We don’t do too many interviews here at Friedbeef’s Tech, but social entrepreneurship
on the web is something I’m passionate about. Here are some quick insights on what
drives a social entrepreneur, and the challenges they face, and for that we’re talking to
Mike Tee from Elevyn.com.
Elevyn helps to connect poor artisans and villagers directly
to customers around the world, and effectively cutting out middle men and ensuring higher returns
to the poor craftsmen. This also allows poor artisans to reach a worldwide market
previously unattainable to them, and to create a sustainable income and raise themselves out of
poverty.
You may have heard of Etsy.com, a community specialized in selling hand-made items directly on
the Internet. Think of Elevyn as Etsy for the poor.
Meet the founders of Elevyn…
1. Why this cause?
Our work is largely inspired by the Gerai OA - a non-profit, volunteer-driven stall that
sells crafts sourced from indigenous groups of Malaysia. Gerai OA plays a very important
role in connecting the poor rural artisans to the urban Malaysian market. Being tech geeks with
interests in social issues, both Devan and myself constantly salivated at the thought of an
online Gerai OA!
At the same time, we had Sze Ning who had, over the years, been volunteering with Gerai OA and
involved in various indigenous group projects. In early 2008, one of the projects took her to a
village deep inside rural Sabah, Malaysia. The locals there were subsistence based, and had
no electricity nor piped water supply. Imagine this in Malaysia! However - she was surprised that
they had high speed Internet in their schools or clinics - powered by solar power and satellite!
It immediate struck her that something could be done with connecting the artisans to the world
via the web.
So a lot of it goes down to having things "coming together at the right time". Sze Ning shared
with us her experience, we decided to try our luck with MDeC Pre-seed, and the ball really
started rolling when we won the grant so a lot of credit goes to MDeC as well for making things
possible. (MDec is a Malaysian Government linked VC).
2. What obstacles did you face getting this off the ground and what are you doing about it?
Very much like traditional IT projects - a major challenge is getting people to buy
into the idea. In our case, it’s many parties:
A. Getting shops to come online - as our objective is really to empower communities is rural
areas to start selling online, a lot of groundwork is needed to share with them the idea, and to
gain the communities’ trust to join this new initiative. And then there’s the
"capacity-building" work needed to get the artisans organized as a group, and producing quality
crafts that the market demands. So in this, we work with various field partners who are already
established on the ground, and have a few advisors who give us their thoughts on the many issues
that we encounter.
B. Getting people like you and me to buy and contribute. One major challenge is how to get people
to buy the crafts, and to learn more about the Causes. It’s very hard to get people,
especially the urban ones, to relate to the plight of a rural artisan like Aunt Imboi for
instance, for her world is so far away from our every day lives.
So we’re thinking hard on how to bridge that gap - and one thing we’ll be doing is
start a blog and start writing on specific themes that people can easily understand, such as
Indigenous Peoples. On top of that we’ll also be embarking on traditional marketing methods
like Google ads, etc.
3. Which other socially beneficial web sites are close to your heart?
The one that totally blew me away is KIVA.org. Many have heard of this - taking microloans
online, but the scale at which it is being done, and in spite of the fact that it started out as
a 1-programmer initiative - is amazing. There are few others, but none truly groundbreaking in
terms of idea or execution that I’ve found so far. I like to follow the Springwise.com
website - they sometimes showcase some truly great social business ideas.
Actually this is one issue that I’ll be addressing at BarcampJB (come to the event if you
live in South East Asia). We’ve yet to see much exciting web projects come into place.
Maybe the social entrepreneurship field is relatively new, and not many have even heard of it. So
a lot of startup ideas are urban-targeted and profit-oriented.
Mike will be speaking at BarcampJB
on ‘Web 2.0 & Social Entrepeneurship - Changing the World’ at
12pm Dec 7th. If you live in Singapore or Malaysia, come join in! If you live
elsewhere, find a barcamp happening in a
location near you.
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