How to make an impact and empower people to act: the story of Howard Weinstein
Below you’ll find an inspiring story of Howard Weinstein. He believes that anybody can be a change-maker in society. He is the co-founder of Solar Ear with 10 other people who are deaf. They invented solar-powered hearing aids by people who were deaf to people with a hearing loss in developing countries. They raised over $3 million and were named as Global Social Entrepreneur of the Year at a ceremony at the United Nations in 2011. They became the largest non-profit hearing aid company with distributors in 60+ countries. Read, get inspired, and join the world changers.
Shake: I want to know what you were doing before social entrepreneurship when you went to school or at university. Did you engage in any social projects?
Howard: You know, I grew up in North America in Montreal in the 60s basically, which was a time of social revolution. So, you know, social change, social entrepreneurship was sort of part of my history.
Shake: So you weren’t into social projects before Solar Ear, right?
Howard: Yes and no. I ran a plumbing wholesale business in Montreal, Canada. And even in that business, you know, I’m certainly concerned about all my employees and we also hired people with Down syndrome to work in the company, you know, so we always had like a social mission and believed in people.
Shake: And what influenced you to change your life and start doing social projects?
Howard: About 25 years ago and a few more weeks in the middle of the night my daughter Sarah, who was 10 and half years old, died of a brain aneurysm, a very healthy young girl. So, you know, I went back to work the next week, but they fired me even though I was running a successful business because they figured I couldn’t make a profit for them anymore. I did a year of psychotherapy, later I started another business, but didn’t enjoy it. So I figured out why not go to Africa, help women earn a salary, cause women generally will take care of the health and education of their children. And in a way to give a meaning to my daughter’s death in retrospect, and it really brought meaning to my life. So I went to Canadian volunteers to rural Botswana. And my first day there in the office with no people and products there’s the knock at the door and there was a lady with a teenage girl, and the lady says: ‘My student here, Sarah, (what is the same name as my daughter) needs a hearing aid’.
It took me about 60 seconds to respond. I said ‘Okay, Sarah’s going to get a hearing aid’. I have no idea how I know nothing about hearing aids, But okay, there’s a reason, there’s a reason I’m there. And then the next week I went to see Sarah at the school for the deaf in rural Botswana and I asked her to tell me about her life. And you know, I’ve traveled about 40 developing countries before Botswana. So the face of poverty is pretty similar around the world. But in Botswana, if you have a disability, it looks like a curse from God. Then I said, what are your hopes and dreams? And they said like we’re going to finish high school pretty soon, and there are no jobs for us, certainly for no jobs, for women, no jobs for women who are deaf. Some of us are given free hearing aids by some charitable organizations, but we can’t afford a hearing aid battery. You know, a battery cost about a dollar for them and lasts about a week. And so obviously that’s too expensive for them. So I basically wrote their hopes and dreams and did a business plan. Raised money from African Development Foundation in Washington, came out with a check for a quarter-million dollars, and I was flying back to Botswana. So I went to, Sarah at the school for the deaf: ‘Oh great news, you got your money, now go to live your dream’. So it’s actually Sarah and the kids at the school for the deaf. We hired them and they invented the first low-cost rechargeable hearing aid and the solar charger. And what was really stunning about this whole process that when we hired Sarah and the other kids, when Sarah filled out her employment form, it turned out that her birthday was the exact same day and year as my daughter Sarah, so sort of meant to be.
Shake: But how did they manage to make such a great product without any education?
Howard: It was, you know, it was really deaf-led. So what we did is we brought a business plan to some engineers in South Africa who came up to Botswana. And it’s funny, I remember they were going to teach our women who were deaf about electronics. So they also had to learn sign language, and then the kids and told the engineers like ‘this is how we need to design it’, cos only somebody who is deaf would know what they need.
And, you know, any time I’ve made an error, it’s when I brought my North American sort of liberal culture to the situation. And every time I did that, I failed. So I’ve learned to sort of shut up and listen.
Shake: Where people can buy Solar Ear projects or similar projects today?
Howard: So we, we started the project first in Botswana, then we replicated in Brazil and we’ve scaled to China and we’ll probably open up in Russia this year. You know, we guess Canada, Brazil will take care of South America. Botswana takes care of Africa, Russia will take care of Russia and all the, all the standing countries and Ukraine and we hope to open up 15 Solar Ear in the next say 10 years. And each one is independently owned and operated. I own nothing. I actually helped transfer over a million and a half dollars technology for free to anyone who wants to open up a solar ear of as long as they hire and empower people who are deaf and run it as a sustainable social business. So we sell to over 60 countries. We don’t sell to consumers because they could buy the wrong hearing aid and go deaf. So we only sell through people who can help fit the hearing aid on the person. Our next program is about education for hearing loss prevention. I found out half of the hearing loss can be prevented and 80% of it occurs after birth, so if you can educate mothers, you can actually lower hearing loss. So we put this program together called DREET, an acronym for Detection, Research, Education, Equipment, and Therapy. We then made a mobile DREET program. Let’s have micro-entrepreneurs do a hearing tests as right now they’re doing eye tests and selling eyeglasses. Let’s have them do a hearing test on an android phone. The results will come to the Solar Ear center via the cloud, and then we’ll eventually be able to remotely program the user’s cell phones to become a hearing aid. So now it becomes an affordable and accessible solution for everybody. And we’ll have a free app for mothers, explain to them how to lower hearing loss in a cartoon fashion. And with the hearing it App also gives a three therapy program. So if you think about it that the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell for his mother who is deaf. We’re just taking his invention a hundred years later. His idea.
Shake: I know that you do a lot for deaf people, and heard that you help them living in a society like with opening bank accounts. Tell about that, please.
