It’s a funny time to be an inveterate optimist. Recession is looming, carbon emissions uncapped, the insurgency in Iraq ongoing. What’s to be cheerful about? Yet ask Pankaj Shah, a 35-year-old US entrepreneur endeavouring to prove that a for-profit charitable enterprise is not an oxymoron, how he feels when he wakes up in the morning and he beams a beatific smile and says: “This is such a captivating moment in time. I wake up in wonderment almost every day.”

Well, he does live in southern California.