Poverty Alleviation Through Business: New Monitor Group Report
Great review of the current wave of creative business models emerging as a response to poverty and environmental challenges worldwide. This report highlights seven successful business models that have been tried and tested in various low-income, rural areas as poverty alleviation initatives. Interesting read on a rapidly evolving market: “Emerging Markets, Emerging Models“.
Change we believe in: Climate Policy and Social Innovation Branches added to the White House
The US Executive office just added two innovative new branches: The Office for Energy and Climate Change Policy and the Office for Social Innovation and Citizen Participation.
The climate policy office will support climate science institutions nationally, oversee the EPA’s plan to launch a national cap-and-trade, and provide public education and communications around basic climate science. This office will manage the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, an ongoing dialogue between key developed and developing countries regarding sustainable energy and emissions reductions. Leaders of 16 major economies as well as the Secretary General of the UN have been invited to participate. Their website, globalchange.gov, also hosts a 13-agency report on the latest climate science, a ‘game-changer’ aimed at shedding light on climate research that has been conducted and suppressed over the past eight years.
The social innovation office will be directed by Sonal Shah, Google.org’s former strategic director, and former head of environmental strategy at Goldman Sachs. Her first task is managing a 50-million social innovation fund written into Obama’s 2010 budget. Investments and partnerships will focus on innovation around healthcare, education, poverty alleviation, and local environmental initiatives.
The Power of Unreasonable People
As Bill Strickland stated in Make the Impossible Possible, “Why not do something remarkable with our time on the planet? Why not set our sights outrageously high?”. Jon Elkington, founder of the consulting firm and think tank SustainAbility, just published an excellent new book on social entrepreneurship that addresses this exact issue.
The Power of Unreasonable People, co-authored by Pamela Hartigan, shows how social entrepreneurs are solving some of the world’s most pressing economic, social, and environmental problems — and in the process are creating growing markets across the globe.
The Guardian also covers the book in the article “Let’s be unreasonable about this”.
Green For All
What comes first on the agenda: Poverty or environmental issues?
Why not both?
Green For All has a simple but ambitious mission: to help build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. By advocating for a national commitment to job training, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy- especially for people from disadvantaged communities. Green for All will fight both poverty and pollution at the same time. GFA is committed to creating “green pathways out of poverty” for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, by greatly expanding federal government and private sector commitments to “green-collar” jobs.
Green For All is led by Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, CA. It launched at the Clinton Global Initiative this fall in New York. Partnerships include the Apollo Alliance, Color for Change, and regional initiatives such as Sustainable South Bronx.
Hello world!
January 24, 2008, 7:46 am
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sustainable developmentThis site is a piecemeal assortment of news and writing on anything related to sustainable design, international development, innovative leadership, biomimicry, social entrepreneurship, sustainable business, and other new ways of looking at old problems: All aimed at shaping a future that hasn’t yet arrived. If you have a post to contribute, news tidbit, or comment, please drop a note and say hi. You can also find me on linkedin. Welcome!
“Here’s to the trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and have no respect for the status-quo. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
