The life of a social entrepreneur is not easy. Living with no real money to call your own, surviving on loans, borrowing from friends, using credit cards to charge things for your friends so they can pay you back in cash, etc. This is my existence as I try to revolutionize the way that people in developing countries create new businesses through alternative energy sources, with my main focus on affordable solar systems and a new way of bartering across borders using the internet. My partner in exploration has been from the beginning Dr. Hernan Figueroa IMBA, a native Peruvian with a Ph.D in Electical Engineering and someone who wants to change the world.
Together we created the idea of solar emPOWERing which is to facilitate a way for individuals, families, universities, or even towns and cities to loan or donate or trade money or solar equipment to aspiring solar entrepreneurs in developing countries. Those that receive the money or equipment install the solar energy system on their home or business. Then they will receive training from business and engineering volunteers (
MBA Enterprise Corps,
MBAs Without Borders,
Engineers without Borders,
Peace Corps Volunteers, etc) as well as from volunteers and fellows in social ventures such as
Ashoka Fellows and
Fulbright Scholars from around the world to create a new business so they will be able to produce a product or service to trade or sell in order to pay off their loan as fast as possible. Most importantly though is that in the long run people improve their lives and living standards through solar energy and the new businesses the clean energy allows them to create.
My inspiration to join this rural solar revolution came in 2005 as I traveled through the remote taiga of northern Mongolia. I had recently completed my two year
Peace Corps service in Kazakhstan and had just crossed both China and Mongolia. After two days on a horse through rough terrain I was utterly surprised to find the nomadic
Tsaatan reindeer herders to be living with solar panels and satellite television.
They said they had purchased the equipment in the nearest town which wasn't that nearby at all, especially in a country with virtually no modern roads. At first I was a bit angry that I had spent all that time to see such an ancient culture only to find them using the most up-to-date technology. Then as I sat in their teepees watching the one television station I realized what was happening.
For the first time in the history of the nomadic
Tsaatan through their radio and television they are able to see where they exist in the world, under what government they live, and the reasons why they should continue with their traditional way of life instead of packing up and moving to the overcrowded, crime-ridden, disease infested capital of
Ulaan Baatar.
It took me a few weeks before I fully comprehended that what I had seen up in the mountains of southern Siberia was not something that I should be angry about but rather something that I should take inspiration from and use that inspiration to combat what I have coined the term
"the Darkness Divide".
The Darkness Divide is much more severe than the Digital Divide because the 1.6 billion people that suffer under the
Darkness Divide have even less chance of overcoming the Digital Divide than those who have access to electricity. Moreover the
Darkness Divide inherently encompasses numerous safety issues such as fire hazards due to usage of unsafe energy sources such as kerosene lanterns and candles. They also risk death to smoke inhalation and lung damage due to these unsafe sources of energy. For these reasons alone Ned Tozun and
Sam Goldman created
d.light.design to totally eliminate the use of kerosene lanterns around the globe.
As I returned to United States to start my MBA courses at the
Moore School of Business of the University of South Carolina I began to focus my attention on learning more about the Darkness Divide and how to create a network and system for its elimination. This blog is my efforts to systemically dissolve the Darkness Divide through solar energy, direct online lending, and just as importantly an efficient trade/barter platform that will eliminate the necessity of money for cultures who have survived to this time without the use of money as well as for people who are tired of our indebtedness to our artificial monetary policies and currency regimes. This platform is being formally announced here as Treque, the
Aymara word for barter or trade and the system of exchange these hardy Andean people have practice since time immemorial.
