The Carbon Trust is a UK-based non-profit organization dedicated to helping businesses cut their carbon emissions and move towards a low carbon economy.

What They Do

Carbon Trust programs work to cut carbon emissions in the present by providing specialist advice and financial assistance for businesses wanting to go green, and to promote a low carbon economy for the future by investing in low carbon companies and working to open markets for low carbon technologies. Since the organization was founded in 2001, it has helped business clients save about 25 million tons of carbon and more than $2 billion in energy costs.

Carbon Trust can help your business reduce carbon emissions in many different ways. A few of their services include:

• Telephone support. Businesses of any size can call for free advice on both general and specific issues relating to reducing carbon emissions and energy costs.
• Free carbon surveys. A carbon survey of your office or other location will identify areas where you can improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions through practical, low cost steps.
• Carbon footprinting. Carbon footprinting calculates the overall carbon footprint of your business operations, both direct and indirect, and suggests practical steps to reduce the carbon footprint of your product or service. Carbon Trust offers both organizational and product carbon footprinting.
• Workshops. Carbon Trust runs a number of business workshops annually covering issues such as carbon management and footprinting.
• Carbon management. Carbon Trust offers carbon management consulting for both the public and private sectors, including an initial review, assistance with setting targets and monitoring success, and even help developing greener products and business opportunities!
• Green building design. Carbon Trust can help design and plan green building or remodelling projects.

In addition to these consulting programs, Carbon Trust also offers several financial assistance programs to companies trying to go green. These include interest-free loans of up to £100,000 (more than US$150,000).

Another Carbon Trust program that can benefit green businesses is its certification program. The Carbon Trust Standard is awarded to companies that have successfully implemented carbon reduction programs resulting in genuine reductions, and committed to continued reduction. It offers trusted, independent endorsement of your company’s carbon reduction efforts that will appeal to green consumers and investors alike.

In order to apply for the certification, your company must:

• measure its carbon footprint over a 2-3 year period
• provide evidence of a demonstrable reduction in carbon emissions
• provide evidence of good carbon management

More than 350 companies and organizations have been certified so far.

Finally, the Carbon Trust offers many special programs designed to help innovative low carbon technologies, and even whole industries, develop. This includes the Entrepreneurs Fast Track, which incubates promising low carbon start-ups, Research Challenges, which focuses on supporting R&D in low carbon industries, and Carbon Trust Investments, a venture capital fund focusing on clean technology.

Though the Carbon Trust works primarily in the UK, some of its programs are available internationally, and they offer a great opportunity for businesses trying to go green (or greener) to gain the benefits of professional expertise at little or no cost.

An entrepreneur is an individual who manages a new enterprise (very often a business) of their own creation, whilst assuming the risks of this new venture.

A social entrepreneur, then, is an entrepreneur who drives for social change and progress. Social entrepreneurs have innovative ideas and solutions to the social problems in society. They are capable of identifying the social problems at hand and are driven to create positive social change within society.

Unlike business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs seek the value in changing the societal problems of a community and furthermore society overall. Social entrepreneurs seek the value of social change, as opposed to business entrepreneurs who seek the value in profits. Social entrepreneurs spearhead innovative methods of helping those who are disadvantaged and marginalized, and with the impact of social entrepreneurs, the means to successfully effect social change in a society are realized.

Why Should You Attend Social Entrepreneurship Conferences?

Social entrepreneurship conferences, or social enterprise conferences, are comprised of a variety of individuals, including professionals, students, and speakers, who seek to educate, learn about, network, and collaborate on social entrepreneurship ventures. Social enterprise conferences are a great tool for any social entrepreneur to expand their knowledge about social enterprise and network with other social entrepreneurs.

Social enterprise conferences are beneficial to anyone working on a socially responsible business idea, seeking a career with a non-profit working on social change, or otherwise using innovative ideas to promote change to society’s social problems. At a social entrepreneurship conference, social entrepreneurs can learn about ways to establish effective social change. No matter what stage of social entrepreneur you are, social enterprise conferences will prove to be beneficial to you.

