On this 100th anniversary, we celebrate the significant progress that has been achieved through determined advocacy, practical action and enlightened policy making. Yet, in too many countries and societies, women remain second-class citizens. [...] In the home and at school, in the workplace and in the community, being female too often means being vulnerable.  -U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

Today, March 8, 2011, marks the 100th anniversary of the U.N. International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the economic, political, and social achievements of women past, present, and future.

On International Women's Day 2011, partner with Opportunity to celebrate and support our women clients like Judith Godiah, pictured above with her children.

The theme of International Women’s Day 2011 is equal access to education, training, and science and technology. In his International Women’s Day message, Secretary-General Ban said, “Cell phones and the Internet, for example, can enable women to improve the health and well-being of their families, take advantage of income-earning opportunities, and protect themselves from exploitation and vulnerability. Access to such tools, backed up by education and training, can help women to break the cycle of poverty, combat injustice and exercise their rights.”

Here at Opportunity International, we offer access to microfinance solutions to more than two million clients worldwide, 85% of whom are women. These financial tools, often delivered through technological innovations like biometric technology, mobile phone banking, point-of-sale devices and more, create change in the lives of women, empowering them to build businesses, feed their families, employ their neighbors, and send their daughters and sons to school.

In honor of International Women’s Day 2011, take action to celebrate and empower women all over the world. Go to Opportunity’s Banking on Women resource page at opportunity.org/change to…

• Donate to help fund the loan of one of Opportunity’s hard-working woman clients
• Travel alongside our International Women’s Day Insight Trip to India on the Opportunity Blog
• Share our press release in honor of International Women’s Day
• Read the special supplement in USA Today, “Investing in Women & Girls,” featuring Opportunity and leaders like Melinda Gates, Mary Robinson and more

Take action to partner with Opportunity to celebrate International Women’s Day 2011 and support the achievements of women all over the world.

YAO-Chicago chair Shannon Leutheuser (left) and YAO manager Sonya Perez-Lauterbach got the opportunity to meet Dr. Muhammad Yunus in Chicago last Friday. In this picture, Yunus is signing Sonya's copy of his book, Building Social Business.

Last Friday, YAO-Chicago chair Shannon Leutheuser and I had the chance to not only hear but actually to meet Dr. Muhammad Yunus at the Chicago Council of Global Affairs event, “Building Social Business.” Yunus is the founder and manager of Grameen Bank and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and he has written a new book called Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism that Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs.

At the Chicago event, Dr. Yunus wore the traditional Bangladeshi clothing that has become his signature throughout his rise to fame. Like his clothing, Yunus was down to earth and perfectly simple in his adamant call to address global poverty. “Poverty is not created by poor people, it is created by the system. In the capitalist system there is only one kind of business, the profit-making business.” The problem Yunus sees with that system is that it centers primarily on human selfishness, a one-dimensional perspective. But humans are not one dimensional; love, compassion and selflessness are all part of the human experience. The business world, as Yunus sees it, has not allowed selflessness to play a role. Through his new book, Yunus calls for businesses to build their practices and future goals around selflessness, rather than selfishness.

I admire Dr. Yunus’ bold call for businesses to address the world through a different lens. During the question-and-answer session, one member of the audience asked Yunus what made him tick and where he found his inspiration. Yunus explained that as a professor in the 1970s, he taught economic theories and models, yet there were still hungry people outside the classroom. All the theories and models in the field weren’t changing people’s lives in a real way, and so he felt they were practically useless. When he started Grameen Bank in 1976, he thought, “If I can help one person every day I am a lucky person… I don’t want to be a useless human being.” Today, Grameen Bank serves 8.10 million microfinance borrowers worldwide, and Yunus’ work continues to inspire people all over the world.

“What astonished me,” says Shannon, “was the power Yunus brought to simple ideas about selflessness and a willingness to work for others.  He made the concept of “social business,” a revolutionary idea, seem like a viable, and even obvious, alternative for one’s career and life’s work.”

It all starts with one individual willing to help one person per day. When you see the change that one person can enact, you too will become convinced, like Yunus, that there is more to life than profit margins and financial gain.

Opportunity’s Partnership Relationship Manager, Andrew Koehler, also attended Friday’s event at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Read his blog post from the event for further reflection on Yunus’ global outlook, including his distinction between “social business” and “selfish business.” For future events from the Chicago Council, visit TheChicagoCouncil.org.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus is the founder and manager of Grameen Bank and the winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. His new book is entitled Building Social Business.

Last Friday, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs brought Dr. Muhammad Yunus to Chicago for a talk entitled “Building Social Business.” Dr. Yunus, often called the grandfather of microfinance, is the founder and managing director of Grameen Bank and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner. Friday’s talk was attended by an audience that consisted of local professionals, business leaders, students and educators, who were all interested in learning more about the principles and impact of building social businesses.

At Friday’s presentation, Yunus spoke extensively about his new book, Building Social Business, but he also devoted a significant portion of his speech to defining the concept “social business,” and to telling his personal story about the route he took to build his social business platform. He also discussed his work with Dannon Yogurt Co. to develop a nutrient-enriched yogurt product for children that would help curb child malnutrition in Bangladesh. Yunus highlighted this project as a prime example of a business developing a cheap yet economically viable product, providing a sustainable solution to pressing social needs.

