GPA Grantees on TEDx

Two GPA grantees from Kenya recently gave TEDx talks.

Wiclif Otieno, KITO International
See Wiclif's Talk on Street Youth

Excerpt from TEDx:
As a former street boy, Wiclif brings deep connections and a superior understanding of the street youth community. After transitioning out of street life, he went on to create Eco Safi Products, a reform youth enterprise project that empowers youth and harnesses their entrepreneurial spirit while providing the training, education, and tools they need to create a lifetime of economic security. The motto of EcoSafi, "Street Kids Today. Entrepreneurs Tomorrow" reflects not only Odongo's past but the future he is creating for others like him. Then in early 2009, he envisioned the KITO concept of training and educating youth, to then employ them in EcoSafi, so they can gain hands-on experience. Wiclif is an entrepreneur, community activist and represents the power of opportunity. Additionally, Wiclif has worked with community development organizations that serve orphans, street youth and HIV positive woman. Wiclif is a 2010 Cordes Fellow, which enabled him to travel to Ixtapa, Mexico to represent KITO at the Opportunity Collaboration. 

Lindy Wafula, of Lady Mekanika, Project Africa
See Lindy's Talk on Social Entrepreneurship and Women

Excerpt from TEDx:
Lindy initiated Project Africa as a nonprofit organization to promote gender equality and empowerment of women. The organization's programs are geared towards creating opportunities for women and girls to access basic education, vocational training, enterprise development, ICT and leadership.
In 2011, Lindy started the Lady Mekanika Project and the Nanny Project. These Projects aim to empower young women with automobile mechanics skills and home management skills for enterprise development respectively. About 60 young women are participating in the 1st year of these two projects and are prepared to venture into automobile industry that has long been dominated by men, also to put value and worth into the home making role that has traditionally been performed by women. After the training, Lindy hopes to establish social enterprises to employ the trained women into these two industries.

Lindy was awarded the Africa International MDG achievers' award for her advocacy work in promoting gender equality and empowerment of women. She was also honored with the Building Bridges peace award for empowering grassroot women as agents of peace after the 2007 post election violence in Kenya. It is her passion to serve women and advocate for gender equality and empowerment of women that is why she has declared her candidacy to run for parliament in 2012 Kenya's general election. She hopes to influence economic policies to the favour of women in Kenya to venture into profitable entrepreneurship for social good. 

GPA Fall Newsletter

Read the Fall 2011 GPA Newsletter to learn more about GPA grantees, the African Advisory Board annual face to face meeting, our wonderful summer interns, events, and activities of the GPA Board.

Web Platforms for Social Entrepreneurs: A Survey of What’s Available

This post by TJ Cook arose thanks to ongoing collaboration between TJ Cook of HiDefWebSolutions (www.hidefweb.com) and Anne Petersen of Global Philanthropy Alliance (GPA), who met last year at Opportunity Collaboration. Bo Wang, with the assistance of Ryan Veneri--both GPA interns--performed original research and drafting for this post.

What is Social Entrepreneurship?

More people today have the freedom, time, wealth, health, exposure, social mobility, and confidence to become social entrepreneurs. As David Bornstein puts it, “social entrepreneurs are individuals seeking meaningful work to build, join, advocate for, or support organizations that are more innovative, more responsive, and operationally superior to the traditional social structures. They have new ideas to address major problems, shifting economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.”

Why Social Entrepreneurship Needs a Unique Web Platform

Because social entrepreneurship is forging new territory somewhere between non-profit missions and for-profit models, the movement has unique needs in the areas of empowerment, funding, and accountability. The rules of engagement are different and constantly evolving. Social entrepreneurship brings together many different entities, from individual funders to large foundations, from farmers in rural Africa to urban teens in New York.

Providing social entrepreneurs the support they need to succeed is an important task for the modern age, and many web platforms have been launched to do just that. Here we’ll take a look at what services such platforms need to have, as well as review the best websites providing the service.

Youth-first, Mobile-first Design Considerations

Global Philanthropy Alliance works under the strong conviction that reaching youth first with a platform for entrepreneurship should be a primary design consideration. Accordingly, thanks to the state of technology globally, designing the system to be mobile accessible (both from smartphones and via novel use of SMS on regular phones) is also of utmost important.

A social-first, mobile-first design approach ensures that the social entrepreneurs who need the system the most--youth--get access to it in a format that they can use the most--mobile.

