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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
It seems like once a year, the famous left-wing comedian John Stewart of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, gets angry enough to light a fire under one of his counterparts and the whole (liberal) world is overcome with shivers of awe and delight. Last year, it was Jim Cramer of CNBC’s Mad Money that received [...]
With only one week left for nominations the Minnesota Community Foundation and Social Venture Partners Minnesota are wrapping up their search for the top philanthropist in Minnesota. The honor of being the top giver in the land of 10,000 lakes is in the form of the Engaged Philanthropist Award and honors exemplary social investors. Keep [...]
I was at a reggae beach party last night, mixing with the ridiculously good-looking and creatively homemade surfer crowd. (One of my most favorite, secret niches of the Basque Country). I say “homemade” not only because you know those muscles are so ocean-fresh that they still reek of saltwater, but also because almost everyone was [...]
One of the greatest challenges of being a teacher is trying to convince your students why they should care about anything that you write on the blackboard. You have to bridge the gap between their current boredom and ten years later, when they will finally appreciate the utility of what they are learning. Yet there [...]
Today is the last day to send in your nominations for Civic Ventures annual Purpose Prize, dedicated to people over the age of 60. If you know a senior who has taken advantage of their retirement to change the world for the better, you can nominate them to receive a cash prize of either $10,000 [...]
My notoriously unsleeved laptop has seen its fair share of abuse, but it knows nothing in comparison to the approximately 17,000 people who are sex-trafficked into the United States each year. Laptop dents and scratches and the plight of sex-trafficked women might seem completely unrelated and a somewhat insensitive correlation to make, but due to [...]
I’m just now getting around to watching my TED talks…Author and publisher, Dave Eggers, and his “Once Upon A School” presentation so far takes the cake. I have been a fan of Eggers ever since his best-selling, quirky memoir, entitled: “The Heartbreaking Working of a Staggering Genius” came out in 2000. Ten years later, his [...]
The majority of immigrants come to the United States with a dream and very little money to make it on. Instead of starting on the streets, what if all they needed was a big idea and their financial security could then be petitioned for? That’s what “The Start-Up Visa Act of 2010“, introduced by Massachusetts [...]
