As exchange students at the University of Ghana in 2008, we were stunned by the magnitude of two issues: child homelessness and environmental damage. In Accra, Ghana’s capital, an estimated 60,000 children call the streets their home. Street children fend for themselves, often working in unhealthy, dangerous environments, eating poorly, and sleeping in unsanitary conditions.

 

Accra’s streets are not only filled with homeless kids, however; they’re also overflowing with trash. Since Ghana does not have an effective waste management system in place, people are forced to toss their trash directly onto the ground. The 40 tons of waste discarded each day have resulted in extensive environmental degradation.

 

So far, we have worked to address both forms of neglect through the following objectives:

1.     Decrease pollution and the number of children on the streets
aBAN on Neglect pays street children to collect waste and craft it into unique, handmade goods that we sell online and through school fundraisers. Since 2008, we have helped these kids make and sell over 1,000 bags and provided 20 kids with sustainable incomes for food, shelter, and education.

 

With the support of grants and other sources of funding, we aim to expand our programs and address the following objectives:

 

2.     Incorporate both a savings and an educational model into our program to help children attain their long-term financial goals.

3.    Increase public awareness of the issues by creating a city-wide campaign to educate the public about the urgency of child and environmental neglect in Accra.

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Thanks for reading! Check out our website at http://www.abanonneglect.com/

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Chow provides a sustainable business solution, bringing together farmers and food producers with their customers through an on-line, auction-based marketplace. Chow’s mission is to be “The e-Marketplace Where Food Wins.” Chow will be known worldwide as the eBay of food, with a particular forte in locally grown food. Chow’s value proposition is that it will serve as an intermediary to link food sellers (e.g., farmers, food manufacturers, commercial food networks and distributors that aggregate food for larger scale operations) with food buyers (e.g., commercial food networks and distributors and small businesses that purchase food for their products such as restaurants and cooperatives, and individuals).

Chow will be measured with all aspects of a true triple-bottom lined, blended-return business: social and economic development for sellers in rural communities, and for emergency food networks to access to recovered food; financial rewards for the company; and environmental returns for buyers and society through reduced CO2 emissions and reduced pollution from transportation. Chow expands a well-proven on-line business model into the new segment of locally grown food.

Chow has a vision to change agri-commerce so food sellers have easy access to markets. Chow has a competitive advantage by selling food on-line in an e-market, ensuring the link of food sources to their consumers and eliminating the currently confusing, time-consuming and ineffective web of channels to bring these markets together. This business model will provide a free marketplace for buyers and charge fees to sellers for listing and selling products.
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The heart of the Safe Water Project lies in Vengal village in the Thiravallur District of Tamil Nadu, India . In 2004, diagnostic camps conducted by the Rural Development Center (RDC) in Vengal revealed that 46% of the population was infected with Entamoeba Histolytica, E-Coli, and Whipworm. However, the problem is not as clear as the numbers. The tremendous disease burden in Vengal village is implanted in a vicious reiterative cycle of gender inequality, poor education, and inaccessibility to clean water.

Traditional water treatment programs, including those targeting women and schools, overlook  the cultural norms of female subordination and circumstances of poverty that shape educational opportunities.

The Safe Water Project acts on two powerful ideas:

1.       A sustainable solution to inaccessibility to clean water and adequate sanitation must extend beyond a biomedical treatment and address the social and cultural context.

2.      Harnessing the passions of young people is the most effective method of bringing innovative and rigorous solutions to intricate problems.

The Safe Water Project has mobilizesd American students to raise money through innovative fundraising techniques s and to directly visit Vengal to initiate programs promoting school attendance and greater hygiene practices.  In the 2009-2010 school year, the Safe Water Project has created a collaborative cross-campus effort at Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill to address the root causes of poor water and sanitation--gender inequality, poor education, crumbling infrastructure, lack of resources, and lack of public awareness. 

The Safe Water Project aims to give Duke and UNC students the transformative opportunity to implement self-designed social change models as the bedrock for a sustainable, grassroots approach to community water treatment.  

 

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I-DEV International (www.idevinternational.com) envisions a world in which underprivileged communities in developing countries are empowered to lift themselves out of poverty.  Local communities should not be relegated to subsistence farming or begging, but should have the opportunity to acquire skills and resources to compete in and benefit from the global marketplace. 