The Four Key Services of an Integrated Web Platform for Social Entrepreneurship

To empower social entrepreneurs around the world, many web platforms exist today to provide services for these talented individuals. Different web platforms have different features offer distinctive services, but what constitutes an effective web platform? The four major functions of the web platforms are:

1. Training. Especially in the developing world, the ambition for entrepreneurship is there, but knowledge about best approaches to business is not. Whether formal modules or knowledge center FAQs, high quality materials are an important starting point.
2. 2.      Funding. Providing entrepreneurs a streamlined way to vet their ideas and get funding for the good ones is essential. A great funding service will increase transparency and accelerate world change.
3. Mentoring. With knowledge and funding in tow, social entrepreneurs benefit most from seasoned professionals—both in their geographic area and even abroad.
4. Social Networking. From collaborating with other entrepreneurs to helping track the goals of their new business, integrated tools are pivotal to ensuring the platform provides everything an entrepreneur needs to succeed without having to exit the system.

Now let’s take a look at existing and emerging platforms that provide the best solutions for each of these services.

1. Training for Social Entrepreneurs

Most of the business training modules found online could be accessed freely. Due to the research being conducted in the US, the search engines seem to focus more on information appropriate for American users. As a result, information found was more applicable to the Western world instead of our grantees in Africa, but types of business that thrive in third world settings tend to be different than the businesses addressed by these sites. Finally, some sites do offer some kind of networking or mentoring features with an online community. Examples of business training web platforms reviewed include:

Example 1: StartupNation

StartupNation provides step-by-step guides for business topics such as “open for business”, “grow your own business,” and “managing your money.” Although the site is primarily geared towards businesses in North America, access to the website’s media is free, and the site has an extensive search engine that allows one to easily find articles pertaining to his or her specific situation. The community section of the website is a good place for professionals to interact and share ideas.

Example 2: Micro Enterprise Training

This module provides easy-to-read training guides on topics such as running micro-enterprise, financial planning, and marketing. Besides to being free of charge, the website offers a wide variety of content with a translation feature that allows the content to be translated into several different languages. 

2. Funding for Social Entrepreneurs

A majority of funding sites in existence are made for donors who contribute small amounts of money to charities of their choice. These sites allow nonprofit organizations or social entrepreneurs to register as a charity, so the organization could receive donations using the platforms. On the other hand, a few sites act like investment sites with investors getting their investment back, with social and financial return. Furthermore, a couple of sites offer training on top of the funding features. Examples of a funding platform include:

Example 1: Kiva

Kiva is a non-profit organization with a mission to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. Leveraging the Internet and a worldwide network of microfinance institutions, Kiva lets individuals lend as little as $25 to help create opportunities around the world. Kiva serves as a middleman in the process by delivering 100% of these funds on a net billing basis, excluding the interest eared while being held in a Kiva user loan account, which is contributed to fund Kiva’s operations.

Example 2: GlobalGiving

GlobalGiving connects donors to the causes and countries they care the most. Using the platform, donors could select projects they want to support, make a tax-deductible contribution, and get regular progress updates so they can see how their gifts are making a difference. On top of fundraising feature, GlobalGiving also provides business-training webinars such as strategy planning 101.

3. Mentoring for Social Entrepreneurs

There are multiple online mentoring websites, with some charging a premium using their services. Some organizations offer local mentorship, instead of mentoring over the Internet. It was hard to judge which local organizations were the most effective due to limited information on these websites, which function simply like an informational site instead of interactive platforms. A few sites also feature online training workshops. Examples of mentoring platforms reviewed include:

Example 1: Score

Score offers online training workshops on top of local seminars, allowing users outside of America to utilize online workshops, templates and tools for business development. A registered user could contact accredited mentors who are volunteers available to answer business questions. Additionally, there is also a blog with helpful articles posted by users and a vault full of templates and workbooks.

Example 2: Umbono

Partnering with Google, Umbono is a South African based program preparing entrepreneurs to develop their own business. For the duration of the 6 months Umbono Program, teams will have regular access to the extensive network of business and technology experts, including Google experts, venture capitalists and angel investors. However, the program is only held in South Africa, and there might be other additional requirements to enroll in this program.

4. Social Networking for Entrepreneurs

Various social entrepreneur web platforms function as a donation site with basic information about their projects and resources, which is similar to GPA’s current website. This might be restricted by the limited membership required to use some of these services. Two sites featured in the report that stood out were Acumen Fund and Adsila.

