Grameen Solutions CEO Kazi Islam announced on the second day of the conference “that we’re going to partner with UNICEF to increase innovation opportunity through education with mobile phones.”

Asif, Jobayer and I watched the keynote speech live that day, at 8 pm our time. Here’s an official news piece on the conference mentioning CEO’s speech:

“When you’re talking about solutions, think about how that solution can be integrated into people’s lives,” said Kazi Islam, CEO of Grameen Solutions, the Bangladesh-based software development company.

“Everybody wants to improve their livelihood, they want to have better education for their kids. So regardless of how the people are different from community to community and culture to culture, their needs and issues are very common,” he added. ( Read more >> )

CEO’s keynote speech revolving around sustainable innovations at Grameen provoked and inspired the audience. Here’s a couple mentions in the blogosphere:

“One of my favorite presentations so far came from Kazi Islam of Grameen Solutions.  I have been reading a fair bit about sustainable social change lately but to be able to listen to Mr. Islam’s story was very telling.  As the CEO of Grameen Solutions Mr. Islam leads an effort to implement profitable, effective, and efficient social change in a traditional corporate environment.  As an example of one of their programs they have been able to install over 2500 solar energy stations to shops around Bangledesh in some of the poorest rural areas in the world.  They achieved this by presenting to shop owners the idea that first Grameen would loan the shop owner the money to install the system.  Second that by installing the solar power system the shop owner is able to expand their hours into the evening as opposed to only working during daylight hours.  During these extra hours the shop owner is able to earn more revenue there by generating more than enough money to pay off the solar system and earn a tidy profit for their family.  This is a powerful sustainable system.  It feeds itself and generates social change at the same time.  In many ways this is how I desire to approach technology issues for education.  Looking not just as a piece of technology as ‘the solution’ or even effective adoption as a ‘problem’ it’s important to take a look at the system of education and view that as a human system needing powerful inputs and outputs that create a holistic benefit for the social system.” ( Read more >> )

“A key point that Kazi wanted to make was that our solutions need to challenge the status quo and be about people. It’s very important to “get down and dirty” and understand the needs of the people you want to reach. “Go and live with the poor,” he suggested, and develop solutions that work for them and their real needs.

Grameen Solutions is a for-profit company. Kazi assured us that there is nothing wrong with making a profit, in fact it is essential for sustainability.” ( Read more >> )