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Detroit: Emerging from the Ground Up
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a unique social enterprise conference, Revitalization and Business. Its focus was not on a continent, a region, or a nation in need. Rather, it focused on one single American city-Detroit, Michigan, where small projects and individuals are making powerful waves from the ground up.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Aftershocks of Egypt and Social Enterprise’s Role
Throughout the Muslim world, echoes of the Egyptian chant "Leave, Leave, Leave" fall on far-from-deaf ears. The simple fact that pumping fists in Tunisia preceded pitchforks in Egypt is a harbinger of the aftershocks to come. The burden is on enterprise to ensure that when the dust does finally settle, those very US dollars start to flow freely.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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Improving Development, One Failure at a Time
The development community needs to learn to better manage failure and stop sweeping it under the rug. On Jan. 14, Engineers Without Borders Canada with Peace Dividend Trust launched a website to challenge development organizations worldwide. Admittingfailure.com is a platform for individuals to submit mistakes they?ve encountered in their work.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Participative Innovation: The Transition to a New Model of Social Capitalism
Today, we have a much more complex inter-sector reality. It isn’t unusual to find businesses that act as NGOs, private banks that give donations, development banks that set interest rates above market prices and NGOs implementing profitable projects. One wonders if the sectors are overlapping one another or if they have simply become obsolete.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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Best Idea(s) of 2010 from the MENA region
It is not easy to pinpoint what made the biggest impression on me this past year... The MENA region has seen several major and exciting events in the development through enterprise arena.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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NextThought Monday: Social Enterprise on the Cover of the Economist
No, not this week and probably not next week either. But in five years, it’s going to happen. The Economist, however, did recently run an article titled: "Companies Aren’t Charities," which argues that the role of a company in developing economies should be confined to pursuing profit while abiding by the rules and a solid moral compass.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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A New Generation of Leaders: The Acumen Fund Fellowship
How would you like to spend one year working with a company focused on serving the poor in a developing country, either helping to set a strategy or improve operations? Then now is the time to apply for the Acumen Fund Fellowship.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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NextThought Monday: Trading on the Social Entrepreneur Asset Class Idea
Creating an asset class for social entrepreneurship not only engenders an aura of solid ground for investors, both institutional and private, it could formally connect social entrepreneurs with a far wider scope of capital markets. Though not necessarily a new idea, it would seem many minds are acquiescing around the concept.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise