Category Archives: social entrepreneurship

Change is coming- launch of B Lab UK

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On Sept 24 B Lab UK hosted the event “Change is coming” the official launch of 62 certified UK B Corps at Proud Galleries in Camden, London. The B Corp movement is gaining momentum and now there are over 1400 companies across 42 countries that are B Corp certified and a number that is growing by the day. In this event it was inspiring to hear the founders of Bridges Ventures, COOK, Fairphone, and Streetlife talk about their businesses and their road to become B Corps. It was also a great gathering to network with the B Corp global community as many leaders were present such as Bart Houlahan, (B Lab Co-Founder), Marcello Palazzi (B Lab Europe Co-founder), and Pedro Tarak (Co-founder of Sistema B, B Corp South America).
There was also a big announcement made by Bart that B Lab is establishing a Multinationals and Public Markets (MPM) Advisory Council as of January 2016 as a strong response for the growing number of multinationals and publicly listed companies that are interested in joining the B Corp movement. In a video message delivered by Paul Polman, Unilever CEO, he announced that Unilever will participate in the MPM Advisory Council and invited others to join them to achieve a collective vision of a global economy where all businesses work to create a more shared and durable prosperity for all. Yes, change is coming!

The Blue Economy – an action plan on improving the world through sustainable development

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I had the greatest pleasure to meet on May 19th Dr. Ashok Khosla, a visionary & social entrepreneur at a private event (thanks Nina!) Dr. Khosla founded Development Alternatives in 1982 to purse his dream for sustainable development. Since then he has been innovating, demonstrating, and fostering the delivery of environmentally friendly and commercially viable technologies. He is also the Chairman of TARA (Technologies and Actions for Rural Advancement). He also presented the just launched 2 new books “To Choose Our Future” which he authored and “The Blue Economy Version 2.0” by Gunther Pauli, for which he is a contributing author. Both books will soon be available to buy online. The Blue Economy is the sequel to “The Blue Economy: 10 years 100 innovations 100 million jobs” and it is a powerful movement that has only started. I recommend you to see the TED talk of Gunter Pauli and the simple intro on the concept and to find about the 100 innovations.

Skoll World Forum 2015: Belief

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SWF2015_mobile_logoThe 12th Skoll World Forum took place April 15-17th in Oxford. It was my 9th Skoll in a row and it is still my favourite forum for its great content, inspiring conversations and unlimited networking opportunities. This year two of the topics that were most emphasized were girls’ education and the continuing need to collaborate amongst the three converging worlds; private, public and citizen sectors. Another positive,this year, many of the sessions were recorded (more than ever) so subscribe to the youtube page of Skoll so that you can check on the videos that are being uploaded. Check also content through their Facebook and twitter page.

Karmafy: Have Fun = Do Good

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We would like to introduce you to Karmafy
karmalife
Karmafy represents a global social currency for doing good. The platform offers businesses, apps, and cause organizations the opportunity to attract new users and strengthen their existing user base by allowing users to track and make use of their socially responsible actions. We partner with businesses through a commonly used rev-share model and deliver more engaged users. Increased monetization occurs through cross promotion, use of gamification and functionality to make directed donations to vetted philanthropic organizations. More to come soon.

Bunker Roy receives the prestigious Clinton Global Citizen Award

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Last night Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College was one of the 7 recipients of the prestigious Clinton Global Citizen Awards. . The awards were presented at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York,

..the honorees are chosen based on their innovative and effective approaches to making positive global change, and on their work’s potential for scalable growth and sustainability. They are leaders whose efforts transcend borders, change lives, and set an example for us all…

( source: Clinton Global Initiative)
Congratulations Bunker!

What’s new in Impact Investing

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SOCAP 13 (Social Capital Markets, at the intersection of money and meaning) conference took place last week. I could not attend this year but it is great that the videos have already been made available on their website. A platform launched during this conference is ImpactSpace, an open data and resources platform. Their mission is to accelerate impact investing by making information available about the impact market (companies, investors, deals, people) to everyone and maintainable by anyone. It looks already a very helpful and promising resource.
Regarding recent articles and reports in this field that are highly recommended to read are;
1) “When can impact investing create real impact?” by Paul Brest and Kelly Born that appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The article and the responses by industry experts give a great insight on this topic.
2) “Making Impact Investible” by Max Martin of Impact Economy is a solid and rich working paper that provides a clear framework to understand the industry, all actors and also provides recommendations on how to scale up the industry.

