1. Microsoft, ABAN Partner to Promote Middle Eastern Entrepreneurs

In an effort to foster self-employment, job creation, social opportunity, economic diversification, and entrepreneurial and technological innovation in the Middle East and North Africa, global tech giant Microsoft partnered with the Arab Business Angels Network (ABAN) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Microsoft, through its corporate social responsibility initiatives of Unlimited Potential and Local Software Economies, will proffer its technological expertise and support and market and business knowledge to the partnership to aid startups in Information Technology. ABAN, founded in 2005 by the Young Arab Leaders and Dubai Holding during the Clinton initiative, will connect entrepreneurs to funding through angel investors; the organization manages $10 million in seed capital funding and $5 million for women-led ventures. At the partnership’s launch event, Microsoft and ABAN enabled four promising entrepreneurs to pitch their projects to over 70 prospective investors. Two of the entrepreneurs presented innovative environmental enterprises: Cash Trash, which showcased a new recycling model to reduce pollution, and PolluMap, a software system that maps and tracks city pollution levels. According to business leaders throughout the UAE and the greater Arab world, the partnership is seen as auspicious, for over 100 million Arabic youth are expected to enter the workforce by 2020. And, as research conducted by the region’s universities reveals, between 25 and 50 percent of this future workforce deems self-employment as an attractive prospect.

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2. Symposium Sows Seeds to Spread Middle Eastern Entrepreneurship

Microsoft and ABAN’s partnership only widens a trend coursing through the Middle East and Asia. The Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) and the Intekno Group of Turkey staged its fifth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Symposium in Doha, Qatar. In line with the Intekno Group’s corporate responsibility strategy, and in conjunction with Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University and several Turkish universities, the symposium, themed “Impacts of Innovation and Technology Management on Entrepreneurship,” worked to share entrepreneurial knowledge, experience, methodologies, and innovation techniques to young and rising entrepreneurs.

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3. Entrepreneurship Key to Social Development, ASEAN Director Advises

In the Filipino capital of Manila, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held its eighth biennial Inter-University Conference on Social Development. Dr. Bounphen Philavong, Assistant Director of the ASEAN Secretariat’s Bureau for Resources Development, Health and Population Unit, exhorted ASEAN members from Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippinnes to concentrate its human and workforce development not only on education and vocational training but also on training workers in entrepreneurship. Linking entrepreneurial skills to the capacity for greater wealth creation in the region, Dr. Philavong called for the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Blueprint to secure greater funding for skills development so that ASEAN members’ respective nations can reap much needed funding in return. The ASEAN Socio-Cultural Blueprint extensively maps out initiatives in social welfare and development, social justice and rights, the rights of migrant workers, environmental sustainability, food security, and protection against natural disasters.

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4. Sex Workers Organize Social Enterprise for Social Justice

Exploitation, harassment, and discrimination—all of these nefarious conditions describe the plight of sex workers in India. While they understand all too well that such stigmatization and marginalization comes hand-in-hand with their line of work, the female, male, and transgender sex workers—many of whom suffer additional injustice for being HIV-positive—organized to protect themselves against the abuses they are forced to endure. 150 of the sex workers have turned to entrepreneurship and developed a community kitchen in Mysore in the southern state of Karnataka, India. The organization, known as Ashodaya Samithi, competed against 1,000 other proposals in the World Bank’s Development Marketplace, a grant program that funds innovative and small-scale projects with great promise for expansion. Equipped with a $40,000 grant, Ashodaya Samithi has started its project of empowerment with its kitchen, has already expanded with a handicraft center that sells clothing, and plans to grow further with a community laundry project. But their grant aims at grander goals: diminishing sex workers’ discrimination by initiating healthcare measures, training speakers on the injustices the workers face, promoting positive living, and documenting and addressing every instance of discrimination.

