Earlier this summer, I was selected to participate in the Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship program. The fellowship brings together 25 leaders from North America and Europe to Cambridge University for two weeks to learn about social entrepreneurship, cross-cultural dialogue, and the humanities.

Having left graduate school at the University for Peace eight years ago, it has been a great opportunity to go “back to school” without having to take off a substantial amount of time; two weeks is just enough.

Here are some reflections on the experience, one week into the fellowship:

  • The interdisciplinary nature of the program is truly unique – it combines lectures and interactive sessions from some of the top professors in the business school and humanities department and includes a cross-cultural dialogue component.

  • The other fellows are truly amazing and inspiring people who come from all kinds of backgrounds. One started a social business that builds empathy through toys, another is working to improve nutrition in nursery schools across Europe. Read about all the fellows here.

  • As part of business training component of the program, we’ve been assigned mentors from the Cambridge business school who are extremely sharp and work with us individually to grow our enterprises while keeping our social mission central. The lectures focus on topics like Financial Sustainability from Mixed Income Streams, and Impact Investing in Developing Countries

  • As part of the business program we’ve also taken field trips to three different social enterprises based in the UK. My group went to a place called the Brigade, an old fire station converted into a restaurant and cooking school for unemployed and marginalized persons.

  • Through the humanities component, we’ve had lectures on topics like “Varying Concepts of the Jihad”, “Israel-Palestine: The Anatomy of Geopolitics”, “Media and Global Imagination”, and more. We’ve also had the opportunity to visit synagogues and mosques in London as well as attend a shabbat dinner.  Read the full program agenda.

Magdalene College Team Dinner

  • Finally, the food has also been amazing. The above picture was taken at our dinner at Magdalene College. It felt just like a scene from Harry Potter! After dinner Tristram Hunt, a member of Parliament, shared his thoughts on education and immigration in the UK.

All in all, similar to my PopTech fellowship experience last year, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some truly brilliant minds who share a passion for creating sustainable businesses with social impact. I’ll be coming home inspired with a number of new ideas to help take TechChange to the next level.

TechChange Founder and CEO, Nick Martin, has been selected as a 2014 Ariane de Rothschild Fellow! The AdR Fellowship program connects social entrepreneurs with a well-connected network across sectors aimed at conflict resolution through cross-cultural discourse.

Nick is one of 28 competitively selected, visionary fellows who have demonstrate early achievements of a social good organization with a commitment to facilitating cross-cultural dialogue.

As part of the fellowship, Nick will be participating in an intensive series of Rothschild Fellow trainings at the end of August at the University of Cambridge, UK. There, the AdR program will focus on business training, unconventional social science approaches, and workshops to extend the impact of these selected social leaders.

To learn more about the Ariane de Rothschild Fellowship, please click here.

Please join us in congratulating Nick!

TechChange Program Coordinator Matthew Heck explains technical aspects of Google Maps Engine to UN Summer Academy Director, Patrick van Weerelt (Photo: S5R3 / Simon Ruf).

In June 2014, TechChange Founder & CEO Nick Martin and Program Coordinator Matthew Heck conducted a training at the 2014 United Nations Summer Academy at the UN headquarters in New York City. 45 participants from across the UN system based in 25 different countries joined Nick, Matt, and TechChange Mobiles for International Development alumnus and guest expert, Arjen Swank of Text to Change in a hands-on workshop on “How to use innovation and technology for development”.

In the session, participants learned about and experimented with online tools for development including CommCare, Google Maps Engine, Magpi, Open Data Kit, and OpenStreetMap, Text to Change, TextIt, and more.

Here are some highlights from the workshop:

Nick Martin at 2014 UN Summer Academy

Nick Martin meets the participants of the 2014 UN Summer Academy and gives a quick introduction about TechChange and ICT4D.

 

Arjen Swank TTC at UN Summer Academy

TechChange TC105 alumnus Arjen Swank leads a workshop on TTC for the participants (Photo: S5R3 / Simon Ruf).

Check out Arjen’s latest blog post on the training and “Why basic mobile technology is still powerful” here and the UN’s summary of the event here.

Arjen Swank TTC at UN Summer Academy2

In smaller break-out groups, Arjen Swank demos how Text to Change can be used via tablet (Photo: S5R3 / Simon Ruf).

OpenStreetMap UN Summer Academy 2014 demo

UN Summer Academy participants experiment with OpenStreetMap (Photo: S5R3 / Simon Ruf).

If your organization is interested in training with TechChange online or in-person on technology for social change, please contact us at info [at] techchange [dot] org.

Did you know that prior to founding an e-learning social enterprise, TechChange President Nick Martin did his undergraduate degree in Modern Poetry?