Changing mindsets… importing innovative models made by emerging and developing economies

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Just back from the “Partnering for Global Impact” a two day forum by EBD Group in Lugano. Key areas covered were agriculture, education, healthcare housing, financial services and water.This forum facilitates outcomes in impact investing and philanthropy through one to one meetings alongside great keynote addresses (such as Sir Ronald Cohen) and panel discussions. It was a well organized event with very good content and great for networking.
Having attended numerous events on impact investment and philanthropy and having been fortunate to learn from outstanding social enterprises over the past 10 years I believe that one new topic should be added to these events.
These great forums such as Skoll World Forum, SOCAP, TBLI and PGI are playing a critical role in helping to solve the most serious problems we face through bringing together ideas, people, capital and promoting the more efficient use of resources. Find sustainable solutions which are working in emerging economies and scaling it. Funding and capacity building to be provided by impact investors, philanthropists and development finance institutions. It’s great but maybe we could do even better.
One different angle should be added. What could WE in the developed world learn and import from the emerging market innovative models that have been successful? Who has developed or is developing low cost high quality services in education, financial services and healthcare? There are successful education models developed in Latin America that could be used for low income communities in the USA. Perhaps vocational school systems or microfranchising business models that could be useful in reducing youth unemployment in The European Union? The increasing applications of mobile technology for payment systems in Kenya? There is so much innovation happening in emerging economies and we should be pragmatic and maybe a bit humble and change our mindsets to search and learn from the best available solution.
I talked about this idea to some veterans in this field, Suzanne Biegel from Catalyst at Large and ClearlySo, Jed Emerson of ImpactAssets and Blended Value and to Hans Wahl of INSEAD and they all thought it made sense! This topic is worthwhile to dig in further and much more research is needed I hope it will be included in future forums.

What’s new in crowdfunding, crowdinvesting

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Crowdfunding platforms are continuing to be launched and according to industry sources there are more than 500 platforms. Of the 4 types of crowdfunding sites (donation-based, reward-based, loan based and equity based) this year we are likely to see a surge of equity based crowdfunding sites (in particular in the USA) that would allow for investment in startups. This is due to the passage of the JOBS Act last year that includes the Crowdfund Act. A recent article titled Crowdfunding Clean Energy by David Bornstein gives an excellent insight on the recent trends in this area. In addition to Solar Mosaic described in this article there are several new green crowdfunding sites that look appealing. Impact Crowd, Abundance Generation, OnGreen

Update: Solar electrification of Kandwi, Zanzibar by Barefoot solar engineers

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fatima_patima.JPG Last August I accompanied Bunker Roy of Barefoot College to Zanzibar where he was selecting grandmothers in the village of Kandwi who would be travelling to India to be trained as solar engineers.(see entry)
This project named “Women Empowerment Project” was supported by Giving Women. Just 12 months later, the women solar engineers are installing the solar panels and LED lights for 100 houses in Kandwi. It is remarkable to see the changes in these women too. It is impressive that the whole project cycle from visiting the village, selecting the grandmothers, getting the village approval, preparing them to go to Tilonia for training, the 6 month training, getting back and preparing the maintenance workshop, getting the solar equipment out of customs and solar electrifying the village houses all this has been achieved in 12 months!
Congratulations to Fatima, Patima and Mwashamba the three solar barefoot enginners, the villagers of Kandwi, Barefoot College and Giving Women for their great work! (video showing the installation, courtesy of Kathrin Legg)

A must see video from the Skoll World Forum 2012

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This year’s Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship was titled FLUX: Seizing momentum and driving change. This forum continues to be one of the best venues to meet up, update, share, collaborate and form new partnerships between all the players, social enterprises, private sector and public sector. One of my favourites talks at this year’s Skoll Forum was Hans Rowling’s presentation on the future of world population.