Code |
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by Elizabeth Hausler, Build Change builds earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries and changes construction practices so that earthquake-resistance construction continues after our intervention is complete. Build Change uses detailed housing subsector studies to determine the most cost-effective ways of building in earthquake zones. And, Build Change works with large multi-national NGOs to disseminate and teach earthquake-resistant building practices."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "3"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
stdClass::$site = stdClass object
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2004/03/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Tim Prestero"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.designthatmatters.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/n"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Timothy Prestero is the founder of Design That Matters that designs appropriate technology for social enterprise. "
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Design That Matters"
stdClass::$hit_count = 111
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Timothy Prestero, Design that Matters brings intellectual capital to the needs of social enterprise, developing new products and services. The organization connects volunteers in academia and industry with communities in need, and translates the needs of social enterprise into breakthrough products and services. Design that Matters' goal is to deliver a better quality of service, and a better quality of life, to one million beneficiaries by 2011."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "4"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 4
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2008/09/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Heather Chirtea "
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/ www.digitalwish.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/o"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Heather Chirtea is the founder of Digital Wish, funding our Children's Digital Future"
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Digital Wish"
stdClass::$hit_count = 115
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Heather Chirtea, Digital Wish is a dynamic internet portal where teachers and donors connect to bring technology to needy classrooms. Educators can connect with each other to share lesson plans, learn from each other and provide support. Students benefit from stimulating classroom curriculum that uses technology to enhance their learning. Digital Wish is a vibrant online community which aims to put technology in students' hands and greatly enhance learning."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "5"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2004/04/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Scott Morgan"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.educationpioneers.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/p"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Scott Morgan is the founder of Education Pioneers that trains, connects, and inspires a new generation of education leaders."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Education Pioneers"
stdClass::$hit_count = 90
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Scott Morgan, Education Pioneers exists to train, connect and inspire a new generation of education leaders dedicated to transforming the educational system so that all students receive a quality education. Founded in 2003, Education Pioneers operates a leadership development program in urban centers across the nation where talented graduate students in business, law, public policy, and education intern with high-performing education organizations and train under successful education leaders."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "6"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2006/03/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Mark Hanis"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.genocideintervention.net"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/q"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Mark Hanis is the founder of Genocide Intervention Network, empowering people with the tools to stop genocide. "
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Genocide Intervention Network"
stdClass::$hit_count = 65
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Mark Hanis, Genocide Intervention Network's mission is to empower individuals and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Genocide Intervention Network will change the way the United States and the international community respond to the world's worst crime. The organization's aim is to recruit a committed and diverse group of individuals and communities to form an active network that realizes the 'never' in 'never again.' Members of the Network educated their communities, lobby their elected officials and fundraise directly for civilian protection."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "7"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 3
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2003/06/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Niko Everett"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.girlsforachange.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/r"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Niko Everett is the founder of Girls For A Change that empowers girls to create social change."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Girls For a Change"
stdClass::$hit_count = 61
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Niko Everett, Girls For A Change empowers girls to create social change. GFC brings together professional women and the entire community to support urban girls in becoming change agents and community leaders. It empowers girls to design, lead, fund, and implement social change projects that tackle the problems they face in their own neighborhoods."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "8"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 3
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2009/01/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Abby Falik"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.globalcitizenyear.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/s"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Abby Falik is the founder of Global Citizen Year that is building a new generation to lead the fight against global poverty."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Globtal Citizen Year"
stdClass::$hit_count = 52
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Abby Falik, Global Citizen Year is building a movement of young Americans who engage in a transformative year of global service between high school and college. By supporting a diverse corps Fellows through apprenticeships in Asia, Africa and Latin America, we will equip a new generation of leaders with an ethic of service, the ability to communicate across languages and cultures, and a deep commitment to becoming agents for social change.
"
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "9"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 4
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2003/02/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Jeff Morgan"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.globalheritagefund.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/t"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Jeff Morgan is the founder of Global Heritage Fund, saving our global heritage."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Global Heritage Fund"
stdClass::$hit_count = 48
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Jeff Morgan, Global Heritage Fund (GHF) is a non-profit international conservancy for preserving and protecting humankind's most important archaeological sites in developing countries-GHF Epicenters. GHF focuses early-stage investments of funding and expertise for large-scale nature conservation, sustainable community development, and long-term success and preservation."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "10"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2006/01/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Tommy Clark"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.grassrootsoccer.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/u"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Tommy Clark is the founder of Grassroot Soccer that uses the powers of soccer in the fight against AIDS in Africa."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Grassroot Soccer"
stdClass::$hit_count = 40
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Tommy Clark, Grassroot Soccer employs the power and popularity of soccer to break down cultural barriers, educate young people, and bring communities together to prevent HIV/AIDS. Grassroot Soccer trains role models, pro players, coaches and youth players, to teach its curriculum about healthy behavior versus the risks of HIV. In doing this, GRS has demonstrated that it can dramatically increase awareness, change behaviors, and help turn the tide against HIV/AIDS. "
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "11"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2007/01/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Toni Heineman"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.ahomewithin.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/v"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Toni Heineman is the founder of A Home Within that builds continuous connections for foster youth."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "A Home Within"
stdClass::$hit_count = 38
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Toni Heineman, A Home Within seeks to heal the trauma of chronic loss experienced by foster children and to improve the foster care system by building positive lasting relationships and continuous connections through direct services, professional training, public awareness, and advocacy. "
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "12"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2007/03/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Matt Flannery and Premal Shah"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.kiva.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/w"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Matt Flannery and Premal Shah are founders of Kiva, a lending platform to alleviate poverty"
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Kiva"
stdClass::$hit_count = 104
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Matt Flannery and Premal Shah, Kiva is the world's first person-to-person lending marketplace for the poor. Kiva's goal is to reduce global poverty by letting internet users lend to and connect with a specific developing world entrepreneur online. Affordable capital helps low income entrepreneurs start or expand small businesses, creating a path towards economic self-sufficiency. Kiva enables a new channel for the delivery of such funds and creates equitable partnership relationships in the process."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "13"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2008/01/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Tevis Howard"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.komaza.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/x"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Tevis Howard is the founder of Komaza, tree farming to end chronic poverty."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Komaza"
stdClass::$hit_count = 75
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Tevis Howard, Komaza unlocks the economic potential of tree farming to generate life changing income for rural families living in chronic, absolute poverty. Komaza extends the total tree farming value chain to the poorest families by providing: farm inputs on credit, education for tree planting and maintenance, and complete value capture services (tree harvesting, value-adding processing, and output marketing). Families will receive increasing installments of unprecedented income, enabling diverse investments in comprehensive and catalytic life improvements."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "14"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 3
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2005/07/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Dave Wish"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.littlekidsrock.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/y"
stdClass::$subtitle = "David Wish is the founder of Little Kids Rock that puts music back where it belongs, in our schools!"
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Little Kids Rock"
stdClass::$hit_count = 51
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by David Wish, Little Kids Rock was established to address the educational disparities suffered by children enrolled in public schools in distressed communities; specifically, the lack of funding for music education in the poorest schools. By disseminating a revolutionary teaching methodology, Little Kids Rock reforms and revitalizes public school music education. Little Kids Rock provides music education and instruments to thousands of children around the United States."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "15"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 3
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2007/06/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Chuck Slaughter"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/ www.livinggoods.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/z"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Chuck Slaughter is the founder of Living Goods that promotes better health, better incomes, better lives. "
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Living Goods"
stdClass::$hit_count = 67
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Chuck Slaughter, Living Goods is pioneering an Avon-like network of mobile Health Promoters who make a living income selling essential health products at prices affordable to the poor. The model synthesizes the latest and best practices form the worlds of microfinance, franchising, and public health to create a sustainable system for defeating diseases of poverty. Living Goods is also a powerful engine of economic development, improving livelihoods by providing women a reliable source of income. Living Goods focuses on a short list of diseases that take over 25,000 lives a day and can be prevented and/or treated for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. "
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "16"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2007/10/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Sasha Chanoff"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.mapendo.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/A"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Sasha Chanoff is the founder of Mapendo International that is a lifeline for forgotten refugees."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Mapendo International"
stdClass::$hit_count = 48
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Sasha Chanoff, Mapendo International protects forgotten refugees in Africa through rescue and health initiatives designed to keep refugees alive and resettle those in imminent danger to the US and other countries. The first rescue operation saw the emergency resettlement to the US of 600 Congolese refugee massacre survivors. Mapendo is planning similar efforts across Africa to help Darfurians and other at-risk victims of massacre and terror. Mapendo means 'great love' in Swahili. The name is inspired by Rose Mapendo, a refugee now living in Phoenix, Arizona, with an extraordinary story of survival in Congo's death camps."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "17"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2009/05/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Asher Hasan"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.njfk.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/B"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Asher Hasan is the founder of Naya Jeevan, providing low income families with affordable access to quality catastrophic healthcare."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Naya Jeevan"
stdClass::$hit_count = 70
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Asher Hasan, Naya Jeevan is a multinational not-for-profit social enterprise that is dedicated to rejuvenating the lives of underprivileged families throughout the developing world by providing them with affordable access to quality catastrophic healthcare. By providing low-income families with health insurance coverage for emergency situations requiring hospital care or hospitalization, Naya Jeevan protects the urban poor from financial shocks and unaffordable health care costs resulting from accidents befalling the primary bread winner of the family.
"
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "18"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 3
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
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stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2006/12/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "Andrew Youn"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.oneacrefund.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/C"
stdClass::$subtitle = "Andrew Youn is the founder of One Acre Fund that empowers the hungry to grow themselves out of poverty."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "One Acre Fund"
stdClass::$hit_count = 101
stdClass::$target_populations = array
stdClass::$organization_email = NULL
stdClass::$organization_ein = NULL
stdClass::$longitude = NULL
stdClass::$description = "Founded by Andrew Youn, One Acre Fund's mission is to begin a revolution in hunger alleviation in Africa, led not by food aid, but by African farmers. The vast majority of Africa's hungry are farmers who grow their own food and are capable of quadrupling their harvests. One Acre Fund unlocks this permanent growth potential for even the poorest of the hungry by providing investments in farmers: farm inputs on credit, weekly farm education sessions, and access to world output markets."
stdClass::$categories = array
stdClass::$source_id = "19"
stdClass::$program_url = "http://www.draperrichards.org/"
stdClass::$referrer_count = 2
stdClass::$program_name = "Draper Richards Foundation",
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stdClass::$award_statuses = array
stdClass::$site = stdClass object
stdClass::$profile = stdClass object
stdClass::$program_email = "info@draperrichards.org"
stdClass::$latitude = NULL
stdClass::$expires_at = NULL
stdClass::$created_at = "2002/10/01 00:00:00 +0000"
stdClass::$issue_areas = array
stdClass::$title = "John Wood"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://http:/www.roomtoread.org"
stdClass::$regions = array
stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/D"
stdClass::$subtitle = "John Wood is the founder of Room to Read that provides educational infrastructure to promote literacy around the world."
stdClass::$connections = array
stdClass::$tags = array
stdClass::$organization_name = "Room To Read"
stdClass::$hit_count = 66
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by John Wood, Room to Read partners with local communities throughout the developing world to establish schools, libraries, and other educational infrastructure. We seek to intervene early in the lives of children in the belief that education is a lifelong gift that empowers people to ultimately improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities, countries, and future generations. Through the opportunities that only a education can provide, we strive to break the cycle of poverty, one child at a time."
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by Chris Balme, Spark creates real-world opportunities for youth, arranging workplace apprenticeships that help middle-school youth become confident, engaged, self-motivated learners. As each student completes a hands-on apprenticeship with a trained mentor, they discover the relevance and power of their education to help them reach their greatest dreams. "
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stdClass::$title = "Aaron Hurst"
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by Aaron Hurst, the Taproot Foundation model leverages the skills of the business community to provide nonprofits with reliable, high-quality marketing, HR and technology services at no cost. As the largest nonprofit consulting firm in the country, the organization has engaged over 2,000 business professionals in pro bono service, delivering more than $18 million worth of services to over 450 nonprofits in New York, Chicago, Boston and the Bay Area."
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stdClass::$subtitle = "Jordan Kassalow is the founder of Scojo Foundation, microfranchises to broaden the availability of reading glasses and other eye care products and services."
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by Jordan Kassalow, Scojo Foundation is improving the economic condition of families in the developing world by broadening the availability of reading glasses and other eye care products and services. Scojo Foundation trains and equips low-income individuals as 'Vision Entrepreneurs' to start microfranchises selling affordable reading glasses and other eye care products. Through reading glasses, Scojo Foundation improves the productivity of those whose livelihoods depend on up-close vision, such as weavers, tailors, and farmers, while raising the living standards for entrepreneurs and their families."
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by Jane Leu, Upwardly Global is a visionary social change organization that provides immigrants, refugees and political asylees the tools and training they need to rebuild their careers in the U.S.A. At the same time Upwardly Global creates real opportunity in the American workplace by partnering with companies to promote immigrant inclusion."
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stdClass::$title = "Eric Greitens"
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stdClass::$subtitle = "Eric Greitens is the founder of The Mission Continues that challenges veterans to continue to serve their country through community service."
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stdClass::$description = "Founded by Eric Greitens, The Mission Continues recognizes the incredible potential in our wounded and disabled veterans. They are an asset here at home, and they posses the leadership skills and passion to strengthen our communities. The Mission Continues Fellowship places wounded and disabled veterans in service-leadership roles across the nation. By challenging veterans to continue to serve their country, we have created a way to continue their mission of service as civilians."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m88oZZSc4WE" target="_blank">Video Interview</a> <a href="http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3217.html" target="_blank">Audio Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
BRAC, the former Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, is one of the most widely studied non-governmental organizations in the world. For three decades, it has been fighting poverty, illiteracy and child mortality, and supporting women's health and development on a massive scale in rural Bangladesh. BRAC mobilizes the latent capacity of the poor to improve their own lives through self-organization.
BRAC’s full-time staff of 28,000 has helped 3.8 million poor women establish 100,000 village organizations. BRAC's health programmes reach 10 million people; its non-formal schools cater to 1.2 million children (of which 70% are girls) and its micro-credit programme has disbursed US$ 1.8 billion in loans with a reported 98% repayment rate. BRAC is now working with Afghanistan to support their reconstruction efforts.
<b>Background</b>
In 1970, Bangladesh was hit by a cyclone that killed 225,000 people. The following year, the country fought its War of Liberation, in which more than a million Bangladeshis were killed. The country lay devastated. Millions, especially those in remote areas bordering India, had lost all means of survival. When Fazle Abed, then an executive in a multinational corporation, returned to Bangladesh, he encountered widespread poverty and disease—and an inefficient, corrupt government wholly unequipped to respond to the country's problems. Abed resolved to apply his knowledge of management techniques and accountability mechanisms to the task of rebuilding his country from the grassroots.
<b>Strategy</b>
BRAC introduced many pattern-setting ideas in development, such as segmenting groups into different target markets and designing customized programmes for separate client groups. BRAC’s clients monitor and evaluate programmes themselves, as well as conduct systematic research and development. In so doing, BRAC identified backward and forward market linkages needed to boost economic opportunities for the poor. For example, when BRAC found that poor women were not profiting from rearing milking cows, it improved the breed of cow (a backward link) and set up a modern dairy (a forward link). Above all, BRAC helped shift the global development paradigm from that of helping 'needy beneficiaries' to 'encouraging villagers' self-development, particularly among women. Abed had seen prior development programmes fail because they were run by state functionaries rather than by the clients themselves.
BRAC's programmes today address problems such as unemployment, poor health and education, environmental hazards and gender inequality. BRAC's campaign to disseminate oral rehydration therapy (for diarrhoeal disease) played a major role in halving Bangladesh's infant mortality rate in the 1980s.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Fazle Hasan Abed comes from an affluent family in Bangladesh. When war broke out with Pakistan, Abed was in his thirties. The war had a profound impact on him. He left his job as a corporate executive at Shell Oil in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and went to London, where he devoted himself to the war of independence from there. He returned to a devastated Bangladesh, which was suffering from the after effects of war and cyclonic destruction. Millions of refugees were returning from India. In 1972, he moved to a remote area in northeastern Bangladesh to focus on relief and rehabilitation efforts. This was the beginning of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, and Abed never looked back. "The driving force behind BRAC is a belief that the people of Bangladesh do not have to remain poor," says Abed. "They can change their destiny if empowered to do so.""
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stdClass::$title = "Helmy Abouleish"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/K"
stdClass::$subtitle = NULL
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Sekem is establishing a blueprint for the healthy corporation of the 21st Century. Taking its name from the hieroglyphic transcription meaning “vitality,” Sekem was the first entity to develop biodynamic farming methods in Egypt. These methods are based on the premise that organic cultivation builds up fertile soil structures, improves agro-biodiversity and does not produce any unusable waste. All products of the system can be sold, used in processing or reused in cultivation, thereby creating sustainability.
However, Sekem is not just an agricultural enterprise. It believes that sustainable profit making should go hand-in-hand with an integrated socioeconomic business model, providing employees and farming communities throughout the country the opportunity to improve their education, health and quality of life. Sekem has grown exponentially in the last decade to become a nationally renowned enterprise and market leader in organic foods, clothing and phyto-pharmaceuticals. It has established reliable links with European and US customers in the export trade. In the beginning, Sekem medicines and agricultural produce were exported. Now, 55% of its sales are domestic, as Egyptians have become more aware of the benefits of organic foods. This is an essential element for Sekem’s long-term sustainability.
Its strong commitment to innovative development led to the nationwide application of biodynamic methods to control pests and improve crop yields. For example, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Sekem deployed a new system of plant protection in cotton, reducing total pesticide intake to less than 10% and leading to a ban on crop dusting in Egypt. Today, Sekem employs about 2,000 people and its revenues more than quadrupled between 2001 and 2005. Among other accreditations, Sekem was awarded HCCP and ISO9001:2000; ISO 14001; 17025; OHSAS 18001 and Fair Trade.
<b>Background</b>
Egypt’s problems are inter-related and include overpopulation, environmental degradation and inadequate education and healthcare. Agriculture occupies 40% of the workforce, yet remains the least developed sector of the economy. Costs of agricultural production have increased while the resource base has diminished. Today, Egypt is one of the world’s largest importers of food. Because the country’s problems are interrelated, Sekem has built a thriving social and cultural base to address Egypt’s crumbling health, educational and cultural preservation capacities.
<b>Strategy</b>
The Sekem Initiative is formed by three closely interrelated and interdependent entities. First, the Sekem Development Foundation, formerly known as the Egyptian Society for Cultural Development, is responsible for all cultural aspects. Next, the Sekem Holding company is comprised of eight companies, each responsible for an aspect of Sekem's business value proposition. Finally, the Cooperative of Sekem Employees is responsible for human rights and social resource development. Working together, they have created a modern organization based on innovative agricultural products and responsibility towards society, nature and the Earth’s future.
To address complex social and cultural aspects, Sekem has set up various health and education facilities. A number of its socio-cultural initiatives in the Arts and other fields contribute to the development of Egyptians, raising their self-esteem and promoting mutual respect. Increasingly, Egypt’s younger generation seeks to pursue tertiary studies; but the country has major deficits in higher education. In response, Sekem has founded the Heliopolis University for Sustainability Studies which will start in September 2009. It will offer undergraduate and graduate degrees at its four faculties (Sustainable Economics & Entrepreneurship, Ecological Engineering & Technology, Organic Agriculture, and Holistic Cultural & Social Sciences).
The Sekem “mother farm” and processing facilities are located on 400 acres of land near Belbeis, outside of Cairo. After the successful implementation of the biodynamic method here, other farmers, stunned by the results, started to cooperate with Sekem. Today, around 800 farms from Aswan to Alexandria are applying the international guidelines for biodynamic agriculture. Right from its start, the protection of the environment was deep-rooted in Sekem’s activities. Sekem actively works on reducing its environmental impact. Its compost site, registered at the United Nations as a Clean Development Mechanism project, offsets CO2 emissions. In 2005 the Sekem Environmental Science Center was established, offering outdoor activities for its own staff and for pupils of surrounding schools to redefine their relation to the environment through environmental awareness. In the end of 2007 Sekem started its carbon footprint initiative with the objective to calculate and offset all fresh fruit and vegetable products. In the beginning of 2008 an Energy Saving Project started to critically assess and reduce the energy demands of the Sekem companies. However, with the foundation of EcoTech, a holding of companies in the renewable energies sector, Sekem started to pursue its objective of environmental protection also outside of its own premises. Various companies will offer products and services of wind and solar energy as well as of efficient energy use to customers in Egypt and the whole Middle East. Sekem further published its first Sustainability Report giving a comprehensive overview over its impact and business practices, reflecting its threefold approach to sustainable development (economy, culture, social).
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Sekem is the vision of Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, an Egyptian medical pharmacologist. He received his medical education in Austria, where he worked initially in research and development of natural drugs. Years later, on his return to Egypt, the country's pressing problems in education, overpopulation and pollution overwhelmed him. His admiration for his country led him to take up the biodynamic farming method and implement it for the first time on desert land. In addition to healing the land, Dr. Abouleish wanted to heal its people. Sekem, therefore, aims at comprehensive development of Egyptian society involving economic, social and cultural spheres of life in the quest for sustainable development. For this unique approach, Sekem was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 2003. Sekem’s Managing Director, Helmy Abouleish, has joined his father’s quest, building Sekem into one of the leading entrepreneurial corporations for the 21st Century. In 2004, Helmy Abouleish took the initiative, inspired by the Initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Initiative of the Global Competitiveness Report to establish the Egyptian Competitiveness Council. He is also Chair of the Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) and board member of the Agricultural Modernization Center (AMC). Helmy Abouleish is a founding member of the Arab Sustainability Leadership Group (ASLG) which was established under the patronage of Queen Rania. He also actively engages in various environmental initiatives such as "Caring for the Climate" platform of the United Nations Global Compact or the Expert Commission on Climate and Energy of the World Future Council."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Sekem is establishing a blueprint for the healthy corporation of the 21st Century. Taking its name from the hieroglyphic transcription meaning “vitality,” Sekem was the first entity to develop biodynamic farming methods in Egypt. These methods are based on the premise that organic cultivation builds up fertile soil structures, improves agro-biodiversity and does not produce any unusable waste. All products of the system can be sold, used in processing or reused in cultivation, thereby creating sustainability.
However, Sekem is not just an agricultural enterprise. It believes that sustainable profit making should go hand-in-hand with an integrated socioeconomic business model, providing employees and farming communities throughout the country the opportunity to improve their education, health and quality of life. Sekem has grown exponentially in the last decade to become a nationally renowned enterprise and market leader in organic foods, clothing and phyto-pharmaceuticals. It has established reliable links with European and US customers in the export trade. In the beginning, Sekem medicines and agricultural produce were exported. Now, 55% of its sales are domestic, as Egyptians have become more aware of the benefits of organic foods. This is an essential element for Sekem’s long-term sustainability.
Its strong commitment to innovative development led to the nationwide application of biodynamic methods to control pests and improve crop yields. For example, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Sekem deployed a new system of plant protection in cotton, reducing total pesticide intake to less than 10% and leading to a ban on crop dusting in Egypt. Today, Sekem employs about 2,000 people and its revenues more than quadrupled between 2001 and 2005. Among other accreditations, Sekem was awarded HCCP and ISO9001:2000; ISO 14001; 17025; OHSAS 18001 and Fair Trade.
<b>Background</b>
Egypt’s problems are inter-related and include overpopulation, environmental degradation and inadequate education and healthcare. Agriculture occupies 40% of the workforce, yet remains the least developed sector of the economy. Costs of agricultural production have increased while the resource base has diminished. Today, Egypt is one of the world’s largest importers of food. Because the country’s problems are interrelated, Sekem has built a thriving social and cultural base to address Egypt’s crumbling health, educational and cultural preservation capacities.
<b>Strategy</b>
The Sekem Initiative is formed by three closely interrelated and interdependent entities. First, the Sekem Development Foundation, formerly known as the Egyptian Society for Cultural Development, is responsible for all cultural aspects. Next, the Sekem Holding company is comprised of eight companies, each responsible for an aspect of Sekem's business value proposition. Finally, the Cooperative of Sekem Employees is responsible for human rights and social resource development. Working together, they have created a modern organization based on innovative agricultural products and responsibility towards society, nature and the Earth’s future.
To address complex social and cultural aspects, Sekem has set up various health and education facilities. A number of its socio-cultural initiatives in the Arts and other fields contribute to the development of Egyptians, raising their self-esteem and promoting mutual respect. Increasingly, Egypt’s younger generation seeks to pursue tertiary studies; but the country has major deficits in higher education. In response, Sekem has founded the Heliopolis University for Sustainability Studies which will start in September 2009. It will offer undergraduate and graduate degrees at its four faculties (Sustainable Economics & Entrepreneurship, Ecological Engineering & Technology, Organic Agriculture, and Holistic Cultural & Social Sciences).
The Sekem “mother farm” and processing facilities are located on 400 acres of land near Belbeis, outside of Cairo. After the successful implementation of the biodynamic method here, other farmers, stunned by the results, started to cooperate with Sekem. Today, around 800 farms from Aswan to Alexandria are applying the international guidelines for biodynamic agriculture. Right from its start, the protection of the environment was deep-rooted in Sekem’s activities. Sekem actively works on reducing its environmental impact. Its compost site, registered at the United Nations as a Clean Development Mechanism project, offsets CO2 emissions. In 2005 the Sekem Environmental Science Center was established, offering outdoor activities for its own staff and for pupils of surrounding schools to redefine their relation to the environment through environmental awareness. In the end of 2007 Sekem started its carbon footprint initiative with the objective to calculate and offset all fresh fruit and vegetable products. In the beginning of 2008 an Energy Saving Project started to critically assess and reduce the energy demands of the Sekem companies. However, with the foundation of EcoTech, a holding of companies in the renewable energies sector, Sekem started to pursue its objective of environmental protection also outside of its own premises. Various companies will offer products and services of wind and solar energy as well as of efficient energy use to customers in Egypt and the whole Middle East. Sekem further published its first Sustainability Report giving a comprehensive overview over its impact and business practices, reflecting its threefold approach to sustainable development (economy, culture, social).
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Sekem is the vision of Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, an Egyptian medical pharmacologist. He received his medical education in Austria, where he worked initially in research and development of natural drugs. Years later, on his return to Egypt, the country's pressing problems in education, overpopulation and pollution overwhelmed him. His admiration for his country led him to take up the biodynamic farming method and implement it for the first time on desert land. In addition to healing the land, Dr. Abouleish wanted to heal its people. Sekem, therefore, aims at comprehensive development of Egyptian society involving economic, social and cultural spheres of life in the quest for sustainable development. For this unique approach, Sekem was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 2003. Sekem’s Managing Director, Helmy Abouleish, has joined his father’s quest, building Sekem into one of the leading entrepreneurial corporations for the 21st Century. In 2004, Helmy Abouleish took the initiative, inspired by the Initiative of the World Economic Forum and the Initiative of the Global Competitiveness Report to establish the Egyptian Competitiveness Council. He is also Chair of the Industrial Modernization Center (IMC) and board member of the Agricultural Modernization Center (AMC). Helmy Abouleish is a founding member of the Arab Sustainability Leadership Group (ASLG) which was established under the patronage of Queen Rania. He also actively engages in various environmental initiatives such as "Caring for the Climate" platform of the United Nations Global Compact or the Expert Commission on Climate and Energy of the World Future Council."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Rebecca Adamson, a member of the Cherokee Nation, founded First Nations Development Institute (1980) and First Peoples Worldwide (1997) to assist Indigenous communities in establishing asset-based economic development programs. After experiencing the dismal results of government programs and development initiatives in indigenous communities, Ms. Adamson realized the existing programs increased dependency on public funds and agencies rather than empowering indigenous people to determine their own futures. She decided to create alternative development models that focused on controlling assets, building individual and tribal capacity, and honoring indigenous values. Ms. Adamson spearheaded a cultural paradigm shift within indigenous communities that encourages entrepreneurship and decreases dependency. Her work established a new field of culturally appropriate, values-driven development which created: the first reservation-based micro-enterprise loan fund in the United States – The Lakota Fund; the first tribal investment model; a national movement for reservation land reform; and legislation that established new standards of accountability regarding federal trust responsibility for Native Americans. Ms. Adamson’s international work with First Peoples Worldwide created the first Aboriginal foundation in Australia – the LUMBA Community Foundation; established the capacity for the Sans Tribe to secure land tenure in traditional African homelands; launched an international corporate engagement strategy; and developed investment criteria protecting the rights of indigenous people that have been adopted by a mutual fund, an index fund and numerous investment advisors. Through her activism, she led The World Bank to recognize the necessity of creating the First Global Indigenous Peoples’ Facility Fund (May 2003). This fund now makes small capacity-building grants to indigenous communities throughout the world. Ms. Adamson also founded Community Notes, the first financial instrument whereby mutual fund shareholders and other individual investors can invest in community development loan funds. Community Notes was first offered by the Calvert Group, based in the US, in October 1990. Since that time, private investors have placed in total over $850 million in to low-income community development financial institutions.
<b>Background</b>
The approximately 400 million indigenous people located in more than 90 countries comprise the poorest population group in the world. Yet, indigenous people own significant assets. Statistically, indigenous people total about six percent of the world’s population, represent 90% of the cultural diversity, and have traditional land claims for 18-24% of the Earth’s land surface. These territories contain 80% of the last remaining biodiversity-rich conservation priorities for this century. Ms. Adamson established the asset-based approach for indigenous people to utilize their assets for culturally appropriate sustainable development. First Peoples Worldwide is the only economic development institute utilizing this approach.
<b>Strategy</b>
Founded by Rebecca Adamson in 1997, First Peoples Worldwide is one of the only international organizations led by indigenous peoples and dedicated to the mission of promoting indigenous economic determination and strengthening indigenous communities through asset control and the dissemination of knowledge. The Fredericksburg, Virginia-based organization has been at the helm of studying, devising and implementing solutions to indigenous communities’ issues. First Peoples Worldwide became a project of the Tides Center in February 2007; the Center provides administrative, financial management, and organizational support for First Peoples.
First Peoples employs a number of strategies to assist indigenous people take their place in the world’s systems. Through regranting, technical assistance, education, and advocacy, First Peoples provides indigenous peoples with the tools, information, and relationships necessary to build community capacity to leverage assets for sustainable economic development. First Peoples advocates extensively with policy making bodies, governments, funders, and institutions on behalf of indigenous peoples. First Peoples engages with multinational corporations and extractive industries to encourage them to work directly with indigenous peoples to establish mutually beneficial agreements. First Peoples established the Indigenous Stewardship InitiativeSM (ISI) to build the capacity of indigenous peoples to establish and manage protected areas on their own homelands. First Peoples promotes socially responsible investing, and maintains an aggressive research program on indigenous peoples and their issues.
The programs of First Peoples Worldwide are grounded in the belief that assets are the building blocks of wealth; indigenous peoples own substantial assets but frequently lack the control necessary to benefit from them. First Peoples also believes that successful economic development is a holistic process that takes into account the political, social, and cultural variables of a community. First Peoples works to stop and reverse injustices by equipping indigenous peoples with resources to challenge government, corporation and conservation policies. At the same time, First Peoples is building capacity in indigenous communities to play an active role in conservation.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Rebecca Adamson is the daughter of a Cherokee mother and Swedish father. Her youth included a mixture of time between a Swedish community in Ohio and the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina. For the last 30 years, she has been working tirelessly to improve the lives of indigenous people everywhere. Ms. Adamson received a Masters of Science in Economic Development from the University of Southern New Hampshire (Manchester, NH); and a Doctorate in Humane Letters from Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH). She serves on several corporate and nonprofit boards, contributes articles and presentations on indigenous issues to publications and international fora, and has had her work recognized through numerous awards over the years."
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stdClass::$title = "Nebahat Akkoc"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
In a region characterized by a traditional, sexist, tribal social structure, and embroiled in a violent civil conflict, Nebahat Akkoc has founded and led Kamer, which, for 10 years, has reached about 40,000 women through awareness-raising activities and provided support (psychological, economic, legal) for close to 3,000 facing domestic violence. Organizing in all 23 provinces of Eastern and South-Eastern Anatolia and developing methods to combat crimes committed against women under the guise of honour, Kamer has also supported about 300 women facing threats of “honour” killings since 2003.
To provide employment opportunities for women in a region where unemployment rate is particularly high and to contribute to its own economic sustainability, Kamer, under the leadership of Akkoc, has also launched an entrepreneurship program, opening restaurants, small production facilities and child day care centres run by women. Kamer has developed an alternative early childhood education model that denounces all forms of violence and discrimination, and promotes social participation and learning through living. Today, Kamer continues to contribute to improving the status of women in Turkey by empowering women at the local level, building the grassroots that serves as a watchdog for women's human rights, and lobbying and advocating at the state level for better policies and enforcement of positive legal reforms.
<b>Background</b>
Having experienced violence firsthand as a woman, a political detainee, and as a widow whose husband was murdered in the midst of a civil conflict, Akkoc first came to terms with the violence and discrimination in her life, then founded Kamer to share her experiences and awareness with other women. Kamer started to operate first in Diyarbakir and its surroundings by holding awareness-raising group workshops on the human rights of women, and provides any support requested by women to end the violence in their own lives. With increasing demand from other provinces in the region, Kamer started expanding its organization into all 23 provinces in 2005. Today, Kamer Women's Centres are present in all of these provinces, providing psychological, employment and legal counselling to women facing domestic violence; it has also formed emergency intervention teams that include representatives of relevant local government agencies (law enforcement, gendarmerie, social services and child protection agencies, governor's offices, etc.) to provide emergency support services for women whose lives are at risk. Kamer Women's Centres have become members of provincial human rights committees, and Kamer is also represented on the Violence Monitoring Committee of the State Department on Women.
<b>Strategy</b>
Believing in personal empowerment, social participation and the value of developing a grassroots movement for sustainable social and political change, Kamer has reached close to 40,000 women through awareness-raising activities. Informing women of their rights, it has been encouraging women to make their own choices, providing them with the support they request. Women who have come out of awareness-raising groups have formed the volunteer base that has facilitated the organizational enlargement of Kamer. The following principles have guided Kamer's work: thinking universally while working locally (focusing on local needs, characteristics and sensitivities); standing against all forms of violence and discrimination; and empowering women with the self-confidence, awareness and knowledge to make their own choices, without giving prescriptions. Kamer stands against hierarchy and encourages transparency, sharing, debate and consensus decision-making.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
A primary school teacher for 22 years, serving on the executive committee of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (1994-1996) and as the head of the Diyarbak's Branch of Education and Science Labourers Union (1991-1993), Nebahat Akkoc founded Kamer in 1997 and has been leading the organization ever since. Akkoc has been recognized internationally for her work at Kamer in contributing to women's rights in Turkey. In addition to the 2008 Turkey Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award, she has received the following distinctions: The MDG3 Torch (2008), Social Democracy Foundation (SODEV) Human Rights Award (2007), Fransa Legion d' Honneur Medal (2006), Mevlana Kinship and Peace Award (2005), Amnesty International Ginetta Sagan Award (2004), Time Magazine - Heroes of Our Time Award (2003), Rotary Club Success Prize (2002), Lions Club Success Prize (2002), and distinction as an Ashoka Member (2000-2003)."
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Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum
<a href="http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_single_mediaplayer/0,,2251892_start_316_end_800_type_video_struct_3066,00.html?mytitle=Social%2BEntrepreneur%2B%25E2%2580%2593%2BVikram%2BAkula%253A%2BMicrofinancier%2Bfrom%2BIndia" target="_blank">Video</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIyCsAxmNaU" target="_blank">Video Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
SKS Microfinance, an NGO-turned-for-profit company, applies global business best practices to the field of microfinance. It was launched in 1997 to address a fundamental flaw in microfinance—namely, its inability to scale to large numbers. SKS identified these scaling constraints as the three “Cs”—lack of capital, capacity constraints, and the high costs of delivering micro-loans. SKS has overcome this challenge by applying three innovative principles:
(1) using a profit-oriented model to overcome capital constraints
(2) leveraging best practices for scaling from the business world to overcome capacity constraint
(3) using technology to automate processes and lower costs.
