Social Entrepreneurship

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    TreeHugger

  • Ford Unveils Electric Version of Transit Connect Utility Van

    9 Feb 2010 | 11:36 am
    Photo: Ford The Business World Needs Electric Vehicles Too Ford has just unveiled the electric version of its award-winning Transit Connect utility van in Chicago, and it's not just a "maybe far in the future" announcement. Transit Connect Electric vans should be in the hands of customers "later this year", says Ford, though full volume production is only scheduled for 2011....Read the full story on TreeHugger

  • Sen. DeMint: DC Snow Is Revenge on Gore

    9 Feb 2010 | 11:18 am
    Sen. Jim "Health Care will be Obama's Waterloo'' DeMint of South Carolina is once again making his state proud by posting on his Twitter account the following: "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle'". Classy, Senator, real classy. It's to be expected that climate change skeptics and deniers would use any strange weather to back up their case that climate change is a hoax, but this is beyond the pale. It does snow in February in DC, Senator. You've been in DC long enough to have realized this. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

  • Today on Planet 100: Facebook's Dirty Secret (Video)

    9 Feb 2010 | 10:58 am

  • Why Are So Many Paul Rudolph Buildings Being Torn Down?

    9 Feb 2010 | 10:15 am
    Bonnie Alter While out running in Sanibel Island, Florida, passing monster house after monster house, I came upon a small, lovely gem of modern architecture by the side of the road. It took about three seconds (google "small, modern, sanibel) to determine that it was the Walker Guest House by Paul Rudolph, a regular on TreeHugger. One of his first commissions, the 24' square house has lift-up panels connected to 77 pound round counterweights, giving it the nickname the "cannonball house." More to follow after I tour it on Friday, but it clearly shows all those things I love about Paul Rudolph…

  • TreeHugger's Best of Green 2010: Now Calling for Nominations

    9 Feb 2010 | 9:03 am
    Do you know of a green person, product, company, event, or concept that deserves to be lauded for the positive environmental change it has enacted? Let us know! In TreeHugger's second annual Best of Green Awards, we're looking to bestow top honors on the people, places, and things that are helping move sustainability into the mainstream. Last year, we awarded more than 170 prizes across eight general themes. This year, we're asking for your help making some of the selections. Let us know who you think should be nominated for a Best of Green Award. Then we'll ask for your hel...Read the full…
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    Global Voices Online

  • Sri Lanka: Another Blunder

    Rezwan
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:37 am
    A Voice In Colombo thinks that the victorious Mahinda Rajapaksa's government had “created another chance for opposition to gain public sympathy” by arresting general Sarath Fonseka.

  • India: The Kala Ghoda Arts Festival Blog

    Rezwan
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:05 am
    An interesting panel discussion on the delicious variety of ‘Food Writing' took place at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival in Mumbai, India. Read this and much more in The Kala Ghoda Gazette, the official blog of the festival.

  • Mongolia: “Khoomii doesn't belong to China”

    Portnoy
    9 Feb 2010 | 9:37 am
    On PetitionSpot, a new petition goes on to ask China officials to stop registering “Khoomii” or Mongolian throat singing in their Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in UNESCO.

  • Trinidad & Tobago: Parenting & Carnival

    Janine Mendes-Franco
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:42 am
    “Yes carnival is here, the greatest show on earth. The music, the [mas], the freedom and…babies at fetes”: Media Callaloo is appalled at the irresponsibility of some of the parents in Trinidad and Tobago.

  • Bahamas, Haiti: Birth Control

    Janine Mendes-Franco
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:39 am
    Sidney Sweeting at Weblog Bahamas shares his thoughts on birth control.
 
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    SSIR Articles

  • Grassroots Concrete

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    3 Feb 2010 | 2:39 pm
    On the morning of Jan. 26, 2001, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the western Indian state of Gujarat. More than 20,000 people were killed and 160,000 injured, many of them crushed by falling buildings. International aid agencies flocked to the scene and began reconstruction. One year later, civil engineer Elizabeth Hausler traveled to Gujarat on a Fulbright scholarship, hoping to learn how she could use her skills to build homes that withstand tectonic shifts. She found that many survivors didn’t want to live in their new, donor-built earthquake-resistant houses because they were made…

  • Second Chances and a Third Bottom Line

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    26 Jan 2010 | 4:14 pm
    Inside the steel and glass office towers of Chile’s capital, Santiago, computers, printers, and faxes hum. Out on the streets, business executives and taxi drivers chat away on some of Chile’s 14 million cellular telephones. Urbanized, well educated, and home to 17 million people, Chile is one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. And as is the case in the United States, all its electronic gadgets are beginning to lead to a whole lot of electronic waste. The country currently discards 300,000 computers a year, and by 2020 it will be grappling with an annual pile of 1.7…

  • Strength Through Flexibility

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    20 Jan 2010 | 2:36 pm
    In June 1992, the five founders of what became the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) met at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy. Each woman was a minister of education in her home country (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, the Seychelles, and Zimbabwe). And each lamented that only half of Africa’s school-age girls enrolled in school. FAWE’s founders understood the obstacles that girls met on the way to the schoolhouse. Many parents simply couldn’t afford school tuition and fees. Others preferred to keep their daughters at home to perform household…

  • An Ounce of Advocacy

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    11 Jan 2010 | 1:38 pm
    For years before Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast, scientists, engineers, and journalists warned that New Orleans’ levees might not withstand the inevitable “Big One.” Yet government officials at every level ignored the warnings and cut the programs designed to fortify the city’s defenses. So when disaster finally struck in late August 2005, government agencies were woefully unprepared to deal with the devastation. Into this breach waded nonprofits and businesses. The American Red Cross, for instance, spent more than $2 billion and deployed 220,000 volunteers to assist…

  • Podcasts

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    8 Jan 2010 | 3:01 pm
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    CSRWire

  • Chartwells Joins White House Campaign to Eradicate Childhood Obesity

    9 Feb 2010 | 11:21 am
    Chartwells School Dining Services is joining First Lady Michelle Obama in her national campaign to end childhood obesity within the next generation. As the industry leader in school dining, Chartwells is committed to partnering with the communities it serves to, at a minimum, more than quadruple the number that qualify for gold level nutrition status of the HealthierUS School Challenge by the close of the 2010-2011 school year. "We're honored to accept the White House's invitation to help eradicate childhood obesity and will be an active participant in the campaign," said Steve Sweeney, CEO…

  • Nickelodeon to Participate in First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move Campaign to Tackle Childhood Obesity

    9 Feb 2010 | 9:47 am
    Nickelodeon President Cyma Zarghami announced today that Nickelodeon will join the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, in her nationwide Let's Move www.LetsMove.gov campaign to solve the problem of childhood obesity in this generation. Nickelodeon will offer its resources and research to the campaign, including kid and family-targeted PSAs featuring the First Lady, and special programming events on its channels and websites. "Nickelodeon is honored to work together with the First Lady and to be part of the Let's Move campaign to stop the rise of childhood obesity," Zarghami said.

  • Sodexo Joins First Lady Michelle Obama in National Fight Against Childhood Obesity

    9 Feb 2010 | 7:03 am
    Sodexo, Inc., world leader in Quality of Daily Life solutions, serving more than 2.8 million school meals daily to students in more than 470 school districts nationwide, announced today its participation in First Lady Michelle Obama's campaign to eliminate childhood obesity within a generation. Collectively, Sodexo and its industry partners serve over 750 million school meals annually. The agreement will affect 135,000 students in the 2010-2011 school year alone. In addition, representatives estimate a potential increase of 18,700,000 meals conforming to standards outlined in the HealthierUS…

  • Yellow+Blue Wines go a Shade Greener

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:31 am
    Wine importer J. Soif, Inc. has today announced two significant partnerships it has established through its certified organic wine brand, Yellow+Blue, making it the only carbon-neutral wine importer in the U.S. and the only wine importer in the world to put a portion of its sales towards global microloans. Due to its eco-friendly Tetra Pak packaging, the carbon footprint of Yellow+Blue wines is 46% less than that of wine in traditional glass bottles. In order to offset the remaining 54%, the company has purchased 472 metric tons of verified carbon offsets to take responsibility for one…

  • University of Phoenix Announces Finish Strong(SM) Scholarship Recipients

    8 Feb 2010 | 12:18 pm
    As part of its ongoing commitment to making higher education highly accessible for working students, University of Phoenix is proud to announce the recipients of the 2010 Finish StrongSM Scholarship, which will provide full-tuition undergraduate or master's degree scholarships to 16 deserving men and women. "These recipients have persevered through incredible circumstances and life challenges in their pursuit of higher education," said Bill Pepicello, University of Phoenix President. "We are excited to partner with them, providing a flexible learning environment where they can complete their…
 
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    How to Change the World

  • How to Avoid Gullibility

    GuyKawasaki
    8 Feb 2010 | 3:45 pm
    We’ve all been sucked into doing something stupid, right? Fortunately, Steven Greenspan has written a book called Annals of Gullibility. In its conclusion he explains how to avoid gullibility, and I’ve provided a synopsis for you. Read the full story at the American Express Open Forum. More on psychology if you need the advice.

  • How to Be Empathetic

    GuyKawasaki
    4 Feb 2010 | 10:24 pm
    By definition, good marketers are empathetic. That is, they have a capacity to understand and care for the needs of others. Bruna Martinuzzi explains how to be empathetic over at the American Express Open Forum.

  • How to Not Be Annoying on Twitter

    GuyKawasaki
    4 Feb 2010 | 10:19 pm
    Amber MacArthur explains how to not be annoying on Twitter over at the American Express Open Forum. Sage advice for you to develop a great reputation and following on Twitter. More Twitter tips.

  • The Elements of Guyle: British Blogging

    GuyKawasaki
    27 Jan 2010 | 10:06 pm
    Want to make your blog classier? You should blog like a Brit. I explain how to do this in ten easy steps.

  • How to follow the Apple announcement

    GuyKawasaki
    27 Jan 2010 | 7:56 am
    Follow the Apple announcement at Apple.alltop. We aggregate over 200 sources there.
 
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    Worldchanging: Bright Green

  • De-Industrializing the City

    Alex Steffen
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:27 pm
    One of my favorite quotes by Bjarke Ingels: "Engineering without engines. We should use contemporary technology and computation capacity to make our buildings independent of machinery. Building services today are essentially mechanical compensations for the fact that buildings are bad for what they are designed for—human life. Therefore we pump air around, illuminate dark spaces with electric lights, and heat and cool the spaces in order to make them livable. The result is boring boxes with big energy bills. If we moved the qualities out of the machine room and back into architecture’s…

  • Vote Today and Help Us Win $5K!

    WorldChanging Team
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:43 am
    Just by clicking a button, you can help us win a $5,000 grant from Brighter Planet. Worldchanging's project proposal, Advocate for Climate Neutral Cities, has just been accepted for Brighter Planet's Project Fund, which provides seed money for people and projects working to help others fight or adapt to climate change. Our idea to create a climate neutral cities mini-magazine is one of nine projects up for the grant money. Brighter Planet members decide—as a community—which projects to fund. The project with the most votes at the close of a voting period receives the grant. Join today to…

  • Visions Desirable, Present and Future

    Mark Tovey
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:03 am
    Here at WorldChanging, we often have conversations about how best to envision desirable futures. Not just on how to collaborate on designing them, or accelerate development on the kind of technology that would get us there, but how to portray inspiring green futures that people would want to live in. Help us change the world - DONATE NOW! (Posted by Mark Tovey in Features at 11:03 AM)

  • Headlines from Worldchanging Canada (December 2009 - January 2010)

    Mark Tovey
    8 Feb 2010 | 10:32 am
    Top stories from our Canadian blog: Tokyo's Transforming Tower | Madeline Ashby "I wish there were a way to combine these shutters and some form of external cladding, but in a year both the tower's designers and its inhabitants will understand how best to exploit this building's transformation potential." Event Summary - 2009 Behavior, Energy and Climate Change Conference | Stefanie Bowles We feature notes from Stephanie Bowles on a couple of talks from the 2009 Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) conference in Washington DC. Bowles, quoting Karen Ehrhardt-Martinez: "... the BECC…

  • Where Did We Go Wrong on "Green Jobs"?

    Alex Steffen
    5 Feb 2010 | 6:12 pm
    I was in a meeting today with some smart folks that got me thinking again about "green jobs," specifically Van Jones' message about the intersection of environmentalism and social justice. They're not polished thoughts, but I thought I'd share them and see what folks think. Ever since Van Jones got essentially lynched by Glenn Beck's teabaggers, I've been wondering why it was so easy to target him, why the green jobs message (which seemed to me at the time uncontroversial) so clearly failed to connect, and why the green jobs conversation in Northern Europe seems to be going so much better.
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    Triple Pundit

  • Can Green Plants Green Coal Plants?

    RP Siegel
    9 Feb 2010 | 10:05 am
    If you take a bunch of dead trees and grasses and shrubs and bury them underground and wait a couple of hundred million years, you get coal: a highly concentrated energy source which has the unfortunate side effect of releasing a very large proportion of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But what if you simply [...]

  • Tesco Opens World’s First Zero Carbon Supermarket, Pledges $156 M to UK Green Economy

    Kathryn Siranosian
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:56 am
    Last week, Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, opened the world’s first zero carbon supermarket. The store has no net carbon footprint and exports any extra electricity generated back to the national grid. Located in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, this new supermarket boasts several eco-friendly features, including: A combined heat and power plant which runs on bio fuels from renewable sources [...]

  • Is Climate Change Legislation Dead in 2010?

    Cory Vanderpool
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am
    The latest chatter on the Hill is that climate legislation is not likely to pass this year. High jobless numbers, financial reform and the health care debate continue to thwart efforts focused on the environment. It is possible that the Senate will settle for an energy-only bill and call it a day. The likelihood of [...]

  • Despite Recession, Home Depot Keeps on Giving

    Jim Witkin
    9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am
    Last week’s announcement from the Home Depot Foundation suggests that even with sales slumps and layoffs, the nation’s largest retailer of home improvement products still views charitable giving as good business. The company is expecting lower revenues for 2009 when results are announced in February, and for the third consecutive January is cutting its workforce.  Still, [...]

  • Nominate A Pioneering, Successful, Green Restaurant!

    Bill Roth
    9 Feb 2010 | 2:21 am
    “Does green really sell,” is the question I am most consistently asked. Amanda’s is one of my favorite answers to this question. It is a restaurant that its founder, Amanda West, defines as “Whole Foods meets In–N-Out Burger.” It is also likely that Amanda’s represents the future of the fast food industry. America is a [...]
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    Marc Gunther

  • Is geoengineering inevitable?

    Marc
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:10 am
    Geoengineering, says scientist David Keith, “is like chemotherapy. It’s something nobody should like.” But if you can’t avoid cancer, chemotherapy may be your best option. And, if it becomes evident that the earth can’t avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change, it is not merely possible... >

  • Your parents were wrong

    Marc
    7 Feb 2010 | 6:27 am
    The Sierra Club and American Electric Power, the nation’s largest coal-burning utility, don’t agree on much, but there is this: Money does grow on trees. Along with other big environmental groups and such businesses as Duke Energy and El Paso Corp., they are part of a coalition that wants to use... >

  • Why green business is like teen sex

    Marc
    4 Feb 2010 | 6:03 pm
    Corporate sustainability is like teen sex. Everybody talks about it. Nobody does it very much. And when they do it, they don’t do it very well. My friend and colleague Joel Makower likes to tell that joke, and it’s as good a way as any to introduce Greenbiz.com’s third annual... >

  • Faith-based economics

    Marc
    2 Feb 2010 | 10:17 pm
    Did the stimulus package jump-start the economy? Will climate regulation create jobs? Are clean energy subsidies an efficient way to curb pollution? Is health-care spending worth it? And how worried, really, should we be about budget deficits? Those are questions for economists. With those issues... >

  • The power of small changes

    Marc
    1 Feb 2010 | 11:07 pm
    When Chris McKenna, who manages a fleet of trucks for Poland Spring, learned that the company’s drivers were racking up as much as 1,400 hours a month of idle time, he saw an opportunity to make a difference. Running truck engines in winter kept the cabs warm — the company is based in... >
 
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    Audeamus: How dare we

  • Microfinance is not good for teens

    4 Feb 2010 | 10:07 pm
    © Sukanto DebnathIt gives us a good feeling that microfinance is reaching out to poor women but some say that the same may not apply in case of teens. A number of those related to this field feel that microfinance to teenage girls could make them more vulnerable. Since the eighties when microfinance started spreading its wings it has helped many people come out of the shadows of poverty. Ninety percent of the loans are given to women where interest rate for income generation activity ...

  • Indian Premier League goes green

    28 Jan 2010 | 9:48 pm
    © B. SandmanThis game attracts billions of dollars and is watched by millions of viewers across the world. One of the biggest cricket extravaganzas in the world, Indian Premier League or IPL has decided to go green and for this purpose has entered into a tie up with United Nation Environment Program to make it happen. As a result IPL has become the first sports body in India to go carbon neutral by 2011. During every match of the season 2010, IPL will be calculating ...

  • Aavishkaar: India’s First Social Venture Capital Fund

    20 Jan 2010 | 9:47 pm
    Meet Vineet Rai, CEO of Aavishkaar, which can be termed as India's first social venture capital fund. With a corpus of just over Rs 1.65 billion, it is just a tiny drop in the Indian economy but that doesn't fetters Vineet. The social venture capital fund drawing cheers also challenges the skepticism over the prevalent idea that profit and social justice can never be combined. Rai started working when Indian economy got into the liberalization mode and while being posted at a remote village ...

  • Corporate Social Responsibility: It’s changing

    14 Jan 2010 | 9:20 pm
    © HowardLakeCorporate Social Responsibility or CSR is changing and definitely is changing for the better. The concept of CSR has been around since the early seventies but it entered the mainstream business a decade or earlier and its sustainability is yet another concept to be discussed. If you look back, not much like ten or fifteen years ago then the concept of CSR was characterized by defense and response where companies received criticism for their acts and they had to explain them too. ...

  • Seen that? - In Focus: Naandi

    6 Jan 2010 | 6:21 pm
    In Focus: Naandi Audeamus - How dare we... In March while I was in Hyderabad, India working on documenting a project the foundation I work for is involved with, we made a number of excursions to see social entrepreneurial and social ...
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    Global Envision

  • Poor Vision Put in Focus for the Developing World

    Sarah Standish
    5 Feb 2010 | 11:35 am
    Glasses are one key to improving the economic productivity of poor people in developing countries. Photo: deepchi1 (flickr)Poor vision may not seem like an economic problem at first glance. But according to the World Health Organization, workers with poor and uncorrected vision cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. Many of these workers struggle to put food on the table, much less purchase an expensive pair of glasses, so their vision problems go untreated. This situation may change thanks to an innovative new series of affordable glasses…

  • African cotton farmers search for better prices

    Alok Amatya
    2 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm
    Cotton farm workers in western Africa have been badly affected by a global drop in prices. Photo: 10b travelling (flickr)Falling cotton prices hurt African farmers far more than their American counterparts. And American subsidies may be to blame for the Africans' pain, according to a documentary on Dev.tv, a nonprofit media outlet. American farmers profit by growing more cotton since the U.S. government has promised them a fixed price no matter how much they produce. But American subsidies cause the market to be flooded with cotton, according to an industry expert in Benin, Bernard Adikpeto.

  • On a Mission to Vaccinate

    Ian Goldsmith
    1 Feb 2010 | 5:06 pm
    Eritrean child receiving a vaccine. Photo: daveblume (flickr)The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $10 billion-commitment over ten years to vaccinate children in developing countries on Friday. The nonprofit is calling on world leaders to join in this effort, aimed at drastically reducing the number of deaths of children under 5 years old. There are economic benefits to reducing child mortality in developing countries as well. Countries with lower child mortality rates tend to be more economically developed, according to the World Health Organization.

  • For Haiti's Long-Term Growth, Look to Business

    Sarah Standish
    30 Jan 2010 | 4:02 pm
    It will be necessary to rebuild textile factories like this one in Haiti, as well as build more of them. Photo: NewsHour (flickr)For aid workers and development experts, simply restoring Haiti to its pre-quake conditions will not be enough. Even before the earthquake about half of the population did not have access to clean water and 90 percent of children suffered from water-born illnesses, reported PRI. What will it take for conditions to improve? Many argue that a robust private sector will be a key part of the country's long-term recovery and ascent out of poverty. As New York Times…

  • Journalism Gives Voice to Untouchable Women

    Haley Dillan
    27 Jan 2010 | 2:27 pm
    "We take buses, cars, motorcycles until the road stops, then we walk..." Photo: FullyFunctnlPhil (flickr)In India, members of the Dalit caste, also known as untouchables, often work as cobblers, roadsweepers, janitors, or worse. They have been discriminated against for centuries and enjoy little to no rights. And all too often, the women are illiterate and have to ask their husbands or brothers for permission to work or go to school. But, in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a small newspaper is giving Dalit women a unique opportunity to voice their concerns. Recently, the LA Times…
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    Hip Investor

  • Terry Mollner Illuminates a New Path

    Jessica Margolin
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:28 pm
    Look what we ran across! It’s great to hear Terry Mollner — the CEO of Ben and Jerry’s and co-Founder of Calvert Fund — talk about how and why he believes HIP Investor is a game changer in the investment world!

