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 Bloomberg Photo/Ny Times Feb 2008: The World's leaders in venture capitalism for socially
conscious purposes
mail info @worldcitizen.tv with nominations of catalogues social businesses yunus list , BoP list , hunt for global sectors with a sustainability entry, ...
nice social business survey here diy catalogues: at facebook, at googlegroups . SB tags: at wordpress | 1 Comment |
Seeing what a SOCIAL BUSINESS is and is not To make today’s half-developed structure of capitalism complete we need to introduce another
kind of business –one that recognises the multi-dimensional nature of human beings. Entrepreneurs of social businesses
design organisational systems not for limited personal gain but to pursue broad social goals
How can the products or services sold by a social business provide a social benefit. There are countless
ways. For a few examples, imagine: A
social business that manufactures and sells high-quality nutritious food products at very low prices to a targeted market
of poor and underfed children A social
business that designs and markets health insurance policies that provide affordable medical care to the poor A social business that develops renewable-energy
systems and sells them at reasonable prices to rural communities that otherwise can’t afford access to energy A social business that recycles garbage, sewage,
and other waste products that would otherwise generate pollution in poor or politically powerless neighbourhoods
In its organisational structure, the social business is basically
the same as a for-profit business. But it differs in objectives. Like other businesses it employs workers, creates goods or
services, and provides these to customers for a fair price. But its underlying criterion by which it should be evaluated-
is to create social benefits for those whose lives it touches. The company itself may earn a profit, but investors who support
it do not take any profits out of the company. A social business is a company that is cause-driven rather than profit-driven,
with the potential to act as a change agent for the world.
A
social business is very different from a charity. It is a business in every sense. When you are running a business you think
differently and work differently than when you are running a charity. There are many organisations in the world today that
concentrate on creating a social benefit. Most do not recover their operating costs. Nonprofit organisations and NGOs rely
on charitable donations, foundation grants, or government support. Their leaders are forced to devote a lot of their time
and energy to asking for money, a form of fund raising that focuses on institutional survival rather than expanding the benefits
they can offer to those in need.
A social business is different. Operated in accordance
with sound business principles, it aims for full cost recovery or even more as it concentrates on creating products and services
that provide a social benefit. It pursues this goal by charging a price or fee for the products or services it creates.
A social-objective-driven product that charges a price or fee for
its product but cannot cover its costs fully does not qualify as a social business. As long as it has to rely on subsidies
and donations to cover its losses, it remains in the category of a charity. But once such a project achieves full cost recovery
on a sustainable basis it graduates into another world – the world of business. Only then can it be called a social
business. The achievement of full-cost recovery is a moment worth celebrating.
A
social business differs from a charity in another important way. It has owners. A social business doesn’t pay profits
to investors but it does pay back to investors all of the money they invested. How long would that take. That is up to the
management and investors. Also once the investors are repaid, they remain part owners of the social business with a say in
its future. Businesspeople find this an exciting opportunity not only to bring money to a social business but to leverage
their own business skill and creativity to solve social problems. That’s a very exciting prospect.