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5. Energy Entrepreneurs Light Up the Cleantech Grid

Rob Day and Andrew Friendly, two architects of the Renewable Energy Business Network (REBN), a San Francisco-haling professional networking organization, have drawn the blueprints for a nationwide expansion of their investment in energy entrepreneurship. Cleantech—which seeks to maximize operational efficiency and productivity while minimizing energy consumption, waste, and pollution—will be the thrust of the transcontinental non-profit network with tens chapters, including Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Los Angeles, Austin, Denver, New York City, Portland, and Washington, D.C. With a social networking website as its hub, the organization will unite entrepreneurs, investors, academics, and other professionals to build businesses on the foundation of renewable energy technologies. Day and Friendly have already secured a number of national sponsors of the new-fangled REBN, including executive search firm Hobbs & Towne, national law firm Holland & Knight, Bostonian law firm Mintz Levin, Bostonian public relations firm Weber Shandwick, Silicon Valley Bank, and Houston’s financial services giant Stanford Group Company. REBN will also be forging a relationship with the American Council on Renewable Energy, a D.C.-based non-profit industry think tank and lobbying group.

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6. Arizona Initiatives Fertilize Rural and Border Communities

The University of Arizona’s (UA) McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship has pioneered the Rural Entrepreneurship Initiatives, a project that endeavors to kindle the entrepreneurial capacities and opportunities in southern Arizona’s rural and border communities. With UA alumnus and entrepreneur Guillermo Quiroga appointed as director, the initiatives seek to heat up the entrepreneurial climate in the region by targeting four critical population sectors through four initiatives. The first initiative is IdeaFair, which will implement the science fair model used in elementary education to stimulate student knowledge of entrepreneurship and problem-based business solutions. The second initiative is Education Curriculum Development, a partnership with local colleges to challenge K-12 students to apply entrepreneurial principles to a wide array of business environments and community-based problems. IdeaXchange, the third prong of the project, will weave a network for nascent and extant entrepreneurs to swap information and receive guidance. The Rural Entrepreneurship Society is the last component, which will channel the experience of area leaders to evaluate regional resources, opportunities, challenges, and policy assessments to help foster successful enterprises and healthy communities. Actively involved in his native Pascua Yaqui tribe, widely credentialed, and widely honored, Quiroga envisions that the initiatives will cultivate local entrepreneurs and enterprises to address the region’s border-based concerns, such as border management and homeland security. The Rural Entrepreneurship Initiatives align with the broader, statewide venture to build local economies and workforces—the IFA, or Innovation Frontier Arizona.

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7. Local Social Entrepreneur Revives At-Risk Youths, City Block

In 2005, working on his Master’s thesis, David Dey of Rochester, New York helped found the Institute of Social Entrepreneurship at Roberts Wesleyan College. Dey soon after founded an offshoot of his institute—Risego, Inc., which seeks to offer area at-risk youth an alternative to the life of drugs, crime, and violence by empowering them to develop profitable and sustainable community-based social enterprises. Dey has continued to work to enact positive change in the Rochester community by establishing The Arnett, a family of businesses in an historic building Dey purchased and renovated out of his own purse. The Arnett houses a number of businesses that strive to make a difference one neighborhood resident at a time. Businesses include Kingdom Ventures, Inc., which imports and sells artisanal goods like handbags and ceramics from developing nations. His Blends Coffee Shop and Lighthouse Copy & Business Services in The Arnett provide locally owned alternatives to their corporate counterparts. The French Quarter Café, an art gallery, an event planning agency, and a counseling/ budgeting agency also offer services to residents who want to support local businesses. But at the heart of The Arnett is Dey’s own Risego, Inc. and Institute for Social Entrepreneurship—the former making entrepreneurship training available to youths, the latter to adults.

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Share Proudly! will soon be shining its spotlight on the winners of two awards to be announced later this year:

In conjunction with the news organization Irish Independent and Enterprise Ireland, a government agency for indigenous business, Ireland’s Ulster Bank Corporate Markets is seeking nominations for its 15th annual Business Achievers Awards. Beginning with provincial rewards and advancing to national recognition, the awards honor the best businesses and entrepreneurs in seven noble categories: environmental/sustainability; community/social entrepreneurship; ethnic entrepreneurship; business going international; family-run business; one-to-watch award; and best business start-up. The national finalist earns a broad education program at the Harvard University Business School, advertising in the Irish Independent worth €50,000, and a two-year membership in the Institute of Directors, the representative body of senior, strategic business professionals in the Emerald Isle. Provincial winners earn entry into the national stage of the competition, coverage in the Irish Independent, and a profile page of the website for the awards. Nominees will be unveiled in the late fall of 2008.

