Ideas have the power to change history. When new ideas emerge, they challenge established ways of thinking and acting, and suggest alternative approaches to resolve problems confronting the world. Yet ideas can turn out to be birds without wings. Without visionary and committed individuals who can actualise them, new ideas will hardly make any difference to the lives of people. They will remain as wishful thinking and disappear without trace.
Many social entrepreneurs across the world today have been able to make a mark not merely because of their innovative solutions to specific problems of poverty, illiteracy, health care, inequality, insecurity and environmental degradation but because they have also worked with determination towards a systematic realisation of those ideas for social transformation.
David Bornstein's How to Change the World narrates the stories of 10 such visionary entrepreneurs. It includes people such as Fabio Rosa of Brazil who spearheaded rural electrification for poor farmers; Bill Drayton of the United States who instituted the Ashoka foundation to nurture and provide financial support to budding entrepreneurial leaders; Jeroo Billimoria who founded Childline in India, a 24-hour emergency response system to help children in distress; Erzsebet Szekeres of Hungary who championed the idea of assisted living for the disabled; and Veronica Khosa of South Africa who started home-based care for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) patients.
Continue reading.
What Gets Measured Gets Done - WBCSD Launches Measuring Impact Framework
World Business Council for Sustainable Development — www.wbcsd.org
Published on July 31, 2008
Business knows that "what gets measured gets done." In this spirit, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) launches the Measuring Impact Framework to help companies measure and assess the impact of their business activities on economic and broader development goals wherever they operate.
The Framework includes 3 components:
- Business case for measuring impacts entitled "Beyond the bottom line", highlighting the experience of several WBCSD member companies
- 4-step methodology to identify, measure, assess and manage impacts
- Excel-based user guide that helps companies carry out an assessment
When discussing the social sector, Bill Drayton, founder and chief executive of Ashoka, a non-profit organisation that promotes social entrepreneurs, remembers the sector 25 years ago.
"Salaries were pathetic, smart people would avoid it, it was disorganised," he says. "That's all gone. We've been catching up and once you go from non-competitive to competitive, organisations have to join in the party or they'll be eaten alive."
As many non-profit organisations strive to make their operations more professional, a growing number of their employees are choosing to take an MBA.
"We are definitely seeing more of them in the part-time MBA programme," says Liz Livingston Howard, associate director of the Centre for Non-profit Management at the Kellogg School of Management, at Northwestern University in the US. "There's been a statistically significant increase in the past 10 years."
Continue reading.
Self-help or self-reliance continues to be the basic philosophy underlying the country's social reform and poverty alleviation efforts. Self-sustaining businesses and livelihood ventures are encouraged, which led to the development of groups with self-help programs that require little (to no) assistance from the government. Asiapro Multi-purpose Cooperative is a notable sample.
Asiapro empowers what was previously an unorganized sector in RP: informal/ non-regular workers. Based on recent labor data, there are over 20 million workers in the informal labor sector in the country. Most of these workers are marginalized casual, contractual, seasonal, temporary, and non regular employees. Under the Asiapro model, workers from this rank organize themselves and form a self-employed workers cooperative.
Asiapro pioneered the concept of self-employed workers-cooperative by modifying and eliminating the disadvantages brought about by the current status of contractual, contingent and temporary relationships. It introduced the concept of transforming workers into "entrepreneurs," or more appropriately, "coopreneurs," having bonded together in a cooperative enterprise.
Continue reading.
Woman's nonprofit brings power, hope to Africans
Daily Press — www.dailypress.com
Published on July 28, 2008
When someone switches on a light in Banco, Mali, it's most likely connected to a photovoltaic solar power system in the village. But its original source can be traced to an unassuming house in James City County.
That's where Mary Graham, who grew up in Northern Virginia, lives with her parents in Kingsmill when she's not in Mali overseeing Practical Small Projects. That's the nonprofit she founded three years ago to foster sustainable enterprise in the impoverished West African country.
The organization works on a shoestring budget with almost no overhead but has provided a spark to dozens of entrepreneurs in Mali.
"It doesn't take millions to make a difference, and sometimes it actually helps if you limit your scope," said Graham, 29. "When I look at nonprofits in New York, I'm like, 'What are you doing?' You're bringing water to Africa, and you've got 20 employees working out of an office in Manhattan.'"
Continue reading.
In the race to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, it is critical to examine all tools at our disposal to alleviate poverty. The greatest untapped resource is the enormous potential, in the form of investment and innovation, of the private sector. And the success of any private enterprise with the poor depends on a dialogue and often collaboration with governments.