(p218) Philanthropists of the future will be strongly drawn to social business. Major donors who come
from the business world will immediately understand that the social business dollar is much more powerful than the charity
dollar. Whereas the charity dollar can be used only once, the social business dollar recycles itself again and again to deliver
benefits to more and more people. If I had been an adviser to Warren Buffett, I might
have suggested he use part of his money to create a social business whose mission would be to provide affordable high quality
health insurance to the 47 million Americans without it. If Buffett – a business genius with decades of experience in
the insurance industry – were involved in designing this social business, it is hard to imagine how the new company
could fail. |
mail info @worldcitizen.tv
with answers to who catalogues social businesses or similar? - –page
17- extracted from : creating a world without poverty: social business, and the future of capitalism, Muhammad Yunus
| | Grameen Foundation, feb 1 newsletter: The Business
of Social Change 
Imagine a stockholder meeting in which the investors are demanding higher returns and a more nimble response to changing
market realities. Except in this scenario, the returns they want are measured by the number of lives improved, a decrease
in the number of poor people in their market, or the increased quality of the environment around them. That exact scenario
is happening across the globe, spurred by a business plan designed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus. In his new book,
Creating a World without Poverty, Yunus gives a compelling account of the successful launches of social businesses. These businesses, while structured the
same as traditional businesses, have two significant difference: all profits are reinvested into the business and used to
advance the company's mission, and the mission is to provide a product or service that improves the lives and opportunities
of poor people. Franck Riboud, CEO of Group Danone first learned of this concept over lunch with Muhammad Yunus in October 2005. Almost immediately, plans were in place to
create the first ever purposely designed social business, Grameen-Danone. Tasked with a mission to improve the nutrition of
poor children in Bangladesh, today it is a thriving business, providing jobs to local entrepreneurs who supply the raw materials,
work in the factories, and deliver fresh yogurt to stores. And, the product they supply is an inexpensive, tasty, highly nutritious
product loved by Bangladeshi children. All profits are reinvested into the company with the purpose of expanding to more villages. Yunus
has also applied his social business model to healthcare, through Grameen Health Care Services, which will set up eye care
hospitals throughout rural Bangladesh. The first eye care hospital is scheduled to open next March and is expected to serve
50,000 people annually. We hope these success stories will inspire you, as they did us, to take a closer look at social business.
In the coming days, we will be launching a blog, where you can discuss social business with others in the microfinance,
business, education and nonprofit industries. We also encourage you to visit the Creating a World Without Poverty section of our Web site, where you can read reviews, listen to and watch media appearances, buy the book, or share your thoughts with Muhammad Yunus.
Social Business Model Can be Applied Throughout the World Yunus' concept has already inspired
Grameen Foundation to launch Grameen-Jameel Pan Arab Microfinance Limited and Grameen Capital India, social businesses that fight poverty in the Arab World and India, respectively. Their stories are very different, but the
concept is still the same-use a traditional business model to fulfill a social mission.
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/yunus_book/
Op-ed articles on Social Business- please feel free to reproduce or edit anywhere that friends of Yunus connect SB1,
Draft 8 Dec 2007- chris macrae us tel 301 881 1655 Why should you read the new book by Dr Yunus and adopt its advice on Social Business? Because Yunus offers
us all a chance to celebrate humanity with an optimal way of helping to save the world from sustainability crises. The crises
human beings need to collaboratively resolve include seven of the deepest community-destroyers: poverty’s
chains, climate food and water being ruined by excess carbon omissions, unaffordable healthcare, wars, as well as what Gandhi
might have called erosion of whole truth through the trio of communications systems that shape our lives, culture and knowledge:
A) education, B) media and C) professional monopolies. Bluntly speaking, the title of this extraordinary book can be interpreted as one man’s dream
or your invitation to join an unprecedented collaborative reality. Creating a world without poverty: social business and
the future of capitalism. If a majority of citizens choose goodwill’s reality, this can be worldwide democracy’s
finest hour. When you read about the core proposition
of Social Business it feels disarmingly simple. In order to found a business around a truly vital service for customers or
society, please find financial funders who want to sustain your purpose to get ever better. Conversely, avoid those who want
to take more and more money out of your business no matter how much this conflicts with true purpose. Up until 1980 or so,
I believe founders of good to great businesses largely connected with purposeful investors and so compounded benefits to the
human lot over time. In 1980, even the biggest multinational
business made locally grounded decisions. Global communications such as telexes required tens of feet of tickertape per page
of analysis. They weren’t fast enough for headquarters to rule by quarterly numbers alone. Then, in under a decade,
the personal computer’s killer application of the spreadsheet and worldwide networking technology changed all that.
