.The Heart of Business

Several people sent me a link to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, which describes a study by researchers at the University of Western Ontario on consumer choices and price tolerance for “ethical products.” The article is certainly worth reading, so go ahead; I’ll wait here.

For those of you who prefer a summary, here it is: Research shows that you might be able to make more money if you are ethical. What a relief! I have been looking for a good reason to be ethical. Without this research who knows what I would have done?

I am very glad that the authors found that people will pay more for products produced with ethical standards. That is undoubtedly good.

What is not good is the suggestion that in order for businesses to behave ethically, there must be some kind of payoff.

There is too much discussion today about the ROI (return on investment) of corporate social responsibility. It’s as if we need a financial reason to not use child labor, to not be a detriment to the environment. I think it is a bad trend to teach business leaders to think this way.

Another manifestation of this trend is the plethora of books and articles and marketing campaigns which tell us that stopping global warming and saving the environment will be easy. Consider these book titles, gleaned from a cursory search on Amazon:

Easy Green Living: The Ultimate Guide to Simple, Eco-Friendly Choices for You and Your Home

It’s Easy Being Green: A Handbook for Earth-Friendly Living

It’s Easy Being Green: One Student’s Guide to Serving God and Saving the Planet

Gorgeously Green: 8 Simple Steps to an Earth-Friendly Life

The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living

Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability

Simple Prosperity: Finding Real Wealth in a Sustainable Lifestyle

I particularly like the last title… not only is a living a sustainable lifestyle “simple,” it can make you rich! Fantastic news!

I’m not an expert, but I am pretty sure that “reversing” global warming, or even halting or slowing it, is not going to be anything like easy. I am pretty sure it will require huge changes in the way we live and do business. But that’s not what these titles lead you to believe.

I suppose a book title like “The Huge Changes You Need to Make in the Way You Currently Live to Have a Snowball’s Chance of Slowing Global Warming” wouldn’t sell.

This is a bad trend. It seems to say that people will only do the right and sensible thing if (1) it is easy and (2) if they can make money doing it. Is this really what we’ve become?

What if this study had shown the opposite, that consumers don’t care, that they won’t pay more for “ethical” products? Does that mean anything goes? If there is no financial reason to be ethical, should we not?

Consider these rather obvious statements:

1. It is easier, more efficient, and less expensive to be unethical.
2. If we are concerned only about maximizing shareholder value, we will not be socially responsible.
3. You can reduce your labor costs by paying less than a living wage, using child labor, or even better, slave labor.
4. Generally speaking, it is cheaper to exploit the environment than to protect it.
5. In all cases it is more expensive to give to charity than to not give to charity.

Yes, you will benefit by being unethical. Otherwise, why would anybody do it?

I have a friend who is fond of saying “A firm can’t go out of business being socially responsible.” My response is, of course it can! If a business is so poorly conceived and badly managed that it can’t survive without child labor, then it deserves to go out of business, and nothing should be done to stop it.

Also, am I the only one who is bothered by the finding that people are still willing to buy unethically-produced products, they just expect to pay less for them?

I was 13 when I bought my first book on Africa. It was a big book – way beyond my age-limited ability to read it all, but its size seemed to best capture how big my heart and passion were for the country at the time. It intrigued and excited me. My mother needed to see that voluminous book on my bedside shelf and release me to go there. She had to. It was my calling, surely she would see that.

She saw the book. She didn’t release me to go. Fair enough, I was 13 after all.

20 years later, I have just returned from my second visit to the Great Continent in six months, including Uganda last October on a mission and building trip with Watoto, and now South Africa on a Corporate Study Tour hosted by the Oaktree Foundation.

Oaktree is Australia’s first wholly youth-run aid and development organisation for which Lenovo is now (proudly) its Technology Partner. They are partnering with some remarkably smart and resourceful organisations on the front-line in developing countries like South Africa, and elsewhere around the world, to impact poverty through sustainable education and development programs.

