Friedbeef’s Tech

We don’t do too many interviews here at Friedbeef’s Tech, but social entrepreneurship on the web is something I’m passionate about.  Here are some quick insights on what drives a social entrepreneur, and the challenges they face, and for that we’re talking to Mike Tee from Elevyn.com.

Elevyn helps to connect poor artisans and villagers directly to customers around the world, and effectively cutting out middle men and ensuring higher returns to the poor craftsmen.   This also allows poor artisans to reach a worldwide market previously unattainable to them, and to create a sustainable income and raise themselves out of poverty.

You may have heard of Etsy.com, a community specialized in selling hand-made items directly on the Internet. Think of Elevyn as Etsy for the poor.

Meet the founders of Elevyn…

1. Why this cause?

Our work is largely inspired by the Gerai OA – a non-profit, volunteer-driven stall that sells crafts sourced from indigenous groups of Malaysia.  Gerai OA plays a very important role in connecting the poor rural artisans to the urban Malaysian market. Being tech geeks with interests in social issues, both Devan and myself constantly salivated at the thought of an online Gerai OA!

At the same time, we had Sze Ning who had, over the years, been volunteering with Gerai OA and involved in various indigenous group projects. In early 2008, one of the projects took her to a village deep inside rural Sabah, Malaysia.  The locals there were subsistence based, and had no electricity nor piped water supply. Imagine this in Malaysia! However – she was surprised that they had high speed Internet in their schools or clinics – powered by solar power and satellite! It immediate struck her that something could be done with connecting the artisans to the world via the web.

So a lot of it goes down to having things "coming together at the right time". Sze Ning shared with us her experience, we decided to try our luck with MDeC Pre-seed, and the ball really started rolling when we won the grant so a lot of credit goes to MDeC as well for making things possible. (MDec is a Malaysian Government linked VC).

2. What obstacles did you face getting this off the ground and what are you doing about it?

Very much like traditional IT projects – a major challenge is getting people to buy into the idea. In our case, it’s many parties:

A. Getting shops to come online – as our objective is really to empower communities in rural areas to start selling online, a lot of groundwork is needed to share with them the idea, and to gain the communities’ trust to join this new initiative. And then there’s the "capacity-building" work needed to get the artisans organized as a group, and producing quality crafts that the market demands. So in this, we work with various field partners who are already established on the ground, and have a few advisors who give us their thoughts on the many issues that we encounter.

B. Getting people like you and me to buy and contribute. One major challenge is how to get people to buy the crafts, and to learn more about the Causes.  It’s very hard to get people, especially the urban ones, to relate to the plight of a rural artisan like Aunt Imboi for instance, for her world is so far away from our every day lives.

So we’re thinking hard on how to bridge that gap – and one thing we’ll be doing is start a blog and start writing on specific themes that people can easily understand, such as Indigenous Peoples. On top of that we’ll also be embarking on traditional marketing methods like Google ads, etc.

3. Which other socially beneficial web sites are close to your heart?

The one that totally blew me away is KIVA.org. Many have heard of this – taking microloans online, but the scale at which it is being done, and in spite of the fact that it started out as a 1-programmer initiative – is amazing. There are few others, but none truly groundbreaking in terms of idea or execution that I’ve found so far. I like to follow the Springwise.com website – they sometimes showcase some truly great social business ideas.

Actually this is one issue that I’ll be addressing at BarcampJB (come to the event if you live in South East Asia). We’ve yet to see much exciting web projects come into place. Maybe the social entrepreneurship field is relatively new, and not many have even heard of it. So a lot of startup ideas are urban-targeted and profit-oriented.

Mike will be speaking at BarcampJB on ‘Web 2.0 & Social Entrepeneurship -  Changing the World’  at 12pm Dec 7th.  If you live in Singapore or Malaysia, come join in!  If you live elsewhere, find a barcamp happening in a location near you.