it appears have become subject to a triple whammy of coincident events. Afirca's first ever world social forum; and India taking the lead with a sustaianbility forum that has bagged that most intriguing duo of climate 007: Nicholas Stern and Gordon Brown. Against which WEF's Lord Browne of BP and Blair look more like history's wisdom than the searching future's - unless this pairing is going to stand up and offer a converted view than any of they have previously mailed us.

Third unlike recent years when a key theme had been clarified and new data collected, and moreover a key speaker from another side of the world made extraordinary challenging contributions, WEF's pre-conference web this year sent me to sleep when I started reading the PCW 90-page knowledge concierge document (in transparency I must admit to potential bias: when I was employed by what became PCW in the early 1990s it was both the most boring and least entreprenurial career move on my vitae)

Nobody will be more delighted than us if WEF pulls a rabbit out of the magiician's tophat. Klaus is an a-list good sort, and whilst media coverage of economics was a subject entrepreneurially concerned with transparently investigating progress for all humanity WEF was the most exciting way to begin every New Year (apart from what each family chose to celebrate on January 1) We will be watching the WEF website http://www.weforum.org which is potentially a hidden jewel as a platform compared with all other meeting formats

Meanwhile, we've been frantically busy trying to sign up a quorum of world citizen future reporters from the World Social Forum in Kenya. What we don't care about is getting the scoops from the next 7 days. what we do care about is identifying the lasting comon actions troughout 2007 and how they connect with other extraordinary events being celebrated later in 007 both:
in Africa such as http://www.ted.com/tedglobal2007/
in the 5 years Passports to Sustainability http://passports.jp being launched as a round the world countdown to London's Olympic year with the goal of persuading the BBC that sustain ability's league heroes demand every bit as much hourly programming of the leading public broadcaster and world service channel as sports. After all's said and done, if we play any more inconvenient games with Truth on climate or the jigsaws of peace there will be no sports for future generations

Should you wish to keep linked in to the very occasional future events preview our networks will be issuing, please go and register at http://groups.google.com/group/maclink/topics?lnk=li&hl=en

Chris Macrae, info@worldcitizen.tv

There are 2 regions of Brazil which my family clan macrae.nets has a special interest in:
Porto Alegre where my grandfather Russell Duncan Macrae served as a British consul in 1920s ... Porto Alegre is one of the best for the world cities today as it is the home of the World Social Forum as well as many grassroots citizen movements which emerged when peoples took back the running of their city a while back

Links to World Social Forum - all news
Links to Forum

Bahia region where he was a consul in the mid 1940s : I dont' speak Portugese but I am very interested in communicating with any alumni of the Brazilian educator Freire and Bahia comes up quite often is searching educational networks partly inspired by him - examples include: this

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7913771768810331968&q=%22world+social+forum%22&hl=en If you look at this 3 minute video trailer on the World Social Forum January 2007 hosted for the first time out of Africa and Kenya, you will note that one of the organising taglines is connecting citizen networks for
*a world where it is not profit that matters but life

Sadly for my self, I just cannot afford to get to Kenya in January 2007. If you or anyone you know is going, I invite you to make a post (and update it) so that we know how to keep connected with any social networks that interface between participants and the overall WSF

The various .tv webs affiliated with my friends and Scottish clans will be monitoring what before, after and during voices and citizen networks interconnect with the world social forum at spaces such as http://futurehistorian.tv/_wsn/page8.html and http://worldcitizen.tv/
My clan http://macrae-nets.blogspot.com/ also has a lot of social and media connections with both Brazil and Africa. For example my grandfather was a British Consul and he was first posted in the 1920s to Porto Alegre (the modern-day birthplace of the world social forum); his son (my dad) was/is the senior interviewer of entrepreneurial revolutionaries http://entrepreneurialrevolutional.blogspot.com/ - his work at The Economist over 40 years enabled him to do this in at least 30 countries.

http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html#Anchor-Changin-27687 Scots feel that since the invention of the darn spreadsheet, many American and other modern business schools have serially abused truth and fairness at the core of economics by misinterpreting its ethical origins in Adam Smith's free markets work of the late 1700s; confusing how Adam's alumni mapped the difference between systemic entrepreneurs and money-driven ones as early as 1800; ignoring how the Scottish founder of The Economist in the 1840s innovated global media to in the quest to make sure that peoples were never ruled over by public servants sponsored by vested interests in compounding lost sustainability for their own speculative or non-transparent gain. http://er100.blogspot.com/ As one of those nations that was by 1900 already more worldwide networked (expatriated) than anchored by ScotLAND we are on a mission to retrieve the goodwill names of economics, entrepreneurship and tv (at least BBC tv) another Scottish innovation for the world.

