On the plane to Vienna. It’s been a long time between the starting point of Internet Bar, 2005 and now. It’s a perfect storm, so they say. The 7 billion people of the world could not be more disparate in terms of their economic situations – and I’m headed to the World Justice Forum to say that we have an approach. PeaceTones! Reaching out to the frontier of the internet, to the 6 billion people who are not online and say – have at it! We are going to bring you everything you need to build online businesses, let you set the your own rules for business, link us all together in online marketplaces, and then see how we can get the money flowing.
There are a number of people who have told me it isn’t going to get done. Maybe that’s because I’m a dreamer, and the hard work of measuring is not in my province. Well, that isn’t totally fair. I have many people around me who are demanding metrics. How many people will we reach? How are we touching them? Are we getting them the technology, the training, the online markets that they need to really make sales?
There is definitely a generational difference in attitude. Younger folks, my students especially, have a great inspiration to make a difference. My generation (I’m 57, almost 58) is far less tolerant of my bright eyed enthusiasm. It is fair to say that I have been less than successful raising all the money we need to make these dreams a reality. Social entrepreneurship is tough work, and more groups are supporting it, including corporations who see future markets for their products being developed. All I can say is that we are in a bad place in the world as it relates to poverty, health, and the environment. So new ways of thinking, funding, and dreaming in particular, are the order of the day.
I remember back to 2005, when my friend, Rachel Barbour, asked me what I wanted out of this idea of bringing justice over the internet to places that didn’t have internet access, were beset by war, devastation and poverty. My answer didn’t make the grade – a common theme for me (to my credit, I listen and then work to change myself)– and, she said that we would travel to Harrisonburg, Virginia, and meet some of her friends at Eastern Mennonite University. That led me to an encounter with several wonderful teachers/mentors, including Lisa Schirch, Anne Nyambura and my classmates in a course on Women, Trauma and Peacebuilding at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. So, it is fair to say that I brought my e-commerce act to EMU and though I had a lot of listeners, there were many skeptics in my midst. One story encapsulates it all for me.
I was at EMU for a week in May, 2005, and Anne Nyambura from Kenya, blessed me with her enthusiasm and willingness to connect me with as many of the people she could find from Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe as she could find – at lunches, dinners, and side meetings, I talked about bringing e-commerce as a tool for poverty alleviation. My last night in Harrisonburg, we had a pot luck dinner. Lisa Schirch, Anne, a couple of women from Kenya, and a Pakistani woman working for a German NGO, sat down next to me, and I started to talk. Immediately, the woman from Pakistan stopped me and said that by now, my story was well known. She had a couple of questions she thought I should answer. Was I assuming that I could arrive in a country like Pakistan, recently devastated by earthquakes, show up in a village filled with illiterate woman, no electricity anywhere, and then get online businesses started? I felt very small at that moment. I really didn’t know what to say. And, I didn’t say anything.
I don’t know the name of the woman from Kenya who was sitting next to me. All I know is that she stood up, put her arm around me, and said, “We need people like him to dream. If nobody dreams, we are never going to get out of the mess we are in. We’ll start somewhere. In Kenya, we’ll start in Nairobi. We have internet access there. We’ll get to the villages eventually. But we have to start.” From that moment on, I was on my way. Yes, I’m a dreamer. But I have purpose, and perseverance. And with the possibility of an internet renaissance at hand, I committed to developing a plan for InternetBAr to come up with a project to bring online business opportunities to Kenya, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Afghanistan, the W. Bank, N. Ireland, Brazil and eventually 1000 villages everywhere in the world. PeaceTones was born.
It took some time to develop. And now, I am in Vienna at the World Justice Forum II. Our first albums are for sale on Amazon and iTunes. From Sierra Leone and Recife, Brazil. And, our kids from Recife arrive today to perform tomorrow at the WJF gala dinner!
Jeff,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great post - so inspiring. I just can't tell you how happy I am to see you making such great progress with this. It is incredibly inspiring!