Social entrepreneurship conferences help beginning entrepreneurs gain knowledge and tools to successfully start social enterprises, help social entrepreneurs already working with a business or non-profit to learn about the best practices to successfully effect social change, and help advanced entrepreneurs to network with others, learn from each other, and gain support for their social enterprise. By building a connection with others at a social enterprise conference, social entrepreneurs can advance social enterprise and gain access to additional capital, opportunities, and resources.

Social Enterprise Conferences

The following social enterprise conferences are excellent for all levels of social entrepreneurs to attend, learn from, network, collaborate, and share ideas. These social entrepreneurship conferences host an abundance of information and resources to spread the ideas of social change and to help social entrepreneurs to advance their innovative socially conscious ideas.

The Social Enterprise Conference at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School

The Social Enterprise Conference features over 100 speakers and panelists sharing a wealth of information and knowledge on addressing social issues and advancing as a social entrepreneur. The conference participants, which number over 1,000, include professionals, students, and alumni. The participants have a chance to network with other social entrepreneurs, learn from experts in the field, and explore career opportunities. The Social Enterprise Conference has workshops and small group lunches with leaders in non-profit, public, and private fields, as well as the Social Enterprise Career Fair and the Pitch for Change competition, in which entrants submit proposals and pitch their ideas for new social enterprise ventures. The Social Enterprise Conference was last held on February 27^th and 28^th 2010 at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum

The Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum is a 3 day conference of panels and sessions that brings together social entrepreneurs from over 30 countries around the world. The hundreds of people attending the Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum learn about social entrepreneurship, share ideas with other social entrepreneurs, network, and make connections. There were over 40 panels and workshops at the 2010 Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum held April 28-30 in San Francisco, California. There were also tours of social enterprises based in San Francisco, as well as the Social Enterprise Leadership Awards to honor the most inspirational social entrepreneurs. In 2011, the Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum will be held in Chicago, Illinois.

Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Conference

The Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Conference brings together thought and industry leaders along with industry professionals, including social sector and business leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors, to continue maturing the field of social enterprise. The 2010 Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Conference is a one day event held on October 8^th in New York, New York, and the focus of this year’s Social Enterprise Conference is “Redefining Return: Financing and Scaling Social Innovation.”

Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference

The Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference seeks to advocate economic development and social enterprise locally in Miami, Florida, where this conference for social entrepreneurs takes place. The 2011 Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference (date yet to be announced) focuses on the theme “Get Connected,” connecting to such things as knowledge, capital, the best practices, metrics, and the Latin American/Caribbean Diaspora, which is connected with the Miami area through social enterprise leaders, capital, and organizations. At this 2011 conference for social entrepreneurs, there is expected to be at least 800 leaders from over 40 countries, connecting on social enterprise issues, tactics, and ideas.

Social Venture Partners Conference

This conference for social entrepreneurs connects the Social Venture Partners annually. The Social Venture Partners are a collection of individuals who use philanthropy to make the world a better place for everyone by promoting positive social change. The 2010 Social Venture Partners Conference will take place from October 21-23 in Long Beach, California. This social entrepreneurship conference helps attendees collaborate, connect, and network with one another to promote collective positive social action amongst non-profit organizations through breakout sessions, plenaries, and keynote speakers.

Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship is a joint venture between the Skoll Foundation and The Skoll Center For Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. The Skoll World Forum seeks to encourage collaboration among social entrepreneurs, social investors, and other thought leaders in the quest for effective solutions to the world’s most serious problems. In addition to the speakers and panelists, the Skoll World Forum hosts the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. 2010 Awardees included the founders of Telapak, a social enterprise working to fight deforestation in Indonesia, Imazon, an independent monitoring system for the Amazon Rainforest, and the One Acre Fund, an enterprise working to empower rural farmers in Africa. The 2011 Skoll World Forum will be held March 30-April at the University of Oxford.

Global Social Venture Conference

The Global Social Venture Conference is a two day conference held in Berkeley, California and organized by the University of California Haas School of Business. The event combines a social enterprise conference with the awards ceremony for the annual Global Social Venture Competition, a student-led business plan competition that provides financial rewards, publicity, and mentoring for winners, such as Re:Motion Designs, a company that provides high performance, low cost prosthetic limbs to amputees in the developing world. In addition to the awards dinner, the conference includes a symposium, panel discussions, and speakers. The 2010 conference was held April 22-23, 2010.