My father's namesake (another octogenarian Norman Macrae) was a Scottish minister whose main educational mission was in Nigeria and whose son Callum Macrae does pretty fearless exposures as a war reporter including the non-transparent mess that Iraq became the day after Saddam's statue was toppled. Transparency is of course a key if Africa is to turn the corner from being the continent that the rest of the world mercilessly extracts from to one where life matters.

http://humanityrising.blogspot.com/ http://asinworld.blogspot.com/2001_09_01_asinworld_archive.html You may be aware that Peter Eigen of Transparency International believes we have 2 years to turn round the tipping point of corruption and lost transparency or forever after hold our peace (ie fizzle out as a species that let warring networks dominate over hi-trust world citizen ones)
Bill Gates is funding the Africa Progress Panel which is now anchoring around Peter Eigen's grassrooted transparency networks and has achieved the reverse take over of all the image-laden make Poverty History networks of 2005 including Blair's Africa Commission. Peter Eigen has also helped Kofi Annan to make the previously non-systemic Global compact integral by adding a tenth transparency principle. Any corporation that signs the global compact but does not honour transparency is now in default of all goodwill.

This is a very interesting conversation to take to any so-called sustainability investment network including the Blood & Gore one. Mathematically, there is no compound sustainability without transparency. The fact that global tangible accountants still do not integrate audits around that principle was first made clear by Brookings and Georgetown Law School in 2000, and the chair of Unseen Wealth forecast that each year risks would compound with ever greater disasters on all peoples until or unless that mathematical error is corrected. If this is a topic that interests you why not mail me at chris.nacrae@yahoo.co.uk because the one thing I do know how to map as a mathematician is how to audit which organisational system (or networks of systems*systems*systems) have governance in place to compounding sustainability, and which are compounding its exponential opposite. http://www.valuetrue.com/

LINKIN IN NOW OR FOREVER AFTER HOLD YOUR PEACE In summary: Kenya January 2007 is a crossroads in future history like none other; and if you have or know anyone who takes part in linking in to that crossroads I urge you to add a post to this thread at any time. Then longitudinally we can work out what connections omidyar.net has with this "once in many billion lifetimes" crossroads to a world where it is not profit but life whose sustainability is valued most by every large organisation we patronise, socially licence into being, work for or otherwise permit to systemise human relationship around. http://worldwidewaves.tv/ http://frappr.com/africamph

congratulations to Brazil on leading the way in showing that transfer to ethanol based petrols can be done quickly - see khosla video referenced at guidemakers

some interesting institutes in Brazil:
funbio

Project30000
Back in 1984 we asked the world's future netizens to map out 30000 replicable micro up projects http://www.normanmacrae.com/netfuture.html so that sustainability could be enjoyed the whole planet round


Its interesting as my mapmaking friends and I go round our local to global reporting journeys, how much I find Brazil invented for the world.

Over the last few weeks, like many people we have been asking ourselves what are the local to global ways of getting on the radar screen of the world's biggest ever phillanthopy organisation resulting from the merger of Gates' and Buffetts' foumdations for world good. What the Economist called Billanthropy

Microfinance is one of our top 10 local to global favourite maps for how to change the world.

ONE OF THE FIRST BRAZILIAN ORIGINS IN TOP 10 CHNAGE THE WORLD MNETHODS
Did you for example know that Brazil can claim (due to Accion) to have been one of the originators of Microfinacne. Wikipedia tells the story like this:

ACCION started as a student-run volunteer effort, with its first operations in Caracas, Venezuela. At first, ACCION was a Peace Corps-like organization, building schools and waterways in the poorest parts of Latin America. Soon, however, ACCION's founder (Joseph Blatchford) realized that these types of changes weren't creating a real, lasting difference in the quality of lives of those affected. In 1973 ACCION staff in Recife, Brazil realized that one of the major obstacles in the struggle of the poor was that almost all their profits were being paid to loan-sharks from whom they had borrowed money to keep their businesses afloat. ACCION staff made the decision to start offering small, moderate interest rate loans to the poor, and in this way launched the field of microenterprise. Since that time, ACCION has managed to overturn the myth that the poor are bad credit risks, as it has maintained well over ninety percent re-payment rates

ACCION offered an exciting alternative to the under-served population that were ineligible for traditional loans and wanted to avoid the exploitive lending practices of loan sharks.

Within four years, the experiment had shown its success in having provided 885 loans with a repayment rate of over 90%. The loans also helped to create or stabilize 1,386 new jobs. This success in making a lasting impact in peoples lives, as contrasted with the previous projects they had done seemingly steered ACCION firmly in the direction of being a microfinance organization. Since this modest beginning ACCION has expanded it's microlending operation to countries throughout South and Central America, the United States, Africa and India.

ACCION claims (and recorded dates seem to indicate) that these loans were the first modern pioneers of microcredit.

Sadly Accion has in recent years lost all the trust of anyone i would ever network with - by taking hundreds of millions out of an IPO of a microfinace in mexico. Always ask who consttutionally owns any microcredit you get involved wit as volunteer, customer , social or other busienss partner http://socialbusiness.tv


RIO'S CATCOMM
At Project30000 entrepreneur cataloguing reporters like me have a natural ineterst to explore what goes into Catcomm's bank of projects. I understand that pride of place goes to projects that emerged out of Catcomm's local participants serving the Favelas of Rio. But then, if I understand correctly, Catcomm also logs some international projects that had no direct connection with actual activities at Catcomm. If so, a third section might report Brazil's other local to global project movements especially in true microcredit fields-

Brazil is one of the most gifted places in starting social movements and citizen organsiations that the world goes on to franchise interlocally (eg the World Social Forum as a macro example which also incubates many others), but who find that we cannot do full justice on understanding all the fonuding collaboration missions because we are not fluent in Portuguese.