Nick recently returned to his alma mater, Swarthmore College, where he participated in a panel discussion on “What I Learned From Trying to Change the World” during the school’s alumni weekend. To an audience of approximately 150 people, Nick spoke with three fellow alumni representing the Peace Corps, Princeton University, and Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia on the lessons they learned in their respective social change industries.

United with the common threads of a liberal arts education at Swarthmore and careers driven by the desire to change the world, here are the pearls of wisdom they shared based on their social change careers so far:

Lesson 1:

“You learn the most and you learn the quickest when you get yourself out there.” -F.F. Quigley, Country Director, Thailand, Peace Corps

We often learn and gain the most from doing what we are afraid of. The impact of this lesson could not be truer and is something we always need to be urging ourselves to do.

Lesson 2:

“Be careful not to be too righteous” -Lourdes Rosado, Associate Director of Juvenile Law Center (Philadelphia, PA)

Be able to disagree with others while maintaining respect for them and their opinions. Sometimes the only way to achieve progress is by working with, and not against, those who challenge us.

Lesson 3:

“We need to take time to ask better questions.” -Carolyn Rouse, Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University

While Carolyn Rouse worked to establish a high school in the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, she learned that sometimes stability matters more than change. When looking to make the world a better place, we need to challenge assumptions, as not everything aligns clearly to a cut-and-dry cost-benefit analysis. With anything life, do not be afraid to ask questions and challenge the status quo.

Lesson 4:

“Community matters.” -Nick Martin, President & CEO, TechChange

We are shaped by the people we surround ourselves with. Whether hiring people to join your start-up or choosing your friends, the values and attitudes of those we associate ourselves with have a strong impact on the people we become.

To check out the entire talk, click here and fast forward to 32:30 to catch Nick’s segment.

Do you have a liberal arts education that you have applied to try to change the world? What lessons have you learned along the way? Tell us in the comments below or tweet us @TechChange.

With a domain that ends with [dot] org, TechChange is sometimes mistaken for a non-profit organization. However, we are actually a for-profit social enterprise business that is focused on market-viable solutions that bring both profit and positive social impact. As we continue on our journey from a start-up to a small business, we’re proud to be a registered B Corporation, a category of social enterprises that also focus on double bottom line values.

Being this type of small, yet growing, online learning business based in Washington, DC brings its own unique set of challenges, recently featured in this Forbes article, “When And How To Scale: DC Startup At Crossroads.” Launched in 2010, TechChange remains a bootstrapped social enterprise. Unlike other high-growth startups in the edtech space that have received an injection of venture capital funding, scaling for us is less straightforward than more employees, bigger offices, and lunchtime perks.

“To scale does not always mean bigger. A thought that seems to get lost in the relentless drive to scale businesses across continents.”

For a social enterprise, scaling offers different incentives than a traditional for-profit business that focuses primarily on maximizing profit. In our case, part of the challenge in scaling is codifying our business priorities and establishing social impact as a core value of our business.

Nick Martin at Johns Hopkins SAIS

TechChange CEO, Nick Martin, presenting at a meeting on social entrepreneurship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Affairs (SAIS) in Washington, DC.

Check out the full article on this link here.

What do you think? What is the best way for TechChange to scale our impact while growing as a business? Who are the best investors that are looking for organizations that promise both financial and social impact returns?

We’re excited to announce that TechChange president Nick Martin was selected as the runner-up for the 2014 Andrew E. Rice Award for Leadership and Innovation by a Young Professional in International Development.

The winner of first place for the Rice Award for 2014 was Diana Jue of Essmart, a U.S. Corporation and India Private Limited company that “brings essential, life-improving products to all people, no matter who they are or where they’re from”. Diana’s company is doing great work to create better distribution and supply channels of existing consumer goods to hard-to-reach places in the developing world.

Nick Martin 2014 SID Rice Award Honorable Mention Stage

Nick received a certificate of distinction at the 2014 SID-Washington Annual Conference, “Delivering Results in a Changing World,” on May 20th, in Washington, DC. Thanks to the team at SID-Washington for organizing the award and event.

Nick Martin SID award

Please join us in congratulating Nick!

Read more about the SID Rice Award here and consider applying next year.

In Online Learning, There Are No Shortcut Keys

TechChange at Fail Fest 2013, Erik and Nick

Tonight, we’re having a blast celebrating lessons learned in ICT4D and international development at the 2013 Fail Festival in Washington, DC. Hosted by FHI360, and co-sponsored by Kurante, Plan International, and TechChange, we’re gathering over ignite talks, spoken word poetry, and song in the spirit of taking failure not so seriously.

Since TechChange was established in 2010, we’ve experimented with many different tech tools, platforms, products, and content; some of which that worked and others that didn’t. From continuing to recognize the importance of cultural and national contexts when applying technology worldwide, to testing hybrid learning models, we’ve strived to make online learning for social change better and better, and even wrote a song about it.

Check out a recording of the song:

And for the musicians out there, here are the lyrics with the guitar chords!