  • [HIP POV] SEC Urges Corporate Disclosure of Climate Change Risk

    PaulandNick
    5 Feb 2010 | 12:05 pm
    THE NEWS: The SEC voted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010, to issue “interpretive guidance” to corporations — essentially requesting that firms include risks pertaining to climate change in their public filings.The Securities and Exchange Commission – and federal law -  has long required the corporate disclosure of “material risk” to potential investors, so this vote does not impose any new legal requirements technically speaking.The SEC guidance advises companies to disclose risks relating to climate change regulation and legislation, international accords, “Indirect…

  • Jan. 13, ONLINE: “Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing”

    R. Paul Herman
    11 Jan 2010 | 10:36 pm
    How HIP Is Your Winegrower? FREE Event: “Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing” – ATTEND ONLINE Wednesday, January 13, 2009 10 a.m. Pacific (11a Mountain, 12n Central, 1p Eastern) The Certified California Sustainable Alliance is a 501(c)(3) established by Wine Institute and California Association of Winegrape Growers in 2002. The Alliance is launching “Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing,” a new third-party certification program, with a detailed program and criteria that integrate all 227 factors. Sustainability is defined as environmentally…

  • (Weekly Webinars) Every Friday, now til 2/29, Sustainability Boot Camp – Turn Learning into Action

    R. Paul Herman
    24 Nov 2009 | 6:17 am
    Sustainability Boot Camp 13 Weeks of Learning for Action Every Friday LIVE – or ANYTIME online Every FRIDAY at 10am, join Sustinable Brands’ Sustainability Boot Camp LIVE to learn from 13 leaders in 13 weeks.  You can also watch ANYTIME on your web browser. In this series, which you can finish in less than one business quarter, learn from the sustainability experts already realizing Human Impact + Profit in business and industry.  HIP’s CEO R. Paul Herman will lead the Feb. 5 session on managing your organization to be more HIP – and the dashboards and metrics you…

  • [In the News] CNBC interviews HIP on Managing Carbon Value and Risk

    R. Paul Herman
    23 Nov 2009 | 6:09 am
    CNBC.com’s Trevor Curwin interviews HIP about managing the pollution associated with carbon and greenhouse gasses, upcoming carbon legislation and competitive positioning across industries – and how it will affect investor portfolios. “With carbon cap-and-trade legislation before Congress and increasing pressure from shareholders, US companies know they’ll have to deal with their greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon footprint, and many are jumping the gun to change their carbon liability into an asset. “The best-managed companies are evaluating their carbon footprint,”…
 
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    Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

  • My Davos remarks on IP

    8 Feb 2010 | 6:07 am
    I had multiple chances to plug my ideas around a more open approach in Davos, and found a sympathetic hearing, given some exciting activity in the same area. Nike launched the GreenXchange, and the Young Global Leaders had a humanitarian patent licensing concept that seemed promising. My main talk was at a session on commercialization of university research. Here's what I said.The underlying goal of spinning off university research is seeing that society actually benefits as much as possible from the immense investment we make in research. Commercialization is a proxy for societal impact: if…

  • Total Engagement

    7 Feb 2010 | 1:23 pm
    I just finished reading the book Total Engagement. It's rare that I read a book that has me wondering if the authors have caught a glimpse of an unexpected future, and that ten or twenty years from now people will be looking back and saying: that was the book that spotted this crucial trend. Having lived in Silicon Valley for many years, I'm used to having that experience of being exposed to the future ahead of its time. This could be one of them. The thesis is simple. Millions of people pay each month to participate in massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). I've tried them,…

  • Bookshare user on the leading literary edge!

    3 Feb 2010 | 5:24 pm
    This comment came to our volunteer email list today, and I got permission to repost. It captures the power of Bookshare so well:Just had to share this with you guys. My husband went out to dinner last night with a friend. His friend mentioned that my husband really ought to look into getting a Kindle for me, so I could read what everybody else is reading (a Kindle probably wouldn't work for me, but the thought was kind). So my husband told his friend about Bookshare, and how Bookshare staff and volunteers and outsourcers get books scanned and proofed and available. His friend said that…

  • The Davos Blur

    30 Jan 2010 | 10:56 pm
    The Davos scene is nonstop: it starts with breakfast meetings at 8 am and ends typically after midnight. You rush from session to session, often jumping a shuttle from one hotel to another or back to the Congress Center. In between the meetings, there’s the powerful force of serendipity. In the hallways, you’re as likely to run into the head of an international NGO, as CEO of a Fortune 100 company, as a renowned professor as the foreign minister of a major country. And, everybody is working on something and usually is interested in several issues. Every table conversation brings a new…

  • Three Fabulous Conversations

    29 Jan 2010 | 2:48 am
    The WEF is all about having a critical mass of incredible people. This enables great conversations: the serendipity effect is huge. I just wanted to highlight three conversations I had today, each of which shows why this is such a great opportunity for Benetech to attend. Conversation OneJust as I finished my breakfast, I looked across the way and saw Larry Brilliant, the new head of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund. That shortchanges Larry’s background: he was the key leader in the campaign to eliminate smallpox in India, cofounded the Seva Foundation and a couple of high tech companies, and…
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    Change.org: Social Entrepreneurship

  • Student by Day, Robin Hood by Night: A How-To Guide

    Caitlin Cohen
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:17 pm
    This is part 7 of an 11-part series on Undergraduate Social Entrepreneurship coordinated by theSocial Innovation Initiativeat Brown University. This post's author is Caitlin Cohen, Chair and Co-Founder of the Mali Health Organizing Project Student social entrepreneurs find themselves straddling a chasm between the ivory tower and communities facing a total lack of resources. It can be a distinctly uncomfortable split, even for the most limber, and the urge to start Robin-Hooding is overpowering. Many of us have heard the story of Paul Farmer pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars of…

  • New Orleans Wins Super Bowl, Gets New Social Entrepreneurship-Loving Mayor

    Nathaniel Whittemore
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:13 am
    Sure, sure, the Super Bowl was exciting. Who didn't want the underdog -- particularly from America's beating heart of New Orleans -- to win? (Okay, besides Indiana fans.) Still, though, even more exciting for social entrepreneurs was Saturday's news that Mitch Landrieu, former Lt. Governor of Louisiana, was elected to become the city's mayor. With 66% of the vote, Landrieu won the election outright, boxing out 10 opponents and closing the door on eight-year mayor Ray Nagin. While Nagin was thrust into the spotlight in the wake of Katrina, New Orleans residents had grown increasingly…

  • G7 Countries to Cancel Haiti's Bilateral Debt

    Nathaniel Whittemore
    7 Feb 2010 | 2:06 pm
    In a show of support for earthquake-devastated Haiti last night, the leaders of the G7 nations announced that they would be canceling all of the country's bilateral debt. As the BBC reports, the actual amount in question is small, as Haiti's largest bilateral debts are not held by G7 nations (which include Canada, the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Japan). Most of its debt is owed to multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund. While such agencies cancelled some $1.2 of Haiti's almost $2 billion in debt last year, the chorus is growing louder for them to eliminate…

  • Digital Work for the Poor: The Next Big Opportunity?

    Nathaniel Whittemore
    6 Feb 2010 | 9:45 am
    Congratulations to Samasource and Crowdflower, which have won the title of "Netexplorateur" of the Year, thanks to the creation of their GiveWork application. GiveWork -- which allows iPhone users around the world to support work opportunities for the poorest of the poor -- is a groundbreaking application, and the recognition is much-deserved. Samasource is a firm that helps refugees and others in poverty earn income by completing digital tasks that include clerical and data input, photo tagging and translation, among others. It business development side brings in the contracts (often…

  • Seeding a Crop of Social Innovators

    Molly Mills
    5 Feb 2010 | 12:24 pm
    This is part 6 of an 11-part series on Undergraduate Social Entrepreneurship coordinated by theSocial Innovation Initiative (SII) at Brown University. This post was written by Molly Mills, leader of the SII Grants Competition. When I can plant a few seeds and watch them grow into a harvest that feeds an entire community, I really feel like I have a "green thumb." The Social Innovation Initiative (SII) Grant Competition plants these seeds by funding early-stage undergraduate social ventures at Brown University. Our process reaches and engages multiple audiences, including alumni, community…
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    Environmental Leader

  • Caterpillar Puts Weight Behind $1.5B FutureGen CCS Project

    Environmental Leader
    9 Feb 2010 | 9:34 am
    Caterpillar plans (PDF) to join the FutureGen Alliance to build a $1.5 billion near-zero emissions coal-fired power plant that will produce hydrogen and electricity while capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide underground in Mattoon, Illinois, reports Reuters. The FutureGen project is expected to prove the technical and economic feasibility of producing low-cost power and hydrogen from coal [...]

  • WR Grace Targets 20% Energy Intensity Cuts

    Environmental Leader
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:58 am
    W. R. Grace has targeted reducing the energy intensity of its operations by 20 percent per pound of production by 2017. The company says it will report its progress annually. “This new component of our sustainability strategy makes good business sense,” said Fred Festa, Grace’s chairman, president and CEO. “Clearly, this is a stretch goal, but [...]

  • As UK Cap and Trade Falters, Government May Prop Up Carbon Prices

    Environmental Leader
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:51 am
    UK lawmakers are calling for stricter limits on greenhouse gases and the power to intervene in carbon markets as its cap-and-trade program fails to encourage investments in cleaner energy, reports Business Week. The UK’s cross-party parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) says the current EU ETS carbon price is well below the levels needed to spur investments [...]

  • Federal Government Proposes Climate Change Office

    Environmental Leader
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:45 am
    The Obama administration proposes to create a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service that would provide information to help governments and businesses adapt to climate change, reports the New York Times. The centralized source of climate information would provide projections ranging from sea level rise to maps of the best sites for wind and [...]

  • University of Florida Football Complex Uses 25% Less Energy Than Similar Buildings

    Environmental Leader
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:39 am
    Architect Al Oberlander with RDG Planning & Design talks about the sustainable aspects of the University of Florida’s new Heavener Football Complex. The building was the first athletic facility in the nation to be certified LEED platinum. It uses 25 percent less energy than other buildings of its size, Oberlanders says. The building uses renewable energy [...]
 
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    Have Fun Do Good

  • How to Start, or Join a Social Action Book Club

    Britt Bravo
    5 Feb 2010 | 3:33 pm
    This week two fellow BlogHer Contributing Editors (Virgina DeBolt and Elana Centor), and BlogHer co-Founder (Elisa Camahort Page), and me had a virtual book club call to discuss Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky, which discusses sex trafficking, forced prostitution and gender-based violence is a tough read, and we all agreed that discussing it together really helped to process the information.We've decided to read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer together next. If you'd like to join us, email me at…

  • Supporting Have Fun Do Good with TranquiliT and the Right Brain Business Plan

    Britt Bravo
    2 Feb 2010 | 8:08 am
    I'm trying out an experiment, and have added a couple digital ads to the sidebar of Have Fun Do Good for creative women entrepreneurs whose work I believe in: Jennifer Lee's Right Brain Business Plan, and Kimberly Wilson's eco-fashion company, TranquiliT. Both women, along with Lisa Sonora Beam and myself, are planning a 2010 creative women entrepreneur retreat together.Basically, if you click on the ads and make a purchase, I get a portion of the sale, which will help support my writing Have Fun Do Good, and my producing the Big Vision Podcast.I took Jennifer Lee's Right Brain Business Plan…

  • How Did You Decide to Help Haiti for the Rest of 2010?

    Britt Bravo
    31 Jan 2010 | 8:26 am
    Last week in my post, Keeping Your Balance While Helping Haiti, I suggested that you research organizations working in Haiti that you would like to support by donating, volunteering, or helping in some other way throughout 2010. We need to support the people of Haiti now, but also in the future, when the hard work of rebuilding begins.Although I have a particular interest in grassroots organizations, I decided to donate to a large organization, CARE. CARE is a humanitarian nonprofit that works in poor communities. They focus on women and children. I contributed to their Haiti Emergency…

  • Your Feedback Requested on The Have Fun Do Good Guide

    Britt Bravo
    28 Jan 2010 | 12:11 pm
    Hello Have Fun Do Gooders!One of my 2010 New Year's resolutions is to complete either a book proposal, or a self-published e-book that I am tentatively titling, The Have Fun Do Good Guide.You have no idea how scary it is for me to share that with you. Yikes!Anyway, I am writing The Have Fun Do Good Guide because:1. I've always wanted to write a book.2. I want to explore how to add more having fun and doing good into my own life.3. I want to share stories, ideas and resources that are inspiring and useful to other people.I have my own ideas about what I would like to include in the book, but I…

  • Keeping Your Balance While Helping Haiti

    Britt Bravo
    22 Jan 2010 | 4:15 pm
    When a tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti happens, and the images and stories are so disturbing, it is normal to feel extreme emotions: despair, depression, anxiety that help isn't getting their fast enough, guilt, even denial. The thing is, extreme emotions are not always the most productive ones. Eventually, Haiti will be out of the 24-hour news cycle, but its people will still need support. Make a commitment this month to do your part to help over the long term, in a balanced way.Below are five ideas for how to keep your balance, while helping Haiti, or any cause you are passionate…
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    Ecopreneurist

  • Can Promo Help Save The Reefs?

    John Simonetta
    3 Feb 2010 | 6:27 pm
    This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry. I like the beach. A lot of folks like the beach. And this time of year dozens of cruise ships are taking people from cold northern climes to warm southern waters. Indeed an item as basic as brandable sunscreen is a big seller for our industry at this time of year. Believe me, cruise ships hold a lot of sunscreen. However, over the past few years the world…

  • Smelly Pen 50% Plant-based Renewable Plastic

    John Simonetta
    2 Feb 2010 | 8:28 am
    This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry. All-in-One seems to have a hit on their hands with their new USA Good Scents™ Twist Pen. Adding scent to a pen gives the item a visceral connection with the user, and is a great way to get your promotional item, and hence your brand, noticed. And the EQP price of $0.99 makes them cost competitive. Here is the video making the rounds. This post…

  • All-In-One Lowers Cost On Eco Max Recycled Pen™

    John Simonetta
    30 Jan 2010 | 1:31 pm
    This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry. Like other promotional items suppliers, for 2010 All-In-One is both reducing costs on their eco-friendly line while also increasing the number of eco related items in their inventory. For me this is another sign of the marketplace getting what it wants when it comes to eco-friendly promotional items, namely more choice and lower prices. A stand out here is…

  • Pre-Printed Jute Shopper From V Natural

    John Simonetta
    27 Jan 2010 | 9:45 am
    This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry. There are a number of pre-printed poly non-woven and recycled material totes on the market. A pre-printed bag allows the buyer to get more bang for their back as they are purchasing a pre-designed and decorated item to which they simply add their own logo or other information. For those looking beyond poly or recycled content bags, Vitronic Promotional…

  • EcoCoolie Pocket Coolie 2.0

    John Simonetta
    25 Jan 2010 | 1:01 pm
    This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry. Remember the ECOCoolie from Numo Manufacturing? The first version of the EcoCoolie had only 15% post-consumer recycled material. At the time I applauded the fact that this Dallas based manufacturer was at least making a post-consumer material coolie (it was the first on the market as far as I could tell), but was disappointed at the low 15%. Now Numo has…
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    NextBillion.net

  • Business Development Manager

    9 Feb 2010 | 10:03 am
    Organization: FUNDES InternationalLocation: San José, CRAbout FUNDES Since its foundation in 1984, FUNDES has been a pioneering and visionary organization in developing the region's private sector. Its efforts have focused on strengthening the business capacity of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in order to improve their position in the markets and transform the sectors, regions, and overall business-enabling environment. FUNDES's efforts have set the pace for creating a business development services market in Latin America geared toward the MSME. Likewise, it has helped…

  • Overwhelming Response to the NextBillion Case Competition

    9 Feb 2010 | 8:19 am
    Authored by: Moses LeeThe date for submitting intention to compete forms for the first annual NextBillion Case Writing Competition has come and gone.  At the onset, the editors and I were unsure of how many people would submit."I'd be happy if we got ten," I told the Rob and Francisco. Well, I'm pleased to let the NextBillion community know that we more than doubled that number with over 20 submissions from teams all over the world!  We had submissions from Washington University in St. Louis, Xavier Institute of Management, Dehlhi Technological University, Indian Institute of…

  • Senior Manager, Business Development, Global Business Division

    8 Feb 2010 | 8:01 pm
    Organization: IntuitLocation: Bangalore, INAbout Intuit Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU) is the world's leading provider of software and web-based services for consumers and small businesses. Our flagship products and services include well-known brands such as TurboTax, Quicken and QuickBooks. Founded in 1983, Intuit has annual revenues of over $3 billion and reaches over 25 million customers with ~8,000 employees in several countries. Fortune Magazine recognized Intuit as "America's Most Admired Software Company" and one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For" for the last several years running.

  • Introducing NextBillion’s Newest Managing Partner: WDI

    8 Feb 2010 | 12:35 pm
    Authored by: Bob KennedyAs announced in January (link), The William Davidson Institute (WDI) has joined the World Resources Institute and Acumen Fund as co-Managing Partners of the NextBillion.net site.  The Managing Partners set strategy, fund enhancements to the site, manage the site, and work together to grow the NextBillion community. This post is intended to introduce WDI to the NextBillion community and to invite you to explore ways to engage with the Institute.  WDI is a think tank located at the University of Michigan (UM) that focuses on business and policy issues in…

  • Market Linkages: The Achilles' Heel of Livelihoods

    8 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am
    Authored by: Sriram GuttaOver the last two decades, models for livelihoods for the poor have come of age and many organizations have focused their efforts on reducing the vulnerability of marginalized communities. A lot of these activities have been through the efforts of NGOs, international funding agencies, and local organizations working in specific regions and with specific segments. Though these models have been successful in creating employment, they haven't scaled to realize their true potential. One such example is of Chamba chappals where over 500 artisans make sturdy and beautifully…
 
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    The Edge

  • Best Innovation Blogs

    8 Feb 2010 | 12:32 pm
    We are usually quite shy at Social Edge about our accomplishments. We rarely mention our traffic numbers (booming!) or our ego-pleasing nominations, like the Webbies Honoree mention for Global X.But we couldn't help but blush when Social Edge was named one the Best Innovation Blogs (along with IDEO!) by Five for Friday, an informal roundup of some of the best things on the Web. These are the reason they chose us:Thinking about starting your own NGO or jetting off to personally endhunger? Read Social Edge first. [...]Social Edge furthers innovation among social entrepreneurs through…

  • 10 Reasons to Apply for the GSBI

    8 Jan 2010 | 6:00 am
    In "Twitter-concise" language, here are 10 reasons to apply for the Global Social Benefit Incubator. For more information on the GSBI, you can read the full press release or find the copy in Spanish, Portuguese, and French in our press area.   Reason # 10 to apply to #GSBI Scale your impact & change the world faster! http://bit.ly/gsbi10 What is your reason to apply? Let us know.  Reason #9 to apply to #GSBI Special opp for orgs helping communities off the grid or suffering frequent disruptions in their energy supply  Reason #8 to apply to #GSBI Be the…

  • Imagine, Connect, Act

    8 Dec 2009 | 3:26 pm
    Life is complicated, says our Idealist friend Ami Dar. He wonders whether we could start looking at the world from a different point of view to "quickly build a network of people and organizations that will allow us to make the most of what each of us has to offer, online and in person."He just published a vision for this network, a path and a timeline to get there, and an invitation to be part of this movement from the very start.Will you join them?

  • Sally Osberg contributes to Intrepid Philanthropist

    3 Dec 2009 | 9:39 am
    Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg is contributing thought-provoking blog posts to the Intrepid Philanthropist blog, a new initiative at the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke. You can read those here.

  • The Design of Business

    1 Dec 2009 | 9:00 pm
    Debra Dunn just wrote a fascinating review of Roger Martin’s new book, The Design of Business (Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage), in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.As they grow, many organizations tend to become driven by an analytical approach to management that is incompatible with exploration of new and innovative ideas. "This is the crux of the conflict between innovation and scale," writes Debra Dunn.She adds a personal comment: "As someone who wears the scars of many battles fought for innovation during 22 years at Hewlett-Packard, a…
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    Greenbang

  • Haiti relief effort gets clean drinking water from the air

    Greenbang
    9 Feb 2010 | 9:54 am
    A device that draws clean, drinkable water from the air is being used to support relief efforts in earthquake-stricken Haiti. Florida-based Aqua Sciences sent one of its atmospheric water extraction machines to Haiti on 28 January. Since then, the device has been operating around the clock at Port-au-Prince’s University Hospital to provide drinking water for the hospital and at drop-off points around the city. The clean water also helps with surgical scrubbing and cleaning wounds. “Sources on the ground have told me that the doctors, nurses, patients and soldiers have dubbed our…

  • Scientists use laser to take oil’s ‘fingerprints’

    Greenbang
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am
    Researchers with the petroleum company Saudi Aramco have found a way to use a laser to “fingerprint” oil. The innovation promises a number of benefits, including better quality control at refineries. The laser device takes mere nanoseconds to excite an oil sample’s fluorescence spectra, which is then analysed to provide a “spectral fingerprint” of the sample. The instrument is also sturdy and portable, which will enable it to be used in the field to assess petroleum quality. “(W)e’re also working on a remote sensing version that can be used in…

  • Survey: Where’s the value in corporate social responsibility?

