BRAC net, world youth community and Open Learning Campus

Sir Fazle Abed -top 70 alumni networks & 5 scots curious about hi-trust hi-tech

part 5 - inviting mobilisation of a world of solutions

Rural gets On-grid (mobile, solar power) BRAC helps celebrate extremely useful innovations

Joi ITo at MIT media lab says - what's exciting now is moores law doesnt just apply to doubling of chip power every year but can apply to dobling of vital goals designed round mobile apps

below we'll look at some of the sectors where brac is mobilising change- and welcomes youth with winning idea

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Permalink Reply by chris macrae on March 3, 2013 at 2:06pm

cashless banking

www.bkash.com

notes from The Economist 17 Jan 2013:

In Bangladesh bKash has garnered a following of 2.2m users. It has more than 30,000 retail agents, almost one in every two villages, allowing most rural Bangladeshis to use digital cash (see picture). In India BEAM has signed up 14m customers and does 1m transactions every month.

In both cases the success is in large part the result of what Anand Shrivastav, BEAM’s founder and chief executive, calls “the agnostic option”: bKash and BEAM offer mobile wallets that work on any wireless network.

Another reason for the growing adoption of mobile money, at least in the case of bKash, is the fact that it is not a single firm, but has a broad network of partners. It is linked to BRAC, a big Bangladeshi NGO, which in turn works with a vast network of mostly mom-and-pop grocery shops, which serve as retail agents for bKash. “They are like an ATM, but a more reliable one in a country where electricity can drop in and out,” says Kamal Quadir, chief executive of bKash.

 

Permalink Reply by chris macrae on March 20, 2015 at 2:51pm

About Innovation Fund Challenge

Photo by Nimai Chandra Ghosh, 2012 CGAP Photo Contest

Project background

In Bangladesh, approximately half of the adult population is unbanked. In less than four years, a mobile banking industry has emerged to meet these individuals’ needs, and has already reached over 25 million users bKash, the leading mobile money provider, conducts an average of 2 million transactions per day, and a total of nearly $1 billion US.... BRAC sees a tremendous opportunity to use mobile money to innovate, better serve clients and become more efficient. With the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, BRAC’s social innovation lab established the BRAC Innovation Fund for Mobile Money. In the context of Bangladesh, the rapid adoption of mobile money creates exciting opportunities for new approaches in poverty reduction. As an organisation, BRAC hopes to improve operational efficiency, decrease costs, and make services more accessible to clients. Through a portfolio of diverse pilots, BRAC is experimenting with mobile money. The project began in September 2013 and will continue unil August 2016. Through this initiative, BRAC hopes to accomplish the following objectives:

  • Increase the adoption of digital financial services at BRAC, particularly in service delivery
  • Increase the adoption of digital financial services by BRAC’s clients
  • Contribute to the global discourse on digital financial services

BRAC Innovation Fund Challenge

Last year, we asked people to share ideas about mobile money, and we received 100 ideas, resulting in in 7 exciting projects . This year, we are asking for your ideas again—briefly share your idea of how mobile money can be used to deliver better, more efficient services to BRAC clients in Bangladesh. A few moments of your time can potentially make a big impact!

Challenge timeline

Support from the social innovation lab

The social innovation lab is here to help you. We have conducted extensive research on mobile money adoption within Bangladesh and around the world. Please feel free to contact us with any questions.

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KERRY GLASGOWIS HUMANITY'S LAST BEST CHANCE - Join search for Sustainaabilty's Curricula

101ways-generation.docx 101 ways education can save the world WHAT IF WE DESIGNED LIFELONG LIVELIHOOD LOEARNING SO THAT so that teachers & students, parent & communities were empowered to be ahead of 100 times more tech rather than the remnants of a system that puts macihnes and their exhausts ahead of human life and nature's renewal 2016 is arguably the first time thet educatirs became front and centre to the question that Von neummn asked journalist to mediate back in 1951- what goods will peoples do with 100 times more tech per decade? It appears that while multilaterals like the Un got used in soundbite and twittering ages to claim they valued rifghts & inclusion, pubblic goods & safety, they fotgot theirUN tech twin in Genva has been practising global connectivity since 1865, that dellow Goats of V neumnn has chiared Intellectual Cooperation in the 1920s which pervesrely became the quasi trade union Unesco- it took Abedian inspired educations in 2016 ro reunite ed and tecah as well as health and trade ; 7 decades of the UN not valuing Numenn's question at its core is quite late, but if we dare graviate UN2 aeound this digital coperation question now we give the younger half if the world a chnace especially as a billion poorest women have been synchronised to deep community human development since 1970