I-DEV International provides full service management & financial advisory services to the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) with the intention of using philanthropic and CSR dollars more effectively to improve the lives of the world’s poor.  I-DEV takes a radically different approach to economic development, employing for-profit principles and practices to solve humanity’s greatest problems.  I-DEV partners with corporations and NGOs to deploy economic resources, business expertise and develop local human capital in a way that enables impoverished communities to build competitive businesses that create sustainable value for both the community and the investor. These businesses empower the poor by creating long-term, respectable livelihoods.

I-DEV provides a nexus for corporations, NGOs, governments, and communities to identify and execute projects that create value for all.  I-DEV achieves this advantage through a combination of unique characteristics:

-         Unparalleled team of senior managers, each of which possess combined experience in traditional  business (private equity, consulting or banking, plus professional graduate degrees) and grassroots non-profits

-         Streamlined service offerings from project planning to implementation

-        Performance-based compensation structure (internally and partner/community-focused), which is tied to tangible, quantifiable metrics

-        Use of aligned incentives to engage and attract committed, motivated local entrepreneurs

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The CO-Fund mission is to facilitate the funding of higher education for deserving, college-ready students.  CO-Fund enables anybody to sponsor student’s college education through online, face-to-face profiles. Donors help students to afford and graduate from college and become a part of their social mission to “pay it forward” after graduation.  We have developed an efficient, accessible, and personalized approach that empowers both donors and students by aggregating direct, peer-to-peer donations of as little as one dollar, 100% of which go to the students. Started by Cody Simmons in the fall of 2009, the CO-Fund team is now comprised of nine talented entrepreneurial Brown students that have the shared vision of leveraging the power of micro-donations to benefit students and their communities. 
 
CO-Fund is launching its public website in the Spring of 2010 under the fiscal sponsorship of Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE). CO-Fund has also received $5,000 in pro bono legal services from the law firm Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP, and is also working with the accounting firm Batchelor, Frechette, McCrory, Michael & Co.  CO-Fund is currently a start-up, non-profit organization that is launching with students from Rhode Island to demonstrate the effectiveness of its approach before scaling to work with additional partners and communities nationwide. 
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 The Amber Initiative has been working closely with the hill tribe people in Thailand that have been marginalized for centuries. Amber is working with Blessing Home, a youth hostel currently serving 60 Lahu youth and children, to increase English and Mandarin proficiency for the students in the surrounding areas, especially students that have no opportunity to continue education in their villages. Through enhancing the programs in Blessing Home, we envision this to be a center of choice for quality linguistic skill development as well as extracurricular activities such as music and sports. Using Blessing Home’s current space as a center for these programs, Amber is working with the local leadership in the area to reach out to even more hill tribe youth in Chiang Rai, in particular youth that have been forced into marriage at an early age. Thus this program is three-fold: 1) Critical language development, 2) Extra curricular development through sports and music and 3) Educational resources and classes for young women who are married as there currently exists no programs for them.
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Africa Start-Up provides business training to microfinance recipients in Malawi, Africa to provide permanent solutions to extreme poverty and unemployment.  Its goal is to supply the know-how to create sustaining businesses, double personal incomes, and increase collaborative trust, transparency and accountability for entrepreneurs living in the sixth poorest country in the world.  With a social entrepreneurship framework, Africa Start-Up is building a coalition of students, professors, business professionals, non-profit experts and government stakeholders around the world to address the issue of high unemployment (over 85% nationwide) and extreme poverty in Malawi.   Africa Start-Up is inspired by study and application of Seattle University economics/marketing student, Christina Davis, after working with microloan recipients and initiated a business training pilot program in Malawi in 2009. 

 

She learned Malawian entrepreneurs will travel nearly half-a-day to learn how to grow small business expansion.  Success means survival.   Africa Start-Up fills the gap by providing both financial stimulus and educational support.  University of Malawi business school students will teach bi-weekly classes; Seattle University’s Students-In-Free-Enterprise (SIFE) and Beta Alpha Psi chapters will consult with microenterprise owners live during classroom webinars.  Upon completion, students will earn a $100+ loan through a local microfinance institution and join a broad social network of business owners.   This program will supply models for similar efforts throughout Africa.  

 

Start-Up solutions, Start-Up success…Africa Start-Up!
 