    Greenbang
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:19 am
    Do you work for a firm that’s taking steps to be a socially responsible business? If so, we’d like to ask you a few questions in this brief survey. We’re interested in learning more about how much your organisation is spending on corporate social responsibility, who’s in charge of funding those efforts and what sort of value your business gains from its CSR programmes. The survey has just four questions, so should take less than a minute to complete. Let us know what your company is doing in CSR and take the survey now by clicking here. Share this on del.icio.us Digg…

  • Jurdy: Wasteful motoring

    Greenbang
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:11 am
    Jurdy finds a better use for government paperwork … Share this on del.icio.us Digg this! Share this on Reddit Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon Share this on Technorati Post this to MySpace Share this on Facebook Tweet This! Subscribe to the comments for this post? Share this on Linkedin Related posts:Jurdy: Catching forty (green) winksJurdy: Food for thoughtJurdy: Inauguration day distractions

  • US unveils new climate portal for decision-makers, public

    Greenbang
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:49 pm
    The US government today unveiled a new web portal today that’s designed to meet a rising demand for information on how climate change might affect farming, public health, business and infrastructure. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Services site will serve as a one-stop shop for the agency’s climate-related information, data, products and services. “More and more individuals — community planners, farmers, public health officials and small business owners — are seeking reliable, user-friendly climate data and information,”…
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    Global Giving Blog

  • A Tough(er) Sell

    Bill Brower
    6 Feb 2010 | 4:23 am
    Poor kids, sick people and threatened animals. As is the case in much of the development sector, projects that deal with any one of these tend to have an easier time raising funds on GlobalGiving. The problem is easy to grasp and a remedy is obvious (at least conceptually in the short run): Give food; provide medicine; build an animal rescue center. These are big problems that warrant significant attention. But a recurring concern as I meet with organizations throughout Southeast Asia is how to engage donors for everything else. Some NGOs are particularly frustrated because their projects…

  • Gathering real-time feedback in haiti can improve disaster response

    Marc Maxson
    1 Feb 2010 | 2:42 pm
    Judging from some of the comments GlobalGiving donors have made on recent haiti updates, I gather that television news falls short of presenting a multifaceted view of the earthquake recovery effort. There is a mix of ongoing challenges with some successes. Last Friday someone wrote in: Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 4:36 PM Project ID: 4559 / IMC provides medical care to Haiti Project URL: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/haiti/ It gives me a first hand account of what medical relief is taking place as oppose to what’s being transmitted over the airways showing de-humanizing…

  • Maryland Teen Raises over $3,000 for fuel-efficient stoves in Rwanda

    Donna
    16 Dec 2009 | 4:31 am
    Reposted from www.reliefweb.int 15 Dec 2009 Local Teen Raises Over $3,000 for CHF International’s Fuel Efficient Stoves Program Spencer Brodsky, a Maryland teen, has raised $3,300 for CHF International’s Fuel Efficient Stoves program in Rwanda through Global Giving’s Give More, Get More Challenge. Through social media, Spencer encouraged hundreds of like-minded individuals to give to CHF through Global Giving, who were matching donations by adding a matching percentage to however much grassroots donors raised. For over two years, Spencer has been working with CHF…

  • International Giving Can Be Tough for Companies, but…

    Donna
    7 Dec 2009 | 6:30 am
    Last month the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (”CECP”) published its annual report on corporate philanthropy, “Giving in Numbers2009.“  This is one of the reports we look forward to seeing each year, as CECP is very highly regarded and counts among its member CEOs of many of the leading global corporate citizens, including several of GlobalGiving’s corporate partners - Applied Materials, Gap, Inc.,  Hasbro and PepsiCo, to name a  few. CECP describes itself as the only international forum of CEOs and chairpersons pursuing a mission exclusively…

  • Do You Believe in Life After Love (and War)?

    Donna
    16 Nov 2009 | 3:08 pm
    In her 1998 worldwide number one hit iconic superstar Cher asks, “Do you believe in life after love?”  But these days that memorable line could be amended to add “…and war?” For years Cher has been a visible and unabashed advocate for ensuring that women and men who serve our country are honored through policies and programs that lift up their heroism and ensure their dignity, both during deployment and after they return from combat.  She has demonstrated this commitment  by supporting organizations from Operation Helmet to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, and…
 
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    Global Giving Projects

  • CARE provides water, food and relief to Haiti

    Justine Miley
    15 Jan 2010 | 2:21 pm
    $10 — Help earthquake victims by providing emergency assistance $25 — Help earthquake victims by providing emergency assistance $50 — Help earthquake victims by providing emergency assistance SummaryCARE's inital focus will be on food, clean water and shelter. Once we are able to provide immediate relief we will concentrate on longer-term rehabilitation.Project Needs and BeneficiariesThe priority at the moment is water. As part of our initial response, CARE plans to distribute 600,000 water purification tablets and 60,000 meals. Our focus will…

  • Save the Children Races to Children & Families

    Rebecca Bryant
    15 Jan 2010 | 12:07 pm
    $25 — Provides emergency relief$50 — Provides emergency relief$100 — Provides emergency reliefSummaryYour donation is urgently needed to help Save the Children support Haitian children and families affected by the catastrophic earthquake. Project Needs and BeneficiariesSave the Children staff on the scene estimate that children may make up 2 million of the 3 million people affected in Port-au-Prince and surrounding communities. Staff also report that roughly 50 percent of all homes have been damaged or destroyed. Power is out, there is no…

  • Rebuilding Livelihoods of Farmers in Haiti

    Lauren Frederic
    15 Jan 2010 | 8:40 am
    $15 — will assist a team of local and international experts in assessing the impact of the recent earthquake on the Vetiver sector.$50 — will provide technical assistance to the Vetiver sector to develop and sustain income generating activities that provide complimentary soil erosion control and flood mitigation benefits.$100 — will help local communities in the South of Haiti establish relationships to sell their products to people and businesses outside of their community and outside of Haiti.SummaryEVI focuses on Haiti's Vetiver industry to…

  • Haiti Earthquake Relief: Clean Water

    Ruth Entwistle
    14 Jan 2010 | 2:35 pm
    $10 — Provides a 5-gallon bucket and a bottle of Gadyen Dlo (treats water for a family of 5 for 40 days)$100 — Supplies to immediately aid 10 families with safe water$1000 — 1/2 of the cost of an electrolytic generator used in production of the chlorine SummaryAs a 501c3 devoted to providing last solutions to the need for safe water in Haiti, Deep Springs is stepping up to serve those directly affected by the earthquake in addition to our ongoing efforts. Project Needs and BeneficiariesHaiti was rocked at 5:00 pm (EST) on January 12th by a…

  • Haiti Water Relief

    Eric Frier
    14 Jan 2010 | 12:55 pm
    $10 — Provide 1 week of water for one person$30 — 1 week of water for a family of 3$60 — 1 week of water for 2 families of 3SummaryProvide Emergency Clean Water to hospitals and people of Haiti in response to the devastating earthquake. Fresh water to be sent in FDA approved 3.4 gallon rugged WaterBrick containers.Project Needs and BeneficiariesWith tens of thousands of Haitians dead and government in disarray, people are in dire need of water. People cannot survive long without water, and without clean water, the likelihood increased disease…
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    Cleantech Blog

  • Big Oil Fights Big Ag

    9 Feb 2010 | 10:45 am
    By John Addison (2/9/10)Americans are Spending 20 percent of their income on transportation. In the average two-car household it is often higher. Big Oil and Big Ag are fighting for their share of that moneyPetroleum use has started to drop in the United States as we have fewer cars and more fuel efficient cars. The U.S. Department of Energy continues to report drops in refinery utilization due to weak demand for gasoline and diesel.Ethanol and biodiesel further cut into oil profits. Big Oil is maneuvering to slow Big Ag from selling more biofuels. Big Oil giants include Exxon (XOM), Chevron…

  • Why isn't there a Building Efficiency Trade Association

    8 Feb 2010 | 12:27 pm
    Is it time for a real trade association for the Building Efficiency industry?I was thinking about this today. I have seen one that really does the job. For those of you that have been a part of the efficiency industry for a long time, you know that it is like a greyhound race.Companies running as fast as they can to realize the dream only to come up short on actually catching the rabbit.Energy Efficiency in the US alone is estimated to have $440B of potential by LBNL and over $3 Trillion when calculating the ultimate economic potential by 2030.As the costs of new electricity, water, and…

  • Gray Power

    8 Feb 2010 | 9:01 am
    by Richard T. StuebiThe distinction between "green power" -- electricity without any carbon emissions, usually from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind -- has been clearly drawn vs. "brown power" -- electricity generated from fossil fuels.In a recent article in The Nation, author Lisa Margonelli writes about "The Case for 'Gray Power'". "Gray power" is the term that Ms. Margonelli uses for a concept called "energy recycling", wherein electricity is generated from capturing waste heat from burning fossil fuels. So, gray power is not as "green" as renewables, but given that the fuel…

  • U.S. Wind Energy Breaks Record with 10 GW added in 2009

    2 Feb 2010 | 7:58 am
    By John Addison The U.S. wind industry broke all previous records by installing 9,922 MW installed last year. This expanded the nation’s wind fleet by 39% and bring total wind power generating capacity in the U.S to over 35,000 MW. The five-year average annual growth rate for the industry is also 39%. U.S. wind projects today generate enough to power the equivalent of 9.7 million homes, protecting consumers from fuel price volatility and strengthening our energy security.Wind power and natural gas are the leading sources of new electricity generation for the United States, generating 80% of…

  • Getting the LEDs Out

    1 Feb 2010 | 4:54 am
    by Richard T. StuebiKeith Scott, VP of Business Development at Bridgelux, recently posted on GreenTech Media an interesting take on the state of LED lighting markets. Mr. Scott claims that "we are in the middle of the LED lighting revolution", and sees big expansion ahead in for the sector.In some ways, the picture he paints parallels the recent trends in the photovoltaics sector. The prices for LED lighting system are high in large part because of booming demand for LEDs from other applications (e.g., high-def TVs). This is triggering expansion of LED manufacturing capacity, which should…
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    Echoing Green Blog

  • PopTech Application Open for Nominations

    shalena
    5 Feb 2010 | 7:20 am
    The 2010 PopTech Social Innovation Fellows Program application is now open! PopTech is looking to invest in the leadership of people with big ideas and innovative solutions to economic, environmental, and social challenges. PopTech Social Innovation Fellows recieve training from influential, prominent leaders in the social sector. Additionally, fellows participate in the annual PopTech conference (October 20-23, Camden, ME) where ideas and inspiration are spread. Five Echoing Green Fellows were a part of the Social Innovation Program Class of 2008. You can view the "popcasts" of…

  • Change.org’s Zach Knowling on How to Land a Political and Advocacy Job

    Anthony
    3 Feb 2010 | 2:32 pm
    In the third second edition of the Jobs for Change partnership, Britt Bravo interviews Zach Knowling, a consultant for M+R Strategic Services. In this episode, they discuss the following questions: What are some tips for landing a job on a political campaign? If internships are important, what tips do you have for getting one? Don't forget that you can subscribe to the podcast to get all of our latest updates. To submit a question for consideration in a future episode, head to http://jobs.change.org/questions. Stay up to date by following us on Twitter: Echoing Green (@echoinggreen) Jobs for…

  • Cheryl Dorsey in U.S. News Leadership for the Next Decade Series

    shalena
    28 Jan 2010 | 1:09 pm
    Echoing Green President Cheryl Dorsey is featured in this week's U.S. News Leadership for the Next Decade series. Cheryl discusses how social entrepreneurs have the ability to unite people across sectors for a specific cause, and the impact social entrepreneurs have in post-disaster regions like New Orleans and Haiti. The U.S. News podcast series, Leadership for the Next Decade, interviews leaders from multiple sectors who are inspiring change in America. To read more, check out The U.S. News article "Cheryl Dorsey: Social Entrepreneurs Already Helping to Rebuild Haiti" and listen…

  • Buffalo fellows featured in ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

    Anthony
    22 Jan 2010 | 1:43 pm
    This Sunday at 8PM EST, be sure to tune in to ABC for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.  This week is a special two-hour edition that features a home renovation in Buffalo, NY.   The lucky recipient of the makeover is Delores Powell and her four children. Delores is a Buffalo resident and board member of PUSH (People United for Sustainable Housing), the organization founded by 2005 Echoing Green Fellow Aaron Bartley.  Her home was selected for an makeover with a strong emphasis on sustainability and community organizing.  Her original home was deconstructed by Buffalo ReUse (founded by…

  • Two fellows talk earthquake-resistant housing with the New York Times

    Anthony
    21 Jan 2010 | 9:04 am
    Two Echoing Green Fellows were featured on Monday in an article titled, Managing Disasters with Small Steps.  The article highlights “innovative approaches to building or rebuilding infrastructure in developing countries, to help forestall disasters or, as in Haiti, recover from one." Elizabeth Hausler, a 2004 Echoing Green Fellow and founder of Build Change, discusses her bottom-up approach to designing and implementing earthquake resistant housing that’s culturally sensitive.  Pete Haas, a 2006 Echoing Green Fellow and founder of AIDG, talks about modifying their upcoming…
 
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    Afrigadget

  • Rim Stoves: Cooking MamaPut Goodness

    Wayan Vota
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:46 am
    I love street food. Everywhere I go, from street markets in Russia, to back alleys of Beijing to side streets in Skopje, to the boulevards of Bamako, I make it a point to eat as many meals from roadside stands as possible. Ghana and Nigeria are no exception. In fact, I love me a MamaPut. Its only where Mama herself is there to put more of her good eats on your plate, that I really feel I’m getting a good meal. Why? Because I can see ever step of its preparation, talk with the chief personally, and share the transcending bond of food with my fellow man and woman. Now I wouldn’t…

  • Recycling: From diving wetsuit to laptop bag

    Juliana Rotich
    1 Feb 2010 | 5:59 am
    When Dipesh Pabari of Camps International sent me pictures of these laptop bags and bottle can holders, I just knew it would be something you AfriGadget fans would appreciate. The fact that discarded waste is converted to something very useful… Its definitely AfriGadget. I asked Sander Den Haring a few questions about these cool products. How did you begin your company? I was born in a small town called Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands but only lived there till i was 5. At that point my family moved to Yanbu, Saudi Arabia where i grew up and ended up spending 16 years. Yanbu is an…

  • Motorized Bicycles in Nairobi

    Erik Hersman
    12 Jan 2010 | 9:28 am
    I was driving down a street in Nairobi today and did a double-take when I saw a man standing by a motorized bicycle. One u-turn (of questionable legality) later and I was chatting with Samuel Magethe, a local carpenter who does house calls. Apparently, he usually carries his toolbox and wood supplies on the back of the bicycle, though he didn’t have them with him today. He has used the bike for 2 years and says that it’s a great help to him as he gets older and has problems with the hills. Motorized Bicycles in Kenya from WhiteAfrican on Vimeo. I talked with Samuel for a while and…

  • Flat parabolic mirror is not an oxymoron!

    Paula Kahumbu
    6 Jan 2010 | 6:40 am
    Can a parabolic mirror be flat? Dominic Wanjihias latest invention may prove that this is the most efficient way of capturing solar energy. Everyone knows what a parabolic reflector is, right? It’s supposed to be a curved surface that collects energy by converging it towards a focus. Parabolic reflectors were invented a very long time ago and have been used in satellite dishes, spot lights and car headlights to name a few. They are also widely used for alternative energy projects to concentrate solar energy for heating and cooking. Dominic (designer of the flexible solar vest, the solar…

  • Video of home made bicycle repair tools and gadgets in Nairobi

    Paula Kahumbu
    11 Dec 2009 | 3:00 am
    In Africa bicycle repair men can be found everywhere, from under a tree to in the local vegetable market, one of the best places to find African innovations. At the Karen market I met the charismatic Mohammed Makokha who proudly showed me two of his home made gadgets that are critical for his business. I’ve obviously been wasting my money in the bicycle stores.
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    Timbuktu Chronicles

  • Farmers Speak-Veronica Sianchenga

    9 Feb 2010 | 6:34 am
    Veronica Sianchenga highlights the improvements to her to crop yields which are largely the result of the IDE inspired "Mosi-o-Tunya" pressure pump:

  • Appeal of Peel

    8 Feb 2010 | 5:53 am
    In New Agriculturist:Rubbish and food waste dumped on the roadside is not only a health hazard for those living nearby, but also a wasted resource. Vegetable peel, fruit skins and other waste can be turned into animal feed, or even a source of fuel.More herephoto courtesy of New Agriculturist

  • BioChar contd.

    7 Feb 2010 | 5:32 am
    At Poptech founder of Re-Char Jason Aramburu on promise of BioChar:

  • Waistbeads

    6 Feb 2010 | 4:39 am
    Waist Beads by Swera "...uses large stones and various natural materials like shells, feathers, and bone and semi-precious stones..."Fatimata writes: In my country, Senegal, women start wearing them as babies, it is said to shape their waist...It has also a contraceptive power in some traditional cultures...As women, we enjoy them as a spice

  • Renewable Energy Ventures

    5 Feb 2010 | 5:02 am
    Afromusing spoke with Joseph Nganga whose:...company Renewable Energy Ventures (KE) currently a resells an innovative lighting solution called ‘The Solantern’. He was kind enough to give me a brief demo over lunch and I got to play a bit with a new solar device. It’s wonderful to see this device, because 2 years ago in Arusha we had a conversation about solar energy, gadgets, etc… I commend him for getting his business going, do look out for more collaborations from his company on a consumer guide for solar gadgets.Solantern from afromusing on Vimeo.
 
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    Startup Africa

  • Africa’s New Frontier – Day 2 – Morning Sessions

    Ismail Dhorat
    4 Feb 2010 | 10:15 pm
    9:30 – Plenary Session Topic: Innovative Approaches by African universities to meet Africa’s Development Challenges Speaker: Goolam Mohamedbhai, Secretary General, Association of African Universities Participation in HE is no more then 5% in Africa, while it is as much as 20% in developed countries. Challenges to Higher Education in Africa Coping with huge demand Gender disparity Poort and insufficient infrastructure Poor research output Poor linkages with community & rural areas Poor ICT African’s have developed innovative approaches to meet these challenges Addressing…

  • Africa’s New Frontier – Afternoon Sessions

    Ismail Dhorat
    4 Feb 2010 | 11:02 am
    13:30 – Society Topic: Educating Generation Next: Expanding higher education for future African leaders What are the connections between higher education and long-term economic growth How can international partnerships expand access to higher education in African countries, and for African students What kind of higher education is most relevant for Africans and Africa How are old and new broadcasting mediums used to expand access to education Speakers: Boubakar Barry, Coordinator, Research and Education Networks, Association of African Universities, Ghana Neil Turok, Director, Perimeter…

  • Africa’s New Frontier – Creating Prosperity Through Innovation

    Ismail Dhorat
    4 Feb 2010 | 5:58 am
    I previously wrote about Africa’s New Frontier conference here in Ottawa. I will be live blogging the event, you can refresh the page to get the latest updates. I will cover each session with a different post. 11:00 – Creating Prosperity Through Innovation Speaker: Minister Venancio Massingue, Minister of Science & Technology (Mozambique) The minister is thanking the previous speaker, organizers and giving an introduction to his talk.  His points: The time for Africa has arrived, if we believe we can do it we can. We should not underestimate ourselves. No co-operation…

  • SAFIPA Knowledge Exchange Visit 2010

    Ismail Dhorat
    3 Feb 2010 | 7:25 am
    Knowledge Exchange Visit - 2009 SAFIPA have announced that they are accepting applications for the 2010 knowledge exchange visit to Finland. I previously wrote about the Knowledge exchange visit: The Governments of Finland and South Africa have been working together in the fields of Science, Technology and Innovation, as part of that mandate SAFIPA is planning a knowledge exchange visit for South African entrepreneurs and other relevant people. From the Invitation email: Open call to all interested parties. This time the call will be especially directed to people interested in e-Health,…

  • Zoopy redesigns and adds HD

    Ismail Dhorat
    2 Feb 2010 | 2:00 am
    Zoopy, a social media and content sharing platform has just redesigned their site. This is the fourth iteration, and over time the site seems to be getting better and better. However, i wonder if the focus on content produced internally by Zoopy over user generated content is wise? New Zoopy Features HD Content You can now upload, share and watch videos in brilliant high definition on Zoopy. Any videos uploaded at a resolution of 1280×720 or higher will be encoded into a special HD MP4 format, which can then be viewed either by clicking on the HD button inside the Zoopy video player or by…
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    Forging Ahead

  • Social Entrepreneur is an Oxymoron

    2 Feb 2010 | 10:01 am
    I have a confession to make.  While I love the field of social entrepreneurship, I hate the term “Social Entrepreneur.”  I know, Mr. Skoll, I send my apologies...  Now admittedly, I’m one of those annoying people who believe that the subtleties of word choice deeply influence our subconscious. I believe that the norms we establish around words and terminologies has a powerful effect on the way we process, deconstruct, and act within our world. And thus I believe that one of our sector’s predominant labels deserves some critical…

  • When Our Days Become Dreary

    18 Jan 2010 | 9:57 am
      Normally, I would call myself an optimist. I have a natural conviction in the achievability of a just and loving world. And yet last week, as I pondered what had happened in Haiti and what it meant for the viability of that vision, I found my faith rocked to its core. As I poured over images and accounts coming from Haiti, a swell of shame and despair arose in me the likes of which any optimist (or leader for that matter) would be embarrassed to admit. Like so many of us who felt the reverberations of the quake round the world, I found myself examining my own life,…

  • So You Left Your Heart in Africa

    7 Jan 2010 | 11:04 am
     “I just fell in love with Africa, and I can’t wait to go back.”“I felt at home there, as if I had found a part of myself.”“There’s something about Africa that completely enchanted me.”Over the course of a thousand-plus interviews for field placements, I've heard the above sentiments countless times from Western applicants looking to return to their beloved continent.   At face value, the statements are sweet, innocent, and innocuous.  I, for one, can identify completely.   But could there be something below the surface of…

  • The Dark Side of Online Voting Contests

    15 Dec 2009 | 1:39 am
      In recent years, we’ve seen how the online phenomenon of 'sponsored charity voting contests' has skyrocketed. The Chase Competition, the Changemakers Competitions, Ideablob, CNN Heros…the list goes on. Sometimes, these competitions have real money on the line. Other times, they offer little more than $500 or an honorary title to the winning charity. Either way, they’ve taken off, and for good reason. Companies have learned that nonprofits are so hungry for funding that they will go to extraordinary lengths to draw votes to their…

  • Breaking out of the Box

    10 Dec 2009 | 2:50 pm
     Yesterday in a panel session I was asked what is the single greatest impediment to FORGE achieving its mission. Security threats? Funding issues? Lack of staffing capacity? Its an important question. And yet the answer for us is simple: the single greatest impediment to our work is the burden of psychological patterns established by the way things have always been done.  In this kitschy social innovation space, we’re used to hearing about unique models of change and exciting new approaches. Technological breakthroughs, data-based…
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    Generating blueEnergy

  • blueEnergy's new class

    27 Jan 2010 | 5:50 am
    The induction program covered such topics as the history of blueEnergy, how to work within blueEnergy, blueEnergy’s partners, blueEnergy’s technology, the history of Nicaragua and the Caribbean, how blueEnergy works with remote communities, the ethics of field work and development, blueEnergy’s Theory of Change and more! We finally reached the point where we had the capacity to channel incoming volunteers to a specific arrival date.  This allowed us to justify investing the resources needed to develop the 8 day training program, which will pay huge dividends.  Invariably, when…

  • Strategy, adjustments and learning to ride two horses at once

    11 Jan 2010 | 11:27 am
    So, as planned, 2009 was a year of core capacity building for blueEnergy.  We strengthened our financial systems, expanded our staff, refined our model, and beefed up our project management capacity. But 2009 was also a year that saw the international climate grow more uncertain and perilous.   After more than 6 months of preparations, the first funder lined up for our UNDP project – Iceland - went bankrupt; The World Bank, executing a project on behalf of the UK DfiD (United Kingdom’s Department for International Development), a situation created by the UK’s withdrawal…

  • System change: Natural limits and sustainability

    3 Jan 2010 | 11:22 pm
    Everything has a natural rate of change.  The rate can generally be compressed or expanded to a certain extent by throwing more resources at it, but at the risk of burnout and backlash.  The rate is not infinitely malleable however; there are natural limitations that cannot be ignored.  If you put your expectations out of alignment with these natural limitations, you pay the price.  It’s like “not believing in gravity”.  You can make this choice, but gravity still exists and you will be subject to its laws.  Creating fundamental changes to human culture and…

  • Thank you

    3 Jan 2010 | 2:03 pm

  • Finishing 2009 strong

    31 Dec 2009 | 7:05 am
    http://www.firstgiving.com/blueenergy2millionhoursoflight Light in Kahkabila. . Light in Monkey Point.
 