SKS’ profit-oriented model has led to sustained organization growth rates of 200%, and attracted major equity investments from premier venture capitalists, including Vinod Khosla and Sequoia Capital. This, in turn, has led to the ability to leverage debt from banks. Indeed, as of November 2007, SKS had lent over 15 billion rupees ($400 million) to over 1,300,000 poor women, benefiting approximately 6 million individuals. Known as the ‘Starbucks of Microfinance’, SKS also standardizes and automates microfinance processes. From training field agents to streamlining processes of entering data, SKS has created a standardized operational practice that can be widely scaled. For these innovative best practices, SKS was given the Grameen Foundation USA Excellence Award. SKS also automates microfinance through back office and field technology. Rather than rely on manually-filled collection sheets and manually entering data in ledgers, SKS created its own automated Management Information System (MIS) that is incredibly user-friendly so field staff with just a high school education can manage the system independently. In this fashion, a loan officer can handle up to 1,000 customers with a portfolio of 3 million rupees—a standard unheard of in microfinance. SKS’s work in automation has won the CGAP Pro-Poor Innovation Award, the Digital Partners SEL Award and the award for Excellence in Information Integrity.
<b>Background</b>
The commercial banking sector has traditionally avoided lending to the poor, deeming them risky and un-profitable due to high transaction costs of giving small loans. This has led many of the 800 million poor to either turn to exploitative moneylenders charging 36%-72% interest rates or to suffer without capital. The Grameen Bank model of group lending has largely overcome the risk problem by demonstrating that group guarantors can ensure high repayment. However, the transaction costs have long remained a challenge to growth. While the Indian microfinance industry has thus far provided approximately 200 billion rupees in capital already, it is estimated that the poor still need 10 times this amount. To date, most Indian microfinance institutions (MFIs) have not been able to significantly scale their operations and reach a large population group across different states.
While providing loans at more competitive rates than moneylenders, microfinance institutions must still charge a hefty interest rate compared to commercial market rates due to high transaction costs of a high-volume/ low-value model. Specifically, these transaction costs are due to 1) a lack of standards that creates high variance in process and procedure, making it difficult to ensure quality and scale 2) manual processing that lead to intensive labor costs and increases the potential for error and fraud.
<b>Strategy</b>
SKS’ microfinance process begins by first introducing the services to a village and surveying a community to determine the number of women who fit SKS’ criteria for Below the Poverty Line. While tracking assets is one obvious method of measuring wealth, another useful test is the relative development of housing structures. Once SKS enters a community, it has the women form 5-member groups which feed into a larger group of 50 women (10 groups) that meet weekly. Prior to the start of activities, each group must go through a standardized, yet unique, training over the course of four to six consecutive days. Members practice basic business skills, like how to sign their name – but also must learn the more complex principles behind the procedures to ensure that they understand them. SKS then offers two loan cycles every six months. These loans run up to a total of Rs. 10,000 (US $250) with the amount payable in 50 weekly payments. With each year of successful repayment, the credit limit is increased by Rs. 4,000. After a track record is established by the borrower, SKS Microfinance graduates them out of the group lending system to an individual loan from Rs. 20,000 and above on a shorter monthly repayment period. To mitigate hardship, SKS Microfinance also provides emergency loans at no interest and also offers loan insurance at 1% of the loan amount for the member and her husband.
In 2007, it introduced a health insurance product and is currently piloting other micro-insurance schemes. These practices have led to a 99% on-time repayment rate. To manage its expansive growth, SKS operates a lean hub-and-spoke back office architecture. The MIS system is shared via encoded Internet and accessible from field offices. Agents can connect via dialup modem to pass on the information in a ready-to-use low memory form that can be uploaded in less than 3 minutes. To meet human resource needs, SKS has created a factory style training that increases the speed of training by ten times thereby enabling accelerated field deployment. The ease of use of the back office system and the standardized procedures allow SKS to employ staff recruited from among poor communities and who often have only a high school education.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Vikram Akula was born in Hyderabad and moved to the US when he was only 3 years old. He witnessed India’s poverty on numerous family visits to India and made a promise to himself to do something to eradicate poverty. After college, he returned to India and worked as a community organizer. During this time, he realized the most important initiative for the poor was economic development and that microfinance made a tremendous impact on poverty eradication. But he felt that the microfinance sector was not scaling rapidly enough, so he launched SKS to overcome problems of scaling.
Vikram is a former management consultant with McKinsey & Company and has over a decade of work and research experience in microfinance. He holds a B.A. from Tufts, an M.A. from Yale, has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and was a Fulbright Scholar. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the impact of microfinance. In 2006, Vikram was named by TIME Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people and has been featured in media ranging from the front page of the Wall Street Journal to CNN."
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stdClass::$title = "André L. Albuquerque"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
André Albuquerque founded Terra Nova as a social enterprise committed the sustainable regularization of illegally occupied properties in urban areas. Terra Nova acts as an intermediary between the legal land owners and the land occupiers to find a win-win solution for both sides. It is the first private-sector organization in the country in the sector of land regularization. Before, the regularization of these dwellings has almost always depended on actions by the public sector, which, overloaded and lacking funds, worked in an inefficient manner. Government policies, when carried out, have been restricted to expropriations and urbanization services.
<b>Background</b>
Currently, 12.4 million Brazilians are living in 3.2 million informal dwellings without access to public services such as water, electricity, and waste collection. Most of these dwellings are located in favelas (urban shanty towns) causing a series of negative effects for the population, such as environmental degradation, diseases and urban violence. In the municipality of São Paulo alone, economically the largest and most important city in the country, there are 1,587 favelas, with over half of these located illegally on public land.
The absence of a housing policy for low income groups has been the biggest aggravating factor in illegal land occupation in the country. Other factors, such as the presence of large vacant urban plots (the result of land speculation), mass internal migration in search of jobs in the large cities, excessive bureaucracy in approving housing projects and the actions of squatters also resulted, mainly in the 80s and 90s, in a significant increase in favelas in Brazil, areas marked by violence, drug trafficking, high rates of mortality and the total lack of an urban infrastructure.
<b>Strategy</b>
Regularizing land ownership is expensive for the public coffers and not always do politicians wish to invest in it. Terra Nova was founded to resolve, in an amicable fashion, various conflicts that had dragged on in the courts for years.
The land regularization process brings a final resolution to the conflict between landowners and occupants. The property rights are transferred to the occupants after payment of an indemnity. The title deeds go to the current occupants of the plots. Landowners are exempted from having to pay taxes accruing on the occupied area. For each plot of land negotiated, 40% goes to Terra Nova, and 20% to a clearance fund to be used in works within the community. The remainder goes to the original property owner, who accepts the deal, even if depreciated, to avoid long court cases that drag on through the judicial system and hardly ever guarantee the return of the property.
In all the communities regularized by André, the quality of low income families improved. At the first sign of the title deeds, the local town hall starts to supply water, electricity, a postal code, basic sanitation and public transport to the residents. This partnership represents a historic milestone in the country, as it means that the State changes its role from provider to supporting player in an initiative that promotes improvement in the lives of those that are least well off. Terra Nova acts directly in negotiations with the public authorities for structural improvements in the regularized neighbourhoods and indirectly, by encouraging the formation neighbourhood associations.
In addition to regularizing land ownership, Terra Nova began to develop a program for the resettlement of the population affected by the construction of a hydroelectric plant in Rondônia in 2008.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Bringing peaceful resolution to conflicts is a life mission for lawyer André Albuquerque, 48. He carries out the task of a mediator with a rare competence, using a soft, but firm manner of speech.
In the resettlement of the riverside dwellers in Rondônia , for example, he gained the trust of the families to be resettled by camping with them. Today, as soon as he arrives at the river’s edge, “Mr.” André is received not only as a friend and partner but as part of the community.
Standing against the tide of people who recriminate against profit in Brazil, André picked the challenge to set up Terra Nova as a social business. “Terra Nova’s commitment is not to retain capital. We should not disassociate economic power from the social question. With a for profit model, we can make the money go around many more times and reach more people than we otherwise would. If the business had US$ 1 billion, it would be in the rest of Latin America and Africa.”
His idea is to capitalize those that have no capital. When the occupant becomes the owner, he can obtain bank loans. The community, legalized, then has the right to improvements such as asphalted streets and a sewerage system. “When the community unites to put pressure on the public authorities, it is exercising its political force.”"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
CINDE’s approaches have revolutionized early childhood care and education. Its focus on the creation of integrated support networks for children – including parents, childcare professionals and institutional representatives – is unique and has gained worldwide acceptance. This approach empowers families and communities, and fosters local development using the existing material, human and institutional resources of the communities.
CINDE’s main innovations are:
1. Changing the approach of childhood programmes by focusing on the creation of appropriate environments for the healthy physical and psychological development and also enhancing the participation of families and communities. This reconceptualization has led to the development of diverse, innovative and participatory alternatives to child development in Colombia and other parts of Latin America and the world. Today, more families and communities are engaged in the education of their children and strengthening their abilities to attend to their needs.
2. The development of a comprehensive approach to prepare human talent at all levels of child development. This new approach requires personnel that works with families, communities, institutional leaders, advocates and policy-makers, but also designs, implements, systematizes and evaluates national child development programmes.
3. The creation of networks and strategic alliances that promote integrated development programmes and influence the formation and ratification of social policies.
<b>Background</b>
In Colombia, as in most developing countries, a great number of children under six live in poverty and do not have access to the services and adequate physical and psychological environments that guarantee their basic rights and integral development to become productive and happy citizens. They have few opportunities to develop their intellectual, emotional and physical capabilities before entering the public school system. Children with severe physical, nutritional and emotional problems are not able to learn and function as easily within the education system as those whose basic needs are consistently met.
The most significant components of human potential and personality are developed within the first years of life. The cost of not investing in childhood, especially in programmes aimed at improving early childhood welfare and development, translates into higher future investments and almost irreversible social consequences.
<b>Strategy</b>
CINDE’s approaches have been adapted and applied in 27 countries, positively affecting more than 10 million families. CINDE has been the main designer of the national early childhood care and development (ECCD) programmes in Panama, Nicaragua and Indonesia, and has had a strong influence in the design of the national ECCD programmes in Colombia, Costa Rica and Bolivia.
CINDE’s accomplishments include:
a) Research and Development: Creation of 90 community centres, benefiting around 13,000 families; design of 84 specialization, master and doctoral programmes in Colombia, Latin America and Indonesia; accreditation of five recognized research groups by the Colombian Institute for the Development of Science and Technology (Colciencias); accomplishment of 50 institutional research efforts; production and publication of 250 educational materials, including many for community leaders.
b) Preparation of Human Talent: Training of over 4,500 professionals in graduate programmes; internships for over 1,550 professionals and/or community workers from Colombia and Latin America.
c) Dissemination, Advocacy and Networking: recognition as an adviser for 38 projects around the world; creation and strengthening of 10 networks of national and international organizations; creation of 34 alliances. CINDE has influenced the pattern of interaction and upbringing of the participating families to improve the children’s growth and development, thinking skills, nutrition quality and the nutritional habits of the families. It has promoted and strengthened the structures of community organization, family networks and inter-agency work in the social projects it carried out. CINDE has also influenced childhood care laws and regional childhood policy. It has achieved a change in the conception of childhood development and professional and pedagogical practices of the professionals and teachers involved in its projects.
Through the graduate programmes and Educational Innovations, a for-profit affiliate of CINDE created to sell products and services, CINDE generates more than half of its budget. At present, CINDE is developing a new programme, “Growing up in the Family”, which addresses families of a high socio-economic level to generate funds for the programmes for poor families.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Marta Arango was one of 10 children. Despite a humble family background, her parents valued education highly and enabled her to pursue extensive studies. She completed her initial education in Colombia, where she worked at all levels of the educational system, especially in rural areas. After finishing her graduate studies (MS and PhD) in the US, she worked on applied education methodologies in direct contact with marginalized populations. Experiencing the difficult situations in which children of these populations live in such a highly developed country, she wondered how difficult the situation is for children in an underdeveloped country such as Colombia.
She decided to return to Colombia, determined to improve the lives of the most marginalized children in urban and rural areas, especially children from birth to age six. She was determined to give back to many people what she had received: the opportunity for education and personal development. Marta believed that early care and education are a basis for social and economic development and that the development of children and youth is a powerful strategy to decrease poverty and marginalization. She was convinced of the importance of physical and psychological stimulation and protective environments for children, which can be reached by strengthening the abilities of families, schools and the community.
In 1977, she founded CINDE together with her late husband, Glen Nimnicht, and continued building and developing the organization in Colombia despite having to take refuge twice from the Colombian guerrillas and drug lords."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), a community-based healthcare program for the rural poor, has brought about extraordinary health and social improvements in 300 villages, home of 250,000 people in India's state of Maharashtra. Despite extreme poverty, severe gender and caste inequality and minimal public health services, CRHP has attained phenomenal outcomes by training local village healthcare workers and by helping villagers to address economic, social, and agricultural and health needs through self-organization.
<b>Background</b>
In 1970, malnutrition and infant mortality were pervasive problems in India’s state of Maharashtra. Less than one percent of the population had systems for the disposal of solid waste. Modern health services were non-existent and Cholera, Typhoid and Malaria were highly prevalent. Having grown up in rural India, Raj Arole understood that any healthcare delivery system would have to overcome superstitions about the causes of illness, as well as caste, religious, gender and political divisions. After graduating from medical schools in the US, Arole and his late wife, Mabelle Arole, returned to India. Using available resources and respecting local customs and traditions, they began engaging villagers in the creation of modern healthcare services for the rural poor.
<b>Strategy</b>
The Aroles initially gained acceptance from village leaders by offering much-needed curative services. To earn the trust of the community, they invited all groups to volleyball games, which became meeting places for discussions about village development. These discussions led to the formation of farmers' clubs working to solve problems, such as inadequate drinking water and poor sanitation. The farmers' clubs eventually conducted their own health survey, a crucial step towards overcoming traditional beliefs about the causes of disease, and identified simple ways to improve health, such as draining puddles that attracted mosquitoes.
The clubs also encouraged women to become village health workers. With coaching and guidance from the Aroles, these women provided prenatal care, monitored child immunizations and coordinated village waste management. The village health workers in turn organized women's development associations, which initiated credit circles to fund cooperative business enterprises. From 1971-93, infant mortality rates in CRHP's areas plunged by 84% while maternal mortality dropped by 75%. In 1994, Raj Arole founded the Jamkhed Institute in Primary Healthcare, which has trained 1,750 people from Latin America, Africa and Asia to initiate and run similar primary health programs.
<b>The Entrepreneurs</b>
Raj Arole was born in Jamkhed to a dalit family (Untouchables) that had converted to Christianity. Arole's mission is forged by his passionate rejection of all forms of discrimination resulting from race, caste, sex or class. His parents were schoolteachers in a government elementary school. His father supported him and worked to send him to a private English school, where Arole remained consistently at the top of his class. Despite his achievements, the school principal laughed sarcastically at his desire to be a doctor, telling him that he should be content to be a clerk. To this, Arole replied, “I will surely be a doctor.” He went to one of the most prestigious medical colleges in India, the Christian Medical College at Vellore. There, he met his future wife. Arole had always been first in his class, but for once in his academic career, no matter how hard he tried, she kept getting first rank. During final exams, she got the gold medal and he trailed behind in second place. During their internship year, they were posted together in a surgical unit. They took an interest in each other, and soon found out that they both shared a passion for working for the poor. They were married in 1960. On their wedding day, they took a vow to work together and devote their lives to the marginalized and disenfranchised people living in Indian villages. Today, their daughter, Shobha, follows in their footsteps. As a medical doctor and anesthesiologist, she has taken over the work of Jamkhed. Raj Arole continues to work with the communities he and his late wife dedicated their lives to serve."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP), a community-based healthcare program for the rural poor, has brought about extraordinary health and social improvements in 300 villages, home of 250,000 people in India's state of Maharashtra. Despite extreme poverty, severe gender and caste inequality and minimal public health services, CRHP has attained phenomenal outcomes by training local village healthcare workers and by helping villagers to address economic, social, and agricultural and health needs through self-organization.
<b>Background</b>
In 1970, malnutrition and infant mortality were pervasive problems in India’s state of Maharashtra. Less than one percent of the population had systems for the disposal of solid waste. Modern health services were non-existent and Cholera, Typhoid and Malaria were highly prevalent. Having grown up in rural India, Raj Arole understood that any healthcare delivery system would have to overcome superstitions about the causes of illness, as well as caste, religious, gender and political divisions. After graduating from medical schools in the US, Arole and his late wife, Mabelle Arole, returned to India. Using available resources and respecting local customs and traditions, they began engaging villagers in the creation of modern healthcare services for the rural poor.
<b>Strategy</b>
The Aroles initially gained acceptance from village leaders by offering much-needed curative services. To earn the trust of the community, they invited all groups to volleyball games, which became meeting places for discussions about village development. These discussions led to the formation of farmers' clubs working to solve problems, such as inadequate drinking water and poor sanitation. The farmers' clubs eventually conducted their own health survey, a crucial step towards overcoming traditional beliefs about the causes of disease, and identified simple ways to improve health, such as draining puddles that attracted mosquitoes.
The clubs also encouraged women to become village health workers. With coaching and guidance from the Aroles, these women provided prenatal care, monitored child immunizations and coordinated village waste management. The village health workers in turn organized women's development associations, which initiated credit circles to fund cooperative business enterprises. From 1971-93, infant mortality rates in CRHP's areas plunged by 84% while maternal mortality dropped by 75%. In 1994, Raj Arole founded the Jamkhed Institute in Primary Healthcare, which has trained 1,750 people from Latin America, Africa and Asia to initiate and run similar primary health programs.
<b>The Entrepreneurs</b>
Raj Arole was born in Jamkhed to a dalit family (Untouchables) that had converted to Christianity. Arole's mission is forged by his passionate rejection of all forms of discrimination resulting from race, caste, sex or class. His parents were schoolteachers in a government elementary school. His father supported him and worked to send him to a private English school, where Arole remained consistently at the top of his class. Despite his achievements, the school principal laughed sarcastically at his desire to be a doctor, telling him that he should be content to be a clerk. To this, Arole replied, “I will surely be a doctor.” He went to one of the most prestigious medical colleges in India, the Christian Medical College at Vellore. There, he met his future wife. Arole had always been first in his class, but for once in his academic career, no matter how hard he tried, she kept getting first rank. During final exams, she got the gold medal and he trailed behind in second place. During their internship year, they were posted together in a surgical unit. They took an interest in each other, and soon found out that they both shared a passion for working for the poor. They were married in 1960. On their wedding day, they took a vow to work together and devote their lives to the marginalized and disenfranchised people living in Indian villages. Today, their daughter, Shobha, follows in their footsteps. As a medical doctor and anesthesiologist, she has taken over the work of Jamkhed. Raj Arole continues to work with the communities he and his late wife dedicated their lives to serve."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
SPARC has forged a 3-way alliance with the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan (MM), a federation of women’s collectives. NSDF has many city-based federations as members. The members of the city federations are pavement and slum dwellers. NSDF undertakes all basic community organization and mobilization work and also lobbies for changes in policies that affect the urban poor. Its main focus lies in creating structures for the poor through which they can undertake negotiations. MM, by supporting and training women's collectives, ensures that women are included in local community decision-making and helps women to participate in both local and larger issues and debates related to their lives. It also undertakes the responsibility of setting up credit and savings groups, consumer cooperatives, ration shops and housing cooperatives.
<b>Background</b>
India may have a relatively low level of urbanization but it also has one of the world's largest urban populations. About 350 million people live in Indian cities today. The percentage of people living under the poverty line in urban areas is higher than in rural areas, and these numbers are rising. However, there is a critical lack of investment in addressing the issues of poverty in cities, which means that the needs of 30-40% of the city’s population are ignored and they are denied any real citizenship rights. Because cities are badly planned, most poor people live as squatters on private or public lands and have inadequate access to the most basic of services. Life in these areas is harsh, especially for women and children. People are deprived of secure shelter and basic amenities, which in turn impacts their health, education and income. Slum dwellers are constantly threatened by eviction and treated as non-citizens who have encroached on the city that needs their labour but is unwilling to accommodate their housing needs.
<b>Strategy</b>
SPARC supports the efforts of community groups, creating area resource centers and helping isolated communities to join together through such processes. It strengthens communities' own efforts with whatever resources (information, training, networking, advocacy) it can generate to ensure that, within these organizations of the poor, there is a clear and defined space for women to participate as partners in the process of change. SPARC is also working to create an information base, through participatory research, on the poor and their problems. It is a member of a three-way alliance with the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan (MM) as its two partners. The Mahila Milan group (Hindi for 'women together') came into being when SPARC’s founding members began to interact with women living on the pavements of Mumbai. These women stated categorically that secure shelter was their main priority. SPARC took the challenge and joined hands with MM, and later with NSDF. This alliance was advantageous to all the three organizations. For MM, alignment with the NSDF meant the inclusion of their members in the mainstream slum movements that the Federation leads and the considerable influence of a national federation to back their claims. For the NSDF, the alignment with SPARC and MM brought two components. SPARC, with its professional input, would lead the Alliance and provide the Federation with the organizational and managerial capability that it lacked. MM would give the Federation an opportunity to develop sustainable relationships with women mobilized earlier for demonstrations but not included in decision-making, as the Federation (until the alliance) was limited to men. For SPARC, the NSDF represented a complimentary resource with a national pool of skilled and committed community organizers.
SPARC assists in the development and strengthening of people’s organizations, and links itself in a critical partnership to achieve commonly articulated goals. Finally, through people’s experiences in the exploration of new initiatives, it has identified solutions for community development. Based on this, SPARC has challenged existing practices of service deliveries by the State and engaged agencies in relating directly to communities. With state support, SPARC seeks to create institutional arrangements where communities own and control organizations and institutions that provide services to the poor. It has demonstrated that partnerships between NGOs, communities and governments can and do bring change.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Sheela Patel is born in Mumbai where she has studies and worked with communities of the urban poor since 1974. She began her career working for ten years from 1974 to 1984 in focusing on women and children. That experience demonstrated that the most efficiently delivered welfare does not produce real change in the lives of the poor, and unless organizations working on issues of poverty have an appetite to explore new ways to addressing these problems there can be no breakthroughs or change. This means that a real partnership with communities of the poor must be made. She founded Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers ( SPARC) in 1984 along with other like minded peers and forged a alliance with Jockin Arputham who had formed NSDF in 1975 to bring together and form an organizations of leaders from slums who defended their neighborhoods against evictions. Mahila Milan evolved as a third partners in this alliance as a network that recognized and developed the leadership of women’s collectives in slums so they would work in partnership with the men.
Arputham is from the state of Karnataka in South India. Due to an alcoholic father who was not able to look after the family, it fell upon Jockin to earn a meager living. He ran away from home as an adolescent, came to Mumbai and had to live on the pavements and in slums. With the state government constantly destroying the temporary shelters, Arputham joined the women in agitating against the government’s insufficient policies towards the slum dwellers. Despite having to continually run from the authorities or hide among the voluminous folds of slum women’s petticoats and saris, he felt that, as agitators, they were unable to achieve a practical solution. Eventually in 1984 the NSDF, Mahila Milan and SPARC came together to build the capacity of the urban poor and negotiate entitlement with the authorities and mainstream institutions to secure land tenure, housing and infrastructure. Jockin Arputham was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2000."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
At the heart of Rubicon’s theory of change is the belief that to enjoy full membership in society, people need a decent place to live, economic self-sufficiency, and to be part of a community. The existing systems trying to solve the problem were too fragmented, compartmentalized, and difficult to navigate for the people they are set up to help. In addition, most of the “helping" systems do not use the strengths of the business world to infuse innovation, sustainability, and strategic planning into the solutions. Rubicon created two thriving social enterprises, Rubicon Bakery, a San Francisco award-winning dessert bakery icon now distributed to over 2,000 supermarkets throughout the US, and Rubicon Landscape, with over US$ 4 million in annual sales throughout Northern California. Additionally, Rubicon has built over 200 housing units and serves over 4,000 people annually.
<b>Background</b>
Rubicon is engaged in addressing three core issues: multigenerational poverty that primarily affects the African-American community in the US, homelessness, and the disenfranchisement and marginalization of the severely mentally disabled. In 1973, Rubicon was initiated by a group of concerned volunteers in Redmond, California, a large urban community that is one of California's poorest. Since 1986, Rubicon's president, Rick Aubry, has spearheaded the conception and vision of Rubicon as a social enterprise, running numerous business ventures, providing integrated services and building affordable housing.
<b>Strategy</b>
Rubicon's success is based on a strategic shift in its practice that occurred in 1988. Rubicon's business ventures were originally conceived to provide training opportunities for clients. But the businesses reached a scale in which their needs and the needs of the training programs were no longer in alignment. Was the primary strategy to have a mechanism where training could occur, or was it to have successful businesses that could create real jobs and sustain a training component? Rubicon took the latter approach, deciding that each enterprise had to succeed first in the competitive market in which it operated. Rubicon recruited leaders from the sectors in which it operated, and its workers were hired and trained from a pool of people thought to be unemployable. The wisdom of this strategy has been proven over time. Further, it merged its core services in mental health, workforce preparation, plus legal and social services into one integrated department. In the aggregate (US$8 million in 2005), this became Rubicon’s largest business unit, serving clients better by providing “one door” for all services and benefiting from the business management approaches of the two social ventures. Concomitantly, Rubicon has also built one of the leading non-profit evaluation systems in the US, CICERO (Consumer Information Collection, Entry and Reporting for Organization), to measure its impact and plan strategically.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Rick Aubry has run Rubicon for over 20 years. A psychologist by training, he turned his skills to business and for two decades has been regarded as a leader in the field of social entrepreneurship in the US. Rubicon has been recognized for 3 years running by Fast Company Magazine as “one of the 25 organizations changing the World.” Aubry is on the faculty of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a course in Social Entrepreneurship."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frer8GIQrf4" target="_blank">Video</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU9-mVkxaAY" target="_blank">Video Interview 1</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKRwlfImipY" target="_blank">Video Interview 2 (Español)</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNp3yfPjjA4&feature=PlayList&p=2886FFD91683EDEE&index=1" target="_blank">Video (Español)</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Un Kilo de Ayuda (One Kilo of Aid) is Mexico’s largest program addressing under-nutrition. The organization orchestrates a network of health promoters and community volunteers to focus on Mexico’s most vulnerable populations: children under five and pregnant mothers in rural and indigenous communities. Un Kilo de Ayuda uses a methodology, called the Integrated Nutrition Program (PIN), developed in partnership with the Salvador Zubirán National Nutrition Institute. The PIN has six main components: nutritional surveillance, anemia detection, nutritional education, neurodevelopment and early stimulation evaluation, nutritional package distribution, and waterborne disease prevention. UKdA catalogues information on the children it serves in a digital database called INFOKILO, which can be accessed via Internet and is updated daily. This system is invaluable to the program in terms of following up, tracking progress, and making recommendations for interventions. Since its inception in 1984, Un Kilo de Ayuda has reached over 170,000 children under the age of five. The program is currently working with 15 centers in seven states, reaching 790 communities, 37,194 families and 42,710 children. For those children served, the program has delivered annual weight increases between 5 and 8 percent, and a decrease by 1.5 to 3 percent of those with moderate and severe malnutrition. Additionally, since 2002, there has been a 10 percent decrease in anemia prevalence amongst those served by the program.
<b>Background</b>
Mexico is firmly established as a middle-income country, albeit with huge gaps between rich and poor, north and south, urban and rural populations. Deep poverty persists among the indigenous population in the southern part of the country, mainly in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero. Nutrition status accurately shows these disparities. Nationally, 29% of Mexican children under five are under-nourished. The figure in rural areas, however, is 40.7% with severe under-nutrition almost double the national average at 2.1%. Un Kilo de Ayuda works in the 8 states where 70% of under-nourished children reside.
<b>Strategy</b>
Eradicating child under-nutrition in Mexico by the year 2023 is Un Kilo de Ayuda’s goal. In addition to a solid nutrition program, Un Kilo de Ayuda boasts impressive community support and participation. Eighty-nine percent of Un Kilo de Ayuda personnel are volunteers. Additionally, in a culture lacking a strong culture of financial giving, it is impressive that 45 percent of Un Kilo de Ayuda’s activities are supported by civil society. As a fundraising innovator, UKdA gets most of these donations from the sale of cards and seasonal products that can be purchased at retailers. Thirty percent of its funding comes from companies working in Mexico, and 25 percent comes from the local governments of three states where the program operates. UKdA is currently negotiating with three additional states to receive additional funding, and reaching out to the federal government to try and impact policy.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
At age 22, José Ignacio Ávalos was inspired to start Gente Nueva (initially a youth movement) as a result of Mother Teresa’s visit to Mexico in 1982 at a time when civil society organizations were regarded as highly suspicious in Mexico. Since then, Mr. Ávalos has either founded or inspired the set up of more than 30 organizations. Such organizations include Banco Compartamos, the fastest growing and largest microfinance institution in Latin America, serving over 1,000,000 people, COFAS a self-sustaining healthcare system focused on providing high quality healthcare to Mexico’s rural poor. One of Mr. Ávalos most recent ventures is “Mi Tienda”, a new kind of wholesaler supplying small, rural shops with products at lower prices and in smaller quantities than traditional wholesalers. In addition, he inherited a beauty product company catering to the Mexican market, which he also runs, effectively managing two full-time jobs."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4hJU6U2S50" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Based in Rio de Janeiro, the Center for Digital Inclusion (CDI) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization with the mission of fostering the social inclusion of less-privileged social groups by using information and communication technologies as tools to encourage active citizenship. CDI works in low-income communities and with institutions assisting individuals with special needs including, among others, the physically and mentally disabled, the visually impaired, homeless children, prisoners and indigenous populations. Learning new technologies not only creates job opportunities, but also expands access to knowledge and encourages social interchange. CDI believes this initiative contributes to changing the lives of individuals and has a profound impact on community development. CDI developed a socio-educational approach to teaching information technology. Students learn how to use computers and software while discussing issues of particular interest to their community, such as human rights, environment, sexual education, health and nonviolence. Furthermore, the model is based on the concept of helping people help themselves. CDI trains future teachers who, in turn, will train others in their communities. The CDI network can be understood as a complex learning system. It has expanded nationally and internationally, with regional offices in nineteen Brazilian states and in eight countries on three continents. CDI headquarters has developed a social franchise framework that defines quality standards. It has an important role representing the network, in which it updates CDI’s educational model, validates and shares best practices, and continuously fundraises, trains and periodically follows-up with regional offices. CDI regional offices are self-managed, reporting to CDI headquarters. Their mission is to replicate CDI’s methodology and educational model in new schools.
<b>Background</b>
Brazil is one of the largest markets in Latin America for information technology, software and services. Government initiatives regarding ICT and the diffusion of the Internet date back to 1988, and development of the ICT industry has been a high priority. Since 1995, nearly all Brazilian universities and research centers have been interconnected. International census show that Brazil ranks in the top twenty for the number of hosts. Yet despite enormous promise and important advances, Brazil faces significant obstacles in the equitable application of information technology. While international companies are targeting Brazil as a new market for ICTs and ICT services, employment prospects for the vast majority of the population may actually decline in the country’s new information economy due to lack of access and training in ICT. Many have noted that the Internet could erect social barriers unless substantial and rapid improvements are made to provide the skills needed to use computers. This is the challenge that CDI is addressing.
<b>Strategy</b>
Baggio's initial idea was to set up a Bulletin Board System (BBS) on the Internet so that rich and poor children could join in debates and exchange ideas. The BBS failed miserably because poor children never participated in the discussions since they had no access to computers. With the help of volunteers, Rodrigo started collecting used computers, mostly from small firms, and donating them to community centers and neighborhood associations in low-income areas. IT, Baggio realized, could be used not only to increase job opportunities for poor youth but also to broaden their minds, help them understand their reality, point them in new directions and raise their self-esteem. Thus, he conceived CDI to meet those challenges. CDI opens Information Technology and Citizens Rights Schools in partnership with community-based associations, providing free computer equipment and software and implementing educational strategies for continuous training of local instructors. Through periodic visits, CDI coordinators monitor their performance and identify key challenges and opportunities. School coordinators work together with CDI representatives to find creative ways of addressing problems, formulating and sharing solutions. Each school is an autonomous unit, self-managed and self-sustaining through symbolic contributions collected from its students. This fund covers maintenance costs and payment of instructors in an authentic "social enterprise." In a recent evaluation conducted by an external consultant group, 87% of the students said that CDI schools had a positive impact on their lives, including regular school attendance, better job opportunities and avoiding criminal offences.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Rodrigo Baggio was first exposed to computers at the age of twelve at a firm in which his father directed the department of information management, and he acquired his first computer that same year. During the same period, he mobilized people to work in a day nursery at Rocinha, a Brazilian favela, and also did volunteer work with street children. Throughout his adolescence, he participated in social, student and environmental movements. Today, Baggio continues to be recognized globally by many diverse organizations. He was granted an honorary doctorate from the School of Computer Science at De Paul University in Chicago, Illinois, and in 2005, he was recognized by the Skoll Foundation as one of its award winners. “One must believe in the power of communities to transform their social reality by mastering new information and communications technologies. It is critical to help them develop processes that will strengthen and expand their economic activities, organizational skills, self-esteem, educational level and ability to communicate with others about their own social projects. If we enable these things to happen, we will be contributing to a better and fairer world where there is more equality, freedom and solidarity”, says Rodrigo Baggio."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Understanding the vicious cycle of unemployment and marginalization among the Roma population in the Czech Republic, Liga o.s. Bruntal employs socially marginalized individuals – primarily Roma, in construction and e-waste recycling positions. Liga then uses part of the profits from the business to fund youth development initiatives that break the cycle of poverty.
<b>Background</b>
In the economically hard-hit area of Bruntal in the Czech Republic, where Liga operates, the unemployment rate is a staggering 20% compared to the country standard of 8% or almost 250% that of the standard Czech unemployment rate. The approximate 700,000 Roma in the Czech Republic have historically been marginalized leading to unemployment. In Bruntal, 90% of the Roma population is unemployed due to discrimination and a coddling social system. Negative stereotypes of the population are reinforced and leads to a downward spiral in Roma engagement.
<b>Strategy</b>
Josef Balaz’s strategy has been to look for market weaknesses or cracks and exploit them with a first mover advantage. His companies include both a construction company and an electronic waste management company called the Green Workshop. Josef, foreseeing the change in EU law regarding electronic waste management in 1995, started the Green Workshop to handle all electronic waste recycling in the northern Czech region. Thus, the Green Workshop also provides environmental benefit in addition to its employment of socially marginalized populations. Josef reinvests his profits into a foundation that targets root causes of unemployment in the Roma community by providing a youth club, integration center, and employment assistance. From 2003 – 2006, he had a staggering 308% Compounded Annual Growth Rate. To ensure impact is indeed being created, Liga has generated very strong impact assessment tools allows for measurement and tailoring strategy to best suit needs of the community as a constant feedback loop
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Mr. Balaz is a modest individual with a soft strength. Of Roma origin, Josef Balaz has long been passionate about Roma affairs. However, after an experience in providing free aid made him realize he was hindering rather than helping individuals, he shifted his work to providing opportunities to those that want a hand rather than a handout. At only 32, his visionary foresight and successful business practices have already made him one of the most respected businessmen in the region with plenty of potential for further growth."
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Mexico, 2008
<b>The Innovation</b>
GRUPEDSAC disseminates technologies that help address a range of problems faced in rural Mexico such as the lack of water, food insecurity, rural migration and inadequate housing. It does this through training and the development of skills, accompanied by programs of human development to increase the autonomous and organizational capacity of the community itself. Through its centers, GRUPEDSAC has provided training for Mexican and Latin American organizations and individuals who have replicated the model in diverse states of Mexico and in South America.
All technologies are adapted to the respective environment and make sustainable use of the existing natural resources. In addition, GRUPEDSAC revives cultural traditions and resources that have been neglected and underutilized and combines them with modern advances. The organization also grants microfinance loans for the development of small business and housing improvements. Through the sale of handicrafts made from solid wastes and processed food, the organization helps families improve their economic situation.