SHINE Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs

The SHINE Unconference for Social Entrepreneurs seeks to provide a “mini business school” to beginning and experience social entrepreneurs alike that will provide practical tools and advice, mentorship, and networking opportunities to help social enterprises succeed. A unique feature of the conference is its one-on-one advice sessions, pairing new entrepreneurs with experienced mentors to work on topics such as marketing, funding, investment, and more. The 2010 SHINE Unconference was held May 13-15, 2010 in London, England.

Satter Conference on Social Entrepreneurs

The Satter Conference on Social Entrepreneurs features experts from the fields of academia, non-profit, and for-profit business discussing knowledge, theories and strategies for social enterprise success, with a focus on measuring social impact and fundraising. The conference emphasizes practical, hands-on solutions and instruction for attendees and will be held starting November 5, 2010 at New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Voice10

Voice10 is the annual conference of the UK-based Social Enterprise Coalition. The 2010 conference, which was held February 1-2 in Cardiff, Wales, attracted nearly 1,000 delegates and exhibitors to a wide variety of panels, discussions, and breakout sessions exploring everything from the basics of starting and setting up a social enterprise to expansion, mergers and acquisitions, and more. Voice10 also offers free “surgery” sessions for social entrepreneurs seeking customized business, financial, or legal advice.

Social Capital Markets

Social Capital Markets, commonly known as SOCAP, is an annual conference focusing on “the intersection of money and meaning,” including social investing, corporate philanthropy, and social entrepreneurship. The schedule features seven “tracks,” including tactical philanthropy, mobile technology, food systems, innovation in international development, impact investing, new money, and metrics and systems thinking. SOCAP10 will be held October 4, 5, and 6th in San Francisco, CA.

The Unite for Site Global Health and Innovation Conference

This social entrepreneurship conference connects leaders, change makers, and other participants from the field of social entrepreneurship as well as the fields of global health and international development. The Unite for Site Global Health and Innovation Conference consisting of over 2,000 participants from over 55 countries connects individuals who seek to use social entrepreneurship to identify global issues and create positive social change. This 2011 conference for social entrepreneurs will take place on April 16^th and 17^th in New Haven, Connecticut.

Image Credit: Renjie Butalid

Greening your business can be great for the environment, great for your customers, and great for your bottom line. Whether you are just beginning to explore green options for your business, or whether your “green cred” is well established, partnering with nonprofits and other organizations that are experienced in reducing the social and environmental impact of products and operations is a great way to bring your green initiatives to the next level.

One nonprofit organization that specializes in helping businesses go green is GreenBlue. GreenBlue is dedicated to developing industrial systems that mimic the “closed loop systems” of natural ecosystems. Instead of lawyers or lobbyists, GreenBlue is staffed primarily by scientists, engineers, design professionals, and business strategists who are experts in the art of developing solutions to problems such as improving the sustainability of packaging, product ingredients and components, and office buildings that are as practical as they are eco-friendly.

How GreenBlue Can Help Your Green Business

GreenBlue has five main areas of operation:

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is an industry working group devoted to developing standards and solutions for packaging that is socially and ecologically responsible while meeting industry and market standards. The group’s projects include a 104-page report providing sustainability education and design guidance for packaging professionals, an online design software program that allows engineers and designers to view detailed assessments of the environmental and social impacts of their packaging choices over the lifecycle of the packaging material, a sustainable packaging design course, and more.

CleanGredients is a subscription-based online database of chemicals used in cleaning products. CleanGredients helps formulators identify ingredients with minimal environmental and social impacts when designing new cleaning products, and offers a resource to help marketers showcase the environmental benefits of green cleaning products. The database currently lists surfactants and solvents. Listings for fragrances and chelating agents are under development.

Green2Green is a free online resource for building professionals that allows them to perform side-by-side comparisons of green building materials based on attributes such as basic characteristics, environmental impact, and performance in order to identify the greenest choice that is appropriate for a specific buildings needs.