Example 1: Acumen Fund

In additional to traditional charity, Acumen Fund seeks market-based approaches to help the poor using “patient capital,” a long tern investment maximizing social rather than financial returns. Acumen has an interactive site, with free resources, articles and an online community to share information and network with potential business partners and mentors.

Example 2: Adsila

Adsila claims to be the world’s first “virtual incubator” for early-stage development and support of social entrepreneurs. It is designed to reduce physical and other barriers, and to provide training, financial, mentorship, and network support to enable social entrepreneurs to create large-scale social impact. Although the site is still under construction, once it’s fully developed, it should become an impressive web platform empowering the needs of social entrepreneurs.

Is There One Perfect Web Platform for Social Entrepreneurs?

The short answer is, “Not yet.”

As we can see from the examples discussed, there are many great tools that satisfy some of the core services of an integrated web platform for social entrepreneurs—but none that could be called “The LinkedIn of Social Entrepreneurship” or “The Facebook for the Social Entrepreneurship Movement.”

There does not seem to be a platform that simply integrates all four of the core services (Training, Funding, Mentoring, Social Networking) into a single, youth-first, mobile-first platform, as Facebook has done for personal relationships, or LinkedIn has done for business relationships.

A partnership between Global Philanthropy Alliance and HiDef Web Solutions is envisioning just such an integrated approach. If you're interested in learning more about it or telling us about your platform not mentioned here, please do so in the comments or find us @hidef and @AfricaSocEntrep on Twitter.

African Culture: RHSC & GPA Reception

When: Saturday September 10th, 5-7pm

Where: Richard Hunt Studio Center, Benton Harbor, MI

Please join Global Philanthropy Alliance (GPA) on September 10th for a very special and informative reception at the Richard Hunt Studio Center (RHSC). RHSC houses Richard Hunt's award-winning art plus his fabulous collection of African art and artifacts. Richard Hunt, our generous host, will be with us to discuss both collections. In addition you will hear about the work GPA is doing in Africa and the difference it has made for young people and their communities there. A silent auction of beautiful African jewelry and art is also planned. Refreshments will be provided. Please save the date and plan to join us. We look forward to sharing this terrific evening with you!

 

For more details, please see the event Invitation

Global Youth: Invisible Opportunity

Youth (ages 15-24) represent a significant, largely missed opportunity globally for sustainable development. Youth unemployment globally has now reached record levels (ILO, 2010), increasing from chronic levels because of the recent global recession. This increased has now reached crisis levels and represented a wasted opportunity for nations and global society. We must find ways to capitalize on the opportunity to support youth toward useful employment.

Some youth need additional training and education. But many are ready now for employment opportunities, with high motivation to become productive members of their families and communities. Entrepreneurial activities represent a significant opportunity to activate this potential. At present many youth in the developing/majority world are entrepreneurial in creating opportunities in the informal economy. While there is potential in this sector, it seldom leads to formal employment and may lead to illegal or even criminal enterprises.

There are also great risks in not paying attention to the opportunity of youth. Research suggests that those who do not find employment by age 30, never do so. The brightest youth who have no access to legitimate employment opportunities will find outlets for their energy and talents, often to the detriment of society. The recent unrest in the Middle East, known for having the highest youth unemployment globally, was fueled with the energy of youth. If their often creative efforts fail to result in the improvement of their societies, and opportunities for them to contribute constructively, many will either leave their countries if they are educated (and in many countries, they were), or find less constructive outlets.

Fortunately there are a few programs that hold promise of changing this grim picture. Several US programs are working globally to increase opportunities for youth social entrepreneurs: Ashoka, Skoll Foundation, Global Philanthropy Alliance (GPA), and a novel partnership between GPA and HiDefWebSolutions to create a web platform to support the development of youth social entrepreneurs globally.

Our GPA grantee, Kito International had successfully started a training program for young adults in Kenya to become sales agents. There were almost fifty very impressive youths who showed up for the vetting that took place for two days. Ten were selected to join the training that lasted two months. There will be multiple recruitment exercises this year with the goal to reach a total of fifty youths by the end of the year.

Also with the funding that GPA provided, the Lady Mekanika Project had established two business incubators for women in Nairobi and Kakamega and 6 women in Lungalunga have started a fish selling business.  

Join us to change the world and become a fan of us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Philanthropy-Alliance/189999181047663

And on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/AfricaSocEntrep