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At the 18th World Economic Forum on Africa, five finalists were nominated for the 2008 Social Entrepreneur Award for South Africa. On behalf of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and Ernst & Young, the awards recognize individuals whose sustainable and innovative enterprises have made a significant impact in unemployment, education, and health. The Schwab Foundation will announce the award winner at the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Award ceremony in November 2008.

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NATIONAL Public Relations, one of the world’s leading communications firms in corporate responsibility, is organizing the fifth annual Tremblant Forum on corporate responsibility and sustainability in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, Canada on September 16 and 17, 2008. Heralding this year’s theme of “Looking Forward, Giving Back,” the forum will assemble over one hundred businesspersons and non-profit executives and academics from around the world to discuss the trends, challenges, and opportunities in community investment, venture philanthropy, and social entrepreneurship.

Renowned journalists will host panelists on strategic philanthropy for three workshops. The first workshop, “Are We Doing Enough?,” will address the widening global gap between social needs and financial means. The second workshop, “The New Model of Philanthropy,” will evaluate the latest models and innovations in social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy. “Find Value in Values,” the last workshop, will map out the mechanics of cause marketing.

The Tremblant Forum ’08 will feature an esteemed host of speakers, including Peter Frumkin, author of Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy, and Dr. Gilles Julien, president of Fondation pour la promotion dela pédiatrie sociale. The forum will also present senior executives from Standard Life Group, Global Endeavor, Molson Coors, Reporters Without Borders, Wal-Mart, the John Molson School of Business, and CARE.

The Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has awarded Filipina Ma. Cecilia Flores Oebanda for her devoted activism against human trafficking and child labor. Known as Nanay Day to the women and children she has helped, Oebanda is the first Asian to win the Skoll award, which also recognizes the Visayan Forum (VF), where she serves as president. Nanay Day and VF will also receive a $1 million grant from a U.S.-based organization for their commitment to legislate protection for workers—especially children and women—from slavery, exploitation, and trafficking. Read More.

The 9th Annual New York University Stern Business Plan Competition has awarded more than $150,000 in seed money and in-kind support to three winning teams for their original venture ideas. The competition features two different tracks—traditional entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, which shared the $100,000 Stewart Satter Family prize. Asher Hasan, Saad Tabani, Farhan Musharrif, and Irum Musharraf with Naya Jeevan for Kids (NJFK) received a $75,000 prize for their commitment to providing economically disenfranchised families in India and Pakistan with affordable healthcare for acute health-related emergencies. NFJK gives naya jeevan, or new life in Urdu and Hindi, to low-income corporate employees and their families and domestic staff members of corporate employees and their families.

Founder Brian McCollum and co-founders Brett Beach and Tim McCollum of Madécasse won $25,000 of the Stewart Satter Family Prize for their work to import food products grown and made from locally grown vanilla beans and cocoa in Madagascar. Madécasse is a social enterprise using a model known as Equitrade, an expansion of Fair Trade, in that it urges for the production and manufacture of products to take place in the goods’ motherland. With Equitrade Malagasy vanilla beans and cocoa, Madécasse distributes chocolate bars and other specialty foods through the U.S. retailers. Learn more about the Stern School of Business.

Rags2Riches: Interweaving High-End Fashion, Justice, and Social Entrepreneurship

A group of young professionals and alumni of the Philippines’ Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University wove together the social enterprise Rags2Riches after they witnessed injustice in the Payatas region in the Philippines’ capital, Manila. Not only did the group discover Payatas mothers crafting beautiful handmade rugs that netted marginal profits, but they also discovered middlemen exploiting the mothers. The middleman sold the mothers scrap materials at inflated prices, marked up the sale price of their rugs at department stores, and pocketed the bulk of their profits. Seeing the powerlessness of the mothers, Rags2Riches amassed donations to abolish the unscrupulous middlemen and facilitate the wares’ direct sales at markets. When the rugs became popular items at the bazaars, Rags2Riches invited designer Rajo Laurel to help the mothers diversify their products. With Laurel, the Rags2Riches team developed 12 high-end designs—from handbags to wine bottle holders—that were unveiled to an elite audience at the posh EDSA Shangri-La Plaza ballroom.