Over the course of a week, the Oaktree team introduced me to some of the most inspirational people I have ever met. The tour took us to Johannesburg, Durban and Capetown and was structured around themes: Introduction to South Africa (when in Johannesburg, a visit to the Apartheid Museum is a must); HIV and AIDs; and Gender Violence and Inequality.

In South Africa, 700-1000 people die of HIV/AIDs every day. Every day. In one of the townships we visited in Durban, almost 70% of the population was affected. Despite years of government education attempts, there persists an insidious belief in some townships – you may have heard this – that a man can cure himself of HIV/AIDs if he has sex with a virgin. Like mine, your mind immediately thinks of young teenage victims. Your mind would not automatically stretch to imagine the horrible reality that babies as young as nine months old have been involved in this desperate, vain attempt at redemption.

I cried many tears for these children. I cried for the loss of their innocence; for the uselessness of their tragedy. I was deeply angry at the men, and at humankind that we could “allow” this to happen to our children. As I learned more about the the challenges facing this extraordinary country and its people though, I realised I could not damn these men without trial. They are desperate, more desperate than you and I could ever understand. Desperate because this virus means the affected man is being robbed of his dignity, his strength to work and support his family, his identity, his standing in his community. He will go to any measure to restore himself, even a shameful measure.

As a mother with young children myself, it’s a long stretch from such empathy to forgiveness, but it brought home to me the realities being faced here and throughout the developing world do not have easy fixes, and are not eased by hasty judgments.

These are desperate times. Crisis times. I was encouraged at the depth of thinking, research-based education programs and compassion that was driving so many of the individuals working at Oaktree and their partner organisations.

I have come back from this last trip more resolved than ever to do my part to make a difference – and to do that from within the corporate world. There is this great perceived divide in our society between idealism and capitalism. People seem to think you can EITHER change the world, OR work in business.

I want to challenge that. I believe you can do both. And that in fact the poor need us to do both, with equal advantage to them, and business. If Bill allows me – and if you’re interested?! – maybe I’ll go into my thoughts about that in more depth in another posting sometime!

Meanwhile, I should visit my parents’ place this weekend. There’s a book in a cupboard somewhere that needs dusting off.

My kids at home are the same age as these children I met in Johannesburg (aged 4 and 2) so was energising to spend some brief time together.

Oaktree hosted business leaders from various industries across Australia on the Corporate Study Tour to South Africa, including a visit to the World Changers Academy which is providing life-skills training to unemployed adults. I’m the one struggling with the sun.

Life-changing work happens on these donated computers at the World Changers Academy.

Heather Jones is Communications Director for Lenovo Australia & New Zealand.

By Guest Blogger Bob Page

Editor’s Prologue:

In October of 2006 I attended a kickoff meeting at NBA headquarters in New York in which Lenovo and the NBA set out to tackle the task of forming a meaningful sponsorship relationship.

(Yes, there are two football metaphors in that sentence… sorry NBA!)

I attended that meeting because NBA Cares, the charitable arm of the league, was one of the most important reasons we chose to become an NBA sponsor. We were impressed with the NBA as a whole, but NBA Cares made it a slam dunk (there’s your basketball metaphor!)

Leafing through the agenda that day 16 months ago, I pointed to the week of February 10 -17, 2008 and thought to myself, “there it is; that’s going to be the most important week in our relationship with NBA Cares.” That was the week that the NBA All Star Game was scheduled to be in New Orleans.

We set to work immediately with Josh Wachs of NBA Cares to make sure Lenovo and the NBA aggressively pursued joint programs that would leave New Orleans better off after All Star week. Both organizations wanted to leave a legacy in town, and contribute significantly to its rebuilding efforts.

So last week was the culmination of that work. We linked up with Allan Houston (my new favorite former NBA player) who fortunately introduced himself to our CMO at last year’s All Star Game in Las Vegas (that was a very lucky meeting indeed, as we are very happy to be working with his foundation in other cities as well). So our legacy in New Orleans will be the Business Education Development program, the Allan Houston / Lenovo Small Business Incubator, and the InExchange Fair Trade shop, which won the first ever Lenovo Social Enterprise Award.