Soon investing by numbers instead of deep purpose took over in many a globalisation game. Formally, Dr Yunus defines a social business model in a strict way: the business gets a one-time
free loan from its investors; it must robustly make its cashflow 100% sustaining and pay back the investors in some agreed
period. From then on surpluses get invested into the business’s ever more lively purpose. Investors get no money out
of the business but the reputation gain of having given birth to such a deeply purposeful organisation. Moreover, they may
have enjoyed leveraging some of their lifelong human expertise or helped prominent social permissions flow. This way truth
of purpose is empowered and action learning is energised. Yunus has chosen a definition has that makes it simple for any city
to register its own stockmarket of social businesses that conform 100%. I personally expect that some 90%-true social
businesses will help sustain the world too but wholeheartedly agree with simplicity of certification as critical. The
world needs to see social business stockmarkets rising as a simultaneous phenomenon across many capital cities. Where do we need to look to get a quick start in celebrating
both the humanity and the reality of the Social Business? This is a key question that friends of Yunus are monitoring at spaces
such as http://grameen.tv and facebook.com . First, most Grameen businesses qualify
including microcredit itself. Second, we may find that many of the Base of the Pyramid cases searched by alumni of CK Prahalad
are ready for certification. Third -this may be the most interesting question : which cities and citizens will race to early
leads in developing Social Businesses now that Dr Yunus has given us all a map for sustainability and is prepared to cheer
on those cities that go for it? Dr Yunus’ book arrives according to amazon.com on New Years Eve 2007, and a few days later in
the UK. Listen out for the collaboration city whisper which I expect to evolve into a worldwide roar through 2008. Impossible
becomes possible when right action time place people. | For years
to come, Grameen Mobile may be the world's most profitable social buiness; TheGreenChildren may be the most popular -
your nominations welcome info @worldcitizen.tv LASTING
NEWS Apparently http://thegreenchildren.org song "you can hear me now" was just a Grameen Brand Campiagn opener for one of the most original networking strategy
books ever born http://youcanhearmenow.com/ I very much doubt that microcredit out of Grameen would have be so rapidly sustainable without Grameen Telecom being
Yunus' first partnership in the social business entreprise market The revenue story is told top video
in section 6 at http://economistclub.tv http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=160339 Grameen Bank has an impact on the poor, GrameenPhone on the entire economy,” says Muhammad Yunus. The idea of
GrameenPhone was conceived by 36-year-old Manhattan-based venture capitalist Iqbal Quadir in 1993. It was triggered when his
computer network crashed, leaving him unproductive. Concluding that connectivity is productivity, the Wharton business
graduate returned soon after to Bangladesh to launch a phone service. At that moment the country had one of the lowest teledensities
in the world with one phone for every 500 people. What followed were years of struggle, frustration and failures. Anything
that could go wrong went wrong. The government, funding agencies and investors were not easy to convince. He himself worked
out of his home and car without any salary for years. The Grameen Bank, too, took its own time to get on board. Why
cannot a cellular phone be like a cow? A business plan built on this argument managed to convince Yunus finally. Then there
was no looking back.The next crucial step was negotiating a partnership between nonprofit Grameen Bank and Norway-based for-profit
Telenor and the service was up and running in 1997. Today GrameenPhone has 10 million subscribers, connects 100 million
people through 2,50,000 phone ladies, who buy phones on microloans from the Grameen Bank and lease air time to villagers to
make a living after paying off their loans. Today a phone lady earns on an average $750 a year, which is double the average
annual income of a Bangladeshi. GrameenPhone has revenues of $1 billion and annual profits of $200 million. In 1999,
Quadir left GrameenPhone and Bangladesh for the US to teach what he had succeeded in doing at the grassroots back home. He
has also come up with the concept of ‘invisible leg’ to explain how technological innovations influence economies.
GrameenPhone’s success in bridging digital divide and generating profits is not an exception, though. It has been demonstrated
earlier also that connectivity increases GDP in poor countries and eradicates poverty. While econometric research by
the London School of Business has shown that 10 phones per 100 people add 0.6% to the GDP of a country, the United Nations
estimates that 0.6% growth cuts poverty by 1.2%. Author Nicholas P Sullivan embellishes the unusual Bangladeshi success
story with such facts and figures in You Can Hear Me Now, which pans out not only vertically, but also horizontally to capture
the big story with its smaller sub-plots.The GrameenPhone story is located on the larger global telecom map dotted by other
profitable digital divide bridging initiatives like Celtel in Africa, MTN and Vodacon in South Africa, Orascom in the Middle
East and South Asia, and Smart Communications and Globe Telecom in the Philippines. Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize
winner Muhammad Yunus, India’s telecom ambassador Sam Pitroda, Celtel chairman Mohamed Ibrahim Mo and social venture
capitalist Joshua Mailman also keep on walking in and out of the story, offering their insight on the initiative. Concluding
that an external combustion engine can catalyse bottom-up development to fuel economic growth, the author elaborates, “The
engine comprises three forces: information technology, imported by native entrepreneurs trained in the west, (and) backed
by foreign investors.” Emphasising that information technology and private investment are better than ineffective
foreign aid to corrupt regimes, the author makes a case for out-of-the box thinking by the private sector to tap business
opportunities in developing countries, provided by four billion people living on less than $2 at the bottom of the pyramid.