The mothers and Rags2Riches soon met with greater empowerment: the enterprise was the first Philippine team crowned with the Social Enterprise Award at the University of San Francisco’s 2008 International Business Plan Competition, beating out a global pool of competitors from prestigious universities. Rags2Riches continues to help the Payatas mothers with product development, quality control, distribution, and public relations, with the mothers taking home 75% of the profits, the rest to run Rags2Riches. The enterprise plans to expand operations in the Payatas area and to extend the project into other communities around the world with of aim of evolving into a global brand for fair trade, environmental conversation, and justice—all through the medium of high-end fashion. Read more.

Social Entrepreneurs Bemoan UK Financial Woes

Research by the social networking site and foundation for social entrepreneurship, www.UnLtdWorld.com, has found that the credit crunch in the United Kingdom is hitting small business owners and social entrepreneurs hard. Out of 984 individuals who participated in the UK study, 40% reported they are experiencing cash flow problems, 21% reported that their businesses had been badly affected by the financial crisis, 34% reported that they have taken out personal loans and have used personal credit cards to launch their services, and 68% reported that their loan or credit card applications were rejected.

“Locapreneurs”: Starting Small, Thinking Big

If the Green Movement teaches us anything about enacting systemic change, it teaches us that action must begin from the bottom up. Budding social entrepreneurs are taking this lesson to heart, building socially- and environmentally-minded businesses that effect change where they can—in the world’s diverse backyards.

St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota held its sixth annual Entrepreneurship Week in April, and the event highlights some of the exciting local social entrepreneurship—or, what Share Proudly! coins “locapreneurship”— that everyday persons are jumpstarting. The event’s keynote speaker was Jacquie Berglund, who fused together her business prowess, love of suds, and social conscience into Finnegans Brewery, a hopping business that donates 100% of its profits to charities tackling poverty. The week also featured the nutritional innovations of Feed My Starving Children, directed by Mark Crea, who collaborated with General Mills and Cargill to confront global malnutrition by developing nutrient-rich foods that quickly recover the health of malnourished children.

“Give a man a fish, and you have fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you have fed him for a lifetime.” Students at Colorado State University (CSU) saw more than just a kernel of wisdom in this aphorism; they saw a social enterprise. A group of CSU students in the university’s Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship course crafted Phones4Loans. Phones4Loans provides a two-fold social service. First, it collects and recycles old cell-phones and cell-phone accessories, thereby eliminating hazardous environmental waste. Second, it directs all profits to Kiva, an internet microfinance service that will provide loans for low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Cork a bottle of Hope Wine, run by 24-year-old Cleveland-based Jake Kloberdanz—and half of the profits go to charity. Buy a bottle of Hope Chardonnay? Half the profits go to breast cancer research. Buy a bottle of Hope Merlot? You’ve helped AIDS research. Buy a bottle of Hope Cabaret Sauvignon? Autism research thanks you.

Web-based platform www.spigit.com chose neighBORROW as the winner of its Entrepreneur Challenge for innovative start-ups. Founded in 2005 in New York City, neighBORROW is a free, web-based network that enables online communities and neighborhoods to lend and borrow a whole host of their resources, from electronic equipment and DVDs to books and baby items. The network, as a result, prevents unnecessary purchases and consumption—thereby allowing users to save time, money, and mother Earth.

Like all “locapreneurs,” French social entrepreneurs Jean-Daniel Muller and Jean-Michel Ricard started small but thought big—and now their social enterprise, S.I.E.L. Bleu, has truly made it big. To improve the quality of life and the longevity of France’s octogenarians, S.I.E.L. Bleu provides affordable specialized exercise and physical activity for seniors both at home and in retirement communities. With a staff of 200, S.I.E.L. Bleu brings in 6 million euros a year, with 200,000 euros in profit channeled back into the company for growth. While 80% of their revenue comes directly from earning, the other 20% comes the French government and from agencies and companies that work in elderly care.

