Guest blogger Jenara Nerenberg is the Founder of BOP Source. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard University and lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she is a Columnist for a national business magazine and a Consultant on new media marketing.

Jenara was a Consultant to the Harvard Center for Health Communication and worked on cause-related marketing at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, bringing together leaders from YouthAIDS, MTV, and the academic community.

By Jenara Nerenberg

Manuel Bueno recently wrote a post about the need to go beyond basic needs business strategies to a more holistic approach when engaging the BoP in business. I thought I would take this idea up in the context of my own field, new media marketing. Below is what I think should be the marketing component of the next wave of economic and social value-driven businesses at the base of the pyramid, an area that I am currently working on at BOP Source.

Imagine the BoP using social networks. Think entrepreneurs, members of microfinance self-help groups, and villagers in remote areas of Nepal or Mongolia. Imagine listening to buzzing conversations of micro-entrepreneurs about their products, challenges, needs, ideas, and desires for collaboration.

Imagine an entrepreneur in the middle of her village who is literate with her elementary school education and who is now the chief ethnographer of her community, appointed by Nokia, Danone, Unilever, or any other large MNC.

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Guest blogger Sofia Leon is currently the Senior Program Coordinator at the Center for Financial Inclusion at ACCION International. Her passion is sustainable social enterprise, specifically seeking to scale BOP energy delivery without subsidies.

By Sofia Leon

Following an all-star Opening Plenary, I walked upstairs at the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative to see Chris Crane of Opportunity International, Elizabeth Littlefield of CGAP, and Maria Otero of ACCION International. I work in microfinance and was clearly excited to hear this panel, but I walked into a packed room whose attention was set on the microfinance discussion at hand.
Track director Jane Wales introduced the panel, and after individual project updates from each of the three panelists, Jane asked Maria Otero to announce a new CGI Commitment spreading across the microfinance industry: The Campaign for Client Protection in Microfinance.

Maria Otero set the stage, describing how the growing interest from commercial lenders in serving the markets at the BoP make it essential for MFIs, MFI networks, and in general, institutions serving low income markets to proactively embrace client protection rather than having it forced upon them by governments, donors, or as a compliance matter by investors.

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