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Founded in 2008 by a student and a Sierra Leonean, Planting Promise is a community-based organization, whose mission is to create sustainable enterprise in Sierra Leone to support educational projects. By developing locally conceived and administered businesses, our charity provides free education to over 600 children. Additionally, our businesses empower the people of Sierra Leone by offering wealth, employment and prospects: and through these, genuine economic and human development.

OUR LOCATIONS:

We currently run 3 primary schools in Sierra Leone, educating a total of 600 children, in addition to an adult education course teaching basic literacy and vocational skills to a class of 50 women. Teachers are locally recruited and qualified, and will soon be assisted by volunteer experts from the UK, so improving the quality of the schooling we deliver.

However we don’t believe you help people by making them dependent. So instead of foreign funding, our schools are funded by our businesses, promoting growth in the Sierra Leonean economy. We farm 1200 acres of rice and cassava, and run 2 food-processing units and an internet café in Freetown, reinvesting all profits back into the organization.

OUR STRUCTURE:

WHAT MAKES US DIFFERENT:

• We provide a free and otherwise inaccessible education to street children and subsistence farmers 
• We are 100% sustainable – our businesses pay for all running costs
  
• We already have a proven record of success after operating for less than two years
  
• All our activities are vetted and administered by a team of experienced local professionals

For more information, please visit our website: www.plantingpromise.org.uk
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 Sustainability without Borders, borders have redrawn the way people interact with each other and their surroundings, now it is time to look beyond those borders to ensure the sustainability of the world's vibrant cultures.

A Chinese Proverb says; Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This initiative is about empowering people in the developing world by giving them access to life altering knowledge. 

Our approach will include mission trips, and alliances with groups such as Engineers Without Borders, Habitat for Humanity and Water for People. The development of a simple laptop, much like the one laptop per child initiative, will contain open source information to help people in every economic class. 

 We are helping to build the future, sustainably. 

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In the developed world individuals and entrepreneurs have been able to take advantage of the internet to expand their reach to customers through new products and services.  In the developing world fewer individuals have access to the internet and entrepreneurs have been limited in their scope and reach.  However, where the internet is failing to make in-roads, mobile phones are taking off; now reaching nearly 4.6 billion phones globally. 

Bazari will provide individuals and entrepreneurs in developing countries (initially India) the advantages of eCommerce through a text-message based platform.  Through the platform customers can browse, purchase, pay, and arrange delivery for products; similar to shopping on eBay or Amazon, but all done via text messaging.

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VALA connects consumers to anything they want from street vendors and service providers in urban India.  We’re like Yelp, Yellowpages, and a delivery service packed into one, but proactively bringing together consumers and the informal market.  

If a consumer wants anything---from a plumber to an electrician to a haircut or a rickshaw ride—we find it.  Through a simple SMS, a consumer can request any deliverable good or service. VALA then identifies the best available vendor to meet this request and connects them to the consumer to deliver and complete the transaction. The consumer then rates the vendor based on speed, quality, and price, allowing VALA to continually refine its database of vendors.

We’re jumping on the back of huge trends in India: (1) mobile phones are in the hands of the nearly everyone in urban India.  And (2) millions of young people are moving to new cities. They need services, but don’t know where to find them.

We make our money on tiered fees to vendors, targeted advertisement, and data aggregation.  And we promise to increase the market activity of informal street vendors--some of India’s poorest entrepreneurs.
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Imagine trying to find and keep a job if you don’t own a car. NOW imagine the same thing if you don’t even know how to drive.  The only jobs available would be the ones within walking distance of a bus line – where driving skills weren’t needed.  You couldn’t even deliver pizzas!  No wonder the opportunities for those who don’t own an internet connected computer (or worse, are computer illiterate) are so bleak.  They aren’t on the information superhighway; they're left at the curb as knowledge workers get on the on-ramp.

US Census stats say that 56.6% of Hispanic households (calculating to a 43.4% penetration rate) do not have internet access at home -- the worst percentage of any race/ethnicity. Furthermore 53.7% of unemployed individuals and 66.8% of individuals not in the workforce are without internet access at home. And internet penetration is only 24.8% in Mexico, 22% in Central America, and 34.7% in South America.

Bridge for the Digital Divide (BftDD) is a non-profit effort dedicated to using for-profit business methods and a cutting edge business model to better accomplishing its mission of (1) maximizing the amount of computers, internet access, and training it can donate in the Hispanic Americas, and (2) achieving rapid and financially self self-sustainable growth.