The group provides environmental training for all sectors of society to raise awareness on the issues that are currently facing the country. It particularly seeks to raise the awareness around simple energy saving methods, such as exchanging light bulbs and alternative energies.
<b>Background</b>
Mexico is considered to be a middle-income country, an emerging market. This disguises high inequalities, particularly between the urban and the rural population. Out of a rural population of 24 million, 56% live below the poverty line. Half of them are considered to be extremely poor. The GDP per capita in the rural area is 73% lower than the national average. Life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality three times higher than in the cities.
Poverty in the rural areas takes on extreme forms: abandonment of fields, massive migration, deforestation, erosion, water absence, low productiveness, food insecurity and precarious housing. Environmental problems are exacerbated by the poverty level. They are also largely ignored because they are considered to be of lesser importance than the fight against poverty.
<b>Strategy</b>
GRUPEDSAC takes an innovative, integrated approach to solving the problems of rural poverty and environmental degradation. Learning centers in the State of Mexico and in Oaxaca provide hands-on training outside the classroom on technologies and methods of traditional farming and construction combined with modern advances. The practical courses are regularly taught in a variety of areas such as permaculture, storage and use of rain water, organic agriculture and sanitation. The approach can be taught to anyone from professionals up to the illiterate.
The training centers receive groups or members of civil society organizations from Mexico, Central America, and Latin America. These trained experts then replicate the appropriate technologies in their countries and regions of origin. There are now close to 30 training centers, all started by organizations trained at GRUPEDSAC and following its model. The Government of Mexico has also constructed 8 small training centers in the most remote municipalities with the intention of helping to detonate sustainable development in these areas.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Born in the city of Chihuahua of Mexican nationality, Margarita Barney studied languages and became an interpreter and translator. She has dedicated most of her adult life to the support of education in Mexico. She was among the first to bring the Montessori methodology to Mexico and started a Montessori school in the city of Chihuahua. In Mexico City, she worked at the center responsible for publishing Montessori guides alongside well-known pedagogues.
Witnessing the pollution in Mexico City and the widespread indifference of its inhabitants, she decided to carry out awareness raising campaigns. She studied Ecology, Population and Development in the Latin-American University and formed the group Environmental Volunteer of Tecamachalco that later turned into the GRUPEDSAC."
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Turkey, 2008
<b>The Innovation</b>
Hey Tekstil invested in less-developed regions of Anatolia and led to radical socio-economic change. Garment manufacturing requires an intensive labor force and new investment increased women’s employment and participation in socio-economic life. Hey Tekstil has innovated a new investment model in its last two production facilities. There are several empty public buildings, as well as serious unemployment, in most of rural Anatolia. In cooperation with public authorities, empty buildings were transformed into manufacturing places and thus created employment opportunities for young people and women. It was a very good practice for the labor intensive garment industry and led to a serious increase in employment in Anatolia. Hey Group companies strictly follow international codes of conduct and apply social compliance procedures.
<b>Background</b>
Hey Tekstil was founded in 1992 as a small family business. With its successful export operation, it expanded its customer and production capacity. Currently, it is the leading knitwear manufacturing company in Turkey, with four factories in four different Anatolian cities and headquarters in Istanbul. It is the source for the biggest retail chains and employs more than 3.500 people. Hey Group companies operate in four areas: textile, tourism, foreign trade and IT. The expansion of the group companies and rising employment make its story unique. It is an inspiring case for women entrepreneurship in Turkey.
<b>Strategy</b>
Aynur Bektas was president of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers’ Association. As a leading industrialist she pushed for relocation of the garment industry to Anatolia, with her own first investment in her hometown, creating 600 jobs, mainly for women, making its case more concrete. She opened her second factory in central Anatolia, as well as a third one. The fourth factory is in Batman, where the highest rate in women’s suicide in Turkey was recorded. The project first started to teach women to organize a small production place and later expanded to a big investment project.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Aynur Bektas was born in Çankiri/Çerkes in 1951. After completing her primary and secondary schools in Çerkes, she completed Ankara Girls High School and graduated from Ankara Economics and Trade Academy. In 1971, while she was still attending university, she started to work for Tobank. For 20 years, she worked in the same bank as trainer, credits assistant manager and branch manager. After her retirement, she started a new company, Hey Tekstil Inc., in 1992. She became the general manager and the board member of the new company. Hey Tekstil expanded its operations within Turkey and abroad. She is a board member of eight group companies, and in some of them she is president of the board. Hey Tekstil AS is among the biggest 100 exporter companies and the biggest knitwear company in the country. Hey Group companies had a turnover of US$ 250 million at the end of 2007.
Aynur Bektas was the president of the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers’ Association (TCMA) from 2005 to 2007. Currently, she is president of the Women Entrepreneurs Board of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey. She is also a member of TÜSIAD as well as KAGIDER. In addition to the 2008 Turkey Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award, she has received the following distinctions: Women Entrepreneur of the Year, National Productivity Center (2006); Women Entrepreneur of the Year, The Economist (2007); Entrepreneurship Congress Special Award, Bursa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (2008)."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRMnexxY3cw" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Marcela Benitez, a geographer and sociologist by training, spent seven years traveling throughout Argentina as part of her work at the National Research Council for Science and Technology (CONICET) as an academic researcher. Benitez established RESPONDE, which promotes the recovery of small rural villages at risk of disappearing by motivating rural villagers to work for their future. The villages are empowered by RESPONDE through their social and economic projects. Working with interested companies, universities, private citizens and local government, RESPONDE builds the capacity of townspeople to engage successfully in new avenues for generating livelihoods and economic and social projects.
<b>Background</b>
Rural to urban migration is rapidly becoming a global pattern, and Argentina is no exception. Approximately 90% of the country’s population lives in large cities; many of these people had to migrate from rural areas in search of better living conditions, only to find they were worse off than before. According to Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), over half of the country’s rural villages are at risk of extinction – approximately 600, home to half a million people. Many of these towns suffered economically with the massive growth of agribusiness and the closing of railways that connected these towns to markets and each other. Roads also have deteriorated and basic infrastructure provided by the State has collapsed, including health services and education, which is only offered up though primary school. Moreover, the government does not offer opportunities for growth and development to these towns, only charity. Meanwhile, violence and crime increase exponentially in big cities, and public services are diminishing with the constant demand from the arriving population.
<b>Strategy</b>
RESPONDE promotes local development so that people can maintain their cultural ties and remain in their towns. To date, it has reached approximately 1.4 million people. RESPONDE pursues three major programs:
1) Production and Micro business: The initiative "Tourism in Rural Villages" promotes local economic development, favoring the participation of the town inhabitants as service providers of bed and breakfast inns, local restaurants, tourism and sale of local artisan products. "Self-sustaining Villages" proposes the self-provision and appropriate food-supply of small rural communities, based on the natural resources that they already have. Responde has started an international volunteering scheme called “revivial”. Advanced students of administration, accounting, economics and other related areas or volunteers from companies offer help on business planning and technical support in order to generate micro-businesses.
2) Education & Technology "Educational Responde" It offers the possibility to enroll more than 500.000 adults who live in rural villages and who have not receive that education in High School degree programs through via Internet. "WINGS" proposes to brake ignorance and isolation with the creation of Centers for Socio-Economic- Cultural Extension that will allow communication via Internet and the development of social, cultural, and recreational activities.
3) Territorial development & Environment “Golden Villages”: They attract new families to small rural towns offering them a new lifestyle in a natural setting that respect the environment. They consolidate the roots of the rural population when offers a basic infrastructure of services and the creation of new social opportunities and economically sustainable. They encourage the decentralization of big cities and, as a result, lead to the reduction of the emission of greenhouse gases.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
For seven years, Marcela Benitez studied geography at a university in the north of Argentina, where she observed first hand the economic and social problems that were arising in the small rural villages outside of Buenos Aires. Throughout her studies, she encountered more and more isolated and forgotten rural villages driving her interest to investigate if the problem was local or one occurring throughout Argentina.
After completing her degree, she began academic research about how these rural villages were slowly dying. She developed different ideas on how to revert the situation of these rural villages, hoping that the government would implement policies and solutions. After two years, she realized that she must put her own research into action if she wanted to see a change.
With the creation of RESPONDE based on her previous research, Marcela was able to galvanize the rest of society to become involved in generating new opportunities for these villages. She has involved thousands of people to help many rural villages, including people from all over the country, from universities, companies, and businesses, to help make new opportunities possible for these villages."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Low-income housing projects have sprung up all over the world. What is different about Un Techo para Chile (A Roof for Chile) is that it encompasses far more than housing. Housing is an entry point for community creation and widespread social change among Chile’s slum dwellers and for the thousands of Chileans who have been inspired to join to ensure that infrastructures for health, education, job training and employment opportunities are also put in place. Un Techo para Chile is managed by 100 recent graduates and young professionals from the best universities in the country who compete for the privilege of dedicating two years of their lives at below market salaries to run the organization’s many programmes. Un Techo para Chile has successfully eroded the barriers preventing national solidarity by generating a commitment by Chile’s youth to the future of their country. In the process, their parents and the public and business sectors have joined the effort. To date, the model has been adapted in 13 other Latin American countries under the name Un Techo para mi País (A Roof for my Country).
<b>Background</b>
While development economists often dub Chile an “economic miracle”, thousands of Chileans continue to live in crowded slums in deplorable conditions. It was precisely at the moment when Chile's economic growth was at an all time high—prior to the Asian financial crisis—that Felipe Berríos launched his effort to demonstrate that many continued to live in absolute poverty. As Un Techo’s model became successful and Berríos became a reluctant national icon in Latin America.
<b>Strategy</b>
Using housing as a springboard for community creation and social change, Berríos succeeded in mobilizing university students across the country to work alongside slum dwellers. After initially building decent housing and infrastructure facilities, they subsequently supported the community's efforts to enlist local and federal governments to create an environment where all dwellers have access to quality education, healthcare and micro-credit as well as opportunities for building skills in preparation for gainful employment. Since 1997 more than 165.000 volunteers have passed through this institution, building 40,000 houses and transforming slum areas into communities that provide dignity for the inhabitants. The graduates and young professionals who run the organization learn how to manage a social enterprise in a professional and efficient manner, applying principles of strategic planning, organizational effectiveness, transparency, monitoring and evaluation.
Un Techo para Chile is characterized by sustainability of action. It has created a movement of young people that, in turn, catalyze Chileans from all economic and social backgrounds to unite and ensure that Chile is a country for all, not just for a privileged few. Until mid-2005,
Un Techo para Chile had no legal status. It simply did not exist as an organizational entity, but as a loose network of students, citizens and former slum dwellers. The reasons were strategic. First, Berríos believes that any organizational structure generates bureaucracy and inertia and sacrifices flexibility. Second, he wanted to avoid having to set up a board that would assume control of administration, thus diminishing the responsibility of the recent graduates who run the initiative. Finally, Berríos wanted to protect Un Techo para Chile from legal action by outraged wealthy landowners of unoccupied adjacent properties that have tried to sue. If it was not legally constituted, there was no entity to sue. Recently, Un Techo para Chile entered into negotiations with the Chilean government to build communities in areas that are closer to urban centers on available government land. This means that the organization has had to become legally constituted. Berríos has selected members to its board who respect the nature of the organization. Up to the date, 210 definitive housing projects have already been inaugurated, and there are more than seven projects in construction.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Felipe Berríos is an entrepreneur who happens to be a Jesuit priest. He exemplifies the definition of an entrepreneur as “one who pursues opportunities without regard for the resources currently at hand.” He has been able to leverage human and financial resources from the public and corporate sectors, and has galvanized the media and the Chilean population to achieve social transformation, not only by providing the poor with housing but in creating a sense of mutual respect and responsible citizenship across the country. Thanks to Berríos’ uncanny marketing savvy, Un Techo para Chile is as well known as a brand to Chileans as some of the most popular products in the country. Berríos is not afraid of open debate and is often seen on national television being interviewed on any number of economic, social and cultural topics. On many occasions, he has taken on the government when it failed to pursue anti-poverty policies, as well as the Catholic Church, which is dominant in Chile. Because of his ability to “name and shame” in a loving and humorous manner, he has gained the respect of the populace, from the former slum dweller to the President of the country."
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Under Construction !!"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) is the global standard bearer in efforts to provide comprehensive support to poor, self-employed women in countries with large, informal economies. Its efforts over three decades to increase the bargaining power, economic opportunities, health security, legal representation and organizational abilities of Indian women have brought dramatic improvements to thousands of lives and influenced similar initiatives around the globe. Based in the state of Gujarat, SEWA’s almost one million members include 550,000 women representing 100 informal trades within the state and an additional 550,000 members in 9 other states.
SEWA is the largest union in India, offering its members a broad array of financial, health, childcare, insurance, legal, vocational and education services. In addition, SEWA has widely shared its experiences in a various fora – the International Trade Union Congress the ILO and WHO’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health, to mention a few. It has also been a founder of Women’s World Banking, Homenet, Streetnet (international networks of home-based workers and street vendors respectively), and also of Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), a network of policy-makers, researchers and activists committed to the informal workers’ movement.
<b>Background</b>
93% of India's labour force is self-employed; 94 % of this sector is women and their production accounts for 60% of India's GDP. Yet, self-employed women have historically enjoyed few legal protections or workers' rights. Most are illiterate and subject to exploitation and harassment by moneylenders, employers and officials. In 1972, Ela Bhatt, a lawyer who was chief of the women's section of the Textile Labour Association in Ahmedabad, witnessed the terrible conditions faced by women working as weavers, needlecraft workers, cigarette rollers and waste collectors. She began helping women to organize themselves. SEWA had to overcome difficult obstacles to win legal recognition as a formal trade union.
<b>Strategy</b>
By dealing with the multiple dimensions of its members’ needs, SEWA supports women’s efforts to overcome poverty. Using an integrated approach, SEWA helps its members achieve full employment and self-reliance through self-governance. SEWA members have created 100 cooperatives and over 3000 producers' groups, thereby forging market linkages and enhancing their bargaining position. The efforts have had so much success that, from 1994-98, members increased employment income by 600%. SEWA Bank, with 300,000 savers, has issued loans to 103,679 members. To provide for its members' healthcare, SEWA has helped them start health cooperatives and developed an insurance program that provides members’ coverage for healthcare, emergencies and loss of life. A SEWA-affiliated team of 500 midwives and health workers serves the healthcare needs of 125,000 individuals.
Through its “university”, the SEWA Academy, members learn together, gain information, knowledge and confidence, which are important in equipping them with the skills to become strong, capable leaders and managers. The SEWA Academy also communicates the concerns, struggles and experiences of poor self-employed women to the public and to policy-makers through its Research and Communication services. Today, SEWA is also working through video, telephone, computer, and satellite communications to provide Information Technology to the working class. To address legal issues such as housing and wage disputes, and other exploitation issues, SEWA provides its members with legal aid services. Currently, Bhatt and other SEWA leaders dedicate their time to influencing national and international policies in support of informal and self-employed workers around the world. Ela Bhatt is currently a member of the Council of Elders, led by Nelson Mandela.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Ela Bhatt was born in 1933 in Gujarat, India. The Freedom Movement in India and Gandhian ideology influenced her ideas. After graduating with a Law degree in 1954, she joined the Textile Labour Association (TLA) a union founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1917. While working at TLA, she observed the conditions of the non-organized sector—primarily comprised of women—and decided to help "unionize" them. "One day," she predicts, "SEWA's street vendors will join SEWA's artisans in the Indian Parliament settling issues about the informal economy."
Mirai Chatterjee is the Coordinator of Social Security at SEWA. She is responsible for SEWA’s Health Care, Child Care and Insurance programs. She is currently Chairperson of the SEWA - promoted health cooperative – Lok Swasthya. She was General Secretary of SEWA (1997 – 1999) after its Founder, Ela Bhatt. Mirai has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins University’s school of Hygiene and Public Health. She is on the Boards of several organizations in India including the Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB), and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). She is currently advisor to the National Commission for the Unorganized Sector and the National Rural Health Mission. She is also a Commissioner in the World Health Organization’s, Commission on Social Determinants of Health."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
There is nothing new about traditional handicraft as a source of income; it is prevalent in almost all countries. However, it is ACP’s engagement with local producers that is the cornerstone of its model and the reason for its success. ACP is not just a cooperative; it is a catalyst for women’s empowerment. In addition to providing training for producers, the company offers a salary and a significant set of social benefit programs. There are eight such programs offered to all producers including health and housing subsidies, an emergency fund and aid for education (two children per family, at least one of them a girl).
Meera Bhattarai set up ACP to improve the situation of the Nepali poor by using a market solution. She focused on providing women craft workers with fair-income earning opportunities by helping them to further develop their skills. ACP started with thirty-eight producers in three skill areas and five full-time staff in a small rented building. Today, ACP works with a 1200 producers (90% women) from fifteen districts in Nepal, covering twenty-one product areas ranging from ceramics and baskets to toys, tableware, wool products and carpentry. ACP has sixty full-time staff and continues to grow. It has remained fully self-sustaining since 1987 (only three years after it initiated operations) and is now turning a profit. Its income in 2007/2008 was US$ 1,184,207, with 75% of its sales to the international market. The Association for Craft Producers provides an example of what carefully planned, socially conscious business investment can achieve. The success of Bhattarai's cooperative scheme lies in the re-investment of profits to benefit her employees.
<b>Background</b>
Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Half of its population of 24 million lives below the poverty line, and 80% live in rural areas and depend on agriculture as their primary source of income. Only 45% of those over fifteen years of age can read and write. The main contributing factor is the socio-economic and political turmoil that has characterized the last fifty years of Nepal’s history. A stable solution to the situation is not yet in sight. In this context, Meera Bhattarai set up the Association of Craft Producers (ACP), a non-profit social venture, in 1984.
<b>Strategy</b>
One of the oldest and largest handicraft non-profit organizations in Nepal, ACP is dedicated to providing design, marketing, management and technical services for low-income, predominantly female, craft producers. Responsible for product marketing and sales, ACP seeks to understand the fashion trends in the international market by conducting research among a wide array of consumers. In order to achieve scale discounts and ensure quality standards, ACP undertakes many administrative tasks, including sourcing. While raw material preparation, finishing of the craft, final quality checks and product packaging take place at ACP’s headquarters, the production of goods is in the hands of the selected village artisans. Value chains vary slightly for different product groups. In addition to national and international wholesale activities, ACP has launched a very successful and often-copied retail brand called “Dhukuti.”
ACP’s product portfolio is oriented to the demands of the international market with regard to style as well as quality. In order to ensure a long-term prosperous relationship between the producers and ACP, the company provides training in handicraft-related skills. ACP’s programs have economic and social impact as well. A woman's increased income boosts nutritional levels, housing quality and education, as well as reducing levels of debt. Increased self-confidence stimulates changes in gender relations within the household, giving women a greater say in household decisions and increasing their determination to educate their children, especially their daughters.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Meera Bhattarai comes from a well-established Nepali family. As with most successful social entrepreneurs, she sees the world and her place in it differently from others. Both in her personal and professional life, Bhattarai has challenged social convention. As illustrative of the former, she decided to forego marriage, much to the shock of her family. Professionally, she has a different vision of how development should be undertaken. During her ten-year tenure with a public sector entity, the Nepal Women’s Association, she became increasingly frustrated with the bureaucracy, inertia, corruption and mistreatment by government staff of very poor women that her project was set up to help. She resigned her position to set up ACP in order to improve the situation of the Nepali poor. Since then, Bhattarai has been able to introduce three major systemic changes in the way handicraft businesses are run. ACP has ensured that its product portfolio meets international quality and design standards, reintroduced ancient crafts and organized women with families and farming responsibilities into a competent and reliable work force."
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<a href="http://www.turmadobem.com.br/novo/ingles/video.html" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
While the job prospects for poor youth in general are limited, such opportunities are even more reduced if the applicant is disfigured as a result of obvious dental or oral abnormalities. This is the case for thousands in developing countries where oral health and hygiene are luxuries few can afford and remain at the bottom of the priority list for struggling public health ministries. Dentista do Bem (Dentist for Good) is unique in Brazil and in the world. It is the creation of Fabio Bibancos, an unusual dentist who is transforming opportunities for poor youth.
Working with an ever growing network of public schools that are located in more than 400 cities across 27 Brazilian states, Dentista do Bem identifies poor youth between 11 and 17 years of age who are about to seek their first job and have severe and visible oral health problems. Using an easily applied instrument validated by the World Health Organization, these cases are detected and evaluated. Those selected are referred to the dentist closest to the dentists that belong to the Dentista do Bem network – and as a result, they receive the best private dental care available – at no cost – until age 18. The cost is absorbed by the dentist who has a daily average of between 15 and 30 paying patients a day. One of the main features of the business model is its cost effectiveness and high social return. With approximately 5,000 direct beneficiaries a year, the cost per client is R$17.31 (around US$ 8 total per client).
<b>Background</b>
In Brazil, as in the rest of Latin America and perhaps the developing world, dentistry as a profession has little attraction – either for the patient or for those selecting a career in health. In addition, the vast majority of dentists, unlike medical doctors or lawyers, are seldom involved in pro bono work. While Brazil trains approximately 12% of dentists worldwide, it does not have an oral health policy. A great number of private clinics are concentrated in the richest regions, generating large idleness; on the other hand, dental services offered through the public health system are poor in quality and cannot meet the demand. In short, while the poor have no access to proper dental treatment, many private clinics are empty.
<b>Strategy</b>
Turma do Bem is a non-governmental organization whose mission is “to change society’s perception on oral health and perception of dentists on the social impact of their activities.” Dentista do Bem is now the largest volunteer program in the dental field in Latin America. The program selects young people in public schools and referred by other NGOs for treatment based on whether they are below the poverty line, seeking employment and with a poor oral health profile. A target is established for each municipality based on the number of youth needing care.
Dentista do Bem creates specific incentives for those who agree to participate in the network, including a plaque placed at the entrance of their office identifying that they are “Dentistas do Bem” and are contributing to the greater social good. This public recognition goes a long way in generating interest in joining the group. The central office in Sao Paulo also provides systematic follow-up of all cases that is then fed back to the Municipal Coordinator so that all dentists know how they are affecting the lives of these young people.
Beyond the Dentista do Bem, Turma do Bem has been developing other projects to transform the oral health reality in Latin America. Barco do Bem (Boat for Good) is a boat with state-of-the-art equipment. It follows a hospital boat along the Amazon river (see description of Saúde e Alegría in this book), offering dental care services to 25.000 remote riverside families in the Amazon region. Dentista Verde (Green Dentist) is an initiative aiming at making the dentistry practice more environmentally friendly through the search for more ecological materials, saving of water and electricity, and recycling of disposable materials. Financiamento do Bem (Financing for Good) is a study assessing the possibilities of providing poor people the access to complex oral treatments not available in public clinics through a microfinance scheme. Pasta do Povo (Toothpaste for the Poor) is a project to develop low-cost toothpaste and toothbrushes and disseminate them among the poor.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Fabio Bibancos is a passionate advocate for dentistry and has a unique capacity to convince his counterparts that they can transform the lives of millions of poor simply by applying their talents as dentists. Fabio has his own clinic. Among his clients are Brazil’s elite as well as the young beneficiaries of the Dentista do Bem network. Both groups receive the same level of care. His clinic is the first dental clinic in Latin America to win the ISO 9001 Certificate of Quality.
From 1997 to 2002, he developed and coordinated the “I Adopted a Smile” program at the Brazilian Toys Manufactures Foundation, a social project to mobilize volunteer dentist to assist poor children. That was the genesis of the Dentista do Bem program. In 2002, he decided to institutionalize the project and mobilized some fellow dentists to open Turma do Bem. But Fabio Bibancos’ creativity knows no limits. He founded the School of Health Philosophy, where dentists broaden their horizons through courses and lectures by professionals from different areas, such as Ashoka entrepreneurs, health area professionals, politicians, business administrators, advertising and marketing executives and writers. He also teaches at the most important dentistry school in Sao Paulo, and is the author of four popular books for people of all ages – on dentistry!"
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<a href="http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3505.html" target="_blank">Audio Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Jeroo Billimoria is a “serial social entrepreneur” who has launched and scaled numerous transformational enterprises. One of her first major projects was Childline, a 24-hour toll-free telephone hotline for children in distress that today operates in 83 of India’s largest cities. Childline has responded to over 13 million calls in assisting vulnerable children with medical assistance, protection from abuse, education, repatriation, counseling, long-term shelter and other emergency services. Building on her success in India, Billimoria established a global network of children’s helplines called Child Helpline International (CHI in 2003). Their mission includes establishing new helplines and strengthening existing ones. Child Helpline International now supports helplines in 110 countries. In 2005, Billimoria founded Child Savings International (CSI) now known as Aflatoun. Te aim of Aflatoun, is to inspire children to socially and economically empower themselves and become agents of change in their own lives and for a more equitable world. By offering a unique blend of Child Social and Financial Education (CSFE), children learn about their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the world and about democratic principles. They also receive basic, but comprehensive, financial education on saving, spending, planning, budgeting and entrepreneurship. The CSFE concept is all about balance. These concepts are brought into practice through self-governing, student-run savings clubs and microenterprise activities as well as child-centered, hands-on exercises like games, puzzles and role-playing.
<b>Background</b>
India has millions of children who live on the streets and hundreds of thousands who are extremely vulnerable to illness and abuse. In 1993, Jeroo Billimoria, a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) in Mumbai, began lobbying India's Department of Telecommunications to establish a toll-free emergency hotline for lost, endangered or injured children. Billimoria had seen the need for effective crisis intervention while working with street children in Mumbai's night shelters. She mobilized support from TISS, government agencies, local child service agencies, foundations and businesses to build the Childline network, which was officially initiated in June 1996. The Aflatoun story began in 1991 after the riots in Mumbai when Jeroo initiated the educational organization MelJol. Over the years, the programme evolved from one focused solely on social issues to the inclusion of financial education. The materials for the Aflatoun program were developed on the ground in Indian primary and secondary schools.
<b>Strategy</b>
Childline acts like an intelligent switchboard, dispatching calls to optimize society's available child protection resources. Relying on existing infrastructures, the organization has capitalized on the recent spread of telecommunications in India and the emergence of a vast array of citizenship building organizations. Two advertising and consulting firms, Ogilvy & Mather and Tata Consultancy Services, have helped Childline develop its brand and franchise model. In 1998, India's Ministry of Justice and Social Empowerment committed to expanding Childline throughout the country. Having fielded over thirteen million calls, Childline serves as a powerful amplifier for the voices of children across India. Applying the same replication model as Child Helpline International, Billimoria’s more recent innovation, Aflatoun, works with schools and existing NGOS. Furthermore, the program employs the training tree method which achieves scale at low cost. The Aflatoun programme has already been proven to convey unexpected benefits including increased math ability and parental involvement. Jeroo believes that Child Social and Financial Education can do for children what microfinance has done for adults – stimulate entrepreneurship and empower them. The program is now operating in 20 countries reaching 250,000 children worldwide. The goal is to reach one million children by the year 2010. "Success," says Billimoria, "will be when every child in the world has access to Social and Financial Education and is empowered to determine their own future."
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Jeroo Billimoria was born in 1965 in Mumbai, India, to a family of professionals. Billimoria's mother instilled strong social convictions in her from a young age. She was eighteen when her father died. During the days following his death, long queues of local people formed to say their last goodbyes to a man who had been a 'quiet philanthropist' – so quiet that Billimoria had never realized he had reached out to help so many people. This realization led her to join the Tata Institute of Social Sciences rather than becoming a trained chartered accountant, as her father had been. Jeroo has been recognized internationally for her groundbreaking entrepreneurial work. One of her latest accolades was bestowed in 2006 by the Skoll Foundation as one of the winners of the Social Entrepreneurship Awards."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
City Year’s signature program, the City Year youth corps, unites young adults, ages 17 to 24, in a demanding year of full-time service, in which they work in diverse teams to address societal needs, particularly in schools and neighborhoods. These young leaders put their idealism to work as tutors and mentors to school children, reclaiming public spaces, and organizing after-school programs, school vacation camps, and civic engagement programs for students of all ages. More than 1,100 corps members serve in sixteen City Year sites across the United States and on site in Johannesburg, South Africa. Over the past seventeen years, City Year has generated 13 million hours of service to community and country, served nearly 900,000 children, and engaged nearly 900,000 other citizens in service.
<b>Background</b>
City Year was founded in 1988 by Michael Brown and Alan Khazei, who were roommates at the time at Harvard Law School, who felt strongly that young people in service could be a powerful resource for addressing society’s most pressing issues. Particularly concerned about the community disengagement and racial polarization, they were witnessing in the United States, Brown and Khazei sought to develop a well-designed, year-long program of national service that would be an effective way to unite people across different classes, races, and geographic regions. City Year was launched as a summer pilot program with fifty corps members and five founding sponsors. Since then, City Year has graduated more than 8,000 alumni and has engaged more than 800 corporate sponsors.
<b>Strategy</b>
City Year is dedicated to building democracy through citizen service, civic engagement, and social entrepreneurship. As an "action tank" for national service, City Year seeks to combine theory and practice in order to illustrate, promote, and expand the power of service to build a stronger democracy. City Year works toward the full realization of its mission through its youth service corps, which unites young adults from diverse backgrounds for a year of full-time community service, leadership development, and civic engagement. Upon completion of their year of service, corps members receive a US$4,725 college scholarship. In addition to the youth corps, City Year is committed to engaging business, civic and government leaders in its vision that, someday, the most commonly asked question of a young adult will be, "Where are you going to do your service year?" City Year helped to lead the Save AmeriCorps Coalition (a nationwide grassroots campaign to respond to federal budget cuts) and is involved in its successor organization, Voices for National Service.
Partnerships have always been a hallmark of City Year. The organization’s citizen service initiatives are rooted in innovative relationships with schools, corporations, community organizations, civic leaders, elected officials and others. City Year’s premier corporate sponsors, called National Leadership Sponsors, are Bank of America, Comcast, CSX, The Timberland Company, and T-Mobile. City Year is a member of AmeriCorps. City Year’s vision for citizen service extends well beyond its borders and is based on establishing "action tank" programs in other countries. It aims to leverage those programs to inspire and build capacity for expanded national youth service movements and systems, and to show the power of idealism and service to build stronger democracies.
<b>The Entrepreneurs</b>
Classmates and roommates at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, the partnership and vision of Michael Brown and Alan Khazei have been the guiding force for the evolution of City Year into a national movement. Michael Brown currently serves as President of City Year and often speaks around the country on issues relating to youth policy, national service, and democracy building."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puQYyLzLWLs" target="_blank">Video Interview 1</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q69RVdv_Ryc" target="_blank">Video Interview 2 (Español)</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
The Fundación Paraguaya (FP), founded in 1985, was the first microfinance institution in Paraguay and is a founding member of the Acción International microfinance network. In 1995, FP brought financial and entrepreneurial education to the children and youth of Paraguay (Junior Achievement). Today, the FP is using this experience in microfinance and education to develop innovative solutions to poverty and unemployment and proactively disseminate them around the world. As a case in point, in 2002 FP took over a bankrupt boys´ agricultural school and set out to turn it into a financially self-sufficient, co-educational school that would transform the children of poor farmers into financially successful “rural entrepreneurs”. Five years later (2007), this goal was achieved. Since then, the school’s 17 on-campus enterprises, run by students and professors, have been generating enough income (US $300,000 in 2007) to cover all of the school’s operating costs, including depreciation, while providing a platform for students to learn technical and entrepreneurial skills. At the same time, the practical, market-oriented education that students receive allows them, immediately upon graduation, to find decent jobs in the modern agricultural sector and create their own small enterprises or enter university. Drawing on this experience at its San Francisco Agricultural School, FP has become a pioneer in a new kind of agricultural education: a model which provides 100% employability to poor rural youth through a 100% market-based curriculum in free, high quality 100% financially self-sufficient schools. In 2007, FP made a commitment under the Clinton Global Initiative to replicate its model in 50 schools around the world over the next 10 years. To date, the model is being implemented in five other schools in Latin America and Africa, and another 19 schools around the world in various stages of beginning implementation. In addition, FP is disseminating this model through its London-based partner, TeachAManToFish, which has developed a network of 930 institutions in over 85 countries which are interested in the concept of financially sustainable schools.
<b>Background</b>
Paraguay is about the size of California, but has only one sixth the population—about 6.5 million. It is one of the poorer countries in Latin America, with Gross National Income per capita of about $1670 and a third of the population living on less than $2 per day. The population is also young and in need of greater educational opportunities: nearly 40 percent of the population is made up of children aged 0-14, and only slightly more than half of the young people aged 15-24 have completed 9th grade. About 14% of youth aged 15-24 are unemployed and looking for work and another 16 percent of this age group is neither in school nor looking for work. This adds up to 30% of young people aged 15-24 who are neither obtaining marketable skills in school, nor using such skills in productive work, an indication that a valuable economic resource—human capital--is being wasted. This situation points to the need to provide youth, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid, with skills that will enable to find employment or create their own businesses. In this respect, Paraguay mirrors the conditions in many other developing countries.
<b>Strategy</b>
FP develops innovative solutions to poverty and unemployment in Paraguay and proactively disseminates them throughout the world. It does his through four inter-related strategies: (1) a microcredit program begun in 1985, which today has a loan portfolio of US$ 15 million and 33,000 clients, including a dynamic women’s village banking program serving 16,000 women micro-entrepreneurs in urban and rural areas; (2) an economic and financial education program (Junior Achievement) for children and youth started in 1995, which serves 20,000 students per year; (3) a financially self-sufficient agricultural school operated by the FP since 2003, which trains the sons and daughters of poor farmers to become successful “rural entrepreneurs”; and (4) TeachAManToFish, an NGO established in London in 2005 to disseminate the FP model of “education that pays for itself” and which now has a network of 935 members in over 85 countries. The four programs are separate in budgetary and financial terms, but are closely integrated at the operational level, so that each program enriches, and is enriched by, the other three. The Agricultural School achieved financial self-sufficiency in 2007. The FP’s success in managing its ‘triple bottom line’ of sustainable development - economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental quality – is based on the fact that its programs are not stand-alone, but mutually supporting and reinforcing. In addition, its programs are financially sustainable, ensuring their future continuity and growth, and offering the independence to innovate. Local and international partnerships keep its techniques cutting-edge and leverage its impact.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
The man behind the Fundación Paraguaya is Martin Burt, a highly energetic, extroverted social entrepreneur with an idea a minute. He has a talented team of managers running each aspect of FP’s programme, and its board members are recruited from the best of Paraguay’s business community. It is difficult to appreciate the enormity of Burt’s undertaking in setting up FP under Stroessner’s repressive regime. For example, it was forbidden for more than 3 people to congregate for any reason, yet initially, FP’s model followed the Grameen Bank’s practice of working through solidarity groups to qualify for a loan. These groups were comprised of at least five individuals, and the Foundation had to operate carefully under the radar of the police and other authorities. In 1988, Stroessner moved to shut down FP after Burt spoke at an international conference in the US and discussed the challenges of spearheading a civil sector organization in the context of a dictatorship. A week before the closure date, Stroessner was ousted from power in a military coup. Burt has twice served in public office, once as Vice-Minister of Commerce in the transition government after Stroessner’s fall, and once as the elected Mayor of Asunción. Among other honors, Burt has received the Microfinance Award for Excellence in Social Responsibility from the Inter-American Development Bank and the Skoll Foundation Social Entrepreneur Award, and distinguished alumni awards from the University of the Pacific and the George Washington University, as well as the 2007 Social Innovation Award from Brigham Young University. He is an Avina Foundation leader as well as an Eisenhower Fellow from the US and the Republic of China. He was twice elected president of the Paraguayan-American Chamber of Commerce. His commitment to education was featured at the 2007and 2008 Clinton Global Initiative. He serves as a Trustee of the Karatara Project in South Africa. Martin Burt is also Visiting Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He was recently appointed to World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Empowering Youth and named a Synergos Senior Fellow."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlzMaN1eT7I&eurl=http://www.evergreen.ca/rethinkspace/?p=302" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Evergreen operates as both a charity and hybrid nonprofit venture. Its mission is to bring communities and nature together for the benefit of both. Started in 1990 to help communities plant trees and green urban spaces, the organization has rapidly grown in its impact on schools, communities, businesses, and governments that work together to create and benefit from a healthy, natural sustainable society. The organization has partnered with over 3,500 school projects and 500 community projects and has reached over 3 million school children. Evergreen is a recognized international leader in ‘green city’ movements, in large part because its community partnerships enable it to effectively measure up to the scale of its ambitions. One of its most recent projects has been the redevelopment of an old industrial site in downtown Toronto into a national centre for sustainable cities. This $55M project involves three levels of government and extensive community partnerships. Evergreen Brick Works will be Canada’s first fullfledged, large-scale environmental discovery centre. It will be a dynamic, magical place that models sustainability on all fronts – from the adaptive reuse of the heritage buildings to creating an economically self-sustaining operation. At heart it is a centre for learning through play, crafts, demonstrations, programming, and innovative partnerships. The site will be animated with year-round programs and activities that include a native plant nursery, demonstration gardens, a local farmers’ market, conference and event facilities, youth leadership and children’s camps, family programming, and youth-at-risk programs.
