SE_Forum: SE-Bar is finally back after the summer break! Listen to guest speaker Lina Stjern from The Fair Tailor. Infohttp://www.se-forum.se/?p=2356 […]
Kiva started in 2004, with only 7 loans. 6 years later, Kiva has grown into a large organization specialized in providing microcredit worldwide. As of today Kiva and their Field Partners have coordinated loans to over 386 000 entrepreneurs for a total value of $ 151,198,050.
If you’re interested in supporting a Kiva entrepreneur, go to the website and browse the profiles of entrepreneurs and loan requests and select which one you would like to support. It’s up to each lender how much money to invest, from as little as $25 to the entire amount of the loan. It’s fun, rewarding and easy. Thanks to Kiva’s website you can follow your transaction and its impact on the person you support.
How entrepreneurship at the grassroots level can eradicate hunger
Time: Thursday 18 March 07.45-9 a.m. Location: The Hunger Project’s office Park Venue, Engelbrektsgatan 9-11, Stockholm Cost: breakfast 50 SEK, alternatively RSVP with “no breakfast” RSVP: no later than 16 March to filippa@se-forum.se
The Hunger Project is working with new strategies aimed at eradicating hunger and poverty. Instead of donating money to charity you invest in people’s ability to be creative and innovative, thus enabling them to realize their own potential. By empowering people toward self-reliant action, they can transform their own societies once and for all!
The model is quite simple: Those who live daily with various problems also possess the best solutions for change and development, for the benefit of everyone. The Hunger Project identifies and inspires local entrepreneurs committed to improve their communities by using true leadership and a lot of common sense. And the return is substantial!
For more information, please visit: www.hungerprojektet.se, www.thp.org or @hungerprojektet
The challenge facing The Hunger Project is how to raise funds with a zero-budget. Please give it some thought and we would appreciate if you would like to share your creative ideas with us after the presentation (which will be in swedish) about the work of The Hunger Project.
These words were spoken by one of the greatest leaders of our time. I fully agree, if you deep inside feel that something needs to be changed to the better, you must embody that change yourself in order to make a real difference in people’s daily lives.
It all started when I got back home to Sweden from a period living and studying Business and Mandarin in China. I had travelled around the South-East-region of Asia and saw the hardships that poverty created. After my homecoming I ignited my passion, Africa’s Potential, during the Winter of 2007, when I received a Scholarship from SIDA, where my mission was to identify the characteristical features of potential entrepreneurs in the Ugandan village of Bubulo, and in corporation with Chalmers in Gothenburg install solar-panels in order to electrify the village and create job opportunities together with local entrepreneurs that weren’t just passive bystanders but active entrepreneurs. More than 150 entrepreneurial jobs were created and more than 3 000 people receive today water on a daily basis from a water-station which is driven by these solar-panels.
After my stay in Uganda, a relentless passion for going back to Sub-Sahara to “boost” more African entrepreneurs was initiated, due to the fact that I saw that the aid that reached these areas only killed entrepreneurship and was breeding inactivity in the Sub-Saharan societies.
During the year of 2010 Africa’s Potential will be involved in many “job-creating” projects in Sub-Sahara and especially East-Africa. I’m going to act as an Adviser for Stockholm School of Economics and their Business Labs international expansion to East-Africa. I’ll also be involved in a project regarding organizing the African Diaspora in Sweden when it comes to “brain-gain” to their home countries, as well as “match make” some of the Rwandan entrepreneurs I got to know in November with Swedish equivalents.
I’m also promoting the success stories of the African continent, which the western-oriented media channels very seldom publish or never promotes. There are plenty of success stories, but very few that reach the masses. My mission is also to make the public aware about the current aid-issue – that trade and not aid initiatives will empower and build the Sub-Sahara region.
This is my life-conviction, not a two or three year project, to “boost” local African entrepreneurs in order to increase competence, “brain gain” and trade to the Sub-Sahara, in the fight against poverty and corruption.
Please, don’t forget! The truth is that YOU also have the same ability to create “greater-good” to the societies’ most pressuring problems. All you have to do is to take that first initial step!
Morakozee chaniii, (Thank you very much in Kinyarwanda)
/Emre Gürler, Africa’s Potential.
P.S. You can follow Africa’s Potential’s mission on Twitter, Facebook as well as Linked-In.
A few months ago representatives from the Swedish network “vagga till vagga” (Cradle2Cradle) held a presentation at a SE Bar event in Stockholm. One of the biggest challenges is to create processes for products that can be runned backwards. For example turning plastic in to oil. Well, as it has been proved before; everything is possible. The green blogg Tree hugger has posted an article about the Japanese company Blest. The company has introduced the smallest machine on the market that turns plastic waste into oil. There is certainly no doubt about the market need for such innovations! Imagine keeping this in your average kitchen…
In the Copenhagen Business School auditorium, the humble man in his trademark indian shirt stands waiting for the murmur to subside. Today businessmen, politicians, social entrepreneurs, students and journalists have all gathered here to learn more about the concept of “social business”. The man looking at us, about to speak, is the honored guest and Nobel prize winner Dr. Mohammad Yunus. As he’s done so many times before, he begins to tell the story of his ever ongoing work to create a world without poverty.
