Author: Hallie McCormick

As the first half of my FMS experience winds down, some nitty-gritty soul searching brought out the following angst:

• Scouts’ roles in their enterprises are not always clear/seemingly relevent.
• This is not an immersive experience (internship) that is necessarily distinguishable from others.
• It is very, very easy to lose perspective and feel simultaneously bored and overwhelmed.
• Cultural resistance and harsh socio-economic realities can sink social impact ships, or at least force them into a less agreeable port.
• Existing social business incubators are limiting themselves to a very narrow field of potential entrepreneurs – and this drives me nuts.

Since we’re in emo mode here, I’ll tell you that recently I have had doubts about the general idea of social impact investment/business (is it really what it thinks it is?) and doubts about what exactly it is that I am accomplishing here – for myself, for Saútil, and for humanity at large. São Paulo’s infernal traffic gives me a lot of time for introspection on the bus – can you tell?

Let’s call this the graduate student’s existential crisis – the doubting of the Scout.

The major hurdle is the heavily lopsided socio-economic reality here in Brazil. In general, the middle- and upper-classes are quite used to appalling inequality, and many have no problem looking the other way (by building high walls to block views of favelas, for example). Extreme conditions illicit extreme responses. This is not an environment that is particularly conducive to worrying about the greater good, and your average João on the street will still be a little confused about why we need to worry about them anyway.

I’m not entirely convinced that social business is the silver bullet for poverty reduction as it is currently being practiced. My initial understanding was that impact investors looked for low-income entrepreneurs with the big idea and the local know-how to generate change in their own lives. The appeal was the autonomy, the dignity, and the longevity of social and economic development generated by small business at the very bottom.

However, what I’m seeing are upper-middle-class types – people that are easily found and incubated/accelerated – getting funding for tech companies that truly poor people have no way of accessing. Saútil is a brilliant site, with a lot of potential to do a lot of good (in fact, they are already doing good), but visiting destitute communities on the fringes of São Paulo is a very harsh reminder that people who live without electricity don’t turn to the internet for information about health care.

I think Brazil was always going to be a tough sell. I haven’t lost faith by any means, but I can’t help but doubt the current methodology for finding and accelerating social entrepreneurs – we should be digging deeper and fighting harder to find revolutionary low-income entrepreneurs if this field is really going to hit back at inequality, poverty, desperation, and the millions of daily indignities that a human being faces without clean water, a toilet, and the ability to read a book.

In other words: we are not going far enough. So you already know the question that has been haunting me these past few weeks: “Now what?”

Well, a little bit of whining over Skype with our top dog Ross actually pulled me out of my funk and highlighted a way forward. First, (and I knew this anyway, but forgot it) any internship is going to have a certain component of drudgery and stupid stuff that you have to do because the actual employees don’t want to. And the beginning stages of any new endeavor are never going to be enough, because you have to start somewhere – even if it’s not the somewhere you envisioned. Reality, as they say, bites.

But Ross made some good points, as he is wont to do – specifically:

• any contribution we make is of value to the enterprise, however pointless it might seem at the time. (One of my sexier tasks is daily trash collection – jealous yet?)
• Brazil is a new beast for this, a new field, so of course things are going to be a little more difficult (read: frustrating and occasionally off-message).
• to make this an FMS experience rather than just an internship, I need to branch out beyond my daily routine and explore the BIG PICTURE.

I am super excited about this last point, because it will make the difference between being an intern (yawn) and being a Scout (yay!). As I may have already mentioned, my biggest concern is that we are actually not working with BoP entrepreneurs, but this is the opportunity to find (Scout?) them and see what’s viable in terms of life-changing, poverty-smashing, tree-saving enterprises.

Don’t misunderstand – Saútil is an innovative, necessary business that has already schooled me in many invaluable ways, and this experience on its own will serve me and them well in the future. But I’m ready to kick it up a notch and really, truly explore both the limits and the potential of social impact investing in Brazil.

Succeed or fail, this is uncharted territory, and we are at the helm – and as Scouts, we can’t let ourselves forget that.

On to the next half!

So what does a Brazilian convention about technology for inclusion and accessibility look like? I found out recently, when I attended ReaTech to do a bit of networking for Saútil.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect, and it was definitely on a much larger scale than I imagined – hundreds of different companies (from car makers with wheelchair-friendly designs to prosthesis companies to solar-powered hearing aids) and a TON of people, many of whom were disabled, getting a firsthand idea of the new technologies in the works to make their lives better.

I have to admit that attending this conference was a huge stretch of my very narrow comfort zone, as networking has long been one of my main professional weaknesses. I don’t like it, I don’t feel comfortable doing it, and it gets about a thousand times worse when I have to do it in Portuguese.

But network I did! Luckily for me, my awkward fumbling for the right words is amusing to Brazilians, and the follow-ups are easy because they remember me (“Ah! The gringa, right?”).

After my initial panic attack, I was so impressed with ReaTech. The hugely diverse collection of businesses, NGOs, and associations for every kind of physical and mental disability reminded me that Saútil’s work goes well beyond merely locating a clinic here in Brazil. Our mission is inclusion as well, though maybe of a more abstract sort. After all, decent access to care means you are better able to participate, and be part of your society. Good health is the gateway to all-around better living, and it’s good to know that we’re not alone in the fight.

