Failing to Win: Lessons from an entrepreneur who went ‘all in’
After backpacking across Africa in search of changemakers building scalable, high-impact businesses, Canadian entrepreneur Mike Quinn convinced his retired parents to mortgage their house and lend him $100,000 to co-found Zoona, one of the continent’s earliest fintechs. That risk paid off big time, as Zoona went on to process $2.5 billion of transactions and generate […]
Growing Haiti’s food systems with determination and partners
Even before the novel coronavirus became a global threat, the United Nations had dire predictions for Haiti in 2020. A UN humanitarian agency report in December 2019 forecast that within months 40 percent of Haitians would “require urgent humanitarian assistance.” Causes included political upheaval, insecurity and rising food prices. Adding a pandemic to the mix […]
How Can Businesses Support Economic Inclusion for People in Extreme Poverty?
Before COVID-19, over 700 million people worldwide were living in extreme poverty. The pandemic could push an additional 150 million people into extreme poverty by the end of 2021. People experiencing extreme poverty already have limited access to health care, food, clean water, and public services. They face obstacles in accessing markets, employment opportunities, and […]
Women entrepreneurs make changing norms the new norm
As we’ve noted before, success in the social sector is usually seen as “scaling out” — as described by Iman Bibars, regional director of Ashoka Arab World. This male-dominated “franchise model” often results in big budgets and large numbers of beneficiaries. But many women take a different, incredibly successful approach: “scaling deep.” “When women adopt a […]
What are the innovations that could shape and transform the next decade?
The essential systems transformations that sit at the heart of the delivery of the SDGs will all depend on innovation: in decarbonization technologies, transport technologies, in preventative healthcare and in gene technologies, materials and materials reuse, in building design, building use and reuse, in sanitation and in the sanitation economy, in agricultural practices, food storage […]
Five Questions on Partnership with the Pollinate Group
1.What is Pollinate Group’s business model? Pollinate Group is a social enterprise with a mission to empower women as leaders of change to distribute products that improve health, save time and save money for the world’s most neglected communities. It was established in Bangalore in 2013, and later expanded to Hyderabad, Kolkata, Kanpur and Lucknow. […]
From Suicidal Depression to Social Entrepreneur: Creating a New $bn Industry for Rural Africa
15 years ago I was working in the London advertising industry, promoting products I didn’t believe in for clients who didn’t appreciate it. I ended up asking myself ‘What am I doing with my life?’ The lack of a sense of true purpose and meaning in my life lead me into a downward spiral and, […]
New Fund to Address Social Isolation Through Technology Closing Soon
Social isolation is a major public health concern, affecting people of many backgrounds, ages, locations and socio-economic circumstances. Research has shown that this issue can be linked to poor physical and mental health as well as potentially negative effects on communities. And those effects are felt most by those communities affected by additional challenges such […]
The Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Awards 2019: Open for Applications Until 30 June
The , delivered by Unilever and the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, support and celebrate inspirational young people from all over the world who have initiatives, products or services tackling some of the planet’s biggest sustainability challenges. Now in their sixth year, the Awards have reached over 5,800 entrepreneurs, and provided tailored support […]
Corporate / Impact Enterprise Partnerships: Still Hard, Still Worth It.
I’ve often worked at the intersection of multinational corporations (MNCs) and smaller, BOP-focused ‘impact enterprises’, some of them led by the most extraordinary entrepreneurs on the planet. Much of the help corporates offer them is time bound investment or technical support to strengthen their businesses. From time to time, though, the opportunity presents itself for […]
Are You Driving Social Impact within the Health Innovation Space?
In Germany, time constraints often mean that breast cancer screening examinations are done quickly. Frank Hoffman CEO and Founder of Discovering Hands has worked as a gynaecologist since 1993. During this time, Frank always focused his practice on early detection. But he also believed that the examination could be optimised; “The idea occurred to me […]
Building Scalable and Self-Sustaining Safe Water Enterprises
Imagine a life without safe drinking water. It isn’t easy. Most of us take for granted that we can just turn on a tap and fill a glass. But that’s not an option for roughly one in four of the world’s population — the 2.1 billion people who still lack access to safe drinking water […]
8 SSIR Articles on Businesses Pursuing a Social Mission
Consumers increasingly expect businesses to look out for not only their shareholders, but also society at large. They want to see their values reflected in the products and services they use, and prefer brands that invest in meaningful, long-term relationships with their customers. Companies that take time to listen and respond to these consumer demands […]
Entrepreneurs Are Changing The World
Entrepreneurship has proven to have a positive impact on today’s global challenges. Each one of us, by developing and using our strengths and skills, are agents of social change. As stated by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, over 43% of the global population pictures themselves starting a business in the next six months. Entrepreneurship is becoming […]
Meet the Longlist: Unilever Global Development Award, Supported by Business Fights Poverty
For the fifth year in a row, Business Fights Poverty is partnering with Unilever and Business in the Community on an award that recognises businesses that demonstrate positive impact against one or more of the SDGs Business has a key role to play in helping drive progress on ending poverty and protecting the planet. More […]
Helping Refugees Move From Crisis To Resilience and Self-Reliance
It is estimated that, on average, a refugee spends over a decade in exile. This means that many refugee children, who make up more than half the world’s refugees, will spend most of their childhood in exile, jeopardizing their education and access to future economic opportunities. For millions of refugee adults, decades of displacement have […]
Virtual Exchange: Students Collaborate to Tackle Social Enterprise Challenges in the Middle East
“I’ve never worked with people from so far away. M²GATE gave me the opportunity to work with people from another culture. I enjoyed it a lot,” said Ryan Berg, a freshman at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan at the final session of Cohort 1 of the M²GATE program. M²GATE is […]
Time to Re-energise the INGO Model Through Structural Innovation
The international NGO sector faces significant disruption to its business models in the next decade. As IARAN has noted, INGOs must think deeply about what kind of organisation they want to be in 2030 if they are to keep pace with shifts in demography, technology, climate, geopolitics and much else besides. For UK-based INGOs, such […]
Making the Most of Interesting Times – and Achieving the Global Goals
As Robert Kennedy remarked in 1966, “Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.” For many of us, the first months of 2018 will go down in history as a similarly interesting […]
The Transition from Aid: Are Businesses Up To The Challenge?
The fabric that makes up international development has many threads, each making a vital contribution. Fortunately the edges around the boxes of ‘who does what’ are more blurred than they were even a decade ago when the transfer of financial resources and expertise usually flowed from ‘North’ to ‘South’. Further blurring of roles is occurring […]