<b>Background</b>
With issues such as urban planning, community health, climate change, and environmental sustainability at the forefront of public concern and international debate, the need for Evergreen’s work has never been stronger. Evergreen has been able to align resources and efforts of private, public, and non-profit organizations to address urban environmental issues and to promote environmental action at the community level. In bringing these communities together, Evergreen increases the presence of public nature spaces in an urban context. This approach is particularly vital in large Canadian cities, including Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, which have recently experienced significant urban sprawl. The existence of green landscapes contributes to making the cities truly livable and also to creating a practical and achievable blueprint for environmental sustainability.
<b>Strategy</b>
Evergreen’s strength is facilitating and bridging community partnerships to promote environmental development. The eight-person management team, and seventy staff - made up of various urban planning, management, marketing and finance professionals, has built an effective and replicable model to forge corporate partnerships with a community interest and resources on the ground. This model has been applied consistently to the organization’s four main programs: Learning Grounds – Projects to green school grounds; Common Grounds – National service to protect natural and cultural landscapes, restore degraded environments, and protect spaces for open recreation, education and enjoyment; Home Grounds – Consulting activities and information resources specially designed to encourage environment-friendly residential lawn care practices; Brickworks – A C$55M initiative to redevelop 19th century industrial buildings in Toronto into a mixed use environmental education and leadership centre. The site, which will be ready by 2010, is designed to cover 100% of operating costs through leasing of office space and event rentals, conferences, parking and admissions. The site plan will include a local food merchants and a seasonal farmers market, community gardens, office space for social enterprise organizations, arts programming, youth leadership training facilities, a restaurant, a place to study geological and natural history, exhibits on the future of green cities, a children’s discovery centre, and community conference facilities.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Geoffrey Cape is the visionary founder and leader behind Evergreen’s national organization. Over the past 18 years, Geoffrey has played an active role in building a supportive culture of innovation that is well-recognized and attracts talent. Geoffrey capitalized on his interest in the environment and his abilities to innovate and to make things happen. At the age of 25, Geoffrey built upon his experience in the real estate industry when he recognized an opportunity to focus his efforts on the unbuilt landscape in cities – the green spaces. Starting out with planting trees, Geoffrey applied great energy to grow his organization to its present size with over 70 staff and nearly 2000 volunteers. As an avid supporter of urban issues, Geoffrey Cape is one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40, and a recipient of numerous other awards, a testament to Geoffrey’s success as a leader in urban innovation."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Acta Vista association has been directed by its founder Arnaud Castagnede since its establishment in 2001. Acta Vista, a social enterprise, specializes in the restoration and enhancement of built heritage, for this purpose it devotes its savoir faire and expertise to the training and professional inclusion of people otherwise excluded from society. Acta Vista rapidly developed its activities in the field of the environment by means of the equipping, protection and enhancement of natural sites that are either in danger or are protected. In 2007, Acta Vista further strengthened its position as a social enterprise by adopting an ambitious plan to diversify its services. It became the Acta Vista Group and brought together the 6 subsidiaries it had set up and which work in France and also across Europe. During the same period it established A&V, which recruits and provides professional training for people without qualifications who seek to work in the building, logistics and environment sectors as well as for part-time recruitment agencies. Every year since then, more than 500 people, previously excluded both professionally and socially, have been recruited and employed by the Acta Vista Group on its work sites, 60% of these people have subsequently entered full-time employment.
<b>Background</b>
France possesses a heritage of buildings and environmental sites that requires a considerable amount of maintenance and restoration. At the same time it is confronted with a high level of unemployment, approximately 8%, which means that under-qualified people are often obliged to live with very low incomes from social benefits and often in very difficult situations. The Acta Vista social enterprise is able to address both of these problems and turn them into advantages. With this aim in mind, it employs people of all ages, from the age of 18 to 65, including those excluded from society, recent immigrants and the unemployed seniors on its work sites that restore and maintain built or natural heritage to enable them to find a place in society, to train and to gain professional work.
<b>Strategy</b>
Acta Vista works within the framework of European, national, and regional policy in the domains of professional and social inclusion. Acta Vista is supported by private as well as by public funds. The work sites can be run for large French companies such as Gaz de France Suez as well as for individuals or local authorities. Lafarge, the world leader in building materials, and which also shares Acta Vista’s values, has supported Acta Vista’s work since 2006. Enterprises, banks, foundations and individuals have also chosen to become involved (Société Générale Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Veolia Foundation, Banque Populaire Provençale et Corse Foundation). In 2009, two new profit-making social enterprises will be established in the industrial, environmental, and heritage sectors.
A team of 40 salaried workers (project leaders, work site managers, psychologists, engineers, sustainable development specialists, human resources personnel) and external agents (architects, research units, professional organisations from the sector) work together on protected and/or classified sites. The objective of Acta Vista is to provide services that produce on site work of high quality and the successful and lasting inclusion of its employees. A work contract with a maximum duration of 12 months enables such people to obtain a status in society, to rediscover the dynamism of teamwork, attain a salary, and therefore restore their dignity. It then becomes possible to work with them towards their return to long-term employment in another company. Throughout the duration of this work contract, Acta Vista salaried workers analyse their financial, health, housing and professional situation and begins solid work in their free time to settle such problems one by one. This approach is led by the work site managers and the psychologists together, and also with the local social services and thus enables the full potential of each person to be evaluated.
With the desire to invest more in the protection of the environment by controlling the impact of its activities on the environment, the group is working to obtain the ISO 14001 Eco-certification for environmental management. Since 2006, the Acta Vista group continues its development across the areas of heritage and the environment and works together with European specialists in Heritage and training in order to establish the « European Conservatory of Traditional and Innovative Techniques for Heritage ». From 2009, this conservatory aims to train professionals working in building from all countries on the traditional techniques to be used to respect the environment and to introduce them to social entrepreneurship so that they in turn can become the ambassadors and activists of sustainable development. Working to respect the environment, balancing the economic factors with social progress, Acta Vista has become a reference in the domain of sustainable development.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Arnaud Castagnède is an engineer and cartographer by training. His life changed when he went to French Guyana in late 1987. There, he worked with Native Americans living on the Brazilian border. While in South America, his unusual career path also led him to pilot experimental training and environmental restoration programmes for gold-mining companies. His focus was enterprise and community development, but in this process he became a firm believer in the power of work to enable individuals to change their circumstances and their future. He returned to France ten years later and sought to deploy these development capacities in his native country. But once there, he found it challenging given the predominance of the State in all facets of employment. It took several years of trial and error in setting up a diverse array of enterprises before he succeeded in establishing Acta Vista. In that capacity, Castagnède has become an intermediary between the public and private sectors facilitating the re-entry of the unemployed into positions where they may profitably regain their dignity and independence through full time work."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) is the global standard bearer in efforts to provide comprehensive support to poor, self-employed women in countries with large, informal economies. Its efforts over three decades to increase the bargaining power, economic opportunities, health security, legal representation and organizational abilities of Indian women have brought dramatic improvements to thousands of lives and influenced similar initiatives around the globe. Based in the state of Gujarat, SEWA’s almost one million members include 550,000 women representing 100 informal trades within the state and an additional 550,000 members in 9 other states.
SEWA is the largest union in India, offering its members a broad array of financial, health, childcare, insurance, legal, vocational and education services. In addition, SEWA has widely shared its experiences in a various fora – the International Trade Union Congress the ILO and WHO’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health, to mention a few. It has also been a founder of Women’s World Banking, Homenet, Streetnet (international networks of home-based workers and street vendors respectively), and also of Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), a network of policy-makers, researchers and activists committed to the informal workers’ movement.
<b>Background</b>
93% of India's labour force is self-employed; 94 % of this sector is women and their production accounts for 60% of India's GDP. Yet, self-employed women have historically enjoyed few legal protections or workers' rights. Most are illiterate and subject to exploitation and harassment by moneylenders, employers and officials. In 1972, Ela Bhatt, a lawyer who was chief of the women's section of the Textile Labour Association in Ahmedabad, witnessed the terrible conditions faced by women working as weavers, needlecraft workers, cigarette rollers and waste collectors. She began helping women to organize themselves. SEWA had to overcome difficult obstacles to win legal recognition as a formal trade union.
<b>Strategy</b>
By dealing with the multiple dimensions of its members’ needs, SEWA supports women’s efforts to overcome poverty. Using an integrated approach, SEWA helps its members achieve full employment and self-reliance through self-governance. SEWA members have created 100 cooperatives and over 3000 producers' groups, thereby forging market linkages and enhancing their bargaining position. The efforts have had so much success that, from 1994-98, members increased employment income by 600%. SEWA Bank, with 300,000 savers, has issued loans to 103,679 members. To provide for its members' healthcare, SEWA has helped them start health cooperatives and developed an insurance program that provides members’ coverage for healthcare, emergencies and loss of life. A SEWA-affiliated team of 500 midwives and health workers serves the healthcare needs of 125,000 individuals.
Through its “university”, the SEWA Academy, members learn together, gain information, knowledge and confidence, which are important in equipping them with the skills to become strong, capable leaders and managers. The SEWA Academy also communicates the concerns, struggles and experiences of poor self-employed women to the public and to policy-makers through its Research and Communication services. Today, SEWA is also working through video, telephone, computer, and satellite communications to provide Information Technology to the working class. To address legal issues such as housing and wage disputes, and other exploitation issues, SEWA provides its members with legal aid services. Currently, Bhatt and other SEWA leaders dedicate their time to influencing national and international policies in support of informal and self-employed workers around the world. Ela Bhatt is currently a member of the Council of Elders, led by Nelson Mandela.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Ela Bhatt was born in 1933 in Gujarat, India. The Freedom Movement in India and Gandhian ideology influenced her ideas. After graduating with a Law degree in 1954, she joined the Textile Labour Association (TLA) a union founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1917. While working at TLA, she observed the conditions of the non-organized sector—primarily comprised of women—and decided to help "unionize" them. "One day," she predicts, "SEWA's street vendors will join SEWA's artisans in the Indian Parliament settling issues about the informal economy."
Mirai Chatterjee is the Coordinator of Social Security at SEWA. She is responsible for SEWA’s Health Care, Child Care and Insurance programs. She is currently Chairperson of the SEWA - promoted health cooperative – Lok Swasthya. She was General Secretary of SEWA (1997 – 1999) after its Founder, Ela Bhatt. Mirai has a B.A. from Harvard University in History and Science and a Masters from Johns Hopkins University’s school of Hygiene and Public Health. She is on the Boards of several organizations in India including the Friends of Women’s World Banking (FWWB), and the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). She is currently advisor to the National Commission for the Unorganized Sector and the National Rural Health Mission. She is also a Commissioner in the World Health Organization’s, Commission on Social Determinants of Health."
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stdClass::$title = "Vicky Colbert"
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stdClass::$organization_name = "Escuela Nueva Foundation (Fundación Escuela Nueva Volvamos a la Gente)"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Escuela Nueva provides a child centered and community based cost-effective approach to basic education by reshaping the roles of teachers, students, community and administrators. The Escuela Nueva (EN) methodology (Spanish for "New School") was initially created to improve the level of education offered in neglected rural schools, where the typical situation is a lone teacher responsible for a classroom of children 6-14 years of age. High rates of grade repetition and student dropout, low teacher morale and isolation from community life used to be salient characteristics of Colombia and in general Latin America's rural primary schools. Rather than ineffectively tackling each problem in isolation, EN addresses all of these factors simultaneously in a systemic way. Its ability to improve mathematical and language skills, as well as foster higher levels of self-esteem and civic behavior, has been widely documented. The EN approach was incorporated by more than 20,000 of Colombia’s 34,000 rural schools in the 1980´s and it is one of the longest running bottom-up educational innovations of the developing world. It has also been adapted for urban schools, post-primary grades and displaced, migrant children in emergencies. It has inspired educational reforms worldwide and has been visited by more than 35 countries throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. At the present, it has reached approximately 5 million children.
<b>Background</b>
In 1975, Colbert, together with rural Colombian teachers, designed and created the Escuela Nueva model to revolutionize education for underserved children, convinced that sustainable development, citizenship and peace could only be achieved through quality, participatory education. Addressing these challenges would require large-scale systemic change, and this is precisely what Colbert set out to achieve. During her tenure in the 1980s as Colombia's Vice-Minister of Education, Colbert was able ensure that the EN model became a national education policy. Her subsequent appointment to UNICEF as Regional Adviser for Education in the Americas offered a platform for promoting EN throughout the continent and in the Caribbean. However, in the 1990s, Colombia and other Latin American countries decentralized their education systems, concentrating their energies in administrative reorganization. As a result, massive transfers of trained teachers took place, new teachers without adequate training were appointed and untrained people were hired as rural schoolteachers, there was poor coordination between training services and delivery of educational materials and, above all, the municipalities were not informed nor prepared to adopt innovations. Despite these setbacks, the EN schools that remained continued to outperform their counterparts. Aware that educational innovations fade and disappear as a result of political changes, Colbert founded in 1987 the Escuela Nueva Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental organization based in Colombia and engaged civil society and private sector to maintain and advance the innovation, and to create new strategies to support EN's quality and sustainability.
<b>Strategy</b>
Escuela Nueva transforms the conventional teacher centered educational model and training strategies. EN’s approach employs self-paced, cost effective learning materials and encourages a new role for teachers to facilitate learning rather than simply transmit information. Children work in small groups promoting active learning, participation and cooperation. Learning takes place through dialogue and interaction. Its flexible grade promotion feature allows students to advance at their own pace, a crucial factor for success in multi-grade schools. The curriculum is locally adapted to include learning relevant to the daily lives and contexts of students. Beyond basic academic subjects, EN’s curriculum includes activities that strengthen each school’s relationship with the community and reinforces the self-esteem, democratic, participatory and citizenship values of students. To ensure EN's continued expansion and sustainability, and to adapt EN to new contexts and populations, such as urban settings and populations in emergencies, Colbert launched the Escuela Nueva Foundation (ENF) - Fundación Escuela Nueva Volvamos a la Gente.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Vicky Colbert returned to Colombia after finishing her graduate work at Stanford and chose to dedicate her career to public service and education. Under her leadership, other significant educational initiatives in Colombia have been launched, including the promotion of family education on child development, a child pastorate in cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean churches and programs to revitalize traditional cultures through local schools. For example, the most significant games, riddles, toys and songs have been revived from Colombia's five cultural regions for use in celebrating local culture."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQHp9_pcFhU" target="_blank">Video</a> <a href="http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3746.html" target="_blank">Audio Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
It only takes a few hours to reach any capital in the world by plane, but it can take days and many hardships to reach the more rural areas in developing countries. Many development efforts fail because distribution proves to be a key neglected component. Food supplies, new drugs, vaccines and other critical health products including mosquito nets and condoms are useless unless they reach their destination. Riders for Health (Riders) addresses these delivery barriers by managing vehicles to support those organizations whose remit is to reach the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa with health care and vital services.
Riders has proven that adequate modern-day technology can perform without breakdowns even across the unforgiving terrain of rural Africa. To achieve this success, Riders had to bring about a change in traditional practices. By working closely with local communities, governments and other agencies they have gotten across the message that, rather than using something until it breaks down, the life and performance of a vehicle or equipment can be extended through preventative maintenance. In addition to cost savings, Riders has a significant impact in the area of primary health care delivery. By using a motorcycle, for example, health and other development workers have increased their number of visits to remote communities by at least 300%.
Riders manages more than 1000 vehicles involved in direct health care delivery and a conservative estimate shows that 11 million people are receiving regular, reliable health care thanks to Riders’ programs. These figures were confirmed by an independent report carried out in 2005. In one district in Zimbabwe, death rates from malaria decreased by 20% after health workers were equipped with motorcycles and could cover 96% of the district with preventive services, mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs.
<b>Background</b>
Currently, 30,000 children under the age of five die each day across the developing world from preventable or treatable diseases including measles, diarrhoea and malaria. Immunization programs still do not reach 30 million children each year and measles and tetanus kill more than one million children under five each year. Birth-related complications contribute to nearly one-third of all newborn deaths. Access to skilled attendants could reduce these deaths, but more than half of women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth alone or with untrained assistance. Often, the one factor preventing the delivery of health care is the lack of managed transportation. Most of Africa, as well as rural areas in other parts of the world, have no infrastructure for motor vehicle maintenance that would ensure lasting and cost-efficient transportation and facilitate a lifeline for needed goods and supplies.
<b>Strategy</b>
Riders for Health has developed a focused expertise in planned preventive maintenance and fleet management. Their innovative transport systems incorporate training in driving skills, daily maintenance procedures, fuelling supply-chain logistics for replacement parts and interval preventative maintenance. Riders places great emphasis on building local capacity to manage and maintain its vehicles. As a result, Riders is able to operate fleets of vehicles in the harshest conditions with a zero breakdown rate for five years or longer. Riders has demonstrated that a properly managed vehicle under its system will save more than 50% of costs over a six-year period, compared to an unmanaged vehicle.
Riders has a solid base of experience, expertise and specialist knowledge built over nearly 20 years of operating in sub-Saharan Africa. They currently operate on a national scale in Zimbabwe and the Gambia in full contractual partnership with Ministries of Health (MoHs) and work on a sub-national scale with partner agencies (either MoHs, NGOs, UN agencies or community-based organizations – CBOs) in Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. In 2002, Riders set up the International Academy of Vehicle Management in Harare, where it has trained more than 1400 men and women in safe riding and driving, vehicle maintenance and fleet management. The values held by Riders are fundamental to the design of the system and to how it is run on a day-to-day basis. They are essential for appropriate sustainable development, systematic behaviours and predictability. Riders’ operational values are to maintain focus and keep standards high in core competence, create and establish appropriate and replicable models, build competence and a replicable skills base, encourage and respect public/private/business partnerships, produce costings for budgeting, transparency and accountability and maximise available resources, employ only nationals of the countries concerned to run the programmes. During the last three years, Riders generated over 70% of its revenues from its own social enterprises (running events, for example) and from contract partners. In addition, Riders receives donations from motorcyclists and other supporters around the world.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Andrea and Barry Coleman met through a common interest, motorcycle racing. The movement that would become Riders for Health started in the motorcycle community when a group of people working in the grand prix paddock began general fundraising for children in difficulties in developing countries. During several trips to Africa in the late 1980s to see the fruits of this fundraising, Barry and Andrea Coleman and American racer Randy Mamola noticed that vehicles intended for use in the delivery of health care were not being used because they had broken down. The Colemans realized that progress in the vital area of disease prevention and eradication in Africa was being hampered by the lack of reliable mobility, particularly for local health professionals. They became engaged in active fundraising for a programme of vehicle management initiated by Save the Children and acted as consultants in the setting up of management programmes in Lesotho, Ghana and Zimbabwe. In 1996, so that funding raised in the motorcycle community could go more directly to vehicle management programmes, Riders was set up as an independent NGO. Andrea Coleman is chief executive officer and has guided the financial/funding and advocacy development of Riders, including establishing the entrepreneurial income streams and innovative fundraising initiatives that have enabled organisational growth. Barry Coleman, executive director, is designer of the groundbreaking Transport Resource Management and Transport Asset Management systems and the Riders cost-per-kilometre calculator."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQHp9_pcFhU" target="_blank">Video</a> <a href="http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3746.html" target="_blank">Audio Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
It only takes a few hours to reach any capital in the world by plane, but it can take days and many hardships to reach the more rural areas in developing countries. Many development efforts fail because distribution proves to be a key neglected component. Food supplies, new drugs, vaccines and other critical health products including mosquito nets and condoms are useless unless they reach their destination. Riders for Health (Riders) addresses these delivery barriers by managing vehicles to support those organizations whose remit is to reach the rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa with health care and vital services.
Riders has proven that adequate modern-day technology can perform without breakdowns even across the unforgiving terrain of rural Africa. To achieve this success, Riders had to bring about a change in traditional practices. By working closely with local communities, governments and other agencies they have gotten across the message that, rather than using something until it breaks down, the life and performance of a vehicle or equipment can be extended through preventative maintenance. In addition to cost savings, Riders has a significant impact in the area of primary health care delivery. By using a motorcycle, for example, health and other development workers have increased their number of visits to remote communities by at least 300%.
Riders manages more than 1000 vehicles involved in direct health care delivery and a conservative estimate shows that 11 million people are receiving regular, reliable health care thanks to Riders’ programs. These figures were confirmed by an independent report carried out in 2005. In one district in Zimbabwe, death rates from malaria decreased by 20% after health workers were equipped with motorcycles and could cover 96% of the district with preventive services, mosquito nets and anti-malarial drugs.
<b>Background</b>
Currently, 30,000 children under the age of five die each day across the developing world from preventable or treatable diseases including measles, diarrhoea and malaria. Immunization programs still do not reach 30 million children each year and measles and tetanus kill more than one million children under five each year. Birth-related complications contribute to nearly one-third of all newborn deaths. Access to skilled attendants could reduce these deaths, but more than half of women in sub-Saharan Africa give birth alone or with untrained assistance. Often, the one factor preventing the delivery of health care is the lack of managed transportation. Most of Africa, as well as rural areas in other parts of the world, have no infrastructure for motor vehicle maintenance that would ensure lasting and cost-efficient transportation and facilitate a lifeline for needed goods and supplies.
<b>Strategy</b>
Riders for Health has developed a focused expertise in planned preventive maintenance and fleet management. Their innovative transport systems incorporate training in driving skills, daily maintenance procedures, fuelling supply-chain logistics for replacement parts and interval preventative maintenance. Riders places great emphasis on building local capacity to manage and maintain its vehicles. As a result, Riders is able to operate fleets of vehicles in the harshest conditions with a zero breakdown rate for five years or longer. Riders has demonstrated that a properly managed vehicle under its system will save more than 50% of costs over a six-year period, compared to an unmanaged vehicle.
Riders has a solid base of experience, expertise and specialist knowledge built over nearly 20 years of operating in sub-Saharan Africa. They currently operate on a national scale in Zimbabwe and the Gambia in full contractual partnership with Ministries of Health (MoHs) and work on a sub-national scale with partner agencies (either MoHs, NGOs, UN agencies or community-based organizations – CBOs) in Lesotho, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. In 2002, Riders set up the International Academy of Vehicle Management in Harare, where it has trained more than 1400 men and women in safe riding and driving, vehicle maintenance and fleet management. The values held by Riders are fundamental to the design of the system and to how it is run on a day-to-day basis. They are essential for appropriate sustainable development, systematic behaviours and predictability. Riders’ operational values are to maintain focus and keep standards high in core competence, create and establish appropriate and replicable models, build competence and a replicable skills base, encourage and respect public/private/business partnerships, produce costings for budgeting, transparency and accountability and maximise available resources, employ only nationals of the countries concerned to run the programmes. During the last three years, Riders generated over 70% of its revenues from its own social enterprises (running events, for example) and from contract partners. In addition, Riders receives donations from motorcyclists and other supporters around the world.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Andrea and Barry Coleman met through a common interest, motorcycle racing. The movement that would become Riders for Health started in the motorcycle community when a group of people working in the grand prix paddock began general fundraising for children in difficulties in developing countries. During several trips to Africa in the late 1980s to see the fruits of this fundraising, Barry and Andrea Coleman and American racer Randy Mamola noticed that vehicles intended for use in the delivery of health care were not being used because they had broken down. The Colemans realized that progress in the vital area of disease prevention and eradication in Africa was being hampered by the lack of reliable mobility, particularly for local health professionals. They became engaged in active fundraising for a programme of vehicle management initiated by Save the Children and acted as consultants in the setting up of management programmes in Lesotho, Ghana and Zimbabwe. In 1996, so that funding raised in the motorcycle community could go more directly to vehicle management programmes, Riders was set up as an independent NGO. Andrea Coleman is chief executive officer and has guided the financial/funding and advocacy development of Riders, including establishing the entrepreneurial income streams and innovative fundraising initiatives that have enabled organisational growth. Barry Coleman, executive director, is designer of the groundbreaking Transport Resource Management and Transport Asset Management systems and the Riders cost-per-kilometre calculator."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Cristóbal Colón created La Fageda to provide dignity and meaning to individuals suffering from mental illness, using an unconventional mechanism given the target population group. He created a social enterprise in the region of Cataluña that is now known for its excellent dairy products, particularly yoghurt and flan. Its annual turnover is 8.8 million euros in 2007, competing for market share with Danone and Nestlé. Each month, La Fageda sells 2 million multi-flavoured yoghurts, all made with natural ingredients. La Fageda differs from its competitors because the former wards of mental institutions run its dairy production. In addition to dairy production, La Fageda manages three other areas: a nursery where approximately 1.4 million plants are grown for use in reforestation and public landscaping projects; a landscaping service that contracts with institutions and individuals to maintain gardens, parks, and green areas; a cattle care facility that feeds and cultivates hay for almost 400 cattle – of those, nearly 200 are milk producers and the rest are for breeding. La Fageda is a cooperative of 250 workers, of which 140 suffer some form of mental illness or handicap. Its four production centers are owned by the workers, who become shareholders by paying 30 euros upon entry. La Fageda also has a support program comprised of a group of psychologists who follow each worker's personal and professional rehabilitation. This support group oversees the residential halls where workers without families stay, as well as the occupational centre for those with the greatest level of incapacity. Finally, a third area provides administrative support to all the programs.
<b>Background</b>
In Spain of the 1960s, as elsewhere, the majority of psychiatric hospitals rarely provided health services. Rather, they were places of confinement. Work therapy treatment was in vogue—programs where the mentally ill or handicapped would be given tasks to keep them busy. However, there was no market for their products. Cristóbal Colón came to the conclusion that only a real enterprise could create jobs with meaning. Thus, he began La Fageda as an independent organization located in a rural area in Cataluña. La Fageda was founded at a time when Spanish legislation did not consider that people with disabilities could work. Things have changed since then, but the labor market continues to regard such persons, particularly those with mental illness and handicaps, with suspicion and fear.
<b>Strategy</b>
La Fageda provides meaningful work to all mentally ill adults at its four production centers in the commune of La Garrotxa. La Fageda works in close collaboration with the public health sector to identify candidates. The support and administrative areas of La Fageda work together to find the appropriate type of work best suited to the individual. Once they begin to work, a monitor is assigned to familiarize and train them in their tasks and also conducts follow-up on their performance. Monitors are hired by La Fageda and do not have mental disabilities. However, the enterprise is very careful in their selection since they must be highly professional, but also sensitive and able to train and follow each individual in their charge. Performance reviews of all workers at La Fageda are done annually. Promotions, salary increases and shifts in work responsibility are carried out according to pre-established goals. La Fageda has been certified according to the ISO, 9001-2000 and is categorized by the Department of Agriculture of Cataluña as a Priority Agricultural Enterprise.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
At age 13, Cristóbal Colón started working as a tailor's apprentice to help support his family following his father's death. Working with these artisans, he learned the value of doing quality work. Though earning an income, he did not find the work meaningful. Later, after finishing his military service, he joined the staff of a mental hospital, seeking a job where he could be useful to others. He questioned why society chose to lock up those who had lost their minds, thus burying them alive. He joined the world of psychiatry to further his understanding of that issue, working for ten years in several institutions where he initiated work therapy programs. Though Colón firmly believed that work gave people a sense of value, he found it frustrating that the programs were often pretenses without meaning. In 1981, he came to the conclusion that real jobs can only be created in a real enterprise, thus abandoning the “Let’s pretend we are working” model. Submerged in doubts about the practice of psychiatry, he decided to put into practice what had for so long been a dream. He began La Fageda with 2 psychologists and 14 mentally ill individuals. When Colón spoke to the mayor and the authorities in the region and explained that he wanted to set up an enterprise, they thought that he, too, was crazy. As Colón points out, “Imagine having to deal with someone who wants to set up a business except it will be employing crazy people and is run by a psychiatrist whose name is Christopher Columbus.”"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Association Saúde Criança Renascer supplements hospital care for children from low-income communities in order to reduce the effects of poverty, which contribute to repeat illness. To do so, its network of volunteers provides post-hospitalization assistance to the families of poor children recently discharged from hospital. At Hospital da Lagoa — a large public hospital in Rio de Janeiro where the flagship Renascer is based — pediatric re-admissions have dropped by 68 % in 2007 as a result of Renascer's efforts. The Renascer model has proven to be easily transferable and ideal for locations in which disease is exacerbated by socio-economic factors. It has spread not to replace the government but as a complementary work near 23 hospitals in Brazil and served 26,000 people to date.
<b>Background</b>
According to the United Nation Development Programme, Brazil has the highest inequality rates in the world in terms of income distribution, both between regions as well as social strata. As a consequence, health and sanitary conditions vary widely. While Brazil offers a public health care system, its coverage is not extensive. State-of-the-art facilities are available for those who can afford them. For the 60% of the population using public health care, though, service is limited to basic immunization and emergency care. Even if Brazil were to uniformly offer high quality health services to all, it could not address the health challenges presented by poverty. Most diseases are caused by unclean drinking water, inadequate sewage disposal, poor housing conditions and malnutrition. Renascer set out to tackle the multifaceted factors related to poverty that make children sick. Renascer is inspiring the government of Sao Paulo in order to replicate the model near each public hospital there. In the city of Belo Horizonte (state of Minas Gerais), Renascer is already a public police in one of the poorest areas called Jardim Felicidade).
<b>Strategy</b>
Renascer's model enables low-income mothers and families to prevent recurring illness in their children. Each Renascer unit is connected to a public hospital and staffed by volunteers, social workers, psychologists, nutritionists, lawyers among others. The staff provides intensive one-on-one health monitoring and assistance to families, most of which are single-mother households with a family income around US$ 180 per month. Renascer works with families on average for eighteen to twenty-four months, providing customized assistance such as nutrition advice, provision of medicines, psychological counselling, vocational training and housing improvements to ensure adequate living conditions. Renascer has teamed up with management consulting firm McKinsey & Company to refine its management systems and prepare to scale up. In 2001, a group of US-based supporters launched "Friends of Renascer" in New York City to disseminate the model around the world. The association's success has also been publicly recognized through several awards from numerous institutions. Importantly, in January 2003, Renascer was selected from among 400 institutions worldwide as the first place winner of the prestigious Global Development Network Award for the Most Innovative NGO 2002 and in 2006 was recognized by the Skoll Foundation. The Renascer´s data base is an essential instrument of organization, planning and measurement of the impact of the program.
The system records quantitative and qualitative indicators that make possible the constant reflection of work progress and the creation of more consistent results reports. The results of this measurement have revealed that Renascer’s efforts have enabled the following: Reduction of Hospital Costs: US$1,005.550.00; Increase of 44% on family income; Improvement of children´s health: The study showed that before Renascer, 29% of the children were in good health, 31% in regular health, and 32% in severe health. After being assisted by the organization, the numbers changed to 46% in good health, 34% in satisfactory health, and only 8% in severe health. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize, said "Saúde Criança Renascer has created a powerful methodology of social inclusion for the very poor”.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
As a physician working in the pediatric department of one of Rio de Janeiro's largest hospitals, Vera Cordeiro was shocked by the number of children from favelas (urban slums) who repeatedly had to be admitted to the hospital. "I could not stand to go one more day seeing children locked in this cycle of hospitalization, re-hospitalization and death," Cordeiro said. Realizing that their health problems were caused or exacerbated by social conditions, she founded Renascer to "connect the hospital to the home" and provide a real treatment that takes into account the full range of economic and social causes of illness. Vera Cordeiro is also an Ashoka fellow, Avina leader, Skoll Foundation social entrepreneur, and a member of the Director's Council of PATH: A catalyst for global health."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Camfed has successfully challenged the conventional wisdom that cultural resistance is at the heart of girls’ exclusion from education in rural Africa, proving instead that chronic poverty is the main barrier. Since 1993, Camfed has pioneered a holistic and grassroots approach to advancing opportunities for girls and young women in order to guarantee a model that is locally-inspired and owned. Camfed has proven that girls’ education is the most effective means by which girls and their communities can break the devastating cycle of poverty that currently plagues sub-Saharan Africa.
There are four key components to the Camfed model, all of which strive to transform the lives of girls and young women from some of the poorest regions of Africa. Firstly, Camfed identifies vulnerable girls who risk leaving primary school on account of poverty or family illness, and provides full educational support, including covering school-going costs. Camfed has put in place a comprehensive support system to protect the rights and welfare of the child. Secondly, Camfed continues to support vulnerable girls through secondary school, providing them with four-year bursaries. This assistance is critical especially during the junction between primary and secondary education, when the rate of female drop-out escalates. Thirdly, Camfed provides school graduates with the chance to become economically empowered and independent members of their communities. Through the Camfed Association (CAMA), a pan-African network of Camfed graduates, Camfed offers ongoing training in finance, health, and leadership. Camfed also fosters local enterprise through its microfinance program. Fourthly, Camfed encourages young women’s leadership and empowerment, through its advocacy of these issues, the CAMA network, and ongoing leadership skills training. Camfed works hard to ensure that the voices of rural women have the chance to directly influence and inform policy and legislation related to girls’ education and gender equality on national and international levels.
Camfed’s reach and impact reflects its success to date. In 2007, Camfed provided four-year bursary support to 12, 374 girls in the four countries. 392, 100 children received material and social support. In 2006, Camfed-supported girls in Zambia were 41% more likely than their non-Camfed counterparts to pass their Grade 9 exams; in Zimbabwe that year, 87% of Camfed-supported girls in basic secondary school went on to the next grade. CAMA has 7, 488 members, many of whom have not only become community leaders, professionals or entrepreneurs but who also re-invest in their communities by providing material support to 25, 852 children so that they too can benefit from education.
<b>Background</b>
In sub-Saharan Africa, only 70% of children complete primary school, and even less complete secondary school. The percentage is significantly less when girls are isolated: in 2004, only 60% of girls completed primary school in Ghana and Zambia, as opposed to 71% of boys. These national figures mask the reality in rural areas where access to education is lowest. Faced with few resources, many families choose to educate only their sons due to the perception that it represents a better ‘investment’; their daughters are sent instead to work in cities or face early marriage. The effects of these trends are devastating particularly for rural girls, who have even less access to educational resources than their urban peers. Education is a vital lifeline for these girls. For example, girls under 20 are experiencing rates of HIV infection 5 times that of boys while research shows that girls with a secondary education are 3 times less likely to become HIV positive than those who receive no education.
<b>Strategy</b>
Camfed-supported girls come from the neediest families from poor rural regions of Africa. Camfed’s model revolves around the child’s right to education; Camfed has therefore structured its model and programs to ensure that all relevant stakeholders protect this right. Education is seen as a long-term investment which has significant benefits for the entire community and must therefore involve all members of the community. With this approach, the model aims to catalyze a systemic shift in community attitudes towards girls’ education and bring about sustainable change.