So things at Saútil just keep getting better and better. I don’t really know where to start, so here’s a quick summary:

• office furniture
• first client (French respiratory products)
• two, count ‘em, TWO mentions on major programs (one radio and one cable news channel and their website)
• steadily increasing web traffick – from poor neighborhoods, no less
• more and more information on the site itself

Although my role in the above has been somewhat limited (aside from voicing an unsolicited opinion about office decor), I have been doing a few things on my end in an area that is especially important to me as a Scout and to the overall mission of FMS.

From the get-go, I was concerned that Saútil’s model just wasn’t going to have the social impact that it could or should. The main barrier has always been that this is web platform, and our target audience is not necessarily web-savvy. To remedy this, a colleague and I have reached out to community leaders in two favelas (slums) here in São Paulo to talk to them about how to get our service into their communities, and how to adapt it to suit their specific needs as low-income Brazilians who rely completely on public health.

Jardim Ângela and Brasilândia are two very different examples of favelas. To wit: a quick perusal of Google will tell you that in the 1990s, Jardim Ângela was considered the most violent urban hotspot ON EARTH, and that being a male between 15 and 25 was tantamount to a death sentence there. Of course, much has changed, but there is still much room for improvement. Brasilândia, on the other hand, had a distinctly relaxed vibe in comparison, and although it has the familiar problems of poverty and drugs, it is not a closed-off community, and our first meeting there took place in someone’s living-room with about a million little kids running around.

These two places will be our pilots to see if our model really is viable for low-income Brazilians. Surveys, tutorials, marketing blitzes – everything will happen here, and changes will be made accordingly. It will be a slow process, but a fun one. Most importantly, we are gaining access to some of the most isolated communities in São Paulo in terms of infrastructure and services.

Looking at where we were a few months ago, I think we’re doing just fine.

After weeks of researching Brazil’s public health care system (SUS) and why it doesn’t work, I had the dubious pleasure of becoming a first-hand witness to the process. Add this to the list of my life’s ironic twists, I guess. After a couple of days of feeling pretty lousy, it became clear that I needed to see a doctor, and quickly. My boss’ recommendation? A public health clinic (go figure!), where I could get antibiotics without worrying about being a foreigner, health plans, and all that pesky paperwork. After so much “academic” dealing with SUS, it was time for the “practicum” – and boy, was I in for it.

I went to a clinic in a, shall we say, rough neighborhood here in São Paulo. And I waited. And waited. And – you guessed it – waited some more. I watched the scores of people all around me, all in various states of ill-health, and all invariably bored and suffering. Think of a combination between an American DMV and an emergency room; are you scared yet?

Now, I’m not sure if this is normal, or was just the luck of the draw (based on the stories I’ve heard, I’m leaning towards normal), but it took a full two days before I was able to drag my increasingly sick self out of the clinic with a prescription clutched in my clammy hands. I could have gotten it filled for free at the clinic (it’s rather ingeniously set up as a sort of one-stop shop) but that would have meant: tah-dah! tons more waiting.

A more pessimistic type would walk away from this advising any and all that it is not a good idea to get sick in Brazil without money and/or influential connections. An FM Scout, on the other hand, walks away with a firm commitment to a personal mission. Now, when SUS’ shortcomings come up at Saútil, I can nod wisely, and feel confident that my two days in hell’s waiting room will ultimately translate to fewer people having the same experience (best summed up as: WAITING).

A Good Time?

As ye faithful blog readers already know, Grace made a pretty impressive FMS introduction here in Brazil, and she will be a tough act to follow. But Elma and I have settled in, ready to put the IMPACT in impact investing, if you know what I mean.
In the spirit of all good Frontier Market Scouts, I have reasonably adapted to life at the Brazilian pace. We arrived nearly a month ago, and yesterday was my first(!) official day in the office. Of course, in the meantime I kept busy attempting to navigate this monster of a city that I now call home; hanging out at the social impact accelerator where Grace was working full-time; practicing my Portuguese in both formal and, ahem, informal settings; and – last but not least – surviving Carnaval.

Because Grace threw down as the first menina in Brazil, I don’t feel so much like a Scout as a Continuer (or something like that, but that sounds better). For example:

Although Artemisia (the accelerator) is gearing up for the next round of Village Capital, we will only have a small role. The job now is to focus on the two social businesses that came out of the first VillCap round triumphant – Elma takes one, and I take the other.

Saútil is a web platform designed to simplify the horrifyingly confusing mess that the Brazilian health care system can often be. (Saúde means ‘health’, and Útil means ‘useful’ = Saútil.) Basically, through painstaking research – thanks, interns – the good fellows here are collecting all the pertinent information Brazilians need about doctors, hospitals, vaccines, and prescriptions into one easy-to-use resource, all for free.

The problem is that, as a social business, their impact with the very poorest Brazilians – those who need this service most – is negligible, as one must have access to a computer.

So where do I fit in?

My job is to establish initial contact and then hopefully build relationships with NGOs that already reach Brazilians in poor communities. By joining forces with organizations with resources on the ground, Saútil can ensure that its very cool model will in fact be benefiting the lives of people who are not aware of their rights or of the medical services available to them.

The founders have some pretty ambitious ideas about the scale and scope of Saútil, and I’m pretty confident they can make something big out of this. And I get to help!