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    Untangled

  • 50,000,000 Apple Rumor Mongers Can't Be Wrong!

    2 Feb 2010 | 12:35 pm
    And so it was that Steve Jobs revealed the iPad, just as it had been foretold by the prophets on the web. And it was good.Oh sure, the regular crowd has its regular complaints. In today's media marketplace there are two sides to every story. It goes a little something like this: 'Some people love the x, while others have their doubts about it. Could it be that x is what will bring about the end of everything that is good in our known universe? Could it adversely affect the unknown universe?!?!?!?!?!' It is as if critical thinking skills have become totally passe and undesireable in the modern…

  • Cool New Product!

    26 Jan 2010 | 10:32 am
    So, I got my hands on that cool new product out of Silicon Valley this week. It is affordable, small, lightweight, portable and will change the way that millions of people will read.The iPad? iSlate? iTablet?No, sorry, but we'll get to that. I'm talking about D.light's Kiran solar powered lantern. It has been designed to replace more expensive and dangerous kerosene lanterns for lighting where electricity is unreliable or unavailable. It is slick and will get plenty of use in my household where electricity is quite reliable.Apple's new tablet is supposed to debut tomorrow, and it will change…

  • Luddites can't do this

    19 Jan 2010 | 10:56 am
    Me? I don't text much. It's not that I don't like it, I just don't like paying for it. Email works just fine for me on the go anyway. Plus, I'm a fan of Strunk & White and there isn't an edition of Lmntz o Styl just yet. Plz canz I by a vwl? It is as if e.e. cummings took over our thumbs.So far, however, more than $22 million has been donated to the Red Cross for Haiti earthquake relief. Thatz sum srz bnjaminz! Global X, as usual, was ahead of the curve. It is stunning to me that so many people have been enabled to donate so immediately and effectively in this manner. Count on good people…

  • Late New Year's Resolution

    12 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am
    Okay, so you're not going to lose weight this year. Again. Give in, enjoy the cookies, the cake, the ice cream. You thought maybe spending more time with your family was a good idea, huh? Until you invited your cousin over to watch some football and he spilled bear on your couch. They're family. You have to love them, but you don't have to subject your furniture to their fluids.Maybe you're a smoker and have decided to quit? Listen to the siren call of that nicotine. 'Smoooooooooke me. Just one little puff...' You don't have the resolve. Go light it up like a chimney.But don't renig on your…

  • Quiet update from a boat this week

    29 Dec 2009 | 3:00 am
    We sent out our newsletter this week, but unfortunately I couldn't find free wifi in Gibraltar. I found plenty of monkeys, but no wifi. So this post is coming to you from aboard a boat. A Social Edge first!Anyway, here's a monkey picture.Next week, my post might be coming from a plane. Who knew wifi was easier to find while mobile than while on the ground?
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    PSD: The World Bank Group

  • The Evolution of Private Enterprise: Russian McDonald's Edition

    Brian Hoyt
    2 Feb 2010 | 12:56 pm
    McDonald's is celebrating its 20th anniversary in Russia this week. One of the most interesting aspects of McDonald's' Russian adventure is the evolution of its supply chain, which has developed remarkably in the past 20 years. Today, McDonald's sources all of its ingredients from outside purveyors, an 180 degree shift from when the company opened its first outlet in 1990: The company celebrated a different milestone earlier this year by outsourcing the last product — hamburger buns — it had made at a proprietary factory outside Moscow called McComplex. It was built…

  • Utilizing Volunteer Technical Communities in Haiti

    Brian Hoyt
    1 Feb 2010 | 12:36 pm
    Editor's Note: This post was written by Cristina Gonzalez, a Communications Consultant within the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) who is presently supporting the World Bank Haiti Situation Room. The success of World Bank’s engagement with Volunteer Technical Communities (VTCs) is nothing short of remarkable. In a very short period of time VTCs achieved extraordinary results in building an information base about Haiti and useful applications that were applied in the response effort. In the aftermath of the massive Haitian Earthquake, this information and…

  • The dubious link between privatization and mortality

    Brian Hoyt
    1 Feb 2010 | 12:10 pm
    Last March, Ryan questioned the veracity of an article in the British medical journal the Lancet, which claimed that privatization in post-communist countries was responsible for massive numbers of deaths. He included rebuttals from both The Economist (subscription required) and John Earle: Earle points out that a very basic link in the chain of reasoning of the Lancet authors is missing - namely, mass privatization did not lead to substantial job loss. In fact, the effects on employment were typically neutral or positive Still skeptical? A new paper by Scott…

  • What to do about Haiti's debt?

    Brian Hoyt
    1 Feb 2010 | 7:32 am
    PSD alum Tim Harford links to an article by David Roodman at the Center for Global Development, arguing against the cancellation of Haiti's debt: The practical question for citizens, officials, politicians, campaigners, and other players is whether to push for that. On a few days’ reflection, I say no. I would go so far as to describe such pressure as harmful. Why? For starters, the benefits of debt relief over the next few years, however done, will be tiny…That’s why cancellation does little good in the short run. It is not a coherent response to crisis. Meanwhile, there are…

  • Weekend Reading

    Brian Hoyt
    29 Jan 2010 | 1:53 pm
    What is the meaning of the word "friendly"? Greece: It's a bailout! Unemployment today vs The Great Depression. Leonardo da Vinci's CV. Is Botswana in trouble? Holden Caulfield's State of the Union Address. (See previous post for his Davos speech) Our CGAP blog has an excellent account of how cash transfers from the United States literally make it people in Haiti. Nouriel Roubini and friends discuss the "new normal for growth" at Davos. Readers can learn more about the "new normal" for job creation at this year's World Bank Finance and…
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    Creating a World without Poverty

  • SEAMO holds benefit for Fonkoze

    grameenfoundation
    5 Feb 2010 | 11:51 am
    Charlene Balick is a Technical Program Officer for Grameen Foundation based in Seattle, Washington.  She has spent considerable time in Haiti working with Fonkoze. On Thursday, 27 January, my co-worker in the Grameen Technology Center, Scott Everett , organized with some other members of SEAMO (Seattle Microfinance Organization) a benefit to raise funds for Fonkoze.  The event was promoted by other Seattle organizations including Seattle Greendrinks, Re-Vision Labs and Seattle Works.   I was thrilled to have a chance to be a part of the lineup and share stories and photos of clients I had…

  • GF & Fonkoze Relief Efforts in Haiti featured in Huffington Post

    grameenfoundation
    4 Feb 2010 | 7:29 am
    Fonkoze client with her child in Haiti The Huffington Post’s Vivian Norris de Montaigu recaps on a Haiti-filled day in Paris, including learning about Grameen Foundation Fonkoze client with her child in Haiti and Fonkoze’s unique recovery and relief efforts in Haiti. The full story is available here.

  • Update: Economic Recovery in Haiti and the Americas

    grameenfoundation
    29 Jan 2010 | 3:49 pm
    Alberto Solano joined Grameen Foundation in October 2009 and provides leadership and management oversight for our portfolio and activities across the Americas.  He is leading our economic recovery efforts in Haiti. Today, Leigh CarterExecutive Director of Fonkoze USA)and I gave a briefing about the current situation and role of microfinance in economic recovery efforts in Haiti.  I also spoke about the role that microfinance plays in relief and recovery efforts after natural disasters and Grameen Foundation’s work in the Americas region. Leighcurrently serves as Executive Director and…

  • Simple Acts of Kindness for Haiti

    grameenfoundation
    18 Jan 2010 | 5:02 pm
    by Kay Hixson, Director of Marketing and Communications, Grameen Foundation Sunday and Monday offered an opportunity to help Haiti in person. Hundreds, maybe thousands, answered the call. This past Sunday, I visited the Haitian Embassy in Washington, DC to deliver baby and medical supplies. People were everywhere, bringing clothes, medicine and all kinds of things. Others were writing checks to support the relief effort, or just standing in the rain wanting to be near. Yes, it was a little chaotic, but no one seemed to mind. No one was pushing or shoving. No one was grumpy or impatient. When…

  • Letter from the ground: update from Haiti

    grameenfoundation
    17 Jan 2010 | 9:20 am
    Anne H. Hastings, CEO, Sèvis Finansye Fonkoze (a Grameen Foundation microfinance partner in Haiti). With communications just beginning to come online, Anne was able to send this quick report on the situation of Fonkoze, a microfinance organization serving Haiti. Dear friends, partners and family, Thanks to every single one of you who has sent your messages since 12 January, the day of the horrific earthquake. Today is the first day that I have had access to internet, except for 1.5 hours when my Blackberry was working. I know that you all want the news: 1. I am personally fine, as is the…
 
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    Social ROI

  • Here’s an excellent post on why you should not judge charities by their “administrative costs.”

    john
    21 Jan 2010 | 7:00 pm
    Good Intentions are Not Enough. hat tip to Marginal Revolution

  • Analytics X Prize – Enabling social change through analytics

    john
    7 Jan 2010 | 7:56 pm
    Enabling social change through analytics Reading about Analytics X and thought I’d share here: The Analytics X Prize is an ongoing contest to apply analytics, modeling, and statistics to solve the social problems that affect our cities. It combines the fields of statistics, mathematics, and social science to understand the root causes of dysfunction in our neighborhoods. Understanding these relationships and discovering the most highly correlated variables allows us to deploy our limited resources more effectively and target the variables that will have the greatest positive impact on…

  • Browse For A Cause

    john
    15 Dec 2009 | 5:18 pm
    Browse For A Cause is a browser add-on that collects affiliate revenue (usually 3-5%) from sites like Amazon to help charities. For example, if you buy a $20 DVD, the affiliate revenue equates to about $1 which is donated to the charity of your choice. You can support as many charities as you’d like, and revenue will be split between them. Continue reading…

  • Sites to bring in billions in holiday donations

    john
    8 Dec 2009 | 7:54 pm
    In the United States, cumulative online donations to charities could hit more than $4 billion during the holidays, according to a survey released Tuesday by marketing firm Convio. More than than 63 percent of those surveyed said they plan to donate money via the the Internet over the holiday season (November 1 through December 31, 2009), up from 51 percent in 2008. Continue…

  • Vittana- “Ultimate Game Changer in Philanthropy”

    john
    5 Dec 2009 | 7:10 pm
    Vittana, which beat out such well-known charities as DonorsChoose and people like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, is building a student loan business for microfinance institutions that cater to poor people in the developing world. It uses a model similar to that of Kiva.org, a nonprofit organization that funnels loans to individual borrowers through microfinance institutions. The method is to solicit individual lenders for money that will back loans to young adults seeking college educations. Continue reading…
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    The School for Social Entrepreneurs

  • O2, social enterprise, and hitting the mainstream

    Nick Temple
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:26 am
    Amongst all the hullabaloo and fall-out from the launch of the Social Enterprise Mark (see previous post for our take), most commentators missed what I think could be a much more important announcement made at Voice 10 last week: that...

  • (Social enterprise) mark my words....

    Nick Temple
    1 Feb 2010 | 7:05 am
    One of the (many!) benefits of working at the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) is that we don’t have to spend too much of our time involved in the definition debates about “what is a social enterprise?” Social entrepreneurs start...

  • "So long for now" from an SSE intern

    Nick Kang
    29 Jan 2010 | 7:01 am
    And there it goes: my one month internship at the School for Social Entrepreneurs – both physically and experientially a world away from home. What I was hoping to do in my last blog posting for the SSE was to...

  • Intern Update: Last Week at the SSE

    Matthew Gallagher
    28 Jan 2010 | 9:59 am
    So tomorrow will mark Nick Kang and my last day at the London School for Social Entrepreneurs and I don't think either one of us can really believe the month is over already. This experience has been a great start...

  • Working with Young People: a peer learning session

    Nick Kang
    28 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am
    Just two days ago, the SSE was able to organise a learning session that not only transformed the way individuals thought about young people, but how to work with these young people to define and work towards common goals. This...
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    Duncan Green: From Poverty to Power

  • How can the international system cope better with crises? Good new paper

    Duncan
    9 Feb 2010 | 2:00 am
    Alex Evans of Global Dashboard is always interesting on risk and global institutions. His latest paper, with Bruce Jones and David Steven takes such a long view that it feels pretty cosmic. But here’s my attempt at a summary/highlights of ‘Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization: Risk, Resilience and international Order’ (far too many syllables for a haiku). We live in a world of discontinuous change: ‘Shocks, rather than stresses, are the primary triggers of change, as three global crises – the September 11 attacks in 2001, the combined food and oil price spike that peaked in…

  • What will drive action on climate change if negotiations can’t?

    Duncan
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:46 am
    I’ve been mulling over the extraordinary shift in public mood since the Copenhagen summit. The devastating combination of a failed summit, the Democrats’ loss of the supermajority in the Senate and a string of climategates surrounding the University of East Anglia and IPCC risk a mood-swing in public sentiment from a ‘now is the time’ historic moment to ‘we’re all doomed and there’s nothing we can do’ resignation. (The Guardian’s investigation of the UEA emails is riveting – it should be compulsory reading for anyone doing research for advocacy). So where next? Here’s a…

  • Hacked emails; African remittances; leaving Haiti; the carbon slump; oil isn’t a curse; what happened in Davos; the BASIC coalition and a new ‘triple crisis’ blog: links I liked

    Duncan
    5 Feb 2010 | 1:49 am
    The Guardian’s brilliant week-long investigation into the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia climate change team should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in ‘research for advocacy’. Read, weep and learn.  Sanou Mbaye reflects on the importance to Africa of remittances from its far-flung diaspora How best to help Haitians? Buy them a plane ticket. Michael Clemens bangs the drum for immigration reform and runs the numbers on Haiti’s prospects.   Matthew Lockwood explains why carbon trading is in the doldrums on his excellent new ‘political…

  • Why militarizing aid in Afghanistan is a bad idea

    Duncan
    4 Feb 2010 | 12:44 am
    Along with several other international NGOs working in Afghanistan, Oxfam last week published a powerful paper on the damage being caused by the militarization of aid. In many ways it resembles the debate on how to ensure that Haitian reconstruction builds, rather than undermines, its battered state. In the last half hour, one Afghan woman died from pregnancy-related complications, another of tuberculosis and 14 children perished, largely from preventable causes. Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, the humanitarian and development needs in Afghanistan remain acute. Undoubtedly, Afghans…

  • Are women really 70% of the world’s poor? How do we know?

    Duncan
    3 Feb 2010 | 12:25 am
    Doing research for advocacy (which is a large part of my job) is a balancing act. The pressure to come up with clear findings and ‘killer facts’ that speak to policy-makers can easily tip over into something much more questionable. I once challenged a colleague at another NGO on a ‘fact’ she was using on Bolivia. London's Senate House, inspiration for Orwell's 'Ministry of Truth' ‘Well, it’s politically true’, she replied with a grin. Should we use facts we know are wrong, because we like their message? Surely the answer has to be no. I remembered this…
 
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    Futureshifters: Blog Posts

  • Schwab Charitable Philanthropy Speaker Series to Focus on the Impact Philanthropic Prizes Have on Innovation

    Crystal Thomas
    Schwab Charitable, one of the nation’s largest and fastest growing donor advised funds, and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership today announced their next Philanthropy Speaker Series event. “The Promise of Philanthropic Prizes to Drive Innovation” will bring together a distinguished panel of leading philanthropists who use prizes to leverage social investment. The event will take place Wednesday, Feb. 10, 12:30-2:00 pm, at the Wells Fargo Room C420, Cheit Building, 2220 Piedmont Ave., in Berkeley. “We are pleased to continue our…

  • Conscience, Creativity and Commitment Are Keys to Social Change

    Geri Stengel
    Does a social change have to rock the world or can it be subtle, something that makes a difference in the lives of one or two people? Actually, I think the answer lies in the middle. It takes a lot of money, influence, luck, and skill to rock the world. And most of us just aren't rock stars in any sense of that phrase. While changing the lives of a few people is a good thing to do, it's basic to the human contract: do unto others, etc. (Finding a way to make more people practice that contract, well, that would definitely be a social change!) As social entrepreneurs, we want to do more than be…

  • GEC at The Forefront of Future Engineering

    Shawn Kavanaugh
    Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S. and home to 2.8 million people, contains major historical landmarks and great structural achievements. Found of GEC, (Globetrotters Engineering Corp) Niranjan Shah, helps continues to play a tremendous role in the cities civil and mechanical development. Globetrotters was founded in 1974 in Chicago, Illinois. Directly from their website, "For over three decades, the Firm has provided a full range of professional architectural and engineering consulting services we have also been active in program management, construction and energy management;…

  • Special Issue on "Ökologisches Wirtschaften"

    Sebastian Thielke
    The English version of a special issue on Social Entrepreneurship is now available for download free of charge from: http://www.botanik.uni-greifswald.de/fileadmin/getidos/pdfdownload/Special_Issue_on_Social_Entrepreneurship.pdf The Special Issue includes brief articles written by social entrepreneurs and noted international researchers including James Austin, John Elkington, Pamela Hartigan and Johanna Mair. Themes covered include institutional entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, social entrepreneurship education as well as the potential of social entrepreneurship for sustainable…

  • Looking for Social Entrepreneur Nominees for the 2010 Tech Awards

    Cierra Cass
    Nominations for 2010 The Tech Awards, a signature program of The Tech Museum, honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to address humanity’s most urgent challenges. In partnership with Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society, 15 Laureates are selected annually and $50,000 is awarded to one Laureate in each category: Environment, Economic Development, Education, Equality, and Health. Individuals as well as nonprofit and commercial organizations are eligible. Anyone may submit a nomination. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged.
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    CIPE Development Blog

  • The Less Glamorous Side of Democracy

    Kim Bettcher
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:04 am
    The Argentine Legislature at work. Among the benefits of democracy, some of the most pleasing are the open exchange of ideas, the encouragement of creativity and citizenship, and of course freedom. These all have intrinsic value in addition to supporting social and economic development. Yet there are other benefits, as the Economist points out, that don’t always catch attention despite their tremendous importance: “Crying for Freedom.” Democracies do a superior job of averting disasters, such as famines (Sen). They don’t always have higher growth rates but they have less volatile…

  • Assessing Progress Since the Fall of the Wall

    Aleksandr Shkolnikov
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:26 am
    A few months ago the world celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall.  Reflecting upon transition twenty years after this historically monumental event, yields important lessons about the challenges of establishing democracies and market economies. Neither appears overnight; both require difficult and often unpopular reforms in order to create inclusive and responsive institutions of governance and business. The outcomes of the systemic transition in Central and Eastern Europe are undoubtedly impressive but vary greatly, and even the most successful countries continue to struggle with…

  • Why are there no Arab democracies?

    Aleksandr Shkolnikov
    5 Feb 2010 | 7:35 am
    In his latest article in the Journal of Democracy, Larry Diamond ponders why are there no Arab democracies: The continuing absence of even a single democratic regime in the Arab world is a striking anomaly—the principal exception to the global- ization of democracy. Why is there no Arab democracy? Indeed, why is it the case that among the sixteen independent Arab states of the Middle East and coastal North Africa, Lebanon is the only one to have ever been a democracy? Is it culture? Religion? Oil-dependence? Diamond argues that none of these factors matter. He does point out that economic…

  • Making Pots of Money

    Brooke Millis
    5 Feb 2010 | 5:39 am
    CIPE often hears from its partner organizations in the field how difficult it can be to get the local business community to support their work monetarily. This is a particular problem for groups that work to bring more people into the business community, focusing on encouraging youth and women to become entrepreneurs. One of CIPE’s partners in Nepal, Samriddhi, The Prosperity Foundation, found a simple and cheap way to start raising money within their local community for their work with youth, while at the same time building a brand for the organization. Samriddhi’s logo is a pot.

  • Entrepreneurship Among Pakistani Youth

    Moin Fudda
    4 Feb 2010 | 12:14 pm
    Last month, in partnership with The Citizen Foundation, CIPE office in Pakistan organized a pilot program to train a group of 31 young boys and girls belonging to the lowest strata of society on entrepreneurship. The training was delivered in Urdu and based on previous entrepreneurship programs CIPE has held in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. It was so astonishing to see the high enthusiasm amongst participants who spent three days  developing business ideas, conducting SWOT analysis, developing a marketing strategy, and preparing financial viability plans.  For more,…
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    The Dreambank Blog

  • Heads Up to Our Dreamers– We are Doing Some Testing- Please Read!

