During the Liberation Technology Seminar on March 1, Joshua Blumenstock, a Ph.D. candidate at U.C. Berkeley’s School of Information, demonstrated the use of “big data” to explore the economic impact of mobile phone technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. Blumenstock focused on a project in Rwanda, which leverages an enormous database of phone calls, text messages, and mobile money transfers. Using this data, he studies the patterns of remittances through mobile phones and explores if this new mechanism can serve as an effective social insurance during economic shocks. He hopes that this new data will provide insight into socioeconomic behavior, and improve policy and welfare in developing economies.

He argued that mobile money has quickly gained prominence in areas with very little formal banking, and it is used to send phone credit, make purchases and withdraw cash. On average, 200 million dollars are sent a day in Kenya alone through this mechanism, indicating the huge potential for such transfers in developing economies.

His data indicates that money is sent in response to shocks, supporting the hypothesis that phone-based technologies can enable risk-sharing. Blumenstock uses in situ evidence to explore the motives for this pro-social behavior. He used phone data from 1.4 million individuals over a period of 4 years to investigate how much money is sent, why it is sent and who benefits. He found that mobile money transfers have a highly reciprocal component and that most transfers go to the elite. In light of this evidence, Blumenstock concluded that while phones have had a positive impact on the lives of some people in times of crisis, the benefits of mobile technologies may not be reaching those with the greatest need.

This spring four social entrepreneurs will be descending on the Stanford campus from as far away as Bosnia, Palestine, and Kenya and as close as San Francisco, to spend the quarter at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) engaging researchers and students across the university. These social change leaders are part of the newly launched Program on Social Entrepreneurship at CDDRL, which brings the work of practitioners to the Stanford classroom where it is rarely on display.

Social entrepreneurs use new approaches and innovative methods to challenge existing systems that keep people socially, economically, and politically marginalized. Rather than generating personal or private wealth, dividends are paid directly to society through new programs, advocacy campaigns, and more.

The first cohort of Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford (SEERS) includes leaders working on the frontlines of gender justice and social reform in societies that have experienced civil war, ethnic division, and continued economic and social injustice. Zawadi Nyong'o and Taida Horozovic are both advancing the rights of women and girls in regions affected by violent conflict. Nyong'o, a Kenyan Afro-feminist, leads several initiatives across the African continent to advance the reproductive rights of women and sexual minorities, and works to promote a more participatory role for women in peace-building efforts. After fleeing the civil war in the 1990s, Horozovic returned to her home in Bosnia-Herzegovina to launch CURE, an organization committed to ending gender violence through educational awareness, media tools, and global campaigns.

The Program looks forward to welcoming the first class of Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence to Stanford this April where they will have the opportunity to develop their initiatives further, enrich themselves in our academic community, and bring their experiences directly inside the classroom for students to learn first-hand about the realities on the ground.    Kavita Ramdas

Confronting racial and political injustice in their local communities, Ramzi Jaber and Steve Williams initiated innovative projects to give voice and resonance to these important issues. Jaber, a member of the Palestinian diaspora, returned to the West Bank to launch Visualizing Palestine, an initiative that uses visual stories and graphics to build international awareness around past and present injustices. Jaber was also the key organizer of the first TEDx conference in Ramallah in 2011, to give a global platform to Palestinian activists and change-makers. Williams, a Stanford graduate (‘92), co-founded the organization POWER, a grassroots organization that works to defend the rights of low income workers, immigrant women, and advocates for housing justice in some of San Francisco's poorer communities.

The Program on Social Entrepreneurship is led by two faculty co-directors, Kathryn Stoner, CDDRL deputy director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Deborah Rhode, the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and director of the Stanford Center on the Legal Profession at the Stanford Law School. Kavita N. Ramdas serves as the Program's executive director and brings her relevant experience as the former president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women where she worked to identify and support an international network of social entrepreneurs. 

Beginning in April, the SEERS will spend eight weeks at Stanford plugging into the academic community and benefiting from a brief respite from their professional lives to reflect on their experiences and recharge their batteries. Ramdas and Stoner-Weiss will be teaching a course (IR 142) examining how social entrepreneurs contribute to shaping democracy, development, and creating more just societies.According to Ramdas, "The Program looks forward to welcoming the first class of Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence to Stanford this April where they will have the opportunity to develop their initiatives further, enrich themselves in our academic community, and bring their experiences directly inside the classroom for students to learn first-hand about the realities on the ground."