Bob Page of Lenovo attended last week’s events and sends the following report:

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Lenovo and Rebuilding New Orleans

The contrast between this year’s NBA All-Star 2008, in New Orleans, and last year’s bling-bling event in Las Vegas could not have been stronger. The NBA selected New Orleans to help rebuild the city, and Lenovo played a significant role in that effort throughout the week.

Lenovo brand ambassador Bill Walton, the NBA legend and former Boston Celtic, started the week by conducting 22 interviews from NBA headquarters in New York. With television broadcasters throughout the United States, Walton advanced the All-Star New Orleans story, talking about what to expect on the court and what to expect from Lenovo in rebuilding the city.

In New Orleans on Wednesday, Lenovo partnered with the Allan Houston Legacy Foundation to expand a pioneering entrepreneurial initiative for young people beyond its first year in Harlem. Along with Houston and NBA Hall of Famer Bob Lanier, Lenovo sponsorships manager Mike Cunningham recognized 25 aspiring New Orleans entrepreneurs in an event at the Harry S Truman Middle School. Lenovo collaborated with the Houston Foundation to expand into New Orleans and is funding the project with 25 PCs, $18,000 in start-up money for each of the top two entrepreneurs, a team of advisers, and free office space.

Houston is a former guard for the New York Knicks, a three-time NBA All-Star, and a gold medalist at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. He is now a soft-spoken businessman and community leader, teaching young adults about financial planning as easily as he used to put up three-point jump shots.”Using the word ‘legacy’ is important in this project because we want to incubate new businesses in New Orleans,” Houston told about 200 middle-schoolers and their parents at the Truman school. “We’re creating a program that will make lasting impact.” The next day, Houston described his foundation’s partnership with Lenovo in a dozen radio interviews throughout the United States. More information about the New Orleans project is available here.

On Friday morning, Lenovo senior vice president Scott DiValerio appeared on a panel addressing the globalization of sports along with NBA Hall of Famers Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson, Coca-Cola Senior Vice President Beatrice Perez, and Mitchell Landrieu, lieutenant governor of Louisiana. On Friday afternoon, DiValerio and fellow SVP Rory Read worked alongside NBA Commissioner David Stern, NBA All-Stars Ray Allen of the Boston Celtics and Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat, and 2,500 other volunteers in the NBA’s Day of Service. DiValerio and Read spent most of the afternoon repainting hallways and classrooms at Laurel Elementary School, as well as touring classrooms and parent support facilities that will be equipped with Lenovo desktop PCs. In total, Lenovo gave about 100 PCs to the NBA Cares! program in New Orleans. More information is available here.

On Friday evening, Lenovo vice president Reid Walker presented Lenovo’s first Social Entrepreneurship Award to Erica Trani, a 25-year-old entrepreneur who created the first Fair Trade shop at Tulane University. The program was created with the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship at Tulane University, and more information is available here.

Bob Page

Lenovo

February 2008

There is a bit of a blogger buzz today, at least in the realms where I do my reading, about Bill Gates  advocating for business solutions to global poverty.

 (See the WSJ article on the subject.)

Blog reaction has ranged from disgust:

“Translation: the old form of capitalism was fine for me, making me the richest man in the world. Now that I’ve got that position, though, let’s change the rules for everyone else.”

To optimism for what it could mean:

“If Mr. Gates puts the muscle of his foundation behind such enterprise development – which we have long argued is the principal bottleneck to a successful BOP business approach – then perhaps the world will really change.”

A certain blogger even wondered what my opinion might be.   (Thanks for the massive, though unwarranted, blog respect, Mr. Churbuck!)

I have long argued that business growth and entrepreneurship are key parts of the equation in solving big social issues, which is why Lenovo supports such things.  I don’t argue with him, therefore, that capitalism is part of the answer.  But I wonder if Mr. Gates is suggesting that the cure to social ills in the developing world lies in the hands of western capitalists.  If he means, for example, that GE or Coke or BP or Lenovo ought to apply their creativity to solving problems in the developing world… well that’s true, but I’m not so sure it’s the whole answer. 