Footnote 1:
Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city - and home to more than 3 million microentrepreneurs with virtually no access to affordable business credit.

Here's my top 5 on what we can all learn from Brazil - what's your top 10, 5 or 1? chris macrae wcbn007@easynet.co.uk subject Brazil A bit of background. I haven't ever visited Brazil but I have meant some Brazilians who have a greater sense of community than almost anyone from my own country (Britain). I don't speak Portuguese, but I did do about 6 months of work in Lisbon surveying what Portuguese people and businesses wanted in getting a quick start across Europe. I learnt from my mentors in Portugal that their culture is that of not liking to be bossed by national leaders - "to be a leader: please be of the people not above the people". It seems to me that Brazil has much of the same culture; and that is a huge advantage in networking's community-up age. In future, it could mean that Brazil is the passport to many a good social development in the Americas 1 2, at least those ones that need deep grassrooting in community participation. Anyway that's the bias I bring to guiding round my top 5 collaboration tours of Brazil 1 Brazil (Porto Alegre) innovated the world social forum - it's now as influential (all be it in a sometines maddening way) as the world economics forum. That's not my assessment, it is President Lula's who in 2005 made a point of being te only leader in the history of world forums to speak at both. Quite hard to do because their dates are almost coincident though hemispheres apart - the Economics forum being in the swanky skiing playboy town of davos (as much as the Swiss playboy), evry odd year's WSF being in Porto Alegre in Brazil. Lula's ratings by the people are still up in the air because he came to power expected to do even more than link world forums irrevocably, and as per my introduction the transparency conflicts of cone=versing with world leaders and being one of us are hard in the separated 20th C world we have inherited. Let's hope they become easy one day soon they become easier now we are all loosely interconnected. One lesson I am most grateful to Lula for is the way he jokingly but seriously has changed world trade to go interlocally wherever people as intercitizens 1 2 3 boldly go below national radars. This is a topic that 1.3 million bookselling Future Historian Thomas Friedman "Green is the Next Red, White & Blue) speaks most eloquently about with Charlie Rose (my world favourite tv interviewer - ok who's yours). Why is there a G8 and not a BA8 (8 country cluster hubbing round Brazil on what Brazil's people know or need mst) BB8 (8.. 2nd most) BBC8 (8 countries 1 that believe most in public media) 2 The social forum also has Regional editions. Out of London's European one in 2004, the simpol network I belong to helped sponsor one of the world's leading educators on why all 6 billion people should collaborate in how (clean) water flows around the world to be every human's right of life. A topic that is becoming exponentially more vital to the survival of many communities as recent events have shown 3 Franklin had also given courage to and been encouraged by the Catholic church's dedication in Brazil to 2004 as the Year of Water. If you want the people to debate an issue from the grassroots up- the church is Brazil's main social media with its 7000 or so parishes. I met one of the organisers of education of priests on such secular matters, and found out they have their own university retreat -a space for chnage? Nack to Franklin, he's one of those people who deep authority and experience helps connects all of a city's humanitarian networks and co-mentoring -see the sort of collaboration cafe invitation we circulate when he's visiting a city 4 In Rio we have Catalytic Comunities 200 people and my favourite social hub in all the world right now- preneurial benchmarks being something that my father has encouraged me to map for 30 years now since his future hostory survey Entrepreneurial Revolution published in 1976. In 1984, we co-authored a specially focused version of that timelining to 2024 what would either compound brilliantly well if we had 30000 open projects emerging from global village hubs or badly for all people as networks caused the death of distance and every locality became globally interconnected. This is why transparent social hubs- open sourcing what projects work so that they can be licenes by peoples in any locality is so valuable to me. On our goodwill timeline 1, we'll need 30000 projects banked for worldwide exchnage between local communities by 2010. So Brazil's gift to the world of how to do a real socila hub and catalogue virtual guided tours to what works is outstanding . Catcom has also started its own blog here. 5 Back to water and schools education and multicultural understanding and sustainability of communities. In Foz, the world's largest dam is shapred by Brazil and a neighbouring country. Up the river basins on the Brazil side you will find over 100 of project30000 -cleaning up agriculture, connecting 100 ethnicities around their local environmental assets, using water's flow to teach 80000 children and 4000 teachers and all the families in between nof how water interconnects us all, and the specially deep local diversities it sustains throughout the region. Look across the national border and you will see a polluting mess of a region turned in mega-agriculture typically soya. Now which future is likely to sustain the local peoples?