Another more recently released report estimates that these four billion people in relative poverty are a $5-trillion
market. The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid has been published by the International
Finance Corporation and World Resource Institute. You Can Hear Me Now is rich in terms of its insight, graphic details,
research and latest data. The number crunching gets at times a bit too much to comprehend, though. There is a problem of plenty.
In fact, at times, one gets the impression that it’s hurriedly written for the information and knowledge packed in it.
Nevertheless, it’s an important resource for all times to come and will be a good accompaniment to Banker to the Poor:
The Autobiography of Muhammad Yunus and Quadir’s in-the-pipeline book. Only somebody like Sullivan could have
written it. He has the right credentials, having written extensively on technology, enterprise and development. He has been
able to reach out to all the key players. He has the domain knowledge, resource base and commitment to recapture a nation
changing story in all its nuances. And he has done it in a compelling way. We have even the word of C K of Prahalad of The
Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid fame for it. —You Can Hear Me Now
By Nicholas P Sullivan
Publisher: Josey-Bass
ISBN: 978-0-7879-8609-4
Pages: 232 :Price: $29.95
|
searching social business enterprise: 1 at social edge includes Edge - Blog Reports: Skoll World Forum on Social ...When Muhammud Yunus called for a stock market for social business enterprises, the e-Bay of the social enterprise sector
- and all the accompanying things ... Social Edge - How to Build a Social Enterprise, Part 2Many organizations are thinking about (or already engaging in) social enterprise. Many have questions about how to
develop a business plan, ... Social Edge - How to Write a Business Plan for a Micro Enterprise ...A provocative online community designed to empower social entrepreneurs and their philanthropic and nonprofit partners. The Harvard Business School celebrated the 10th anniversary of its Social Enterprise Initiative recently. This is a significant initiative considering
that ... - Oxford’s Exploration of Venture Philanthropy. We are imagining and pursuing development of what might best be described as social business ecosystems or social business
extended network enterprises. ... The Business of Doing Good. With a technology and business strategy background, I have had the privilege of working with social enterprises in London,
Bulgaria, San Francisco and ... - Social Fusion: Going Corporate. Social Fusion’s Conversations in Social Enterprise, now in its third ... to engage on issues of substance about how
to bridge business and social change. ... - Marketing for Community-Based Social Enterprise 4) Placing full page ads in Fast Company, Forbes, Business Week, etc. or running TV ads on social enterprise "heros"
that link to the Edge. ... - Creating a Hybrid For-Profit / Non-Profit Social ...Prior to this I'd been sponsoring the social enterprise from my taxed income. So hopefully, what I've done will
expand the business activity and also .. Stop or Go: Is Social Enterprise Right for My ...Many CSOs find difficulty in adjusting to the idea of entering into the business world, and may consider social enterprise
a financing strategy that would ...
