It's about all of us, and the kind of world that we, together, want to live in and share.

If you're looking at distributing alternative energy in Nigeria, for instance, what gets in your way is not people's ability to pay, not people's desire for a clean solar lamps or biomass opportunities. But there is a strong status quo that really depends on selling diesel.

The only way we really create change is to enter any situation with the humility to listen and to recognize the world as it is, and then the audacity to dream what it could be.

Acumen Fund's patient capital investment in Western Seed is intended to enhance the food security and economic independence of Kenya's smallholder farmers.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all and the foundation for our collective survival.

On the one hand, I loved being a banker. I loved how numbers could tell a story and how you can invest in ideas and see them translate into products and services and create jobs. What I didn't like, particularly where I was working in Brazil during the debt crisis of the early '80s, was how the poor were excluded from the banking system. I made the decision to try and experiment with whether we could use the tools of banking to extend the benefits of the economy to the poor.

Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it's in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.