For reasons as yet unexplained, Google melted down 100 of our co-edited blogs on Dec 9- two of which told a lot of the water stories we had been listewning to from Brazil - it looks nigh on impossible to ressurect whynotfoz from which the post below of Jan 2005 is extracted; we are trying to find the time to connect back http://waterangels.blogspot.com - itself a troubled warrior as we used to co-edit with the EU's www.knowledgeboard.com but then their founders left and with them the mission to be the greatest open space linux type example of community knowledge sharing every experimented with http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=272082005 Lula took part in the official launching of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), a civil society movement that is pushing governments to keep the promises they have made for development assistance. Addressing the 12,000 people packed into Gigantinho Stadium in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where the fifth World Social Forum (WSF) is under way, Lula expressed his solidarity with the movement, which is made up of hundreds of civil society groups from around the globe. "I'm here because I believe that you are taking an important step, an historic step for the Forum. You are growing from being a mere group of people, each one with their own demands, towards resolving an issue like hunger, which is a social problem and a political problem," he said. The GCAP demands that the rich countries of the industrialised North immediately dismantle their farm subsidies, comply with their pledges to set aside 0.7 percent of their gross domestic product for international development aid, and cancel -- along with all of the multilateral credit institutions -- the foreign debt of the poorest nations. The movement also urges governments around the world to protect public services against the incessant wave of privatisations, to ensure the population's access to food and medicines, to require greater transparency of the big corporations, and to redouble their efforts to achieve by 2015 the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000. "This should be the year in which governments keep their promises and respond to the more than one billion people who are living in absolute poverty, who demand justice," said Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/news/stories/030127s.htmPresident Lula opens World Social Forum /27.01.03Before leaving to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Luiz Lula Inacio da Silva of Brazil took time to open the third World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre. With rousing words of social justice and solidarity, President Lula endorsed the key message of the WSF; 'Another World is Possible'.With an estimated 100,000 people in attendance, activists and campaigners worldwide are seeing this year's forum as the beginning of an important global movement. One of the key concerns of delegates in Porto Alegre is the power and influence of big business, which many believe is as destructive as it is beneficial.Christian Aid joined forces with partner organisations for a seminar on increasing the accountability of multinationals. Entitled 'From Grassroots Struggles to Global Strategies', the session attracted participants from all over the world to discuss common problems of increasing corporate influence and malpractice and the need for legally-binding regulation to reduce both.'What we see more and more in companies is corporate cannibalism with companies putting profit before people,' said John Samuel, a Christian Aid partner from India. 'Many companies make promises of corporate social responsibility but its mainly a whitewash, concealing what's really going on. What we need is rights-based regulation which will make companies legally accountable to the people and communities they affect.'All six panellists involved in the seminar, including delegates from India, the Philippines and Brazil, as well as the UK-based organisation Friends of the Earth International, echoed this same message. 'The importance of the WSF is that people realise that we are all in the same situation with companies' said Ingrid Gorre from the Philippines. 'The strongest message coming out of the WSF is 'no' to corporate control and 'yes' to community-based management of resources.'Porto Alegre 2003Firstly, I’d like you to know that the joy I feel is more than my heart can bear, to be taking part once again in the largest multinational event organized by world society - this World Social Forum.The last time I was here was to take part in a debate of which the subject was "Another Brazil is possible". And I can remember that at that time I wasn’t even sure whether I’d be runningfor President of the Republic of Brazil. And today, taking part in this Forum, I’m here in my capacity as my country’s Number 1 civil servant.I’d like to thank the management of this event. I know that it’s not easy, I’m aware of the sacrifice you’re making for the sake of the organization that’s required, and I’m aware of the trouble you’re taking with security.Right now, Haddad, I’m speaking here in Portuguese and there must be comrades out there - French, English, there must be people from China, and from India, who have no idea what I’m saying.However, those of you who don’t understand what I’m talking about but believe in the World Social Forum, look into my eyes and you’ll understand every word I’m saying.I would like to thank here and now our comrades who are running the Forum, and the ministers too, but in particular I’d like to thank the people from all over the world who have come here without counting the cost, some of whom don’t even have the right to speak, who don’t have the opportunity to speak but who came here anyway just to say, "I exist as a human being. And I want to be respected as such."I always said that my greatest wish, to be elected President of the Republic, was to see if I could meet my own challenges. I’m a man who has taken up many challenges in Brazil. I have made many demands of each government that has held office here before me, just as many of you make demands in your own countries.And my wish to become President of the Republic was to find out whether, if elected President of the Republic, I would be able to meet my own challenges.And so I don’t have to worry about what possible enemies could be saying. I know very well that throughout history, the Brazilian social movement, the Brazilian trades union movement, Brazilian political parties, Brazilian religions and Brazilian NGOs have accumulated a wealth of experience and together with that wealth of experience they have plans, they have challenges, they have brought about amazing things. And now I have four years in which to deal, calmly, if not with everything but with those issues that we can and are in a position to deal with.I still dream of implementing agrarian reform in Brazil. I still dream of ensuring good quality state education for our people so that university isn’t just for the privileged 8% of society but a right that’s within the reach of everyone.I still dream of creating a policy for health in which the poor no longer die on the hospital doorstep through lack of