Dear Robert - you kindly asked for a short email so that you could see if there is a CGTN anchor in east coast who might confidentially share views with my expectation of how only Asian young women cultural movements (parenting and community depth but amplified by transparent tech in life shaping markets eg health, food, nature..) can return sustainability to all of us
three of my father's main surveys in The Economist 1962-1977 explain imo where future history will take us (and so why younger half of world need friendship/sustainable adaptation with Chinese youth -both on mainland and diaspora)
 1962 consider japan approved by JF Kennedy: argued good news - 2 new economic models were emerging through japan korea south and taiwan relevant to all Asia Rising (nrxt to link the whole trading/supply chains of the far east coast down through hong kong and cross-seas at singapore)
1 rural keynsianism ie 100% productivity in village first of all food security- borlaug alumni ending starvation
2 supercity costal trade models which designed hi-tech borderless sme value chains- to build a 20 million person capital or an 8 million person superport you needed the same advances in engineering - partly why this second economic model was win-win for first time since engines begun Glasgow 1760 ; potentially able to leverage tech giant leaps 100 times ahead; the big opportunity von neumann had gifted us - knowhow action networking multiply value application unlike consuming up things
1976 entrepreneurial revolution -translated into italian by prodi - argued that future globalisation big politics big corporate would need to be triangularised by community scaled sme networks- this was both how innovation advancing human lot begins and also the only way to end poverty in the sense of 21st C being such that next girl born can thrive because every community taps in diversity/safety/ valuing child and health as conditions out of which intergenerational economic growth can spring
in 1977 fathers survey of china - argued that there was now great hope that china had found the system designs that would empower a billion people to escape from extreme poverty but ultimately education of the one child generation (its tech for human capabilities) would be pivotal ( parallel 1977 survey looked at the futures of half the world's people ie east of iran)
best chris macrae + 1 240 316 8157 washington DC
IN MORE DETAIL TECH HUMAN EXPONENTIALS LAST CHANCE DECADE? 
 - we are in midst of unprecedented exponential change (dad from 1960s called death of distance) the  tech legacy of von neumann (dad was his biographer due to luckily meeting him in his final years including neumann's scoping of brain science (ie ai and human i) research which he asked yale to continue in his last lecture series). Exponential risks of extinction track to  mainly western top-down errors at crossroads of tech  over last 60 years (as well as non transparent geonomic mapping of how to reconcile what mainly 10 white empires had monopoly done with machines 1760-1945 and embedded in finance - see eg keynes last chapter of general theory of money); so our 2020s destiny is conditioned by quite simple local time-stamped details but ones that have compounded so that root cause and consequence need exact opposite of academic silos- so I hope there are some simple mapping points we can agree sustainability and chinese anchors in particular are now urgently in the middle of
Both my father www.normanmacrae.net at the economist and I (eg co-authoring 1984 book 2025 report, retranslated to 1993 sweden's new vikings) have argued sustainability in early 21st c will depend mostly on how asians as 65% of humans advance and how von neumann (or moores law) 100 times more tech every decade from 1960s is valued by society and business.
My father (awarded Japan's Order of Rising Sun and one time scriptwriter for Prince Charles trips to Japan) had served as teen allied bomber command burma campaign - he therefore had google maps in his head 50 years ahead of most media people, and also believed the world needed peace (dad was only journalist at messina birth of EU ) ; from 1960 his Asian inclusion arguments were almost coincidental to Ezra Vogel who knew much more about Japan=China last 2000 years ( additionally  cultural consciousness of silk road's eastern dynamics not golden rule of Western Whites) and peter drucker's view of organisational systems
(none of the 10 people at the economist my father had mentored continued his work past 1993- 2 key friends died early; then the web turned against education-journalism when west coast ventures got taken over by advertising/commerce instead of permitting 2 webs - one hi-trust educational; the other blah blah. sell sell .sex sell. viral trivial and hate politicking)
although i had worked mainly in the far east eg with unilever because of family responsibilities I never got to china until i started bumping into chinese female graduates at un launch of sdgs in 2015- I got in 8 visits to beijing -guided by them around tsinghua, china centre of globalisation, a chinese elder Ying Lowrey who had worked on smes in usa for 25 years but was not jack ma's biographer in 2015 just as his fintech models (taobao not alibaba) were empowering villagers integration into supply chains; there was a fantastic global edutech conference dec 2016 in Tsinghua region (also 3 briefings by Romano Prodi to students) that I attended connected with  great womens education hero bangladesh's fazle abed;  Abed spent much of hs last decade hosting events with chinese and other asian ambassadors; unite university graduates around sdg projects the world needed in every community but which had first been massively demonstrated in asia - if you like a version of schwarzman scholars but inclusive of places linking all deepest sustainability goals challenges 
and i personally feel learnt a lot from 3 people broadcasting from cgtn you and the 2 ladies liu xin and  tian wei (they always seemed to do balanced interviews even in the middle of trump's hatred campaigns), through them I also became a fan of father and daughter Jin at AIIB ; i attended korea's annual general meet 2017 of aiib; it was fascinating watching bankers for 60 countries each coming up with excuses as to why they would not lead on infrastructure investments (even though the supercity economic model depends on that)
Being a diaspora scot and a mathematician borders (managers who maximise externalisation of risks) scare me; especially rise of nationalist ones ;   it is pretty clear historically that london trapped most of asia in colomisdation ; then bankrupted by world war 2 rushed to independence without the un or anyone helping redesign top-down systems ; this all crashed into bangladesh the first bottom up collaboration women lab ; ironically on health, food security, education bangladesh and chinese village women empowerment depended on sharing almost every village microfranchise between 1972 and 2000 especially on last mile health networking
in dads editing of 2025 from 1984 he had called for massive human awareness by 2001 of mans biggest risk being discrepancies in incomes and expectations of rich and poor nations; he suggested that eg public broadcast media could host a reality tv end poverty entrepreneur competition just as digital media was scaling to be as impactful as mass media
that didnt happen and pretty much every mess - reactions to 9/11, failure to do ai of epidemics as priority from 2005 instead of autonomous cars, failure to end long-term carbon investments, subprime has been rooted in the west not having either government nor big corporate systems necessary to collaboratively value Asian SDG innovations especially with 5g
I am not smart enough to understand how to thread all the politics now going on but in the event that any cgtn journalist wants to chat especially in dc where we could meet I do not see humans preventing extinction without maximising chinese youth (particularly womens dreams); due to covid we lost plans japan had to relaunch value of female athletes - so this and other ways japan and china and korea might have regained joint consciousness look as if they are being lost- in other words both cultural and education networks (not correctly valued by gdp news headlines) may still be our best chance at asian women empowerment saving us all from extinction but that needs off the record brainstorming as I have no idea what a cgtn journalist is free to cover now that trump has turned 75% of americans into seeing china as the enemy instead of looking at what asian policies of usa hurt humans (eg afghanistan is surely a human wrong caused mostly by usa); a; being a diaspora scot i have this naive idea that we need to celebrate happiness of all peoples an stop using media to spiral hatred across nations but I expect that isnt something an anchor can host generally but for example if an anchor really loves ending covid everywhere then at least in that market she needs to want to help united peoples, transparency of deep data etc