The Share Proudly! Spotlight: Honorable Mentions, Notable Social Entrepreneurs

Rising stars of social enterprise, as well as some veteran activists, received special recognition this past week from leading social and entrepreneurial organizations for their efforts. Share Proudly! wants to extend the spotlight to the following individuals:

The American India Foundation, a non-profit organization facilitating social, educational, and public health initiatives in India, has recognized Raymond Spencer, CEO of Capgemini’s Financial Services Strategic Business Unit, for his lifelong commitment to implementing social and economic change in India. Leading projects with the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) for 20 years, and founding India’s ICA division, Spencer guided rural and community development to confront poverty in India.

The China Entrepreneur magazine, the Daonong Entrepreneur Institute, and Guanghua School of Management of Beijing University crowned Ericsson with the “China Green Company Award” for its dedication to and innovation in environmental protection in China. The award honors Ericsson for its development of strategies to contend with climate change—from green office facilities and telecom equipment to environmentally friendly product standards and alternative energy sources.

The Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture fund that invests in sustainable strategies to confront poverty in South East Asia and Africa, has named its 2009 Acumen Fund Fellows, who will bring their extensive business expertise to work in the field with Acumen’s investees, helping deliver critical goods and services to the world’s indigent. Look out for these rising social entrepreneurs: Tara Sabre Collier, Primal Desai, Sophie Forbes, Ramakrishnan Hariharan, Joanna Harries, Karthik Janakiraman, Heidi Krauel, Joel Montgomery, Nicole Orillac, Suraj Sudhakar.

1. Intel and Grameen Trust Join Forces to Get World’s Poor Online

Dr. Muhammad Yunus—2006 Nobel Prize winner, founder of the Grameen Trust, and progenitor of microcredit—will join forces with Intel Chairman Craig Barrett in a venture to provide information and communications technology (ICT) and microcredit services to the world’s poor. With Intel contributing its technological expertise and with the Grameen Trust contributing its prowess in microfinance and community and economic development, the partnership seeks to equip the impoverished with the ICT and entrepreneurial opportunities to help alleviate a battery of social ills. The Grameen Trust has served nearly 8 million people in over 70,000 Bangladeshi villages through its entrepreneurial and microfinancial development, while Intel will expand its humanitarian Intel World Ahead effort as the first big-tech corporation to implement a social entrepreneurial model. Read more.

2. Entrepreneurs Cook Up Employment for Cambodians

Students and graduates from the Singapore Management University (SMU) concocted a social enterprise to help nourish solutions to Cambodian poverty. Equipped with $130,000 from independent investors, the young entrepreneurs surmounted technical and culinary challenges to establish Camroy Food Industries, a for-profit cookie shop that employs underprivileged natives in the tourist hotspot of Phnom Penh. Continuing employment for the Cambodian workers, profits for investors, and the expansion of distribution are billed for the venture’s future menu, as will be support from SMU, which nurtures a number of other social entrepreneurial initiatives around Southeast Asia. Read more.

3. Commission Makes Music to Make a Difference

In need of capital to fund the poverty-fighting services of the Milwaukee-based Social Development Commission, director Deborah Blanks became a believer of the power of social entrepreneurship when she envisioned Believin the Power of You, a CD/DVD set that features local music and the Commission’s work throughout the city. United by anthems calling for change, the eclectic package sells for $10, with profits benefiting the Commission’s major programs, including the educational outreach of Head Start, which serves 3,000 Milwaukee children, and the Family Support Center, a homeless shelter housing and job-counseling 44 children and 27 adults. Read More.