medical attention or lack of help.I still dream of building a society that is fair, jointly responsible and compassionate; a society where the product of the wealth produced in the nation is distributed more equally among all the children of Brazil.However, I have also learnt during my political career - and learnt with you - that a good coach is not one whose team wins the first game but one who can win the end game.I have four years in office during which to deal - calmly and serenely - with the issues that need dealing with in Brazil. I’d like to make this Government the most honest one there has ever been in the history of this country, the Government that has the best relationship with society.I want to treat each of you in the same way that I treat my youngest son, aged seventeen. We can only do what we can do but when we can’t - with the same calmness and the same compassion, comrade - it’s just not possible. And I’m sure that this relationship that’s based on honesty and comradeship will be the key to our Government’s success here in Brazil.And why am I going to do this? Because I’m aware of the responsibility that rests on the shoulders of those who elected me, on the shoulders of my ministers and - above all - on my shoulders. Although I’ve been elected President of Brazil I have the distinct feeling that our victory represents hope, not just here but for the left all over the world and especially for the left in Latin America.I get up every morning and tell my wife, Marisa, that we must think carefully about everything we do. Because any government, in any country in the world can make a mistake and nothing will happen because it’s not unusual for those in office to make mistakes - but I can’t make a mistake. And I can’t make mistakes because I wasn’t elected as a result of the support of a TV channel. I wasn’t elected because of the support of the financial system. I wasn’t elected thanks to powerful economic interests. And I wasn’t elected because of my ability or my intelligence. I was elected on 27thOctober2002 because of the high level of political awareness of Brazilian voters.I’m aware of the expectations I’m building up in men, women and children. Never, in the history of Brazil, have I seen such expectations, such hope and so many people praying that we get it right. And so many people asking, or rather, saying to me, "Lula, what can I do to help our Government to be successful?"It is that kind of people-power and exactly that political capital that enabled us to get through the election and shout out loud, "Hope has finally overcome fear!"I’ve already visited Argentina, Chile and Ecuador and am aware of the expectations that South America is focusing on the Brazilian government. I’m aware of the hope that socialists around the world are pinning on the success of our government.This has added to our sense of responsibility and I would like to affirm once again that we’ve waited so long to win, we’ve lost so much, we’ve suffered so much and so many have died before us trying to get there, that because of this accumulation of commitment I want to look each one of you in the eye and say, "I shan’t make mistakes and I’m going to create a government that’s focused on the poor in this country."I have always told our comrades organizing the World Social Forum that the Forum should be turned into an instrument that firstly, was not dependent on any political party, and secondly, that wasn’t used by anyone.When I was invited to come here, I actually said to my comrades, "You must think about whether I should go to the World Social Forum because I’ll be the first President". And they said to me, "Lula, you should go because you’re the host of the Third World Social Forum." But today I’ve made a public commitment because a comrade from India, where the next World Social Forum will be held, asked me at a meeting I had with the World Forum Board whether I would be going to India next year. And I told him I’d be going. If necessary, I’d go to China and, if necessary, I’d go wherever I was invited because I’m the end result of the work you’ve been doing all those years. I think, therefore, that it’s not just I who should go to the Social Forum but other heads of government should also go to find out what people are thinking, what people want and how people want things to happen.So, what’s new? What’s new this year is that because of you and because of the World Social Forum, I’ve been invited to go to Davos. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have been invited. And I’ve just remembered something: when I started out on my trade union career, my cleverest and most intelligent friends said to me, "Lula, don’t join the trade union movement because the Brazilian union structure is a carbon copy of Mussolini’s "Carta di Lavoro" and if you join the union you’ll end up serving the interests of the employers and achieve nothing." I joined the union and in three years we’d changed the history of the Brazilian trade union movement and it’s now one of the most important in the world.In 1979, we in Brazil were fighting to regain political freedom and I took it into my head to form a party. Those who were in favour of political freedom began to oppose this because their version of political freedom didn’t include the creation of a political party. And there were those who warned me, "Look here, there’s no room in Brazil for a party like the Workers’ Party. This business of saying that a workers’ party can be formed, that a steelworker can lead a party - that’s a thing of the past. There’s never been anything like that in either the Brazilian or world social order." Well then, we were a stubborn lot and managed to form a party that is now the main left-wing party in the whole of Latin America.Now, I’ve remembered something that I’m going to tell you now: in 1978, we came out on strike at the ABC industrial complex and the Chairman of the Federation of Industries rushed off to the 2nd Army to tell General Dilermando that he had to put down a strike by steelworkers. It’s just possible that if I’d belonged to a more traditional political organization I’d have packed my bags and gone off somewhere else for a week until the dust had settled. As I was politically more innocent in those days I just picked up a phone and rang the commanding officer of the 2nd Army, saying: "General Dilermando, I’ve read in the papers that you’ve invited the Chairman of FIESP (Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo) in response to a request put forward by him. Well, I’m Chairman of the workers and I’d like to talk to you as well." I then spent three hours with him.Now, when the invitation to Davos arrived, to begin with I said: whatever am I going to do in Davos? And I then took the following decision: I’m President of a country with the world’s eighth largest economy. I’m President of a country with 45 million people who don’t get enough calories and protein. I’m President of a country with a history and a people. And it’s not every day, every month or every century that a metal-worker wins the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil. So I took the decision. A lot of people in Davos don’t like me, without having met me. I want to make a