Howard: Oh yeah. Okay. So let me explain. I’ll give you my definition of social business. Think of a three dimensional game of tic-tac-toe. The bottom level of that tic-tac-toe game with the nine squares is a regular business: sales production, human resources, the finance and etc.
The second level of that game is a social mission of the organization. For Solar Ear the second level is education. Now if you can get a child to hearing aid before the age of three, she can learn to hear, developed speech and go to a public school because there are very few schools for the deaf in a developing country. And then as you know, it’s only through education. You break the cycle of poverty and then each solar operation has it’s own mission over and above. Then we have an environmental mission. You know, we’ve saved over ah 30 million hearing, a better person being thrown up by having a rechargeable hearing aid battery in China.
And the third level is the empowerment of our workers. And that sort of the problem we had with Sarah and that and the kids in the Botswana program. I remember the first month when we gave them their paycheck, but then the process stopped because Sarah and the workers who are deaf were not oral, and the tellers [in the bank] don’t speak sign language. So after about an hour or two, one of the workers said, hey, why don’t we teach the banker sign language? Great idea. So we went to see the governor of the Bank of Botswana. She called the presidents of the five major banks in Botswana, and finally, our workers who were initially afraid to go in a bank then became the teachers to the bankers and we taught them sign language and what the bank sponsored was sign banking sign language dictionary. We also did another program, a dance program. We had actually a professional ballet dancer, and he taught them ballroom dancing. Just think about this. Our workers are deaf. They couldn’t hear the music, but they felt the music.
And that all became part of their empowerment program. They left their rural. They were on the physical journey. One day they left their mud hut and rural Botswana and flew to Brazil. So not only the journey they took, but just think about it. There were more people in that 747 airplane from Johannesburg to San Paulo. Then they were in their village. Look at the courage it took them, but they were able to do that because of the empowerment program we did with them over the years. They had that confidence and then they chose the employees in Brazil. They selected them. So it was the last day sort of the empowerment program for Sarah and the kids from Botswana, and the first day of the empowerment program from the kids from Brazil and just think about it for them was the first time they ever had a teacher who was deaf. And then we went to China, we taught the kids in China about HIV AIDS, which was illegal, but because it was an in sign language, they were able to accomplish it. So good social businesses running it in three dimensions and be able to replicate and scale basically all the levels globally. In Brazilia, I also started a project with kids in a favela in Rio, so I went to see them and sat down with them and said, you know, tell me about your life. I went back to them a few months later and said, okay, here are 15 different business ideas based on what you told me, you pick three. So we created three separate businesses for 60 kids and it was all their ideas, they were empowered to do that.
“I give a lot of talks at universities and I say — if you want to be a successful social entrepreneur, there’s three things. You have to be — ‘A’ stupid, ‘B’ you have to be stuck and not give up, and ‘C’ you have to be stupidly stubborn. And if you are all three, you’ll succeed very well”
Shake: Now let’s move to the part about you. What is your mission, and what motivates you to continue working?
Howard: you know, it’s not about me. Just think about Sarah and 10 kids who are deaf. So they invented a, they invented products that had been exhibited in this Smithsonian Museum. It’s on permanent exhibit in the Alexander Graham Bell Museum next to the first hearing aid he invented, they’ve won a 20 or 30 international global awards for technology, a humanitarian awards. I haven’t accomplished 1/10 of 1% from what of what they started to what they have accomplished. So what the Sarah’s and the kids who developed that they have inspired me. It’s all about them, what they can do.
Shake: What is your global vision?
Howard: What I see is the kids today are more interested in the environment, more interested in social innovation and social technology, justice for all. And that’s wonderful to see. It’s a sort of skip the generation.
Shake: How about people and children in rural areas?
Howard: It really depends on where you are and you know your income level. Obviously, if you’re living at the bottom of the pyramid, you’re trying to find your next meal. But I’ve met some very poor people, uh, who have done incredible things at Epstein. Incredible. I have one of my friends, Pinky, she started a paper recycling program in Botswana. She had no education, didn’t finish high school and she started up a program hiring young women who are HIV positive to give them a job and start a sustainable business for them. She bought the equipment and learned how to raise money, and how to assemble the equipment herself.
Shake: What was the happiest moment in your social entrepreneurship experience?
Howard: Watching Sarah and the kids from Brazil communicate having to invent language. So, you know, I remember Sarah right at the blackboard, the word capacitor or resistor, some technical term. And then Amanda looked in her Portuguese English dictionary, what that word meant in English then and then kept ahead at that language. I go, wow, this is so cool. This is just to watch them succeed. It was fabulous. Well, we also have our own children. I mean, we see our children grow and learn and we take pride in their growth. And it’s all about seeing others grow with it’s exciting and amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Shake: What recommendation would you give to all who wish to change the world, but don’t have an idea?
Howard: to go as a volunteer.
Shake: Which book that you read recently can you recommend?
Howard: Awakening the Buddha by Lama Surya Das, it sort of brought meaning to the death of my daughter.
Shake: Who inspires you the most?
Howard: Sarahs of the world
Shake: What social projects do you like?
Howard: Anything that sort of educates and empowers women. You know, It’s sort of sad to say old white men have ruined the world from an environmental point of view, a peace point of view, an armament point of view. You know, we, we’ve ruined it.
Shake: What can you tell in the conclusion?
Howard: A — it’s not about you. B — work hard. C — enjoy life.
Shake: Okay. That was great. Thanks for coming to the podcasts. Your story is so amazing and you are really inspiring.
***
Howard, thank you for coming and sharing your inspiring story. Good luck with all your beginnings! ‘Shake the World’ team.
***
Click here to listen to the full-version interview.