    Dawn Bowles
    25 Jan 2010 | 6:29 pm
    Hello to the DreamBank Community, Just a quick heads up that over the next few days we are testing out Facebook Connect on the DreamBank site. We do our best to test everything thoroughly before we bring new functionality to the live site but it’s never foolproof. If you experience any problems signing in, setting up dreams, contributing or doing anything at all, please please let us know. We’re trying to make DreamBank better but sometimes that mean’s it’s worse first. If you do happen to experience a little problem please bear with us. Well make it bug free as…

  • Simplifying Your Life: How to Want Very Little

    Victoria Ronco
    24 Jan 2010 | 2:14 pm
    Have you ever found that the more you have, the more you want and the more complicated it all becomes?   Simplifying your life has many benefits. There was a great post on Zen Habits about how to want very little… How to Want Very Little Editor’s note: This is a guest post from David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek. There are two challenges that people face when choosing to live a more simpler life: owning little and wanting little. Yet people fuse these challenges together into a larger “live simply” goal. Unfortunately, they’re two different beasts that need to be…

  • Hearts Out to Haiti

    Dawn Bowles
    18 Jan 2010 | 10:04 pm
    Our hearts go out to Haiti; The people of Haiti, their friends, colleagues and loved-ones, and to the admirable volunteers and aid workers who have  gone there to help. If you still haven’t contributed, please do. A few of our charity partners are doing work on the ground now: Canada: The Humanitarian Coalition: Save the Children, Care and Oxfam have joined forces.  Canadians can give as little as $5 and it turns into $10. The Canadian Government will match every dollar donated to help Haiti. US: Doctors Without Borders/ Medicines Sans Frontiers is a global organization. This is the…

  • How to Keep New Year’s Resolutions

    Victoria Ronco
    3 Jan 2010 | 11:40 am
    Happy New Year Dreamers! We hope you’ve had a great 2009, and are looking forward to an even better 2010. With that in mind, I saw a great post on Maholo.com on how to keep new year’s resolutions – I thought it’s pretty apt, so I’m cross-posting it for you all to read. What resolutions are you setting for yourself? Read on for tips on making sure you’re successful! How to Keep New Year’s Resolutions Every year on January 1, people around the world make a list of things they want to accomplish in the upcoming year. Many, however, have trouble achieving…

  • DreamBank’s Search for the Ugliest Festive Sweater

    Victoria Ronco
    8 Dec 2009 | 12:05 pm
    We’ve shown you ours, now show us yours! We’ve all seen them, some of us have received them as gifts, and fewer still have dared to wear them (in public, no less!). We’re talking about The Ugly Sweater (TUS). Traditionally given as a holiday gift, The Ugly Sweater has now become more of a symbol of the most useless and least wanted gift during the holiday season (along with the fruitcake!) than a present. We’re having a bit of fun with this as when we talked about the worst gifts in the office – TUS topped the list – but there were lots more too- a…
 
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    Overseas Development Institute

  • Climate change finance must be additional to finance for development

    Jessica Brown
    1 Feb 2010 | 3:02 am
    There is much debate on whether climate finance will be additional to official development assistance (ODA, or ‘aid’). Some climate finance can be classified as aid (within the OECD-DAC creditor reporting system) so the question remains: is newly announced climate finance really additional, or is it just recycled aid? ODI research shows that certain sectors and regions will lose out if aid is diverted to finance future climate change adaptation needs. This blog argues that such finance should be in addition to, rather than instead of, existing aid spending. ...(read more)

  • Tourism in poor places – who gets what?

    Jon Mitchell
    28 Jan 2010 | 7:57 am
    What is the acceptable face of international tourism? Should we condemn those who holiday in poverty-stricken countries? For the last four years, ODI has been looking at this question through the lens of economics, to focus on the money and, specifically, who gets what from international tourism. The key question is how international tourism to developing countries works (or doesn’t) as a way of transferring resources from affluent tourists to poor households around tourist destinations....(read more)

  • Donor support to the Comprehensive Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)

    Lidia Cabral
    25 Jan 2010 | 5:49 am
    As discussions begin in Rome on donor support to the Comprehensive Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), it is time to move beyond debate on sound principles and address the root causes of failed policy coordination in agriculture The Annual General Assembly of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GPDRD) seems a good opportunity to start this shift in thinking. ...(read more)

  • The state of the world economy, developing country finance short-falls and donor responses

    Dirk Willem te Velde
    22 Jan 2010 | 2:41 am
    The World Bank's Global Economic Prospects (GEP) Report is a painful reminder of the overall effects of the crisis in both developed and developing countries, which were, in fact, much bigger than initially expected. Research by ODI suggests that donors have responded in different ways, with multilaterals such as the IMF responding more extensively than bilateral programmes. But the response has been nowhere near enough to counteract the large financing gaps emerging from the crisis. ...(read more)

  • The Haiti catastrophe: lessons learned from previous operations

    Ben Ramalingam - ALNAP
    19 Jan 2010 | 3:36 am
    A few days into any emergency, operational responses hit a turning point, when aid starts to flow and be scaled up. The decisions made at this stage are crucial. This blog draws on a report by ALNAP on earthquake response, based on an assessment of almost 30 years of responses to such natural disasters. The research suggests a number of important considerations for agencies in the operational setting in Haiti, including the importance of recovery starting as soon as possible, without prolonging the relief effort....(read more)
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    the Change.org Blog

  • Meet The Changemakers

    Matt Slutsky
    13 Jan 2010 | 4:48 am
    Today we are excited to announce the launch of Changemakers on Change.org! For the past three months, more than 100,000 Change.org members have participated in nominating and voting for the leaders who they feel best personify a Changemaker, resulting in a remarkable network of people. For those of you who haven’t been following along at home, [...]

  • Change.org Welcomes Five New Faces

    Maria Tchijov
    8 Jan 2010 | 5:42 pm
    We’re a pretty eclectic bunch over here at Change.org. Some of us write haiku, others enjoy communicating in emoticons – but one thing that brings us all together is our desire to make the world a better place. So naturally, when we find others who share this desire and want to join our team, we [...]

  • Change.org’s Predictions for the New Decade

    Ben Rattray
    3 Jan 2010 | 2:44 am
    It’s a new year and a new decade, and there’s no better time to take a look toward the future of social change. What will be the defining moments of 2010, and what victories might we be celebrating come 2020? Will this be the decade that the world finally sees a vaccine for HIV or a [...]

  • Change.org’s 2009 Year in Review

    Maria Tchijov
    31 Dec 2009 | 3:14 pm
    In a few hours, it’ll be out with the old and in with the new as we welcome the start of a new year, filled with new opportunities to create change. But, before we put on our party hats and launch into a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne, we wanted to take a look [...]

  • Top 10 Victories on Change.org in 2009

    Ben Rattray
    28 Dec 2009 | 1:07 pm
    2009 was a year in which the Change.org community emerged as a powerful force for social change. Our rapidly growing community of more than 1 million activists won dozens of campaigns over the past year, successfully pressuring multi-billion dollar companies to adopt more responsible and non-discriminatory practices, convincing federal departments to change outdated policies, and impacting [...]
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    Zerodivide

  • Healthy Babies Through Texting

    Tessie Guillermo
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:04 am
    Text4baby is a free service that sends health tips in the form of text messages to registered users timed to match with mom's pregnancy stage and later, baby's age.read more

  • ZeroDivide Grantee CMC Featured in the news

    Brian Gallagher
    4 Feb 2010 | 2:09 pm
    ZeroDivide grantee the Center for Multicultural Cooperation (CMC), based in Fresno, recently garnered local television news coverage for its FresYes program.  FresYes is a workforce development initiative that provides students from economically disadvantaged neighborhoods an opportunity to earn income as Youth Media Consultants read more

  • Social Media Benchmarks for Nonprofits

    margaret
    1 Feb 2010 | 5:31 pm
    In the rapidly evolving world of social media, nonprofits are scrambling to find meaningful metrics for their social network outreach. We know social media has two core metrics - influence and engagement. If we want to know how we can engage our communities, we need to understand what to measure.  read more

  • National Survey Confirms Exponential Growth of Online Media Consumption by Young Americans

    Robin Wu
    21 Jan 2010 | 3:57 pm
    The Kaiser Family Foundation just released findings from the third in a series of national surveys about young people's media use.  The study found that young Americans, ages 8 to 18, spend more than seven and a half hours per day, except for the time in school, using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device.  This is an hour more per day than what was reported in the last study, conducted in 2004, and read more

  • Teaching America What Haiti Needs: Money

    margaret
    21 Jan 2010 | 3:46 pm
    With the unprecedented use of Facebook and Twitter to facilitate donations to the Haitian earthquake relief, nonprofit groups are providing guidance to eliminate the experience of wasteful giving. read more
 
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    Creating the Future

  • Talkin’ About My Generation

    Hildy
    6 Feb 2010 | 10:52 pm
    An online discussion this weekend brought me back almost 3 decades, to my first job out of college.  With my brand new political science degree in hand, I became the first ever legislative aide for the maverick city council member in the city where I lived. My research skills a given, the attribute that had placed me at the top of the heap of qualified job candidates was my inexperience with city politics.  That’s right – INexperience.  My boss was eager to receive recommendations based on pure research, not on whether the recommendation might “fly” politically. Being young and…

  • What’s in a Name?

    Hildy
    28 Jan 2010 | 10:30 pm
    What’s in a name? A whole lot! We have been talking for a while about a name change at the Community-Driven Institute. If you’ve read the posts that describe the Institute’s vision, its accomplishments towards that vision,  its goals for the coming 2 years, you know that the name “Community-Driven Institute” just doesn’t cut it. First, it’s confusing. What does it mean exactly? From the name, would people know the results we are trying to achieve, or for whom? Not so much. Second, it doesn’t come close to describing the powerful work we are…

  • Monday Morning Rock Out!

    Hildy
    24 Jan 2010 | 5:57 pm
    These days life so often hands me what I need the moment I need it, that I should probably stop being surprised each time that surprises me.  Today’s Monday Morning Rock Out is a case in point. This week at the Community-Driven Institute, we will begin the process of developing a new name – one that better reflects what the Institute is about.  As the brilliant strategist Zach Braiker suggests, a name should describe “the outcome for which we want to be renowned.”  The name Community-Driven Institute falls short of that mark and then some. The energy of last…

  • Catalyzing Community Change

    Hildy
    19 Jan 2010 | 9:41 pm
    It is the evening of Day 2 of our immersion course for Consultants as Catalysts for Community Change. And as always happens, teachers emerge everywhere – we are all learning, and all teaching. It is an honor to be part of this process. We were also honored last week, when 2 Immersion Course veterans, Randa Cleaves and Bonnie Koenig – each seasoned consultants with decades of experience – spent an hour answering questions about the course and the difference it has made in their lives. We have turned that Q&A into a podcast, and you can hear it here. While I am taken away…

  • Goals for 2010 and Beyond

    Hildy
    17 Jan 2010 | 8:09 am
    The vision of the Community Driven Institute is a healthy, vibrant, resilient, peaceful, humane world. To make that vision a reality for all of us, the mission of the Institute is to encourage and support the Community Benefit sector to leverage its considerable resources to do so. In developing our plans for the next 12-24 months, we started with that vision of a peaceful, vibrant world and reverse engineered the cause-and-effect conditions that would ultimately lead to that vision.  The following are among the immediate conditions we want our work to create: * There must be ample proof…
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    ThinkChange India

  • [TC-I Call to Action]: Acumen Fund Summer Associate Program

    Shital Shah
    7 Feb 2010 | 8:32 pm
    Acumen Fund, a global non-profit social venture capital fund, is looking for Summer Associates for their India office in Hyderabad.  Acumen Fund has made a variety of investments into companies in India, some of which we’ve covered on TC-I before, such as Dial 1298 and d.Light Design. The Summer Associate program is targeted for graduate students and will provide an opportunity to analyze new markets, develop tools for benchmarking, perform due diligence on investments, and enable knowledge sharing.  These associates will be able to use their business skills in researching and…

  • Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-02-07

    admin
    7 Feb 2010 | 10:12 am
    Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-31 /ThinkChange India/ – - Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24 … http://tinyurl.com/yl9dy8s # What Makes a Social Entrepreneur? /ThinkChange India/ – In an article in India Knowledge@Wharton, Abraham … http://tinyurl.com/yd94ahr # http://bit.ly/dCHXZa ITsAP Software-Products' Awards. Categories include Social Impact, Startups – Emerging Trends (BoP n Social Entre'ship) # Ashoka organizes Social Entrepreneurship Twitter chat on Peace Building http://bit.ly/MN3nV # Husk Power Systems is hiring…

  • Firing the hungry spirit of rural children

    sudhar
    4 Feb 2010 | 8:45 am
    Academics who attended the recent Indian Science Congress wholeheartedly agreed that the standard of science education across India is appalling. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. In 2008, the National Knowledge Commission recommended that attracting and retaining talented students in basic sciences is paramount to any fighting chance with China, South Korea and the likes. One organization took up this challenge a decade sooner. Using low-cost, hands-on models, Agastya introduces rural Indian children to the fundamentals of science and math. As a trust based in Bangalore, it inspires children…

  • [Think Sport]: Indian women’s national football team back on international stage

    admin
    3 Feb 2010 | 8:34 am
    Rahul Brahmbhatt is a contributing writer to Think Sport. After a two year hiatus from international competition, the Indian women’s national football team is currently competing in the 11th Annual South Asian Games was held from January 29th to February 9th in Dhaka, Bangladesh. As a result of not scheduling any international friendly matches for the squad since October 2007, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport’s global governing body, removed the Indian women’s team from the world rankings. Football has long been a popular sport in India for…

  • What Makes a Social Entrepreneur?

    Shivam Srivastava
    31 Jan 2010 | 10:53 pm
    In an article in India Knowledge@Wharton, Abraham George, founder of The George Foundation, questions the effectiveness and validity of many so-called social entrepreneurs and writes about the myth of the BoP consumer. He starts with the common definition of social entrepreneurs as those who focus on the double bottom-line – profitability and the impact on society. However, the term is easy to abuse and Abraham points to the microfinance industry as an example, Today, many ventures claim to be social enterprises, some with the professed goal of poverty alleviation. However, in the…
 
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    Truck and Barter

  • Dinar and Discussion February, March and April 2010

    DinarAdmin
    31 Jan 2010 | 11:14 pm
    This is the Dinar And Discussion Page for February, March and April, 2010...

  • Dinar And Discussion November, December 09 & January 10

    DinarAdmin
    1 Nov 2009 | 3:53 am
    This is the Dinar And Discussion Page for November and December 09 & January 2010...

  • Dinar And Discussion August Sept Oct 09

    DinarAdmin
    4 Aug 2009 | 12:51 pm
    This is the Dinar And Discussion Page for August, September and October 2009...

  • Random thoughts on Electronic Medical Records

    Kevin
    16 Jul 2009 | 6:41 am
    Regardless of the lawsuit implications, I am not so sure of the benefits of EMRs. I would be all in favor of a private and complete electronic medical history for each person, but the EMRs I have seen are neither private nor complete, and tend to reinforce formulaic medical practice, as opposed to discovery, discussion, and intelligent understanding. Broadly, my concerns with EMRs: First, GIGO. I was enthusiastic about Kaiser-Permanente's electronic medical records until I saw garbage being put into the system by well intentioned folks. This translated into outputs that incommensurable over…

  • Dinar and Discussion May, June & July 2009

    DinarAdmin
    30 Apr 2009 | 11:15 pm
    Dinar and Discussion for May, June & July 2009...
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    PHILANTHROPY 2173

  • In a changing landscape, whither the 501c3?

    Lucy Bernholz
    3 Feb 2010 | 9:39 am
    I'm concerned about nonprofits. Are they aware of the threats they face?Are they prepared to demonstrate their value in the face of changes in corporate and tax law, and, as importantly, changes in the cultural zeitgeist about social capital markets and social enterprise?For almost a century, 501c3 nonprofits have held a privileged place in our communities and in our tax code. They are provided tax exempt status, and supporters can deduct their contributions to these organizations from their income taxes. In so doing, the US tax code privileges these organizations - from major hospitals and…

  • The Changing Ecosystem of Change

    Lucy Bernholz
    2 Feb 2010 | 10:15 am
    I'm pleased to draw your attention to a newly published paper we've written with the support of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. "The Changing Ecosystem of Change" looks at the many new enterprise forms, from social businesses to nonprofits, that are now actively producing and distributing social goods. The paper also looks at the opportunities and challenges these new enterprise forms raise for funders, and that funders raise for these enterprises.Thursday, February 4 in the SF Bay Area is a big day for discussing these issues. Criterion Ventures, with backing from the…

  • What kind of Apps would your foundation build?

    Lucy Bernholz
    26 Jan 2010 | 11:40 pm
    I admit it - I tossed the question out onto Twitter in a bit of a lark. I was preparing for a presentation to 50+ of America's largest community foundations and I've been thinking about Apps quite a bit (not only because of the new Apple Tablet due out tomorrow) because I was about to declare Apps as Buzzword 2010.1.Most of what I will talk about has to do with ways that certain technologies (and the expectations/behavior they allow) are shifting philanthropy, the shifting sands of social businesses, policy opportunities, intersections with the public sector, new ways of organizing for…

  • Nonprofit Data Scorecard goes live

    Lucy Bernholz
    26 Jan 2010 | 5:16 am
    (Sorry folks - The first version of this post (January 25) somehow got corrupted/encoded. Lots of email readers received empty emails and/or gibberish. Hope this one posts better. Thanks for your patience.)I've written about the Nonprofit Mapping effort before and am thrilled to say they've launched their test version. Go to the site, check out the data, check out the rankings, comment on the methods, improve the data, use the data, and consider the implications. For all of us as donors to nonprofits. For all of us as taxpayers who pay for the data. For people who use, enjoy, benefit from the…

  • How technology is disrupting philanthropy

    Lucy Bernholz
    24 Jan 2010 | 4:00 pm
    I hope readers in the SF Bay Area will join us at Stanford this Thursday, January 28 at 5 pm for a discussion with me, Sonal Shah, and Rob Reich on how technology is changing philanthropy.For those on twitter, the hashtag for the conversation is #sempacs. The hashtag for the Disrupting Philanthropy paper is #disruptphil.Tags: philanthropy, #sempacs, technology, #disruptphil
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    Social Business Blog

  • Global Interest in Recent CIC Changes: Better Does Not Yet Mean Good

    Rod Schwartz
    24 Jan 2010 | 1:46 pm
    I recently wrote an article for Third Sector magazine on Community Interest Companies (CICs) for Third Sector Magazine. Since then I have received numerous calls from parties here in the UK and abroad asking about this corporate form and my thoughts about them–and if they have changed in light of the Governmental reforms. There are now three things I think about CICs: First, they are better than before. Second, they are still not very attractive. Third, the Government is doing a great job of marketing the idea and has tapped into an international interest in coming up with something for…

  • Social Enterprise Tetchiness: Not a Helpful Trait

    Rod Schwartz
    7 Jan 2010 | 1:41 pm
    Yesterday I read a blog posted recently by Patrick Butler of the Guardian about the Novas Scarman Group, a Social Enterprise which had seen its CEO resign, amid what Butler describes as “one of the most inglorious chapters in the recent history of social enterprise”. I took instant umbrage. Whatever the issue at Novas Scarman, why did Butler have to bring its organisational form up at all? Of what relevance was it? When a conventional firm is, like the Novas Scarman Group (NSG), accused of “alleged cronyism, nepotism, bullying and mismanagement”, according to a report…

  • Announcing ClearlySo in Romania: Why do we do these Mini-Blogs?

    Rod Schwartz
    6 Jan 2010 | 6:49 am
    Recently we posted a new mini-blog on the ClearlySo site; ClearlySo in Romania. We were privileged to have an exceptional intern–Romanian-American Sandra Barbosu, and she worked on the five posts which have just gone up earlier in 2009. Romania is a very poor country that is nevertheless a recent member of the EU with excellent soil, breathtaking views and a rich and interesting history. I had the good fortune to do a tour of the country myself in 2006, just before it became an EU member, and felt two things profoundly. First, it had enormous potential, but second, there was a great…

  • Are Social Enterprises Different When it Comes to Industrial Relations?

    Rod Schwartz
    1 Jan 2010 | 1:17 pm
    Towards the end of last year I wrote about industrial action by the labour union Unite against the HCT Group, a company I advise (let me get that disclosure right out of the way). I challenged the contention, made by officials at Unite that HCT was getting “fat on basement level wages for its workforce”. David Floyd, commented on my blog post and, to his credit, admitted that he did not think the getting fat quote was Unite’s finest hour, but raised a very substantial question in his comment (which I reprint in full below) that he was, “dubious that the claim that the…

  • Arise Nigel Kershaw, Officer of the British Empire (OBE)

    Rod Schwartz
    31 Dec 2009 | 8:07 am
    I had not intended to post again this year, but scanning the Honours List this year, stripped marvellously of most of its bankers (all but one, apparently) was a name I recognised, that of Nigel Kershaw, who is listed as Chairman of the Big Issue, but is better known recently for his work in building Big Issue Invest, a specialised lender to social enterprises and the trading arms of charities. I am delighted for Nigel, as I am sure this recognition means a great deal to him, but I also think this is a wonderful way for the decade to end for the social enterprise sector. In the past ten years…
 
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    Socializing

  • Palin-omics

    7 Feb 2010 | 9:01 am
    I enjoyed this review of Going Rogue: An American Life in The New York Review of Books.In our present neo-Keynesian moment, economics has never seemed more bewildering and arcane, or more the exclusive preserve of hated "experts" from the "East Coast elites." Most people I know, myself included, can't readily follow the algebraic equations that explain the "Keynesian multiplier," which, in its

  • Fiscal Conservative In Name Only - FCINO

    6 Feb 2010 | 2:17 am
    I gasp at Carly for California. Please, keep making shit like this so we can identify those who want to have an adult conversation and those who want to make a complete mockery of the challenges facing California and the world. Lions and tigers and bears and wolves increasing taxes! Oh, my!Wonkette (thanks Tom) had the appropriate response, but please...that's a Kiwi film, I believe. Get the

  • Getting A Rise Out Of People

    2 Feb 2010 | 11:18 pm
    This Tea Party thing is just moronic. I fear it has to be covered, sadly taking time from the pressing and complex issues of the world, and I certainly welcome any and all supporters to make their case, debate and put forward their "solutions". Good article on the New Yorker that helps explain it a bit - The Movement. The Ask the Author chat session is illuminating as well.Keli Carender, someone

  • NYT 2009 Year In Ideas

    30 Jan 2010 | 3:50 am
    I like reading the NYT Year in Ideas, even if I am slow and only get to it in 2010. I've taken the liberty to copy all the topics in the annual review for my blog, which still needs a boost to get back in gear.There were some interesting ideas. Forensic Polling Analysis reminded me of the www.fivethirtyeight.com blog, whose missing is to "to accumulate and analyze polling and political data in

  • You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train

    28 Jan 2010 | 2:45 pm
    Howard Zinn died yesterday. He was a man I had never heard of when I heard him speak at University of Oregon in 1994. His lecture that day was an eye-opener as much as A People's History of the United States was a page-turner for me. I have been flipping through my old copy tonight and recall that I had been pretty moved by this:Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a
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    Acumen Fund Blog

  • Another round-up: Upcoming awards and events

    Mariko Tada
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:55 am
    Investee VisionSpring will be honored with the CASE Award for Social Enterprise Innovation from Duke University. IDE India, the organization behind our drip irrigation investment GEWP, will be featured in an upcoming BBC World News series. More details on where/when to watch, but in the meantime, you can catch a preview here. If you’re in the New York area, Jacqueline Novogratz will be speaking at the New School on February 17. The event is open to the public; RSVPs are required.