In my admittedly limited experience I have found there is plenty of creativity and industriousness in developing countries, and an abundance of capitalism.  What can Lenovo bring to the world’s poor, in the category of creative capitalism, that isn’t already there?  We have chosen to encourage that creativity, to support indigenous capitalists and social entrepreneurs, instead of trying to impose our creativity upon them. 

I found the following quote from the WSJ article to be surprising and even heartening:

“Mr. Gates sees a role for himself spurring companies into action, he said in the interview.  ‘The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy — even beyond the market opportunities — that’s something that appropriately ought to be done,’ he said.” (Emphasis mine)

It’s that hyphenated phrase “even beyond the market opportunities” that I find so interesting.  Does this mean Mr. Gates is going to eschew the claims of postmodern corporate social responsibility, which  suggest that solutions to huge global problems are easy, and even have positive ROI?  (E.g. “You can help the poor and profit too!” or “You can save the climate simply by planting a tree and going carbon neutral!”)  Instead of trying to convince firms that they can make money by serving the poor, is he going to call us all to accept what I call our Corporate Higher Calling, to do good regardless of how hard it is, how expensive it is, and regardless of the market opportunity?

If so, I am so in!

A little while ago we ran a poll on what a firm should do to be a good corporate citizen. The results were interesting, though not what I would call conclusive; there was a virtual 3-way tie.

This poll should be a bit easier on the voters. Only three choices, and a relatively simple question.

It’s a question I deal with often: Where should a firm focus its CSR efforts? By “where,” I mean geographically. I’m not asking for a city, state, or country, but more generally, what should guide a firm’s decisions on where they should work.

I can think of at least three schools of thought.

1. First are those who believe that you need to focus on issues that affect your employees the most. So give to local schools, local arts, local environmental and human services organizations, etc. This is pretty simple if you are a regional company, but significantly more complicated when you have 28,000 employees spread out over sixty-odd countries. But it is rational to suggest that your largest employee bases should get the lion’s share, or even all of the benefit of your philanthropy.
2. Next is the argument that philanthropy is a tool by which you grow your business by improving your reputation. Therefore your CSR spending should be concentrated in areas where you have the greatest marketing / branding need. For example, since the US is the largest PC market, a PC manufacturer might spend a commensurate portion of its philanthropic resources to benefit US concerns, and perhaps concentrate spending within the US on major PC markets like New York, LA, Chicago, etc. China, as the second largest PC market would receive the next most funding, and so on.
3. Finally an argument is often made that, particularly for a global company, the bulk of philanthropic initiatives should focus on areas of greatest need anywhere in the world. This could mean that, if you choose to focus on education, help students that are the most resource constrained. If your chief objective is to address the environment, concentrate on the most threatened areas. You get the idea.

You can also choose “other,” because I’m sure there are other ideas. But do refrain from suggesting a combination or a hybrid approach. That’s the coward’s way out.

In my experience most people in HR advocate #1, most people in marketing will choose #2, and most people with any sense will choose #3.

Have I poisoned the results by writing that? No matter, this is not a scientific poll. Besides, if you are a regular reader of the Heart of Business blog you already know where I stand.

(Note: those of you who answered “Do Nothing” in the previous poll are banned from this one! And I know who you are.)
[poll=2]

Last year Lenovo sponsored the Carolina HopeFest, an all-day music festival held near Lenovo’s headquarters in North Carolina that benefits Beacon of Hope, an entrepreneurial approach to the challenges of AIDS and poverty in Africa. Last month I was able to travel to Kenya to visit Beacon of Hope and see with my own eyes the difference Lenovo’s sponsorship of the HopeFest has made.  It’s huge.

I’ll let pictures tell the story, but first a bit of background.

Beacon of Hope brings in women and children from the Kware slum near Nairobi who are affected by HIV / AIDS (like Nancy and Charlene) and provides a broad range of services. The idea is not simply to give them medicine or food or financial help, but to do everything possible to help them be healthy and self-reliant despite their illness.

