Seetao Por - "lady boss"

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Hi Everyone!

It's a cold, rainy, dreary day in Malaysia and the last thing I feel like doing is working, so I thought I'd write in my blog. I'm looking forward to going home at 5pm and watching a movie in my stretch pants and fleece! (We can buy the $3 movies here, so I have a bunch of ones at home that are still in theaters. :-) )

Wedding Update: My parents finally emailed me after I had been in Malaysia about a week! no pictures of the wedding yet, though. I seem to have hunted down some online where I have identified certain family members (see the bottom of the blog).

To the question "what am i doing in malaysia?" Well, i'm working for a Seetao Por at a women's non-profit organization. The country itself is a bit random. Prior to starting my second year at school, I needed to do an "international experience" - which in my case came down to a 4 week internship abroad. Stanford has these internships all over the world (about 1/3 of my class is doing one of these, including 4 here in kuala lumpur!), and you have to apply, then get selected, etc. etc. I have another classmate who is here at the same organization with me, who I really like, so that worked out well! We're also living together in the condo.

so anyways, after applying, etc. when all the pieces fell into place I ended up in Malaysia. I was quite excited about it because I am very much interested in women entrepreneurship, particularly the role that a woman as an entrepreneur can play in development. I've been very much convinced of this since my first trip to Africa, when I realized that women are the ones who raise the children, and do pretty much all the work - the farming, etc. etc. Yet they have no economic power; the man of the family keeps the money, does the "business" (i.e. sells the crops), and even to take their child to a medical facility, the wife has to convince the husband to give her money to do so. So, it's always been my personal belief that international dev't should really focus on women - which is what the organization i'm working for does. A friend of mine, who knows about my interest in the area sent me an email the other day with the subject line simply "girl" - and in the content, www.girleffect.org. I thought this website was fantastic and exactly the type of site I would have set up! The best part are the stats backing it.

One more separate note on women abroad - as I was wandering around the city this past weekend, I was observing all the women, particularly the muslim women in their burkas where you can see nothing but their eyes, and they just don't seem real. In the line at the women's restroom, one woman had taken off and was fixing her headpiece (Bahar i know there's a real word! ;-) ), and the atmosphere was very different - there was a woman in a burka in front of me in line, and while out in the streets they seem so foreign to me, I had to touch her shoulder and ask if she was waiting for a stall (because there was one open) - and somehow, she became much more of a person to me. As I thought about this later, I realized how many times I have seen this in cultures abroad - I thought it would be amazing to write a book about this and call it "The Secret Lives of Women" - I feel lucky to have the insight, that I think I wouldn't necessarily have the same exposure to if I wasn't a female traveling alone....I have found so many "mothers" (not like you mom!! 😊 ) on the road, who take me under their wing when they find out I am alone, and watch out for me, teaching me how to do things. Anyways, I just find it interesting in so many male-dominated cultures how the dynamic changes and how sometimes it's with women-only that you can actually see some people's personalities.


Back to Malaysia! So, I'm here working for this non-profit which I will keep anonymous because apparently a lot of people are reading my blog :-) I've had many hits on my entries from last summer, i.e. thousands. The most popular one, with over 700 hits is the "mines of potosi" in bolivia. So i'm working for a non-profit; they have a website that connects middle-income women working from home through technology - think of it as a social network / resource center. The idea (hasn't happened yet) is to make this site profitable, to fund pro-social projects. The main project right now is baskets that disadvantaged women (often single mothers, disabled children, etc.) weave from home, made of out used magazines! i know, I thought that sounded awful as well, but actually....they are quite nice! I am working on what would be considered a new "basket" initiative....details later, but first - the founder!

The organization is about 10 years old and was founded by this now 50-something fireball of a woman! She is so energetic! I immediately liked her - so passionate about what she is doing. She started the org after her husband left her with a young daughter, and now has received tons of non-profit awards and funding across Asia, in addition to supporting her parents, her sister, her daughter, and her brother - until he passed away in March (he had down syndrome, and a hole in his heart). This woman doesn't sleep, and her commitment to helping these poor women is very inspiring. On a separate note, from an organizational perspective, this non-profit has reached the typical "outgrew the founder" stage - she lives and breathes her work every day, but as the organization grows she starts to hire "staff" - who just need a job. So I think they are facing the growing pains of having a founder transition to a manager, and how to really build a solid business model out of something that has, to date, been driven by opportunities that have presented themselves rather than proactively directed. I do, however, love seeing this powerful woman founder, this tiny asian woman who can't be more than - 4 feet? - and she takes no crap from anyone.

My Project

I won't get into too many details here, but my project was to develop a business plan for a new pro-social concept idea of worm composting. In a nutshell, vermi-compositing is the process by which garden waste composts with the aid of special worms imported from South Africa, and the worms excrete a very effective organic fertilizer. You can sell this for a great rate, or also sell the worms to people once they multiply. (they make good animal feed). The general idea is to make a business/project that allows disadvantaged or disabled women to raise the worms at home, selling the fertilizer / worms for sustainable profit. From the surface level it's very win-win: great for the environment, gov't likes it cause it prevents landfills from overflowing, and helps the women start their own little mini-business and become self sufficient. Without goign into details, this sounded like a logistical nightmare to me so I have redefined my project to an evaluation of the feasibility of this project - we'll then go from there. I'm modeling out the numbers to see if it's actually sustainable. I spent last Saturday (and hence the pics) touring farms and learning a little more about agri, composting and worms - some VERY interesting projects going on in Malaysia!

There are definitely the frustrations that come not ONLY with non-profit work but also with the cross cultural aspect. For example, the org had applied for a grant for this "worm project" - but they really have no numbers or anything, so it got rejected on the basis of no commercial viability. The founder asks me to fix it up so we can resubmit and i'm thinking....but you haven't even solved the problem? Which I then need to explain to her. I was also frustrated for the first few days, not realizing why they didn't just switch the mentality of the organization to for-profit and really focus on driving revenes (which you can then spend on pro-social work), but A) I learned that they have to be careful because if they show any thing as profitable, they run the risk that the gov't will start messing wtih it and 2) aforementioned founder's problem, where she is just focused on helping others, w/o necessarily the whole business rationale behind it!

That's what I do day-to-day. . I work with 2 wonderful ladies in the office - especially Rachel who is my age and very cool! They take us to very strange lunch locations every day, and we have fun hanging out in the office. There is also the georgetown MBA who has been here 10 weeks (tmrw is her last day). Another part-timer in the afternoon, and then now, my classmate Cole who has joined me.

I think that's about it for this blog...not a very exciting one I know, but I thought I would respond to some curiosities about what i'm doing over here. I will try to do something more dramatic and interesting this weekend so that I have something better to write about next week. ;-)

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Photos

Worms
This should make sense after you read the blog

Farm Visit
This very proud farmer shows us his farm.

Seetao Por's Dad's Bday
Here is a bunch of use celebrating the founder's dad's Seventy-something bday!

Joce and Gma
This one was easy to identify. nice glasses, joce! ;-)

This one was harder but....
I'm pretty sure we are looking at the back of Dad and Jared's heads