Camfed’s strategy is based on building up the capacity of local stakeholders and working together with them to support girls’ education. Education ministries, head teachers, teachers, chiefs, parents and girls are all consulted: programs are flexible and act in response to local needs. Camfed has established and continues to invest in district-level committees and school-based committees in all four countries. These committees identify vulnerable girls and act swiftly to respond to the changing needs of each individual child. The process is overseen and monitored by our country teams, many of whom are former Camfed beneficiaries themselves and are, therefore, fully committed to changing girls’ educational and social status quo. On average, for every UK £ Camfed received between 2000 to date, 91 pence were channeled directly to support girls education, 6 pence were used to generate another pound, and 3 pence to manage the organization. The transparency of Camfed’s governance systems and its investment in girls’ education has a transformative effect not only on girls and young women, but on whole communities. From the grassroots up, Camfed is helping to narrow the gender gap in education in Africa, and fostering the empowerment of a generation of girls and women.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Ann Cotton was first inspired to change the fate of girls in rural Africa during a research trip in a remote village in Zimbabwe in 1991, as part of a Masters program. What she discovered there profoundly changed her view – and the standard thinking – that girls’ exclusion from education was culturally based. She met many parents who wanted to keep their daughters in school, but were unable to due to their poverty. Moved by this experience, Ann decided to found Camfed and has worked tirelessly ever since to ensure that poor girls are given the chance and the resources to go to school. Her work has been recognized with several international awards including an Honorary Doctorate in Law from the University of Cambridge in 2007."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Rodelillo helps families to transform histories of poverty and dependency into lives of opportunity and self-reliance. Working with business, government institutions, foundations and the local community, Rodelillo’s 18-month psycho-social family companionship has assisted thousands of poor Chilean families to make such transformational changes. Rodelillo has also launched three social business ventures linked closely to the institution’s core mission that generate new sources of income and positive social impacts. The first social business venture, Rodelillo Takes Flight, is a fee-for-service vocational training institute with ISO 9001 and UKAS certifications. It was launched in mid-2006 and already contributes about 13% of the Foundation’s annual budget. It is growing rapidly. The second, called Rodelillo Inside the Company, works with medium-to-large businesses to install Rodelillo’s model for the benefit of those employees/subcontractors and their families.who are committed to take charge of their dreams and destinies. This program is ideal for companies wishing to materialize their Corporate Social Responsibilities and increase their workforce’s well-being, productivity and stakeholding. The third social business was initiated in 2007 as a Social Housing Brokerage Agency which has prepared several hundred families to become homeowners. Finally, Rodelillo continues to bid successfully for publicly-funded social projects, thereby increasing its economic sustainability and social impact.
<b>Background</b>
In addressing poverty, Latin American societies have tended to rely on paternalistic approaches rather than encouraging personal development, independence and entrepreneurship. Chile is no exception. But Rodelillo refuses to follow a one-size-fits-all, bureaucratic solution for the poor. The key to positive social change lies in the many untapped strengths in each family. Rodelillo helps families to draw on those strengths, and to respect and believe in their latent capacities to be the protagonists of their own development; this in turn reinforces their sense of self-worth and confidence in their ability to achieve self-defined goals.
<b>Strategy</b>
During its 21-year history, Rodelillo has worked with about 8, 000 poor Chilean families, or some 30, 000 individuals, helping them to set and accomplish their goals. More than 5, 000 families have graduated from, or are currently participating in, Rodelillo’s 18-month family accompaniment programs. Many of these families have also become owners of one of the almost 1,800 homes designed and built by Rodelillo. As the conditions in which we live evolve, so has Rodelillo. The Foundation’s community-based family accompaniment program is an effective and replicable model. At the same time, Rodelillo Foundation has modified its organizational structure so it can reach thousands more poor or socially-vulnerable families. Such families are organized not solely by geographical proximity but also by a common employer or industry, common associations or memberships, and common needs such as social housing or vocational training, or other shared identities.
This new structure means that Rodelillo will eventually become fully self-sustaining financially, replicable and portable, without involving significant increases in personnel or fixed costs, thus permitting the Foundation to expand and reach countless other needy, determined families who will also create a path for themselves out of poverty and dependency. Rodelillo performs a rigorous quantitative and qualitative evaluation process every six months to measure and interpret its results. The Foundation is also routinely audited by the government Ministries and Departments with whom it collaborates on some of its social programs.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
As a result of 25 years as a Social Worker in Chile and 5 in the United States, an unusual family history and her intensive academic preparation, Macarena Currín understands societies as “co-constructions” among social actors; that is, as the product of the actions that legitimize the voices and contributions of diverse sets of stakeholders towards materializing common goals, including strengthening family bonds, providing education and employment training, promoting health and ecology, co-constructing definitive housing solutions, and preparing at-risk groups for self-dignity, empowerment and responsible citizenship."
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Germany, 2006
<a href="http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_single_mediaplayer/0,,2291981_type_video_struct_9772,00.html?mytitle=The%2Breport%2Bas%2Bvideo%2Bon%2Bdemand" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Kinderzentren Kunterbunt is a childcare initiative providing a new approach to meet the demand from parents for childcare facilities in Germany. In contrast to most of the state-run kindergartens, it is designed to meet the needs of working parents. Specifically, it provides a new service because the childcare centers have extraordinarily long operating hours (from 6 am to 8 pm), including weekends and school vacations, enabling mothers and fathers to combine family and career better than many public kindergartens. In contrast to traditional childcare facilities which are normally situated in residential zones, the centers are located close to big companies, hospitals and in industrial zones, significantly shortening travel time between home, kindergarten and the workplace. Kinderzentren Kunterbunt considers itself a service provider and partner for families, offering additional services like excursions and seminars about nutrition, health etc. These innovations give parents the invaluable flexibility to fulfill today’s job requirements, such as unpredictable overtime, with the confidence that their children are being well taken care of.
<b>Background</b>
The number of children born in Germany has consistently dropped over recent years. Particularly alarming is the fact that 40% of women with an academic degree remain childless. They often do not see a way to combine children and a career. Until the end of 2004, there was no legal obligation for the German government to provide kindergarten places for children younger than 3 years old. A new law, adopted in 2005, guaranteed the building of a nation-wide network of childcare facilities for children between 0 – 14 years until 2010. This law supposedly enables all parents to combine family and career more easily. However, according to current survey data, only 14% of the demand for day-care places is met. To date, the market is dominated by state-run and religious organizations, which usually offer limited opening hours. Surveys reveal that over 60% of parents using daycare programs wish to have more flexible hours.
<b>Strategy</b>
Kinderzentren Kunterbunt supplies modern childcare services which are strictly modeled on the parents’ needs. The long opening hours throughout the whole year combined with the centers’ locations close to the working places provide a unique service for parents. Furthermore, Kinderzentren Kunterbunt offers seminars on topics such as nutrition and excursions for the entire family. Currently, Kunterbunt runs twelve childcare centers in Southern Germany, providing holistic childcare services to over 800 children. In 2008, another fifteen centers were opened in several other cities across southern Germany. Kinderzentren Kunterbunt seeks to expand at the rate of one new center each month. Given that it typically takes two years to open a childcare facility, this is a very rapid expansion. Kinderzentren Kunterbunt is primarily a publicly funded institution receiving government support that is given to all state-approved facilities. However, it works closely together with hospitals and companies from the private sector, in order to make the organization more independent from public funding and to create childcare centers close to the parents’ working place. It chooses companies with a high share of female workers and at least 1000 employees. Apart from a better funding source, this ensures a long-term demand for the childcare services. The employer also benefits from this cooperation due to the ability to provide at work daycare for the employees’ children at low costs and the possibility to present an open and family-oriented image in public. The fees are in the same range as in state-run or religious kindergartens. They depend on the total amount of hours booked and the age of the child.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Björn Czinczoll first encountered the problem of childcare in Germany whilst doing community service. As early as 1998 – at the age of 26 – together with a parents’ initiative he founded Kinderzentren Kunterbunt in order to open a service and profit-oriented childcare centre. Björn is convinced that entrepreneurship blends well with social endeavors, and that there is room for the business sensibility even in traditionally public sector projects areas. His studies in law at the University of Regensburg prepared him well for his career path to date."
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Colombia, 2007
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emWr1z9izcM&feature=PlayList&p=2886FFD91683EDEE&index=0" target="_blank">Video 2 (Spanish)</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
At a time when paternalistic, palliative approaches dominated efforts to work with the poor, José María Campoamor had an innovative vision. He maintained that any such efforts should use market-based approaches, and he set out to establish opportunities that linked the poor to the formal market system. His creation of Workers’ Circles and Savings Banks would evolve into what today is the Fundación Social which since its inception in 1911 has been based on two principles: workers as the primary actors of their own development, and to spur that development, the need to cultivate their “virtue to save”. Campoamor mobilized thousands of poor workers to set aside small amounts of money in their savings banks, agreeing to contribute the interest generated to education, nutrition, housing and other basic needs underpinning personal and collective progress. Contrary to a company that creates a foundation to channel its charitable activities, the Fundación Social is a non-profit “holding” that has set up 12 highly successful for-profit companies. These compete in the market and throughout their history have focused on 3 areas: banking, insurance and housing. The mission of the Fundación Social is to “contribute to overcome the structural causes of poverty in Colombia by building a more humane, prosperous and just society”. The way to accomplish its mission is by owning and managing profitable, poor-oriented business enterprises. Among other companies, the Fundación Social is the major shareholder in the BCSC bank, with its networks Banco Caja Social BCSC and Colmena (insurance); and Deco Construcciones (low income housing construction). The Fundación Social today is the 5th largest private financial group in the country with about 6% of the banking market. It has 5 million poor clients who benefit from its 320 offices in 56 Colombian cities. In the low-income sector, Banco Caja Social Colombiana (BCSC) is the largest provider in Colombia and Latin America, a leader in financial services and mortgages for low-income sectors.
<b>Background</b>
From its inception, the mission of the Fundación Social has been to address the root causes of poverty in Colombia. Today, over 60% of the country’s population lives below the poverty line. Income inequality is one of the highest in Latin America, while violence remains a chronic phenomenon exacerbating social conditions. From the moment José María Campoamor, a Jesuit priest of 36 years, arrived in Colombia from Spain, he was impressed with the vivacity and intelligence of Colombian children. They became the entry point for what would be developed with their parents, the “workers’ circles” and “savings banks” that later evolved into the Fundación Social. Campoamor’s initiative spread quickly thanks to his ability to mobilize a large contingent of women who, while not being religious, dedicated their lives to replicating “workers’ circles” together with “savings banks”. Demand for “workers’ circles” grew exponentially, based on the interest of municipalities throughout the country, but Campoamor insisted these would only be spearheaded if the workers were also ready to simultaneously open a Savings Bank. The circles focused on three areas: Educational opportunities (schools, newspapers, workshops, printing press, libraries, etc.); Economic opportunities (Savings banks, housing construction and loans, insurance, restaurants, grocery stores, etc); and cultural opportunities (popular celebrations, theatre, sport, etc.) Campoamor died in 1946 and the leadership eventually passed to lay hands – although it was never a Jesuit initiative. Alvaro Dávila became President of the Fundación Social in 1986.
<b>Strategy</b>
Fundación Social develops its activities through two main departments. One focuses on creating the conditions whereby civil society and business organizations in poor communities can emerge and thrive. Fundación Social provides hands-on accompaniment to very poor communities, providing skills building and leadership training as a first step, and subsequently connecting their enterprises to the formal economy. The second area of the organization is responsible for the functioning of its 12 businesses, creating others as needed. The organization seeks to be a market leader in financial services for the poor in Colombia as well as to significantly influence solutions to social problems, emphasizing housing, and microfinance. BSCS offers a range of financial services with an emphasis on savings, investment, and credit. The main obstacle BSCS has confronted in Colombia is the low use of banking services due to lack of trust in the banking sector. Thus, its biggest challenge is to expand the acceptability of its services to the poorest populations and businesses. To promote use of the banking system, BSCS has created a series of financial incentives for those who begin to save on a consistent basis, an incentive that has increased by 9% the number of clients in the last 2 years making use of this offering. One of the striking aspects of the Fundación Social is the priority it places on its work force - close to 7,500 people work with the organization and have been there on average for 7.6 years. In addition to offering a fair wage, the organization promotes the involvement of the workers in its management and provides personal development and capacity building opportunities as well as benefits in health, housing, savings, insurance and recreation.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
José María Campoamor conceived the underpinnings of what today is the Fundación Social. His genius lies in having sown the seed that for almost 100 years hence, has been able to grow and evolve into a continuously pioneering social enterprise. By 1943, Campoamor’s workers’ circles and savings banks had spread and been consolidated in the country’s major cities. While the venture was conceived by a visionary pragmatist, the adherence to its mission has never waived thanks to the contribution of other similar entrepreneurs, equally pragmatic and committed, who followed the priest’s footsteps and today lead the organization. Among them are Alvaro Dávila, who has been leading the organization for over 20 years within a complex political, social and economic climate that has characterized Colombia’s recent history, and Eduardo Villar, who would convince even the most loyal adherent to Milton Friedman about the virtues of a market that seeks the common good."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Doi Tung’s holistic and participative approach to rural development makes its projects truly sustainable. With initial funding through the local government, for-profit business units are created for eventual long-term ownership by the local communities in need.
<b>Background</b>
Impoverished migrant hill tribes and local people living at the Northern Thai border subjected the region to slash-and-burn agriculture, opium cultivation, as well as human and arms/weapon trafficking. To address these issues, the Mae Fah Luang Foundation under Royal Patronage eradicated opium trade, promoted reforestation of the area, and set up the Doi Tung Project in 1988. Doi Tung was the Foundation’s first implementation of the Sustainable Alternative Livelihood Development (SALD) approach, which provides disenfranchised and poor communities with health services and truly sustainable economic alternatives, ultimately improving their quality of life, their access to educational opportunities, and the environment.
<b>Strategy</b>
Doi Tung uses the holistic and participative SALD approach to rural development, which focuses on three integrated development pillars: health, livelihood development, and education. Over a 30-year plan, the impoverished communities are provided with health services, and livelihood skills development, which includes vocational training and employment opportunities. People are either directly employed by Doi Tung businesses (restaurant, café, lodging, tourism), or given resources to start their own businesses as artisans or crop farmers. The products of these micro-enterprises can then be sold back to Doi Tung if they meet a pre-specified quality standard. Ultimately, the business units are to be handed back to the local communities when their economic viability has been demonstrated and when the local population has been trained and developed to manage them. Community ownership is an integral part of Doi Tung’s innovative approach.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Appointed by the late Princess Mother, Disnadda Diskul has been Secretary General of the Doi Tung Project and MFL Foundation since their inception. Doi Tung is the flagship project of the Foundation, and through Disnadda’s leadership, has developed strong branding throughout Thailand. Disnadda is also responsible for replicating the SALD approach in collaboration with the local NGOs and governments in Myanmar, Afghanistan, and Indonesia."
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Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum
<b>The Innovation</b>
Isaac Durojaiye conceived DMT Mobile Toilets as a commercial enterprise that produces, hires out and maintains safe, sanitary, portable toilets. DMT is the first manufacturer of mobile toilets in the West African sub-region. The business model aims at improving public health, sanitation and encouraging social transformation via job opportunities. Durojaiye has devised a system whereby idle youth, popularly know in Nigeria as “area boys” (gang leaders), and poor women (especially widows), find gainful employment maintaining and managing the mobile public toilets. The toilets are placed in high traffic areas, such as bus stations and markets, where there is a demand for sanitation facilities.
<b>Background</b>
Nigeria has a population of about 140 million people, making it the most populous African country. In 1999, before DMT Toilets started, there were fewer than 500 functional public toilets in Nigeria, and most of these were inadequate and poorly maintained. DMT was conceived to offer an alternative to these facilities, and to the widespread, unhygienic practice of public urination/defecation. It also aims to address the unemployment situation, particularly amongst youth. More than half of the population of Nigeria is under 35 years of age, and many are unskilled. Nigeria’s estimated economic growth of 6% in 2004 was driven by the oil sector that accounts for more than 90% of its foreign exchange earnings. However, this high growth rate masks an extremely high unemployment rate, as the oil sector is capital intensive and does not require much labour. While Nigerian unemployment statistics are under debate, it is believed to be around 17%, and higher amongst urban youth. Up to 55% of the unemployed are secondary school graduates, underlining the fact that education and skills do not guarantee employment.
<b>Strategy</b>
DMT manufactures the toilets and provides them, free of charge, to ‘area boys’ and women who are wishing to franchise them. In turn, the franchisees oversee the maintenance of the public toilets facilities and enter into an arrangement whereby DMT staff and their specialized trucks evacuate the waste twice a week from each toilet. Each toilet can be used by about a hundred people per day, for a small cost of 20 Naira, (equivalent to 25 US cents). In the end, 60% of the profits go to franchisees and 40% to DMT for evacuation services. As a result, local area boys and widows earn about US $160 a month, far more than the national monthly average of under US$30. DMT transports the waste to government approved recycling plants for disposal. In the future, it plans to set up its own plant where waste will be reprocessed into biogas. About 60% of all DMT revenue comes from this franchise system. In addition, about a quarter of the revenue comes from advertising, as the colorful plastic toilets make an excellent placement for promoting other companies that sell hygiene products. With a life span of fifteen years per toilet, the advertising capacity of one toilet pays for the production of four extra toilets. DMT also generates additional income by providing toilets for parties and outdoor activities. Recently, the Lagos State government signed an agreement with DMT to set up 3,000 public toilets within Lagos over the next three years, using its social franchise model. DMT has also just been contracted by the World Bank to produce and install over 500 public toilets in slum areas around Lagos. DMT’s involvement is being sought throughout Nigerian states and elsewhere in Africa across all sectors. DMT works with regional schools where toilet facilities are abysmal, donating both toilets and evacuation services. It has provided mobile toilets for the police and army in Nigeria, as well as for some universities in Nigeria. DMT Toilets prides itself on cleanliness and professionalism. It uses the latest equipment for evacuation; its trucks are well maintained and capitalize on the Nigerian sense of humour. Staff proudly wear the orange smocks that identify them as DMT professionals. Through the enterprise, Durojaiye and his team have directed much public and government attention towards issues of hygiene, sanitation and the environment.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Isaac Durojaiye is a big man. One can understand why he was employed as Chief bodyguard and head of security to the late Chief M.K.O Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria. At one-time, he was even a credit card fraud investigator for American Express in their UK security division. He is also a man with a huge vision, an enormous heart, incredible optimism and energy and an avid passion to bring about change in his country. He graduated as a graphic artist from a technical college in the UK and received a higher diploma in Business Administration from Lagos State Polytechnic, but found himself doing security and intelligence world. His nickname, Otunba Gadaffi, originates from that function. As bodyguard to Chief M.K.O Abiola, he was extremely tough, so much so that people would tell him, “Why do you behave like Gadaffi?” Otunba means “high chief.” DMT Toilets came about as a result of a request from Chief M.K.O Abiola, who wanted to have a large celebration for his son’s wedding and charged Durojaiye with the task of organizing security. Durojaiye immediately noticed the lack of toilets at the venue and found that no toilets could be hired in Nigeria for such occasions and the few toilets that were available were situated in unsafe areas. Consequently, he suggested creating makeshift toilets for the occasion. Inspired by Dr Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh International in India, who has set up many toilets across the Indian sub-continent, Durojaiye allowed his idea to evolve into the company that became DMT Mobile Toilets. DMT looks forward to a future of expansion across Nigeria and the African continent."
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Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum
<a href="http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3745.html" target="_blank">Audio Interview</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h8N4rK8GIc" target="_blank">Video Interview</a><
<b>The Innovation</b>
PATH brings the benefits of modern science and engineering to bear to address challenging global health issues, advancing health technologies for unique problems and situations in poor countries. For example: A chemically active sticker tells health workers when vaccines have been spoiled by heat during the long journey from an industrial-world factory to a developing-world village; Clean-delivery kits contain inexpensive but essential items for safe home births; The Uniject™ device, a pre-filled injection system that looks like a needle attached to a tiny bubble, is so simple that health workers with little training can use it to administer vaccines in remote areas. It auto disables, preventing the spread of infection through reuse.
Tailoring health technologies to low-resource settings is only the first step; getting them out of the lab and into the real world requires a special kind of innovation—collaboration with the private sector. PATH’s partnerships with the commercial sector are a critical and unique element of the organization’s success. PATH draws on the ability of corporations to make technologies widely available and affordable in developing-country markets. The result? Private-sector resources applied for public good—and solutions that stand on their own, for the long haul.
<b>Background</b>
Each year, millions of people in the developing world die from completely preventable diseases. Children in these countries are especially vulnerable, and are regularly killed or crippled by diseases that children in developed countries are vaccinated against. For example, rotavirus, the most common cause of serious infant diarrhea, is rarely fatal where healthcare is readily available, but kills half a million children a year in developing countries. Neonatal tetanus is almost unheard of in the United States, but also kills half a million children each year in places where tetanus vaccinations don’t reach. Millions more children die from malaria, which commands few research dollars in part because it is endemic in poor countries. There are a staggering number of people around the world living with HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa, where the adult infection rate exceeds 30 percent in some countries. Suffering in the world’s most fragile communities is great, yet the solutions to global health problems are all around us—in winning ideas that stall during research and development for lack of funds or the right connections; in health workers with heart and will but little training and few supplies; and in individuals looking for the power to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS. PATH is the catalyst that brings this potential to life.
<b>Strategy</b>
PATH is well known for its technology achievements. Over the past 30 years, the organization has advanced more than 55 health technologies for low-resource settings. However, the need for technologies is only part of the global health equation, which is why PATH also applies its creativity and connections to strengthening health systems and encouraging healthy behaviors in communities around the world. Often, the systems that people rely on need strengthening before other improvements in health can take hold. PATH shares information and resources with policymakers, trains health workers and peer educators, and provides technical assistance to program administrators. In Cambodia, Kenya, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, for example, PATH works with local partners to help public- and private-sector pharmacists become a critical link between the formal health system and youth. Through training, pharmacists learn to provide accurate information and the right products and referrals that help young people avoid sexually transmitted infections. Individuals need the knowledge and skills to avoid risky behaviors and safeguard their health.
Many PATH projects reach the community level. In China, for example, PATH and local partners provide information and life skills training to girls who have left their homes and families to seek work. The interactive training helps girls learn to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS, discover that they have the right and the strength to resist sexual coercion, and get the support they need to stay healthy and imagine new lives. Training sessions are often held conveniently in the workplace, in collaboration with factory owners, who see both social and economic benefits to promoting healthy behaviors among employees. Advancing technologies, strengthening systems, encouraging healthy behaviors—the magic of PATH is its multifaceted approach. PATH meets the complex health needs of an expanding world with this multipronged approach that moves solutions from innovation to impact: supporting new ideas through inception, development, and testing; paving the way for introduction in low-resource countries; and working with governments and communities to integrate and expand the most successful ideas. Each activity is made more sustainable through collaboration with governments and local groups and—whenever possible—partnerships that enlist private-sector resources for the public good.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Christopher Elias has dedicated his career to tackling the complex problems of global health. After receiving his medical degree from Creighton University (1983) and completing postgraduate training in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (1986), he spent two years in Thailand working with refugee assistance programs, first as a physician supervising a large pediatric ward in a refugee encampment and then as a medical coordinator for the American Refugee Committee at the Thai–Cambodian border. He then obtained an MPH from the University of Washington (1990), where he was a fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. For six years, Elias served as a senior associate in the International Programs Division of the Population Council. He was the country representative in Thailand and managed reproductive health programs throughout Southeast Asia. In 2000, Elias joined PATH, assuming responsibility for the organization’s strategy, programs, finances, and management. Under his leadership, PATH’s annual budget has more than tripled to reach $218 million, and the number of staff has increased by more than 50 percent to reach more than 750 worldwide.
Elias represents PATH at domestic and international forums, both as a spokesperson for PATH and as an advocate for innovative responses to global health challenges. He also sits on the boards of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Ibis Reproductive Health, and the Medicines for Malaria Venture, among others. He is a member of the Policy Advisory Committee for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is the co-chair of the UNAIDS “aids2031” working group on science and technology. In 2006, Elias was recognized by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as the U.S. Social Entrepreneur of the Year and was also selected as an ambassador for the Paul G. Rogers Society for Global Health Research."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
By promoting the concept of waste as a resource and emphasizing the marketing aspect of organic waste, Waste Concern has caused a chain reaction among multiple sectors in Bangladesh. Working in partnership with communities, Waste Concern directs a process for house-to-house solid waste collection that is then taken to community-based composting plants to be turned into organic fertilizer. Waste Concern arranges for fertilizer companies to purchase and nationally market the compost-based enriched bio-fertilizers. Thus, it provides jobs for the urban poor who collect and process the waste. It has stimulated behavioral changes in urban communities and the waste management industry. In addition, Waste Concern has helped to address the environmental problems of diminishing topsoil fertility (due to the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) and green house gas emissions.
At present, 60,000 people benefit from Waste Concern’s project in Dhaka, and an additional 434,290 people benefit from replication of the model in other parts of the country. Each year, Waste Concern produces 900 tons of compost in Dhaka; elsewhere in Bangladesh, 8087 tons of compost are produced and distributed by 47 organizations using the model. Fertilizer companies now estimate that farmer demand has risen to 50,000 tons per year. At present, the technology used for composting can treat 30,000-35,000 tons of waste per year and reduces emissions by 12,000-15,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Because of its novel approach, Several NGOs and private sector firms have already emulated the model in Bangladesh,and UNICEF and the Department of Public Health Engineering have started to do the same in 14 municipalities throughout the country. Waste Concern has received wide media coverage and recognition. Delegations from several countries have visited Waste Concern and started replicating the model in their own cities. With support from the UNESCAP, Waste Concern is assisting two cities in Sri Lanka and Vietnam in replicating its model. Recently, with the support of the Leap Frog Fund of the Lemelson Foundation, Waste Concern is exporting its model of managing waste to Saiban (a Pakistani NGO) for a slum settlement in Karachi, Pakistan.
<b>Background</b>
Initially, no local financial institution or development organization supported Waste Concern. After three years of running their demonstration program without external support, Enayetullah and Sinha convinced the Municipal Corporation and Public Works Department to provide public land for community composting. Waste Concern’s first community-based compost project was initiated in 1995 and successful demonstration of the project spurred the model's replication to five more communities of Dhaka. Moreover, based on the project, the Government of Bangladesh has recommended the recycling of organic waste via composting as a viable alternative for solid waste management.
<b>Strategy</b>
Success of a community-based program depends largely on identifying and addressing the community's needs, while sustainability of the project depends on involving individuals in the cost-recovery/cost-sharing process. To that end, Waste Concern has established partnerships with public agencies, the private sector and communities by working as an intermediary to form the tripartite partnership. Each relationship is important in the public-private-community link. Communities are responsible for monitoring the house-to-house waste collection system and contributing towards its costs. The Ministry of the Environment and Forest, through its Sustainable Environment Management Program, coordinates the project and provides strategic support on behalf of the central government. Local government provides land for the composting plant as well as the electrical connections and other logistics. UNDP has provided start-up funds for the composting units while the private sector markets the compost. An effort such as Waste Concern requires that land is provided at a nominal rate, or free of charge, to the entrepreneurs interested in running the project. Public-private partnerships are needed to underpin the initiative and provide training and technical advice on composting and marketing for those involved in the effort.
Before 2004, Waste Concern’s model replication was dependent upon financial support from international agencies, as well as non-cash support (such as land) from municipal and public agencies. Access to land and finance was an impediment to attainment of large-scale success due to this dependence. Since early 2004, however, Waste Concern has developed a new approach by directly purchasing land to establish compost plants rather than depending on public agencies. It has also attracted foreign direct investment through carbon trading using the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol. Waste Concern has recently entered into an agreement with a Dutch company for investment in two CDM-based projects: one is a 700 ton/day composting project and the other is a landfill gas extraction and utilization project at the Matuail landfill site in Dhaka. Waste Concern, along with its Dutch partner, is now building a compost plant in Dhaka with a compost production capacity of 50,000 tons/year. This project is will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 89,000 tons every year and benefit the 2.3 million people of Dhaka city.
<b>The Entrepreneurs</b>
Sinha, born and raised in Dhaka, is an urban planner/architect. Enayetullah, also from Bangladesh, is a civil engineer/urban planner. The pair met while doing graduate research on urban waste management. They decided to work together to develop programs in this area. Initially, the two young entrepreneurs sought to convince government agencies to develop the community-based composting plants, even promising free consulting services to support governmental efforts; but they could not convince the authorities. One government official listened to their ideas and then challenged them: if their ideas for community-managed compost plants were so great, why didn't they create it themselves? Inspired by the challenge, they founded Waste Concern.
Enayetullah and Sinha were awarded the 2002 United Nations Poverty Eradication Award for the Asia Pacific Region. Other honors include the 2003 Outstanding Professionals Award from the Institution of Engineers Bangladesh and Fast Company’s inaugural Fast 50 Leadership award. They were also selected Tech Laureates by the Tech Museum USA. Waste Concern has been awarded with Environment Award 2007 by the Department of Environment of the Government of Bangladesh for its applied resource and development activity in environmental sector. Fast Company of USA has selected Waste Concern in 2007 as one of the Fast 50 profit-driven solutions for the planet. Recently, a number of renowned international business schools are using Waste Concern’s experience as a case study for MBA courses."
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Under Construction !!"
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<a href="http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_single_mediaplayer/0,,2312952_type_video_struct_9772,00.html?mytitle=The%2Breport%2Bas%2Bvideo%2Bon%2Bdemand" target="_blank">Video</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZei012CM0I" target="_blank">Video Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
KickStart seeks to develop a significant middle class in Africa by stimulating the growth of a thriving entrepreneurial sector. Beginning with Kenya and Tanzania, it seems well on its way to attaining that goal. KickStart creates new businesses and jobs by developing and promoting new low-cost technologies that are bought and used by local entrepreneurs to establish profitable small-scale businesses. By identifying, developing and marketing technologies with a high cost-benefit ratio, KickStart enables the entrepreneurial poor to play an effective role in the market economy, substantially increasing their income levels and creating new jobs. According to KickStart’s Impact Monitoring results, as of September 2008, 107,000 MoneyMaker pumps were sold, 71,000 enterprises created, and 355,000 people were lifted out of poverty. Every month more than 800 new businesses are created. Between these , new revenues equivalent to more than 0.6% of Kenya's GDP and 0.25% of Tanzania’s GDP are generated. With an ROI of 17:1, every $1 donated results in $17 in new profits and wages for the new business.
<b>Background</b>
In the industrialized world, governments subsidize research, development and market development to promote new technologies. In developing countries, governments have other priorities and there is very little expenditure on this front. And because it is not profitable, private sector companies rarely develop new products and technologies for the poor, who have minimal purchasing power. This market failure can be addressed by innovative, affordable technologies and equipment that can be used to start small businesses in Africa. But to do so, a private sector supply chain needs to be established while understanding and building a market demand..
<b>Strategy</b>
KickStart identifies profitable, new small-scale businesses that can be established by thousands of local entrepreneurs with an initial investment that can be recovered within three to six months. KickStart then designs the equipment and tools required to start and operate these new businesses. This equipment must be affordable (less than a few hundred dollars) to buy, manually operated, energy-efficient, durable and easy to transport. And it must require minimum training to install, use and maintain. KickStart designs the methods for mass producing the equipment and trains private sector manufacturers to do large-scale high quality production. It then buys the equipment from the manufacturers and uses innovative marketing techniques to sell it to poor entrepreneurs through a network of whole-sellers and hundreds of local retail shops. KickStart uses donor funds to subsidize the initial design and market development and continues rigorous marketing until the new equipment becomes commonly known and firmly rooted in the society. At this point the equipment can be profitably and sustainably manufactured, and continue to be sold to millions more poor, but entrepreneurial, local families – who will use it to establish profitable businesses and climb out of poverty. Because 80% of the poor in Africa are poor rural farmers, KickStart’s best selling devices are their MoneyMaker micro-irrigation pumps. These simple, human powered pumps enable farmers to start small businesses growing and selling high value fruits and vegetables throughout the year. They recover their investment in three months, make on average $1,100 in new profits per year, and increase their farm income by 1000%.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Nick Moon grew up in India and South East Asia. He learned woodworking and general building skills and started a small enterprise in London that prospered from working with big city firms. Uneasy in his role as a full-fledged businessman, Moon sold his share of the company and left for Kenya, where he joined ActionAid and met Martin Fisher. In addition to managing KickStart, Moon found the time to earn an MBA in 2002. Martin Fisher received his PhD at Stanford in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. However, it wasn't until he made friends from developing countries in graduate school and spent a summer in Peru that he considered applying his knowledge to help the developing world. He went to Kenya on a Fulbright in 1985, and has never looked back. KickStart’s micro-irrigation pumps have been identified as one of Ten Inventions That Will Change the World by Newsweek magazine."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Cool nrg International Pty Ltd (Cool nrg) designs, develops and delivers innovative energy efficiency action that reaches millions of consumers worldwide and results in large cuts in CO2 while reducing the cost of energy bills.
<b>Background</b>
The global fight against climate change has evolved to become the most pressing challenge of our times. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that CO2 emissions must fall by between 50% and 80% by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change. In order to do so, according to the International Energy Agency, two thirds of emissions reductions will have to come from cutting demand for energy. And yet the search for effective solutions has focused on costly and long-term responses to the problem – nuclear power, large-scale renewables and “clean” coal - that may not deliver significant reductions in CO2 emissions for many years. Projected investment in action directed at tackling energy supply accounts for between 80% and 90% of the total, just 10% aimed at reducing demand. And yet energy efficiency has the capacity to cut 7Gt of CO2 - the equivalent of 25% of global emissions. In addition to tackling climate change, the great win of energy efficiency when aimed at consumers is its anti-poverty potential in reducing heating and lighting costs for the poorest members of society.
<b>Strategy</b>
Cool nrg’s broad business strategies are to: Create high profile climate action campaigns; Undertake mass distributions of free energy-saving devices; Reach millions of consumers with energy and cost saving campaigns; Use and adapt existing regulatory frameworks to deliver residential Energy efficiency programs; Campaign to create or shape regulatory frameworks to deliver rapid action on climate change through energy efficiency; Develop strategic media, supply and distribution partners; Create significant leadership, brand and financial value for program partners.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Nic Frances, a recognized leader in social enterprise, is founder and executive chairman of Cool nrg International.
A former stockbroker, Nic left the City at the height of the 1980s boom for Liverpool where he built the Furniture Resource Centre into a leading social enterprise. Nic was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1996. In 1998, he emigrated from the UK for Australia. There, he led the Brotherhood of St Laurence, a leader in the fight against poverty, to 2004. His work earned him an Australian Centenary Medal. Cool nrg was established in 2007, building on Nic’s efforts to reverse climate change begun by Easy Being Green, the company he co-founded in 2004.
Nic is a frequent speaker on prestigious international platforms and the award-winning author of The End Of Charity, published by Allen & Unwin, a book advocating the reordering of business and political systems to support social enterprise drawing on his personal experience in that field over 15 years. Nic lives in Melbourne, Australia. He has two children, Holly and Charlie."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Benetech open avenues of high technology to society’s disadvantaged. It is a non-profit venture capital model that fosters and finances the development of socially valuable technological initiatives discarded by commercial developers because of potentially low market returns. The first Benetech project was the Arkenstone reading machine for the blind. To date, the Arkenstone system has delivered reading tools in a dozen languages to well over 50,000 disabled people living in 60 countries. Subsequently, Benetech initiated Bookshare.org - an extensive online library of accessible digital books in XML or digital Braille format for people with visual or learning disabilities. Currently, over 40,000 persons from around the world subscribe to Bookshare.org. In the US, all students who are blind or have a visual impairment may access the Bookshare.org library free of charge. Their subscriptions are underwritten by the U.S. Office of Education. Benetech’s Human Rights Program applies technology and scientific methods to protecting human rights. Martus, the Greek word for “witness,” is a software program developed by Benetech that permits human rights groups to collect and store sensitive information on a secure database regarding human rights violations. Currently, human rights groups in 60 countries including Guatemala, Liberia, and Lebanon, as well as exile groups from Burma and Darfur, are using Martus to document incidents of human rights abuses. Benetech’s Environmental Program applies technology and scientific methods to protecting the environment. Miradi, the Swahili word for “goal,” is a software program developed by Benetech in collaboration with the eConservation Measurement Partnership. Before Miradi, there were no project management tools on the market designed specifically for conservation practitioners. As a result they were required to cobble together a variety of software programs to store and track data, calculate projections and generate reports of their efforts to conserve species and ecosystems. Miradi is far more useful and affordable than any off-the-shelf improvisation and is currently being used by over 600 environmental organizations in over 80 countries.