point of going to Davos and saying in Davos exactly what I’d say to a any comrade here on this stage. I’ll say in Davos that it’s impossible to continue with an economic order where very few people can eat five meals a day and a great many spend five days on earth without eating at all. I’ll tell them that a new world order must be established in which the product of wealth is distributed more fairly so that the poor countries can have the chance to become less poor. I’ll tell them that black children in Africa have as much right to eat as blue-eyed children born in the Nordic countries. I’ll tell them that the poor children of Latin America have as much right to eat as any other child born anywhere in the world. And I’ll tell them that the world doesn’t need war, the world needs peace, the world needs understanding.I believe we have things to do in the world. What we can’t do is stay shut up inside our world, believing that all the bad things around us are caused by those who are outside.I’d say, today that this is rather like a family in which suddenly the son’s involved in drugs and instead of the parents talking the matter over with their son and finding out where the problem lies, they start blaming the school, they start blaming a neighbour, they start blaming the girlfriend, instead of the parents sitting down and asking themselves, "What did we fail to do that ledour soninto drugs?"We’re poor. This may be partly the fault of the rich countries. But it may be partly the fault of one section of the elite of the South American continent that has ruled in a subservient way, that has ruled Brazil in such a way as to make it subordinate, perpetrating the most outrageous instances of corruption.In Latin America alone, in recent years, four heads of state - Collor, in Brazil; Fujimori, in Peru; Menem, in Argentina; and Salinas, in Mexico -have left office because of having robbed their countries in broad daylight. And this can’t go on happening. The rich countries can’t help the poor countries by accepting capital deposits or laundering money belonging to those who are robbing the poor countries.I can remember that there was once a President of Zaire by the name of Mobuto. And I remember at the time he was accused of having 8 billion dollars on deposit in Europe while his people were starving.If the rich countries want to make a contribution they shouldn’t take money resulting from drug trafficking or organized crime. And they shouldn’t take money from countries whose leaders are actually involved in stealing - they should give that money back to help their people.Dear Haddad, I’d like to end by telling you all something. Let me say something to you. I want you to know that my single and most important commitment to you is one of which you can be absolutely certain, like the confidence and faith that you have in God, if you’re a Christian: it is that I may make a mistake but I’ll never reject even the smallest detail of the ideals that won me the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil.Each month, each year, I want to be able to look each child, each woman and each man in the eye and say: "We’re building a new nation. We’re building a new country."And I keep on saying every single day that I must make a dream come true, not my dream but the dream of all of you, that one day in this country, no child will go to bed hungry and no child will wake up to an empty plate.The day will come in Brazil when people die because we were born to die, but no-one will die of malnutrition as many in this country are dying nowadays. The day will come when people will realize that this nation I’m dreaming of and that you’re dreaming of can actually be built. It depends on our inclination to do it. It depends on our courage. It all depends on our inclination.And I’m here to tell you something, comrades at the Third World Social Forum: come what may and whatever may happen, I shall try to carry out to the letter the Government Programme that elected me President of Brazil.Running a country is like running a marathon. You can’t set off at top speed because you’d be out of breath by the first corner. You must take sure and deliberate strides in order to end your term in office certain that your obligations have been met. And I want to be able to tell the world: how good it would be, how marvellous it would be if instead of the rich countries making and spending money on so many arms, they spent money on bread, beans and rice to stop people being hungry.I can imagine how many billions and billions of dollars are spent on war. Soldier killing soldier. Soldiers killing the innocent and closer to home, children looking up to beg for food that’s often thrown away without any thought for that child.Comrades of the World Social Forum, I want you who are Brazilian and you who aren’t Brazilian but who are here, I want you to be as absolutely certain as you’ll ever be in your life that I won’t let you down. I won’t shrink from doing what we have to do. And I expect to make my contribution so that other comrades win elections in other countries, so that we can, once and for all, start electing people with more compassion, people with more commitment, people who believe that it is possible to change the history of mankind.For 500 years Brazil has been looking towards Europe. Now is the time to look towards Africa and South America. Now is the time to establish new partnerships so that we can be more independent, strengthen Mercosul and create a political force for negotiating. We cannot accept what has been going on for 40 years, the blockading of Cuba. We cannot accept that countries can be marginalized for centuries and centuries. And we can’t accept that a country the size of Brazil can each year go on having a higher and higher rate of poverty and wretchedness.Therefore I just had to come here. I had to come here and say to you: it’s been worth it. And it’s going to be even more worth the trouble on the Government’s last day in office when we can prove, supported by a mass of data, that we achieved in four years what others have failed to achieve in dozens of years in Brazil.In saying goodbye to you, I want to end by telling those of you who have coordinated the World Social Forum, for God’s sake, don’t give up comrades, because in three years you have managed to build one of the most extraordinary things that the world civil societyhas ever known.Although we are several thousand kilometres from Davos, following on after the Porto Alegre Forum, Davos no longer has the force it once had before the World Social Forum existed. The truth is that the world’s social problems have never been discussed in Davos and now everyone is forced to admit that social problems need to be discussed.You have managed to achieve a place in history. The press, which at the first Forum had started by calling it a "meeting of leftists,"a "meeting of the world’s loony left", now acknowledges on all the front pages that the World Social Forum is the most important political event that has taken place in contemporary history.And I have no doubt whatsoever that it will make a decisive contribution to changing the history of mankind.Thank you very much, comrades - here’s to victory, God willing!"