Yunus’ greatest strength may be his ability to envision his projects and goals on a grand scale. His ability to break down a complex social system, and explain it in a very pragmatic way with solutions, shows his dedication to enacting sustainable and long-term social change.

Yunus’ many years of experience in both commercial and social business make it possible for him to draw a line in the sand between the two. He spoke passionately on his stance, affirming that “selfish business does not mix with selfless business, and the two must exist independently of one another.” This distinction between “selfish business” and “selfless business” was the cornerstone of his presentation on Friday, and a point to which he returned to emphasize his call for a shift in the business system.

Dr. Yunus challenged us all to become part of the global solution to the problem of “selfish business” when he declared his goal to someday start a “social business stock market.” It was a humorous moment, and it produced a ripple of laughter in the audience. But Dr. Yunus was also driving home a point — one which he has made for much of his career. The system is flawed, he admits, but we all  have the power to change it.

Opportunity International is a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Read our previous blog post on the Chicago Council’s May 4th event, “Investing in Women, Enriching the World,” with Ambassador Melanne Verveer,  ambassador-at-large for Global Women’s Issues under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. For more information on the Chicago Council’s future events, visit TheChicagoCouncil.org.

Since it might take me 5,000 words to recreate all of their great lessons I am going to try to keep this short and sweet and recap the key messages of the speakers.

John Brock, CEO, Coca-Cola Enterprises
• Socially minded leadership is the key driver of buy-in for the employee body (Coca Cola has 72,000 employees)
• Working with stakeholders (consumers, customers, suppliers, employees and non-government organizations) to innovate responsible and sustainable practices builds better relationships
• Sustainability improves business results

Conversation with John Wood, founder of Room to Read and author of Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children, and Jonathan Greenblatt, founder of Ethos Water
“Nonprofit” is an antiquated term
• Business with a social mission is the future
• Take up a challenge, start small to see what works
• The government needs to create incentives for businesses with a social mission, quoting Jonathan, “there would be an explosion of social good”
• Don’t wait. Develop world class skills and network now. Learn to make a social impact no matter where you are in your career.

Innovating Investing Panel: Lincoln Caplan, managing partner, SeaChange Capital Partners; Greg Casagrande, founder of South Pacific Business Development Microfinance Network and MicroDreams, and founding director of the Ice Angels, Australasia’s largest angel investor group; Seth Miller, partner at DBL Investors; and Dr. Sanjay Sinho, CEO, The American India Foundation.

This panel focused on how capital markets for social good are developing. Lincoln and Sanjay represented the non-profit capital market, while Greg and Seth represented the socially minded capital market. Plenty of expertise and insight on this panel! This panel was only allotted 75 minutes, but we could have spent an entire day with them in discussion. Some of the key lessons:
• Measuring impact is a key success factor for all social capital
• Mission driven investments must be “patient capital”
• There is a broad range of businesses that do social good and it is a dynamic definition
• Invest with a double bottom line – social and financial returns

Nancy Barry, founder and CEO, Enterprise Solutions to Poverty (ESP)
• Unfettered capitalism is over and now is the time for profitable social enterprises
• The best solutions to poverty are small and local
• Started ESP to scale up local poverty solutions, or as she put it, “do it well and do it big”; social enterprises should leverage the resources of large corporations

Jacqueline Novogratz, founder of the Acumen Fund and Author of The Blue Sweater
• Created Acumen Fund after seeing a need for a better solution to poverty
• How to attack poverty: with dignity, from the bottom up, using enhanced market-based solutions
• Acumen Fund invests with “patient capital,” seeks high risk and low returns
• Invest in local social entrepreneurs, who have great products with social impact, but are ignored by commercial capital markets

Congratulations to the Northwestern Kellogg MBA students for putting together this excellent event. The cast of speakers brought the cross sector perspective that is needed in innovating social change. The future of business is the social enterprise and it is quite bright! For those who were unable to attend this conference, I hope this blog will be inspiring and informative to you, and I encourage you to try to attend KIN Global in May 2010.

While I was thrilled to be in the breakout session when we shared our commitment update from the stage (see Banking on Education), so much of the power of CGI is in these hotel lobby and hallway moments. In fact, CGI is a bit like UrbanSpoon on the iPhone. You take people who are working to make the world more just, people with political and social influence, and people with access to significant resources and…shake. What pops up is often just the right fit, the right partnership. And even if not, it’s cool to know that those people (or those restaurants) are out there. To know that they too are trying to create social change and ease the world’s suffering.

Even if you didn’t have the great privilege of attending, please know that you are a part of that work – that you’re in the app. As individuals, problems like poverty, disease and climate change can seem insurmountable. But every time you give, every time you volunteer, every time you tell the story of why you care about these things, you’re in the mix. And you’re not going it alone.

A quote in the conference materials from Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai, who I had the tremendous honor to meet while there, reads as follows, “And if every one of us did something little…that little action multiplied several million times will make a difference.”

And…shake.

If you were there or watched online, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the annual meeting. Just click the comments link below.