Nadaa Taiyab - Acumen Fund Fellow

During my stay at the 2007 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship I had a huge honour and pleasure to spend few days and talk with Acumen Fund Fellow - Nadaa Taiyab.

Nadaa is and extraordynary Canadian (originally half Sri Lankan/half Persian). During her stay in India she was worked for Medicine Shoppe, an internationally recognized pharmacy chain that has recently launched a new store format called SEHAT Clinics targeting low-income people. Nadaa was the project lead for the first low-income store rollout, and she assisted in the opening of eight new clinics aimed at serving the urban poor.



Her experience and reflections about creating the network of those pharmacy shops, in the context of long term project sustainability can be very easly compare with our experience in creation of 7 Community Computer and Education Centers in Podlasie.

Paradox on which we reflect is that the time invested on the beginning, for the research and comparing all possible options, can save a lots of mistakes in the future. To big push for the scale and the results from the donnors side on the beginning in opening centers, can easly push out the smartest possible solutions and just give access only to the fastes to implement. This can kills project long term sustainability.