Tag Archives: Social Entrepreneur

Assured Labor – creating a mobile marketplace for jobs in emerging markets

Posted on April 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

In the fall of 2007, a group of young potential entrepreneurs attending the course on Development Entrepreneurship at MIT struggled with a problem facing over half the developing world. As developing economies grew and provided new jobs, the infrastructure to communicate and broadcast the potential opportunities for employment was unable to keep up. The influx of migrant workers into urbanized centers provided a rich pool of available talent but the mechanisms for disseminating job needs were still rooted in the 19th century. Print advertising and, in extreme cases, roving cars with loudspeakers, were used in a scattershot manner hoping to attract potential candidates to interview for jobs. Online advertising wasn’t an option in most developing countries where internet connectivity was sporadic. The transient nature of most migrant and casual laborers made getting to the target audience even more difficult. Continue reading →

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Posted in bottom of the pyramid, Information Technology, Latin America, mobile technology, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation

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Help select a winning teen social entrepreneur

Posted on March 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

Ashoka Youth Venture and Best Buy Children’s Foundation have teamed up to create the @15 Community Impact Challenge. Ashoka is known around the world as the institution that coined the term social entrepreneurship and has been actively supporting social entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years. Ashoka’s Youth Venture works to encourage this spirit of innovation and social entrepreneurship in young people. With Ashoka’s Youth Venture’s support youngsters design and launch their own social ventures to target social issues and challenges.

The Best Buy Children’s Foundation hopes to empower teens at the most critical time of their lives – early adolescence. Its @15 programs provide teens with a platform to affect social change. @15 working together with Ashoka’s Youth Venture has created the Community Impact Challenge. Youth teams from around the nation applied to enter the competition. A set of 15 finalists was chosen based on an assessment of their potential for community impact and a vision of how they would create sustainable change. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education, Schools, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation

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Some reflections on Martin Luther King and non-profit leadership

Posted on January 21, 2010 | 2 comments

Yesterday I had the opportunity to volunteer with a group at the Greater Boston Food Bank. After spending some time on the production line, and given the past weekend celebrating Martin Luther King, the group was asked to reflect on what Martin Luther King might have done in light of what we had seen and experienced, at the Greater Boston Food Bank as well as the larger set of social issues that we are exposed to in our daily lives. Continue reading →

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Posted in Leadership, non-profit, Philanthropy, Politics, Poverty, Service, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation

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Social Media for Social Entrepreneurs

Posted on October 21, 2009 | Leave a comment

Panel Description for ForSE 2009

One of the most popular panels in the past and one that promises to be very interesting at ForSE 2009, is on Social Media for Social Entrepreneurs.  With Twitter and Facebook revolutionizing the business of marketing, can social activists lag behind? Successful grassroots efforts have helped spread the word to thousands, even millions. But the devil is in the details. How does one turn followers into funders? Motivate movements with your messages? And leverage social networks to create social change?

The experts on this panel have shown others how to maximize their impact with the latest online tools and techniques and they will help you figure out the right approach to integrating social media within your strategies.

Panelists

  • John Haydon, Social Media Consultant @johnhaydon
  • Dan Croak, Thoughtbot @croaky
  • Tushneem Dharmagadda, Director, US Operations India School Fund @tushneem

Moderator

  • Kate Brodock, Founder & Principal, The Other Side Group @just_kate

You can prepare for this panel by reading a thoughtful piece by one of the panelists, Tushneem Dharmagadda, on his blog that describes four tips for Social Entrepreneurs to leverage Social Media. For more advice and great posts on social media strategies, check out @johnhaydon and @just_kate blogs.

Finally the afternoon will include a real live interactive case study highlighting the challenges Lokvani.com, a South Asian community portal and e-magazine with over 40,000 subscribers, faces as it tries to integrate the new media tools into its online strategy. Join Lokvani team members and the content experts to help brainstorm ideas for solving Lokvani’s challenges.  The session will be moderated by Kimi Ceridon (@kalepatech), Founder of Kalepa Tech, a design firm with deep social impact experience.

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Posted in Conference, Information Technology, non-profit, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur

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Sustainable Business Models for Social Ventures

Posted on October 17, 2009 | Leave a comment

Panel Description for ForSE 2009

In decades past, many non-profits have achieved only temporary success and limited scale due to dependence on grants and donations. A new breed of ventures has begun innovating revenue models to build greater capacity and sustain operations. These approaches leverage the power of markets to meet social needs. Whether they’re building a socially responsible brand of clothing, providing renewable energy solutions, or bringing banking to the poor, these organizations have discovered the sustainable power of partnering with their customers.

Hear from a panel of innovative organizations that are thinking outside the box in terms of building sustainable models. Click here to register.

Panelists

Moderator

  • Prof Nitin Joglekar, School of Management, Boston University

Equal Exchange – Special In-depth Case Study and solutions brainstorming

Case Presenter: Rodney North, The Answer Man, Equal Exchange

Moderator: Gaurav Rohtagi, Principal, Continuum

Equal Exchange, the Massachusetts-based employee-owned worker co-operative best known for introducing Fair Trade coffee to American grocery stores in that late ‘80s.

Equal Exchange has over 100 employees in 6 states and $35 million in annual revenue. They’ve recently won six different awards for their environmentally and socially responsible business practices including the Social Innovation Award from the Financial Times newspaper and the World’s Most Democratic Workplace award from WorldBlu.

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Posted in Conference, non-profit, Rural Development, Social Business, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainable development

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