[1] Brilliance Inside
This week on the podcast, I spoke with Mariette Fourmeaux, founder of Brilliance Inside – a mission working with prison populations to heal society’s cycle of violence. She shares this journey in a profound manner – along with her approach of showing up as both a student and as a teacher. Since her arrival, she’s enabled inmates to organize and put an entire TEDx event from within the walls of their prison.
[2] The Multibillion-Dollar Potential Of Social Innovation
Ashoka explores cool ideas in Germany creating an impact, and how to further the adoption of social entrepreneurship. For example, Discovering Hands is employing specially trained blind women to discover tiny breast cancer tumors with their hands. Apeiros is building better communication to help schools reduce absenteeism. Their suggestion: encourage experimentation.
[3] Reducing Water Consumption
Social entrepreneurship is gaining traction in Qatar… students worked on innovative ideas for reducing water consumption, such as a project by a student named Sawalha who found ways to reduce agricultural water consumption by 40% using mixes of water with natural substances like gum arabic. Contests like these are great for raising awareness and testing ideas… great to see them spread around the world.
[4] Startup Weekend on the Bandwagon
Startup Weekend – the global organization running hack-a-thons around the world – is beginning to launch events specialized around social entrepreneurship. (Note, I love Give Back Hack’s approach to this, because they really focus on providing support for teams after the weekend to continue on). The bigger picture: hack-a-thons are an awesome way to expose more people to social entrepreneurship, which in turn leads to more change. Hack away!
[5] CEOs of Tomorrow Land in Botswana
CEOs of Tomorrow is a social entrepreneurship incubator for students, teaching them real-world business and leadership skills to make an impact. This year 8 innovators took a trip to Gaborone, Botswana, where they paired up with local youth, to share ideas and collaborate on launching a new business… and launched a new t-shirt brand in the process.