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 “I carry people and their goods to and fro; I spend my energy in the heat or the biting cold to save their energy, time and money. I only wish they treated me with some respect. I want to live without the fear of loosing my rickshaw and my livelihood”

3-5 lakh men pull cycle-rickshaws everyday to earn their living, and about 10 lakh people’s livelihood depending on them. These men work in oppressive conditions pulling loads and people well beyond their capacity. Most of them do not own their cycle-rickshaws and pay exorbitant rents. Moreover, they work in the unorganized sector and are frequently harassed by cops, local mafia and even customers. They have no social security and healthcare options. They are a high risk group, vulnerable to disease and suffering.

Seeking to address these issues, the idea is to provide them with an alternative source of revenue and raise their level or awareness and civic responsibility. Golden Wheel also plans to use this enormous human capital as green messengers. Regularizing their services will also strengthen last mile connectivity and serve to increase the efficiency of mass transit systems in urban India. Golden Wheel will bring these cycle-rickshaw pullers into the organized sector and try to provide them basic amenities.

The model is scalable and can be implemented throughout the city and in other cities of India. The outcomes will be addressing human rights issues and dignity of labour. The innovation has strong socio-economic benefits and financially, it is self sustaining.

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The rise of electrical sciences in the late 19th century drove the world towards the 2nd industrial revolution resulting in huge economic growth that has changed the world ever since. However, more than 100 years on, there are many that still lag behind. 

Not known to many, at least 1.6 billion people do not have access to electricity for lighting, refrigeration, mechanical power, telecommunications and other beneficial uses. This represents almost 25% of the world’s population. Having access to electricity can reap huge social and economic benefits. Extending reliable energy to the world's poor is crucial to encouraging economic progress and improving social welfare in developing countries. In light of rising global greenhouse gas emissions, achieving energy goals in a way that is environmentally sustainable is also essential. 

Our idea is to start by empowering rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa with electricity. Sub-Saharan Africa is blessed with an abundance of irradiation of sunlight which can be harnessed and converted to useful electricity by means of solar photovoltaic panels. However, such devices are expensive and the technological barrier of entry to such locations is high. Hence, the idea is to also incorporate a financial model to finance the implementation of solar power to these areas.

This can indeed become a reality by connecting the financial mechanism of carbon trade with corporate and private social responsibility together.  To achieve this, we are in the process of inventing a device that will make such a project more cost effective.  AriffMunshi80.0

“Child’s Play” is an arts education program that develops communication skills in underserved children.  Research has demonstrated that "at risk" children benefit academically and intellectually from arts education - and solid presentation skills are vital to any future job or career. 

This course has been successfully implemented for 4 years in 2 U.S. cities -- helping students improve vocabulary, diction, and reading skills, as it builds teamwork, fosters self-esteem, and teaches students the intrinsic value of serving others.  Its mission is vital – and its potential is limitless. childsplay0580.0

Its high time we stopped taking drinking water for granted as a resource. Too little too late would land us up in a situation best described by the title.  With water tables depleting at an alarming rate and fresh water resources shrinking rapidly there is need for action.

A lot has been spoken about rain water harvesting, the methods and advantages. But it is one idea which has really not taken off on a large scale. This could partly be because of ignorance and lack of expertise.

I propose a website which shall help customers by providing good rain water harvesting solutions. Having good links with architects and civil engineers, new houses can be modelled with these solutions. This would mean an overall business for architects, engineers, website developers and customer satisfaction. The website would also include a host of eco friendly solutions like what type of solar panels/ wind mills to use and where to place them to optimize their effect.

This idea if recognised and supported would provide a strong and much needed impetus to rain water harvesting.
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Loyal Label is a for-profit socially conscious clothing company focused on connecting people to causes they care about through sustainable and stylish apparel. The company is made up of seven lines, each connected to a different cause. The first six lines are Water, Hunger, Life, Earth, Learning, and Peace. Profits from each of these lines will fund initiatives with relevant partner charities. The seventh line, Loyal, is tied to our own cause, The Loyal Foundation, which distributes grants to young aspiring social entrepreneurs. The company is unique in that every item in the product mix is tired directly to a tangible outcome.