  • News Round-up: Speaking of Faith, food, Fellows and for-profit business

    Mariko Tada
    3 Feb 2010 | 4:38 am
    CEO Jacqueline Novogratz was interviewed recently for the NPR program Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett. Check out the show’s website for a podcast and lots of supplementary material. In a special section on business and food security, the Financial Times featured two Acumen Fund investments: drip irrigation company GEWP here and nutrition company Insta here. Similarly, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) includes an interview with Acumen Fund’s Ajay Nair in its latest newsletter. Talent Manager Blair Miller was recently interviewed on Dubai radio about the…

  • Diving into Ripple Effect in India (with video)

    Sangeeta Chowdhry
    1 Feb 2010 | 5:48 am
    Sangeeta Chowdhry is Acumen Fund’s Ripple Effect manager. The India phase of  Ripple Effect included pilot programs by 5 organizations, the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation among them. The Ripple Effect project presented the Jal Bhagirathi Foundation (JBF) in the Thar desert of Rajasthan with quite a challenge: Improve access to safe drinking water in the area in just 8 weeks. Not only did they meet this challenge but they went a step further - and added an additional goal – to create livelihood opportunities for women in the process! The story of JBF is an inspiring one — as can be…

  • Photo auction for Haiti

    Mariko Tada
    28 Jan 2010 | 4:41 am
    Our good friends at Nuru Project, who put on the DIGNITY event with Acumen Fund’s New York chapter, are putting on a photo auction and benefit for Haiti and Partners In Health on February 4th. If you are in the New York area, we encourage you to come out for a good cause.

  • Seeking Summer Associates

    Mariko Tada
    27 Jan 2010 | 5:46 am
    The application process for summer associates in Acumen Fund’s New York office is now open. We are currently accepting applications for the following positions for Summer 2010: Portfolio Associates - New York (3) Communications Associate - New York (1) Applications will be accepted until 5:00PM EST on February 3, 2010. If your school subscribes to The MBA-Nonprofit Connection’s summer jobs program, please apply through that channel (a list of participating schools can be found at: http://mnconnection.org/schools/partner-schools.html). If your school is not a member of MNC, please…
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    Oxfam News Blog

  • Internship Opportunities in Oxfam Midlands

    Jenna Wills
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:57 am
    Just a quick note to let you know about all the exciting internship opportunities we have in Oxfam Midlands at the moment. These are great opportunities to gain lots of experience working with the Oxfam Midlands campaigns and fundraising team and to help us in our mission to overcome poverty and suffering worldwide. We’re currently recruiting for the following positions: Youth Engagement Campaigner  (six months commitment, two days per week) School Engagement Campaigner (six months commitment, three days per week) Midlands Political Campaigns Intern (three-six months, two – three days…

  • Dolphins, honey and climate change: visiting a Cambodian village

    Lucy Aitken-Read
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:29 am
    A fat mango dropped out of the tree, centimeters away from my colleague’s head. We were about to commence a meeting with the eighth village here on our tour of Cambodia. As people began arriving my mind skipped back over the experience so far; we had only been here ten days but it easily felt like a month. In every village we had been greeted with huge genorosity, a fresh coconut to drink from and crowds of broad smiling faces. We had heard about honey, bamboo and resin processing businesses that were providing a diverse and sustainable form of employment for villagers.  We had stayed…

  • Become a community organiser!

    Maya Segas
    8 Feb 2010 | 4:25 am
    I wrote recently about a volunteer opportunity in the Birmingham office for a Political Campaigns Intern. If you live in the Midlands and would like to get involved with Oxfam’s work during the general election but don’t have the time to give to an office-based internship, please read my colleague Katy’s blog about making your mark on the next general election. Katy has been collecting names from all over the UK of people who are interested in getting involved with Oxfam during the upcoming general election by becoming community organisers. Please do check out the blog or…

  • Survey shows few Haitians willing to move far to camps outside the city

    Oxfam Media Unit
    6 Feb 2010 | 8:16 am
    Camp residents have little official information about plans to re-site camps Less than a third of people living in one of the largest camps in Port au Prince say that they are willing to move to camps sited outside the city according to a snap-shot survey carried out by international agency Oxfam. If the new improved camps are established close to where they used to live then the proportion willing to move leaps to nearly three quarters. The survey also revealed that there is little official public information available about plans to move people to new camps. Whilst 63 per cent had heard of…

  • BAE Deal Charge - Oxfam Response

    Oxfam Media Unit
    5 Feb 2010 | 10:29 am
    International agency Oxfam, who broke the news of the Tanzania Air Traffic Control Story to the media in 2001, welcomed the news that BAE have been charged £30m for improper behaviour around the sale of a Watchman Air Traffic Control System to Tanzania.   In response to the news, Anna MacDonald, Control Arms Campaign Manager, said: “This deal was a disaster for development from beginning to end.  We believe it was the wrong system meeting the wrong needs for Tanzania and should never have been allowed to go ahead.  The charge highlights the inappropriateness of the deal. The £30m…
 
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    Mercy Corp Women Features

  • March 3: Three Cups of Tea Author David Relin speaks at the Action Center

    Dan Sadowsky
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:43 am
    Start: 03/03/2010 7:30 pm Start: 03/03/2010 7:30 pm When: Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 7:30 pm (doors open at 6:30 pm, enter through the Action Center). Where: Mercy Corps Action Center Community Room, 28 SW 1st Avenue, Portland, Oregon, 97204, 503-896-5002. Tickets: Online - $12 (includes ticket-handling fee), go to www.brownpapertickets.com/event/99031; $10.00 in person at the Action Center Gift Shop, 28 SW 1st Avenue, Portland, OR, 11 am – 5 pm, Tuesday – Friday; noon – 5 pm, Saturday). For more information, please call 503-896-5002. Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts…

  • What the Haitian people still have

    Linda Mason
    6 Feb 2010 | 8:26 am
    In one tent, a little five-year-old girl was clutching her old plastic doll. It was missing an arm and a leg and most of its hair, but it was obviously very precious to her. Photo: Linda Mason/Mercy Corps It has meant a lot to me to be back here in Haiti. I had spent some time here 15 years ago and just fell in love with the culture, people, and their artistic and spiritual life. It’s astounding to me to see how much of that warm culture still shines through during this horrific crisis. It’s a very gentle culture. I have walked deep into the vast tent encampments where people are living…

  • Design For The Other 90%

    5 Feb 2010 | 11:18 am
    Start: 10/22/2009 End: 02/27/2010 Start: 10/22/2009 End: 02/27/2010 Presented by Mercy Corps and The Lemelson Foundation, Design for the Other 90% features some of the most inspired inventions to improve the lives of low-income people around the world. Go to other90.cooperhewitt.org/about for complete information about this innovative and uplifting exhibition revealing the power of design to improve the lives of millions. “The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing…

  • Edinburgh Bands Together for Haiti

    Ross Hornsey
    4 Feb 2010 | 6:19 am
    Start: 03/07/2010 6:30 pm End: 03/08/2010 12:00 pm Start: 03/07/2010 6:30 pm End: 03/08/2010 12:00 pm Edinburgh’s music community is banding together to throw a benefit concert in aid of the Haiti appeal launched by the Edinburgh Disasters Response Committee and Mercy Corps. The event will feature the cream of Edinburgh’s live music scene, including Scottish blues legend Tam White. All proceeds from ticket sales are going directly to the Haiti appeal and along with charitable collections, raffles and auctions at the event organisers are hoping to raise up £10,000 from a sell out…

  • 'Every January 12 for the next five years, take a moment for Haiti'

    Alison Granito
    3 Feb 2010 | 2:12 pm
    The epic devastation in Haiti is about much more than an earthquake, Mercy Corps' President Nancy Lindborg told a crowd of supporters in New York assembled at the Action Center to End World Hunger to hear a briefing on the situation on the ground after her recent trip to Port-au-Prince. Ultimately, it's a human rights issue. Flying in a helicopter over Port-au-Prince, she encountered a surreal landscape. "It looked like someone had jumped up and down on top of a toy city," she said. In contrast, she recalled the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake that struck San Francisco in 1989. More…
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    Vital Voices Blog

  • Turkish Girl Buried Alive in Honor Killing

    vital voices staff
    9 Feb 2010 | 10:10 am
    Turkish police have found the body of a 16-year old girl who they believe was buried alive in an honor killing “carried out as punishment for talking to boys,” reports The Guardian. An informant allegedly told the police that the girl had been killed after a “family council meeting.” The father and grandfather of the [...]

  • First Female President Elected in Costa Rica

    vital voices staff
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:01 am
    On February 8, Laura Chinchilla was declared winner in the presidential election in Costa Rica, becoming the first female president of the nation and the fifth in Latin America. Winning 47 percent of the votes counted, Chinchilla avoids a potential run-off. In her acceptance speech, Chinchilla said to the gathered crowd: “Thank you, Costa Rica. It’s [...]

  • Secretary Clinton on Haiti at the 58th National Prayer Breakfast

    vital voices staff
    6 Feb 2010 | 2:48 pm
    In her keynote address at the 58th National Prayer Breakfast on February 4, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke about the current crisis in Haiti, where tent cities, “food lines and makeshift hospitals” are evidence of the urgent needs of millions of people. “When I think about the horrible catastrophe that has struck Haiti, I am [...]

  • Vital Voices Honoree Kakenya Ntaiya Voted one of People of 2009 by One World

    vital voices staff
    5 Feb 2010 | 10:23 am
    Kakenya Ntaiya of Kenya, 2008 Rising Voices Award honoree and a valued member of the Vital Voices network, has been voted as one of the People of 2009 by One World, an online news service. Kakenya provides young girls an education through her Academy for Girls, the Kakenya Center for Excellence. One World was introduced to [...]

  • International Violence Against Women Act Introduced to Congress

    vital voices staff
    4 Feb 2010 | 2:06 pm
    On February 4, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) joined Representatives Bill Delahunt (D-MA), Ted Poe (R-TX) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) to introduce the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) to both Houses of the 111th Congress. The bipartisan bill would authorize the development of a 5-year strategy to “reduce, prevent, and respond [...]
 
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    Adventures in Hope: Stories of DiscoverHope

  • Join us for a Microcredit Panel Discussion in Austin

    Maggie Miller
    22 Jan 2010 | 12:50 pm
    Dear DHF Family, Never fear...Nora Bedard will be returning in two weeks to Cajamarca to resume her full time duty as Program Manager for the DiscoverHope Fund (congratulations to her for her marriage on Jan 4!). We have a lot of exciting program movement upcoming this year so stay tuned for more colorful stories from the field. In the meantime, join us in Austin if you can...Central Texans striving to lift the Base of the Pyramid!Join Net Impact Austin for a speaker panel discussing a convergence of microfinance, creative philanthropy and business opportunities that are lifting people in…

  • Moving

    NoraBee
    18 Dec 2009 | 4:41 pm
    Yes folks, the move went smoothly. (I may have scared you in the last post?) My moving truck was a little rusty and lopsided, but nothing got lost in the shuffle. Hope House is packed up in a safe location until Feb. classes start next year. Why is Hope House moving? 1. We found a more central location2. With lower rent costs!3. The new Hope House will have a full kitchen stove - so no more appetizer mishaps, like this year4. Computers for computer classes are part of the new Hope House5. And, a room full of sewing machines will also be part of the Hope House!!!!We have lots of things to look…

  • Packing up Hope House

    NoraBee
    16 Dec 2009 | 8:12 pm
    Folks, this is an exciting, busy, and emotional time. The Hope House is turning into boxes. Since Hope House will be changing locations next year, it is my task to make sure with the move all of DHF materials make it from point A to point B. The moving task is a bit stressful, as it involves going to the designated location in Cajamarca where you negotiate with guys that have big trucks. Once you strike a deal, the moving begins. Moving has to be done with two people - why? - because you leave the stuff out in the truck on the street by itself and it may not be there when you return with the…

  • The Big Chocolatada

    NoraBee
    11 Dec 2009 | 5:22 am
    Hot Chocolate and Paneton and craziness. The basics for a Christmas celebration in Peru. In other words: The Big ChocolatadaDHF and Afider held our last big event together for the year this afternoon, the 2009 Chocolatada. We invited more than 200 women to join us in celebrating the holiday season. Thankful only half of them came because otherwise there just wouldn't have been room in the office. We were scheduled to start at 3:30, which means 4:30 Peruvian time. At 3:30 we had only just begun to cut the Paneton (sweet fruit bread). We filled 3 big boxes with cut Paneton and served pipping…

  • DHF Winter News

    Maggie Miller
    10 Dec 2009 | 3:27 pm
    Dear DHF Family, Happy Holidays to all of you! Please enjoy our Winter Newsletter for all the year-end news about DiscoverHope and a glance at our new logo!Sending Light, MaggieMaggie MillerFounder/Executive DirectorWould you like to support the work of DiscoverHope Fund? Visit http://www.lendhope.org
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    (Blog) RED

  • The Doctor is in!

    5 Feb 2010 | 2:06 pm
    The Beats by Dr. Dre Solo HD (PRODUCT) RED Special Edition Headphones are available in the US starting today. Now people can hear the music the way artists intended, while helping to eliminate AIDS in Africa.Tune into HSN tomorrow at approx. 6:20pm ET to hear Dr. Dre, Maxwell, and Lady Gaga talk about the headphones. The (SOLO HD) RED headphones cost $199.99, with at least $5 from every purchase being contributed to the Global Fund. The headphones are available online in the US at HSN.They’re only available in the US for now but we’re working on getting them across the pond soon. And stay…

  • Celebrating (diptyque) RED

    4 Feb 2010 | 4:19 pm
    Paris and London last week, New York next week – you’d think we were talking about Fashion Week – close, but not quite. These are the fantastic cities hosting parties to celebrate the launch of our new (diptyque) RED Special Edition candle! Lucky for us, we found ourselves surrounded by very fashionable company –supermodel Alek Wek attended both events and other friends of (RED) joined us in London at Space NK Hans Crescent - Jo Wood, Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, designers Henry Holland and Tracey Boyd as well as the world’s press. The Paris event was at the beautiful Maison de…

  • FLOWE(RED) has Bloomed!

    2 Feb 2010 | 6:32 pm
    Yesterday morning at London’s oldest flower market FLOWE(RED) came into bloom with the charming support of Cat Deeley.Standing in front of map of Africa constructed from 10,000 African roses, Cat teased the photographers, by asking which of them wouldn’t choose FLOWE(RED) when all the profits go to the Global Fund to help eliminate AIDS in Africa.Throughout the day 3,800 roses were handed out in recognition of the 3,800 men, women and children in sub-Saharan Africa who die every day from AIDS. Those who received flowers were invited to have their picture taken in front of a FLOWE(RED)…

  • A (NIKE) RED Moment: Arsenal v. Man Utd.

    2 Feb 2010 | 7:25 am
    On Sunday January 31st Arsenal played host to Manchester United at Emirates Stadium in London. While known rivals on the field the two teams came together to lend their support for (NIKE) RED. Donning (NIKE) RED laces in their boots and (NIKE) RED jackets as they took the field, the teams had one color uniting them – and that color was (RED). The fans joined forces too, spreading the message of ‘Lace Up Save Lives’. Even Emirates Stadium turned (RED) for the day, with (RED) messaging all over, giant (NIKE) RED laces tying the stadium together and red goal-nets made of (NIKE) RED laces.

  • FLOWE(RED)™

    2 Feb 2010 | 5:18 am
    Say hello to FLOWE(RED)™ - (RED)’s new online flower service in the UK.We launched it today with Cat Deeley and a huge map of Africa map of roses in London’s Covent Garden.Ethically-sourced, gorgeous, contemporary flowers, delivered directly to you and yours.Choose from petite arrangements to indulgent bouquets. Prices range from £20 - £65, with ALL PROFITS going towards eliminating AIDS in Africa. Making these the most powerful flowers you'll ever buy.Visit flowered.com
 
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    ONE

  • Lessons from a Port-au-Prince Restaurant

    ONE.Partners
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:06 am
    Here’s a guest post from our partners at World Vision, with a personal look at long-term development issues in Haiti. Gilbert Bailly is my favorite person in Haiti. His three Muncheez pizza restaurants miraculously remained intact during the quake. But he realized he had not a chance of running a business in the current chaos. Did [...]

  • What We’re Reading 2/9/10

    Steve Wilson
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:08 am
    Washington Post–Haiti earthquake relief efforts are still falling short Nearly one month after an earthquake brought Haiti to a halt, the Washington Post reports that evidence is everywhere on the island that current relief efforts may soon fall short as the immediate emergency response phase fades. Despite the good intentions of the United States and the [...]

  • Nigeria names acting president

    Chris Scott
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:28 am
    The New York Times reports that earlier today the Nigerian Parliament voted to make Vice President Goodluck Jonathan the acting president of Nigeria. The vote ended weeks of political uncertainty, with [President Umaru] Yar’Adua’s cabinet and supporters insisting there was no need to replace him, little word from the president himself about his condition, and outbreaks [...]

  • Q&A with Michele Bertol ONE Member and “Bundled One”

    Brie O'keefe
    8 Feb 2010 | 1:42 pm
    On Saturday February 6, 2010, Michèle Bertol, a Haitian Canadian led ONE’s delegation to hand over our petition for Haiti debt forgiveness to the G7 Finance Minister’s meeting in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. A town of only 7,000 people near the Arctic Circle, it was harder to think of a more remote location to hold an international [...]

  • “Science Speaks” with Ambassador Goosby

    Chris Scott
    8 Feb 2010 | 11:57 am
    UN Dispatch picked up a great interview conducted by Science Speaks with US Global AIDS Ambassador Eric Goosby in which he talks about the future of PEPFAR, universal access, and a host of other issues. You can read the full interview here.
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    Changed by Design

  • Emily Pilloton gives Stephen Colbert a new pair of specs

    editors
    19 Jan 2010 | 11:20 pm
    We were delighted to see Emily Pilloton, founder of Project H Design and author of Design Revolution, appear as a guest on the Colbert Report last night. The highlight of the interview was the rousing response from Pilloton’s call for a new measure of success according to “the triple bottom line: Planet, People and Profit”. Pilloton chose excellent visual aids to show Colbert how design can improve lives. Selected from her book, Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, Colbert walked to the interview table wearing Spider Boots, donned a pair of Adaptive Eyewear,…

  • The Project H Redesign of Hippo water transport

    editors
    28 Oct 2009 | 6:06 pm
    In a recent interview with Hippo Water founder Cynthia Koenig, we learned a bit more about the recent re-design of the Hippo Roller. It was a dream experience for this blog. The challenge In third-world countries, women and children must haul water over long distances in order to supply their communities with clean, safe water. Alternative sources like wells are only functional 6-8 months of the year, and well pumps are unreliable or fuel to power them can be difficult to obtain The first version of the Hippo Roller multiplied the hauling capacity of a single person but the cost of…

  • Hippo Water: Smarter and ready to go further

    editors
    14 Oct 2009 | 1:14 pm
    We’ve had the fortune of interviewing Cynthia Koenig, founder of Hippo Water International, to learn more about their recent re-design and their latest plans to spread Hippo technology to more communities outside South Africa. Before we dig in, Hippo most urgently needs your vote for a much-needed scouting trip in India to exchange ideas and advice with other social entrepreneurs and establish critical distribution partners. The contest is hosted by JustMeans, offering an India Social Entrepreneurship Journey with Journeys for Change, for which Hippo Water is currently in the Top 5…

  • Chicken a la Carte

    editors
    22 Jul 2009 | 1:33 am
    Sometimes, a well-told story can do just as much good for a problem as a well-designed solution. This principle attracted me to switch careers from engineering to advertising years ago…I’m still so far from becoming like the storytellers I so admire. This short film makes Ferdinand Dimadura one such storyteller. I won’t spoil it by telling you what’s in it, but I will say that people have been inspired to share this video so much that it has been viewed nearly 10 million times. In fact, I found this from my aunt who forwarded it to my entire extended family! View this…

  • Three mobile solutions to development challenges

    editors
    30 Jun 2009 | 8:00 am
    Two thirds of the world’s 3.3 billion mobile phones are owned in developing countries. Social changemakers recognize this opportunity to reach those in need with information, tips, and resources that would otherwise be inaccessible at large scale. Here, we profile three innovative uses of mobile technology to combat developing world challenges. A Twitter tip informed me of Project Masiluleke in South Africa. Due to the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS in South Africa, individuals avoid getting tested and 90% of those infected are not getting treatment. In the KwaZulu Natal province, >40%…
 
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    Jolkona Foundation Blog

  • Race Against Hunger

    Guest
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:18 am
    This guest post contributed by Action Against Hunger - one of our partner organizations. The beginning of the year means many things-New Year’s resolutions, increasingly brighter days, budding flowers and baby animals. But for the Race Against Hunger team, the first of the year means only one thing: the beginning of our educational presentations! The Race Against Hunger [...]