Students enrolled in the course will work with the social entrepreneurs to develop case studies that examine, document, and share lessons learned from their work. With little original research available on social entrepreneurship, this is a rare opportunity for the Stanford community to examine new practices and approaches to promoting social and economic change, highlighting what has worked and failed to work. Guest lecturers include leaders from IDEO.org and Lulan Artisans, as well as faculty members Sarah Soule of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Professor Emeritus David Abernethy.

In addition to the course, the SEERS will be featured in events and gatherings on campus hosted by the Faculty Advisory Council whose members hail from the Haas Center for Public Service, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Stanford Law School, the Stanford School of Medicine, the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Graduate School of Business. The Launch of the Program on Social Entrepreneurship will be hosted at CDDRL on April 5 at 5:30 pm to introduce the SEERS to the larger Stanford community and kick-off their eight-week residency. It is free and open to the general public.

The Program is planning to welcome the second class of social entrepreneurs to Stanford during the fall of the 2012-13 academic year. Focusing on using legal frameworks as a force for change, the program will solicit nominations from experts in the field who have engaged with leaders working to transform and improve legal structures that challenge prevailing inequalities or protect the rights of marginalized groups in society.

For more information on the Program on Social Entrepreneurship, the Social Entrepreneurs in Residence at Stanford, or to view the calendar of events during their stay, please visit: pse.stanford.edu. 

Recent news from Caixin.net

To illustrate the worst-case scenario for China in the near future, Scott Rozelle pulls up a picture from Mexico. It's a completely barren manufacturing warehouse, abandoned after wages in Mexico rose to more than four dollars per hour.

Following its manufacturing moment in the 1980s, Mexico has been struggling to create jobs in part because 40 percent of its workers lack a high school education, the Stanford University Professor of Economics said.

Contrast this to South Korea, where almost the entire workforce has attained a high school degree. After manufacturing jobs left South Korea in the 1980s, he said, well-educated workers were able to upgrade to technical jobs like chip manufacturing and computer assembly.

The question for China is: South Korea or Mexico? Rozelle said.

With rising labor costs, China is under pressure to upgrade from low-cost manufacturing to high-tech production. But it's still an open question as to whether China's labor force will have the education levels to take on these new roles, or if the jobs will move elsewhere as they did from Mexico in the last few decades.

The odds are stacked against China. In some parts of the country, China's labor force more resembles Mexico's than South Korea's, with about 40 percent of workers in the poorest rural areas (China's 592 "nationally-designated poor counties," as deemed by China's anti-poverty authorities) lacking a high school education, Rozelle said.

Furthermore, the financial hurdles to attaining higher education are the highest in the world, illustrated most recently by a series of studies conducted by the Rural Education Action Project (REAP)—an umbrella group that includes Rozelle's Stanford University, Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and the Xi'an-based Northwest University.

In one REAP study of 62 nations, China claimed the highest tuition price for public rural high schools: $160 per student per semester, not including costs like housing and everyday living expenses. This is nearly three times the world's second-highest tuition in Indonesia, which also fully subsidizes the education costs of children under the poverty line.

It's also a stark contrast to the fact that the vast majority of nations—93 percent of those studied—fully subsidize education, including places like Brazil, India and Kenya.

The high costs of education will become even more problematic, Rozelle said, once China's economy begins to restructure towards higher-value production. If the skill levels of the labor force cannot keep up, China will be caught in a middle-income trap, he said, possibly leading to high unemployment and social strife—not unlike what is plaguing Mexico now, he said.

Even a small subsidy could push thousands of students into high school. In REAP's most recent study, Rozelle and his colleagues took 250 junior high classes in Shaaxi Province and selected the two poorest students from each, providing one with a 1,500 to 2,500 yuan subsidy. The survey revealed that 51 percent of students who had received the subsidy were admitted to high school in the fall of 2010, while only 38 percent without the subsidy enrolled.

To some degree, the Chinese government has recognized the importance of limiting the costs of education. In 2009, officials enacted a policy to reduce high school tuition costs, providing 20 percent of students in central regions and 30 percent in the China's western parts with scholarships ranging between 1,000 and 3,300 yuan annually.

But the policy has proved somewhat illusory: In its 2011 survey of more than 3,000 students in Shaanxi Province, REAP discovered that less than five percent of the targeted students had actually received the subsidies.