Read more articles on this topic: Overview – Classifying
Social and Private Sector Partnerships, by Valeria Budinich Enabling the Poor to Build Housing: Pursuing Profit and Social
Development Together, by Kris Herbst • [Versión en español] Compassionate Manufacturing: Doing Business
with the Poor, by Kris Herbst • [Versión en español] Fabio Rosa: Making the Sun Shine for All, by David
Bornstein • [Versión en español] Utilizing the Market for Environmental Changes, by Fabio Rosa Waste Management:
Finding the Treasure in Trash, a Studio presentation Revolution in a Coffee Cup: Waking the Sleeping Consumer Giant, by Kris
Herbst Changing Markets: From the Coffee-Grounds Up, by Talli Nauma Tribal Groups Harness Globalization in Northern Thailand,
Photo Essay by Naveen Kishore Adopting Globalization to Local Social Development & Ecology, by Talli Nauman • [Versión
en español] Balancing Sustainability with Service to the Poorest of the Poor, by Sharda Naidoo Creating Safe Space
and New Opportunities for Women Workers, by Amala Reddy Factory-Based Daycare, a Studio presentation by Shehzad Noorani/Developing
Images Shanty Town Seamstresses Fuel the Fashion Industry, by Shannon Walbran • [Versión en español] Combating
Technological Apartheid in Brazilian Favelas, by Daniela Katzenstein Hart After W.T.O.: Creating Jobs for the Next Millennium
(an Overview), by Derek Brown Sustainability and Environmental Awareness: Keeping Farmers on Their Farms in Poland, by John
Babb Beating Doubts, Droughts & Debt: Re-shaping the Economic Landscape, by Shannon Walbran • [Versión en
español] You Can Bank on It: Women are Doin' It for Themselves, by Pritha Sen Herbal Remedies for Social Wellbeing,
by Jennifer Gampell Returning Power to the Family: Learning Self-Reliance in Zimbabwe, by Penny Cohen | 1 2 During my father's 4 decades (1950s-1980s) deputy editing The Economist, he investigated hundreds
of cases of innovation and entrepreneurs. Evidence was amassed showing that 20th C large corporations developed an
ever smaller percent of innovations the word's people most urgently needed. This helps to explain we celebrate the
opportunity to catalogue new organisational species such as no loss corporations that
Yunus and entrepreneurs networking around his inspired innovations for humanity. Here is just one article from Macrae's
entrepreneurial revolutionary casebook, time-stamped 1982: Of 10,000
new patents a year that are used, only 10-20 are for what the co-inventor of the integrated circuit, Mr. Jack Kilby, calls
"major" inventions things that change our lives. Over 70% were discovered by individuals or small businesses. The individual inventors' list turns alphabetically
from air conditioning and automatic transmissions, through jet engines and penicillin, to xerography and the zipper. The big
companies' list runs more predictably through crease-resistant fabrics, float glass, synthetic detergents. Note how these
fit with corporate objectives; "We are a big textile or soap company, so go for something capital-intensive". CASE "We are Pilkington's Glass, and if we can beat plate
glass by developing float glass, then every motor car in the world will pay us a royalty, so we will research the last three
problems in the way of float glass.." Nobody should underestimate the intrapreneurial excitement among a tiny group of researchers when a big firm's
opportunity presents itself. Sir Alastair Pilkington described how his research group into float glass
was kept small to maintain total secrecy, so that experiments progressed for seven years before competitors knew of them;
how team members, after working impossibly long hours, were carried away on stretchers suffering from heat exhaustion; how
100,000 tons of float glass were made and broken before the great day which produced the first bit they could sell. But, as
Jack Kilby says: each invention presents a profile of opportunities and requirements, while each company has its own profile
of what constitutes to it an acceptable product. The probability that these two profiles, will coincide is not high.
The result is that many big companies' brilliant
researchers are, in conditions of great secrecy, in their seventh consecutive year of smashing unusable float glass.