Here is a dialogue aimed particularly at cultivating pan-European apprecation of Brazil that used to help host, mainly between 2001-2004. I will need to come back and re-edit its currency of links etc BRAZIL Chris Macrae , 29 January 2005 @ 00:02 AM  Lula - a leader for our times? Mr Chris Macrae Lula's 30 minute speech at the WEF today certainly gets my vote as the most inspired by a world leader in recent times http://clients.world-television.com/worldeconomicforum_annualmeeting2005/_S13926.asp# Some truly inspiring constructs New geography Brazil Sustainable Growth South America Community of Nations G20 Poverty eradication democratize United nations Brazil has renegotaited trading understandings with 35 countries over the last 2 years. He searches for countyries where similarity policy applies. Watch for water & agricultuire system agendas   Chris Macrae , 04 February 2004 @ 01:59 AM  World Social Forum Mr Chris Macrae I'd love to hear any feedback on the WSF which I understand to have been inuagurated in Porto Alegre to run at the same time as the World Economic Forum and which is now alternating biannually in Porto Alegre and even years in India 2004, Africa 2006...   Chris Macrae , 04 February 2004 @ 01:57 AM  directory to each nation's youth movements for peace, responsibility Mr Chris Macrae Seeing the note below which Harrison Owen sent out to open space alumni in over 80 countries on the 3000 youths due to meet in open space in Brazil later in the year motivated me to start cataloguing names of coordinators of youth k,ovements in each country please post me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk any links; it will take some time but hopefully we'll http://www.valuetrue.com/home/community.cfm?startrow=13&intClassID=3 have 100 countries mapped in time for Brazil I have been approached by the organizers of the World Youth Peace Summit about the possibility of opening space for their several gatherings, including the final one in Kenya next October. This could be a biggie with 3000-5000 projected participants. This Peace Summit is the youth follow-on for the Peace Summit in 2000. As with most of these things, the ideals and intentions seem wonderful – we will have to wait and see about the execution. So I am not holding my breath, but I have committed to do what I can. And, one of the regional gatherings is slated for Brazil in July – exact dates and venue TBD. I know we have some “spaceniks” in that great country, but the names and emails have escaped me so far. Not unlike many other important details, the capacity of my aging memory does not seem to be what it once was. So – if there is anybody out there who is interested, let me hear from you. I am assuming that there will be some level of budgetary support, but zero information on the amounts. Ordinarily, programs like this are not buried in money. But the ideals are glorious, and I did say I would help. So if you can help me help, that will be wonderful! Harrison Harrison Owen 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, Maryland 20845 Open Space Training http://www.openspaceworld.com   Olaf Brugman , 14 November 2003 @ 19:07 PM  Brazil page I think the 'Brazil' category in my blog (http://goiaba.blogs.com) shows quite a few KM and Social Development Initiatives-related items.   Olaf Brugman , 19 September 2003 @ 10:45 AM  < KM and humanization and intangibles. Rossatto, Maria Antonieta. GESTÃO DO CONHECIMENTO: A Busca da Humanização, Transparência, Socialização e Valorização do Intangível. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Interciência, 2003. Aborda modelo, metodologia de Gestão do Conhecimento e um estudo de caso de sucesso realizado no Departamento de Informática da Eletrobrás, que combinam as diretrizes, as características e os elementos fundamentais da GC com os alicerces da organização, resultando na análise das competências dos indivíduos e da organização, funcionando como uma arma competitiva para levá-los ao sucesso e orientando o desenvolvimento organizacional, humano e social nesta nova Era. Destinado a estudantes, professores, administradores, pesquisadores, dirigentes e profissionais de GC, RH e TI. Source This book is about humanization and social issues it seems. Is there anyone who can confirm whether this book takes an original Brazilian perspective, or whether it adopts international literature? Links from Brugman's brilliant blog Mr Chris Macrae http://goiaba.blogs.com/knowledge_bridge/2003/09/brazilian_knowl.html According to Brugman's brilliant blog, KM is really taking off in Brazil at spaces such as these: http://www.abong.org.br/ http://www.sbgc.org.br/ http://www.informal.com.br/ http://www.kmbrasil.com/homepage.html http://www.terraforum.com.br/ Chris Macrae , 09 August 2003 @ 12:33 PM  Part 3 of What if Nike had been Indian Mr Chris Macrae ...an article by New Zealnader Jack Yan, serialised in Knowledegboard countries Part 1 in India: http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=113747&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y In Dunedin, Florida, is a young designer called Brad Batory who caught my eye and that of my associate publisher, Ann Fryer, earlier this year. Brad has managed to get BET VJs wearing his edgy Indashio label but that wasn’t the reason we were drawn to him. The 19-year-old had announced that the proceeds of his show would go to teenage pregnancy, a cause that he believed in strongly. It would prove to be the start of a pattern for him: his spring–summer 2004 show in New York, hopefully running at the time most readers pick up this issue of Headway, will have a similar charitable bent. Bolivian designer Rosita Hurtado is already well known for her charitable work for Latin American children, trying to relieve the poverty that 96 million of them live in. Carlos Miele of São Paulo brings his culture into his designs but has grand schemes for his people. Working with the social project Coopa-Roca in a three-year partnership, Miele gives local