Rethinking livelihoods.

This post appeared on the PopTech blog and has been republished with permission. You can read the original post here.

This post is co-authored by PopTech president Leetha Filderman, and Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net and FrontlineSMS. Together they are co-facilitators of the 2014 Bellagio/PopTech Fellows program. 

We are pleased to announce the 2014 class of Bellagio/PopTech Fellows, a diverse group of designers, social innovators, technologists and writers with expertise in technology, global health, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability and informal sector economics.


Sean Blagsvedt, Alexice Tô-Camier, Dominic Muren, Robtel Neajai Pailey, Solomon Prakash

This year’s program is focused on rethinking livelihoods. Now more than ever, the world’s population is contending with a multitude of challenges: demographic shifts, environmental stressors, unrestrained financial capital flow, shifting political landscapes, emerging technologies, and changing economic growth patterns and labor markets – all of which are shaping the notion of what livelihoods look like today and may look like in the future.

For two weeks this August the Bellagio/PopTech Fellows will convene at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy. We will collaboratively work to define the notion of livelihood in the 21st century, while simultaneously exploring the challenges, opportunities and complex interdependencies that will impact sustainable livelihood achievement in the coming decades.

Our goal is to initiate a conversation designed to inform and inspire global, national and local efforts to improve livelihoods. Conversations will be complemented and challenged by an incredible group of catalysts, which bring a diverse and unique set of insights to the table.

Areas of exploration will include an examination of the central tenets of livelihoods strategy, the interplay between livelihood productivity at national and individual level, and the opportunities offered by the often-opposing formal and informal sectors. We’ll look at the positive and negative impacts of technology on livelihoods, and how both global security (and insecurity) and the geopolitical landscape impact sustainable development goals. It would be impossible to have this kind of discussion without recognition of the environmental challenges facing the planet, so we’ll be looking at how climate change and other threats could impact livelihoods development now and into the future.


Members of the 2013 class of Bellagio/PopTech Fellows presenting at PopTech 2013

Following their immersion at the Bellagio Center, the Bellagio/PopTech Fellows will reunite in Camden, Maine at PopTech 2014: Rebellion, where they will present their work and explore opportunities for collaboration with the global PopTech network.

About the Bellagio/PopTech Fellows program:
In 2012, PopTech and the Rockefeller Foundation created a joint Fellows program that brings together small, interdisciplinary groups for a two-week immersion program at the Foundation’s renowned Bellagio Center in Lake Como, Italy. Learn more about the inaugural class.

The Bellagio/PopTech Fellows program is designed to be a unique incubator of unconventional collaboration around critical topics relevant to the lives of poor and vulnerable populations, and also serves as a laboratory to study the nature of collaboration itself as a profound tool for creative problem solving and solution development.

NEWS: Video of kiwanja’s Pop!Tech 2008 presentation now available online

A video of Ken Banks’ presentation at this year’s Pop!Tech gathering in Camden, Maine is now available online. Ken, who was selected as a Pop!Tech 2008 Social Innovation Fellow, talks about Dr. Who, Daleks, appropriate technology, mobile phones and FrontlineSMS in a five minute talk given to 700 delegates and attendees

The video is available via the kiwanja.net site (with some additional background information) or directly from the Pop!Tech site. Videos of the other Fellow’s presentations are available on the Fellows page

NEWS: kiwanja.net awarded 2008 Pop!Tech Fellowship

16th September, 2008: kiwanja’s Ken Banks has today been named as one of sixteen Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellows for 2008. According to Pop!Tech, “For the past year we have combed the planet searching for visionary change agents incubating breakthrough approaches to the world’s most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges. We received more than a hundred amazing submissions from over thirty countries worldwide, and we’re proud to present the most outstanding sixteen – the 2008 Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellows”

Ken joins friends Erik Hersman and Ory Okolloh ofUshahidi fame, and Nam Mokwunye, who he last worked with at Stanford University as a fellow Fellow on the Reuters Digital Vision Program in 2006/2007

The Pop!Tech Faculty will lead the Fellows through an intensive four-day “boot camp” just prior to the start of the “Pop!Tech 2008: Scarcity and Abundance” conference. Each Fellow will then be showcased at the conference itself, kicking off a year of access to mentors, influencers and resources

A copy of today’s official Pop!Tech press release is available here (PDF, 170Kb)