United Nations Development Programme's new report Creating Value for All: Strategies for Doing Business with the Poor offers suggestions for governments and the private sector to better develop markets that engage the poor on the demand side as clients and customers, and on the supply side as producers, employees and business owners. Its heart lies in 50 commissioned case studies by researchers largely from developing countries, including three cases from India. These studies examine businesses that have often worked with governments to successfully include the poor.
Countries such as India can take concrete steps to facilitate more inclusive business models - from raising awareness about the opportunities of doing business with the poor to removing constraints in the market environment. Moreover, governments can strengthen their own capacity to collaborate with the private sector, and combine traditional aid and subsidies with private sector approaches so that the poorest of the poor can ultimately become integrated into the formal financial and other sectors.
Continue reading.
This week Trade Ministers assemble in Geneva to try and make progress at the World Trade Organisation on the Doha Development trade round. The global economy needs the boost that further trade liberalisation has always delivered.
However, it's true of generals, leaders, and bureaucrats, that we fight the next war, or address the next problem based on the evidence of our last battle when things have moved on.
My experience of the 1970's prepared me for the needs of the 1980's. My views on how we could help the poorest nations transition using trade as an important driver for progress was based on that evidence and experience. It was correct, China and India prove this.
The historic pattern from Britain to the US to Japan to Korea was clear. At a certain stage of development, nations move to textiles then to industry, then to the service sector and new technologies. Many countries succeed in all those businesses, but move up the value chain.
Continue reading.
Salma Sultana's rural and orthodox background hardly came in her way of becoming a processor in a BPO. Hailing from Muthukuru mandal of Nellore district, K. Sudheer, her peer, shouldered the job responsibilities with a great flourish.
It's a metamorphosis for the likes of Salma and Sudheer from BOP (bottom of the pyramid) to BPO (business process outsourcing), when HDFC Bank picked them up for the challenging assignments, thanks to the customised training imparted by the Employment Generation and Marketing Mission (EGMM), an arm of the Rural Development Department.
With their family status improving, income levels moving northwards and caste barriers vanishing, these young men and women are able to fend for their siblings' education or to create an asset in the households. Graduates from underprivileged families in rural areas, trained by the EGMM, are now hotcakes for multi-national companies to work in their rural BPOs.
Till six months ago, HDFC Bank faced a problem in selecting right candidates for its rural operations. But today, the bank is more than satisfied by the setting up of its first rural BPO in Nellore with the EGMM-trained manpower.
Continue reading.
Exports of Eco-friendly Shopping Bags Give Livelihood Opportunities to Disabled in Indonesia
PR-GB.com News Origin — pr-gb.com
Published on July 25, 2008
Export Service Centre Connects Small-Scale Producers in Indonesia with Import Buyers in Europe to Create Sustainable Jobs and Advance Skills Development
Hong Kong, July 22, 2008 -- People in Europe who buy the eco-friendly shopping bags made of recycled materials are doing more than just helping the environment -- they are also giving meaningful employment and self-sufficiency to 37 physically disabled people in Indonesia. This is made possible through the work of the non-profit Export Service Centre in Bali, Indonesia (http://www.exportservicecentre.com/).
The Export Service Centre, whose mission is Aid through Trade, is fulfilling orders for Netherlands-based Pure People Products (http://www.purepeopleproducts.com/) for hundreds of eco-friendly shopping bags by sourcing from the Senang Hati (Happy Heart) organization in Ubud.
Senang Hati's founder and chairwoman, Putu Suryati, who is also disabled, said: "We hope export orders will continue to come, so the members here whom can't work in formal sector have a chance to earn a living for themselves.
Continue reading.
Development Aid - Help or Hindrance?
Kansas City infoZine News — www.infozine.com
Published on July 25, 2008
Celebrities have made foreign aid cool. With their themed wristbands, tireless campaigning and regular trips to Africa, people such as Bono are among the world's most prominent activists.
Washington, D.C. - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - infoZine - The face of development aid has changed since Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act in 1961. More and more famous people are signing up to "make poverty history" and save Africa from war, corruption and HIV/AIDS, and they are asking the U.S. and governments across the globe to give more to the cause.
Some celebrities have been accused of using Africa's problems to further their careers. Madonna was criticized for not following the correct procedures in her adoption of David Banda from Malawi.
Others have been commended for their efforts. Bill and Melinda Gates shared Time magazine's person of the year title with Bono in 2005. Bono is the face of the One campaign to make poverty history and helped organize the Live 8 concerts to raise awareness and public pressure. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation committed $750 million to improve access to child immunization and vaccines.
Continue reading.