Extract of Yunus Q&A at 2004 Stanford conference on global
poverty Question: As a trained economist, have you attempted to reduce any of these
wonderful ideas to elegant theories and where could we read about them? What are you doing to further the cause of securitizing
this? What other forms of equity investments are you currently able to take? Yunus:
Our first instincts come back to the political framework, many of the issues that were neglected before come back into the
discussion—not that it got accepted within the broad basic framework yet, but it is at least knocking at the door to
get in. One is self-employment, for example; self-employment is a very important thing. Most of the time we talk about poverty
alleviation in terms of creating jobs: the more jobs you create the more you help people get out of poverty. When you talk
about jobs you talk about wage-based employment; you never realized there is another vast opportunity to create self-employment
so that people create their own jobs, you only need to facilitate the financial services and so on. So this is one issue and
then the few I just mentioned about the types of business. Business doesn't have to be only for making money, business
can also be for business for doing good. The same person can play both ways. I invest in the old style stock market and I
also invest in the new social stock market; same person, because in each person there are parts that would like to do business
in both ways. Some may invest more in social stock market and some may invest more in stocks for making money. This is a mix
that one has to decide how to go, but gradually one part becomes more significant in the marketplace. On
the part of equity, we ask equity for what, what kind of business, business for making money or business for doing social
good? For example, if I wanted to set up a company for producing good quality seed—because this I see is very important
and I want to do it in a way that farmers can buy the best seed possible at the cost price because my business objective is
to help the farmers get the best seed—this is solving and addressing a particular social and economic problem that exists
in many countries. Or, I want to provide health service. I was told that in the United States 40 million people don't
have health insurance, so I want to build health insurance for the people who are left out in a way that helps them get into
the health benefits, and I design my health program in a way that addresses the people who are left out completely. It is
a business. I'm not bringing money to throw into it from my own pocket. It's a business, but a business that doesn't
bring money into my pocket but that goes around with the money it generates and continues and gives services to the people
who never had the services before. These are the kinds of things that we would like to bring into mainframe economics. 
Visionary Economist Muhammad Yunus Shares Microlending Success Stories  Video File, 32:24 minutes
Center for Global Business and the Economy Other News from the 2004 Conference Business School Hosts First Global Business, Global Poverty Conference
Business Can Help End Poverty, Says BP's John Browne Rich Nations Inhibit Growth for Developing Countries, Says South African Finance Minister
Ignoring Social and Political Reality Can Sink Global Companies
Oxfam Leader Calls for Global Effort to Alleviate Poverty, Transfer Technology
Microlending: An Anti-Poverty Success Story Global Corporations Are the Best Weapon Against Poverty, Said Reliance Chairman
When Is "Doing Good" Good Enough Internationally?
With Globalization Here to Stay, Giving Back to Local Communities Makes Good Business Sense Related Videos Mukesh Ambani
Chairman
and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Ltd., India
Video File, 48:58 minutes Edward Barnholt
Chairman, President, and CEO,
Agilent Technologies
Video File, 25:02 minutes David Brady
Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy
Professor of Political Science and Leadership Values, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Video File, 23:30 minutes John Browne, Lord Browne of Madingley, MS '81
Group Chief Executive, BP p.l.c.
Video File, 41:21 minutes John Gunn, MBA '72
President and CIO, Dodge
& Cox
Video File, 14:14 minutes Vinod Khosla, MBA '80
General Partner, Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers
Video File, 27:43 minutes Daniel Litvin
Author and Founder, Percept Risk
and Strategy Ltd.
Video File, 39:47 minutes Trevor Manuel
Minister of Finance, South Africa
Video File, 44:56 minute Raymond Offenheiser
President, Oxfam America
Video File, 44:25 minutes | social
business blogs - at grameenfoundation new SBs feb 2008  Paris, 18 february 2008Crédit Agricole S.A., in partnership with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
winner Professor Muhammad Yunus, announces the creation of the Grameen Crédit Agricole Microfinance FoundationLooking to foster the development of microfinance institutions1 in developing countries and emerging economies,
Crédit Agricole S.A. has decided to team up with Grameen Trust to create a dedicated foundation and endow it with 50
million euros.
>> For more information, look at the mission of Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation
October 2003 Grameen/Ashoka Dialogue Mark Swilling (South Africa, 1992) is building a model
of a socially viable, democratically managed, sustainable community that demonstrates that sustainable living is socially,
ecologically and financially viable. This model, Lynedoch Development, which Mark will begin scaling nationally next year,
houses a learning precinct and several NGOs and small businesses. In 2003, the Lynedoch Development Company (LDC) is also
launching a profitable housing project to demonstrate state-of-the-art sustainable design accessible to both poor and middle-class
people. The learning precinct includes a primary school that serves children from poor farmworker families; a pre-school that
has pioneered new ways of caring for and educating very young children; and the Sustainability Institute (SI), which, among
other programs, offers South Africa’s first Masters program in Sustainable Development in partnership with the national
University of Stellenbosch. Continental. 80 master students and 40-60 emerging farmers per year at the Sustainability
Institute, 400 students at the primary school and pre-school. Revenue generation: 65% of Sustainability Institute budget.