GreenBlue recently acquired fellow nonprofit Metafore in a rare non-profit merger, and has continued Metafore’s programs, which focus on helping businesses evaluate, select, or manufacture environmentally sustainable wood and paper products. Metafore’s projects include the Forest Certification Resource Center, an online database that helps businesses identify certified wood and paper manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and other industry traders, and the Environmental Paper Assessment Tool, which helps buyers and sellers of paper select the most environmentally sustainable option.

Finally, GreenBlue offers one-on-one advisory services tailored to the needs of your business, including sustainability scenario planning, metrics development and application, materials assessment, and implementation plans.

With so many existing resources available, greening your business does not mean reinventing the wheel. The tools and services offered by GreenBlue can be an important starting point for any company wishing to green its operations and services.

MBAs Without Borders, a project of CDC Development Solutions, is a non-profit organization that connects experienced volunteer businessmen and women with NGOs and social enterprises in the developing world to share expertise.

What They Do

MBAs Without Borders focuses on projects in five main areas – agriculture, health, finance, income-generation, and the environment – and has sent volunteers to more than 20 countries, including Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Poland, and Haiti. Volunteer assignments typically last anywhere from two weeks to more than a year. Though the assignments are unpaid, volunteers do receive free air fare, health insurance, and other benefits, as well as a stipend to cover living expenses. MBAs Without Borders uses a cost-sharing program with the host organization in order to reduce costs for both MBAs Without Borders itself and the NGO employing the volunteer.

Interested MBAs must apply for volunteer positions as they would for any other job, and the competition for some can be intense – as many as 100 applicants for a single position. Successful applicants must have an MBA, at least three years of work experience, experience living or working overseas, and fluency in at least one foreign language.

Sample Projects

MBAs Without Borders volunteer Omar Yacub took an assignment in Nigeria, working with Vestergaard Frandsen, a Swiss company that needed helping marketing its new and improved mosquito nets. A child dies of malaria every 30 seconds in Nigeria alone, and sleeping under mosquito nets can reduce infection rates by up to 90%, but many families do not use the nets because they have a reputation for being fragile and ultimately ineffective. Many people also consider them primitive and just plain ugly. Vestergaard Frandsen’s nets were more durable and longer-lasting than their competitors’ nets, but they suffered from the same associations and unattractive appearance. Yacub helped the company overcome these consumer associations by creating more attractive packaging to catch customer’s attention and adding brightly colored nets in addition to the traditional plain white to fit local tastes better. He also took advantage of Nigeria’s booming film and television industry – “Nollywood” is now the third largest film industry in the world, after the US and India – and purchased spots in popular Nigerian soap operas and movies – product placement!

Blake Dinkin went to Rwanda to help Dancing Pots, an organization that aimed to help the impoverished indigenous Batwa people create a sustainable livelihood through crafts. In an effort to cut costs and lower the program’s environmental impact in the already heavily deforested region, Dinkin helped develop a system for using charcoal briquettes made from coffee bean parchment, instead of wood, to fire the pots, cutting costs by 220% and reducing pressure on Rwanda’s remaining forests.

Jon Ven Johnson went to Laos, where he did financial consulting for a social enterprise called Digital Divide Data that trains poor and disadvantaged youth in Laos and Cambodia to perform digital services for companies in North America, Europe, and Asia, in order to help the rapidly growing organization improve its accounting and financial reporting procedures.

How You Can Help

If you meet the requirements for an MBA Without Borders volunteer, consider applying for one of their current projects.

If you don’t meet the requirements, or can’t make the commitment at the present time, you can still help by making a donation or helping spread the word about the organization’s work among business friends and colleagues. You can also help spread the word by joining MBAs Without Borders’s Facebook group, LinkedIn group, or Ning social network.

Microfinance is one of the hot trends in social enterprise right now. Microfinance organizations issue small “microloans” – sometimes as little as $25 – to entrepreneurs, most often in the developing world. Many of these entrepreneurs do not have access to traditional forms of capital. These loans enable them to start or expand a business, helping the entrepreneur lift him or herself out of poverty.

One of the fastest-growing microfinance organizations is Kiva Micro Loans.

How It Works

Unlike many other microfinance organizations, Kiva does not make loans itself. Instead, it partners with other microfinance organizations, called Field Partners. Kiva’s Field Partners make and disburse microloans to individuals and groups in their country of operation. The Field Partner then uploads borrower photos and stories to Kiva, where volunteers publish them to Kiva.org.