Beacon was started by Africans and is managed by Africans, so Lenovo’s involvement represents an intriguing innovation in corporate philanthropy; to support indigenous social entrepreneurs creating home-grown solutions to their own challenges. I believe this is the beginning of a very positive trend.

Beacon has been a godsend to this community since they opened their doors in 2001. Currently this grass-roots organization provides:

A voluntary testing clinic.

Anti-retroviral drugs.

Business classes.

A school for the children of women in the program.

A kitchen where the women and children are provided with nutritious meals.

A child sponsorship program that sends children from the slums to private boarding schools.

Trained social workers.

A vocational training center where women learn to make traditional African tapestries.

A shop that sells the products that the women make.

And partners in the US and elsewhere that import their products for sale here. In fact, you will soon be able to buy Beacon of Hope products in Ten Thousand Villages stores across the U.S. and Canada. Lenovo is also working to create a shop at Tulane University that will sell items from Beacon.

It is shocking how comprehensive and effective they are, considering what little resources they have. (Perhaps this demonstrates NYU professor William Easterly’s point, that “Africans are and will be escaping poverty the same way everybody else did: through the efforts of resourceful entrepreneurs, democratic reformers and ordinary citizens at home,” rather than through large-scale aid efforts.)

But thanks to Lenovo and the HopeFest, those resources are about to expand, as is the number of women and children they can serve.

Largely due to the donation from the HopeFest last year, Beacon of Hope was able to buy new property and start construction on new facilities. The property has a house on it that they are converting into the new Beacon, and they are also building new classrooms and vocational training centers.

Here is the current Beacon building…

And the new Beacon of Hope site:

The current back yard / play area for the kids…

And the new back yard…

The current kitchen…

And the new kitchen, where they will not only make food for the women and children, but a luxury hotel chain has agreed to train the women to be chefs in their hotels!

And, my favorite images, the current toilet (really just a hole in the ground) and bathroom sink (actually a bucket with a valve)…

And the new. Yes, that is a bidet…

Of course, there is a down side. This is how we had to cut the grass at the new facility. I don’t ever want to do that again…

This is all still within short walking distance of the slums where the women that Beacon of Hope serves live.

To see this as simply moving from humble to posh facilities would be missing the point. Beacon will be able to do so much more in this facility, and serve many more women and children. It also shows those women and children that they deserve so much more than the slums offer. And it shows that innovative, indigenous social entrepreneurs can transform lives and entire communities.

It was a privilege to be able to see this transformation, and a joy that Lenovo has helped it happen.

Angkor, May 2007: a journey to discover « Caring for Cambodia ».

For most of us, Angkor is a mythical place which has much to offer: the richness of its temples, its luxuriant nature, the smiling beauty of its children, the elegance of its traditional dancers, all living symbols of Asia’s refinement. But Angkor is also the place where Bill Amelio, Lenovo’s CEO and his wife, Jamie, have chosen to set up “Caring for Cambodia” (CFC), a specific program created by the Amelio Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides children from the neighbouring villages with educational facilities and improvements in their everyday lives.

In Cambodia, as in many countries with high tourist added value, the contrast is sharp between the living conditions of the local population and the way we, tourists, are taken care of in luxurious hotels with pools, spas and thoughtful staff. Yet, the contrast can be overcome when a common project brings about a real encounter and generates shared emotions.

For us, some members of the EMEA executive team, led by our President Milko Van Duijl , the project consisted, within CFC, in building a house over the week-end, in a village near Seam Reap. A house built on wooden piles with palm-leaf partitions, right in the heart of a village of banana and palm-trees, among half-naked kids who played about with us, while looking upon us with an air of gentle amusement.

At dawn, on Saturday morning, May 4^th, after a 15 hour flight and the corresponding jetlag, out moves the team, complete with Lenovo caps, the heavy working shoes and gloves we had been instructed to buy, into the unknown village. After greetings from the local representative of CFC, work starts in the blazing sunshine. While the group of men start hammering away with strength, dexterity and enthusiasm, Milko’s executive assistant, Christine Dehnel and I are wondering what our contribution to the collective manly effort might be.