Items in each line will be tied to a direct action. For example, a t-shirt from the Hunger line will give a child 20 meals, while one from the Earth line will cover the cost to plant five trees. This model of creating a connection between a customer and a solution is what distinguishes Loyal Label from other companies in the apparel market. We call it the “Consumer/Cause Connection.”

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Our goal is to bring free health care services to the neighborhoods in need through mobile bus. Analogous to Meals-on-Wheels-method, our bus will visit neighborhoods that often suffer significant decrease in the quality of citizens’ lives due to lack of care received. These families sometimes even do not receive most basic health care, and suffer diseases that are easily preventable.

 

Therefore, the mission of “Doc on Wheels” is to reduce the number of people suffering these diseases and to maintain the health of general population by bringing free clinic to the neighborhoods weekly.  Instead of having needy family to invest time and money to receive care from clinics or hospitals, we will bring those services to them through partnership with local medical school and hospitals.

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One man’s trash certainly is another man’s treasure, but we’ve got an even more efficient formula that will make every man’s trash our treasure. We have come up with an extensive business model that will not only solve a tide of social, environmental and economic problems but will also make us a good a buck while we are at it. We will be using Lahore (major city of Pakistan), whose current state of affairs is mutual to those of many cities of the developing world, as our pilot city. Most of the problems these cities face are interlinked and we believe that the inefficient allocation of resources is a major cause. Our business model uncovers the links between the problems and provides a step-wise cycle to root them out.

Step 1: Involves the conversion of the various slums of Lahore into communities with hygiene-controlled collection plants. These communities will have residential facilities, for the slums’ population, with infrastructure of standard that far exceeds that of an average slum. The slums’ adult population, irrespective of their gender, will be offered full-time jobs in the garbage collection and sorting process. The collection plants are where the people who are hired as garbage collectors will bring all the garbage after collecting it from the area of the city assigned to them. On the plants, the garbage sorters will be responsible for separating and categorizing the garbage collected there i.e. separating paper, cans, glass, steel etc.

Step 2: Involves transporting this garbage from collection plants in various communities to a major processing unit. The employees that will be carrying out the logistics will originally be selected from a pool of unskilled labor, preferably from the lower-most class, and will be given the required training in order to attain drivers’ licenses and other essentials. Once transported, this garbage will be recycled into paper, cans, glass, containers, packages, and a lot more. Apart from the supervising staff, workers employed in the factory, too, will be selected from the pool of unskilled labor and will be trained for their specific tasks.

Result: We will have provided safe housing to those who would never have been able to afford it, provided them with jobs, provided healthy alternative to begging--a common practice in Lahore, cleaned the streets revitalizing beauty and aura of the entire city, reduced the number of trees being cut down for pulp to make paper, saved scarce resources such as fossil fuels which are used in making virgin plastic, and last but not the least made a profit. The complete package, a business model which would be every Economist’s dream; saves the government from having to spend colossal amounts in order to curb unemployment, provide housing, eradicate poverty, and at the same time gives it some tax revenue in exchange.

Sustainability: At present, 21.2% of all recyclable waste in Lahore is recycled, and it generates an amount of US$4.5 million per year. If recycling is adopted as an industry, it can generate revenues of around US$20 million per year, and can also save enormous amount of energy, as well as the natural resources.

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FashionACTION is a new alternative that can transform our conventional ways of giving. An online marketplace, FashionACTION brings together buyers and sellers with the ultimate goal of promoting and increasing charitable giving towards programs that empower women and girls. Investing in girls has proven to be an effective tool in breaking the cycle of global poverty. FashionACTION aims to generate awareness of local, national and international organizations that operate programs to address this issue and help these charities in their efforts to eradicate poverty and injustice. In this unique marketplace, sellers donate designer accessories to be auctioned for buyers to bid on. Proceeds of a winning bid will be given to support a charity of the buyer’s choice. The seller will be able to select from a list of charities that the buyer must choose from.  However, all charities will centre around three common themes of women and girl’s empowerment: increasing health and safety, improving access to education and enhancing livelihoods.

FashionACTION will engage people who would not necessarily directly donate to a cause by providing them with a revolutionary avenue for them to purchase new and used luxury goods at a discounted price. Fashion meets altruism on this platform where both the buyers and the sellers can immediately see the difference they make once the transaction is complete. Charities will also benefit from an innovative online fundraising solution to help them build their financial base, so they can continue providing essential services that invest in women, children and communities worldwide. FashionAction1020.0