4. UCONN Scholarships to Support Social Entrepreneurs

The University of Connecticut (UCONN) offers two new scholarships to promote non-profit and social entrepreneurial experience and careers: the Ed Satell Non-Profit Internship Program and the Ed Satell International Social Entrepreneurship Fund, each endowed with $50,000. 1957 UCONN business school alumnus Ed Satell—founder, president, and CEO of Progressive Business Publications in Pennsylvania—created the funds to help cultivate global citizens and global contributors out of socially conscientious UCONN students. The Non-Profit Internship Program supports students in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences who are working in poverty-fighting non-profit institutions. The Social Entrepreneurship Fund will support students who are studying abroad to participate in social entrepreneurial projects. Satell has also established two charitable foundations, the Satell Family Trust and the Progressive Business Publications Charitable Trust Fund, both of which are philanthropic ventures addressing medical research, education, community organizations, and disadvantaged children. Read More.

5. Socially Conscious Marketing Agency Enriched by New Hires

Based in New York City and San Francisco, BBMG, a branding and integrated marketing agency connecting socially responsible companies to socially conscious consumers, has hired brand strategists Eve Smith and Benita Singh. With her work at The CSR Group, a management and communications consulting firm focused on corporate social responsibility, Smith implemented studies for Dell, assessed ethical sourcing models for Whole Foods Market, and helped engineer the Brown-Forman Corporation’s first sustainability report. Since joining BBMG, Smith has helped produce BBMG’s first Conscious Consumer Report, which fuses field research and national polls to evaluate consumer attitudes towards corporate social responsibility and the environment. Benita Singh, as marketing Vice President of Lotus by League of Artisans, helped develop marketing platforms for sustainable enterprises among India’s artisans. Singh also co-founded Mercado Global, a non-profit organization specializing in fair trade that helps connect women artisans in Guatemala to larger global markets. Singh’s rich record in fair trade and social entrepreneurship has already helped launch BBMG’s new business strategy, aided the health start-up JIVA Supplements, and crafted the Eve of Sustainability event with the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. Read more.

6. Former Executive to Serve as Major Foundation’s CEO

The Russell Berrie Foundation of Teaneck, New Jersey—promoting the philanthropic initiatives of the Jewish Renaissance, innovations in diabetes and humanistic medicine, interfaith dialogue, heroic community givers, and professional sales—has named former JPMorgan Chase executive Ruth Salzman as the foundation’s new CEO. With JPMorgan Chase, Salzman proved her business and humanitarian prowess by her management of the company’s lending to non-profit organizations, small business, and community development financial intermediaries. She also oversaw the company’s socially responsible investment program. After her work with JPMorgan Chase, Salzman owned a private consulting firm that helped financial institutions develop business strategies for small businesses, non-profits, and social enterprises. Her position fills the yearlong CEO vacancy of the Russell Berrie Foundation, the largest private foundation in North New Jersey and the ninth largest in all of New Jersey with over $155 million in assets. Read more.

7. Texas Foundation Gains Veteran Humanitarian

Dedicated to providing educational opportunities to impoverished women and families, and committed to creating financial opportunities for educational non-profits, the Central Texas-based KDK-Harman Foundation opened its board to Eugene Sepulveda, CEO of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas. Sepulveda has a rich humanitarian history, working with over 50 non-profits over the past quarter century, including his service on the boards of the Austin Community Foundation, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, the Austin Museum of Art, as well teaching social entrepreneurship and global business at the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business. Read more.

1. Major Retailers Haloed with Awards

The Cause Marketing Forum issues the Halo Awards each year to the best campaigns and communications between for-profit businesses and the non-profit social causes they support. A majority of 2008’s 16 Halo Awards recognized major US retailers. Target garnered the Best Campaign Print Creative award for its “Gifts for the Greater Good” print ad in partnership with the Salvation Army and the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In conjunction with the home-rehab non-profit Rebuilding Together, Sears’ “Heroes at Home” campaign took home the Best Transactional Campaign award, which acknowledges the campaign that raised the most donations through consumer activity. The Burlington Coat Factory’s “Warm Coats and Warm Hearts Drive,” joining the efforts of ABC News and One Warm Coat, was honored with the National/Local Integration Award, which honors a campaign that successfully integrates local chapters of a cause with its larger national thrust. The Best Environmental/Wildlife award went to InterContinental Hotels for “Chase the Extraordinary.” The team of Proctor & Gamble’s Olay and the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery were lauded for their efforts against skin cancer, and Frito-Lay and Make-A-Wish Foundation of America received recognition as well. Read More.