To begin with, I just fiddle with camera and video. But, little by little, with Christine, we shift to more serious jobs: passing nails, carrying wooden boards (light ones only) or preparing the team’s picnic! While we busy ourselves, the women of the village look at us with a glimmer of irony in their eyes, probably wondering why we seem to pretend competing with our male companions.

Our foreman is a very efficient Cambodian. The house is intended for a 10-children family. The family seems happy with our work. Neighbours come to give us a hand while their wives cook rice and vegetable, seated on the wooden floor. The heat increases. The children run playfully around us.

Our Human resource leader, Ken Batty, faithful to his recent role as master of ceremony during our yearly employees event “the Lenovo University,” keeps demonstrating his immense talent for entertainment and story-telling. At midday, we stop working for a brief half-hour, while the villagers linger over their lunch and take to their hammocks for a siesta. Even then, productivity keeps being the key-word for us.

The house, then, gets rapidly into shape: the roof is positioned, floorboards are nailed and the staircase is set up in the twinkling of an eye. We then come to grips with the partitions made of layers of palm branches that have to be tagged on wood slats. That seems an easier task for us, women, as it takes skill and patience (!). Yet drilling holes into palm branches and slipping wire into them soon appears to be a matter of technique. Each member of the group claims his own technique to be the best. Progress is rather slow. We end up working in pairs, thereby accelerating our tempo and thus, once more, illustrating the virtues of teamwork.

At the end of this first day’s work, we feel rather exhausted but totally delighted. Bill and Jamie have joined us for dinner. We tell them the story of our day. On the following morning, on Sunday, May 5^th, we all set out at 8 a.m. Bill Amelio is with us. As we get to the village, the sound of a sad, haunting music reveals that one villager has died overnight and that the village is preparing to assemble for the funeral lunch.

A huge dish of rice is being prepared. The smell of grilled garlic blended with the strong fragrance of moist earth pervades the village. We start our day’s work under stormy skies. The monsoon season has just started. We still have to build a dozen palm-partitions. We work in pairs and, as time passes, we become really efficient. The villagers help us, showing us how to position palm branches in order to keep the rain out.

We work crouched under the heavy rain, with our feet stuck in mud. Bill is an expert at partition building. His handling of nails and wire reveals a long-time practice acquired since his very first stay in Cambodia. After him, the EMEA team keeps busy so that, after a few hours, all the partitions are completed. The villagers put them up while we take pictures of the scene and Gareth places the Lenovo logo on the central roof-beam of the house. Jamie joins her with her children. The whole village greets them in very friendly fashion. It’s time to leave, after one last group photo outside “our house”. We leave the village hoping to return to it some day.

We then make another important discovery: we visit the first school built by the Amelio Foundation for the children of the village. Four schools are now functioning for 3000 children. Some 80 teachers, all of them Cambodians, are employed by the Foundation. The school we visit hosts 700 hundred children, from elementary to secondary level. Being Sunday, the school is closed, but a group of pupils is there to greet us warmly. The younger ones come to us, while the older ones, especially girls, ask for our names and stick by Christine and me during the whole visit, talking in excellent English. We are impressed with the well-kept school, its capacious buildings and its beautiful garden. Christine and I hand out cuddly toys while our colleagues give out sport-clothes and footballs.

The visit is now over. We return to our hotel with beautiful memories, callous hands and broken backs. Yet we are all delighted with the experience. Moreover, we can now start visiting the Angkor temples. But this is another story.

Our warmest thanks to Lenovo senior management and the Amelio Foundation for having given us this extraordinary opportunity to live an unforgettable adventure.

If you wish to take part in Bill and Jamie’s efforts and help the Amelio Foundation, you will find all relevant information on their website.

See also photos from the trip here and more Caring for Cambodia images here.

Catherine Ladousse

It’s official: Lenovo is now a partner of Kiva. We have sent our first shipment of ThinkPad T60’s and X60’s for use at their offices and in the field.

We’re going to follow this up with a number of other collaborations with Kiva, to help them thrive and advance their inspiring and innovative microfinance model.  Stay tuned.

