people who change people

Just back from New York and it would be too much to say how amazing the whole trip was in every particular details but it was a field trip with the fellows and we saw so many organizations fighting to change the world that it was truly amazing. In quick succession, we met with Acumen Fund which funds start-up capital to entrepreneurs in the developing world, with an emphasis on a double bottom line (i.e. mandating the entrepreneurs to for example pay 10 times the minimum wage to their factory workers), the Nonprofit Finance Fund that acts as an investment bank to nonprofits and has developed unique financial products (e.g. a conversion of a depreciation) product that improves liquidity on the balance sheet, KIPP academy, the highest performing middle school in NY located in the South Bronx, all students of colour, high poverty areas. The school has a unique pedagogical method that is yielding results in test scores and all that. Then the Harlem Children's Zone, headed by a charismatic black leader that has really cleaned up Harlem. Then dinner with documentary film producers that are submitting their pieces for the Academy Awards and changing the world in their own way and with other wonderful people (e.g. this guy from morgan stanley who's created a microfinance fund! morgan stanley! and it's headed up people from Europe that I KNOW!). Then the next day to see WITNESS, a human rights film advocacy group that was headed by Gillian Caldwell who worked undercover to expose Russian sex trafficking groups and now trains local NGOs to film human rights abuse. Then to see Chancellor Joel Klein (Head of the New York Board of Education) who was in the Economist the other day for his controversial education reform package who said that in life, like in politics, "you gotta give a little, take a little and let your poor heart break a little".