Cell phones: a platform for social innovation in emerging markets
Smart social entrepreneurs and their like-minded investors would be smart to think about the breadth of opportunities that a cell phone creates for citizens of emerging markets.
Smart social entrepreneurs and their like-minded investors would be smart to think about the breadth of opportunities that a cell phone creates for citizens of emerging markets.
Yesterday the White House announced President Obama’s 2010 request to Congress for $50 million to set up a Social Innovation Fund with the goal of identifying the most promising results-oriented non-profit programs in order to expand their reach throughout the country.

And without the chickens, Derek Hoeferlin and his architectural students from Washington University would not have had reason to take interest in this little community garden which has begun to harbor interest for it’s uniquely designed “urban chicken coop”, the story of its recovery post-Katrina and the sustainability recipe it holds for other communities across America.
Good ideas have a life of their own. That’s what Paul Baricos, Executive Director of the Hollygrove Growers Market and Farm (HGMF) in New Orleans is learning two years after the Carrolton-Hollygrove Community Development Center (CHCDC) set out to figure out how to bring fresh produce to a neighborhood with no real access to affordable food.
Whether they are “social” entrepreneurships or just plain entrepreneurships, it is clear that New Orleans is laying the right groundwork for a full-scale “and then some” recovery.
He talks about how the15 percent drop in diamond prices in the past six months is actually helping his business,
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1BOG works by grouping customers together into a sort of buying club. Then, after a rigorous selection process, they choose a solar installer who will provide the biggest discount and the best quality. The more people that sign up, the better the discount for anyone buying solar through the program.
If you aren’t familiar with 1 Block Off the Grid, what they do may be best explained by New York Times Magazine:
…in a cultural moment when many individuals aren’t feeling all that rugged, perhaps it makes sense that a company called 1BOG has put collective buying at the center of its business model. The name is derived from the phrase “one block off the grid,” a reference to the goal of rounding up groups of homeowners willing to install solar-power systems on their houses — removing the rough equivalent of one block from a city’s electrical grid.
Smart meters will have their own web pages that can be presented on social networks.
I’ve gotten a little leery about product posts lately (”seen on TV” products notwithstanding). Ultimately, with the number of new “green” products out there, such posts could easily become the sole focus of our work here… and I don’t think that’s the kind of content sustainablog readers want or expect. But, I do make exceptions, and was happy to do just that when Ecopreneurist’s Paul Smith approached me about writing a post on Ode magazine.
Why make an exception for Ode? It’s quickly become my favorite magazine… the first (and, so far, only) one I’ve subscribed to on Zinio. Ode’s not only focused on issues that matter to me — social, environmental, and economic change — but also on stories about people making a difference in these areas.
In short, there’s a lot of good news in Ode… and, more and more, we need that.

The very fact that it razed down acres of orange groves in Anaheim to build its first theme park filled with “plastic” fairy tales should speak for itself. Child health activists have been against the company’s use of toxic cleaning materials in their theme parks for the last three years; they even protested outside an annual shareholder meeting in Oakland, CA yesterday.
AT & T has partnered with One Economy and Meraki to bring free WI-FI internet to low income communities Sunnydale Housing Community, San Francisco’s largest low income housing project.
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