Curious about the other acts? Check out the photos we took at the event!

Freedom Polio India mHealth programWe’re excited to be mentioned in the New York Times in an article on mobile technology for social good!

The article, titled “Ubiquitous Across Globe, Cellphones Have Become Tool for Doing Good”, discusses how mobile phones are becoming more useful beyond entertainment in developing countries and emerging markets. Increasingly, organizations are using SMS text messages to provide goods and services including water, energy, financial services, healthcare, and education.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

The number of [mobile public-private partnerships] seems likely to increase. “The development community is eager to learn more about how to use mobiles effectively,” said Nick Martin, a founder of TechChange, a social enterprise based in Washington that educates development practitioners via online courses.

Mr. Martin said his most popular course has been Mobiles for Development. In the last three years, TechChange has taught the course eight times to nearly 400 participants from over 60 countries.

MHealth, or mobiles used for health services, is the most “evolved” of the mobile sectors, Mr. Martin said. Large-scale campaigns in mHealth have focused primarily on maternal health and vaccination campaigns.

Check out the entire article in the New York Times here.

 

Last week, I was fortunate enough to present at PopTech 2013 and participate in the Poptech Social Innovation Fellowship program along with nine other super inspiring social entrepreneurs. What an amazing experience!

I had the great fortune of getting fantastic training/advice/wisdom from the Poptech faculty on the content of my talk as well as other challenges that we’re facing as an organization. Many thanks to Ken Banks, Michael Duarte, Erik Hersman, Cheryl Heller, Peter Durand, Jim Koch, Chloe Holderness, Kevin Starr, Heather Fleming, Grant Tudor, Lisa Witter, Priti Radhakrishnan, Susan Phillips, and the amazing staff at PopTech: Becky, Andrew, Ollie and Leetha. This group was truly an all-star cast of individuals at the forefront of social innovation. Read about them here.

Our Prezi as it appeared for PopTech. Click through and check it out!

After the presentation on Friday, a number of folks asked me about the presentation format. so I decided to share some details about how we made it and the design decisions that went into the process.

1. Unify your presentation with your organizational identity

In telling our story, we didn’t just want to read off bullet-point slides. We wanted to bring the audience into our office and show them what we see. We also wanted to take the most literal skeuomorphic approach to our presentation: a map should be represented by a map, a note by a sticky note, a website by a web page, etc. This was partly on the principle that we had the freedom to create our elements and not use pre-existing photos, but also that it reflects much of the design sense we have used in our online learning products. That unity of experience between our learning design and presentation intent was important to us — what you see is what you get. However, using that framework meant that we had to create depth in two-dimensional infinite canvas while still having believable rectangular frames to zoom into — an effect that we created through a fisheye illustration.

2.  Bring your Prezi to Life

Since we had dedicated creative time to this project that is passionate about representing our brand well, we wanted to do a good job, but we didn’t want to overdo it either. We looked around for inspiration and we found a few neat ideas around the internet, which used subtle animated gifs to bring an environment to life. Of course, Prezi required that we used SWF instead of animated gifs, but we could achieve pretty much the same looping effect after we inserted the animations into our Prezi.

3.  Get feedback and back up everything

The most valuable part of this project wasn’t just the creative team, but the feedback from other PopTech fellows and faculty about distilling information and pacing it. At the end of the day, Prezi is based on Flash. The same problems that led to us treating it as unreliable three years ago exist today. Naturally, the night before our presentation we were unable to download the presentation. Fortunately, we were able to work offline to rebuild our changes and export them for the presentation. The one saving grace of this experience with Prezi is that their online customer support was right on the ball when their product started having trouble. That’s one thing that we consider vital as we approach 10k followers — not just maintaining a product, but building a community.

I’d like to give a special shout-out to my fellow fellows: Esther, Nicole, Donnel, Emily, Alex, Anushka, Nathaniel, Jessica, and Julia – you all are an inspiration! Grateful for this experience and hope to join for PopTech 2014!

 

PopTech Sparks of brilliance 2013Curious about the future of online learning? Don’t miss TechChange Founder & CEO, Nick Martin, discuss this topic and our work at TechChange on Friday, October 25 via livestream of the 2013 PopTech conference.

Nick Martin, one of the 2013 PopTech Innovation Fellows, is attending the “Sparks of Brilliance” PopTech conference this week. He will be speaking between 2:30 PM to 3:00 PM EDT (14:30- 15:00 EDT) on Friday, October 25 about our work at TechChange to train international development practitioners to use technology better. In Session VII, Nick will be speaking alongside Miriah Meyer, Francisco Cervera, Lisa Servon, Dan Schulman, and Nicole Stubbs.

Catch Nick’s talk streamed live here: http://poptech.org/live and join the conversation with #PopTech using the channels listed here.

Go Nick!