LDC run as a business, currently debt financed. Mark is always looking for new ideas and cases to use in his teaching. He
is also developing a global consulting service of Ashoka and LEAD Fellows. Participation in the Dialogue will allow him to
expand his networks and experiences for both of these purposes. Email: swilling@icon.co.za Maqsood Sinha and Iftekhar Enayetullah (Bangladesh, 2000are tackling the problem of urban waste
disposal in Bangladesh by developing a network of decentralized composting centers which are adapted to the local Bangladeshi
context and financially self sufficient. They have successfully tackled the problems of urban land scarcity and governmental
intransigence, while working to ensure a sufficient demand for the organic compost produced by this approach. Their
model for community based waste management is being replicated by Oxfam in Dhaka, Prodipon in Khulna, and AYA in Sylhet. The
government has included composting and recycling for the first time in the National Safe Water and Sanitation Policy. National.
Potential to employ more than 90,000 people from informal sector. Model is being replicated in 14 cities/towns of Bangladesh,
having beneficiaries of 1 million people. Learning objectives for Dialogue: Maqsood and Iftekhar are interested in learning
of ways to finance the replication of their idea and believe that their experience in effective public-private and community
partnership will allow them to both contribute to and benefit from the Dialogue. Email: wastecon@dhaka.agni.com or office@wasteconcern.org Tomasz Sadowski (Poland, 1995) is pioneering a new approach to dealing with
Poland's
most chronic homeless cases by creating self-sufficient cooperative communities on abandoned farmland. The homeless
people regain dignity and self-reliance, and the rural communities are revitalized as abandoned farms are reclaimed.
The development of social enterprises of diverse types creates a
chance for work, sustainability, and the development of vocational skills of thousands of unemployed persons. Tomasz’s
organization, the Barka Foundation, has 20 homes in 16 villages. Every year between 2000-3000 people come to Barka. It has
assisted over 15,000 people in Poland. 30% of budget plus 20% in volunteer work and 34% in in-kind donations Learning objectives for
Dialogue: Tomasz is interested in learning what is happening in this field in other countries and in getting acquainted with
financial instruments available to benefit the poorest so that he can promote new initiatives in Poland and Eastern Europe. His organization has socioeducational
schools and a School of Social Animation to prepare community leaders, through which he could spread the knowledge gained and ideas/vision generated
More here
| The
Context: Beginning a Journey For years
the Grameen Bank has been inviting organizations that want to replicate its microcredit programs to come to Bangladesh for
Grameen Dialogue meetings so that the bank can evaluate these organizations, and so that the organizations can visit the bank,
immerse themselves in its operations, share their own experiences, and develop plans for alleviating poverty in their countries.
In a historic departure from earlier dialogues, the Grameen-Ashoka International Dialogue Program was the
first to go beyond the topic of microcredit and the Grameen Bank experience itself. Its goal
was to explore an emerging trend for eradicating poverty: developing business-social ventures.
The Grameen-Ashoka International Dialogue was structured as a conversation
between social entrepreneurs from throughout the world about the challenges of scaling-up the size and impact of their projects
through business-social ventures. Fourteen social entrepreneurs from four continents – all of the them Ashoka Fellows
– spent ten days participating in plenary meetings and visits to Grameen's family of business-social ventures, including
a three-day trip during which they scattered to live in Grameen Branch bank offices located in a rural village.
The Grameen-Ashoka International Dialogue was an opportunity for the participants to experience one of the world's
most impoverished nations and to visit some of its poorest residents. They witnessed how rural women in an Islamic culture
can empower themselves by investing in their own productive enterprises. They embarked on a journey to explore another country
and culture, and in a larger sense to explore how social entrepreneurs can enlarge the impact of projects by incorporating
profitable enterprise in order to eradicate poverty.