2021 afore ye go to glasgow cop26-

please map how and why - more than 3 in 4 scots earn their livelihoods worldwide not in our homeland- that requires hi-trust as well as hi-tech to try to love all cultures and nature's diversity- until mcdonalds you could use MAC OR MC TO identify our community engaging networks THAT SCALED ROUND STARTING UP THE AGE OF HUMANS AND MACHINES OF GKASGOW UNI 1760 1 2 3 - and the microfranchises they aimed to sustain  locally around each next child born - these days scots hall of fame started in 1760s around   adam smith and james watt and 195 years later glasgow engineering BA fazle abed - we hope biden unites his irish community building though cop26 -ditto we hope kamalA values gandhi- public service - but understand if he or she is too busy iN DC 2021 with covid or finding which democrats or republicans or american people speak bottom-up sustainable goals teachers and enrrepreneurs -zoom with chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk if you are curious - fanily foundation of the economist's norman macrae- explorer of whether 100 times more tehc every decade since 1945 would end poverty or prove orwell's-big brother trumps -fears correct 2025report.com est1984 or the economist's entreprenerialrevolutionstarted up 1976 with italy/franciscan romano prodi

help assemble worldrecordjobs.com card pack 1in time for games at cop26 glasgow nov 2021 - 260th year of machines and humans started up by smith and watt- chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk- co-author 2025report.com, networker foundation of The Economist's Norman Macrae - 60s curricula telecommuting andjapan's capitalist belt roaders; 70s curricula entreprenurial revolution and poverty-ending rural keynesianism - library of 40 annual surveys loving win-wins between nations youth biographer john von neumann


http://plunkettlakepress.com/jvn.html

101%20ways%20that%20lifelong%20education%20can%20prevent%20your%20kids%20being%20the%20extinction%20generation.docx

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