<b>Background</b>
The idea for Benetech came about when Jim Fruchterman was an undergraduate studying engineering at the California Institute of Technology. As one of his professors was explaining how machine pattern recognition was used to guide “smart bombs” in battle, Fruchterman began wondering how pattern recognition could be used to benefit a society. He came up with the idea of applying this technology to language, specifically written characters, to create a machine that could read aloud to the blind. During the 1980s, with US$ 25 million of venture capital, he co-founded a company to build his optical character recognition technology that could read any printed material. Fruchterman subsequently founded Arkenstone, a non-profit organization, to deliver the technology to the blind and visually disabled community. Benetech grew out of Arkenstone, which was eventually sold to a commercial company. The capital generated from that sale went to fund Benetech’s continued innovations.
<b>Strategy</b>
Benetech acts as an incubator for socially oriented technology projects. It provides seed capital for market and technical feasibility studies, as well as the infrastructure needed for developing socially beneficial ventures. Ideas for the projects come from potential customers, Benetech staff and advisers, external inventors, and entrepreneurs. Initiatives operate as projects under the Benetech umbrella, reducing costs by sharing a common infrastructure. Benetech has 50 full-time employees and over 200 volunteers. The majority of volunteers are people with disabilities helping others by scanning and processing books for Bookshare.org. Benetech has been able to mobilize pro bono Silicon Valley expertise and has worked with a wide variety of global partners including IBM, Intel, Sony, Hewlett Packard, Fujitsu, Sun Microsystems, NEC, and Microsoft. The impact of Benetech’s innovations has been well documented and includes enhanced educational outcomes, improved employment prospects, and fuller participation in society for the disabled, particularly the blind. A conservative estimate indicates that over 75,000 individuals have benefited directly from Benetech’s reading systems.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Unlike many individuals working in disabilities, Fruchterman was not drawn to the field because of personal experience, but rather because of his keen interest in applying technology to bridge an equity gap. After attending two of the best engineering schools in the US, Caltech and Stanford, Fruchterman continues to interface with the engineering profession. He lectures regularly to engineering and business students at schools such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the University of Washington, and inspires his students to apply their training in socially innovative ways. Fruchterman is chair of the Board of the Social Enterprise Alliance, and a 2006 MacArthur Fellow."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Takao Furuno has developed and disseminated a sustainable, integrated organic rice and duck farming system. This method significantly increases yields and has been replicated in thousands of locations across Asia. Rather than using chemicals, Furuno introduces ducks into rice paddies to fertilize and strengthen rice seedlings and protect them from pests and weeds. This process boosts farmers' incomes and decreases their workload, while reducing environmental damage and increasing food security.
<b>Background</b>
In the next three decades, population growth will lead to a 70% increase in the demand for rice. The Green Revolution, which increased food yields through intensive mono-cropping and use of inorganic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, is recognized today as unsustainable and environmentally unsound. Annual increases in the use of chemical fertilizers now outstrip the growth of rice yields, causing declining incomes and intensifying rural to urban migration. Alternative systems are necessary. In the mid 1970s, Takao Furuno, a high-spirited farmer who had been influenced by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, was determined to turn his farm organic. Furuno spent ten years doing the backbreaking work of pulling out weeds by hand. In 1988, he came upon a traditional practice of using aigamo ducks to protect rice. The ducks eat insects, pests and snails. They also use their feet to dig up weeds, in the process oxygenating the water and strengthening the roots of rice plants. Furuno lovingly calls this method the "duck effect" and his farm yields have soared.
<b>Strategy</b>
Furuno's duck-rice system is the result of continuous study of a natural symbiotic relationship after years of trial and error adjustments. One season, disease destroyed his entire crop. For three years, dogs ate Furuno's ducks until he got the idea to install electric fences. Furuno has identified the optimal age at which ducklings should be released into rice fields, the number that should be introduced per tenth of hectare and the moment when ducks should be removed. Through experimentation, he discovered that the addition of certain fish (loaches) and a nitrogen-fixing weed (azolla) to the field boosted rice and duck growth.
In addition, Furuno has successfully marketed duck rice, which now sells at a 20-30% premium over conventionally grown rice in Japan and other countries. Today, his 3.2- hectare farm gives him an income of US$ 160,000 a year from producing rice, organic vegetables, eggs and ducklings. After demonstrating that small-scale organic farming can be highly productive, he is disseminating his ideas. He has authored best-selling books on his methods, such as The Power of Duck, as well as an aigamo duck cookbook. Through his writing, travel, lectures and cooperation with agricultural organizations and governments, his methods have spread to more than 75,000 farmers in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, China, Taiwan, India, Cuba and Bangladesh.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
The image of an Asian rice farmer is probably one of a taciturn man in a straw hat with whom it is difficult to converse about anything except his local area. In contrast, you will find Takao Furuno quite a surprise. His passion for the preservation and health of the small family farm is supported by a deep understanding of how modern society works. "My dream," says Furuno, "is to see ducks cheerfully swimming around in all the rice paddies of Japan and other Asian countries." Furuno was also awarded a PhD by the Kyushu University in September 2007 for "Comparative Research on Traditional Asian Paddy/Duck Farming and on Rice-Duck Farming--with a focus on the meaning of enclosure".
From ancient times, the people of Asia have followed a tradition of releasing ducks into their rice paddies without enclosures. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, these traditional technologies began to disappear with the introduction of agricultural chemicals and chemical fertilizers. By making use of net or electric fence enclosure, duck-rice farming allows ducks free use of limited space resources enhancing the benefits free of the scourge of agricultural chemicals. In other words, the introduction of this technology traditionally more associated with livestock is an innovative technology beneficial for and integrative paddy agriculture. This innovation represents a new revival for Asian paddy and duck cultivation and an emergence from the scourge of agricultural chemicals of the last 30-40 years."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Infoklick offers financial and in-kind support to children and youth that come with an
initiative or idea to contribute positively to society. Often a small impulse, a mentor, a room
to meet, a plug or a small start-up financial contribution are enough to get an initiative
going. In addition, Infoklick is the biggest online portal for information concerning young
people in Switzerland. Through the projects and the information portal, young people are
actively engaged in solving the problems of their generation in a proactive way. Every year,
Infoklick supports more than 250 projects initiated by children and young people in
Switzerland. The projects are particularly in the areas of youth participation, respect and
tolerance, youth and media, intergenerational projects and integration of immigrants. One
of the projects, “buntkicktgut”, is a street soccer league to integrate young immigrants.
Tink.ch is a magazine made by young people for young people, covering topics that are
underrepresented in the general media. “Jugend mit Wirkung” is run in 22 districts in
Switzerland to foster the active participation of youth in communal political matters.
<b>Background</b>
In most societies, particularly in Switzerland, young people only receive attention if they
are in trouble and have committed a crime, taken drugs or are unemployed. The majority
of programs are directed at these offending groups. Infoklick realizes that 85% of young
people have immense creativity and resources that are underutilized.
<b>Strategy</b>
Infoklick.ch answers more than 30,000 questions submitted by young people to the
website. It links youth with similar ideas or issues and creates a network of engaged
groups. It has created a center for children and youth activities in Moosseedorf, close to
Bern, where it offers meeting space and rooms for seminars. Currently, more than 10,000
young people are actively involved in projects with Infoklick, receiving the financial and inkind
resources and support they need to convert their ideas into reality. In 2005, the
financial support towards these projects was more than CHF 250,000. Infoklick is mainly
financed through projects administered for public entities, foundations or other donors.
Membership fees and private donations cover a smaller part of the budget. Infoklick has
introduced the 'club ramoneur', which gives companies the possibility to be featured on
the website and act as sponsors of particular projects. In 2007, Infoklick is also starting a
fund for children and youth development with a Swiss private bank. Infoklick offers a youth
card, which is offered through the local communities and allows access to a range of
offerings and activities. Both the communities, which benefit from a closer access to the
young people, as well as the institutions providing the offers pay a fee for this service. The
club ramoneur, the fund and the youth card will lead to more sustainable income streams
in the medium term.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Markus Gander was an active boy scout, participating in every project that came his way.
He studied music and sociology in Bern. As a youth worker in the community of
Moosseedorf, he was troubled by the focus on teenagers with problems and deficits. He
decided to start Infoklick with two other colleagues in 2000 to stimulate the potential in
young people to engage in society by providing them with information, financial and inkind
support. Markus Gander has also co-founded a Swiss network for youth development,
conceptualized the Moosseedorf Center to host a range of youth organizations from across
Switzerland and is actively engaged in a range of projects that have been spun-off by
Infoklick."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Gustavo Gennuso came to Bariloche almost thirty years ago to study nuclear engineering at the prestigious Balseiro Institute. While he continued until 2000 to work in that capacity, his most important contribution has been to transforming the educational systems that keep young, rural, poor Argentines from taking advantage of opportunities for personal and professional growth. In setting up schools to provide job skills for youth, he and his colleagues ended up putting in place a host of other initiatives to support improvements in people’s lives, including quality primary and secondary education, day care centers, business apprenticeships, teacher training, dental care, youth and sports clubs and centers for the elderly. Together with poor disenfranchised communities, Gente Nueva has even spearheaded significant advances in the area of property rights. To date, more than 5,000 students have passed through Gente Nueva’s classrooms, and an additional 3,000 have benefited directly from its various programs. Among the most important innovations Gente Nueva has pioneered is the concept of “community managed public schools” that are free but run by Gente Nueva and the communities it serves. In this model, teachers’ salaries are supported by the state whilst the selection of the teachers is made by Gente Nueva and the community according to specific criteria they have developed to safeguard the quality of these learning institutions. The “community managed public school” was approved by a state law in 1987, calling for these schools to be free and supported by state funds. In 2006, Argentina passed a national law recognizing the legitimacy of the community managed public school, taking the model pioneered by Gente Nueva. While Gente Nueva never set out to influence directly national and state public policy, as the organization gained legitimacy and credibility for successfully taking on seemingly insurmountable challenges, the government began seeking its counsel and involvement, particularly in the area of educational reform. In this way Gustavo Gennuso and Gente Nueva have exercised the true role of the social entrepreneurial organization – designing, testing and measuring innovative approaches to social and economic problems, turning these into opportunities to reverse trends and mindsets so that public policy can, in turn, accelerate their adoption on a much greater scale.
<b>Background</b>
Today in Argentina, approximately 50% of the population is poor, and 20% is indigent. The richest 10% are 30 times wealthier than the poorest 20%. Unemployment is high, and even higher in Bariloche where a quarter of the population do not have work – a figure that increases to 75% in those communities where Gente Nueva initiated its activities. A culture of apathy and dependence characterizes many of these communities and is passed from parents to children. A number of governmental and non-governmental organizations have sought to address poverty and unemployment but their offerings focus on training alone – leaving out the development of entrepreneurial qualities that enable people to create and run a small business. In addition, such programs focus on the individual, neglecting the creation of social networks and other types of support that are instrumental in helping individuals advance towards their objectives. Gente Nueva has helped build the strategic alliances across local institutions engaged in productive activities, including businesses, educational centers, and individual professionals that can help each young person develop the entrepreneurial attitudes as well as the technical and administrative skills that are important to success.
<b>Strategy</b>
The principal mission of Gente Nueva is to ensure that the poor are empowered to act on their own behalf, using education to enable that process. But as Gente Nueva went about setting up educational institutions in collaboration with the communities, other needs kept being detected – land rights, health, the situation of older adults and of youth, to name a few. Over time, these aspects were incorporated into the activities of Gente Nueva. Today, Gente Nueva has 10 “community managed public schools” located in the poorest areas of Bariloche. Each school becomes a community center after school hours. Of the schools, two are pre-schools that take children from 45 days of age to 5 years; two are primary schools, three are secondary which also include adult education, and three are technical schools that include basic education and skills building for young people and adults. All are supported by the government that pays for teachers’ salaries while Gente Nueva and the community are responsible for the selection and monitoring of teachers and aspects related to infrastructure, upkeep, and food. Preparation and insertion of young people into the labor force is a primary driver for the organization and to that end, Gente Nueva provides them with the skills for specific job opportunities in Bariloche and elsewhere, and also connects them with employers. As part of the enterprise-creating activities, Gente Nueva’s technical schools bring together groups of three to six person teams with one professional to support the design and venture shaping process. These teams present their projects and Gente Nueva assesses the feasibility of each, awarding seed money to those that are favorably assessed, and providing further guidance to those that are not. Gente Nueva monitors the venture’s progress, lending support where needed. In addition to affecting directly the lives of the poor in Bariloche, Gente Nueva is making its presence felt in the nation by influencing public policy, particularly in the area of youth and adult employment education, including teacher training to include ways to encourage students to develop entrepreneurial attitudes.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Gustavo was born in a conservative rural town in the province of Buenos Aires. A gifted student, he won a scholarship to study nuclear engineering at the Instituto Balseiro in Bariloche. The courses were tough and students stuck to their books. But Gustavo found himself wanting to be involved in something other than studying. One Sunday, a fellow student invited him to church, and he went along because he had nothing better to do. Yet he found himself inspired by the priest who gave the sermon. It turned out the priest was working in one of the poorest areas of Bariloche, struggling to start a school there to address the glaring educational gaps in that community. Gustavo, who had always been attracted to challenges, realized he had found a significantly different challenge to nuclear engineering – and perhaps a more complicated one. Among his concerns was the need to prepare the poor to access full employment that would open opportunities for personal and collective improvement. In 1983, the first school, a primary school, was instituted and in 1985, he started the first job training school for the poor. As a result of the success of these efforts, Gustavo and his colleagues went on to spin off all the other schools and initiatives that are part of Gente Nueva today. Gustavo has recently founded a social business named "Emprendimientos Tecnología para la Vida" (Life Technologies Ventures) with the mission to select, manufacture and diffuse sustainable technologies for the human development of the poorest sectors. This is in line with being a social, economical and enviromentally sustainable company. This company is for labor inclusion of young people as well. Recently ETV won the first prize in Business in Development Challenge Argentina."
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Egypt, 2008
<b>The Innovation</b>
Sherif El Ghamrawy has fought relentlessly for the sustainability and conservation of Egypt’s natural resources on both land and sea. He is the founder of two complementary organizations. He pioneered Basata as the first eco-lodge in Egypt in 1986, thereby establishing South Sinai and the gulf of Aqaba as an eco-tourism destination with an emphasis on cultural exchange and respect for the environment. With the large scale developments that followed, Hemaya, a local NGO, was then created to deal with waste management on 150 kilometers of coastline with marine and reef protection patrols and to empower local communities to run these programs.
<b>Background</b>
Egypt’s citizens generate approximately 25,000 tons of garbage daily, and that number increases annually. The Sinai Peninsula and Gulf of Aqaba are particularly vulnerable regions, where the consequences of massive tourism in Sharm El Sheikh and Dahab have had a dramatic impact on both land and sea in only one decade. From overflowing landfills, hazardous disposal of trash like burning or dumping into the sea, little attention has been paid to waste management and environmental protection. In addition, these lands were almost solely inhabited by about 15,000 Bedouins who are completely omitted from any tourism plans by developers, yet suffer from the impacts (such as loss of livestock to disease from rubbish dumps).
<b>Strategy</b>
Basata started in an undeveloped bay called Nuweiba 22 years ago as a unique eco-lodge, putting great concern on environmental protection, social integration and development and preventing negative impact of tourism to the local society. Today, it is one of the few unspoiled bays and coral reefs left on the coast. About 12 years after starting Basata, a rapid development in tourism started in the area, causing different kinds of pollution, particularly solid waste, from which arose the need to establish an organization to monitor, regulate and provide awareness and a legal framework to minimize the impact of tourism on nature and local society. Hemaya was born and also started creating other jobs than tourism for locals Egyptians.
When Sherif and the Hemaya team first approached the problem of solid waste, they realized that they were dealing with three different types of wastes; Tourist establishments' waste, the Bedouins' waste, and that of the people who moved from the Nile Delta to the area. They realized that they had to find a new way to deal with these different types of waste, and so designed a system to have the waste sorted at its source. Hemaya collects the waste for roughly 60,000 people from hotels and camps, households, and cities' streets on a daily basis in three cities of South Sinai Governorate; Taba, Nuweiba, and Dahab. This waste would otherwise have never be taken care of, or dealt with in an environmentally friendly manner – it was previously dumped or burned.
Waste is sorted at source into organic and non-organic. The organic is distributed amongst the Bedouins as food for cattle, whereas the non-organic goes to the transfer station built by Hemaya, to be sorted into 15 kinds of plastic, 40 kinds of glass, and all different types of metals, cloth, and paper. It is then packed, or shredded or pressed and sent off to Cairo for the recycling process. Only 15% of the waste collected is deemed un-recyclable and therefore dumped. Half of the income earned by selling the recyclable waste is distributed among the workers.
Hemaya has also expanded its activities so as to be more interactive with the community and to affect more lives in direct and indirect ways. It started initiating clean up campaigns organized with local schools, getting the teachers and the students involved in cleaning the city, the beaches, and the valleys, and educating them to keep them clean. It aesthetically renovated Nuweiba and Taba, by planting 120 palm trees and revitalizing the ideas of green and clean. Due to the trust built with governmental authorities, Hemaya is also uniquely responsible for the cleanliness, maintenance and security of Dahab hospital and soon to be responsible for Nuweiba and Taba hospitals as soon as they are complete. Hemaya also takes action on coastal protection through a reef watch patrolling system, by collaborating with authorities to make sure that no illegal fishing takes place, and to preserve the corals that are in an ecologically critical situation. The reef rangers are local Bedouins who know the area very well. This is the first time Bedouins are given such responsibility and empowered and skilled in jobs that are diversified from tourism
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Sherif El Ghamrawy was born in Agouza, Egypt and studied at the German school in Cairo, later receiving his degree in Civil Engineering from Cairo University. He immediately turned his attention to environmental protection which was mostly unrecognised at the time and was a self employed free lancer contractor/consultant on environmental affairs when he finally found the place which would fulfil his dreams in 1982 – in South Sinai. It took four years to get permission to build Basata, the first eco-lodge in Egypt. It is through Sherif’s personal commitment to the environment and the local community of Bedouin Egyptians that he has been able to get the support, network and resources to establish the waste management and environmental protection work of Hemaya. He remains active in environmental affairs in Egypt and abroad he is a consultant to EU as well as a trainer in environmental literacy. Sherif has received numerous awards for Promoting Tourism, Best Solid Waste Management programs, WTM international award for best project in marine environment and Best NGO in South Sinai for 2007."
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stdClass::$created_at = "2003/01/01 00:00:00 +0000"
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stdClass::$title = "Dener J. Giovanini"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.renctas.org.br"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/1y"
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stdClass::$organization_name = "Renctas"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Renctas is riding the global wave of heightened environmental consciousness and taking advantage of the growing awareness among Brazilians of their country’s unique flora and fauna and the need to protect these treasures. It is also using the Internet to catalyze a national movement to curtail trade in wild animals. In only four years, and thanks to the confluence of these trends, Renctas has been able to dramatically lower the threshold of tolerance in Brazil to animal trafficking. While wildlife trade in Brazil is illegal, the laws were seldom enforced and selling wild animals as pets around the world has been commonplace. Thanks to the work of Renctas and its collaboration with other like-minded institutions, including governmental agencies and the business sector, animal trafficking is now denounced and prosecuted as a crime. To achieve this massive national attitudinal change, Renctas works on three fronts. First, it raises national awareness of animal trafficking, educating the general public on this issue. Secondly, it supports public authorities responsible for the surveillance and control of trafficking. Finally, it conducts research to further improve its public outreach activities. Renctas has provided the public at large with a web-based mechanism for reporting such cases so that the authorities can pursue the perpetrators. Renctas works closely with those most likely to encounter illegal trafficking activities, including agents from federal, civil, forest and military police.
<b>Background</b>
The 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has failed to successfully regulate the international wildlife trade. Trade in wild animals has become a global industry of several billion dollars annually, primarily because of the combined lack of public awareness, the strength of vested interests and lack of legal enforcement. In Brazil alone, the annual turnover in illegal trafficking of plants and animals is US$ 1.5 billion. The trafficking is controlled by 400 gangs and is the third largest illegal trade after drugs and weapons.
<b>Strategy</b>
RENCTAS is a young organization with 12 full-time employees and an apprenticeship program with 8 students. However, Renctas has been able to mobilize an active body of 1,200 volunteers to its cause from all segments of society. It has also formed sound partnerships with other entities working to curtail trafficking in wild animals, including the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, different police branches and Interpol. Among the business entities that support and work with Renctas are BR Distributors and Furnas Centrais Electricas. These strategic alliances have enabled Renctas to work within a powerful network, pooling resources and taking advantage of different platforms, particularly the Internet, for engaging all social actors in a concerted effort to address this harmful practice. Renctas has generated interest from other countries in the Americas, including the US, Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay and Peru to initiate a South American Network to fight trafficking of wild animals.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Dener Giovanini has been an active environmentalist since the age of 16. He studied Biological Sciences, but left his studies to help found a number of environmental organizations, including the Brazilian Green Party. Since starting the highly visible work at Renctas, he has received several threats to his life."
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stdClass::$title = "Nihat Gokyigit"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.tekfen.com.tr"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/1z"
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stdClass::$organization_name = "Tekfen Holding"
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Turkey, 2009
Nihat Gökyigit was a successful business entrepreneur, presiding over a large, diversified company
particularly active in the construction business, when he decided to focus on starting TEMA in 1992
together with a partner. He gathered 30 business leaders in Turkey to help set up the largest
environmental organization in the country. TEMA is the umbrella organization for more than 100 distinct
projects in the fields of environmental education, reforestation, policy recommendations and fighting soil
erosion. More than 2 million Turks have gone through one course or another of TEMA, and many have
become volunteer supporters in the meantime.
Nihat Gökyigit’s hometown is in a secluded, pristine province bordering Georgia. He wanted to identify a
way in which the inhabitants would find sources of income that would preserve the rich biodiversity rather
than destroy it, like the prevailing deforestation. With a team of scientists and villagers, he discovered that
the region featured the otherwise extinct pure Caucasian bee, a species superior to the prevailing bees in
the country. The honey is currently marketed across Turkey, also in an organic variety.
Nihat continuously searches for additional projects along the same lines and has established a
guesthouse in the region, which accommodates ecotours from around the world. His latest company is
dedicated to industrial forest plantation to ensure a sustainable and profitable lumbering practice in the
country. It has planted more than one million saplings in the last three years.
His private family foundation, ANG, is running the country’s most prominent botanical garden in the
middle of a highway junction in Istanbul. There, he constantly innovates and researches to identify the
best species for cultivation in the country and contribute to increased productivity and food security."
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stdClass::$title = "Javier Gonzalez"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.abcdespanol.com"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/1A"
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgELycwjvN4" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Javier González's abcdespañol ("Spanish abc") is a simple and highly effective game-based system that teaches reading, writing and math skills to children and adults. Abcdespañol does not require a classroom or rigid time periods, nor does it grade students. Rather, it presents activities that draw upon group interaction and cooperation to motivate students and stimulate interest in continued learning. Using abcdespañol, students learn to read and write in 90–120 hours. Used in Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the system has enabled over one million people to achieve literacy and numeracy.
<b>Background</b>
Across Latin America, many students repeat grades because they fail to meet standards in reading and math. Not only does this situation increase the cost of national education, it also leads to psychological barriers to learning among many students. González came up with the idea for abcdespañol while playing dominoes with his students' parents. He realized that, although they could not read or write, the parents consistently beat him at the game by using deductive logic, memorization, inference and other mental abilities needed for learning to read. This observation lead him to believe that the cause of low reading standards and high repetition rates among students was the rote learning methods employed in Latin American schools. González decided to figure out how to apply the skills observed in the parents in order to facilitate learning of reading, writing and math.
<b>Strategy</b>
González works directly with education authorities in many countries, sharing the abcdespañol methodology with a core team of national educators or people committed to their communities (not necessarily teachers) who will become the technique's multipliers. Each one of them learns the methodology in order to pass it on to others, scaling up in number to create a solid group of trained people who will spread the methodology to target communities. In this fashion, the system has the capacity to reach thousands of people, teaching them to read and/or do math in a period of three to four months. Rather than assuming a traditional authority-figure role, the teacher motivates the students, ensuring their smooth progress. In the abcdespañol system, students focus on relating to others, sharing ideas and seeking compromise. While playing the game, they broaden their mental structures in order to grasp the necessary written language and math capabilities while deepening their emotional intelligence and problem solving skills. The same strategy applies in working with adults, though the complexity of the experiences will expand the context of language. The abcdespañol method has been adapted for teaching Spanish, English, Portuguese and four indigenous languages: K'iché, Mam, Kaqchikel and Q'eqchi'. The system has played a significant role in reducing the illiteracy rate in some Central American countries. In Guatemala alone, illiteracy dropped from sixty to thirty percent from 1995 to 1999.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
"What is necessary for social well-being is a warm heart, a cool mind, the capacity to be surprised, the ability to cause change without falling into self-importance, a soul that is connected to people and hands that are kept busy with concrete things," says Professor Javier González. His lifelong devotion to education has evolved through many different roles and contexts. Believing that effective language learning could be motivated through creative materials, González began by writing and publishing his own interactive textbooks with exercises that encouraged discovery. While these publications found great acceptance among teachers, González continued searching for additional ways to make the learning process more interesting. After years of experimentation and research, he developed the didactic game that is today the centerpiece of abcdespañol. He has received numerous awards in recognition of its effectiveness in combating illiteracy."
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stdClass::$title = "David Green"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/1B"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
David Green has worked with many organizations to make medical technology and healthcare services sustainable, affordable and accessible to all, particularly to the poorer two-thirds of humanity. His most significant work is the development of an economic paradigm which he calls “humanized capitalism” for making healthcare products and services available and affordable to the poor.This paradigm of ‘compassionate capitalism’ utilizes production capacity and surplus revenue to serve all economic strata, rich and poor alike, in a way that is both financially self-sustaining and affordable to all members of society.
In 1992, Green directed the establishment of Aurolab (India), a not-for-profit manufacturing facility in South India. Aurolab is one of the largest manufacturers of intraocular lenses (IOLs) in the world with 10% of the global market share. With sales to 109 countries, Aurolab has sold over 7 million lenses since its inception. IOLs are surgically implanted in the eye to replace the cloudy lens during cataract surgery. Cataract disease is the main cause of blindness and visual disability in the world. Aurolab sells lenses for US$ 2- 4 that are priced at US$ 150 in the developed world, thereby helping countless patients that otherwise could never afford such treatment to preserve their sight and ability to work. Green also directed the establishment of suture manufacturing at Aurolab, and the company has reduced the price of ophthalmic sutures from US$ 200 per box to US$ 25. Previously, only 10% of suture products were sold to developing countries, where 70% of the world’s population lives.
Green is now turning his attention to hearing impairment. With partners, he is establishing Conversion Sound, a social enterprise dedicated to making high quality hearing aids affordable and available to all who need them, regardless of ability to pay. WHO estimates that 278 million people have severe hearing impairment. WHO estimates that the global need for hearing aids is 32 million units per year. Despite this need, only 7 million hearing aids were sold worldwide in 2006 and less than 12% went to developing countries home to 70% of the global population. Conversion Sound is developing an inexpensivedigital hearing aid that is combined with a unique system that reduces the cost and complexity to efficiently measure hearing loss and program and fit hearing aids. Through collaboration with leading social entrepreneurs, Conversion Sound will develop unconventional cost effective distribution channels reaching the poorest of humanity. Green has also helped develop high-volume, quality eye care programs that are affordable to the poor and are self-sustaining from user fees. He helped develop Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India, which performs 300,000 surgeries per year, making it the largest eye care system in the world. 70% of the care is provided free of charge or below cost, yet the hospital is able to generate substantial surplus revenue. Green has replicated this cost recovery model in Nepal, Malawi, Egypt, Guatemala, El Salvador, Tibet, Tanzania and Kenya and has assisted other institutions in providing sustainability planning services and training, such as the Al Noor Foundation in Egypt and the Lions Aravind Institute for Community Ophthalmology in India. He is now collaborating with the International Agency for Prevention of Blindness and Deutsche Bank to create an “Eye Fund” that will improve financing for sustainable eye care.
<b>Background</b>
Green’s efforts are underpinned by the concept of compassionate capitalism, which centers on the choice to use profit and production capacity for service delivery to the poor. It emphasizes the provision of high-quality service to all economic strata, rich and poor alike. It relies upon efficiency, productivity and sound financial management to generate surplus revenue, which is used to cross-subsidize services and products offered free of charge or below cost, and to expand service delivery. "Free" is the lowest price, and everyone is eligible to receive service, regardless of his or her ability to pay. Better quality at a price that is affordable to a broader segment of the population generates consumer demand, which increases volume and leads to further reductions in unit costs.
<b>Strategy</b>
The cost structure and technology of a given product and manufacturing process is demystified via careful research and forensic cost accounting. By gaining control of the relevant technology, production and distribution, price may be controlled to ensure affordability and accessibility for the intended beneficiaries. Another key aspect of this economic model is multi-tiered pricing. Prices are set according to the paying capacity of the local population. This model capitalizes on income differences within national markets to make medical services available to the poor at an affordable price or at no charge.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
David Green's philosophy of development emphasizes ‘deconstructing reality’ to see that much of the world's problems are due to human artifice that has created economic paradigms favoring the concentration of wealth into the hands of the few. He addresses the pricing disparity that exists and works to put basic human needs like sight and hearing into the realm of affordability for the blind and visually disabled, and hard of hearing. David is a MacArthur Fellow as well as an Ashoka Fellow, and is recognized by Schwab Foundation as a leading social entrepreneur. He will be honored as the 2009 recipient of the “Spirit of Helen Keller” award, given by Helen Keller International for humanitarian efforts in blindness prevention."
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stdClass::$created_at = "2009/09/01 16:37:43 +0000"
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stdClass::$title = "Jorge G. Gronda"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.cegin.com.ar"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/1C"
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stdClass::$organization_name = "Centro Ginecologico Integral (CEGIN)"
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stdClass::$description = "Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Argentina, 2005
<b>The Innovation</b>
CEGIN SRL is a completely self-financed and profitable company, which offers accessibly priced health services to mothers, their children and women in poor rural areas. Thanks to its innovative approach to meeting market demands, the company is able to offer health services for significantly less than private medical coverage, and of a better quality than many public services. The original health centre in Jujuy was founded seventeen years ago with three employees. Although Gronda’s original partners did not share his philosophy, he developed a healthcare methodology focused on prevention. His patients quickly began to appreciate the services offered and adjusted to CEGIN’s extended opening hours, an element of their strategy which increases the volume of patients treated at the centre each day. The main centre at Jujuy currently manages 130 patients each day, performs 1000 tests for cervical and ovarian cancer and treats 500 patients per year. The profits finance the extension of health services to the poor and those in remote areas, sometimes reachable only by foot. Gronda makes these field visits twice a month, along with other CEGIN employees.
<b>Background</b>
The Argentina crisis has reduced the number of people able to afford medical coverage. Many have lost their right to public healthcare (‘obra social’), while others (particularly indigenous communities) never had any. The healthcare options currently available include the public health system, which can be inefficient with long queues and mediocre service, and the private health system, which can be prohibitively expensive. There is traditionally a distance between the medical profession and the public, making it difficult for doctors to understand or treat the primary needs of the community. Doctors have tended to seek the prestige of a public sector career rather than trying to meet the medical profession’s responsibilities to the community. The rate of cervical and ovarian cancer in the province of Jujuy is among the highest in the world, due to a combination of genetic factors and sexual practices. With yearly checkups, the chances of developing cancer can be massively reduced.
<b>Strategy</b>
Fixed costs of providing basic health care are high, while the incremental cost of treating each additional patient is minimal. By providing excellent and convenient services, with extended operating hours and the best available equipment, CEGIN attracts a large volume of patients. This in turn allows the quality of the service to be maintained at a much lower cost to each patient. CEGIN attends both patients with state medical coverage (‘obra social’) and those without. It sells membership cards to the public for a small cost, registering them as CEGIN clients. With the card, a patient has access to consultations at any CEGIN center for a reduced fee. Any treatment subsequently prescribed is either provided by CEGIN (or a CEGIN partner) at less than half of the normal market price or, for some illnesses, the patient may be referred to a public hospital. Patients from rural areas who are referred for treatment are either transported to the cities or treated by CEGIN specialists during their regular field visits. The company collaborates with various organizations; partnerships have been formed with healthcare specialists offering services not covered by CEGIN. Partners are selected based on their philosophy and the quality of services provided, and must conform to the norms and practices of CEGIN (a manual is currently being created, including the practice of extended opening hours). By partnering with CEGIN, private specialists benefit from a high volume of patients without incurring any risk (the reduced price paid by each patient more than covers the incremental cost of treatment). A pharmacy offers discounts of 10-20% on medicines sold to CEGIN clients, thereby increasing their volume of sales. Agreements have been signed with universities to offer practical rotations of a year (compulsory for all medical students) at CEGIN centers in remote rural areas. Gronda works with Rosario Quispe, an indigenous entrepreneur who manages a health center in the Pampa to treat a community of 3,500 women (the women pay for treatment with wool and other products, which Quispe can then sell in the cities). A community microcredit fund has also been created. CEGIN doctors are atypical, and are hired on the basis of their personal integrity and moral values. They are often local and recently graduated, with experience treating patients in rural areas and a desire to break down traditional hierarchies in the medical profession. These doctors receive generous salaries, earning three or four times more than they would in the public health system. CEGIN doctors are obliged to join one 3-4 day medical tour to remote rural areas at least once a year (on average, doctors elect to join 2-3 tours per year). The company is completely self-financing, and profitable, and plans are currently underway to build several new centres in the province. The company has engaged consultants to carry out impact studies and to develop a plan for growth by franchising, while ensuring the integrity of the franchisees.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Gronda retired from public administration because of the failures he perceived in the public health system. He wanted to diminish the distance between the medical profession and the people, and specifically, the inability of the system to meet basic primary health needs. Gronda has a great talent for relating to people and gaining the trust of the relatively timid indigenous women and their children. His clear objectives are to reduce the cancer rate and provide basic health services for all. With a reputation for integrity, Gronda is easily able to generate good will, create partnerships and expand his operations. He is one of the ten winners of the 2008 World Business and Development Awards (WBDA) with the project Sistema Ser (SSer). The objective of Sistema Ser (SSer) is to improve the lives of those at the bottom of the economic and social pyramid by increasing their access to health care. SSer has his clinical sites in the province of Jujuy (Argentina) one of most backward in the country with high fertility rate and many problematic health, social and educational indicators. The central offices and main clinic (CEGIN) are in the capital city of San Salvador, serving around 20,000 since its inception."
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stdClass::$title = "Ronald Grzywinski"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.shorebankcorp.com"
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stdClass::$url = "http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/s/1D"
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stdClass::$organization_name = "ShoreBank Corporation"
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stdClass::$description = "Schwab Fellows of the World Economic Forum
<b>The Innovation</b>
ShoreBank refers to a set of companies grouped under the holding company, ShoreBank Corporation, the first and leading community development financial institution in the USA supporting economic equity and a healthy environment. ShoreBank started out as an experiment in 1973, but it has had far-reaching impact on the structure of the banking industry in the USA and abroad ShoreBank was created by Ron Grzywinski, Mary Houghton, Milton Davis, and Jim Fletcher Although none of them claimed to know much about banking, they believed that a commercial bank, flanked by complementary development organizations, could restore neighborhood economies, including many of those in their hometown of Chicago. In the 1970s, they purchased the South Shore National Bank on Chicago’s South Side. The bank had been losing deposits and staff, blaming its downturn on racial change in its neighborhood. For the first few years after buying the bank, Ron, Mary, Milton, and Jim focused on gaining the trust of the local community and revitalizing the investment climate.