dressmakers in the shanty town of Rocinha a chance to show off their hand-craft skills—and become self-sufficient in the process. Having shown in New York and London, there was enough demand for his range for him to open his own boutique in the former at West 14th Street. At Mercedes Australian Fashion Week a few months ago, we learned of new talent Gabriel Scarvelli, who is known not only for the beautiful beading of his designs, but his sustainable approach to fashion and his assistance to a village in India. Part 4 in Russia http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=114130&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y   Olaf Brugman , 30 July 2003 @ 16:11 PM  NGOs and KM in Brazil Some more links in which NGOs are mentioned that have discovered KM as a theme: http://www.labore.org.br/lab_escolanegocios.asp http://www.kmol.online.pt/outros/noticias.html http://br.dir.yahoo.com/sociedade/filantropia/organizacoes_e_associacoes/ http://br.groups.yahoo.com/group/Labore/message/698 http://www.capina.ong.org/quemsomos.htm http://www.conhecerparaconservar.org/ When I did a similar search a year ago, I hardly received any results in my searches. KM is taking off in Brazil.   Olaf Brugman , 30 July 2003 @ 15:51 PM  Reply to CHris's links Chris, - the portoalegre link doesn't work; - the World Social Forum link has English pages: click your link, right below the top bar, you can choose the language.   Olaf Brugman , 30 July 2003 @ 09:26 AM  Links to Brazilian KM sites - http://www.abong.org.br/ (Brazilian Association of NGOs); - http://www.sbgc.org.br : Brazilian Society of KM; - http://www.informal.com.br/ Informal Informatica Gestão do Conhecimento; - http://www.kmbrasil.com/homepage.html (KM Brasil); - http://www.terraforum.com.br/   Chris Macrae , 30 July 2003 @ 01:36 AM  great posts from Brazil transfer 1 Mr Chris Macrae From: Felipe Fonseca Here in Brazil we´re creating a curious scenario: me and Hernani Dimantas created almost one year ago a newsletter and called a few people we had met on other mailing lists. What interested us was to put together people who were developing things based on the way free software works, but in other areas of knowledge. I´m not a programmer or something like that, and I envied those guys who were breaking many things we generally assume about knowledge. Soon, the list became a monster which were bigger than anything we could possibly explain to outsiders. What happened is that all those guys we called at the beginning were also interested in bringing the idea of free, collective knowledge to their own areas. at the first month, we had an average 30-40 messages a day, and one of the guys asked me to put online some kind of bookmark management system. I studied two or three, but finally decided to set up a wiki website, as I was currently creating one of those for a client. What happened then was that people started putting on bookmarks and classifying them, and one day somebody wrote a draft to a social project and published it on the wiki website. For the surprise of everyone involved, three days later we had a full project with plenty of references and ways to get resources, a methodology for implementarion, and a suggested team. On the following months, more than 25 projects have been created. Some of them are just drafts, others have already become independent. We have there some projects so innovative that we knock at corporation´s doors to ask for resources and them don´t even understand what we´re talking about. "That´s not possible", they say. Well, most of our projects are possible. But the thing is, corporate people don´t believe that a project created by a group of geographically dispersed people who are not even an organization (we are creating a NGO on two weeks) can be trusted. Collaborative creation is something completely new to them. As for the opposition between competition and collaboraton, I don´t know how it happens outside Brazil, but here the word "competition" is perhaps the most heard concept on management and marketing courses. People grow up believing that the first student in the class, the faster runner, the soccer player who shoots better, the bigger company, are the objective to be reached. How can we change people´s minds? I don´t know. We are developing a completely innovative project which relates mostly to social projects and the third sector, and nobody listens to us. Now, me and three friends of metafora are creating a company which will try do operate the same way. Perhaps if we, on their words, "win", someone will pay attention to us. Oh, the URL to the project: www.projetometafora.org (sorry, portuguese only. google translate could help you guys) see ya   Chris Macrae , 07 July 2003 @ 15:00 PM  co-nation branding - Brazil & Usa Mr Chris Macrae Brookings have published an interesting paper - would be interested on comments on how its analysis of history also indicates where these nations may head next http://www.brookings.edu/views/papers/lgordon/20030701.htm   Chris Macrae , 12 June 2003 @ 09:53 AM  changing government's absolute care for human capital Mr Chris Macrae Everyone whom I most deeply respect on this most tricky of democratic challenges ends up pointing here as a role model http://www.portoalegre.rs.gov.br/ Since its in Portuguese (and I'm one of those sadly language-insular English guys) I will try to add some english testimonies as to what this is all about as soon as time permits Of course, if we have any translators in this space who would like to guide us through what some of the 50000 people interacting in this city's bugdet spending are convening through this web of meeting places, please do add your wonderful translations to this thread An English friend John Caswell of http://www.grouppartners.net suggested we add http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/home.asp -since neither of us is Portuguese literate we need some help in working out whether these are 2 bookmarks to similar or different things