Three leading entrepreneurs — two of them Brown alums — reflected on how their organizations are making social impact in Latin American countries, during a seminar hosted by Brown's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in March.
The panel, titled Social Entrepreneurship in Latin America: The Ashoka Model, featured Diana Wells ‘88, president of Ashoka, Marta Echavarria ‘87, founder of EcoDecision and Orazio Bellettini, executive director of Advance of Reforms and Opportunities (FARO).
Ashoka is a global organization that provides venture capital in the form of fellowships to social entrepreneurs across the world.
Such funding frees entrepreneurs, and helps them to “focus all of their energy and time on developing, nurturing and implementing their innovative ideas,” according to Director of Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) Prof. Richard Snyder, who had a summer internship with Ashoka 23 years ago and gave an opening address at the two-panel seminar.
EcoDecision, the social firm that Echavarria co-founded, focuses on the protection of ecosystem services in the world’s largest continental mountain range, the Andes.
Wells: to be leading this organization is still a thrill
Bellettini’s organization, FARO, is an Ecuadorian-based ‘think-and-do tank’ that fosters citizen participation in strengthening the public policy framework to promote development and equity.
Both Echavarria and Bellettini are recipients of the Ashoka Fellowship.
A 'global network'
According to Wells, Ashoka is the first truly global association for social entrepreneurs, and by bringing fellows to a group of peers where they get moral support and benefit from the “network effect,” her organization increases the impact that these fellows make in their communities.
“There is nothing is more powerful in terms of driving social change than finding an entrepreneur who has a new idea,” she said. Such ideas, according to Wells, are “the best investment in making social change." Under the Ashoka Model, the 31-year old organization identifies 'leading entrepreneurs with innovative solutions to social problems,' awho are elected every five years.
Currently, more than 60 Ashoka fellows work across the world in six diverse fields — civil engagement, economic development, environment, health, human rights and education. Social entrepreneurs, according to Wells, do not only change the issue in front of them, but actually plant a seed that will drive and change whole systems.
Passion
In addition to having a cause, according to EcoDecision boss Echavarria, social entrepreneurs need to have passion about their work.
“You’re going to be doing it 48 hours a day,” she said, adding that the same kind of passion moved her and her husband to start a firm committed to saving forests and landscapes in the Andes.
“Our economies depend on nature…” she explained, citing a 2010 study that showed a $28 billion loss in biodiversity, contrasted against the net present value of that biodiversity — $1.35 to $3.1 trillion.
Echavarria described the current model of conservation in the United States as “amazing” and “powerful,” but noted that it was not working the same way everywhere overseas, where it is often limited to creating national parks.
“We need to incorporate much better the value and the benefits that nature and forests provide,” Echavarria said. She cited as examples — non-timber forest products, the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) program, and offsetting biological diversity impacts.
EcoDecison, co-founded by Brown alum Marta Echavarria, focuses on conservation of natural environments in Latin America
Specialty
Echavarria, who said her specialty was water, said that the goal of her current work is that “every water user ensures a percentage of their tariff to protect the watersheds through financial mechanisms.”
Among those mechanisms in Latin America, she cited fiduciary trusts and endowments.
Improving policy in Ecuador
Bellettini's reflections focused on policy entrepreneurs, whose focus he said is to “improve the quality of public dialogue and the quality of the policy process.”
“It is crucial to have people committed to improving those capacities in public institutions,” he said. “No country has developed without good public institutions and good public policies."
Policymaking in his native Ecuador has been characterized by a lack of institutional capacity and political instability, Bellettini said, adding that a minister of finance lasts an average of only six months in office.
“It’s very difficult for a policymaker to implement any policy,” he said, noting that by the time a policy is signed into law, the policymaker sponsoring it would have typically moved out of office.
Evidence as a tool to influence policy
“Social entrepreneurs are people with the ability to use evidence to promote policy change,” Bellettini said.
“However, evidence is important but is not enough,” he said. “It is very important to be able to communicate.” Since political communication flows are both top-down and bottom-up, it is critical for social entrepreneurs build “the capacity to talk, to present evidence… to convince both the policymakers and the citizens.”
Belletini: "Systemic change is going to be possible if we have people with strong research skills, ability to generate and communicate evidence, and capacity to promote cooperation between private and public sectors”
In addition to effective communication, policy entrepreneurs also need to develop capacities to network and work together.
“In developing countries, no single actor has [all] the ideas, the capacity, the resources or the legitimacy to promote social change,” he said. Particularly, in countries with “high political fragmentation” like Ecuador, “it is very important to promote a culture of implementation, collaboration and responsibility,” Bellettini said.
As an example, Bellettini cited the failure of extensive research to influence policies in Ecuador. He noted that despite research evidence from the 1990s showing that eastern Ecuador was a hotspot for biodiversity that needed to be preserved, subsequent government policies were not responsive to the findings.