2. Florida Social Entrepreneurs Crowned with Laurels

The Florida International University held its annual Entrepreneur Challenge Business Plan Competition to award start-ups in social entrepreneurship and investment. Go Global Education won a $10,000 top prize in investment for its creation of a website that provides online global educational programs to public and charter schools. My Daily Cause earned the $10,000 trophy in social entrepreneurship for its website that compiles non-profits and charities so that visitors can give small to big causes. NoBo Interactive, an educational and therapeutic toy company promoting the social development of autistic children, became $2,5000 richer as the runner-up in the social entrepreneurship track. Read more.

Social Citizens Blog started a first on-line newspaper on Social Entrepreneurship. It is made in Scribd iPaper format that is offered by Scribd Paltform. The first thing that I do not like about this paper is that you can’t embed it in your blog or on your site. I think the blog needs to learn from sites like YouTube and make it easy for people to embed their newspaper.

Most of the paper deals with, what is called today Generation Q, young adults mostly under 30 years of age who are interested in shaping this world. The newspaper talks about the trends of this generation, their media usage and the impact they want to have on the society. In a way this is an academic paper with pictures. The paper briefly covers Web 2.0 and its various components giving examples of sites that utilize  them effectively.

I am not sure how helpful this paper is from the marketing standpoint. I doubt it will tell you something you don’t already know, perhaps something you haven’t thought about for a while.  I do recommend reviewing this paper, but do not spend too much time on this.

I would like to see this blog expanding its newspaper selection and offering more editions. Perhaps they can also make a “chicken soup” on social entrepreneurship, publishing a collection of articles by other writers.

Share Proudly! Reports: A Social Entrepreneurship News Digest

1. Student-Run Phones4Loans Rings in Success

In the last edition of Share Proudly! Reports, we cited Phones4Loans, a project dialed up by students in Colorado State University’s Social and Sustainable Entrepreneurship course. Students developed Phones4Loans in a two-pronged effort to collect used cell phones and to dispatch profits from recycling the old mobiles to Kiva, which provides sustainable loans to low-income entrepreneurs. The community answered the students’ call: Phones4Loans collected over 300 cell phones, whose resale profits will help launch the businesses of over a dozen low-income entrepreneurs. Read More.

2. Indian Institutes Lay Down Foundations for Change.

India, the second most populous nation and second fastest growing economy in the world, still endures the epidemic of poverty and malnutrition. Yet, in the face of these woes, the subcontinent is growing a generation of schools and students with a social conscience.

The Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) has founded The Habitat School in conjunction with the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay.

The new school features three departments, including pedagogy, research, advocacy, and intervention in the targeted programs: urban planning and governance, water policy and governance, and science, technology, and society. TISS has also joined a consortium to train Indian HIV/AIDS counselors; the consortium recently landed an $18.2 million project from UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, and GFATM, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Already home to children’s rights law and master’s programs in social entrepreneurship, disaster management, globalization, and labor, TISS has founded a certificate program in social work aimed at bolstering grassroots work in India’s tribal communities. Read More.

3. The Indian Institute of Bio-Social Research and Development (IBRAD) amplifies India’s humanitarian academic surge with its foundation of a post-graduate degree in rural management and sustainable development. The degree expands IBRAD’s commitment to responsible commercial use of natural resources and its vision of enacting systemic social change to solve environmental crises. Read More.

4. Google.org Searches for Change

Google.org is channeling its resources and innovative staff into five ambitious social projects to confront global challenges from climate change to poverty. The initiatives are to:
1) Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal (RE<C);
2) Accelerate Commercialization of Plug-In Vehicles (RechargeIT);
3) Predict and Prevent (identifies and expedites response to areas at risk of emerging threats from climate to disease);
4) Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services; and
5) Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Adding to the expanding body of social-centric institutes and programs in India, Sonal Shah is aiding the development of Google.org’s fifth initiative, fueling the growth of SMEs. United with the Omidyar Network (established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam) and the Soros Economic Development Fund, Sonal Shah and Google.org have created a $17 million investment company to launch and assist SMEs in India. Read More.