I am in a bit of a unique circumstance while writing this blog as I am sitting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia preparing to leave for a five-day trip to where more than 64 million Ethiopians live- in rural poverty. So, the implication of being a change agent for me- and thus, my answer to this [...]
48 participants representing 17 countries converged upon Colorado State University on July 7th, 2010 to kick off the fourth annual International Development Design Summit (IDDS). IDDS aims to produce innovative, scalable technologies and enterprises to meet the very real needs of the 2.6 billion people earning less than $2-a-day. For this year’s Summit, the focus [...]
“People in poverty are championing the way out of poverty,” declared Daphne Nederhorst, Ashoka Fellow and founder of Sawa Global, an organization highlighting local changemakers in their home communities. Four Sawa Global employees, including Nederhorst, recently flew to Haiti from their home base in Vancouver, British Columbia. Once on the ground, they didn’t bark orders [...]
Education Not all volunteer opportunities are created equal. Instead of sending volunteers overseas to paint classrooms or hand out food – projects with ephemeral impact, Jane Reitsma makes sure the impact lasts. Jane’s vision is to help secondary students learn and make a difference through international community development. It is the crux of her mission [...]
In today’s world, Brazil is commonly viewed as the shining star of South America – both in terms of political and economic stability. President Lula has proven to be a reasonable man, a well-fed middle class is beginning to poke through a society previously marked by strong class differences, and the sun continues to shine. [...]
We’ve all had the “What is social entrepreneurship?” discussion. The topic was even the recent focus of Stanford Social Innovation Review’s cover article. Yet the definitions we apply to social enterprise continue to vary widely based on a range of considerations. Is a social enterprise necessarily for-profit or non-profit? How much profit is acceptable for [...]
The following is a shared post with the Social Enterprise Alliance blog. Following the previous night’s performance of soothing and rustic tones of Wake For Dead, The Grateful Dead cover band with a Celtic twist, Day 3 at the 2010 Social Enterprise Summit started out with some Aussie flavor. I attended the Stories from Australian [...]
The following is a shared post with the Social Enterprise Alliance blog. Government and social enterprise The 2010 Social Enterprise Summit opened its second day with a plenary panel delving into the government and social enterprise collaboration. Social Enterprise Alliance public policy board member Jim Schorr started the event questioning the state of the union [...]
Social Entrepreneurship Knitting is often associated with grandmas, not social enterprise. However, Cambodian Knits founder and social entrepreneur Monika Nowaczyk makes the connection. At six years old Monika fled Communist Poland to live a better life in Canada. As a child she didn’t fully understand the situation she was in, but looking back realizes how [...]
The following post is from the beautifully articulated TBD email by All Day Buffet. New digital tools like Chatroulette, Twitter, and Foursquare are incredible new ways to connect people, but sharing info like location and identity can compromise safety – even landing you in jail (or worse) in countries that restrict free expression. Nonetheless, the [...]
Entrepreneurship Surfing is pretty radical, especially when it’s used to transform poor towns into thriving sustainable communities. Dave Aabo is social-entrepreneur surfer-dude using surfing, the gorgeous Peruvian coastline and voluntourism to build eco-tourism to support community programs for the local people. From his Peruvian surfing documentary, CAPTURE: A Waves Doumentary, to surfing education, Dave is [...]
Back-to-back with their recent Financial Times honors, Sparkseed has just accepted seven new student-led social enterprises into its highly selective incubator program. The incoming class of student leaders will receive seed funding, personal business coaching, hand-matched mentors, pro-bono legal services, extensive skill-building workshops, and a four-day networking summit in Silicon Valley. Sparkseed works exclusively with undergraduate [...]
The University of Washington, Tufts University, Purdue University and the University of Texas at Austin all have yearly Social Entrepreneurship competitions in place to spur social innovation into action on college campuses. You can now add the University of Villanova to the list. The Villanova Social Entrepreneurship Competition (VSEC) was started in 2009 by two [...]