“It started almost accidentally”, Dr. Yunus tells us. ”The situation in Bangladesh was so bad you just had to take action. I wanted to react, even if it only meant to help one human being, just for one day.” In the beginning, his goal wasn’t set higher than that. At that point, he made a list of people that he met on the streets on his way to work every day, fellow citizens that were in need of monetary support. He concluded that there were a total of 42 individuals that were in need of a mere sum of 27 dollars. If they could, between them, get that small amount of money it would mean that they would be able to get rid of the loan sharks that profit on the poor sending them down the negative debt spiral. Yunus went with his newly found conclusion to a local bank and asked for help. The bank manager wasn’t impressed. He didn’t want to have anything to do with the business of lending money to poor people. The bank manager explained that, in fact, a bank cannot lend money to poor people because they will not be able to pay the money back. Mohammad Yunus didn’t agree. He also argued that not even one percent of Bangladesh’s population are able to borrow money with the existing rules. But the bank wouldn’t budge.
So, Yunus borrowed the small amount of money himself and lent it to the poor people on his list. The result was very uplifting, every single individual who had borrowed money from him was able to pay the money back, and furthermore, did so with great pride and gratitude. Time after time, Yunus went back to the bank and showed them the good results. More people in need of small loans came to Yunus. After a while he thought, “If the banks refuse to grant the poor people small loans, why don’t I create a bank of my own?”. Everyone he spoke to said it was impossible, but he was convinced it would work and after many months of paperwork Grameen Bank was finally up and running. The main idea was that the bank would actually be owned by the poor themselves. Now, he set a new goal, Yunus wanted half of the loan-takers to be women simply because it was the women who usually did the shopping and made sure that bills were paid in time. However, traditionally the men were the ones in charge of the family’s money. Everyone said that it would be impossible to reach the goal of 50/50, not least the women themselves. “I don’t handle money” was the usual reaction when Yunus tried to persuade a woman to be the loan-taker in the family. Yunus argues that that wasn’t the woman speaking, but the voice of history. Ahead of him then lay the work of building confidence in the women. If only one woman succeeded, he thought, others might become curious and dare to take the step. Yunus did eventually convince a woman to be in charge of the loan and as expected, with her came the others.
After six years the Grameen bank reached the 50/50 goal between men and women. Yunus then quickly decided to focus entirely on women because they did a great job at taking care of the money and helping their families to get out of poverty. Today 97% of the loan-takers are women. These women have a new confidence in themselves. They have all contributed to the fact that as of last year, 65% of the families have crossed the poverty line. As the families started to have a functioning economy, more and more of the children were able to go to school. Today almost every child is enrolled in a school. These children, the poor peoples children, are almost always among the best students in their classes. As of today, Grameen Bank has issued 60.000 student scholarships and granted 32.000 students educational loans.
When it comes to running a social business, Yunus claims, you should be able to recoup your investment money, but not more than that. Traditionally, the concept of business is profit maximization and according to Yunus, that is something that has to change. We need to be a lot less selfish in the way we build businesses. After the success of micro credit banking, Grameen has started many other social businesses. One example is Grameen Shakti aiming to provide Bangladesh’s rural households with green, affordable energy. So far over 200.000 “solar home systems” have been installed. Yunus already has many other enterprises up and running (see links below) and new ideas keep on coming. The next big ones are about yoghurt and fresh water. To help millions of impoverished children in Bangladesh Grameen has partnered with the french dairy company Danone and plans to build a large number of small and local but high technological yoghurt factories across the country. There, vitamin-enriched yoghurt will be made from local farmer’s milk and sold and consumed within days. No need for long transportations and preservatives. The water company, also created in partnership with a french company, Veolia, has a new approach to selling water. The water won’t be bottled in fancy, expensive bottles. Instead, fresh water will be sold by the liter from a tap. The customers bring their own containers and ten liters of water will cost one (1) penny. Yunus explains how he then wanted to produce a environmentally friendly container. The result is a newly developed cup, which is edible, made of corn starch. After listening to Mohammad Yunus’ amazing story, SE Forum’s representatives in Copenhagen left the conference with a feeling that it’s very possible to create a world without poverty. If we just dare to have a mindset that anything is possible. And not to listen to the voices saying “It can’t be done”. And keep in mind Mohammad Yunus powerful statement: “Poverty is not created by the poor”.
Further reading:
Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism (book)
When I take part in manifestations or activities for different causes, I sometimes think of the diverse entering points of how people involve them selves.
Too often I see frustration and anger being the source of commitment.
Many are against war rather than for peace. Anti dictatorship rather than pro democracy
In oppose a problem, rather than in support of a solution.
For me that’s a very important distinction.
If the driving force is dissatisfaction, rage and resentment or even guilt, chances for finding a common ground to meet, reconcile and find answers to importat questions, are very slim.
If you want peace – you must be at peace.
To be pro; is to be active, creative and solution orientated
To be anti; is often associated with blaming and hold others responsible.
When pointing finger at some one, there’s always three fingers pointing right back at you!
To be pro is to send out a message that you want to change things to the better and also making yourself a part of the solution. It’s about taking responsibility.
A creative example of the movement towards positive thinking is the Reverse graffiti project. The project is founded by Paul Curtis, aka “Moose” and is all about cleaning walls rather than spoiling the surface with new layers of color, and in the meantime beautifying areas that are unfortunate. www.symbollix.com, www.reversegraffitiproject.com
For a long time the notion of capitalism as the evil force has been widely spread. Often when collaborating with corporation or using the market mechanisms to tackle the greatest challenges of our time, you are considered to “sleep with the devil”.
Of the 100 biggest economies in the world, 51 are cooperations. See that as an enormous potential of resources and know-how to be directed towards sustainable solutions of the social, economic and environmental challenges. It’s time to get all sectors, government, NGO:s and businesses, to work together.
I’m for using the business sector to solve the greatest challenges ahead.
I’m pro merging the idealist and the capitalist, they can learn a lot from each other.
I’m in support of social entrepreneurship.