Once the profile is published to the website, lenders can start funding the loan. They can fund anywhere from $25 to the full loan request. When the loan is fully funded, Kiva disperse the money to the Field Partner, which uses it to replenish the money from its earlier loan to the borrower.

As the borrower repays the loan, the money is repaid by the Field Partner to Kiva, which repays the lenders. Lenders can either withdraw the money from the repaid loan, donate it to Kiva, or use it to fund another loan.

How Kiva Uses Social Media To Fight Poverty

Kiva has made extensive use of social media marketing to build its community of lenders.

In fact, Kiva is one of the most successful Web 2.0 organizations, combining a charitable purpose with social media features that encourage member participation and build a sense of community. Like many traditional social networking sites, Kiva lenders have a public profile displaying select information about the lender, as well as invite-a-friend features.

One of Kiva’s most popular social media features is the Teams feature, which allows Kiva members to join “Lending Teams” organized around specific interests or affiliations. This not only encourages a spirit of community within groups, it also encourages a spirit of friendly competition between them, resulting in loans filling faster and keeping interest levels in the site high. For example, there is an ongoing friendly competition between the two top Lending Teams – “Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious” and “Kiva Christians” – that has resulted in a combined total of more than $3,500,000 loaned by these two teams alone!

Many of Kiva’s lending teams are centered around universities and other educational institutions, and Kiva is reaching out to college and high school students even more directly with its Campus Kiva and Kiva High School programs.

Kiva also makes extensive use of other social media sites to promote its own, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Squidoo.

The most devoted Kiva lenders have even created their own community, an unofficial forum called Kiva Friends, which now has nearly 6000 members and more than 80,000 posts.

How You Can Help

The easiest way to help is to sign up and make a loan! You can filter available loans by factors including the gender of the recipient, the country where he or she lives, and the business sector he or she works in.

You can also help by spreading the word through social media, posting a banner on your website, and becoming a Kiva Fellow.

The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) is a non-profit social enterprise working to educate girls in sub-Saharan Africa.

An estimated 24 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa cannot afford to go to school, a problem that will have lifelong consequences for them. Studies have found that girls with secondary education earn up to 25% more money than uneducated girls, are three times less likely to become HIV positive, and have children who are 40% more likely to live past the age of five.

What CAMFED Does

CAMFED seeks to solve this problem with a unique, community-based program that offers long-term assistance and support to girls selected by members of the local community as being most in need of help.

CAMFED begins its assistance in the elementary years, with a Safety Net Fund for each of the elementary school in their network. This fund is used in emergency situations to prevent a student from dropping out of school due to lack of money. The fund can also be used to purchase teaching supplies.

At the secondary school level, when school costs rise substantially in many parts of the region, CAMFED provides financial assistance in the form of assistance with school fees, uniforms, books, and supplies, and covers room and board costs for girls who live too far from school to walk. Girls may also receive individualized assistance to help solve specific family problems preventing them from staying or succeeding in school. For example, the family of a girl whose widowed mother spent weeks away from home tending the family’s small plot of land 18 kilometers away, leaving her oldest daughter in charge of the three younger children, received a bicycle so the mother could travel to and from the field every day, instead of spending a full day walking there. As a result of this long-term, customized support, more than 90% of CAMFED’s girls go on to graduate from the program.

CAMFED also provides scholarships for girls interested in continuing their educations at the university level. Graduates of the secondary education program are also offered business training through CAMFED’s Seed Money program, which teaches economic skills and offers microfinance grants and loans to help young women start their own business.

Many of these classes are taught by members of CAMA, the CAMFED Association, an organization of CAMFED graduates which now includes more than 14,000 women across Africa. CAMA members give back to the program and their local communities by activities such as providing business training and mentoring to their fellow graduates, serving as Community Health Trainers to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS, and donating to support other girls through school.

CAMFED’s impact has been significant. Since its founding in 1993, CAMFED has helped improve the school environment for more than 1,000,000 children in Ghana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, provided scholarships for more than 40,000 girls to finish high school, and helped more than 700 girls attend college. CAMFED’s microfinance program has trained more than 10,000 women in business skills and helped more than 7,000 women start or expand businesses. Through CAMA, CAMFED has also trained more than 1,500 community health activists.

