Nathan Wyeth

Weekly Roundup: Upcoming Events and Engagement Opportunities

As the week and month wind down and you make plans for the weekend and what´s left of the year, here are some events and opportunities you won’t want to miss.

NextBillion readers in the DC area will have the opportunity next week to hear from Stuart Hart, the Cornell professor who co-authored with C.K. Prahalad the white paper titled “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” ad then published his own Capitalism at the Crossroads. He’ll give a keynote address next week for FIELD Day, November 3 in Arlington, Virginia. The conference will focus overall on “Food Security: New Pathways,” and Hart will be discussing the co-creation, with BoP communities, of strategies that address environmental sustainability. The conference organizers say it will be provocative and we look forward to it. FIELD Day is happening at the front end of the SEEP (Small Enterprise Education and Promotion) Network’s annual conference, which runs November 4-6 at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington. It’s still possible to attend with on-site registration.

In New York, NYU’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies takes an academic look at measuring social impact and the social capital market at the 6th Annual Satter Conference on Social Entrepreneurs. That’s November 4-6, with an all-star lineup on the morning of the 6th discussing impact investing from the perspective of philanthropic advisors.

Upstate just a few days later, the Net Impact conference at Cornell University will have a range of content relevant to the base of the pyramid – that’s November 13-14 in sunny Ithaca, and you can register here. Stay tuned for a more detailed preview of the conference coming up soon here on NextBillion.

Finally, coming up in a few weeks at MIT is the 12th Annual MIT Venture Capital Conference. Friday, December 4 will see a panel on the specific topic of Social Venture Capital. Also notable will be the Startup Showcase. The deadline for early stage ventures interested is approaching rapidly on November 8. The organizers welcome applications from social enterprises catering to the BoP which have not yet raised Series B financing. Make sure to check out the details at the conference website.

Also coming out of MIT is the announcement of the first fellowship I’d like to point you to: the Legatum Fellowship. The Legatum Center administers a competitive fellowship program for aspiring entrepreneurs who wish to develop innovative businesses that promote prosperity in the developing world. The program is open to incoming and current MIT graduate students, across all academic and professional disciplines. An Open House is happening on November 18.

I-Dev International, a social venture firm that works with indigenous communities in developing countries and multinational corporations to identify viable business opportunities at the base of the pyramid, just launched its Doing Development In… Program (DDI…). DDI… is an alternative winter vacation immersion program created for young professionals & students from top graduate programs interested in grassroots development, microfinance, corporate social responsibility and social venture capital. The 2009/2010 trip, offered in two sessions over winter break (Dec 27th – Jan 5th & Jan 2nd – Jan 11th), will take place in Peru and is designed to give participants a realistic, first-hand view of how development programs are making a difference on the ground, in communities at the base of the pyramid. Applying before November 7 here will save participants a bit of money on the program fee.

And last but certainly not least, the deadlines for two notable fellowships in the Social Enterprise sector are coming up so mark your agendas: The one for Acumen Fund’s Fellows program, which has been extended to November 12, and the one for the Echoing Green Fellowship, which is due December 2nd.

Categories
Uncategorized