As a result of their efforts, the bank booked loans to good borrowers after a careful assessment of local property values, encouraging the market to normalize. More lenders entered the market and property values in South Shore rose faster between 1970 and 1980 than any other community in Chicago. In 1985, then Governor Bill Clinton asked ShoreBank to help start a community development bank similar to ShoreBank, in his state of Arkansas. The governor was so impressed with the impact of their efforts in his home state that when he became US President, he enacted federal legislation that spawned the Community Development Financial Institution program, spearheading community development banks across the USA. But already in the early 1980s, the co-founders of ShoreBank began to look beyond national borders to expand their model. In 1983, they signed their first consulting contract to advise Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Today, ShoreBank, headquartered in Chicago, is a USD $2.4 billion company that owns, operates, invests in, and advises development banks around the world.
<b>Background</b>
The founders of ShoreBank set out to change the social forces that led to declining neighborhoods, rudderless lives and hopelessness. To do that, they had to turn the banking industry and public policy related to it, upside down. The most important drawback to achieving their goals through the formal banking system at the time was the issue of distribution of the profits. Ron and Mary wanted to reinvest a significant portion of the profits to expand the program so as to widen its social impact. So they set out to start a different kind of bank. They seized the opportunity created by an amendment to the 1971 Federal Bank Holding Company Act, which expanded permissible activities for bank holding companies to include investment in community development corporations. Under that amendment, they asked, could a bank holding company be a community development corporation? When they bought the South Shore National Bank in 1973, they applied the law to create a new kind of bank which has now spread around the world - the community development bank.
<b>Strategy</b>
From the outset, Shorebank’s primary purpose has been to do development work and not to maximize financial returns or capital for its shareholders. Of course, it must also be profitable to meet regulatory requirements. This tension has been less of a problem than one might predict. In the early years, turning a profit was a key to survival, but that profit was the vehicle for attaining large-scale impact for low income clients. Grounding in a set of values and principles which now encompass conservation as well as community development - along with a culture of pragmatic innovation and experimentation - has been essential to sustaining ShoreBank’s mission and entrepreneurial heart. In reality, the bank’s most mission-focused lending is also its most profitable. In 1990, ShoreBank launched its first long-term international program, the ShoreBank Advisory Services (SAS) beginning in Poland, and expanding to Russia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Romania, Georgia, India, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Northern Ireland. As the work matured, SAS in 2006 became ShoreBank International (SBI). Shorebank also created a private investment company, ShoreCap International (SCI), with an international set of shareholders that made minority equity investments in 16 locally managed African, Asian and eastern European regulated financial institutions specializing in small business or microfinance lending. A non-profit capacity building affiliate, ShoreCap Exchange provides technical assistance and peer-to-peer learning opportunities among investee institutions and more broadly in the microfinance and small business lending field.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Ron Grzywinski grew up in a blue collar neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Of Polish background, he graduated from college without ever having taken a business course and went to work for IBM selling computers to banks in the Chicago area. The work left him uninspired and in 1963 he got a job with a small banking group and was assigned to its bank in Lockport, Illinois. Three years later, he was its President. At that time, the owner of the bank in Lockport became interested in buying another bank in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, home to the University of Chicago and a rare American instance of a racially integrated neighborhood, albeit one surrounded by African American neighborhoods. For the first time he became really conscious of racial divisions in the US. Ron brought in Milton Davis, an African American civil rights activist who led Chicago’s chapter of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality. Ron found Mary Houghton looking for something more challenging after a stint at an insurance company and a foundation. She and Milton structured the minority lending program and it took off. Milton turned to his friend, Jim Fletcher, then working for Citizen’s Action Program in the Office of Economic Opportunity during the Johnson presidency. Jim joined in 1969."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Institute for OneWorld Health is the first non-profit pharmaceutical company in the United States. Its mission is to develop safe, effective and affordable new medicines for people with infectious diseases in the developing world. OneWorld Health conceives implements and manages complex drug development projects for neglected diseases. Its expertise includes: integrated project management, pre-clinical development (pharmacology, toxicology), chemistry, clinical development (clinical study design and conduct/reporting of clinical studies), submissions to regulatory authorities in the developing world and to the US FDA, and business/legal expertise necessary to ensure global access to medicines through local partnerships.
<b>Background</b>
Most of the so-called “neglected” infectious diseases are unheard of in industrialized countries. These include leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, onchoceriasis, African sleeping sickness, lymphatic filariasis, and Chagas disease. Others, such as diarrhoeal disease, are ubiquitous, but their impact is most severe in the developing world: two million children under age five die each year from diarrhea and more than one million children die each year from malaria. Moreover, it has been estimated that only 10% of global spending on health is devoted to diseases or conditions that account for 90% of the global disease burden. Of the approximately 1,500 new drugs approved in the last 25 years, less than 1% was for neglected infectious diseases, because the diseases associated with global poverty are not the same as in the West.
<b>Strategy</b>
Safe, affordable and effective new therapies are lacking for many infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poorest people. Meanwhile, numerous potential cures exist but remain undeveloped. OneWorld Health was founded to unite this specific need with promising industry and academic scientific research, in order to address this specific global health inequity. Through the model created by OneWorld Health, pharmaceutical companies and universities can share and/or donate intellectual property, lend experts or make financial contributions. This enhances their essential role in global health and allows them to receive acknowledgement for their contributions. This new paradigm for global health, which encourages collaboration with OneWorld Health, can shave years and millions of dollars off the traditional new drug development path. OneWorld Health currently has three active drug development programs; all are funded by grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
1) Visceral Leishmaniasis: Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL, black fever or kala-azar) is the second most deadly parasitic disease in the world following malaria. VL is a fatal systemic infection caused by the Leishmania parasite; transmission occurs through the bite of a sand fly, causing chronic fever, weight loss, severe anemia, and death due to infection, organ failure or hemorrhage. VL is endemic in 7 countries, of the developing world, and the population at risk is estimated at 200 million. Annual deaths exceed 300,000, more than half of these in India. In August 2006, OneWorld Health’s first new medicine, Paromomycin IM Injection, was approved by the Drug Controller General of India for VL, and also by Bangladesh. Paromomycin has been added to the WHO Essential Medicines List.
2) Malaria: Malaria is a life-threatening disease transmitted by mosquitoes infected with the Plasmodium parasites. All over the world artemisinin combination therapy is used to cure malaria. Some years ago, the cost of artemisinin was so high that a cure cost more than $25 in Africa. OneWorld Health and its pharmaceutical partners have reduced the cost of artemisinin by more than 10-fold by genetically engineering yeast to produce this critical medicine. The development is completing, and humans will begin receiving the new medicine in 2010.
3) Diarrheal Disease: Diarrheal diseases account for approximately 2 million deaths annually in children under the age of 5. It is especially prevalent in developing countries, and most deaths are due to dehydration. OneWorld Health has partnered with several pharmaceutical companies to develop new anti-secretory medicines to complement the traditional treatment, oral dehydration solution, by helping the body to retain precious water and salt.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Victoria Hale established her expertise in all stages of biopharmaceutical drug development at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Her corporate experience was gained at Genentech, the world’s first biotechnology company. She earned her PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She has taught at the FDA and at
Universities, and is an Advisor to the WHO for building ethical review capacity in the developing world. Dr. Hale’s recent honors include being elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academies in 2007, and being named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2006. She is an outstanding social entrepreneur by Ashoka, the Skoll Foundation, and the Schwab Foundation. In 2005, The Economist named Hale the recipient of its Social and Economic Innovation award. That same year OneWorld Health was awarded the Social Responsibility Award at the prestigious Pharmaceutical Achievement Awards competition."
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Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Y6UeLqoD0" target="_blank">Video</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Harish has pioneered access to rural solar electrification for below poverty line families through a combination of customized lighting systems, innovative doorstep financing, and an understanding of market needs of different user groups. SELCO’s approach to the lack of working electricity through much of rural India relies on three tenets – the poor can afford sustainable technologies; the poor can maintain sustainable technologies; and indeed, one can run a commercially viable venture serving the needs of the poor. Specifically, SELCO:
1) creates low-cost customized lighting solutions for the poor. The core business of SELCO is the sale of PhotoVoltaic (PV) solar-home-systems that provide lighting but also are suitable for radios and fans. A system is customized and installed to customer needs and budget.
2) Works with banks to structure innovative financing for customers A standard four light system costs users approximately 18.000 Rs. SELCO works with banks and MFIs to create financing mechanisms that suit the budget. For example, a user will pay a small down payment and then pay monthly installments of 300 to 400 Rs over five years. The user can pay from extra income brought in from additional work made possible with the light and savings from eliminating costly fossil fuels with customized payment schedules.
3) Creates solar-related businesses and entrepreneurs In addition, SELCO further spreads the sustainable technology and creates livelihoods by creating ‘business associates’. These entrepreneurs lease solar powered lights to street vendors in the evening. Furthermore, while SELCO focuses on energy needs, its creative financing model can be spread to other sectors including housing, water, and so on where savings and income can be realized with viable alternatives.
<b>Background</b>
Around 57% of the Indian population does not have electricity and for many more, the supply is unreliable. In addition, those living on less than $2 a day in India annually produce close to a billion tons in CO2 emissions showing that the developing markets must be addressed with the issue of climate change.
<b>Strategy</b>
Rather than focus on a saturated solar technology production field, SELCO brings this technology to the Base of the Pyramid using financing mechanisms to make the technology affordable and productive for the end user. To do so, SELCO pioneers linkages between technology, financing, energy services, income generation, and quality of life. The organization runs its grassroots operations through 25 Energy Service Centres (ESCs). The ESCs market, sell, install, and service SELCO’s products. SELCO has an ESC within two hours of all its clients to provide timely servicing and improves the durability and reliability of SELCO’s products. This proximity also develops a relationship with the end user to allow instant honest feedback that improves functionality of SELCO services SELCO has also created 22 business associates. These solar entrepreneurs will purchase 40 to 160 solar kits including the panels, batteries, and lights on a five year loan from the bank. They then lease these batteries and light fixtures to local night vendors. The vendors normally spend 14 Rs a day for kerosene whereas the solar vendor is able to provide better lighting under safe conditions for only 12 Rs a day.
Thus far he has reached 80,000 clients across Karnataka and Kerala and has recently moved into Gujarat. Solar electrification has led to everything from better education outcomes for children who can now study at night to increased livelihoods from nighttime vegetable vendors.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Dr. H Harish Hande is an engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and he earned his Doctorate in energy engineering (with a solar specialty) at the University of Massachusetts. Harish originally started his PhD thesis in heat transfer. When visiting the Dominican Republic, he saw areas with worse poverty than India that were using solar energy and decided to shift his academic focus. Upon returning to Massachusetts, he flung his heat transfer thesis into the river. He then started anew on solar electrification in rural areas and conducted much of his research in India, Sri Lanka, and the Dominican Republic. He is widely recognized as an international expert in the field of renewable energy."
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4qQKlcejEQ" target="_blank">Video 1</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9erx2SaJlo&feature=channel" target="_blank">Video 2</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
The Rural Development Institute (RDI) is an international non-profit organization that partners with governments and NGOs to help the rural poor in developing countries gain ownership of land, thus alleviating poverty on a massive scale. Based in Seattle, Washington, with offices in Beijing, Bangalore, Delhi, and Jakarta, RDI has been working for over 40 years, in over 40 countries, and has helped attain secure land rights for over 400 million people, providing a leveraged, sustainable and generational foundation for poverty alleviation.
<b>Background</b>
Most families in the developing world rely on agriculture for their survival, but only a minority enjoys secure rights to land. Empirical evidence and history show that once land is in the hands of the rural poor a progressive cycle of growth out of poverty, escape from under-nutrition, and reduction in violence can occur. Land rights encourage farmers to invest and increase their incomes, allowing them to bring their children out of the fields and into the classrooms, reducing urban migration, and enhancing political, economic and social stability. In 1966, Roy Prosterman left his Wall Street law career to devote himself to this social transformation. His initial work in Vietnam in the late 1960s led to legislation that provided land ownership to a million tenant farmer families in South Vietnam – a program that has since been instituted in all of Vietnam and has helped Vietnam become the second largest rice exporter in the world. Since that initial success RDI has gone on to work with governments representing some of the world’s largest populations of rural poor, including China, India and Sub-Saharan African nations, among others.
<b>Strategy</b>
RDI uses both field and desk research, relationship development and the rule of law to develop land-tenure reform recommendations for governments to help them design programs to alleviate rural poverty – especially focusing on gender and cultural factors. RDI enters countries at the request of governments or international agencies when opportunities for reform are ripe. RDI interacts with local farmers, including women, consults with government officials at various levels and then recommends enforceable and politically viable reforms. As an example, RDI has worked in China since 1987, and is the principal foreign adviser to the central government on laws which have now brought secure, 30-year land rights to over 80 million of that country’s 190 million farm families. In the former Soviet Republics, RDI has advanced reforms to "de-collectivize" and establish private ownership rights to farms. RDI has been working extensively in India, and has developed a new “micro-land ownership” program to provide ownership of small homestead plots to the landless, with special regard to land rights for women. Under the leadership of Tim Hanstad, now President and CEO, RDI has grown into a well-structured organization currently active in India, China, Indonesia, Russia (legal aid center), Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, and Angola.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
In 1966, Roy Prosterman he left his rising law career with one of the nation’s top law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, for a teaching post at the University of Washington School of Law. Led by a passion for addressing global poverty, he has devoted his career to applying the law to build a better world. In 1966, Prosterman published an article ("How to Have a Revolution Without a Revolution") in which he proposed a program of democratic land reform to satisfy the grievances of the rural landless poor in developing countries. Prosterman’s idea caught the attention of US policy-makers who were seeking a political settlement to the conflict in Vietnam. He soon found himself in the middle of the Vietnam War, drafting legislation for a “land-to-the-tillers” program —carried out between 1970 and 1973 — which provided land ownership to one million tenant farmer families, which increased their rice production by 30%. Since then, Prosterman and his RDI associates have gone on to apply and develop variants of this peaceful approach to land reform, working in over 40 developing countries around the globe, and helping over 400 million people attain secure land rights.
Prosterman, now Chair Emeritus of RDI, is considered a leading expert on land reform and has authored numerous publications on land policy, hunger and agricultural development. Prosterman and RDI have received numerous awards and distinctions including the 2003 Gleitsman Foundation International Activist Award and the 2006 Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership. RDI has also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the World Food Prize, and was a finalist for the Hilton Humanitarian Award and the Rio Tinto Alcan Prize for Sustainability. Prosterman currently serves as an Honorary Co-Chair of the World Justice Project and serves on the Board of Directors of the International Development Law Organization (IDLO). Prosterman is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School. His forthcoming book (with Tim Hanstad and Robert Mitchell) is titled, “One Billion Rising: Land, Law and the Alleviation of Global Poverty” with a preface by Nobel Prize economist Joe Stiglitz.
In 2004, Hanstad became RDI’s President & CEO of (RDI). Under Hanstad’s leadership, RDI has significantly expanded its reach, size and effectiveness, and has partnered with the World Bank, USAID, UNFAO, IMF and other international agencies. Hanstad has written numerous publications on the importance of land and the rule of law in poverty alleviation, and co-authored several notable books on the subject. He also teaches at the University of Washington, School of Law, where he co-directs a graduate program in Law of Sustainable International Development. Tim Hanstad is the President and Chief Executive Officer of RDI. He joined the organization in 1987."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Phulki has pioneered high quality work and community-based daycare for the children of women employed in factories, businesses and government offices in Bangladesh. The organization currently operates 130 childcare facilities and many more are running on their own. It provides training in the management of daycare centers so employers can run them independently if they so choose. Further, it is now under compliance, which means factories must establish childcare facilities. Studies have shown that daycare increases women's satisfaction and productivity at work. There are a total 0.42 million working mothers in garment factories alone and their children benefit from Phulki-initiated daycare facilities.
<b>Background</b>
An organized job sector for women was created in Bangladesh with over 3,000 garment manufacturing industries employing approximately 1.6 million workers. The majority of these women live in urban slums and for the first time, a nuclear family system has emerged. On the job, women lack access to childcare, particularly care that allows them to breastfeed their infants during the day. Laws were in place, but not implemented. Suraiya Haque, founder of Phulki, had to overcome opposition to entering the workforce from her own family, a struggle that reinforced her determination to help other women in Bangladesh gain the benefits of employment without having to deprive their babies and young children of essential nutritional care and attention. Now, offices such as banks, government offices, hospitals and NGOs offer on-site childcare facilities. Recently, the Principal Secretary of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh issued a letter to the organization in favour of on-site childcare. In other words, Haque's work has changed Government policy and brought a degree of gender balance to the country.
<b>Strategy</b>
Phulki's strategy works in both directions. It lobbies and advocates with international purchasing companies that need to include childcare centers to be fully compliant. It demonstrates to factory owners that, by investing in childcare, they not only provide essential life benefits for their employees, but they themselves benefit from a workforce that is happier, more productive and has lower rates of absenteeism. Factories provide the space, start-up costs and caretaker salaries, while mothers provide the food for the children. Phulki either manages the daycare centre for a fee or trains company personnel to do so. Haque is now franchising the model in other cities. Her goal is to scale-up childcare facilities in garment factories and cover all other sectors in Bangladesh.
At present, she is in contact with major American garment buyers such as Nike, Gap and Reebok, and European companies such as H & M and Marks & Spencer, among others. A recent survey conducted by Phulki found that the benefits outweigh the costs of on-site childcare facilities. The employers are now aware of childcare as worker's right. Haque also established on-site childcare as a woman's legal right in Bangladesh.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Suraiya Haque had a privileged upbringing. She married at age 16 while she was still at school, an arranged marriage as was the prevailing custom. Following her marriage, she was not allowed to continue her education. However, she returned to school at the age of 24. She worked on a voluntary basis in different social organizations as her children grew up, and when, as young adults, they brought home their first pay check—the tradition in Bangladesh—she decided to invest the money to set up a childcare facility. In 1991, she started her first daycare centre in her garage. From a very modest beginning, Phulki is leading the way for women's empowerment in the workplace. Haque “dreams of a world where working women will not have to forego their children's well being for economic reasons.”"
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFSItpzpmB8" target="_blank">Video Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Dialogue in the Dark is a unique exhibition, where blind guides lead sighted visitors through pitch-dark spaces. Visitors walk through a market place, onto a boat and into a bar without being able to see. They experience a role reversal: Visitors become blind, while their blind guides are the experts at moving in the dark. Darkness is a strong equalizer and out of the pressure of being in the dark, people need trust and can only survive with cooperation and communication. This leads to cohesion and empathy, the first step towards understanding differences and becoming more tolerant. After the success of Dialogue in the Dark, Andreas Heinecke and Orna Cohen designed Dialogue in Silence, where hearing people gain access to the world of the deaf. Visitors receive powerful headsets and enter a world of silence. They experience the power and breadth of non-verbal communication. Deaf guides act as mediators. Both exhibition concepts create empathy for the differently abled and break down mental prejudices. Surveys have shown that even five years after the visit, 100% remember the Dialogue in the Dark exhibition. 58% assert having a greater understanding for the blind as a result of their visit. In the case of Dialogue in Silence, 81% of visitors defined deafness as a disability before the exhibition. After their participation, only 39% continued to define deafness as a disability. The others referred to deafness as a difference or even as an asset. Since its inception in 1988, Dialogue in the Dark has created jobs for 5’000 blind people. This makes it one of the largest private sector employers worldwide for the blind. The employees receive further qualifications, training and, above all, reach a higher level of confidence through their work. Companies and event organizations find that both concepts are unique tools to sharpen the other senses in the absence of being able and to foster non-verbal communication.
<b>Background</b>
Currently, world-wide around 37 million people are blind. In Germany there are about 150,000 and additional more than 1 million people with very limited vision. Society’s perception of handicapped people is very different from their self-perception: Only half of those perceived as “disabled” would also describe themselves as such. This discrepancy reveals that most people primarily focus on the deficits of the handicapped instead of their abilities. A shift in perception on both sides can mean an important step towards accepting the important contributions handicapped can offer society.
<b>Strategy</b>
Dialogue in the Dark has permanent exhibitions in Germany (Hamburg and Frankfurt on the Main), Italy and Israel. In addition, more than 130 temporary exhibitions have been set up largely in a franchise system in 25 different countries, among them France, Italy, UK, USA, Hungary, Mexico, Japan, Brazil and Korea. More than 6 million people have visited the exhibitions. Dialogue in the Dark is a holding with four different companies. Three companies are running permanent exhibitions in Germany and one markets and franchises the concept around the world. The three primary sources of income are: Entry fees to the exhibitions; Franchising fees for the concept for exhibitions around the world; Training and events for companies. In addition, Dialogue in Germany receives public funding for the initial years of operations to subsidize the employment of its blind employees. In its first permanent exhibition in Hamburg, the exhibition still proves to be popular even after 8 years. The exhibition runs at a 90% capacity on average and is often booked for months in advance. Various other organizations have copied the principle of the Dialogue concept and opened bars and restaurants in the dark. Dialogue in Silence was first set up in Frankfurt on the Main (Germany) and Paris. Recently, new exhibitions opened in Israel, Mexico, and Switzerland; exhibitions in Hong Kong and Singapore are in the works.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Andreas Heinecke’s Jewish mother lost most of her family during Word War II, while his father’s side supported the regime. This torn family background led him to focus his studies on Jewish philosophy and German history. As a radio-journalist, he was asked to develop a work training program for a young journalist who had lost his eyesight in an accident. Through his colleague, he learned the richness and potential of a blind person, but also the inequality and discrimination they must face. Motivated by this encounter, Andreas looked for opportunities to promote encounters between disabled and others. He joined the Foundation for the Blind in Germany, where he was able to find employment for blind and develop electronic books and newspapers. He developed the Dialogue in the Dark concept but then left the Foundation due to a different understanding about innovative social work. He formally incorporated Dialogue in the Dark in 1996. Dr Andreas Heinecke was named an Ashoka Senior Fellow in 2005."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Working Today – Freelancers Union is a national non-profit membership organization that is introducing a new form of portable unionism to promote the interests of the growing number of independent workers in the United States. Unlike traditional trade unions, which are limited by law to employees of workplace-based organizations, Working Today – Freelancers Union delivers flexible and portable benefits applicable to an increasingly mobile and decentralized workforce adjusting to the changing contours of the US and global economy. Since 2001, Working Today’s Freelancers Union has provided vital health, dental, life and disability insurance, advocacy initiatives and education for independent workers—the fastest growing workforce in the US and globally. In 2006, the organization went national. Freelancers Union has built a membership of 60,000 independent workers nationwide, and delivers insurance to 16,000 people. This membership, in turn, serves as a vehicle for social change, both by acting as an organized constituency to advocate for change to public policy and by contributing to Working Today – Freelancers Union’s financial sustainability. Ultimately, Working Today – Freelancers Union’s model could be expanded to address the needs of the more than 30 million independent workers across the US.
<b>Background</b>
Today, one-third of all working Americans are temporary, part-time, freelance or selfemployed. Although this independent workforce is diverse, ranging from low-income childcare workers to highly-paid business consultants, members share many of the same problems: they are not covered by employer-based health insurance plans, for example, nor do they have access to the tax and retirement benefits given to traditional employees. This overlooked group of workers has been “voiceless” with no mechanism to advocate for basic protections and benefits. For example, Working Today – Freelancers Union recently undertook a survey of nearly 3,000 independent workers across New York City and twentyeight percent spent some portion of last year without health insurance. With low-cost group rate health care plans for workers in the technology, non-profit, arts and entertainment, media and advertising, financial services, healthcare, and domestic childcare sectors, Working Today – Freelancers Union addresses the needs of independent and project-based workers.
<b>Strategy</b>
Freelancers Union's membership is built by linking professional associations, unions and companies on a sector-wide basis to provide needed services such as health insurance, tax and retirement planning advice, education, events and discounts. Working Today – Freelancers Union also carries out advocacy initiatives aimed at building an organized constituency among the diverse sub-groups within the independent workforce. By binding industry-specific associations to one another through joint advocacy efforts and group purchasing arrangements, Working Today – Freelancers Union helps independent workers understand the importance of collective action as a vehicle for improving their lives. Working Today – Freelancers Union also collaborates with research institutions and foundations to study the implications of changes in the economy, developing solutions and advocating for legislation designed to meet the needs of workers and employers in this new landscape.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
As a labour lawyer working in New York City, Sara Horowitz recognized that changes in the economy and structure of the labour market were having a profound impact on individual workers. Labour laws and benefit-delivery systems, created in the 1930s to apply to large industrial workplaces, were no longer relevant. Horowitz's solution: a new kind of union. She was well prepared to spearhead such a union. Her grandfather was vice-president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Her father was a labour lawyer, as is her husband. When she graduated from Cornell University, she went to work as a union organizer at a nursing home. Running Working Today – Freelancers Union out of a growing office in Brooklyn, Horowitz hopes to unite the fragmented independent workforce and provide individuals with the bargaining muscle of a union and the political power of a lobbying juggernaut. Since its founding in 1995, Working Today – Freelancers Union has been featured in a variety of US national and local media. In 1999, Horowitz received the coveted MacArthur Genius Award. “I look forward to a time when mobile safety nets are a fact of life," she says, “and no longer an innovation.”"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
ShoreBank refers to a set of companies grouped under the holding company, ShoreBank Corporation, the first and leading community development financial institution in the USA supporting economic equity and a healthy environment. ShoreBank started out as an experiment in 1973, but it has had far-reaching impact on the structure of the banking industry in the USA and abroad ShoreBank was created by Ron Grzywinski, Mary Houghton, Milton Davis, and Jim Fletcher Although none of them claimed to know much about banking, they believed that a commercial bank, flanked by complementary development organizations, could restore neighborhood economies, including many of those in their hometown of Chicago. In the 1970s, they purchased the South Shore National Bank on Chicago’s South Side. The bank had been losing deposits and staff, blaming its downturn on racial change in its neighborhood. For the first few years after buying the bank, Ron, Mary, Milton, and Jim focused on gaining the trust of the local community and revitalizing the investment climate.
As a result of their efforts, the bank booked loans to good borrowers after a careful assessment of local property values, encouraging the market to normalize. More lenders entered the market and property values in South Shore rose faster between 1970 and 1980 than any other community in Chicago. In 1985, then Governor Bill Clinton asked ShoreBank to help start a community development bank similar to ShoreBank, in his state of Arkansas. The governor was so impressed with the impact of their efforts in his home state that when he became US President, he enacted federal legislation that spawned the Community Development Financial Institution program, spearheading community development banks across the USA. But already in the early 1980s, the co-founders of ShoreBank began to look beyond national borders to expand their model. In 1983, they signed their first consulting contract to advise Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Today, ShoreBank, headquartered in Chicago, is a USD $2.4 billion company that owns, operates, invests in, and advises development banks around the world.
<b>Background</b>
The founders of ShoreBank set out to change the social forces that led to declining neighborhoods, rudderless lives and hopelessness. To do that, they had to turn the banking industry and public policy related to it, upside down. The most important drawback to achieving their goals through the formal banking system at the time was the issue of distribution of the profits. Ron and Mary wanted to reinvest a significant portion of the profits to expand the program so as to widen its social impact. So they set out to start a different kind of bank. They seized the opportunity created by an amendment to the 1971 Federal Bank Holding Company Act, which expanded permissible activities for bank holding companies to include investment in community development corporations. Under that amendment, they asked, could a bank holding company be a community development corporation? When they bought the South Shore National Bank in 1973, they applied the law to create a new kind of bank which has now spread around the world - the community development bank.
<b>Strategy</b>
From the outset, Shorebank’s primary purpose has been to do development work and not to maximize financial returns or capital for its shareholders. Of course, it must also be profitable to meet regulatory requirements. This tension has been less of a problem than one might predict. In the early years, turning a profit was a key to survival, but that profit was the vehicle for attaining large-scale impact for low income clients. Grounding in a set of values and principles which now encompass conservation as well as community development - along with a culture of pragmatic innovation and experimentation - has been essential to sustaining ShoreBank’s mission and entrepreneurial heart. In reality, the bank’s most mission-focused lending is also its most profitable. In 1990, ShoreBank launched its first long-term international program, the ShoreBank Advisory Services (SAS) beginning in Poland, and expanding to Russia, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Romania, Georgia, India, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Northern Ireland. As the work matured, SAS in 2006 became ShoreBank International (SBI). Shorebank also created a private investment company, ShoreCap International (SCI), with an international set of shareholders that made minority equity investments in 16 locally managed African, Asian and eastern European regulated financial institutions specializing in small business or microfinance lending. A non-profit capacity building affiliate, ShoreCap Exchange provides technical assistance and peer-to-peer learning opportunities among investee institutions and more broadly in the microfinance and small business lending field.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Ron Grzywinski grew up in a blue collar neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Of Polish background, he graduated from college without ever having taken a business course and went to work for IBM selling computers to banks in the Chicago area. The work left him uninspired and in 1963 he got a job with a small banking group and was assigned to its bank in Lockport, Illinois. Three years later, he was its President. At that time, the owner of the bank in Lockport became interested in buying another bank in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, home to the University of Chicago and a rare American instance of a racially integrated neighborhood, albeit one surrounded by African American neighborhoods. For the first time he became really conscious of racial divisions in the US. Ron brought in Milton Davis, an African American civil rights activist who led Chicago’s chapter of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality. Ron found Mary Houghton looking for something more challenging after a stint at an insurance company and a foundation. She and Milton structured the minority lending program and it took off. Milton turned to his friend, Jim Fletcher, then working for Citizen’s Action Program in the Office of Economic Opportunity during the Johnson presidency. Jim joined in 1969."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Centre for Mass Education in Science (CMES) is replacing traditional rote learning, a widespread practice in rural Bangladesh. Instead, the CMES curriculum offers youth life-oriented technological skills, thus integrating the world of learning with the world of work. CMES reaches out to 20,000 students each year, half of them adolescent girls. This is done through a network of 400 basic and advanced schools, influencing educational practices throughout Bangladesh.
<b>Background</b>
Muhammad Ibrahim has been fascinated by science since he was a high-school student. But the science education he received bore no relevance to the daily life of Bangladesh's struggling millions. Most poor village children and adolescents fail to attend school or drop out after a few years, typically because their families see no economic benefits from education. In 1960, at 15, Ibrahim founded Bijnan Samoeeki, the country's first popular science magazine, which became the platform for a popular national science movement and later, CMES.
<b>Strategy</b>
CMES combines a basic curriculum with an emphasis on economically relevant life skills, such as soap and candle making, computer skills and mechanics. Goods produced in the school are marketed, providing both a revenue source and an economic incentive for students to stay in school. Through CMES's groundbreaking Adolescent Girls Programme, girls, whose education is often neglected in Bangladesh, gain important economic skills traditionally limited to boys. They receive loans from the CMES micro-credit programme for young people and learn about their rights and reproductive health.
Advanced basic schools and rural technology centres are available to students interested in pursuing a higher level of education and technology. At CMES's Rural Centre for Joyful Science Activities, researchers are developing appropriate technology solutions for village life, such as low-cost, solar electric micro-utilities to electrify bazaars and village huts. CMES has already put this technology to use in a commercial, affordable manner.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Muhammad Ibrahim's education gave him the belief that all people should share the knowledge provided by science and technology. He had already published the first science magazine in the country when he decided to establish CMES, the next natural step to achieve effective mass education in science. Ibrahim felt that this would be the best way to unleash the power of the adolescent mind and provide equity for girls, especially in areas related to technology. “Success for me," he says, "is to sense the mindset change in an individual girl or boy, a necessary element to come out of poverty. My dream is to spread the principle of education-work-empowerment linkages to all levels and bring global technology and business to the grassroots.""
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Schwab Fellow of the World Economic Forum
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6KxvCjlaqM" target="_blank">Video</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Umeic3b70kE" target="_blank">Video Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
On the outskirts of Cairo sits Mokattam Hills where the Zabbaleen –or garbage people – live. The streets are heaped high with solid waste. But the huge piles have been sorted into plastics, textiles, and glass. Greater Cairo’s 60,000 Zabbaleen, a Coptic Christian community of formerly landless and unemployed peasants who migrated to the capital 50 years ago, gather one third of the city’s 14,000 tons of daily garbage. Laila Iskandar has worked with the Zabbaleen since 1982, introducing innovative social and environmental initiatives that have included recycling as much as 80% of the inorganic waste into raw materials and manufactured goods – plastics, rugs, pots, paper and glass. As a result, garbage collectors have begun to break the cycle of poverty. Iskandar’s work with the Zabbaleen first began when she started an informal school focused on learning in the context of recycling. Because Zabbaleen children used to accompany their fathers in their garbage collection sojourns, she designed school attendance timing to fit with their needs. With an emphasis on health and hygiene, the curriculum was shaped to help the children deal with their surroundings.
In 1988, Iskandar became the Field Director for the Rag Recycling Center at the Association for the Protection of the Environment, pioneering multiple initiatives with the Zabbaleen community. One such initiative involved over 200 Zabbaleen households that bring organic waste to a neighborhood composting plant that then turns the waste into high-grade compost for agricultural use. Another involves girls from the community who are reviving the most ancient of Egyptian crafts, weaving on a handloom made from discarded cotton remnants. The “earning and leaning” project teaches them basic math and literacy, and the earnings are divided among the aspiring weavers. Iskander has stimulated many such creative endeavors designed to combine learning, income generation and waste recycling. To date, CID has benefits over 15,000 urban poor with its water and sanitation projects, housing improvement projects, crafts projects, primary health care and literacy projects.
<b>Background</b>
Cairo has become one of the largest cities in the world with a population of fifteen million and growing at a rate of almost one million every eight months. As a result, basic services especially the collection and disposal of waste, are severely strained. The Zabbaleen are an industrious people and have been able to create work from waste for thousands of low-income residents. But their living conditions continued to be deplorable, and as the population continued to rapidly increase, the Zabbaleen were increasingly unable to meet the garbage collection requirements. In addition, they lacked the resources, the political organization and the vision to expand their economic opportunities and protect their own interests. Iskandar’s efforts have focused on linking productive work with environmental sustainability in poor urban environments, including those inhabited by the Zabbaleen.
<b>Strategy</b>
Iskandar founded CID in 1995 based on her experience with the Zabbaleen. She was joined by four other partners equally committed to environmental sustainability and poverty elimination. CID is a for-profit organization that seeks to link the private, government and non-profit sectors to achieve sustainable development while building the capacities of its clients. CID works with local and international partners and clients and uses a multidisciplinary and multicultural approach. CID seeks to link the poverty sector with the business sector to create sustainable, viable business partnerships where people and organizations learn together. Non-formal and adult learning are linked to all aspects of CID’s work while issues of marginalization are brought into the arena of business solutions.
Since its inception, CID has planned and implemented projects around on-site rural sanitation, crafts production for rural women, low cost housing improvement projects for rural communities and institutional building for grass roots communities organized through non profits and working with municipalities to improve environmental conditions in Upper Egypt. CID works with communities to set up sustainable waste recycling programs and education for development, beginning in the Moqattam area and expanding to Minia and Sinai. Thus, CID promotes efforts that create jobs while improving sanitary conditions. To do so, it has had to overcome many barriers, including bureaucratic and disciplinary mindsets. For example, waste management has traditionally been perceived by town planners, waste management specialists and engineers as a technology, management and engineering issue. Few municipalities and ministries in charge of waste management have perceived garbage to be an issue where consumers have to be involved in crafting sustainable responses. CID highlights how the reality of megacities, particularly in emerging markets, must place people at the center of waste management planning.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Laila Iskandar’s background includes studies in economics, political science and business in Cairo as well as Near-Eastern studies and International Education Development at U.C. Berkeley and Teachers’ College at Columbia University. Her voluntary work with the nonprofit sector led her to recognize the limits of working through NGO’s to realize a bigger dream of scaling up, professionalizing and turning practice into policy. The performance driven, efficiency aspect and quick response of the business sector led her to set up CID as a company rather than a non-profit institution."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Bina Swadaya has been focused on socio-economic development of Indonesia’s rural communities for the past 40 years. Bambang Ismawan, Chairman of Bina Swadaya, embraces a strong philosophy of directly empowering these communities through education and training. Bina Swadaya’s origin arose from the Pancasila social movement in the 1950s, with specifically the activities around the Pancasila Farmer Association driving the creation of Bina Swadaya. To address strong demand for agricultural education and knowledge dissemination, Bina Swadaya went into the publishing business and started the “Trubus” agricultural magazine that is currently a market leader on the subject. Building on the success of that publication, Bina Swadaya then leveraged its printing infrastructure to enter other diverse publication segments like gardening, health issues, language training and small business skills. To date, it has published around 1600 agricultural book titles, and 826 titles in other areas.
Besides generating profits from the sale of its own publications, Bina Swadaya has developed significant expertise in the printing field to become a printing powerhouse while at the same time offering market-leading consulting services. Aside from the success in the publishing business, Bina Swadaya started a franchise operation for agricultural shops in 2001 which provides market access for Bina Swadaya group’s products and since 1987, has been operating a flourishing eco-tourism business that focuses on local, as well as international, cultures and destinations. Meanwhile, it does microfinancing through 4 rural banks and cooperatives.
<b>Background</b>
Indonesia is a nation comprised of about 18,100 islands in the Southeast Asia archipelago, and has a population of close to 245 million people. With the bulk of Indonesia’s economic activity concentrated in its capital, Jakarta, many rural communities in regions like Sulawesi and Kalimantan find themselves struggling to keep up economically as the country as a whole progresses. Roughly 44% of Indonesia’s labor force is still engaged in agricultural activity, and introducing more effective agricultural production practices is one way to immediately impact the income and livelihoods of these rural communities.
Through greater awareness and better education programs, the case can also be made for better environmental protection in these agrarian societies. Over the past 50 years, as Indonesia moved through various social movements, the need for a multi-prong solution to foster socio-economic development became apparent; this started with the Pancasila Social Movement in the 1950s and formed the basis for much of Bina Swadaya’s operations. Despite having its roots as an agricultural society, the absence of good publications in the field and structured education programs at the beginning of the social movement made it a challenge to reach out and broadly engage the rural communities to attain the prescribed goals of the movement.
<b>Strategy</b>
Bina Swadaya literally translates into the “Self-Reliance Development Foundation”. To reach its vision and to carry out its missions Bina Swadaya diverts its activities into seven categories as follows: 1. Community Empowerment; 2. Micro Finance Development; 3. Agribusiness Development; 4. Development Communication; 5. Alternative Tourism Development; 6. Printing Service; 7. Provide facilities for meeting, training, workshop and seminar. Bina Swadaya organizes its members into self-help groups, which then congregate in training centers for education and training in agribusiness as well as civil society empowerment.
To date, there are 10,000 alumni members from these training centers. The self-help groups also form the locus for Bina Swadaya’s microfinance activities, which since 2003 have been modeled after the ASA (Association for Social Advancement) microfinance model. Bina Swadaya’s business operations are each profitable on their own, and overall, 30% of the profits generated from these operations get funneled back into the Civil Society Empowerment operation which funds the expansion of Bina Swadaya’s work throughout Indonesia.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Bambang Ismawan has always been a contrarian in making life choices. When it came to careers, he chose agriculture when his peers mostly joined in industry. While pursuing his economics degree at Gadjah Mada University, he found that he was interested in neither business nor politics, and wanted to identify something more meaningful that he could pursue. His inspiration on social economic empowerment came from Father John Dijkstra SJ, a catholic priest originated from the Netherlands. Father Dijkstra also shaped Bambang’s view of socio-economic development of the rural poor by thinking of them as the “have little” as opposed to the “have not” – as such, they should be offered a helping hand, as opposed to a hand-out.
Bambang has been involved in Bina Swadaya’s formation and growth for the past 40 years; and along the way has developed a proven track record of successful partnerships with government, NGOs and businesses. His philosophy of promoting self-reliance within Bina Swadaya’s self-help groups drives the strategic development of operating engines within the organization, ranging from micro-finance to a strong ethic of learning. He invests a large amount of his time on developing the leadership capabilities of the organization, and the fact that several employees have grown with Bina Swadaya for more than 30 years is a strong testimony to Bambang’s ability to empower and cultivate leaders within the organization."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Garth Japhet’s success as a highly innovative social entrepreneur was established in creating Soul City, now a international, multimedia "edutainment" initiative that seeks to positively impact people's lives by integrating health and development issues into serialized prime-time television programs, radio dramas and easy-to-read booklets. Reaching 79% of South Africa's population (40 million people), the Soul City television and radio shows have consistently ranked number one or two in audience ratings during the past five years. Two-thirds of its audience is between 16 and 24 years of age. Soul Buddyz, a similar multimedia intervention for children aged 8-12 years, is complementary to Soul City and reaches over 68% of South African children. Large-scale independent evaluations have clearly demonstrated the programs’ effect on positive social change. In the last five years, it has extended its operations to another 8 countries in the southern African region, making it the largest development communication organization in Africa.
In 2002, a separate organization was launched, called Heartlines, using a similar approach to Soul City of multimedia, but adopting a strategy that leads to individual value changes in order to deal with priority health and development issues. It also mobilizes over 50% of all faith-based organizations in South Africa in support of the initiative (More information can be found on www.heartlines.org.za).
<b>Background</b>
As a physician working in Soweto in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Garth Japhet had become increasingly frustrated that his medical skills were doing little to improve the health and quality of life of his patients in poverty stricken townships. Lack of information on issues surrounding health and poverty was the main "disease." Existing educational programs had little effect because they did not reach enough people and the information was delivered in a dry, bureaucratic manner not conducive to learning. Japhet turned to the media. In South Africa, radio reaches 98% of the population, television reaches 76% and print media reaches 46%. By making education entertaining, he believed, knowledge would be retained and debate stimulated.
Garth built Heartlines modeled on the success of Soul City in reaching people through multimedia. Based on the premise that South Africans - no matter what their race, color or creed - share many of the same core values, Heartlines aims to use multimedia to create debate about, and reinforce these core values, through a variety of projects. Initially, the program created eight stories in feature length films highlighting eight values that were aired for eight weeks, sparking national awareness. Values include responsibility, forgiveness, perseverance, self-control, honesty and compassion. This has been followed by frequent calls to respect these values and act as a change for good through a number of ongoing media campaigns through multiple channels.
<b>Strategy</b>
In setting up both Soul City and Heartlines, Japhet concentrated on four strategies. Recognizing that television, radio, music, theatre and print reach different audiences and could serve to reinforce messages, he opted, first, for a multimedia approach. Second, he decided to focus on quality. Media owners would not donate prime space for educational content; the programming had to attract large audiences with compelling plots and characters. Third, he chose to create a drama, rather than a documentary or talk show, since drama is the most popular form of television in Africa. Historically, drama is also the best way to deal with social issues. Finally, he decided to create a popular social brand that would provide credibility to all initiatives with which it was associated. Since its inception, Soul City has stirred public discussion and challenged attitudes about HIV/AIDS, youth sexuality, hypertension and violence against women, as well as complex development issues like land rights and access to banking services. Heartlines aims to do the same. Soul City is active in another eight African countries as well as Surinam and Colombia and Egypt, where materials are adapted and training undertaken.
Heartlines is embarking a new strategy that will see a web and cell phone based social networking platform set up which will be like “facebook” but with social content. This forms the core of a strategy aimed to move people from dialogue to values-based action. The strategy includes the use of mass media and the mobilization of faith-based organizations and schools.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Garth Japhet was brought up in South Africa during the Apartheid era. Due to his family's liberal upbringing, he was able to comprehend the injustices prevalent in South African society. This led him to embark on a career in medicine. He felt that in doing so he might be able to make a difference in the development of better health facilities for his fellow citizens. But his enhanced medical expertise only aggravated his frustration towards stagnating health and developmental problems. Japhet realized that in order to change the environment in South Africa, he would have to create an interesting access to knowledge in this particular field. This idea finally crystallized into Soul City in 1991. "I see my work as giving people and communities tools that will make a tangible difference in their lives," explains Japhet. "I want to reach more people in Africa and beyond, and make the interventions increasingly relevant to all facets of their lives.""
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Science, when coupled with human creativity and generosity, is potentially the greatest tool for social enterprise. The use of science to inform and guide equitable problem solving in food and agriculture, public health and environmental management is however dependent on empowering and engaging more problem solvers. Modern life science – with its extraordinary power to understand and change the fabric of our surroundings – is being privatized, its component parts locked up in complex webs of patents and opaque rights. Genes and proteins are being patented, and the fundamental biological processes that underpin our crops, our livestock and our own health are fought over in legal battles. Innovation based on new life sciences is becoming grossly inefficient, driving up costs and driving out small enterprise. In a bid to democratize the innovation process,
Richard Jefferson developed the BiOS Initiative —a concept and a practical movement that combines patent transparency, enabling technology development and distributive innovation concepts to forge an open source metaphor for the life sciences. Jefferson is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the private, non-profit research institute, CAMBIA, which is recognized as the pioneer of the open source biotechnology movement, and a creative force in exploring new scientific innovation ecologies. This movement has already attracted a diverse range of supporters including governments, civil society, small and large private enterprise, philanthropic organizations, research institutions and learned societies. The BiOS initiative aims to catalyze innovators worldwide to address local or global challenges by ensuring that the capability to use science to innovate is widely shared and scope of problems tackled extended to include the neglected.
<b>Background</b>
Very few of the problems experienced by the disadvantaged of either the developing or developed world are adequately addressed by modern biological technologies. These problems include the lack of sustainable food production, fragile rural economies, poor nutrition, environmental degradation, poor public health practices, insufficient attention to diseases and medical conditions of poor people or marginalized communities. Sustainable and equitable development can only happen with the committed and creative participation of those experiencing problems, and the enterprises they trust, in generating robust local solutions. If science is to be relevant as a component of this process, it must be part of an integrated process that is sensitive to the operating constraints of problem solvers. The costs of biological innovation must decrease, and the relevance to these problems must increase. And it must foster the creation of myriad small to medium enterprises with new business models that emphasize the products and services delivered, not the gaming of the very technologies and tools used to create them. The tools of science must be part of a 'commons of capability' that is preserved and expanded to provide a platform for diverse innovators and diverse business models.
<b>Strategy</b>
Open innovation has been a strikingly successful model in open source software and is now being applied to a wide range of industries. CAMBIA’s BiOS explores, applies and extends these concepts to biological problems affecting the disenfranchised of the world, or opportunities impacting the entire world . Through focusing on the platforms and tools of biological innovation, and the norms and legal instruments that govern their use, BiOS creates new innovation models and new efficiencies. CAMBIA enables decentralized, cooperative innovation by merging intellectual property informatics and analysis, innovation system structural reform, new legal and business instruments, and open access technology development. As a crucible for these ideas, CAMBIA has for the last decade and a half also invented and distributed throughout the world enabling biotechnologies, and created the first open patent licensing communities around them.
CAMBIA now recognizes that these challenges and opportunities transcend sectoral boundaries, and will impact business and innovation at all scales. Open innovation ecology will build confidence, increase transparency and inclusiveness and generate new efficiencies in all fields of science and technology-enabled innovation. In an economic crisis, it is critical that public and private investments are made on a firm foundation, and routes to market delivery to beneficiaries are transparent and affordable. To enable this CAMBIA has recently founded the Initiative for Open Innovation – IOI – to increase the efficiency, effectiveness and equity of science enabled innovation for public good. As a platform for this new initiative, CAMBIA developed the Patent Lens the leading independent worldwide open access patent searching and information resource. On this foundation, and using Web 2.0 technology, the IOI will render the opaque world of patents more transparent, create a sound evidence basis for policy and practice, and provide free navigation and decision support for enterprises in all sectors to more effectively see their efforts impact society and public good.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Richard Jefferson is one of the world's most prominent molecular biologists and plant scientists. Anyone spending time with him will come away with the impression that not only is he changing traditional ideas about genetics and intellectual property, but that he is revolutionizing the way in which molecular biologists are seen: they can be agents of social change. While he is amongst the most cited authors in plant science, he once faced a tough decision between becoming a professional musician or a scientist. Jefferson ultimately chose science but constantly questions his sanity in doing so instead of juggling, playing the guitar and mandolin or performing comedy."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Parceiros Voluntarios (PV) prepares people, corporations, schools and universities to exercise citizenship through organized volunteer work. Conversely, it prepares non-profit organizations to receive and effectively deploy the skills and goodwill of the volunteers that provide their services. PV's success stems from its capacity to tap into people's desire to participate meaningfully in a community. It cultivates a level of competency in people of all ages and walks of life and teaches leadership skills for the service of all. PV provides a vehicle for companies to engage in systematic corporate citizenship, sharing the strengths and skills of their staff with social organizations and increasing staff motivation and company reputation. It shapes youth for continued civic service and supports schools in their efforts to open up to the communities in which they are inserted. PV has over 245,000 screened and trained volunteers registered in its database. Over 1,900 large- and medium-sized companies actively participate in lending their expertise to 2,287 non-profit organizations in 74 cities in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The goal is to reach 120 cities. PV is not just an effective matchmaker for volunteer activity, nor just a volunteer center or placement agency. Through the professionalizing of both the volunteer and the receiving agency, PV stimulates people of all ages to see themselves as agents of social transformation. It is creating a culture of responsible citizenship by applying business principles and practices to what has been a haphazard, ineffective and inefficient process. To replicate its approach throughout Brazil, PV is working in collaboration with SEBRAE, the national enterprise support organization. It is also disseminating its approach through long-distance, web-supported training.
<b>Background</b>
Volunteer activity is rarely treated seriously as a resource for the recipient or provider. Rather, it is usually considered to be a non-essential activity for retired, older people or part of a compulsory community service requirement for younger people graduating from high school. In Brazil, as elsewhere, people expect the government to respond to social needs. The majority of volunteer activity stems from a paternalistic root that goes in one direction — one person gives and the other receives — as in charity. Parceiros Voluntarios has undertaken the enormous challenge of changing mindsets so that each individual realizes that they are responsible for the social conditions of their community.
<b>Strategy</b>
As with most successful social entrepreneurs, Maria Elena Pereira Johannpeter’s experience with failure was critical in shaping the winning strategy behind Parceiros Voluntarios. She wanted to mobilize people to establish a new culture of social service in Rio Grande do Sul, her home state. She launched a five-month pilot project to test her idea. Would people be interested in doing volunteer work? First, she developed a list of 20 NGOs that needed volunteers. Then, she secured free television time to announce that she was looking for 100 people interested in working as volunteers in socially oriented organizations. The next day, a line of 300 people formed outside her office. But the NGOs couldn’t absorb 300 volunteers. She took the first 100 in line and gathered the names of those remaining — they became the first inputs into her database. Five months later, the pilot project failed because the NGOs did not know how to maximize the talents of the volunteers, and moreover, the volunteers had unclear expectations about their role. As a result of this failure, Pereira Johannpeter understood how she needed to shape her new organization. It was not just about getting people to do volunteer work; to be an effective volunteer or social organization working with volunteers, one must approach the task in a systematic, ordered and deliberate way, with a clear sense of purpose and measurable outcomes. Today, PV its work along two distinct lines of action: Doing and Influencing. Both are focused on promotion and education. Through selected activities, the organization empowers people to be agents of transformation and promotes volunteerism through the following programs: The Doing line comprises the following PV programs: Individual Volunteer Program; Corporate Volunteer Program; Young Volunteer Partners Program; Corporate Volunteer Program. The strength of this work is based on the social mobilization using specific methodologies developed during ten years of experience promoting a culture of organized volunteerism.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
The youngest of ten children, Pereira Johannpeter was born in the pampas of Rio Grande do Sul to a humble agricultural family. Her father died when she was an infant. As with most poor families, her mother was completely involved in the community in which they lived, working to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them. She could not afford to look after her children, however, and work at the same time. She was able to enroll them in different schools run by religious orders where she knew they would get a decent education, food and lodging. As a result, Pereira Johannpeter did not experience a family life with her siblings, and it was only as adults that they developed sibling relationships. Even so, she vividly recollects her mother as a leader and supporter who worked with and for others in her community and draws on her mother's experience for inspiration for her own work."
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<b>The Innovation</b>
La Selva is an association of indigenous coffee producers in Chiapas, Mexico that sells its finished product directly to the consumer, distributing its profits among its members and to the social needs they identify within their communities. What distinguishes La Selva from other cooperatives and associations is its commercialization strategy. In addition to foregoing the use of intermediaries to sell its coffee nationally and internationally, it sells its finished product directly to the consumer, freeing the producer from being the supplier of raw material for export so that others can process it. Over 15 years ago, La Selva pioneered efforts in Mexico that predated Starbuck's, opening La Selva Coffee Shops in the country’s major cities. Today La Selva’s Coffee Shops have spread to Europe, boosting solidarity and national pride among Mexicans in addition to providing a source of income for the organization. La Selva’s innovative approaches have allowed it to survive the international collapse of the coffee market as well as the insurrections of the Zapatista movement that spread through Chiapas and significantly affected rural communities.
<b>Background</b>
Before 1970, a feudal system dominated the State of Chiapas. That year, a rural uprising took place in which indigenous farmers demanded land ownership. The federal government and the wealthy landowners responded by agreeing to give government lands to the Indians. But there was one drawback: the land was in the jungles of Chiapas. Roads, water and other basic infrastructure were non-existent. But that land was better than the farmers’ existing situation, and they accepted. Faced with this new reality, they saw the need to collectively organize and deal with the lack of roads to get their products to market. One of the key drivers facilitating the organization of La Selva was the presence of Jesuit priests living in the area who fostered the belief in self-sufficiency and coffee production as a vehicle to that end. The theology of liberation to which these priests adhered promoted awareness of farmers’ responsibility to environmental conservation for future generations. Thus, soil conservation practices and the use of organic fertilizers were implemented before organic coffee was in vogue. The other important formative influence in the emergence of La Selva was José Juárez, an agricultural engineer who started working with the communities 28 years ago. These communities credit Juárez as the innovator and driving force that ensures the survival of these communities and their product.
<b>Strategy</b>
The poor frequently capture only a small percentage of the value of the ecosystem products they sell, while middlemen and retailers often capture a much greater share. Middlemen perform valuable services by transporting products to wider markets and tapping distribution chains to which the poor have no access. But they are also key actors in keeping producer profits low. For example, small-scale coffee farmers earn, on average, only 4.5% of the retail price of coffee sold in US supermarkets. Union de Ejidos de la Selva has created an organization in which indigenous small coffee producers in the State of Chiapas have become an effective marketing force. The union collaborates with 1,300 families in 42 communities to ensure better soil management and environmental practices, including certified organic techniques that limit erosion and water pollution. In addition, it has created a chain of 18 upscale coffee shops in the main cities in Mexico and Europe—the Café de la Selva—which serves the organic coffee produced by La Selva farmers. By controlling the entire vertical chain of coffee production, the Union de Ejidos de la Selva has been able to take advantage of the full urban consumer value of coffee and use it to improve farmer income and self-sufficiency. Part of the Union’s strategy is identifying multiple markets. La Selva establishes commercial links with small and medium coffee roasters in Europe and the US. Although sales volumes are limited with this strategy, it permits the establishment of personalized, stable and trusting relationships. “If you sell 1,000 kilos of coffee to a huge buyer that needed 150,000 kilos, you are nobody. However, if you sell it to a buyer who sells 2,500 kilos a year, then you become someone he relies on,” explains Juárez.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
In his youth, José Juárez worked alongside his father farming their small plot of land. Although life was hard, he loved agricultural work. At age 18, he enrolled in the National Agricultural School in Chapingo and became an agricultural engineer. At 21, Juárez went to Chiapas as part of his practicum experience and there initiated his contacts with the indigenous farmers that were later to become members of the Unión. He quickly learned their customs and ways of thinking and fell in love with their struggle to improve their lives. He stimulated their interest in reading and writing as part of that process, so that they could become owners of their own destiny as entrepreneurs. Juárez has dedicated his life to La Selva. Only six years ago he found the time to marry someone with a similar dedication to the organization. She runs La Selva’s national marketing arm."
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stdClass::$title = "Dája Kabátová"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.letohradekvendula.cz"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Letohrádek Vendula is a non-governmental, not-for profit organization providing alternative social services. It is a crafts manufacturing workshop employing people with mental, physical or combined handicaps, who engage in traditional crafts such as weaving, candle production and handmade paper production. The crafts workshop production is based on the principle of breaking down the manufacturing process into simple steps, allowing each client to participate. The products of the crafts workshop are sold in a wide network of stores, including the Baumax chain. Other services provided by Letohrádek Vendula include a daily and weekly assisted living facility, socio-legal consulting and a crisis centre with accommodation and medical rehabilitation. The crisis centre provides temporary accommodation, consulting and personal assistance to handicapped people in need, e.g. in the case of their caregiver’s death.
<b>Background</b>
The main purpose of the daily and weekly care is to assist families caring for a handicapped person and the development of the handicapped person’s abilities and self-sufficiency, with the option of future employment in a protected job in the crafts workshop or in the open labour market. The clients of the workshop and the daily assisted living facility are brought to Letohrádek in the morning and go back in the afternoon to their families so that they do not loose contact with them. Family members/caregivers can work. This is an alternative to a permanent placement in a state social institution, which still is more common in the Czech Republic. This approach increases the integration of handicapped citizens into society through a combination of a crafts workshop and high-quality, individually oriented social services.
<b>Strategy</b>
All services, i.e. the crisis centre with accommodation and the protected crafts workshop combined with a daily assisted living facility, are new. The approach also includes client selection, because Letohrádek Vendula accepts all people irrespective of their diagnosis, which is completely different from the approach of state-run institutions that sort people according to their diagnosis. Thus, Letohrádek Vendula represents a unique community of people who are, to a great extent, able to help each other and work together. For example, a physically healthy but mentally handicapped man and a wheelchair-bound but mentally healthy man can help each other. The result of their cooperation is production and a saleable product – none would be able to accomplish this alone.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Manager Drahoslava Kabátová graduated from the College of Education of Charles University in Prague, with a major in special education. For 10 years, until 1994, she worked in the Jedlicka Institute in Prague as a nurse, where she organized a crafts workshop. In 1992, she founded the Letohrádek Vendula Civic Association, and is the creator of its comprehensive work-therapeutic programme and know-how. Kabátová has served on several evaluation boards for social projects of the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Since 1990, she has worked on the building, construction and expansion of Letohrádek Vendula and its services. In 2005, she became President of the Letohrádek Vendula Civic Association. She has created many projects with Czech Republic grants, grants from European Funds and others."
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stdClass::$organization_name = "Development Alternatives"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
Development Alternatives (DA) has turned out one new technology or method after another for the last twenty five years, always combining two goals: creating income for the poor and regenerating the environment. Among its successes are machines that produce standardized and affordable products for rural markets, such as roofing systems, compressed earth blocks, fired bricks, recycled paper, handloom textiles, cooking stoves, briquette presses and biomass-based electricity. For example, the TARA micro-concrete roof tile kit, consisting of a simple machine and various tools, provides employment for five people. The recently introduced TARA Vertical Shaft Brick Kiln reduces energy use by 55% and emissions by 50% and offers an officially recognized replacement for traditional technologies that are now banned on environmental grounds. Each eco-kiln employs 16-21rural people and has earned carbon credits from the World Bank. The paper production units employ forty workers to produce textured, high quality paper out of rags and recycled paper for use in stationery, cards and commercial products.
DESI Power, the electric utility of DA, installs mini power stations in villages, fuelled by weeds and agricultural wastes. It is a global winner of the 2008 Tech Awards Laureate by The Tech Museum of Innovation under the Economic Development category as one of the 25 best of the best technologies of the world. TARAhaat, the ICT affiliate of DA, brings information technology to villages through its portal, www.TARAhaat.com, and its rapidly growing network of over 400 franchised local telecentres provide a wide range of information services including educational courses, e-governance services and Internet connectivity to local people on a commercial basis. The Lifelines Project it is implementing in rural India uses mobile telephone technology to connect poor farmers across 1000 villages to critical agricultural information though volunteers. This has also won the 2008 Tech Awards Laureate under the Equality category. Its functional Hindi literacy programme of 35 days has made more than 50,000 rural women literate in less than 18 months. The fuel efficient and low emission stoves designed DA are widely used in Indian homes. Local groups and official agencies use DA's portable pollution monitoring kits to test water and air quality in cities and towns across India. In addition, DA has built more than 130 check dams to revive the water cycle of many micro watersheds.
DA’s technologies and products are used throughout India. The group has created more than one million sustainable livelihoods across India. The technology solutions have an immense potential for Africa. Most recently the DA technology solutions were used extensively in the post-tsunami reconstruction projects in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The website www.tara.in provides the details of the technology.
<b>Background</b>
In India, half of the rural population is either unemployed, underemployed or informally employed. They need income generating jobs that provide them with economic security and with the products and services required to satisfy their basic needs, as well as appliances for their daily activities. At the same time, the industries that create these jobs and appliances must reduce the wasteful use of energy, water, forests and other natural resources. Modern industry cannot, and does not, address the needs of rural communities and in any case requires heavy investment of capital, which is not available. Conventional development practices only increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots. New technologies and institutional systems are needed to achieve equitable and environmentally sound development.
<b>Strategy</b>
DA’s strategy is to develop and deliver alternative technologies that are commercially viable. The DA Group is a conglomerate of DA, TARA and its subsidiary companies. DA is the non-profit design and research arm, focusing on environmental systems, technologies and institutions. It develops appropriate technologies, which are then commercialized by TARA, a for-profit entity with several subsidiary companies such as DESI Power, TARAhaat, TARAenviro and the TARA Building Centres. TARA pays a royalty to DA for the products it sells. The DA Group has set up 3 TARAgrams, testing and demonstration campuses near Orchha and Datia, in Madhya Pradesh and Pahuj in Uttar Pradesh, which employ more than 500 people. The Group has a reputation for decentralized decision-making, giving employees a high degree of responsibility based on accountability to a highly organized planning and monitoring system. Turnover in 2007-08 reached US$ 5 million. Approximately two-thirds of the DA Group’s income is from product sales, consulting, sponsored research and policy advice, while national and international donors contribute a third of the budget, which is used mainly for R&D.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Ashok Khosla holds a PhD in Experimental Physics from Harvard University. He abandoned a promising scientific career to focus on issues of environment and development. After helping to design and teach Harvard’s first course on the Environment, he set up and directed the environmental policy unit for the Government of India. Subsequently, he worked for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Kenya. In 1983, he set up Development Alternatives. Khosla reserves 30% of his time for global and national contributions. He has been a board member of many global environmental institutions, including the Club of Rome, IUCN, WWF, IISD, SEI and the Alliance for a New Humanity. He is also an advisor to UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank. In 2002, he received the United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize. In 2007 he was elected president of The Club of Rome and was invested with the Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty, the Queen of England this year. Khosla has just been elected President of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) for four years."
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stdClass::$title = "Rut Kolínská"
stdClass::$organization_url = "http://www.materska-centra.cz"
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stdClass::$organization_name = "Network of Mother Centers"
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<b>The Innovation</b>
The Network of Mother Centers in the Czech Republic (Sít materských center v Ceské republice) is a non-profit organization that seeks to help women with small children maintain their professional orientation and develop self-confidence. It provides fellowships, solidarity and education. With 287Mother Centers throughout the country, the organization offers a meeting ground and direct help to more than 28.000 families. In addition, it indirectly helps all families in the Czech Republic thanks to its political lobby. Kolínská drew inspiration from the model of Mother Centers in Germany and has taken the model to new sites in the Czech Republic.
<b>Background</b>
Family politics is not a priority in the Czech Republic. Maternity leave can take 3-4 years, but the state financial allowances for women on maternity leave are very low and often leave mothers in an uncertain financial situation. The solution would be an increased availability of part-time jobs and equal opportunities for women and men. Presently, women with small children are discriminated against in the labor market. MC prevents women from professionally and socially stagnating when they are on maternity leave. As a member of the Government Council for Women and Men’s Equal Opportunities, Kolínská does a great deal of lobbying for the benefit of mothers. Her goal is not only to establish equal opportunities for men and women in the workplace, but also to make on-site childcare possible at work.
<b>Strategy</b>
The Mother Centers are spaces where mothers and children can meet other mothers and children to learn how to use their free time. The Centers are open to all—including minorities, refugees and the disabled. The open atmosphere teaches respect and tolerance, and at the same time prevents xenophobia or racism. The benefits of MC include escaping isolation, keeping or upgrading the women’s professional standard, exchanging information and experience, developing new friendships, building self-confidence and interest in public matters. It also helps to prevent criminality and boosts the maternity rate.
According to Kolínská, the MC’s biggest contribution is that women learn how civic society works, and see what can be achieved when they take up the initiative instead of waiting to see what the state will do for them. It is a self-help model. Establishing an MC requires close cooperation with the local authorities, fundraising, and orientation regarding laws and the political situation. This process is a great teaching tool for women on maternity leave; they learn self-confidence and often become active in local politics. The numerous activities of Mother Centers are meant for mothers, parents and all families. The activities include crafts, educational and requalification programs, sports and short and long-term projects.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Kolínská is the daughter of a protestant pastor. The mother of five children, she spent 18 years on maternity leave. She has a university degree in Ethnography. Her interest in family issues originated in 1988, when she co-founded the environmental group, Prague Mothers. She founded the network of Mother Centers in the Czech Republic as a professional civic association in 2001. However, the first MC was opened as early as 1992, shortly after Kolínská got the inspiration from the model of Mother Centers in Germany. Over the years, she helped establish new centers, leading them methodically and popularizing the idea of the MC in the Czech Republic. The biggest problems she faced were lack of understanding, financial insecurity and insufficient staff. The turning point came when Kolínská started attending international seminars and conferences related to MC and family issues. She drew immense media attention after she was named Woman of Europe 2003, which consequently helped with fundraising. Rut Kolínská is highly respected by all members of the Mother Centers, and has become a natural authority in society due to her indisputable results and exemplary personal life. She serves as a role model for thousands of Czech women."
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<a href="http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3506.html" target="_blank">Audio Interview</a>
<b>The Innovation</b>
Wendy Kopp refuses to believe that where you were born should determine your future. She founded Teach For America to build a movement among promising future leaders to ensure that children growing up in low-income areas in the United States have the same chance to succeed as their better-off counterparts. Teach For America calls upon outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors and career interests to commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and to become lifelong leaders in the effort to expand educational opportunity. In the short run, corps members go above and beyond traditional expectations to help close the achievement gap for children. In the long run, Teach For America alumni (who go on to become educators, lawyers, corporate executives, and policy makers) use their influence to improve education and social conditions in low-income communities. Recently, Teach For America collaborated with Teach First, an adaptation in the U.K., to design and launch Teach For All to support the development of this model in other countries. Teach For All is supporting efforts in Australia, the Baltic region, Chile, Germany, India, Lebanon, and South Africa.
<b>Background</b>
Teach For America aims to address the inequities facing children growing up in low-income areas of the United States, where they are seven times less likely to graduate from college than those in better circumstances. One of the challenges initially faced by the organization was the threat felt by the education community itself. How could it be that young people, straight out of college, could be qualified to teach alongside professionals who had been through state approved teacher training programs? Recruiting untrained college graduates seemed to further jeopardize teachers' already fragile status. Teach For America managed to turn the tide in its favor as veteran educators witnessed the impact that corps members had on students and the community and as the program’s alumni proved to be a powerful force of educational leaders.
<b>Strategy</b>
Each year, Teach For America recruits and selects a corps of recent college graduates, intensively trains them during summer pre-service institutes, places them as full-time, paid teachers in urban and rural public schools, provides two years of ongoing professional development to ensure corps members’ impact on student achievement, and coordinates an alumni network to foster participants’ ongoing leadership. Teach For America has fulltime staff members (most of whom are alumni of the program) who recruit, select, train and support corps members and alumni, raise funds for the organization and manage administrative and communications functions. It has 25 national board members and close to 500 local advisory board members. Its funding base is highly diversified, with 70% of the financial support coming from the local areas where Teach For America places its members.
In its initial years, Teach For America has achieved impressive growth. In 2008, Teach For America had close to 25,000 highly qualified applicants, including between 5 and 10% of the senior classes at 100 colleges and universities including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Its annual group of over 6, 000 corps members reaches more than 400,000 students. Sixty percent of the 14,000 Teach For America alumni are still working full-time in the field of education, and of the remaining 40%have jobs that relate in some way to schools or low-income communities. While program alumni are still in their twenties and thirties, they are already leading reform initiatives as school superintendents, running many of the highest-performing schools in low-income communities, winning the highest accolades teachers can win as national and state teachers of the year, and pioneering far-reaching reform initiatives. While Teach For America is in the midst of an aggressive growth plan in the United States, it has worked in partnership with Teach First, its U.K. adaptation, to launch Teach For All to support the development of its model in other countries. Teach For All, a global network of local, independent organizations that will channel the talent and energy of their countries’ top recent college graduates to help end the educational disparities facing children in their communities, is supporting efforts in Australia, the Baltics, Chile, Germany, India, Lebanon, and South Africa.
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Wendy Kopp turned her senior thesis at Princeton University into Teach For America. Kopp pursued potential funders relentlessly, traveled the country, knocked on high-level doors, and refused to start small. She was determined to start Teach For America with no fewer than 500 college graduate recruits. For her, achieving this scale from the outset was the only way to gain the national importance necessary to inspire the most talented graduating seniors to compete to teach in low-income communities. Spurred on by a relentless commitment to educational equity, she climbed a steep learning curve in building a strong program and sustainable organization. Today, she is engaged in an ambitious effort to expand Teach For America’s impact still further, to become a truly effective movement to eliminate educational inequality."
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A decade after the collapse of the Soviet system, the faltering economies of former socialist countries has given rise to a significant population of homeless and unemployed people. Meanwhile, social services that were provided by the communist system have eroded as state coffers have dwindled. Outdated social policies remain - including the stipulation that access to healthcare, welfare and voting rights is contingent upon proof of employment and a place of residence.
Sergey Kostin's organization, The Way Home, makes visible those whom the state refuses to acknowledge. It serves as a registration centre for the Ukraine's homeless and unemployed, enabling them to exercise their right to basic government assistance. The centre provides a wide array of services to these groups, applying innovative outreach strategies to reintegrate them into the wider community. The Way Home also advocates for long-term policy solutions, maneuvering within the country’s legal system to overturn antiquated registration requirements. Since its inception, The Way Home has helped thousands of people across the Ukraine.
<b>Background</b>
Sergey Kostin is a geologist by training. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he became involved in the restoration of Odessa’s major architectural treasures. To aid with this endeavor, he set up a series of small workshops to teach carpentry, sewing and icon painting. In attempting to rescue the old buildings of Odessa, he rescued instead the exponentially growing numbers of homeless people, prostitutes, street children and drug addicts that roamed its streets. Kostin began The Way Home by offering a series of workshops similar to the ones he had run during his restoration work, seeking to build the skill base of those who had fallen on hard times. However, he soon discovered that the socially disenfranchised needed more than workshops. Thus, The Way Home rapidly expanded its programs and geographic scope to address this growing need across the Ukraine.
<b>Strategy</b>
Kostin has created a system that supports individuals from the socially vulnerable strata of society who are ready and able to improve their standard of living. Services promoting re-socialization are targeted at a wide variety of at-risk populations. The Way Home ensures that the basic needs of its clients are met, such as possession of official documents, adequate housing, opportunities for training and employment and support for managing personal life issues. It has set up transition homes for those individuals involved in its vocational training workshops. Its clothing production workshops have established a market brand and are generating revenue. The Children’s Centre provides a safety net for approximately 600 street children, most of whom come regularly for food and counseling. The AIDS Prevention Centre addresses the risk posed by intravenous drug use and prostitution via its needle exchange program and street outreach activities for sex workers. Because of the frequent political and legal roadblocks set up by government authorities, Kostin has turned to the media to educate an apathetic public about the growing problem and alert the general population that they, too, could one day find themselves victims of job loss or even homelessness.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2001
<b>The Entrepreneur</b>
Kostin believes that it is up to individuals to help themselves, and The Way Home is a vehicle to provide them with the tools. However, he feels that self-awareness and responsibility are not characteristics that come easily to individuals in post-Soviet societies. Kostin believes that people must be encouraged to see themselves, not the State, as agents of their own future. His st