This event is the first step of a broader
effort to plant the seeds for a business-social approach to addressing poverty. Ashoka's Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship,
the Skoll Foundation, which provides support to the academy, and Ashoka's Full Economic Citizenship initiative invite you to join us in a series of actions that will converge on a global agenda
for eradicating poverty through the formation of business-social ventures. Read an online discussion on SocialEdge that addresses questions that will allow us to move ahead, such as: Yunus Reflects on his
Election to the Ashoka
Global Academy for
Social Entrepreneurship
"The Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship is a good idea in the sense that there are a lot of social
entrepreneurs who are busy solving their problems, and getting their work done as they dreamed they would," Yunus said.
"This is their work, 24 hours, and they don't have a chance to sit back and reflect. It's very important that
this takes place – the reflection.
"The academy would be a kind of place, or time, where
you can sit together and reflect together: what is it you are doing? What can be done, and what are the issues? Sometimes
you thought you are addressing the right issue, but in the discussion you see some blank spots – that this is something
I never thought of. Then you start thinking and you see the link between all these things.
"So
discussions and dialogue open up the horizon, and you yourself feel elevated: 'That now I see the path. I didn't see
the path, I saw the pieces. Now I see the totality of that – when I link myself with another person, and another person,
and so on.'
"That is very important. Some of the things you do, you do instinctively.
You have never verbalized it. You have never understood what you did. Now, under questioning, you are trying to explain. And
in explaining, you are not explaining to the person who asked the question. You start explaining to yourself, because you
never had the occasion. Nobody asked that question before.
"It's a winner all the way
around – the academy idea is very good for reflections and linkages, for other ideas and to look forward – visioning.
It leads to a visioning process. What do we do? What does it all mean? Are the pieces integrated with each other, or are they
just pieces? – we are not thinking about putting it together; they are just hanging in the air.
"So then you say, 'Ah, there is some empty space in between that we need to cover.' And once you do that,
then things become so much simpler. So this is how I see the academy idea." Read about Muhammad
Yunus' agenda for the future: Halving Poverty By 2015 – We Can Actually Make It Happen
Kapil Mondol (India, 2002)is moving beyond traditional
approaches in microfinance to introduce microbanking to villagers. Rather than relying on grants or any kind of external
finance, Kapil is demonstrating that rural areas can generate needed investment capital from within their own communities.
Beginning in rural Bengal, Kapil’s approach has rapidly expanded for the last few years to encompass more than 200 villages and has caught
the attention of microfinance practitioners who have come from Bangladesh, Africa and the United States to learn from him. In addition to helping people replicate his idea, Kapil is
expanding his current operations to 250 villages in the next five years. Regional within India. 22,908 clients. 140-200% annual growth
in last 4 years. Kapil is interested in learning more about innovative products/ideas, sharing organizational lessons with
others and developing linkages for cooperation and collaboration. He hopes the Dialogue will help him to develop new products
and services and widen his geographical region. Email: kapila@vsnl.net or vssuu451@hotmail.com Pradip Sarmah (India, 2001) a vet by profession and a hands-on
development worker by training, is organizing rural self help groups to specialize in all aspects of livestock management
and thus move animal husbandry to become a sunrise industry holding immense growth potential for the rural economy of Assam.
An impressive army of backward and forward linkages—“livestock banks”, para vets, professional vets, training,
a marketing federation of NGO products and a training institute—are functioning to address all animal husbandry concerns
of rural areas in a holistic manner Regional within India; Works directly with 112 different groups in a variety of sectors
including Animal Husbandry, Agriculture, Fishery, SHG Management, and Rural Marketing. Revenue generation: Learning objectives
for Dialogue: Pradip wants to reinvigorate his work by sharing ideas and experience in market-based social entrepreneurship.
He will also investigate possibilities for collaboration in a poverty elimination program
|  Celso Grecco, Brazil The first social stock market
Celso
harnesses the structure of existing financial markets to generate new avenues for social investment. His Social Stock Market—operating
within Brazil’s largest exchange—offers portfolios of certified investment opportunities. Online reporting ensures
transparent and efficient tracking of social impact returns. Thirteen of thirty organizations initially posted have already
been fully funded—a large step towards transforming the relationship between financial markets and the social sector. | Author: admin 20 Feb Nobel Peace Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus discusses the social business project
of Grameen Bank and Danone |  | | | | | |
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