What You Can Do

CAMFED founder Ann Cotton started her campaign for girls’ education with a bake sale! Today, CAMFED offers a variety of unique ways to support the organization’s great work in Africa, including marathons and triathalons, film screenings, and memorial gifts.

CAMFED also makes it easy to raise awareness of CAMFED and connect with other CAMFED supporters through its Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SocialVibe, and other social media accounts.

Ecodana is a San Francisco-based for-profit social enterprise that seeks to improve the lives of the rural poor around the world by facilitating funding for small-scale, sustainable projects in their communities.

What They Do

Ecodana partners with non-profit organizations working to fight poverty and environmental degradation in developing countries with small-scale, sustainable projects that make a real difference in people’s lives.

In exchange for a 10% fee, Ecodana helps each project get the funding it needs by crowdsourcing donations through its website. Unlike traditional charities, which often have minimum donation figures, Ecodana focuses on micro-donations, believing that many small steps can make as much difference as one large one. As the website declares, “For the price of a coffee and a donut, you can change people’s lives.”

Although donations are not tax-deductible, donors can follow the progress of the projects they have helped fund through updates by email, Facebook, or on Ecodana’s website. Ecodana’s partners provide detailed information and photographs documenting the progress of each project. For example, you can check out the progress reports on a previously funded project that seeks to improve village health and nutrition by planting Moringa trees, also known as “miracle trees” due to their high nutritional quality and medicinal uses.

Much like the popular microfinance charity Kiva, Ecodana offers donors the opportunity to donate directly to a specific project, and in many cases to “meet” the individuals and families directly benefiting from their donation through photos and progress reports, an opportunity rarely offered by traditional charities.

Current Projects

One Ecodana project enlists schoolchildren to help collect plastic litter for recycling.

Ecodana is currently helping fund projects for partners Thien Chi and Anh Duong in Vietnam and the Asociacion Amigas del Sol in Guatemala, including:

• Biogas Systems for Vietnam. In many parts of rural Vietnam, the most important source of income for families is livestock farming. Unfortunately, manure is often discharged into community waterways, polluting the water and presenting a health risk to local human, livestock, and wildlife populations. Installing inexpensive biogas systems will not only solve the problem of improper manure disposal, it also provides a clean, renewable source of energy for local farmers, reducing carbon emissions and deforestation.
• Compost Latrines for Guatemala. In rural Guatemala, the most common toilet facilities are simply holes dug in the ground. These holes attract flies and other disease-carrying organisms, leading to periodic outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and other diseases. Building dry composting latrines not only will enable rural Guatemalan families to improve local sanitation, it will also provide them with a safe source of fertilizer for their fields.
• Plastic Recycling for Vietnam. Littering is a major problem in rural Vietnam, with only about 30-40% of the 100 million tons of trash accumulated every year properly collected and disposed of. Educating schoolchildren about the impact of pollution and enlisting them to help collect plastic waste for recycling will not only help clean up rural Vietnam and educate the people about the importance of proper waste disposal, it will also provide a source of income for schools to fund scholarships and improve facilities.

How You Can Help

You can help fund one of Ecodana’s current projects, or donate to The Well, a “rainy day” fund that helps cover unexpected expenses on completed projects, such as repairs due to damage from natural disasters.

You can also help by raising awareness of Ecodana’s work on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks around the web.

Salaam Garage is an organization of citizen journalists that seeks to make a difference in the world by telling stories that will raise awareness and effect positive change in the world.

What Do They Do

Salaam Garage organizes trips for participants to visit and observe the work of non-governmental organizations in countries around the world. Salaam Garage provides the guidance, translators, support staff and other assistance travelers need to ensure a truly personal, hand-on experience that will change the lives of travelers and hosts alike. These citizen journalists then report on the people they meet, the work they observe, and the social and political context of the problem the organization is seeking to solve through words, pictures, videos, and other communications on social networking sites across the world wide web.

By sharing photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, status updates on Twitter, and more, Salaam Garage and its members seek to harness the power of social media to raise awareness of the work of the featured organization and help that organization achieve its goal of effecting positive change.

