Friday, April 1, 2011
Water Scarcity: Opening the Flow for Scale and Sustainability
Session Description
Access to water is increasingly recognised as a crucial roadblock to tackling development, education, publichealth, biodiversity, climate change and other massive social challenges. To solve water issues for the long term, social entrepreneurs must have access to sustainable financing and a favourable regulatory framework. Join us as we explore how social entrepreneurs can leverage appropriate finance mechanisms and new partnerships with governments to create innovative local solutions to water issues.
When | Where
09:00 - 10:30
Friday, April 1
Session leaders
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Expert Associate Principal, McKinsey & Company Inc.
Dr. Boccaletti leads McKinsey’s work on water economics and is part of the leadership group of McKinsey’s Sustainability and Resource Productivity practice, and of McKinsey’s Economic Development Initiative. He has published and spoken on carbon and water economics, the role of smart infrastructure in resource constrained economies, and in 2007 co-founded and has since led McKinsey’s Global Water Resources initiative.
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Joe Madiath completed his studies in English literature from Madras University. As a student, he was elected as the President of Madras University Students’ Union and founded the Young Students’ Movement for Development (YSMD) to harness positively the student disenchantment prevailing during the period. In 1969, as a student, he journeyed across India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka on a bicycle for a year.
In 1971, Joe led 400 YSMD volunteers to manage a number of relief camps for refugees from Bangladesh. Later that year, 40 volunteers along with Joe, moved to Orissa, which had been ravaged by a cyclone and tidal waves. Joe and a few colleagues decided to stay on in the area after relief work to work as development activists. They moved to Ganjam District in southern Orissa in 1976 on invitation from Government, to initiate development activities among the indigenous communities. This resulted in the establishment of Gram Vikas in 1979.
Since its inception, till the end of June 2014 Joe has been the Executive Director of Gram Vikas and now the Chairman of Gram Vikas. Gram Vikas, today, is one of the largest NGOs in Orissa, reaching out to over 100,000 indigenous and poor families living in 1200 rural habitations with a population over 400,000. Some of the pioneering efforts of Gram Vikas have been in biogas promotion, rural habitat development and education. Gram Vikas’ current approach to convergent community action with water and sanitation as the entry point is evolving into a movement influencing local democratic self-governance and poor people’s control over development processes.
Recipient of awards: Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Award; Global Development Network Award (1998); World Habitat Award (2002); Kyoto World Water Grand Prize (2006); Social Life Time Achievement Award by Godfrey Phillips Red and White Bravery Awards (2006); NGO of the Year (2006) by Resource Alliance; Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurs (2006) by Skoll Foundation, USA
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CEO, Tennyson Center for Children
Ned Breslin is a 2011 winner of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and currently is the CEO of the Tennyson Center for Children in Denver Colorado. Tennyson is relentlessly focused on reshaping pathways for children who have experienced trauma from abuse and neglect so that they can truly heal and thrive. Tennyson is attacking a broken child welfare system where the outcomes for kids who enter the system - in terms of shockingly low graduation rates, exceedingly high rates of homelessness, addictions and suicide - are simply not acceptable. Ned was the former CEO of Water For People. He was the architect of the Everyone Forever program that is helping to reshape the WASH landscape and forcing scaled solutions that involve all stakeholders in district- and city-wide success. He is a passionate believer in monitoring for impact and improvement, and was the driver of the outcome-focused monitoring program at Water For People that played a role in shifting sector focus from short-term project completion milestones to long-term outcomes focused on sustained water and sanitation service provision and financing, with a view on constant improvement and reflection. Ned worked on WASH in Africa for 16 years on top of his 9 years at Water For People, and embraces the leap from one sector to another as a way to grow as a leader and escape the comforts of a sector (WASH) that he still loves.
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President, Pacific Institute
Dr. Gleick is co-founder and President of the highly regarded Pacific Institute in California and a global leader on water. His work addresses the ties between water and health, human rights, climate change, globalisation, and international conflicts. Dr. Gleick has received numerous awards, among them the prestigious MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, was named “a visionary” by the BBC, and “one of 15 people the next President should listen to” by Wired Magazine.
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Global Head, Water, International Finance Corporation
Usha Rao-Monari is the Global Head of Water and Environment in the Infrastructure Department of International Finance Corporation (IFC). Since joining IFC she gained substantial experience in the Infrastructure, Manufacturing and Petrochemicals sectors worldwide. Rao-Monari was the Regional Manager for Manufacturing and Services for South Asia and Country Head for India, from 1998 to 2001 when she assumed her current responsibility in Washington, DC. Prior to joining IFC, she was a Vice President at Prudential-Bache Capital Funding.