A small team from Lenovo Europe went to Cambodia last week to help build a house near one of the Amelio Schools (see also Caring for Cambodia). I am intrigued that the company chooses to reward its employees this way. Instead of cruises or boondoggles, top performers get to go sweat in the jungle. I love it.

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That’s Bill Amelio, our CEO, in the foreground, beside Milko Van Duijl, GM of Lenovo Europe.

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The house Lenovo built.

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Photos courtesy of Catherine Ladousse, who managed to select the perfect pink outfit for a charity construction project. It says “I’m working hard, but I’m still looking good.” Well done!

My family is going to Africa this summer. This is not a normal thing for us.

We leave June 1, and I have to apologize to “Heart of Business” readers in advance; this is on my mind. I have never been to Africa before. I am taking my wife and three children, ages 10, 8, and 6, and it is not entirely safe. So I am a bit preoccupied with the trip, and consequently will likely be writing about it quite a bit in the coming weeks.

This is not a vacation. We are traveling with a group of about 25 and will be working primarily with a charity called Beacon of Hope in Nairobi, Kenya. Beacon is an inspiring social enterprise that brings in women infected or affected by HIV / AIDS and, among other things, teaches them to earn a living by making traditional African tapestries. Beacon of Hope then sells these tapestries in a local shop, or exports them to the US, and the proceeds help sustain the charity.

It’s brilliant, really. It’s one half social entrepreneurship, the other half profit-making entrepreneurship. It appears to be extremely effective in helping the women, enabling them to care for their children, creating relationships that help them through their crisis, and providing medical care. I particularly appreciate the fact that it’s holistic; it addresses the medical, social, educational, and economic needs of the women and their children. See this video for more information.

Since this organization is innovative and perfectly in line with our “Hope through Entrepreneurship” program, Lenovo sponsors a music festival here in North Carolina that raises money and awareness for the charity. It’s called the Carolina Hope Festival, and you’ll be reading more about it in the very near future.

Among the 25 people going on the trip is fellow Lenovo employee Anthony Kerr. People like Anthony are vital in any business. He is not content to just do his work and collect a paycheck. He is the guy who wants to push the company along, to move it in new directions, to make a difference.

He is not afraid to take on new things, even things that he has never done before. When somebody has a new idea but can’t figure out how to implement it, invariably Anthony raises his hand and says “my team can handle it.” And they do, regardless of whether they’ve ever done anything like it before.

I think we should rename his team. They should be called the New Things Division, which I think has a nice ring to it; it sounds like a 1990’s boy band. Which means Anthony is their lead singer, and so we have to figure out a new name for him… maybe A-Kerr, or Acre. Or AK-47. Or Anthony Antony Ton. Later he can go solo and be known as Kerry Kerr, and do Calvin Klein ads and workout videos and movies with Jack Nicholson.

Perhaps I’ve gone off on a tangent.

When I approached Anthony and asked whether he wanted to join this trip to Africa, the conversation went something like this:

Bill: “Hi Anthony. Want to go to Africa?”

Anthony: “Sure.”

Bill: “Ever been?”

A-Kerr: “Nope.”

Bill: “We’ll be spending most of our time in slums.”

AK-47: “Ok.”

Bill: “Working with people infected with AIDS.”

Kerry-Kerr: “Alright.”

Bill: “And you will probably burn a couple of weeks of vacation time.”

The employee formerly known as Anthony: “No problem.”

Bill: “And you’ll have to pay for the trip yourself.”

Anthony (with pen and checkbook in hand): “To whom should I make this out?”

Bill: “And we may all be mauled by wildebeests.”

Anthony: “I’ll put my affairs in order.”

It wasn’t exactly like that, but you get the idea. The guy is up for anything.

If all goes well, Anthony and I will be posting to “The Heart of Business” blog while we are in Kenya. And by “if all goes well” I mean, if we have any spare time, and electricity, and our ThinkPads aren’t stolen, and we find an Internet cafe, and we don’t contract malaria or get mauled by wildebeests.