Past trips have included a visit to Vatsayla, an NGO that helps street children and women in Jaipur, India by providing education, vocational training, internships, and other assistance, and to PeaceTrees Vietnam, which clears land mines, provides mine risk training, assists survivors of land mine explosions, and works to rebuild rural Vietnam by planting trees, building schools and libraries, and more.

How You Can Help

Because Salaam Garage relies so heavily on social media to do its good work around the world, one of the most important things you can do is follow Salaam Garage on Facebook, on Twitter, on Flickr, and on your RSS aggregator of choice. Spreading awareness of Salaam Garage and its projects will help Salaam Garage get the word out about the great organizations it supports.

For the adventurous, consider signing up for one of Salaam Garage’s trips. Travelers are responsible for funding their own participation, and Salaam Garage limits the number of travelers per trip in order to minimize impact on the local community, but for successful applicants, the trips offer a unique opportunity to make a difference.

The next planned trip will visit Ethiopia in November 2010, where it will raise awareness of the work of the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The hospital treats obstetric fistulas, an injury that occurs as a result of prolonged or obstructed labor and causes a tear to form between the vagina and the bladder, rectum, or both. Fistulas causes urine and/or feces to leak constantly from the vagina, an embarrassing and unsanitary condition that can lead girls to be abandoned by their husbands and families. The condition requires surgery to correct. Teenage girls are the most frequent victims, due to their underdeveloped pelvises, which may be too small to allow a normal vaginal birth.

The Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital performs 3000 corrective surgeries per year, provides training for doctors and midwives to help prevent and treat fistulas, and educates patients and other local women about reproductive health, birth control, and women’s rights.

B Corp Certification is given by B Lab, a Pennsylvania based nonprofit organization that aims to support the emerging B Corp sector by certifying and rating, recruiting and promoting B Corps, demystifying the legal frameworks surrounding the B Corps, and more. 

What is a B Corporation?

Social responsibility is a key element of a B corporation’s business philosophy. B corporation pledge to take care of the interests of not just the business shareholders but all its stake holders – the society, the environment and the communities it engages with. A company that aspires to obtain a B Corp Certification must make the necessary changes to its articles of incorporation, obtain a minimum score of 80 (on a scale of 200) on the B ratings system, pay an annual licensing fee to B labs and submit to recertification every two years.

Why should you consider becoming a certified B Corporation?

B Corp Certification is important whether you want to brand your existing business as a socially responsible enterprise or set up your own home based green business.  It helps customers cut through the crap and clearly understand the company’s value proposition. The biggest advantage enjoyed by B Corporations is that though they may be small individually, their collective annual revenues are in excess of $ 1 billion making them a force to be reckoned with.

1. Special tax status- The concept of a B corporation was born in 2006. Since then, over 300 companies have signed up. A few US states have given a legal status to B corporations. Efforts are afoot to have a tax incentive in place for B corporations that commit to caring for the community. Philadelphia has already committed itself to offering tax breaks to certified B Corporations.
2. Umbrella Branding -B Corp Certification is like an umbrella brand that helps cut marketing expense. Consumers have indicated their preference for dealing with companies that are driven by motives other than profit. In the current business and legal environment it makes sense to be seen as a socially responsible business. B Corp Certification allows businesses to display the B certified logo and benefit from the promotion of the B certified business by B labs.
3. Access to advice and discounted services – B service partners offer tools and services at discounted prices to B certified businesses and B labs supports certified companies meet their social and environmental goals.

Here are 3 innovative B Corporations

As of August 2008, there were over 120 B Corporations. Here are 3 examples of Certified B Corporations.
1) Pura Vida Coffee

A 2009 study showed that consumers included in the study group rated Pura Vida coffee as better than Starbucks. The Seattle based company is the baby of Sage and Dearnley. Pura Vida Coffee is a company with a heart. Its coffee is 100% organic (free from hormones, pesticides and fertilizers), fair trade and shade grown. Besides the fact that the company operates in a $ 8 billion an year gourmet coffee market in US, what sets it apart are its programs for at- risk children in Costa Rica, a soup kitchen serving 100 meals a day to poor children, computer centers and community soccer teams.