  • New Year, New Projects

    Adnan
    31 Jan 2010 | 11:08 pm
    We are excited to welcome 2010 with a lot of new projects. Here are the newest projects you will find on our website: We are excited to welcome Ashoka to the Jolkona community. You can now support an Ashoka Youth Venture project right here in Seattle to encourage youth led journalism. Jolkona Foundation believes that we can [...]

  • The Gift of Giving

    Taylor
    25 Jan 2010 | 2:21 pm
    Imagine something that has been proven to make you happier, healthier and more confident while being environmentally friendly, and having absolutely no adverse side effects. I am not referring to a new miracle drug or infomercial for aroma-therapy candles, but simply the act of giving. People have long known that altruism carries its own rewards. [...]

  • Options to Help Haiti

    Nadia
    14 Jan 2010 | 6:11 pm
    Our heartfelt condolences go out to the people and families in Haiti affected by the recent tragic earthquake that has claimed thousands of lives and affected over one third of the population.  We know that there are tons of relief efforts and fundraisers going on right now to help provide assistance, and although we ourselves [...]

  • How Jolkona Foundation Came About…

    Adnan
    14 Jan 2010 | 5:58 am
    Last month, I gave an interview where I discussed how I came to start Jolkona Foundation. This interview was distributed internally within Microsoft. It is my pleasure to share the article, in its entirety, with our readers. Once again, I would like to thank my employer - Microsoft Corporation - for being so supportive of Jolkona [...]
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    What Do You Stand For?

  • Where Did All the Cause Ads Go?

    7 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm
    Every year, we watch the Super Bowl with great expectations for cause marketing, which has become more prominent in the sought-after advertising spots. Although Pepsi received much of the pre-Super Bowl advertising buzz for not buying spots and instead investing in its cause program, the Cone team felt disappointed there weren't more cause efforts during the big game. Check out the video below to hear what they had to say:  

  • Go Red or Go Home

    4 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm
    The country is awash in red today as millions support the fight against heart disease by uniting for National Wear Red Day. This icon day is a cornerstone event of the American Heart Associations (Cone client) year-round Go Red For Women initiative and has helped raise millions of dollars - and supporters - for the cause. The Cone team goes red for National Wear Red Day 2010 Go Red For Women has transformed the issue of heart disease - the number one killer of women in America to be more approachable and engaging through a multi-faceted program. Todays sweeping support of…

  • The Race is on to Catch Foursquare Enter CauseWorld

    1 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm
    Geolocation apps for mobile devices are one of the rising social media trends du jour and Foursquare is the undisputed leader of the pack. But Shopkicks latest free iPhone app, CauseWorld, delivers geolocation technology with a philanthropic twist - it allows users to make charitable contributions just by walking into stores. Launched in December of 2009, CauseWorld works in the same way as apps like Foursquare and Gowalla. Using geolocation, the app will show the user a list of nearby participating stores. The user enters the store, checks in on their phone, and earns karma no purchase…

  • Rising to the Transparency Challenge

    28 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm
    Transparency is a critical issue for corporate leaders, one that separates the compliers from the leaders in corporate responsibility reporting. It is a difficult aspect to measure, but Corporate Knights has tried to do just that with a new and improved release of its annual study, The Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World.   The Corporate Knights added a unique measure this year, called a Transparency Indicator. The number quantifies how easy it was to find information for the 10 other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), therefore indicating the level of disclosure…

  • Practical Tips for Selling Cause Partnerships to Corporate Sponsors

    25 Jan 2010 | 9:00 pm
    Cause sponsorship remains the fastest-growing slice of the sponsorship pie, projected to grow 6.1% in 2010, according to IEG. As a nonprofit, finding the support to keep your organization growing is more crucial than ever. No matter your size, now is an ideal time to tap into the power of cause marketing by aligning your organization with like-minded companies who see the strategic value of association with a cause. Here are a few tips for getting started on your selling journey: Create guidelines. While corporate partnerships are a proven method to grow revenue, expand relevance and…
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    A Volunteer's Guide to Changing the World

  • A Call for Nonprofits: Ask less, give more

    4 Feb 2010 | 10:22 am
    We know budgets are reduced and giving is down. Asking for more won't help. Sending more emails, planning more events, and hosting more auctions are signs of desperation.People don't need to give money. People don't need to raise money. People NEED to belong to something special. People NEED to be recognized for their contributions.Communicate a mission that people can support. Provide a place where people feel like they belong, and are recognized. Create a community where people get more than they give. Only by doing that can nonprofits grow their network... and with a larger network be…

  • RE: Online Outreach on a Budget

    28 Jan 2010 | 12:46 pm
    More than ever, online outreach is VITAL to your and your organizations ongoing success. I hope this post provides you valuable information and tools to stay ahead of the curve.Currently, there is a nonprofit blog carnival sweeping the Internet... Its full of great information, tips, and tools for nonprofits and volunteers. This month, IssueLab collected some amazing posts about improving online outreach.I recommend reading the full and original post by going to the Issue Lab blog, but if you are strapped for time, here are some of the highlights:Webinar Recap: Connecting Advocacy to…

  • Creative Crowdsourcing Empowers Non-Profits to Spread the Word

    22 Jan 2010 | 4:58 pm
    Crowdsourcing has been a growing trend and its a wonderful way to find new volunteers. There are a variety of different types of crowd-sourcing that fit almost any need that a nonprofit might have. Recently, National Association of Federal Credit Union leveraged a crowd-sourcing group to help launch advertisements to promote its nonprofit branches across the nation. I thought the crowdsourcing methodologie was very interesting and invite you to read this guest post from the creator of the program Peter H. LaMottePersonally, I have never working with GeniusRocket nor do I receive any incentive…

  • 3 Rules for Nonprofits: Belonging belonging belonging

    13 Jan 2010 | 2:38 pm
    Just like the first three principles of real estate are priority, priority, priority, the first rule for nonprofits to engaging volunteers and donors should be BELONGING, BELONGING, BELONGING!This rule is inspired by Marsha Shenk, and her presentation, Brain, Body and Business.You can see the full presentation here:View more presentations from marsha shenk.

  • 3 Sites That Make a Difference

    12 Jan 2010 | 12:47 pm
    Increasingly, you can do the things that you like to do, and do them in the name of a charity or cause. I have recently experimented with the following and I love what these groups are doing. I encourage you to check them out. And if they haven't listed your favorite cause, contact your cause and see if you can get them enabled.(NOTE TO NONPROFITS: If you haven't connected with sites like this, you are behind the times. Its free money, and it increases your social media presence...)Rec.fm | rec.fm is a tool that simply allows you to make great recommendations to your friends and help your…
 
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    Kiva Stories from the Field

  • Giving hope and commitment

    Jeremy Lapedis
    9 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am
    By Jeremy Lapedis, KF9, Guatemala One of my lasts tasks as a Kiva Fellow was to do a journal update an incarcerated Kiva entrepreneur. Kiva’s field partner in Guatemala City, FAPE, has a program where they give women in jail trainings and a loan for their businesses while incarcerated.  About one year ago, FAPE initiated this program in the jail in Guatemala City, four of the women were Kiva clients. Training programs were given.  Hand-made goods like those on the left were being sold for profit. Loans were being repaid, and the women were even putting money away in savings. The…

  • Do you need more fun in your life?

    marydear
    9 Feb 2010 | 12:53 am
    I am not sure if it is an East Coast thing or a Catholic school thing but when I was in grammar school I loved field day. In kid language Field Day = “No more classes, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.”A day full of watermelon to eat and games to play – a clear demarkation that summer and weeks of PLAYTIME were on the way – This was only the beginning! Ahhhh the yester years of Playtime…. In our busy ADULT lives, it seems playtime often falls off the radar. How many times have you thought, “I need more fun in my life.” Perhaps you have chosen to…

  • Day 0: A Kiva Fellow’s reflections

    vishnu84
    8 Feb 2010 | 12:03 am
    By Vishnu Hariharan, KF10, Philippines As I sit at a local internet cafe in Cabanatuan city, Philippines (where I am surrounded by five kids all reading out loud from the Kiva Fellows blog site on my computer screen!), I find myself reflecting more on what I hope to learn when I’m in the field. Back in July when I applied to be a Kiva Fellow, my goals from the program were generally to learn more about microfinance in developing countries and the use of financial tools to enact social change. From speaking with alumni, Kiva staff and attending training last week, the immersion of…

  • Offense Defense

    Kimia
    7 Feb 2010 | 7:12 pm
    By Kimia Raafat, KF10 Paraguay With Super Bowl Sunday upon us, I have begun to think of life as a football game.  Closer analysis of the sport inevitably leads to two topics of deliberation: offense and defense. Sunday night, the Colts and the Saints will be rotating their players based on their specialized roles in the field.  We will see the offense attack, take control and engage the opposing team with the objective of scoring points.  Then there is the defense, guarding their possession and protecting it from attack.   As I thought about these two “ways of life”, I realized, I…

  • Cusco on My Mind

    lethalsheethal
    5 Feb 2010 | 1:00 pm
    If you haven’t heard, there have been terrible floods in Cusco, Peru in the past week. Since we are in the thick of La Epoca de la Lluvia (the rainy season), rain is expected but the level of destruction seen in the area is unimaginable. Tourism is the main industry in Cusco, and the damage produced by the rain does substantial damage on the Cusco economy. From the February 3rd warden message from the U.S. Embassy in Peru, I read that Machu Picchu is closed and the rail line between Ollantaytambo and Aguas Calientes is closed due to landslides until possibly March. I also read that tourists…
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    Change Your Life | The Change Blog

  • You Can’t Force Other People to Change – But You Can Help Them

    Ali Hale
    9 Feb 2010 | 4:30 am
    Photo by Amir K. By Ali Hale Do you have a teen who just won’t get off his backside and do anything? Is your brother deeply in debt? Have you got a friend whose romantic life is a series of disasters which she never seems to learn from? Are your parents severely overweight? Is your partner a smoker? The chances are, there’s someone in your life who you believe is in need of change … but they’re not making any progress. If you’ve devoted yourself to change, perhaps making great strides in your personal and professional life, then it can be frustrating to see others – friends…

  • Want To Change Your Life? Travel. Or Don’t.

    Nathalie Lussier
    4 Feb 2010 | 6:13 am
    Photo by Andy C By Nathalie Lussier We often hear of people traveling across the world and experiencing profound life changing epiphanies. Well I’m here to tell you that’s not how it happens. Sure traveling around the world will change your life, but not exactly in the way you expect it to. At this time last year my boyfriend Robin and I were just two travelers visiting East Asian countries like China, Korea, and Singapore. We considered ourselves to be independent, non-confirmist souls. We had all these notions of inner change taking place. Or at least I did. Nathalie at the…

  • How to Build the Confidence Habit

    Mark Harrison
    25 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am
    Photo by Andy C By Mark Harrison “If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”  ~ Vincent Van Gogh We are all beset with doubts sometimes. Even the most self-assured and successful people can be unsure of themselves. Some people are clearly more confident than others, though. To what extent this is ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ is unclear, though I suspect that ‘nurture’ has a lot to do with it. I’ve seen my own confidence wax and wane over the years, and external factors have certainly played…

  • Reactionary or Revolutionary: What’s Your Attitude to Change – And Is It Holding You Back?

    Ali Hale
    21 Jan 2010 | 4:00 am
    Photo by h.koppdelaney By Ali Hale Broadly speaking, there are two political outlooks on change. Reactionaries see change as a bad thing, something to be treated with caution. Revolutionaries celebrate and embrace change. Take, for instance, attitudes towards the rapid changes in society due to technology. A reactionary would voice concerns about children playing video games, about the short attention spans caused by the internet, and about security and privacy risks. A revolutionary would talk about the new possibilities created – new ways of working, new art forms, and new connections…

  • Signs of Aging

    CA Mobley
    18 Jan 2010 | 5:35 am
    Photo by jonrawlinson By CA Mobley My recent birthday gave me ample opportunity to reflect, as I always do, on my life thus far and what the forthcoming year means to me. As a woman I’ve become very aware of how our society puts an extreme amount of emphasis on aging as a marketing tool for beauty products (most of which are completely unnecessary and useless- but they smell good and look pretty!) I find it fascinating how aggressive the marketing is aimed at being anything other than your age. Specifically if you’re a woman over 40- that is the target demo. Those are the ones to…
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    Change.org's Sustainable Food Blog

  • The Great Organic Marketing Ploy

    Greg Plotkin
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:35 am
    We all know that when the term "organic" is attached to a food product it means that it is grown free from chemicals, on environmentally sustainable farms, and by small family farmers, right? Wrong. There is a false perception among many consumers of what organic really means, and I'd like to take this opportunity to help lift the veil. The most popular misconception about the organic label is that it means food is grown without any chemicals, whether they be fertilizers, pesticides, or insecticides. This, my friends, is simply not true. Standards set by the USDA's National Organic Program…

  • FDA Sizing Up Serving Sizes

    Katherine Gustafson
    9 Feb 2010 | 10:00 am
    With obesity on the rise, the FDA Is thinking up ways to scare people away from unhealthy foods. The first idea? Encourage manufacturers to post the food's calorie information on the front of the box or bag, as the FDA is doing, according to the New York Times. That will make reaching for a handful of chips a more alarming experience. The problem with that, however, is that most serving sizes marked on packaging don't correspond to people's actual eating habits. And the calorie count listed on the packaging is determined by the serving size, so the FDA is considering changing that too. When a…

  • LoraxAg Prompts a Look at Coal-based Fertilizer

    Katherine Gustafson
    9 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am
    After I wrote last week about a company called LoraxAg using waste coal to make farm fertilizer, commenters rightly pointed out that we should understand the technicalities of coal-based fertilizers before we condemn the stuff. Of course that is a good policy, so I am now offering a deeper look into what this is all about. Coal as fertilizer? What the heck? LoraxAg will use a process called coal gassification to convert the carbon dioxide and hydrogen in the coal to produce urea and ammonia for fertilizer. In this process, coal is fed into a chemical reactor, where extreme heat and pressure…

  • How Michelle Obama's Fight Against Obesity is Taking Shape

    George Miller
    9 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am
    Congressman George Miller is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Congressman Miller is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. This year we will reauthorize the laws governing the federal school meal and afterschool meal programs, the Special Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and community-based programs such as the summer meals program and the child and adult care food program. As Chairman of the Committee with jurisdiction of these programs, I take this very seriously. Nothing is more important than…

  • Students Compete To Cook Up Change

    Katherine Gustafson
    8 Feb 2010 | 4:25 pm
    Who better to design a delicious and healthy school lunch than the people who have to eat it? High school and college students are invited to enter the Cooking up Change 2010 National Healthy Cooking Contest, hosted by the Healthy Schools Campaign and the National Farm to School Network. Their challenge? To create a healthy lunch using only ingredients that are available to the workers in school food service. That sounds challenging enough, but add to that the requirements that the meal must use at least one locally grown food, meet stringent nutritional guidelines and taste good. Tall order!
 
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    Social Work/Social Action

  • One in Eight

    4 Feb 2010 | 8:17 am
    From Feeding America: they help supply food banks (warehouses stocked with food) which, in turn, deliver it to local soup kitchens (where you eat on site) or food pantries (where you can get bags of groceries to take home, if you have a home):A landmark study released today from Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, reports that more than 37 million people, one in eight Americans -- including 14 million children and nearly 3 million seniors -- receive emergency food each year through the nation’s network of food banks and the agencies they serve. The…

  • Birth of the Bureau of the Budget Blogging

    2 Feb 2010 | 8:14 am
    Well, actually, it's the development of the B.O.B. (now O.M.B.), but where's the alliteration in that? Still, important stuff, and more fun than you may think.UPDATE: Our friends at The Monkey Cage also point us toward this very, very cool NYT graphic. Go look, and, at the very least, hit the "Hide Mandatory Spending" button.

  • And I didn't get you anything. . . . .

    29 Jan 2010 | 10:31 am
    I've just learned that it's National EITC Awareness Day! It is, in fact, among the most effective of American anti-poverty programs, which may be damning with faint praise, but still. . . . . . More info from our friends at the IRS here.

  • Views from above, and from below

    28 Jan 2010 | 11:51 am
    The passing of Louis Auchincloss and Howard Zinn.

  • Getting the Cops Off the Beat

    27 Jan 2010 | 6:40 am
    The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cElizabeth Warrenwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHealth Care Crisis
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    SocialEarth

  • Social Entrepreneurship Weekly

    Tristan
    9 Feb 2010 | 9:27 am
    Another week, another partner column with Ashoka’s Change Insight blog. I’m slightly behind due to the #NedSoc Social Entrepreneurship Conference, but here are the top highlights from the last week in social entrepreneurship: Ashoka-Lemelson Tech4Society Event to start this week in Hyderabad, India From February 11-13, 2010 Ashoka and The Lemelson Foundation are bringing together pioneers and [...]

  • Read it, Think it, Play it, EVOKE it

    Ashley
    8 Feb 2010 | 4:03 am
    Social reality game designer, Jane McGonigal, has been proving to the world for awhile now that video games don’t have to be a waste of time and on March 3rd, with the debut of her latest work, EVOKE, she’s going to do it again. EVOKE is like SIMS on steriods. You think it’s difficult raising a [...]

  • The Social Enterprise Conference: Reflections on Service

    Guest Author
    8 Feb 2010 | 2:30 am
    The following is a guest post from Emily Wren, a first year student at the Harvard Business School. An engineer by training, she studied at Duke University where she was a founding member of the Duke chapter of Engineers Without Borders. She is currently the Media Co-Director for the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference. At [...]

  • Jordan Proves to be the Arab Powerhouse of Microfinance

    Ashley
    6 Feb 2010 | 4:07 am
    Jordan might still be coasting on it’s rebirth of economic prosperity brought on by its liberal economic policies – it is now classified as a “lower middle income” country by the World Bank – and it remains a nation that is determined not to leave anyone behind. In a report issued by Sanabel, the Microfinance [...]

  • Story of a Start Up: Mana Nutrition Part 1

    Amy
    5 Feb 2010 | 12:52 pm
    Back in December, I came across Mr. Alex Cone, the marketing manager for MANA Nutrition, on twitter. He was tweeting about this organization that will tackle severe acute malnutrition with an innovative social business model producing ready-to-use-therapeutic-food (RUTF). After speaking with Cone about the process of being a start-up organization, I proposed a project to [...]
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    Andrew Wolk

  • New Orleans in the Spotlight

    Andrew
    8 Feb 2010 | 2:24 pm
    This past weekend was a big one for New Orleans – not just because of the Saints’ Super Bowl victory over the Colts but also the landslide victory for Mitch Landrieu in the election for mayor that took place on Saturday. Landrieu’s job will not be an easy one, to say the least. As we approach the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans still faces many of the challenges that the destruction of the city exposed and exacerbated. Add to that the burden of our nation’s current economic situation, and New Orleans appears as a microcosm of the United States and the issues we…

  • What’s hot in New Orleans?

