[1] Supporting Mental Health of Child Patients
This week on the People Helping People Podcast, Ryan Scott shared how Bonifier is seeking to help children get better care during their journey in the hospital system. Working outside medical or physical components, Bonifier is developing a 24/7 digital imaginary friend to provide children support then resources are lacking.
[2] Paying attention to untapped opportunities
Karin Underwood, a recent Standford Business Grad, realized that there was a huge opportunity with bringing access to health coaching to the 5 million Medicaid recipients with diabetes or heart diseases – and built up CoachMe Health, an SMS-based coaching platform that helps those on Medicaid achieve better health conditions while lowering their overall medical costs.
[3] The Unjani Clinics Bringing Sustainable Healthcare to South Africa
The Unjani Clinics launched a cool non-profit model to bring healthcare to an area inundated by HIV and economic distress. They train black South African female nurses to own and operate their primary health clinics, at rates affordable to the local area – this creates both jobs and access to healthcare not previously available. As of 2018, they have built 55 clinics and served over 700,000.
[4] Businesses Join the Rewilding Movement
In the rewilding movement, damaged land is restored to a more natural state so wildlife is encouraged to return. One company in Portuguese, Vale das Lobas, is building an ecotourism company around nature-based tourism – tourism that’s balancing the effects of sustainable travel with funding for initiatives that will restore the Malcata mountain range and Douro Valley. The idea is to find a path which brings revenue to the sustainability – without causing more damage or greenwashing in the process.
[5] 622 Million Lives
The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship released it’s 2020 Impact Report and found that through their platform they’ve impacted 622 million lives. They’ve reached 226 million people with education programs, 100 million people with solar products, and impacted 180 million with access to land rights and improvements of laws and policies. It’s an interesting impact report, but it brought up an interesting point: one of the best ways for lasting change is to change our mental models – and social entrepreneurship is providing us new models for creating change. But we really need to take these social entrepreneurship lessons from the last couple of decades and push it into the mainstream.