2)  Green Design Systems

The straw wall product of Green Design Systems (GDS) is a revolutionary building material. These infill walls are made from rice straw, wood framing and steel mesh. While the first is an agricultural waste the second is certified by the forest stewardship council and the third is made from 100% recycled metal. The reduction in wall construction time, energy efficiency, and a non toxic fire resistant wall is complemented by reduced global warming. Additionally the wall is completely recyclable/ compostable at the end of its life. The Straw wall was chosen as one of the “Top Ten Green Building Products of the Year” by the Northwest Chapter of the Green Building Council.
3)  GiveAndDate.com

Giveanddate seeks to bring together the two ideas of flirting and philanthropy. A dating service for Single New Yorkers Giveanddate successfully set itself apart by requiring its users to use its services free of cost but only after they have contributed to one of Giveanddate’s partner charities. Additionally, Giveanddate sources 75% of its supplies from recycled material, tries to minimize travel and gives 50% of its profits to charitable organizations.

In a short span of little over three years, B Corporations have  a gained legal recognition in a few states and tax breaks in at least one US city. B labs estimates that the B corps   save $ 750,000 annually in marketing and operating costs. B Corp Certification can thus help a company cement its sustainable credentials, improve visibility and deliver better returns to the shareholders too.

The United Nations Fund For Children (UNICEF) has been a respected member of the international aid and development community for many years. Its work around the world includes programs to decrease child mortality rates in the developing world, provide free education for children of both sexes from all economic backgrounds, protecting children from violence and abuse, and many more.

UNICEF Innovation is a relatively recent UNICEF program developed in response to a changing set of challenges for children and youth around the world, and the aid workers working with them. The program focuses on using low tech hardware and open source software to empower young people and aid workers to improve their lives.

What They Do

UNICEF Innovation’s current projects include:

The Bee is a mobile computing system designed to provide communication and connectivity in crisis situations and other field circumstances where limited access to power and connectivity can inhibit communication and information sharing, thereby inhibiting the effectiveness of the response. The Bee is designed to be lightweight and easily portable, yet rugged and resistant to damage, and has been built with multiple sources of power and connectivity. The Bee can power itself with solar power, car batteries, or conventional power sources, and it can use everything from traditional WiFi to FM radio transmitters to communicate. The Bee’s design is publicly available, and the construction is based on easily available consumer components.

Uniwiki is an open source wiki software based on the MediaWiki platform (the same software that runs Wikipedia) that has been designed to be easier and more intuitive for children and teenagers, especially those in developing countries, to use. Uniwiki will make it easier for children around the world to share and collaborate online. Among Uniwiki’s changes to the MediaWiki platform include easier page creation and an improved editing interface designed to resemble other commonly used software programs. The MediaWiki extensions used to power Uniwiki have been designed specifically to be lightweight and accessible even in areas with low bandwidth and other connectivity problems.

YouthNet is software designed to run youth social networks centered around specific topics of interest. The software is designed to run in areas with low connectivity and to provide a platform for youth to connect both with aid workers and each other to collaborate on discussions about the issues and challenges they face.

UNICEF Innovation is also one of the developers of RapidSMS technology, a data collection, communication, and coordination tool that will enable aid and development workers to more quickly and accurately assess community needs based on text messages from cell phones. The widespread use of cell phones around the world provides an unparalleled opportunity to receive near-immediate feedback for organizations conducting relief efforts or other social services.

One program using RapidSMS to make a difference is an effort to distribute anti-malarial nets in Nigeria. Every year, more than 250,000 children under the age of five die in Nigeria from malaria or its complications, yet health surveys conducted from 2006-2008 indicated that only 8% of households owned malaria nets. UNICEF Innovation is partnering with other organizations to use RapidSMS data gathering technology to distribute the nets to the areas that need them most. RapidSMS was also used to provide real-time tracking of food delivery and availability during the 2008 famine in Ethiopia.

How You Can Help

You can support UNICEF Innovation’s work by donating through the main UNICEF website, or by helping raise awareness of UNICEF Innovation’s products, which are open source or freely available. Due to the open source nature of the programs, interested developers can even get involved in the projects themselves.