    Andrew
    4 Feb 2010 | 1:31 pm
    No, it’s not just that the Saints are going to the Super Bowl − it’s Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu’s candidacy for the mayor of New Orleans. This Saturday’s election in New Orleans features the latest in a string of campaigns in which a candidate’s core messages include social innovation or civic engagement. Lt. Gov. Landrieu, for whom this is a third attempt at New Orleans’ top spot, established Louisiana’s Office of Social Entrepreneurship – the first such office in the nation. When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, they revealed the existence of…

  • Social Innovation Fund Draft NOFA is out…Public Comments Due By Jan 15th

    Andrew
    20 Dec 2009 | 12:28 pm
    The moment that we have been waiting for is here. This week, the Corporation for National and Community Service released a draft Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) for public comment. As I have mentioned before, this should be seen as a good step toward building a broader social innovation agenda – but not as the whole story. You can find the draft NOFA here. I wanted to share some quick observations, and will offer more thoughts in the near future. My initial reactions: The Corporation and the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic…

  • Driving at Social Impact in Texas

    Andrew
    16 Dec 2009 | 10:49 am
    Last week I traveled to Dallas for the OneStar Foundation: Texas Center for Social Impact’s Governor’s Nonprofit Leadership Conference. The theme of the conference was “The Driving Force for Social Impact 2009: Where the Rubber Meets the Road.” The title was well chosen; the OneStar Foundation is definitely taking a leadership role in advancing social innovation. I wanted to share a few highlights from the conference: The conference opened with Liz Darling, President & CEO of OneStar, announcing the seven Social Innovators selected for their new Texas Social Innovation Initiative,…

  • Exploring the Role of Government in Social Innovation

    Andrew
    10 Dec 2009 | 10:30 am
    As I mentioned in a recent post, Root Cause’s Public Innovators initiative recently hosted an event at the Capitol called Advancing Social Innovation in Government: Investing in Community Solutions. We hosted the event because we wanted to broaden the conversation and educate people in the federal government about the importance of social innovation. We were fortunate to have an exciting group of attendees, including the recently appointed head of the Corporation for National and Community Service, Patrick Corvington, Mike Firestone from Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s office, Jim Fruchterman…
 
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    Fuel for the Field

  • The true engine of job creation…

    Carla Javits
    1 Feb 2010 | 10:24 am
    Continuing on this year’s theme: positive change: what works….. During his State of the Union message, President Obama outlined incentives for small businesses to hire more workers, and for investors to provide more capital. But the next day when the President was asked in a Tampa, Florida town hall meeting about job opportunities for one woman’s brother, who had been in prison, he did not mention social enterprise. He did talk about the Second Chance Act – an important federal program that does provide some resources to local communities that can be used to help parolees. But it’s…

  • Positive change in the new year

    Carla Javits
    5 Jan 2010 | 11:20 am
    Holiday greetings! A resolution for 2010: Make positive change. And the corollary: Focus on the positive. Searching for ‘how to’ …some great guides below: Dan Pallotta’s always interesting blog suggests a new name for the “nonprofit” sector — just about anything is better than a word that starts with “non”. A hot new book coming out in February called “Switch” written by the Heath brothers (whose “Made to Stick” was a communications classic) lays out some of the most useful tips I’ve read about how people and systems change. Watch for it! Atul Gawande’s…

  • Where social enterprise is headed

    Carla Javits
    8 Dec 2009 | 2:45 pm
    After more than a decade of learning from success, as well as from the school of hard knocks, the time is ripe for dramatic expansion of the social innovation that REDF has been privileged to pioneer with our extraordinary partners. Over the next several years, REDF’s new strategy will accelerate the growth of job-creating social enterprises in the State of California with the twin goals of establishing a replicable and sustainable model that also provides thousands of people the chance to succeed and thrive in the workforce, with higher hopes and brighter futures. REDF’s first-ever…

  • Getting the numbers right

    Carla Javits
    24 Nov 2009 | 1:28 pm
    I was in the Washington, D.C. area last week to speak at the Social Solutions conference, where I learned about their practical innovations in measuring the results of nonprofits’ work. The impressive group of presenters and attendees are pioneering new ways to assess and integrate what they learn by improving their work. Two of the speakers were the CEO’s of organizations with powerful influence – Robert Ottenhoff of GuideStar and Ken Berger of Charity Navigator. They are challenging themselves and the field to find new ways to report on and compare nonprofit results so that donors can…

  • Changing the game

    Carla Javits
    2 Nov 2009 | 11:06 am
    The Huffington Post recently released their list of top ten “game-changers” in philanthropy – you can vote for one “ultimate game changer” – who are using new media as a foundation to create real change. The list includes blogger and inspirational thought leader, Lucy Bernholz. Among many hot topics she has raised, her suggestion for a “Philanthropy Policy Project” recently galvanized a whole new conversation. It also includes Perla Ni, the mastermind behind greatnonprofits.org, a website that makes the nonprofit world more transparent so that people and institutions can…
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    Social Velocity

  • The Social Side of Entrepreneurship

    Nell Edgington
    9 Feb 2010 | 11:21 am
    In less than a month, Austin’s premier entrepreneurship conference, RISE, will be in full swing. March 1st through 5th brings a SXSW-style conference that is quickly becoming the place to be for anyone thinking about launching or growing an enterprise. This year, RISE has added an official social entrepreneurship track to the conference, which seems to be a sign of the times. Social entrepreneurship is starting to take its rightful place next to “regular” entrepreneurship. Perhaps in the future there won’t even be a distinction. But until then, I’m delighted to…

  • What We Can Learn From Idealist

    Nell Edgington
    2 Feb 2010 | 11:41 am
    At the risk of going against the crowd, I’d like to add my perspective to the Idealist crisis.  Idealist.org is a job site for nonprofit organizations that has been around for 10 years.  It’s a great site that brings nonprofit organizations and aspiring nonprofit job seekers together.  It has launched many a great career, including that of Rosetta Thurman, nonprofit consultant and Gen Y leader who is a huge supporter of the site. Earlier this week Ami Dar, Executive Director of Idealist, sent out an emergency appeal for funding to Idealist supporters.  It seems that the…

  • Convergence Can’t Be Denied

    Nell Edgington
    28 Jan 2010 | 10:08 am
    There is a fascinating debate going on in the blogsphere touched off by Michael Edwards, author of  Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World and former director of the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society program. In essence, the debate is about whether the convergence of the private (business) and the nonprofit sectors is a good or bad thing, whether market forces help or hurt social change efforts.  Michael kicked off the debate on Monday with the first in a week-long series of posts called “Should Civil Society Be Reduced to a Subset of the Market?” In…

  • Let’s Take a Step Back in the Outcomes Debate

    Nell Edgington
    21 Jan 2010 | 10:24 am
    There is a growing discussion among social impact organizations and those who fund them about how to measure impact.  It is indeed a very slippery endeavor. Mario Marino, Chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners (a venture philanthropy fund in Washington D.C. that makes growth capital investments in nonprofits) has been encouraging nonprofits to measure outcomes for years.  Indeed one of the fundamental characteristics of venture philanthropy is a reliance on metrics and outcomes for investment to happen.  He recently wrote a post arguing that he is “increasingly worried that the…

  • Losing the Charity Mindset

    Nell Edgington
    19 Jan 2010 | 10:25 am
    Along with the burgeoning social entrepreneurship movement comes a bit of hubris that social entrepreneurs know better how to create social change than do the nonprofits that have been working toward social change for years.  Some social entrepreneurs argue that nonprofits are too set in their ways to embrace a new way of creating solutions.  I tend to disagree.  We can’t, nor should we, discount and dismiss an entire sector of people and organizations that have been working on social problems for centuries.  However, I do think that there are some things that nonprofits can learn…
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    SSIR Articles

  • Grassroots Concrete

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    3 Feb 2010 | 2:39 pm
    On the morning of Jan. 26, 2001, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the western Indian state of Gujarat. More than 20,000 people were killed and 160,000 injured, many of them crushed by falling buildings. International aid agencies flocked to the scene and began reconstruction. One year later, civil engineer Elizabeth Hausler traveled to Gujarat on a Fulbright scholarship, hoping to learn how she could use her skills to build homes that withstand tectonic shifts. She found that many survivors didn’t want to live in their new, donor-built earthquake-resistant houses because they were made…

  • Second Chances and a Third Bottom Line

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    26 Jan 2010 | 4:14 pm
    Inside the steel and glass office towers of Chile’s capital, Santiago, computers, printers, and faxes hum. Out on the streets, business executives and taxi drivers chat away on some of Chile’s 14 million cellular telephones. Urbanized, well educated, and home to 17 million people, Chile is one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. And as is the case in the United States, all its electronic gadgets are beginning to lead to a whole lot of electronic waste. The country currently discards 300,000 computers a year, and by 2020 it will be grappling with an annual pile of 1.7…

  • Strength Through Flexibility

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    20 Jan 2010 | 2:36 pm
    In June 1992, the five founders of what became the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) met at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center on Lake Como, Italy. Each woman was a minister of education in her home country (Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, the Seychelles, and Zimbabwe). And each lamented that only half of Africa’s school-age girls enrolled in school. FAWE’s founders understood the obstacles that girls met on the way to the schoolhouse. Many parents simply couldn’t afford school tuition and fees. Others preferred to keep their daughters at home to perform household…

  • An Ounce of Advocacy

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    11 Jan 2010 | 1:38 pm
    For years before Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the Gulf Coast, scientists, engineers, and journalists warned that New Orleans’ levees might not withstand the inevitable “Big One.” Yet government officials at every level ignored the warnings and cut the programs designed to fortify the city’s defenses. So when disaster finally struck in late August 2005, government agencies were woefully unprepared to deal with the devastation. Into this breach waded nonprofits and businesses. The American Red Cross, for instance, spent more than $2 billion and deployed 220,000 volunteers to assist…

  • Podcasts

    lynch_loreal@gsb.stanford.edu
    8 Jan 2010 | 3:01 pm
 
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    Not Only for Profit

  • The NFIB once again shows its Republican stripes

    Anne Field
    4 Feb 2010 | 10:47 am
    Image via Wikipedia The performance by a representative of the National Federation of Independent Business on a PBS show last night should eliminate any doubts that the organization is anything but a mouthpiece for the Republican party. Judy Woodruff had on the show Bill Rys from the NFIB and John Arensmeyer, who runs Small Business Majority, a small business advocacy group, which presents itself as an alternative to the NFIB. They were there to discuss President Obama’s latest small-business proposals. And, of course,  Rys had nothing but criticism for every single one of…

  • Investment funds let startup founders profit from each others’ success

    Anne Field
    1 Feb 2010 | 3:04 pm
    Invest in startups–and share the wealth when (and if) they hit it big. That’s a creative approach some early-stage investment funds and business incubators are experimenting with these days. The latest is First Round Capital, which has an exchange fund for entrepreneurial founders.  Entrepreneurs can get a stake in a pool of all participating portfolio companies if they agree to forgo a percentage of stock in their own startup. From the perspective of the entrepreneur, it reduces the chance that, if their own venture fails, they have nothing to show for their efforts. For First…

  • An experiment in funding for not- only-for-profit startups is launched

    Anne Field
    22 Jan 2010 | 7:17 am
    An innovative and possibly risky experiment in social -enterprise incubation and funding just kicked off in San Francisco. Called West Coast Village Capital, it’s a 12 week program with 24 social- enterprise entrepreneurs, based on the following philosophy: that startup founders can make funding decisions about one another as well as official investors.  The backer is First Light Ventures, which is part of Grey Ghost Ventures. To that end, the program splits the participants up into six groups; they meet weekly to help each other out.  The entrepreneurs themselves decide who goes…

  • Sexy startups: Why are they the focus of business plan competitions?

    Anne Field
    19 Jan 2010 | 12:42 pm
    Business plan competitions are like a friend who’s good for a laugh but not particularly reliable otherwise.  That is, they’re limited. For example, they favor sexy web, technology, and life sciences businesses.  All the rest are usually out of luck. However, a blog on the You’re the Boss site asserts that some contests take a different tack: But there are competitions now that encourage and reward service, consumables and other non-tech companies — though their numbers are fewer and their winners get less attention. These include: standalones, like the yearly Good…

  • Why less bank lending to women entrepreneurs is a blessing in disguise

    Anne Field
    14 Jan 2010 | 7:43 am
    Women entrepreneurs are going to create a lot of jobs over the next eight years, especially compared to their male counterparts.  And the current crisis in bank lending could be one factor. That’s according to research from the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute.  It found that female-owned firms will create 5 to 5.5 million jobs by 2018; the Labor Department predicts that there will be a total of 15.3 million jobs by that year. There are a lot of factors, ranging from higher growth rates for industries and jobs usually dominated by women to higher college graduation…
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    Entrepinoy Bank

  • 21 Steps on How to Start Your Own Business Book

    BizMind
    9 Feb 2010 | 8:05 am
    The 21 Steps on How to Start Your Own Business is a great book for would-be entrepreneurs who want to start their own business in a good start. This book contains tried-and-tested formulas in starting, sustaining, and succeeding in a business. This book inspires and induces a fist-pumping “I-can-do-it-too” moment from its readers. But this book goes a step further and answers the question: “Now what do I do next?” Dean Pax Lapid of the Entrepreneurs School of Asia, and self-help guru and motivational speaker Ping Sotto combine their vast experiences and share the formula to business…

  • How to Turn New Technology Ideas Into Businesses (Symposium)

    BizMind
    8 Feb 2010 | 7:44 pm
    Symposium on how to turn new technology concepts into viable, profitable, and successful businesses is now being prepared by the Technology Resources Center (TRC). The Idea-to-Liquidity Technology Symposium slated at the Philippine Trade Training Center on February 23 could make Filipino proponents of new technology become entrepreneurs and captains of today’s technology-driven industry. According to TRC Director General Dennis L. Cunanan, “This symposium is for aspiring and practicing techno-preneurs. They will help the techno-preneurs understand the various aspects and a requirement of…

  • Free Basic Car Troubleshooting Seminar at Philippine Trade Training Center

    BizMind
    7 Feb 2010 | 11:08 pm
    Basic Car Troubleshooting is one of the many skills training seminars offered at the Free Business and Livelihood Options Training Session to be facilitated by Philippine Trade Training Center on February 26, 2010. This is a great whole day training seminar for those who want to know the basics of diagnosing car trouble and learn how to figure out what’s wrong with the car without getting automotive repair help. Interested Filipinos who want to start a business and looking for business opportunities are very much welcome to attend the free seminars. Other interesting seminars are:…

  • Making Money on eBay: Basic Information to Make Money Selling No Longer Used Items

    BizMind
    6 Feb 2010 | 11:08 pm
    Making money on eBay is a great way to earn money selling items. When discussing making money through sales, eBay is not left behind. Many people have proven they will by almost anything if they can get a good price. To start making money on eBay, you simple open an eBay account, post your product and sit back and wait for sales. You can have the option of offering items for sale upfront without having to go through auction. One of the fastest to make money on eBay is this: Take a look at your house. There will be at least 10% – 20% of the items in your house that you do not want…

  • Debt and Equity Financing: 6 Tips to Increase Your Chances to Get Financing for Your Start-up Business

    BizMind
    6 Feb 2010 | 7:57 am
    Debt and equity financing are basically the two types of financing your business. Equity financing is a practice of selling portions or shares of a company to outsiders in order to raise money. It can be received at any point in a business’s life. However, most investments are done in the early stages of the company. And any entrepreneur can avail of equity financing. But those that are high-risk with the potential for high returns are preferred. Equity financing can be obtained from various sources. Investors range from private individuals, called angels, to venture capital firms. But…
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    Notes from a Sustainopreneur | on Sustainability Entrepreneurship

  • In an act of self-evaluation - notes now finally being notes

    andersabrahamsson
    31 Jan 2010 | 2:18 pm
    Reading: Statistics on my Typepad account. I have posted 96 posts in total since 2004 here. Not much. But when posting, quite long, and encompassing time periods quite vast, with more intermediary landings of the really longer articles, or to associate with certain events honoring my attention and contribution through the blogging here.On my way to the 100th post, I now sense that this blog will change character. In heavy exploration of both sustainopreneurship and its leverage all dimensions through social media of various kinds, finally made the last cornerstone in the structuring to make…

  • 2010 - the year of that book writing...

    andersabrahamsson
    31 Dec 2009 | 2:53 pm
    It's time to Get Real.I have to admit that my admin of a process that easily invites itself to procrastinating - writing big stuff - has been post-poned.But what's the opposite to post-poned? Pre-something? You tell.Anyways, I've done something in the in-between days making itself beyond that shallow "nyårslöfte", Swedish for committing yourself to something for the New Year.We close 2009 with a smile. Done a lot, but did not do other things.Some hours ago, I disclosed on my personal miniblog ("tumbleblog") on Tumblr (streamed in the sidebar) - "Sneak…

  • [#socialweb:#blogs] Today: Got featured on 'Social Entrepreneurship' on Alltop

    andersabrahamsson
    22 Oct 2009 | 2:32 pm
      Thanks to a quite magic interaction flowing in - a story shared later - I ended up getting featured on Alltop.And I added the badge to the sidebar!Who said that blog posts needs to be longer than this? Macroblogs could be used for tumblelog lengths too :).    [TOMORROW: Guest blogging, part two, on #Internetdagarna - screenshot preview- and, now we're talking Sustainopreneurship - Mobile Internet For All!]

  • [#causebizbook:#1mcc] One Year After Starting "Sustainopreneurship" on Wikipedia - A To-Do List

    andersabrahamsson
    17 Oct 2009 | 12:34 pm
    One year ago, I started the article on Sustainopreneurship on Wikipedia. The story about the publishing covering the first 24ish hours of its history is here. Paradoxically, I expected in the worst-case scenario a multiple-front "wiki-war" defending the article - but an anti-climax occurred when it basically has been resting untouched all upon until now. That means it actually has sifted in into general vocabulary actually usable at a higher level. Thus. It's time to upgrade all the efforts to really get the word out, and the concept really widespread. Here is a to-do list of…

  • [#causebizbook:#pledges] Testing Weekend Attention Span of my Network

    andersabrahamsson
    17 Oct 2009 | 9:41 am
    The other late night I digged deep into different crowdsourcing initiatives, tools and approaches on the net. There are alot of resources, and I will blog separately on that. Now I test my Twitter Followers, Facebook Friends and LinkedIn Network who will be the most attentive to sign my little pledge - you landed here on this blog post if you captured my message from either of the platforms! This blog post is fed automatically to Twitter with a headline notification, and to Facebook in my stream through the app Networked Blogs. If I don't reach 10 to sign the pledge by those two spaces, I…
 
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    mollybuckley.

  • The North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival

    Molly Buckley
    1 Feb 2010 | 10:07 pm
    I know, I know. It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. I’m sorry. I’ve missed you, too. As most of you know, I’ve been working a lot. But have no fear, I’m still here. (Oh, and I’m only working TWO jobs now!) But what many of you may NOT know, is that I am a proud staff member of the 2010 North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival (#NCCAF). I was honored to perform at NCCAF (as a guest) last year in 2009. This year, I have the honor of performing again AND the privilege of serving on the volunteer staff. It’s been an amazing experience so far,…

  • A Little Advice From the Girl with 4 Jobs.

    Molly Buckley
    7 Jan 2010 | 9:25 am
    I know, I know. I’ve told you guys a gazillion times now that I’m working my ass off. Sorry to belabor (is that the right word here?) the point, but I have some advice for anyone who wants to listen… or read. Even my change is important. READ: These are simply some frustrations of mine and in no way aimed at anyone in particular. It’s more of a venting tool for me. Take it for what you will, take it for comedy, I’m not being condescending, but I am being serious. Job 1: Art Gallery Retail Job Please do not haggle me (or anyone) on the price of a retail item.

  • Please, Stop Predicting. Start Doing.

    Molly Buckley
    4 Jan 2010 | 7:56 am
    Maybe this is just my pet-peeve, maybe I’m a bit cynical (who isn’t?), or maybe I’m just cranky and need a burrito. But if I read one more “Predictions for 2010″ blog entry, I think I might have to punch my computer. Unless you're this lady, stop telling me what WILL happen. And my computer doesn’t deserve that, she’s been nothing but loyal to me. But seriously, stop making predictions and start DOING. Stop telling me what you THINK will happen and take the steps, do the work, and take the actions that are necessary to actually MAKE things happen…

  • These are FACTS – Molly’s 2010 RE-UP!

    Molly Buckley
    28 Dec 2009 | 1:32 pm
    I haven’t blogged in a week. Blah blah blah, yada yada yada. I went from blogging every day to I haven’t blogged in a week. [Note: I really hate posts when people say, "Ahh I'm so sorry I've been slacking!" or "My apologies for not blogging much" or "I suck and I am lazy and I haven't posted in forever." This is not one of those posts. This is a post of facts. Or truths. Or factruths. I want to join the RE-UP crew. But guess what? Unless you’re a blogger with a gazillion readers, or Oprah, I bet you that people don’t give a rats rear if you haven’t blogged in a…

  • Las Vegas = Sin City or Social City?

    Molly Buckley
    21 Dec 2009 | 4:00 am
    Be jealous: I went to Las Vegas (again) a week and a half ago. The trip was my Christmas present from Zach Ward (@zachward) and it included a stay at Planet Hollywood, a facial and manicure at the Mandara Spa, and TWO VIP tickets and passes to see Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds play an acoustic set. It. Was. Awesome. (I’m super lucky). But even when I am on a short (but awesome) vacay, a part of my brain doesn’t leave work/writing mode. Well, I’m not a gambler and I have much more interest in partaking in spa services than any of the other “activities” that…
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    Kevin J. Porter

  • Reno Mayor Bob Cashell Interview on Commitment, Work Ethic, and Communication

    Kevin Porter
    5 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am
    Bob Cashell is currently serving his second term as the Mayor of Reno, Nevada.  Mayor Cashell previously served as the Chairman of the Nevada System Board of Regents and Lt. Governor of the State of Nevada.  Outside of public service, Mayor Cashell serves as the Chairman of the Board of Cashell Enterprises, a management company that specializes in hotels, casinos, and resorts. Mayor Cashell’s accomplishments and achievements speak volumes of his success in both private and public business arenas.  I contacted Mayor Cashell with the following questions regarding commitment, work ethic,…

  • Commitment and Hard Work: SEAL Hell Week

    Kevin Porter
    4 Feb 2010 | 7:59 am
    Each of the Navy SEAL posts in the current blog series is structured around the values of commitment and hard work. My purpose in writing these posts is to relay the sheer power of the human mind and body.  Applying this knowledge to your career or to your business will increase the potential for personal success and achievement.  People I consider successful in business are not defined by their company or organization; they are defined by the commitment to their personal achievement and the hard work they have consistently displayed along the journey. To culminate this consecutive series…

  • Phase I – Navy SEAL BUD/S

    Kevin Porter
    1 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am
    The candidates that survive Indoctrination graduate to Phase I.  Eight weeks in length, Phase I exponentially increases the workload candidates were introduced to in Indoc.  The training continues to violently rattle candidates via endless physical/ mental evolutions.  Evolutions are constructed as either individual or team exercises.  An example of an individual evolution is the four mile 32 minute timed run.  An example of team evolution is surf passage.  Boat crews are assembled to man 180 lb inflatable boats.  The boat crews must successfully paddle the inflatable boat through six…

  • Can I Suggest to My Professor He Adjust His Behavior?

    Kevin Porter
    27 Jan 2010 | 3:00 am
    The professor walked through the classroom door and began talking before the hydraulic door jack pulled the door back into the door jam, he didn’t stop talking until we were fifteen minutes over our allotted class time.  If I had a stop watch to time the breaks between the professor’s words, I would not have accumulated more than a minute and a half by the end of the three hour class. Even more disturbing, the three hours consisted of random stories striking little to no relevance to the theme of the course. Some quick math (class and student fees divided by one class session) reveals…

  • Indoctrination, a “Warm Up” for Navy SEAL BUD/S Training

    Kevin Porter
    26 Jan 2010 | 4:00 am
    The first segment of training SEAL candidates face is known as Indoctrination (Indoc).  Lasting approximately five weeks, Indoc is used to “acclimate” SEAL candidates to the nature and culture of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEALs (BUD/S).  The five weeks are essentially used to smooth the learning curve so that Phase 1 doesn’t feel like being thrown out of a plane without a parachute; although transitioning from Indoc to Phase 1 probably still feels like being struck by an 18-wheel semi truck according to the description and testimony of The Warrior Elite. Candidates…
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